Welcome the Money and Wealth with John Hobryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast Network and iHeartRadio.

Hey, Hey, this is John Hope Bryant and this is Money and Wealth on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio.

The podcast series season two are highly anticipated every week Ministry of Finance, if you call it.

And I want to thank everybody for again making this so well received here and around the world.

As you know what I bring a guest on, it's pretty special.

I normally do these solo pretty much.

Today is one of those days I've been looking forward to this.

This is not only somebody who works with me.

I see my Operation Hope pan on today.

So we're in the operational corporate offices, Global Corporate, the global headquarters, actually somebody who works with me at Operation Hope principally even though he's embedded in all my life.

And now you get to know him.

And I'm gonna take you behind the curtains of how things work at a very high level, introducing you to an extended member of my family, both my organizational family and a friend.

So my friend family, friends of Bryant, Tim Crockett, and I don't have you with us, so Tim Crockett is structurally organizationally, he is the head of Corporate Risk and Security or risk Corporate risk and corporate Security.

I guess his way is.

Really is that the title chief risk Officer.

Okay, there you go, risk covers everything.

Yeah, risk security.

Tim Crockett is one of these guys that you read about in the British spy novels.

Who can you know, like Jason Bourne movies or something we Can Kill You would have pens right, and he's got a pencil on them.

You're gonna learn more about about Tim as we go here.

But you might be asking, Okay, wait a minute, is this is the wrong podcast?

Like this is money and wealth, not you know, security and health?

Right, what's the deal?

As we talked about when I brought my wife Shasron, and we talked about how health is wealth, that things are often connected and correlated.

So one of the things I like to do is to bring folks behind the curtain of how things work, whether it's financial systems or models in financial systems, financial structures, economic structures, business structures.

Here's brand structures and personality management structures and corporate organizational structures and what no one talks about which is you see the folks walking around with the little earpieces on, and I mean there's a time where you want physical security and you want folks with a uniform on, and you want them walking, you know, with a clipboard on.

That's a deterrent.

It's a process.

It's really they're really managing retail threats.

Now you tell me, you're tell me when I get this wrong.

They're managing retail threats to a security guard.

Yeah, in the uniform.

Yeah, there's a number of things that fall into that category.

Yeah, you're providing safety for your customer, your employees, and then to some degree, brand and reputation.

But you want that person visible and obvious, yes, all right.

And a police officer there's another example of retail security.

By the way, high regard for police officers.

But you want that person obvious, invisible.

It's a badge, there's uniform, there's a police card, there's lights and sirens.

You want that to be a deterrent.

You want bad people to say, maybe I shouldn't do that.

I see this bad guy over there, right, all right?

So what about the guys with the little earpieces on, Like they got on sunglasses, they got on a you know, non a script closed.

They don't want to draw any attention in themselves what so ever.

And and Tim's the next level above that.

He's just health right when he kills you, you think you're still alive, but we're not.

We're gonna we're gonna have some fun with his background all that stuff, because he was literally British Special Forces and it really is quite fascinating.

But but this whole level of why would somebody like me you need a guy like him, but the court organization like mine need a gut need an organization like his or him?

Uh?

Why why might you have specialized security firm associated with you?

How is that tied to wealth?

And and is that tied to insurance and risk management and all that kind of stuff.

We're gonna get in all of that.

So as you road and as you develop, you can also be thinking holistically about how to protect and how to keep because it's not about what you make, it's about what you keep the wealth you create.

Because I'm convinced all of you are going to create wealth again.

I keep people keep telling me John, you keep giving his game in areas that no one ever told us about our people as somebody just last night told me, like all these wealthy folks whatever, successful people don't tell us a gatekeeper.

They don't tell us how things really operate.

You see it, but you don't understand it.

I'm trying to unpack this or you understand it now.

To understand it, you need to understand him.

So, if I had to give one word for Tim Crockett, beyond kind, gracious, consistent, a good guy, actually really do like of a good father is resilient, like consistent, commited, credible character, good character, resilient resiliency runs through the whole stream.

He just doesn't give up.

And it isn't that I've never seen him flustered.

Actually, and he's sort of is the kind of power I like, you can power.

You know, you got real power.

You don't need to use it like you don't need to like flex It's just it's just then is.

And that comes with a quiet confidence.

You always know how you know how.

I love the power of quiet.

Remove the noise.

So Tim Crockett tell the audience set this up a little because we'rena talk about By the way, the reason all this all came about was he just crossed the ocean.

The Pacific Ocean, right from San Francisco to Hawaii, where he just got where me and my family just came back from on a retreat.

We got there in five hours on a plane eight hours.

It took him forty five days because he was wrong a boat, a twenty foot boat, no motor on it, with the sun across the ocean, with storms, it was not and there was a hurricane that came from it was an earthquake that had come from Russia or something, and there was concern that was gonna turn into a tsunami.

You were, you were on the on the ocean.

We rode into the Big Island under a tsunami watch.

So we're gonna get We're gonna get in all it.

Because he actually got two Guinness Book of World Record entries because of this.

Right once under contention being the first father son team to rode the Pacific.

But my son, yes, he's getting credited with being the youngest to rot the Pacific.

And this is the second time you've done this.

Yes, I did the Atlantic back in twenty eighteen, but I did that solo.

I told you.

It's like a like a living Jason board, like like like John Wick or something.

So we're gonna get into the what and the how and the who.

You should be listening, Like, what did you just say, John, we can't row across a lake?

His brother.

His brother just just wrote I just went on a diving lesson in uh in MAUI went down forty feet for forty five minutes.

I thought I deserved an award.

This dude, this did forty five days on a rowboat where one falls, move and you're done.

Like, if anything happens to you out there, you're done.

There's no one to call when you're taken.

A plane from Hawaii is the most remote land mass in the world.

One of the reasons I go there.

You take a plane from the West coast Los Angeles to Maui or to Hawaii.

You went into.

Honolulu and then we went into the Big Island.

Big Island, and there's seven islands.

I think it takes five hours of continuous flight at six hundred miles an hour, whatever it is, and if anything happens to the plane, no one wants to really think about this, but it's a plane.

There's no place to land, it's just water.

So can you imagine being in a rowboat?

I mean it's more than a rowboat, but I mean an unpowered vehicle for forty five days.

Okay, we're gonna get an all of this.

Let's now back up and tell the audience a little bit about so we're gonna have resilience, your backstory, talk about resilience really anchoring in this this most recent endeavor of yours, and then talk about risk management, how that relates to wealth protection, creation, growth, and to the sent that.

We can talk a little bit about how we came together and and what does that mean and all that stuff.

Some stuff we can say, some stuff we can't say, right, But you're smart, You're feel in the blanks your background.

How does someone get into this field?

And I believe I think I met you through the FBI or something like that.

I mean, I mean somebody, I mean when direct the FBI recommends you, you know you hot crap.

Yeah, that's where the referral came from a little over two years or so ago now, And it was around the Hope Global Forum, obviously a very high profile event.

I call it kind of Davos for financial literacy.

We've got some big names, all of which bring a certain amount of risk to the event.

Not alone, not elect to mention sort of the risk that surrounds yourself and so forth.

And that's why I got to ask to sort of come in and help manage that risk not only for yourself, John, but also the event a lot of moving parts.

