Captain Brad Geary
speaker
303 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Captain Brad Geary’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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 a Navy SEAL or end your career right now and move on to something else. Do you fear me? And without skipping a beat, this dude leans forward. He goes, no, sir, but I respect you. That's Gen Z in a 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. He respected me. How do I do that?
Because I was 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 people who have higher rank than me. So I'm looking to this Gen Z guy, 20-something years younger than me. I'm like, I'm inspired by this guy. I got to learn from him. Wow.
They're impressive, man. Very interesting. That takes big balls. And you don't just fake that. That was genuine. Other things I saw with this generation, man. So you would say that's a common alibi throughout Gen Z? I saw a lot of that in Gen Z, yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's one story, but I saw things like that.
So it's a good one to use to kind of, I think, use an example to say that this is a pretty consistent what I saw across this generation. 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, they don't, to quote an Italian soft guy, they don't bruise well.
And what I mean is 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. And we saw candidates do that. We saw candidates do that. One guy, this guy was a total stud. Class leader, class OIC. I mean, he looked like he was chiseled out of the granite of Oklahoma.
Like this guy was just quintessential what you think of as you want as a potential SEAL officer. Great dude, showed a lot of great leadership attributes. 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 timed run and he quit. Failed it by like two 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 our coach was 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 our program. Nobody ever succeeds at everything. How do you lead through adversity is a better question. How do you lead when you don't succeed? Because as we talked about, the enemy gets a vote. Sometimes you can do all the right things on target and still be caught on your heels. How do you lead in those cases?
So that was a negative that I saw in their generation, but that wasn't consistent with all of them, but a lot of them. And they have an incredible sense of teammanship. One more story and then we'll move on, I think. But this one time I was coming out of a couple months out of a boot. I'd broken my foot. And so I was not in the best shape. I hadn't been in a boot for like three months.
And my first day at OIC, total stud. He's like, hey, sir, we're doing the MRF as a class. We're going to lead the MRF for one of these PTs. It was, I think we were at the, one of the anniversaries of Red Wings or one of these things. And are you in? And in my mind, I'm thinking like, dude, I'm not in shape to do a MRF in front of candidates right now. But how do you say no?
You know, as the skipper. So yeah, of course I'll be there. So me and my CMC show up and we're doing this. And, man, I was sucking, like, bad, bad. And I'm so far behind everyone else. They're, like, knocking out all their reps. For those out there who don't know what the MRF is, you can look it up, but it's a mile run. I think it's 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 squats. Is that right?
And another mile run? I think that's right. 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 me and my CMC on the grinder now, still doing the reps. We're that far behind everybody because I'm that out of shape. And it was embarrassing. I was humiliated as the CEO. My CMC was a good teammate.
He was pretending that he was hanging with me like, oh no, it's not you dragging me back. But it totally was. He was just being a good swim buddy. So we start our run. And now guys are actually coming back from the last run. And I'm so beat down and defeated and depressed. As I'm running through the sand, I'm looking at my feet. I'm depressed. I'm watching the sweat fall off my face.
And I'm thinking, like, how do I salvage this moment as the CO here when I wasn't hanging with these dudes and I've embarrassed myself? And I get to the turnaround point, hit it, turn around and start to run back, and I see something different. I look up and I see my first phase OIC coming back to pick me up. And as he comes around the corner, a candidate's 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 pity. There was nothing other than, We're here to be a teammate.
And as we're marching now, all of a sudden, like, another one fouls it, and another whole class starts to get a little bit better. My gait opens up. My breathing fixes. I'm starting to get, okay, that surge of energy. And my first phase OIC whispers behind me, it's always nice knowing someone's coming back for you. And 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, man, these guys are incredible. Super inspirational. Just one more. I can't stop. One more. We're at San Clemente Island, 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 singing the national anthem as a class. So we stopped, salute, do the thing. And I look at the instructors, I said, hey, do we mandate that? Is that something like we've forced them to do?
They're like, no, no, they just do it on their own. They started it a couple of classes back as a tradition and they just kept passing it on. These patriots just love their country and they bring so much to the table. Not to mention the fact that they're incredibly innovative.
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