Join our community of fearless leaders in search of unreasonable outcomes... Want to become a FEARLESS entrepreneur and leader? Go here: https://www.findingpeak.com Watch on YouTube: https://link.ryanhanley.com/youtube Former Navy SEAL Garrett Unclebach joins Ryan Hanley for a raw and powerful conversation on masculinity, modern purpose, and what it takes to reclaim your edge in a world built for comfort. From SEAL Hell Week to the boardroom, Garrett breaks down why most men are stuck, soft, and spiritually lost — and what to do about it. Connect with Garrett Unclebach Website: https://theimpossible.life/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garrettunclebach/ 💥 Topics include: Why the modern man is losing his edge The difference between purpose and pleasure How AI and outsourcing are making us dumber Faith, fatherhood, and fighting dragons SEAL lessons on suffering, sacrifice, and success Recommended Tools for Growth OpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool: https://link.ryanhanley.com/opus Riverside: HD Podcast & Video Software | Free Recording & Editing: https://link.ryanhanley.com/riverside Shortform - The World's Best Book Summaries: https://link.ryanhanley.com/shortform Taplio • Grow Your Personal Brand On LinkedIn: https://link.ryanhanley.com/taplio Kit: Email-First Operating System for Creators (formerly ConvertKit): https://link.ryanhanley.com/kit
Chapter 1: Why are men losing their edge in today's world?
We're so we're in the middle of our seed round. We're looking for three. We have mill checking hand in bank already all like 25 to 100 checks. And then we're looking for about a million and a half. If you just start. Yeah. Yeah. So yep. So we got that first million with a lead, which is great that that basically puts everyone at ease. I already have a couple of the strategics in.
We're going to collect those all at once. I'm doing the rounds on the funds. I'm trying to stay in this round inside the insurance industry because insurance, particularly property casualty insurance, it's so nuanced, dude. There are certain things about the insurance industry and particularly property casualty that are just like it only happens this way in this space.
And I've been CEO of fitness companies, I've been CEO of tech companies, I've been in business for a while, done a few different industries, but this space, which for some reason I keep coming back to over and over again, I've been technically in it for 20 years now,
like there are just certain aspects of the business that if you don't know how they work, you don't understand why you have to do certain things. And I've raised money from people outside the industry before and it tends to not work because they get very frustrated and it's like, Guys, we're not selling T-shirts, right? You have 50 different states with 50 different regulations.
You have 5,000 carriers. Every single carrier has a different process for how you work with them. Everyone pays differently. Everyone's product is different. You then have 36,000 independent agencies spread out the country who all work in different ways, who all sell different things, who all have different issues. There isn't like a one size fit all solution.
So you have to build your products in a way that matches that particular unique characteristic as one example. And so we're trying to stay in the industry, which limits our pool of investors, but I think we'll be able to get it done pretty quickly here.
No, but it does matter who you raise money from. I do a lot in the VC space, just defense tech.
Yeah.
I'm in the middle of a $500 million raise right now.
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Chapter 2: What distinguishes purpose from pleasure?
So we're having, we're talking last night on the phone and we get done with that portion of the talk and we, you know, kind of swings over to like life and stuff. And I'm very interested in like,
politics and what's happening in the world and very pro america very pro you know especially where we're kind of headed now versus where we were headed and i just like i find it intriguing like i'm just interested in it you know and and and he was like i don't even so i mentioned something that would be like base knowledge for you and me i can't even remember what topic i brought up and he like had no idea and i said bud
what do you mean you don't know what I'm talking about? And he's like, I don't pay attention to that shit. And I'm like, Dude, you have two kids, you have a wife, you own a business, right? Like, how do you not at least have your periscope up a little on what's happening in the world, right? He's like, oh, I find I'm happier if I just don't know. And that, it dawned on me in that moment.
Not that this isn't something I've thought about in the past, but like, it really hit me hard because this, he used to be like, when we first got done playing baseball, we all moved to Washington, D.C., I wasn't interested in politics at the time, although I wish I was because I probably would have gotten involved. I just find politicians fascinating for how fucking nuts they are.
This guy's a former press secretary for a senator, right? His first job out of college was as a press secretary for this – he was a horrible liberal senator out of Minnesota who didn't even last – he lasted one term and he was gone. But he – I was like, how do you not know?
And I think that mentality of people just – there's so much stuff going on in their life, and a lot of that is problems that they make themselves, that they then – can't even handle thinking bigger, which is how we find ourselves in these fucking positions.