So I think that I was very experienced in I've run some events where there's seventeen thousand people in attendance and the executive team have a certain exposure that needs to be managed.

So that's how we met.

We spent three days together during the Whope Global Forum.

We hit it off, and I think it was about three months after that we decided that we wanted to look at the institutional the organizational risk that operation carried at the time of the last seven years has been a lot of rapid growth, so we figured out how best we could approach that at a strategic enterprise level.

The enterprise means the mothership company.

Yeah, all of the big things that any established organizational business or family office need to sort of address.

Family offices and another podcast episode, but there's a whole other conversation with.

Family in order to kind of protect that upside.

Again, often gets forgotten about when when people become and start to experience success.

With success comes elevated risk, and that's really where become a target.

You can become an individual, an individual as a target as in the person, but also the role, the institution and everything else that goes along with it.

So when you're around the King with the King's on TV right now in the UK, or you're around the Cornference of Norway and the friend of mine around Quincy Jones got Ress of Soul, or you're around President Clinton, former president, you're around the current president, or you're around I mean, any high profile person you're gonna see hopefully you won't see, but you're gonna notice a presence.

We're calling it a bubble, and they have a body man.

Uh and Tim would be in this example, my body man.

If you see me at the forum flowing, Tim won't be very far from me.

And Tim sees everything around here.

He's got eyes in the back of his heads.

When I wake up in the morning, I don't know when he sleeps.

When we have in the morning, he's at the front door.

Go to bedt height, he's leaving me at the door and he's there, but he's invisible.

And it's something I never thought i'd need, but you it becomes a time where you become it becomes obvious.

Again, things don't make any sense until they do.

And a certain point, you need a banker.

Then you need a private banker.

Then you need uh uh financial planners, and you need accountants on top of that, then you need auditors.

Uh.

It's a big lead.

But at a certain point, you need a family It's just somewhere between the auditors all and and accountants all the stuff, lawyers, at some point private bankers.

You'll need a family office if you keep building wealth.

But that's that's a big lead.

By the way, if you're in a family office, we'll again, I'm do a podcast just on family offices.

That's that's a lot of wealth you're managing.

Typically you talk about liquid assets of you know, give or take fifty million dollars.

Then you need a family office.

Let's back up and talk about why, you like, why would the why would the Federal Bureau of Investigation or we only say it, you know, the CIA or whoever recommend a guy like you?

What does it take to be recommended?

Where does that credentials come from?

You were in what we call the effectively the British Special Forces, Is that right?

Yeah?

The current of your seals, the equivalent of the of the of the Baby Seals.

In the UK is called the Special Boat Service, So was a UK being a smaller entity.

Obviously our special forces are smaller as well.

And I initially joined the Royal Marines and then from there transitioned at a very young age into special forces, specifically the Special Boat Service.

So I spent most of my adult life either in on or under the water in some fashion.

Ah, that's why you're so comfortable in the water, right, What attracted you to that?

Again?

I think it comes back down to sort of personal attributes or traits.

My start major back in forty Commando, which is where I came from, was in the Special Boat Service and he recognized, I know, whether it's my character, my aptitude or attitude.

And he's the one that actually said you should consider a career in special forces, and he was the one encouraged me then to go forward.

And you need to be recommended for that, No anyone can put in the recommendation.

You have to do a minimum sort of two years within a fighting unit, commander unit, and then once you've reached that sort of level of maturity.

You can apply yourself, but it's a it's a closed branch.

It's a volunteer branch.

So just like the Navy Seals in the US, you go through a selection process and if you wish to leave, you can voluntary withal ring the bell.

What he's really saying is, if you're a punk and you can't make it, you wash out, so they don't need to they don't need to select you.

You sort of yourself selected because you made it toward through an impossible rigorous situations.

Okay, that was very elegant way for you to say that.

Okay, so we're going to fast force.

We can get to the need of this.

So you come up through the ranks, you select yourself, you get selected.

You're in British Special Forces and at some point you say, it's been real, it's been nice, and I'm out.

Is that right?

Yeah?

Like I said, I was very fortunate.

I think I was the third youngest person to pass selection back then, and I had a very full career.

And because it was such a small unit, you kind of hit that ceiling.

Because there's no opportunity for promotion.

You'd have to sort of wait your turn right, and I'd sort of hit that ceiling and I was still young enough to pursue your second career.

I've done all the work, all the jobs that I wanted to do, so.

Wait, wait, back up.

So you hit a ceiling where you thought you couldn't go any further, in effectively the special Forces of Britain, even though you're very good at what you did, You're like, okay, I can wait around for twenty more years.

But yeah, it was on my timeline.

Like I said, I'm not one disort to sit there and wait.

So what I want the audience to hear is you can be upstanding, successful, so highly intelligent, brilliantly talented, gifted, obviously well connected, white male, proper British white male and still hit a wall, hit a ceiling like okay, I need to pivot.

So you pivoted, like I'm not going to wait here twenty years and go do something else.

And what was it something else?

Well, when I first came out, I didn't quite know what it was going to be.

At the time, there were very few transferable skills other than the experience that you had.

We didn't have that piece of paper.

When you kill somebody with a pencil.

It doesn't work very well in the corporate suite.

So there was there was very little call for underwater knife fighting guru.

Right, So it was trying to figure out where I would naturally fit, and so I gave myself twelve months to experience what we call the circuit, that security realm of work.

I knew I wasn't.

Sorry, sorry for audience.

What the heck's the circuit?

Yeah, it's just it's what's called the those that work in security, but not very special.

This specialized area.

This is not the security guard.

And globally you could probably back then this is pre nine to eleven, you could measure that group globally is less than three hundred people.

You hear that experience.

And by the way, no disrespect to the security guard at Alberson or wherever.

My mother was a security guard at my elementary school, So no disrespect attended.

This.

This is a whole nother This is this is a whole other situation.

I'm trying to He said, there's about three hundred individuals in this community globally unbelievable.

Okay, so all right, so, uh, I mean everybody's getting a little bit of a behind the scenes of the movies.

You all watch right, you just picked the movie.

I just watched one of them last night.

Well, Special Forces CI Securities, you know, Elite Services, seals, and you're getting a backstorea A three hundred or so.

You work, you spend your time doing that.

You go, okay, that's not really my drill.

You got you end up You end up with this with CNN embedded in Afghanistan or some crazy thing dodging bullets.

Well, so one of the first jobs I had was actually for the BBC, and I was looking after investigative journalists doing a story on the illegal logging trade in Brazil.

It was ten day job, thoroughly enjoyed it and running around the Amazon jungle like on this nice yacht making TV.

And then that came to an end, and fast forward probably six and.

You're doing security for Higatt Security again.

It was kind of providing that that safe platform from which then the TV crew could do their job.

Bubble.

The last thing they want to be doing is worrying about safety, security, logistics.

Pirates, pirates on the ocean.

Yeah, right, so he's created a bubble, a secure environment which is both physical, which is physical electronic, electrical, electronic, digital, physical material weapon weapon.

Okay, let me just tell you what is that telling you?

Okay, so now you pivot to.

So it kind of was when then I was gravitating more towards project management.

And then six months later nine to eleven happened and the world literally got and my world literally got turned upside down.

