Scott Mann

And introduce them to each other so that they know who's who, relationships are established, and the preexisting conditions are in place for if something goes down, you now have these eclectic groups that can light up and work the problem.

because I think it's the best shot we got.

It was really what happened in Afghanistan at one point.

Monty, my wife, it was really, you know, everything was happening so fast.

All my clients were gone.

You know, our nonprofit play had just been shelved at this point because I'm just myopically focused on trying to answer the phone and try to help buddies that I knew get out.

And at some point, Monty just said to me, she said, why are we doing this?

You know, I mean, there was a point in my life in 2015 where I was standing in a closet holding a pistol, you know, when I came out of the army, a very dark place in my life, in my transition.

And I think for Monty, that's where she saw me heading back to when the country collapsed like that.

And she's like, you know, just why are you doing this?

You know, it just makes no sense.

And the only thing I could think to tell her was like, nobody's coming, babe.

I mean, like our kids are watching us right now.

Like our three boys are watching us to see what we're gonna do when our friends are calling us right now.

And for a while I thought, surely somebody's gonna step in from US SOCOM or somewhere, and there's no way we're gonna leave 30,000 commandos in the dirt.

There's no way.

They're just getting it together right now.

But it turns out we did.

And for me, it was just like this epiphany that I had always kind of felt was starting to happen, but it was the first time I saw at a collective institutional level where the top-down organizations that we had relied on for years simply did not perform.

They just didn't show up.