I appreciate the entrepreneur mentality of like, Hey, I'm just going to put my head down and focus on my thing. But it is, that's a limiting mindset when you have a mindset like that, because what your friend's doing, most people live their lives doing one of two things, either running from pain or running towards pleasure.
right when you're running towards purpose that's when you're focused on like man what's the what's the one thing that i can be a part of that i can continually be a part of bring more people into and that that involves community that involves country i would say your friend may be very focused and might be very effective in the short term but when you get what you want when you get away from the pain then you start to find emptiness which is the most demotivating thing in the world
Yeah, it's like you can only play so many rounds of golf. And I love golf. I'm not one of those guys who hates golf. I love it. I find the discipline associated with the sport to be, that's what captures me. You know what I mean? I'm not there for the beers and the laughs, although those can be fun too. But those aren't even my favorite rounds, right?
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Chapter 3: How is AI making us dumber?
But it's Edmund Burke. This is like the quote that sparked me into the military at a young age. And I would say it's relevant to your friend. Edmund Burke said, evil prevails when good men choose to do nothing.
Yeah. Dude, this might sound trite, but I think it's relevant. At some point in the early 2000s,
we lost the social contract that if you say some stupid shit i get to punch you in the face when i was growing up in the 80s and the 90s there was a social contract that if you're out on the wiffle ball field or the basketball court or recess at school and you said some stupid shit and you crossed a certain line with that individual there was a consequence for that action right you write a check you're gonna have to cash it right at some point that social contract got broken
I'm sure there are people smarter than me that know when it was, but it happened sometime between 2000 and 2010. And I firmly believe that that, with a whole bunch of other, we'll call them unspoken social contracts, that were created that have destroyed particularly men's disposition for for aggression and defense of what's theirs and what's right, right?
Like somewhere in there, men started outsourcing that to faceless, nameless entities.
There's been a long run of outsourcing and I'll tell you where it really started is in the 70s, which is the beginning of like, if you look at stock market growth, the 70s is where all the big pension funds, big index funds begin, and people, they don't invest, they just put their money in an index fund, they put it in the S&P. in the SMP and it'll just perform for me.
And what that created is the shareholder society where you have people who have subjugated their capital, they've subjugated their values, and now they've subjugated their parenting, they've subjugated their beliefs. I don't want to have to do the work. Somebody else will just do it for me.
When you put your money into an index fund and just say, hey, you guys make me the money, you might get a good return, but you've also lost the ability to invest in moral things.
And I think this applies to our current time with AI. I was reading an article or an essay, I guess, that Paul Graham wrote where I thought he was right on the button with this. And I don't agree with everything Paul Graham says, but I do think he's incredibly intelligent guy. And he wrote this article was titled Rights and Right Nots. Right. That was the title.
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Chapter 4: What role does faith and fatherhood play in modern masculinity?
I know in our company, what we're building, you know, we're not open AI level tech, but we're pretty close for our deep vertical niche. You know, we're doing stuff. We're building all agentic models, which is fascinating tech and it's really fun, but
Like, I wrote this post on LinkedIn today, and basically the idea was this whole concept of, while AI can think linearly and that's great, we as humans are the nonlinear problem solvers and we can't outsource that skill, right? A couple of the comments were like, well, humans just think, and I'm like, no, you're missing the point.
ai can't think at a second level today for the most part humans that don't think at a second level are just simply lazy right those are two completely different things and because you don't want to take the time to think deeper about a topic and go to a second or third level does not mean that you should outsource all of that ideation to a computer and just expect it to produce the right answer again you're losing that skill and that's what i keep trying to push particularly to the insurance industry because
I'll tell you the industry that I work in the insurance industry is particularly susceptible to tools, AI drastically removing the need for humans in places where they have been necessary. And you know, my pitch to them is always, whether I'm doing a keynote or whatever, this is a massive opportunity, but we have to keep the humanness of your business or you will lose it.
And then you are just like everyone else.
Yeah, and I would also compare it to technological literacy. Let's start with the beginning of literacy. Just because you knew how to read does not mean that you know how to comprehend. You do need to have the ability to read, but then you need to know how to be able to use what it is that you've read. That's the beginning of literacy.
You and I grew up in an age of expanding technological literacy. It wasn't hard for us. We were teenagers. We were in high school.
when cell phones are becoming a thing and so it was kind of automatic to us where we could this is the first time for you and i that we're looking at ai and saying man if i don't learn this stuff i'm going to fall behind so you have to have this mindset of one i want to engage in what's new and i need to grow my technological or artificial intelligence literacy but also there's a responsibility on my part not to just understand the tool but to know how to use it well
Completely and utterly agree. And this is actually a point that I make in my keynotes too, particularly to insurance agents, because they tend to be And for those of you who aren't in insurance, you know, use this example as a microcosm. There might be some similarities to whatever industry you operate in.