I was working on a project in Indonesia for oil company and because of the the coalition going into Afghanistan, kind of the the Muslim world erupted in protests, and obviously Indonesia was a majority Muslim country, so they started to go after and look for America.

Is that No, this is this is way before, the way before it.

And the project got canceled.

So I'm now sat back in the UK wondering what am I going to do next?

And I was actually looking after Pat Cash at a at a Classic tennis tournament in London and somebody asked, oh, this is your client.

Someone had asked me, like, you've worked with the journalist with journalists before, are you interested in going to Afghanistan?

So I was like, yeah, sign me up.

Yeah sure.

The Parliament bullets flying over your hair when.

You lay ten days later, I found myself in Cobble and yes, the news team that I was happening to be looking after was cn.

IT and you were embedded deep in Afghanistan.

Yeah, and the correspondent I was working with was senior correspondent, Very eager.

Very had a great work ethic, and we went all over the country news gathering, and through a set of circumstances, I helped recover some material that provided an opportunity then to come to Atlanta, and I was supposed to come here and help set up all of CNN's.

Way.

Just that was just so smooth.

That was just so If I didn't know the backstory, we were just kept all.

I don't know how much of this he can tell you, but I'm gonna try to tease this out of him.

I don't make my man uncomfortable.

Can you tell them what you can?

You give them any sense of what you discovered.

I have to recover bin Laden's video library and then hand carried almost two two hundred VHS tapes from Kandah all the way back to Atlanta.

Okay, talking about I mean talking about making smart sexy, talking about what's like smooth's cool?

My brother man is completely smooth run that because it was this is if this is anybody in my family, we have t shirts like I I discovered ben Laden's tapes, we'd have we market the heck out of this thing.

All right, he's back up.

Serious thing.

It's a very serious thing.

And by the way, thank you for your service.

You stumbled on or found somehow discovered in the midst of Europe work in Afghanistan the video library for Asama bin Laden.

Not quite.

I was just responsible for verifying it and then bring it to the.

US, which was which was highly risky because people wanted this.

Was probably when when this young Afghani Afghany photojournalist came to us.

It was probably three four weeks after the murder of Daniel pil The concern was that this was.

A was street journal reporter was murdered.

Right, So this was a concern that it was a ruse to grab another journalist, you.

Meaning your client.

Yes, so a setup to get the tapes, but really the setup maybe to grab you and your journalists.

Yeah, so highly risky.

And this is where it comes back into the principles of risk management, not what you think of just financial risks, physical risk off so the more you know on the front end, you can plan accordingly and mitigate that risk.

And that was really my role in helping recover that.

How long did it take it to get him back, so it was.

Kind of two parts.

This gentleman came to us on a Thursday.

We went down there two days later.

Within ten hours we confirmed that they were the real deal.

Twenty four hours later we'd recovered them back to Carble within two days, I think they were dubbed, and the correspondent was heading back here with the original fifty seven tapes.

And then when they got back here, they scrolled through This is kind of the humor spiece.

When you scrolled through some of the tapes, there were a lot of Western b movies.

Really, we thought that was watching he was watching just old American.

Movies, slack like Cowboy in Western movies.

But one of those tapes had actually made it back in that original batch and someone had scrolled through it and halfway through, spliced in the middle was essentially how to put together a rocket launcher.

So at that point the investigative team here said we want the rest of the tapes.

So I didn't go to ask to go back a second time.

And whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up, back up, We'll slow down.

You went back to Afghanistan?

Are you out your dang on mine?

Well, I never left.

I basically we were ripping cobble.

So you which went back to Kandahart went went from the frying pan to the fire to go back in where you just escaped essentially with with with by the skin of your teeth.

Uh, where it might have been set up to go back to get more tapes.

So this is where I tell you.

This is like they say when the when the when the the Titanic was going down, that the band was playing, The band of the Titanic was playing as the ship was sinking.

And I've always said that was not cooling the gang, because cool the gang would have been wrapping up there their cords as the ship was sinking and heading toward the life rabs.

So look, it takes a special kind of dude to do what he just said.

Okay, if I hadn't pulled this out of him, what did he say?

Something happened and that caused me to be in in back of the states.

He would have missed.

You would have missed this entire thing because he has no need to brag.

The fact discretion is a key to his position.

He literally is a black box.

He hears it, he doesn't say it.

I pulled it out of him and he from security places that you know, perspective.

Now he can talk about it, but I wanted to respect his ability to say or not say that.

So you go.

Now, you go back into Cobble.

And he went to Cobo to Kanda Heart, which again frying frying frying pan to the fire where people eat bullets for dessert or somebody's teeth, you know, grinding the.

Bullets for dessert.

So you go back in to get some more tapes, and you return a second time with a second stash.

And actually we stayed a little bit longer than we planned because.

There was I was gone in twenty eight minutes.

So their concern was that the the original tapes got brought back and created a week long documentary series with the correspondent and the and the team.

It was called Terror on Tapes.

So you can watch this on TV.

By the way, put up spat on YouTube.

The first episode was going to air on the Sunday night, and their concern was that while it seen an international wasn't streamed in Afghanistan at the time.

It was in Pakistan and just across the border from Kandahart's Queta, which is a short two hour drive of that.

So their concern was if I were still in Candahart at that time, that the risk would go through the h But there was an opportunity when we recovered that second batch of tapes.

There was actually another set of tapes documented Bin Laden's journey from Kandahart to Tora Bora as the sort of coalition was tightening that noose on on getting hold of it and the whole Anaconda battling in to Born.

So these eleven tapes, sorry, people who know what is very quick.

Yeah, it was an operation to sort of try and kind of get the final remnants of the Taliban al Qaeda, and obviously if you watch and the movies that document that now as he slipped over into Pakistani where he was fine.

So what you did was on the road to capturing Ben Laden.

It helped to gather additional intail to ultimately capture and kill Bin Laden.

The terrorists are brought down.

There well, I think from CNN's perspective, the material that they got a hold of showed that you're dealing with a very sophisticated adversary and not someone that was just interested in fighting Americans or the coalition in Afghanistan.

This was a global concern.

And essentially fast forward a little bit, having brought those tapes back here and then when you started to look at what the rest of the investigative team had gotten hold of from other correspondents across the space of maybe the last ten months or more, it's actually we pieced it together and you almost had an education system, a curriculum for al Kada Curriculu.

We had, we had instructors notes, we had instructors instructional videos, student notes, and you could see that this was a very sophisticated organization intent on obviously trying to damage and conquer the West.

So I think that then elevated the Western's understanding of who we were really up against.

Obviously, once seeing n a extra act did the newsworthiness of the tapes.

Yes, they were then passed on to the government where they could then have their analysts piece together with probably.

Other so see, you guys don't need to watch action adventure movies and just watch my podcast and then go and see only go on YouTube and look at the back look at the results of what this guy actually helped to do, because it's all there on a documented But by the way, as you're listening to all this, you can think about a half dozen action movies that you love that have bought you in the Middle East or Africa or someplace Latin America, you know, with three guys or ladies whoever, battling quietly behind closed doors forces of evil.

Thank you very much for your service.

So you come, you come to America, and I'm gonna do this pretty quickly so we can get to the meat of this.

You know, when you're bored, things take all day.

But when you're when you like somebody, you're enjoying it, things go really fast.

And so things want to really fast in our episode, and I want to get to the meat of it before we're done.

So you come back.

You're given this great opportunity.

Am I going to tell your business?

You say no to it?

As I recall, yes, which was unheard of.

This was I think CNN gave you this opportunity or some broadcasting that gave you some major opportunity and you're like, nah, I'm really I'm not ready to push pencils.

Well, I'll kill some with pencil, but I gotta push a pencil.

He doesn't kill anybody, by the way.

I'm just thinking he has a capacity to.

Okay, So now you you use a bunch of a series of choices and changes that because we can talk about Crockett just for the next hour and a half.

That leads you to us connecting.

Yeah, and.

Before we connected, though, you'd already done one of these crazy ocean crossings.

Would you do that twenty years ago now?

Eighteen, twenty eighteen, okay, seven years ago?

Seven years ago?

Okay?

And why did you do that?

Because you could no, So the serious seriousness of it all.

So I'd reconnected with an old military body of mine in late twenty seventeen.

I think it was just over social media, being spoken for probably over twenty years and just reliving the good old days.

We actually served together in the same unit, first Golf War and then also being on the Royal Boxing squad together.

He was super heavyweight, I was a heavyweight.

So we used to spa together quite a bit, so we got quite close hand spoken to him for over twenty years we reconnected and then it was about six weeks later that I come to find that he had died by suicide and lost his life.

So that kind of sparked in me the need to do something more, not just an honor of his memory, but draw more attention and hopefully some resources for addressing the mental health crisis within our veterans and obviously the wider military community.

I didn't quite know what that was going to be.

And then it was about six weeks later another friend of mine that I had served with was actually rowing from mainland Europe to mainland Latin America as a team of six, and it was just disappeared down that Google rabbit hole kind of and came across ocean rowing, and I thought, that's what I want.

To do, raising money, essentially resources and visibility for this good cause of mental.

Health, so that when I talk about resiliency and especially ocean rowing, it's having that strong why.

And that was my why.

Everything with you has a strong why, But I.

Think that's so important for when tackling anything that is a struggle, I enthusiasmal Enthusiasm will get you so far, like discipline will get you so far.

But again you need something that's bigger than that to keep pulling you through again those low points.

And that's interesting.

And we never talked about this, at least I don't recall that we have.

Is that why you relate to me so well?

Because of our strong why?

Around here?

I think it's a strong factor.

Yes, yeah, again I hadn't really thought about it, but that's certainly I think why you and I connected and why we get on so much.

Yeah, so the strong why, I once you explain to the audience what the strong why is, we never talked about this is very powerful and it's a great lesson for for anybody listening.

Yeah, so I when I started.

When I started it, it was because obviously he was reported twenty two veterans were taking their own lives each and every day, and across the months and years, obviously those numbers have gone up and down, and they're probably very much underreport it.

The mental health crisis.

Well, certainly, if you're by the way, if you're in this group of three hundred, you really can't talk about it so literally.

And if you're a CIA officer, whether you die in the field or somehow, and fortunate situations come to you.

Literally, it might other than a placement of a marker at CIA headquarters, the world hears nothing about it.

Yeah.

No, it's only just recently that kind of this stigma, this concern around mental health is sort of broken past.

Like you said, there's dark corners of an institution.

People don't talk about it.

Certainly the male community are much more reluctant to talk about it.

No, but I'm saying, on top of that, tem on top of that, a lot of places where these folks work because of confidentiality, because of secrecy.

Literally, unlike a soldier or a police officer or a security guard or whatever, somebody in law enforcement, military service, if they get killed in the line of duty or they die, there's a news flash as something not there's a parade, the presentation of the flag to the family, and there's a nobility about it.

There's metals, all kinds of things.

But oftentimes, in this group of three hundred around the world, they live in silence, they serve in secrecy, and often they die without recognition.

Yeah.

True, And to some degree when you're in that community as well, and this is the important piece of trying to break that stigma.

It could be viewed as a weakness.

Yes, that's why you're saying that that there's also there's there's is acknowledgement and recognition now so that the stigma is now going away.

So now it's not viewed as a weakness so much anymore.

Okay, got it?

And if and and sometimes it's tied to what you've seen, what you've experienced, like the loss of people close to you.

There's that aspect of it, but it's also a fear.

And this is where like they sort of tie it more to again this podcast.

And the word that Operation Hope does is the financial piece, because often that's not talked about.

That is a stressor, like debt is a stressor.

So if you have things that you're trying to wrestle with and then you have just life and life stress adding to that, that's often while why so many people will resort to taking their own life, giving up.

You know, I had not put this together yet until you said this, But the minute you said that, I'm reminded.

Because we have a Hope inside the workplace at Atlanta Police Department, and they found that one of the highest bankruptcy rates amongst professionals, sorry, financial stress rates which leads to bankruptcy is with a law enforcement but they can't talk about it.

And and you often see a law enforcement officer moonlighting in the evening at a club or whatever.

They're trying to make extra money because they got too much month at the end of their money.

By the way, I think it's a huge security risk to have the law enforcement officer essentially arresting somebody at two o'clock in the afternoon and theoretically maybe protecting them at eight o'clock at night at the club.

I mean, it's not inconceivable.

It's the same guy, right, So I hadn't thought about how extends everywhere.

Of course it does, makes perfect sense.

So it's not so much the physical threat of the job they're doing or their service, or maybe it is what they saw.

But on top of that, you've done all this for your country or for the world.

You're traveling around the world, you're helping people.

You come back home stack of bills, your wife's screaming at you, or whoever, your kids are like I need school fees or whatever, and that wears on you on some of the people.

And a lot of people don't realize if you've served your whole career twenty twenty five years.

You'll get someone that is very experienced in that specialized role, whether it's security risk or again flying planes, and yet they've not learned the basics of financial ligacy.

Wow, and they've come from a world where they may have gotten free housing, you've got free medical and dental, everything is.

Clothing, transportation, everything.

And then all of a sudden, in a very short period of stacked they just put out literally in and you've got to try and figure this out.

That can be depressed, and it can be depressing.

It's a shock to go and sort of transition.

And ask any military from in any part of the world that management of that transition is not very well done.

They may get a sixty minute class on finances and just let loose if that.

Yeah, So it's very easy for individuals to all of a sudden get themselves into trouble or have no idea of how to get a mortgage, how to manage their finances and everything else.

And then you've got to realize some of these people that have spent their whole career in the military, they're be pretty beaten up when they come out.

So then healthcare costs, so that will go through.

Yes, you've got the VA and all the rest of it, but there's some things that there's just a matter of urgency where they've got to get work done.

They haven't planned for those costs.

So in a very short space of time they can go from being in this tight knit unit where they're very well looked after to life drowning in debt and stress.

And if you can, and the audience you may not know this, you cannot keep your security clearance in the military if you have financial stresses that are now obvious bankruptcies collections.

It may risk your security clearance.

You can't be in the military in the United States if you if you have these stresses, and so the if you if you're around the military basis the mouth of the military.