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Chapter 5: What lessons from SEAL training can men apply to their lives?
It's hard to make people be hungry. Yeah. If someone's not hungry, you can cook them great food and they're still not interested. Yeah. But for those that are hungry, they'll go out and get it. And that's what it takes in the AI field. That's what it takes in any field to stay at the front. We see that you see the same thing in battlefield warfare, right?
The stuff that guys were doing when I was in 10 years ago, it's way different now. The warfare has completely changed. And if you're not paying attention to the tactics at the very front, you fall behind so quickly. If you want to be at the edge, that's for the people who are hungry.
So if you're listening to this and you want to be great, those are the people that I like to talk to, people who want the best, not just people who want to be good. You do have to have that hunger to stay at the front. And it takes a lot of effort to do that.
So Garrett, I want to change directions a little bit here. So much of your work is coaching and teaching and training and helping people become the best. You operate at a very high level. You have some incredible people. You're explaining how one of your coaching clients, you help them come up.
Now you're doing a podcast with them and they have all these incredible contracts and all this kind of stuff. I'm really interested how, like what framed your belief structure, your mindset that you used to approach to business, right? You have military career, faith is a big part of your life. What were the inspirations or what helped you frame?
Like when you look back, you're like, these were the experiences, these were the ideas, or these were the people that really helped me frame my, the set filters I use to operate in life on a daily basis.
Yeah, let me tell a little bit of a story here. Please. So I'll Tarantino a little bit. I'll start in the middle or the end, and then I'll go back to the beginning. When I was towards the end of my SEAL career, I spent a lot of time with tadpoles. A colloquialism for Navy SEALs is frogmen. And so the guys who want to be frogmen, we call them tadpoles. They're wannabes.
We'll see if they become frogmen or not. I spent a lot of time with tadpoles, and I enjoyed mentoring those guys. I spent a ton of time with them. Any free time I had, I poured into these guys. And eventually they would all ask me the same question, Ryan. They would all ask me, hey, do you think I'll make it? Some people would ask me after a week. Some people would ask me after six months.
And what I would say to all of them is if my opinion matters to you, you probably won't make it. And in fact, all the time that we've spent together has actually had very little impact on whether or not you'll make it. I've just been trying to make you a better man. In the unlikely event that you make it to the SEAL program, I hope you'll show up as a stronger man.
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Chapter 6: How can men reclaim their sense of purpose?
My roommate, through the beginning of the SEAL program, this was his second time to SEAL training. He had quit earlier. He was the number one athlete in our class, and his dad was a Master Chief Navy SEAL. Okay? So this guy, like, how great? You would think that's great. Like, man, this guy has a lot of experience, knows about this program.
Well, he told me every single day, Ryan, he'd say, Uncle Buck, you have no chance here. I was in the bottom third of our class athletically, was not great in that category, and he was number one. His dad was a famous Navy SEAL. You'd think he would know all about the program.
So fast forward a little bit, we make it to San Diego, and as soon as we get to San Diego, this is where SEAL training happens. The first day that we're there, I see this class that has finished Hell Week. Hell Week is one of the most difficult parts of SEAL training. You stay up for five days straight. It starts on a Sunday night. You go all the way until Friday.
You'll sleep for one hour Wednesday and for one hour Thursday. And in that time, you'll run over 200 miles. The majority of that is with an inflatable boat on your head. I could go on and on about how brutal the training is. It's tough.
And I saw this class that had just finished and they looked like they had been run over by a bus and then the bus pulled over them and then backed over them again and then pulled over them. These guys could barely walk. They're on crutches. Guys are coughing up blood. I mean, it crushes you to go through this. And when I saw that, I immediately got a picture of what I wanted.
And I said to myself, I'm going to make it through this program, but I won't look like that when I finish. And I faced all kinds of discouragement. People telling me, hey, you don't belong here. Hey, you're not good enough. We finally get to hell week, which is, you know, I'm fast forwarding through a lot of the pieces here, but we finally get to hell week. I'm one of the youngest in the class.
I'm one of two guys under 20 years old who makes it to this point. and don't have very many friends at this point. The guys who had been my friends had all quit. I wasn't a top performer, so I wasn't well looked at. Right before we're about to start Hell Week, my boat crew were sitting around talking to each other.
They put you in this classroom where you wait for four hours, for five hours for Hell Week to begin. So I can tell you one of the lessons that you learn in the Navy is the hardest part of pain is the anticipation of the pain. They let you sit in there and brew before you go through the most difficult military training you'll ever go through. And so my boat crew were having a conversation.