Based the entrance, you'll often find check cashers, payday loan lenders, rent to own stores, title lenders, liquor stores, all this stuff because they're either trying to prey on somebody who they know is gonna get a paycheck every two weeks yep, and who cannot afford to get into financial trouble, so they'll pay that here, it's an advance your paycheck or whatever, but they know they're gonna get it repaid.

It's the federal government, or you got a liquor store or somebody selling illicit good listed drugs or whatever trying to help you medic medicaid if you will, your depression.

And so the same thing that happens in underserved neighborhoods, urban neighborhood, poor neighborhoods happens at the mouth of the military base.

By the way, this goes back to the Freedman's Bank of why Abraham Lincoln and Frederic Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, General Sherman, Secretary of War Stanton try to create a bank for formerly enslaved people, trying to teach free slaves about money because in the camps, yes this happened back then in the eighteen hundreds.

In the camps, you have financial predators on payday, yes they got paid, would show up, even though the blacks are paid less than the white soldiers, would show up at the camp trying to separate the soldier who just got paid, who's financially illiterate, from their dollar.

And so the bank was created as a way to domicile the savings, to protect the savings.

To put it, Tim, thank you so much.

I hadn't even thought about all this stuff trigger all.

And so that's how the Freeman's Bank got originally created, was a protector, a protection of the savings of these soldiers.

In these case, the black soldiers, formally enslaved people who are not finicially literate, never taught about money.

They're out in the middle of nowhere being preyed upon.

I don't know how the predators find them way out there dodging the Confederate bullets.

People do anything over money to try to separate these guys from their wallet and befriending them as if they're a friend.

That's even worse.

Now get somebody acting like they like you, but they really they're trying to take your money.

Okay, So you're doing this to help raise money for this good cause of mental health depression, anxiety, financial stress.

What was the name of the nonprofit.

At the moment, it was tamed the Kracking.

So my analogy that the kracking is a giant Norse mythical beast that would drag ships and sailors down to the bottom of the ocean.

And that was my analogy for PTSD, stress, mental health conditions and so forth.

Tame the kracking, Tame the cracking.

Heigh spelled cracking for my US audience k R A K E N.

Is it available now?

Can they go on the website?

Their website is still there dot us.

But the nonprofit that got the benef from this the first time, the mental.

Health the twenty eighteen nineteen row I had a charity on each side of the the Atlantic.

In the UK it was called Compact Stress, which is one of the first organizations to help address mental health issues set up in the UK after the First World War.

And here in the US it was called Given Hour.

Whether you're getting clinicians psychiatrists donate their time to help veterans get into some sort of program as quickly as possible.

So those are the two organizations I was supporting.

So anybody watching this that you have a skill, you have a talent, you've got mental health abilities.

You're a nurse, you're a doctor, your clinician, your psychologist, you're a financial advisor, your financial leader.

You can volunteer.

You volunteer and Operation Hope for the financial side.

You can also volunteer for these organizations to help these military veterans and Special Office Special Operations officers to manage through the civilian parts of their lives, which nobody prepared them for.

All Right, in the last fifteen minutes we have left.

Everybody wants to hear like, Okay, blah blah blah, tell me about going across the dang on Ocean in forty five days.

So let's get to that.

You you announced to me one day you maybe need a little time off.

You a little boat ride from San Francisco.

As I recall, you had an Operation Hope sticker on the boat.

Yeah, was on several parts of the boat and the website and everything out.

So yes, after doing the Atlantic, the plan was always to do more, but then we had this little thing called a global pandemic that go in the way, so that need to continue to scratch that itch has been there for the last six years or so.

I thought Pacific is the next.

I thought it would be easier.

It's sort of I can be in the US and just actually finishing the US as well, so I didn't have to go to another country.

Because the Atlantic going to Europe.

Yeah, We're just do the Pacific.

So the planning and the logistics were going to be a lot easier, so I thought, and yes, we we left out of South Solito on the north side of San Francisco Bay, rode out underneath the Golden gate Bridge, and then actually it was forty eight days or forty seven days and change when we arrived then in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii.

And I would text you every now and then, Hey man, let me know you're alive.

Shark gets you, I mean, what's ready to send somebody if something happened to you.

Of course wouldn't know for days, right.

Yes, So anyone who's roaded both oceans will say that it's harder.

The first half of the row is harder than the Atlantic, but the second half is a lot easier.

And this is all relative to sea states, how big the waves are, how much sun you've got, and everything else.

So as you're pointing out, we're on a little twenty four foot boat, completely self sufficient.

We have to take our own food.

We have marine batteries and solar panels that provide power that will run a water maker which kind of desalinates the sea water, because you wouldn't be able to carry that much water with you.

But that second half of more favorable weather and sun and all the sort of things that we were waiting for never happened.

So when you go out of the forty eight days, we had three days of sun.

Wow, we probably had a couple of few days of kind of mixed sun.

So we had to be very conscious of our power because if we couldn't run the water maker, we didn't have water, and without water, we couldn't rehydrate, our food couldn't.

So there's that whole Maslov law in terms of you can go three minutes without air, three days without water, and go three weeks without food.

So when it came to power management and how we were can.

They have a person go three weeks without food?

Is that true?

That's what they say?

Yes, I was told the people, most people, most societies were seven days from anarchy, seven meals, I'm sorry, from anarchy.

Well that's the difference between the body what you need actually physiologically versus the psyche people go three hours without a snack of some sort, and that started to go a little bit antsy and get angry.

So, yeah, we had a lot going on managing all of that, and sometimes communications and sometimes we had this little satellite dish it's called a began the newer versions of these, like what we see with starlic so, but to get up on the satellite you need a stable platform.

But when the boat is rocking and rolling on big seas as.

Some of the biggest seas we had were forty fifty foot waves coming out of San Francisco because, like you said, we had two hurricanes on the nowhere near us, but even one hundred and fifty miles away, it can have an effect on the weather systems that you're in, and we had a big weather system to the northwest of US, so we were stuck in all of that.

So we were like a washing machine for forty five days or so during the crossing.

So there are times that we literally could not get up on the satellite to connect and send messages back and forth.

And a thirty forty foot wave unless you ride it, it's going to crash over you.

Yeah, it can flip you.

It can do I think within the first two days we almost capsize three times, which slows down.

When you get to those sort of conditions, it's not safe to row.

It's certainly not safe to row with My nineteen year old son so we would deploy this piece of equipment called a power anchor, which is like a giant parachute that would grab the water and turn the boat into the waves.

So, yes, you still got the waves crashing over you, but they're not side on, where the risk of side sized and rolled with big waves.

So this piece of technology, this anchor or water anchor essentially, yeah, which literally points you into the waveh yeah.

So you run it off the bow, off the front of the boat, so that's the narrowest part of the boat itself, and that just then holds you.

So the wind is always going to push you further, so you literally hold you in the water and the waves will just crash over you, but in a in a safer fashion.

So okay, and you had a little place that you could retreat to the sleep.

Yeah, we had to do little sort of cabins which were water tight, which is part of the kind of the safety that's built into the boat.

So if you were happened to be sized, you've got these two bubbles of air that would then kind of pop you back out on top of the.

Water and uh, heat exhaustion.

Heat exhaustion, salt saws.

Again, you're in a wet, humid environment and occasionally it would dry out, whether you're in a cabin or hot so you're always damp.

But salt water is not that particularly not all that clean.

But obviously as this as the water dries, at least behind it the salt crystals, so it's almost like sandpaper.

Anything that would chafe, from your toe in your shoes to you crouch your sat so it's your feet, hands and backside always wet and in contact with the boat.

So you'll get saws and those souls will get infected.

So again there's a certain manager.

There's no pharmacy out there.

Pharmacy we had to take our own medical equipment.

You'll get infect infected blisters that you have to deal with.

So your body is just fighting this as you kind of have to deal with the environment that you're in as well.

And now you're worried about your son, because you know, that was.

The one thing that I probably didn't fully appreciate.

So when I did the Atlantic our solos, I knew myself, I knew how far I could push myself.

I was also a medic in the military, so I could attend to any of these issues.

My son again, he's not had any of these big life experiences.

He's never been in that situation before.

We did some training.

We did obviously our own preparations, so I knew comfortable with him coming out on the water with me.

He was confident, and he was fairly confident in in tackling what we had, but again still a big unknown for him.

What I didn't fully appreciate is that parental need to look after your offspring.

Yes, I was going to look after him, but that being hardwired into you.

It's different when there's another team member, a crew member, and you're sharing the work light back and forth.

You're rowing for two hours, I'm resting for two hours, and vice versa.

But when you're in big c's and the prospect of this other stuff going on when it's your son, now just different.

I'm going to worry more.

Any little noise I hear out on deck, I'm going to open the hatch and make sure he's okay.

So that was much more wearing on me emotionally than kind of than if it was just someone that was a crew crew.

Member, and psychologically, I mean, it might change some of your decision making I did.

I was much more measured and risk averse than I than I was when I was a solo.

So the sea conditions were on the Atlantic forced me to go on paraancho a couple of times.

That's literally because the wind was blowing me in the wrong direction.

I chose, or we chose to go on para aancho probably three or four more times than we perhaps needed to, because it was just I didn't want my son to be out in the darkness with the prospect of getting capsized.

Yes, and so, audience, I need you to listen.

This relates to health insurance, It relates to life insurance.

It relates to the choices you make when you're thirty forty versus with a family and when you're twenty and you're on your own.

And I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday who made a couple ony thousand dollars when he was twenty and he was about to get married, and his wife was like, well, what did you do with the money?

You made a couple of hundred thousands a year.

He's like, I spent it right.

I was enjoying myself.

I had no responsibilities.

I had an apartment, I had a nice car, and I made it and I spent it.

That's the whole point of being twenty years old two hundred thousand dollars a year, is to enjoy yourself.

By the time he got married, he had to look think about getting a house and getting and getting insurance.

And now he's more measured.

He he is a guy who's got add and tissu deficits or disorder, and he's not a party animal, but he loves life.

And up until very recently he would just go and go on these elaborate vacations, and recently he said he's gotten more measured.

He still goes and has fun still, but he's not trying.

He's like he's trying to I'm trying to save money.

Now he's at a different point of his life and now he's concerned about his children, concerned about his wife and making sure they've got what they need.

It's not just about his immediate gratification.

So it's similar analogy that when you're on your own, you took more risk than when you had somebody you had to care for and be concerned about your protection.

And there it's the same philosophy, yeah, no, the same principles.

Yeah, And that was one of the things that it wasn't planned when we went into this.

When he agreed to row with me, it was less about the actual row.

Yes, we still had our mission about raising awareness for veteran's mental health.

We hadn't even considered the prospect of world records and everything else.

It was having that shared experience in his at his age in a nineteen like I said that, I think the previous youngest was someone like twenty four to twenty five.

Has a lot of life between those five years, and on the opportunities now that will be allowed or afforded him having done this re number, when he knows he can he can attempt anything.

Yes, he's got cool points out.

He's got the cool points.

Every date works for him now, every date, every day.

Tell her what you do?

Ask me, why is the most exciting thing you've done?

When I went to a concert for this rock band, what did you do?

Well?

I went rod across How many miles is it?

And it's about twenty four hundred nautical miles so it's about twenty six twenty seven normal miles.

Yeah, his confidence goes up.

Confidence again, his confidence in himself and the ability to now tackle anything.

He couldn't do or apply himself.

There's a flip side to that.

He can't come up with the excuse saying I can't.

Do that exactly.

Course you can exactly, and you'd be amazed that whatever you struggle well at again it can be very life affirming and so forth.

So yes, that was kind of a secondary aim for me, was to instill that in him.

I knew he had the confidence and the confidence to do this, but he had to learn that himself.

So I think coming out of this now, literally the world is his oyster.

And all those other sort of things that like being able to plan, manage risk, like have project management, project management again, we budgets, yeah, budgeting, Like I said, all of that now translates from ocean rowing into.

Time management, time management, risk management, environmentals and management.

And like building for the future.

Like I said, having that resiliency, knowing that you can't control everything, but you control you can control and that's yourself, your mindset.

All those things will translate into like I said, building generational wealth.

Start planning now and you can just tackle so much more.

Yeah, we're running out of time, but I want it.

There's so much I want to cover.

But we're trying to do this in five minutes or so.

It's been fantastic and some pleasant surprises.

You're in the middle of the ocean.

About mindset.

Now you're trying to help people with their mental health.

That's mental heugment.

But what about your own in the middle of the dang on ocean.

You're half pregnant.

You can't turn around.

Was there any time when you said to yourself, what in the heyo am I doing?

No?

That didn't That didn't didn't cross my mind.

Across your Sun's money, It didn't.

Cross my mind on the Atlantic runs by myself.

But I think we're about day three and because of the conditions we were in and again we're exhaust we're both exhausted.

My son said, I'm not sure if I can do this.

Wow about thirty.

And like you said, three days in, three days.

In, so not three days of forty seven.

But we'd already So it's around about one hundred miles off the coast.

Is that point of no return because that's the limit of the Coast Guard helicopters coming out to it to rescue.

One hundred miles off the coast, there's the limit of a rescue from the coast Guard.

Now you can pull a beacon and then maritime law dictates that any ship close by we'll come to your rescue.

But then that could still be days away.

Now I knew that he was just going through a little bit of a wobble because he'd never experienced this.

Day one at five point thirty in the morning's still sleeping in a comfortable hotel bed.

Basically, fifteen hours later, we're tackling fifty foot waves.

And that was relentless for those first few days.

And he came to me and thought, I don't think I can do this.

And I said to him, well, if you want to give up now, you've got to come to that conclusion.

I'm not going to make that decision for you, because you will then go for the rest of your life thinking well, could I have done it?

Spoke to his mom, he spoke to his sister, and then I also told him, I said, phone yes.

But I also told him, I said that if you decide that you want to get off the ride now, it's still seven to ten days of rowing to row back to the coast.

And I told him, as if you do that, I said, we're going to be through the worst of it anyway.

Yeah, and then he sort of went, Okay, I'll carry on.

You know, by the way, let's give your son some credit.

What's his name, Harrison, Harrison Crockett, Crockett.

Okay, And people can go to your website and see some of this stuff that you guys did.

Yeah, you can go to the website, go to any of our social media if you have to Instagram, kind of the whole stories.

It's tame the cracker, Tame the cracking.