You know, the guys are asking each other, hey, do you think you'll make it? Do you think you'll make it? Well, my boat crew finally asks me and they said, you know, Uncle Bob, do you think you'll make it? I said, I don't think I'll make it. I know I'll make it.
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Chapter 7: What is the importance of community in personal growth?
Verifiable, demonstratable, repeatable, that's what science, you know, science has kind of lost its reputation in the last decade. But real science, the way that it was created, is supposed to be things that you can prove. Beliefs are things that you believe are true, but can't prove, right?
Ryan, I believe in God and I can give you a lot of great evidence for who he is in my life, how he's changed me. I cannot scientifically prove the existence of God to you. I can just give you a lot of evidence. Let me give you two beliefs that I went into the SEAL program with that allowed me to do what I did there. From a young age, my dad would say this to me over and over, both my parents.
They would say, son, God has a plan for your life. They said it to me at five, they said it to me at 10, they said it to me at 15. Didn't really mean much to me, but I just kept hearing it over and over again. And the second thing they would say to me is you can have anything you want in life, If you're willing to pay the price for it. And again, you have to believe that's true. Some people don't.
Some people think that whether it's God or the universe or whatever, that they're being withheld from. I've chosen to believe and stake my life on if I'm willing to pay the price for something, if I believe in it, and if I'm willing to pursue it, that I can attain that thing.
When you understand that you have purpose, right, whether you believe in God or not, when you understand that your life has a purpose, I do, and we know that you have potential, you can have anything you want as long as you're willing to pay the price for it. When you put purpose and potential together, I call that the infinite potential unlock. So that's what allowed me to go into this program.
Whatever you do in life, whether it's seals or start a big business or whatever, you're going to have to take some risks. And there's just like the Israelites going into the promised land, you're going to have to believe that you're going to find success on the other end. And so whatever your beliefs are, that's what's going to come out in what you see.
If you don't have the right perspective and the challenges that you're facing and the problems that you're facing, there's no way that you'll overcome.
Let's say you weren't raised with someone who was giving you these lessons. And I completely agree. And I do this to my kids constantly. I had two great parents. We were very poor, lived in the middle of nowhere. My parents were divorced. My dad was a mechanic on the railroad. My mom was a receptionist. We didn't have really anything, except I was blessed because I had love, right?
So that was a really good kicker, right? I had two parents that loved me and cared about me. But I didn't get lessons from them. They were just trying to get by doing the best they could. So what I try to do with my children is instill on them the lessons that I've had to learn over the course of my life. And many of them are very similar to what you're describing. My kids go to Catholic school.
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Chapter 8: How can we prepare for the future in a rapidly changing world?
and i was tracking it and then i'd been tracking it for a while i saw it i was following it and then i realized that i had done a circle and it kind of came on me all at once and the hair stood up on the back of my neck and i just slowly backed against the tree and i sat there for probably 30 or 40 minutes expecting that mountain line to be somewhere next to me
the mountain lion had circled on me.
Yeah, I was going to say, he started hunting you.
I never saw the mountain lion again. Eventually, after I sat there for 30 minutes and waited for the eyes to appear, I realized that he had scented me and then ran off. I say that to say... Mountain Lion was way smarter than me that day. But no mountain lion or no animal has ever looked up at the stars and wondered, why am I here?
But what I know about every single person that's listened to this podcast has wondered, why am I here? What's my place? And all of this. So there's a purpose within all of us. Scripture also says there's a way that seems right to a man. but in the end leads to death. And let me tell you what those two ways are. Most people spend their lives either running from pain or running towards pleasure.
Most people spend their life running from pain or running towards pleasure. And both of those are finite loops. If you are running from pain, let's say pain is a grizzly bear, you're probably not going to outrun the grizzly bear just because they can run 30 miles an hour.
But we'll pretend that the grizzly bear is injured and you somehow outrun him after he chased you for two or three miles through the forest. And if he does, by the time that you finally outrun him, you're going to be lost. You will pick up your head and say, where am I? How did I get here? Because you didn't know where you were going. You were running from something.
That's how a lot of people live their lives. Or you're running towards pleasure. And the thing with pleasure, it's most people are familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If you read Abraham Maslow's papers, he talks about this. There's a part that I don't hear many people speak on. Running towards pleasure, pleasure is on Maslow's hierarchy.
It's got four base levels, which is like your survival needs. Hey, if you can't breathe, if you don't have any air, you'll fight really hard to get air. And then some basic shelter and your basic needs. If you're starving to death, you'll fight really hard to get food until, you know, at some point, 500 cheeseburgers isn't that much better than 50 cheeseburgers, right?
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