Okay, So I goes, it's so much here, And I mean I talked to you a couple of times, didn't they don't I talked to you as a text.

Messaging text messaging back and forth.

Was it physical call talk that talked you physically one time?

Voice the voice?

No, I think it was you sent me a voice voice notes, voice note.

And you sent me a voice No, that's right.

And somebody sent me photos.

That's where I saw.

What was the worst moment and the best moment or moments in this forty seven days?

Well, the best moment's easy when you finish, when you get off the boat and you're reunited with family, friends and so forth.

That that experience is just you other than our own company.

We hadn't seen another human being for nearly forty eight days, so that is just a great experience.

And it wasn't too far before that.

The only literally a matter of hours, which was probably our worst for me.

For Houson, it was probably that time when he thought he was going to give up.

We're coming into two Helo, the big island, and there was a patch of water that is the currents, the weather systems, the wind, the waves are all messed up and it's not something that you can pull off a chart or pull off.

Now we're going between the Hawaiian islands.

Very different.

This is sort of the suze of kind of Heilo Bay, and it's because you've got the currents sort of whipping around that part of the island, but also the weather systems that are coming off the mountain of the volcano.

And we were the day of literally the twenty four hours prior to that was our biggest day.

I think we did sixty some odd miles miles and then we kind of just rolling.

You're rolling, yeah, and we just ran into what felt like a brick wall.

We thought we were going to get to this this booby that sort of marks when we would like literally turn in because we have to manage the currents because Helo Bay to the south of Hilo Bay, Rocky Shoreline to the north of Hilo Bay Rocky Shoreline.

So if you don't get the approach right for the last ten to fifteen miles, you're gonna end up on the rocks unless you get rescued by a safety boat.

So the approach is very sort of critical.

And I'm talking with my weather out and planning over By the.

Way, everybody, you know, seventy percent of the world is water.

Just to be clear, seventy percent of the world's water, and human beings have only explored five percent of the seventy percent.

Yeah, most of that is unexplored.

Completely different world, separate podcast idea for another time, go ahead.

So a very intense period where we have to write up and again we're still taking turns because I'd rode so hard the twenty four hours period we both had.

We were exhausted and we're coming up and I think I must have been suffering a little bit from heat, exhausted, and we should have been rowing kind of southwest, and I was rowing off northwest, and all of a sudden, my messager app on our kind of side like beacon was pinging away and it was the weather right saying everything, Okay, you're going in the wrong direction.

You need to get back within the next thirty minutes otherwise you're not going to make it.

So that was I think a difficult time because I'm a little bit loopy.

Yeah, I had to pull myself out of his rest period.

We basically had to go two ups.

We're both rowing at the same time for about an hour to bring us back on course.

Wow, while also managing like literally I would row for like fifteen minutes, have to retreat to the cabin, try and hydrate just to stop myself from collapsing.

You could have missed the island, well.

We would have essentially ended up on the rocks.

The rocks, which is worse.

Because it was that critical for about a two hour period.

But then we got back on once we crossed that, then we were home and dry.

By the way, if he had missed the island, there's nothing else out there Australia.

It's Australia.

Just how far away that would have.

Been another five thousand miles, So.

They had rowed twenty five hundred miles, so it'd been another two and a half months before the next lefe more than that.

Okay, so the worst was reaching your physical and psychological and mental limits, and I'm sure that was tough, given how tough you are, and also protecting your son and seeing him go through that.

And the best, of course, was finally getting there again.

It was an earthquake, and there was an earthquake in Russia.

It triggered a tsunami warning.

I know because we were monitoring that.

You were minoring that for us, even though you're rowing as we're going into to Hawaii ourselves.

And luckily that didn't create any drama.

For it didn't and there was nothing we could do about it anyway, I worry about it.

It was like, Okay, we're probably perhaps in it in a safer position than those that were on the shore, because he know that area had obviously been devastated several times throughout history through Tsnoymious.

Only you would say that out in the middle of nowhere, a little peak cups caught a boat with no sails and no motor.

I'm like, yeah, we're safer than the people on shore.

So here's some lessons that that I just heard.

Never ever, ever, ever, ever give up.

Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Take no for vitamins.

Keep your mindset straight, tight right, otherwise all will be lost.

Faith is what you do when you don't have all the facts.

Even the strong get insecure and lose it temporarily.

Jesus Christ, there's a story of Jesus when he was being crucified.

He said, even though he knew what was gonna happen, he knew this is preordained.

He said, basically, Father, why have you forsaken me?

I mean, he was in so much pain that even this man of almost complete faith, well complete faith, had an insecurity get dad, yo, pops, look like, why are you doing this to me?

Lord?

Why have you forsaken me?

Father?

Why are you forsaking me?

And then before he passed away, he said, forgive them the Lord.

They know not what they do.

He snapped back, But there's that moment.

We all have that moment, rainbows after storms.

They never let a crisis go to waste.

You only grow through legitimate suffering.

So you pushing through that, your son pushing through that just makes that resiliency.

Never ever ever give up, makes you stronger.

Okay, let's now pivot.

We're out of time, but let's spend a couple of minutes on Let's go back to why this is important for me and operation hope to do.

Ten years ago, I didn't need this.

Ten years ago, I'm just trying to make some money.

Or twenty years ago, just trying to make some money.

Ten years ago, I'm trying to build some wealth.

Now you got a brand, Maybe I'm answering the question.

Now, now you have a brand to protect if a reputation.

Folks don't kill you now with bullets, but they sometimes they do.

But they can kill you with your reputation.

They can kill you digitally.

They can hack your devices.

They can hold your organization ransom, literally take over all your servers, your mainframe servers, and hold your organization ransom and won't release it until you give them cryptocurrency or something.

There a whole new world out here, most of us.

You sent me an email today it showed that there were twenty five impostures running around on tiktoks and they're me.

That was just earlier today.

And that's almost on a week on a monthly basis.

Yeah, yeah, and people creating a posture accounts for me saying that they're me.

Somebody told me that somebody a friend of mine told me, you know why they didn't reach out to me, said that somebody thought it was me and said twenty five thousand dollars to somebody because they were soliciting them.

If you hear anybody saying that they're me and they're asking you for money, it's not me.

That's not what I do.

That's crazy.

Why is it?

Maybe I just answered your part.

Why is it important for an organization at this level, you know, meet a guy like me at this level or a woman to have Why why it is risk management cheap insurance for brand equity?

Well, there's two sides of that.

Like risk is often associated with all the bad stuff that you just sort of alluded to, And that's important because yes, when you have a again some notoriety, your wealth, obviously somebody wants to take that.

Yeah, you have people out there that they feel that they've been dealt a bad hand, right, and they want to take away what you have built or what the organization is built.

Because they feel they they mean or they feel like they're desperate or they feel like they need they deserve it or whatever.

Yeah, so we've got to protect all of that across all those different domains, like I said, digitally, cyber reputationally, physically, and not just through you obviously, but also the organization, my family.

But then also there's the positive side of risk, because if you can manage all of the downside, you create opportunities.

And that's often something that people don't realize.

If you know where the pungee pits are and the swamps and the deep border and the bad weather and all that sort of stuff, you can navigate a path some people will fear to tread, so you can you can create You can create opportunity by knowing I know what the risks are.

You can when you understand risk, you can then start to think, okay, if I do this, the upside.

Could be that they can go faster and the safe area you can go.

You can go for the predetermined and you can.

Take you can exploit new territories if you know how to manage, like risk in a in a foreign country which is now being developed, like being in there first, that often will provide you with greater returns because you're.

We do that underserved communities today.

Yes, that's that's the upside of risk.

So yes, you want to manage the downside and protect against that across all those different domains.

But then having that understanding of risk will allow you to approach things with more confidence and take on more of that risk.

It's just like debt.

There's good debt and bad debt about plenty of times.

There's good risk and there's bad risk, right, and we want to mitigate the bad risk, and we want to exploit and take educated risk.

So if you do your research on a new country and your piece of software, and you whatever it is, invest in it, you're likely to get greater returns.

So when I go into an area, if I go into a risky area, risky the community, or risky city or risky country or whatever Tim's doing, Timinus team they do a threat assessment, they do an analysis that they're working with the embassy, they're working with law enforcement.

Again, this is all stuff you just don't see.

And they'll do a threat assessment and they'll say, you know, you know this one's okay or this one is not okay.

We need to put a team with you, which you won't never see, and that allows me to not worry about it, and I think about it, I can move fast.

I know that this path in front of me is being secured or been protected, or at least the path that we're driving on is fine.

So then I can go really fast, going to spend my mind doing with a part of my mind managing risk or being worried about things exactly.

We want to remove that burden of risk or security or whatever it may be from you so you can do what you do best.

But also this relies to it applies to even me sending an email.

If I'm concerned that email can be hacked or that I'm got some threat risk, maybe I don't send the email or I send it.

But if I think, oh no, I'm in secure communication, I send the notes, send the text whatever.

So all this stuff allows you.

I hadn't thought about the positive side of risk management before, You're.

Right, yeah, And that's what I think small business is need to pay attention to.

Because if you because it's very hard to differentiate yourself from your competitors, but if you are good at risk management, you're more likely to get investment from bankers and outside like VC firms and everything else which will help you grow, will allow you to get more resources to do more.

If you're a bit like blase about managing risk, then like banks investors, they will do that.

They'll be doing their risk assessment on you.

So if you're not secure in what you do, if you're one way in your professional life, but your cavalier in your personal life online, all the rest of it, your risk, that creates risk and they're less likely to invite.

So it's an important business trait to have.

And again it's not just about business or small business in your personal life as well.

If if you're posting on social if.

You're seen to be a certain way, like people like trust in you because you've posted something online, again, it can all come back to haunt you.

So so and again it's not about saying no to things.

It's doing things thoughtfully, thoughtfully, with intention and professionally.

There's so many things we could talk about.

I mean, I thought it would do forty minutes, we can do an hour and forty minutes.

We're gonna stop now because it's I mean, we can go on forever.

But there's just you're really smart and then induitioning a nice guy and lethal that needs you.

You're really really smart and you're very I mean, the wisdoms just keep on coming.

And there's so many overlaps between effectively what I do and what you do.

And I hope you guys got something of this.

Look, if you're a small business owner listening to this, you're somebody building a brand.

Watch what you're putting online.

If don't post your home address, don't take your GPS off of your your phone.

If you're posting stuff people, people are bad.

Guys are paying attention.

Uh, And don't don't post when you're at not away, not at home, and then say you're not at home.

That's how people that signal to go rob you because you're not at home.

Like, be thoughtful and don't post stuff you're gonna regret later, like you know, get drunk in private, just not literally.

And there are cheap things you can do, inexpensive things you can do.

There's software you can get off of the off the shelf that will give you a layer of protection.

Mostly you know, Apple iPhones have encryption now.

And if you're gonna use if you're gonna text things that are confidential, don't just text it over like literally, texting on phones was created as an afterthought by mobile phone companies.

This is another when I break down the mobile phone industry, I'll i'll explain that, but it was there's not a lot of protections around it.

You're gonna do that, use a protected app that has encrypted I want to name one and I endorse them that has encryption tied into it, so that there's some sense that what you're communicating on a business basis is protected and won't get grabbed by somebody, some bag out of the sky.

What are some other simple things that people can do to protect themselves?

Do you research?

I know what the risks are like everyone here in Atlanta.

When I first came here, I came from Afghanistan.

Within the first three weeks here, I almost got mode and I was in an area that did not have outward signs that I was in a bad neighborhood.

Because I hadn't done my homework, I hadn't done my research.

I'd let my guard down and I could have got myself into some trouble.

So they know the risks before you go there, like you could anyone would go to their hometown and they'll say, oh yeah, avoid these areas because you know your own area.

You go to a different city, different country, you don't know those areas.

So time spent on research will help going to anything like a business, venture, vacation, just travel.

So education, especially today on your phone is the Internet.

It's free, it's free, and it's easy.

With AI, you can literally say I'm thinking of going in this location, what are the top five top ten risks that I need to be aware of?

And AI will give you everything.

Obviously, don't take it for gospel.

Do a little bit more research, perhaps run it through another that will follow the links through and find out what their sources are.

But very quickly and very easily you can know what the risks are in different destinations, different country, business venture and so forth.

There's a lot of information out there.

I think.

I think the problem, and from my profession now, is not the access to information.

It's being able to filter it, analyze it.

Too much information to say that, oh I didn't know.

Again, that's not an excuse these days.

You've got to be dumb, have failed these days.

You got to really work at it, because the information is out there for everybody.

If you take the time and analyze your noses, like me, you'll come down to the crux of it.

And as an entrepreneur, somebody may say, my god, you do nothing but take risk.

No no, no, no no no.

By the time I do something, I wrung all the risk out of it.

It feels very safe for me because I know what I'm doing the neighborhood, so to speak.

Exactly, Tim Crockett, I love you man.

Thanks for spending this hour with me and and enlightening the audience.

It's I didn't realize how much overlay with financial literacy and wealth creation, this and money management and just life management there was between what you do and what we do.

I have much compassion and empathy for well.

Thanks for first of all people in your profession, and thank you for your service.

Thank them for their service.

Uh and your friend who passed away, may he rest in heaven.

He's been remembered.

And thank you for giving yourself your life so we might remember his.

And we will make a We made a contribution, will make another one.

Now that you're back.

We know you're going to survive or not, so we didn't want to give you too much money exact exactly, and so thanks for all you do and thanks for all that we will do going forward.

We didn't cover a whole lot that we could have.

But let's just say when I say business is not personal and capitalism is a gladiator sport.

Like the stuff that he and I have seen just together in the last few years with gray your hair in twenty four hours, most people like, it's just unbelievable.

People are just unbelievably selfish, cruel, nasty, greedy, lie I mean, and you can't take that personal.

I mean, it's unfortunately the nature of where we are in the world today and probably the way the world's always been.

We're just seeing more of it.

But focus on the light, Focus on the good people, like, don't let the bad things taint you.

Always go to the light.

Meet people like Tim Crokett and your son.

Thank you, and you.

I've met many, many and many me of you, and I mean ninety nine point nine percent interactions are is leave me inspired.

So focus on the good people and just manage the risk of the bad.

Step over messing that in it.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Tim Crockett, go change the world has been money and wealth on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio.

Go change your life today.

Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network.

For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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