The Mission After

Mike Bledsoe (00:00)
Welcome to the mission after podcast where we help veterans discover and execute on the most important mission of their lives. I'm your host, Mike Bledsoe. Our guest today is William Burnett, a decorated veteran, father of four, husband, and dedicated practitioner in healing. With 10 years of hands -on and theoretical experience in biology, psychology, psychotherapy, and behavioral science, Will has pioneered new and innovative practices for healing trauma and medical conditions.

He has achieved global influence in trauma healing and global impact ventures, as well as multiple Guinness World Records and ultra marathon running. Dedicated to integrating ancient wisdom and modern science, Will's commitment to healing and supporting others and achieving their ultimate state of living is both phenomenal and purposeful. He has traveled worldwide, working alongside leading industry thought leaders and facilitating at major summits in the US and Europe.

By the end of this episode, you'll discover three major takeaways. One, the journey from military life to civilian life involves struggles, self -discovery, and healing. Two, hardship and challenges can be transformed into opportunities for personal growth and resilience. Three, the significance of effective communication and emotional awareness in creating meaningful work and life experiences. But before we dive in, I want to tell you all about...

our new resource available at themissionafter .org. It's called the 10 Surprising Military Habits That Are Sabotaging Your Career and Your Life. This guide will help you identify and overcome those habits. So be sure to download it at themissionafter .org. Now let's get into the conversation with William Burnett.

Mike Bledsoe (01:29)
We got will here and the first episode where we have somebody a veteran from a non -us military You're in the Australian military. Yeah, where do you and Well, we've known each other for what four or five years. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, and I've been watching you

do just extraordinary things. And from what I've gathered, you did not necessarily come from like extraordinary beginnings. Like the beginnings, there was a lot of hardship. If there's somebody listening, they go, you know, I don't know if I could do this because I've got this thing in my history. It's like, no, this whole show, no matter who I'm interviewing is about like, how do we, you know, we started.

At this position, we may feel like we're disadvantaged in some way, but the reality is, is we have a huge advantage and this is how we apply ourselves to live the best life. Like our best years are ahead of us, not behind us. So Will, can you tell us a little bit about, actually, I want to know why you went in the military and then why you got out. You know, when you get out and you go through that journey,

of self discovery, because it's, it's as long and as short as you want to make it, right? This transition from military life to civilian life. And one of my Achilles heels was that I could not admit to myself that I was at an advantage. Leaving the military, I was at an advantage. I just wanted to discourage myself from acknowledging that through the whole process, because it felt like.

That was so like this part of my life is so hurtful. It is some darkness. I don't want to return to it. And so I set up these mechanisms and, but like you said, as soon as I become aware that I was at an advantage due to what I had been through in the military, man, the world changed for me. I, I got in. So I am William Burnett the seventh and I am.

Man, that's awesome. I love that. My son is number eight, William Burnett the Eighth, and I am the fifth serving. So five generations of military men. I was not only raised, now looking back, I was not only raised in a military environment, I was raised by military people. And so that instills in a, especially a young boy,

That instills a couple things, a rebellious attitude, a never give up attitude and a deep sense of wanting to know what else is there. You know, I left professional soccer after three years playing professionally. I grew up in, in the ranks and, and then finally got a shot and I left that.

because I hit that rebellious path really early. In fact, on my final interview with recruiting, I had to call them and say, I'm running late because I was actually in court because I got arrested. And I was waiting to get my sentence. And so I had to ring the chick at the front desk.

And I distinctly remember because I said to my dad, can you do it? And he's like, no fucking way. It's time to grow up young man. And I was like, okay. So I like haphazardly called this, this woman at the front desk. I'm like, I'm going to be late. I don't know how late, but I'm going to be late. She's like, okay. Can you give me approximation? And kind of gave her approximation. And then, and then she's like, okay, no worries. Is there anything we can do? And I'm like, no, I tried not to go there.

And then I went and got my sentence and I was able to get over there and I got in. I got into the military. I was accepted. Hang on. What was the charge? I was trying to answer. Should have left that to the end and just left everybody hanging. I got down for trying to get a fake ID from our equivalent to the DMV. So.

Silly me, I was, I must've been just 16, maybe, maybe still in my 15s. And I went to the DMV with my cousin's credentials. We didn't even look alike. I'm like, I need to upgrade my license, et cetera, et cetera. False, false documents. And then she's putting everything through. She caught on that I was doing it. Bless her. Didn't tell me that she caught on, but she caught on. And when she says, Hey, please sign here so I can go print your.

new ID and I go, okay, cool. And I go to sign and I signed my name, not my cousin's name. She acts as if it's normal, goes out the back to do the printing. Two constables walk in young William Burnett gets carted out the door. And yeah, the rest, the rest of that is history. But you know, that's, that was, that just speaks to the kind of.

personality I had at that age. I left home at 14 and then I left for the military at 16 and nine months. Had my 17th birthday at recruits. And yeah, I was ambitious about getting as much as I could out of the military. You know, I think my second or third year joined as a logistics operator and second or third year, I was like,

I am going to apply for special forces and that's what I'm going to do for my career. And so as soon as I got hooked on that, it was anything and everything from training to being around them to, the learning components of what the job entailed. It was so stimulating to me. It just fed every part of my soul, including the brotherhood, the camaraderie, the teamwork. Cause.

I mean, you get a, you get a teamwork of, you get a team full of rebellious people together. They're pretty creative. Yeah. They're pretty creative. They're, they're pretty effective as a capability. And I was searching for that as a young man, you know, my, my dad was pretty disciplined, but he loved me a lot. But I think he got to a point where it was like, I'm either going to really hurt you from disciplining you, or I've got to take your hands off the wheel and let you go figure it out.

And that's what he let me do essentially. I got into a lot of trouble through my service, a lot of trouble. I was charged a few times. I had a few record of conversations, just that lack of what I was searching for in the teams.

And after I didn't get through selection, I chose to do a role, which the US military is not, they don't have this as a capability, physical training instructors. So essentially you grab a strength and conditioning coach and you insert them in the military. Then you teach them how to run military PT and exercise and whatnot. And then once you get into that, you get to specialize in your own arena, your own realm of what you're.

wanting out of the health and wellness industry. I was largely passionate about human behavior and consciousness. And I was very interested in how the two linked, both from an environmental standpoint influencing human behavior and also this internal monologue that we have, which influences our internal rationale of the 4D landscape.

And it was round about that time I started listening to barbell shrugged and then got onto the blitz show. And it was three or four episodes of ayahuasca talk. And I was like, all right, like I get the message, you know? but why I got out, I got to a point in my career where I was, I was pushing, I was pushing my life, my lifeline there. You know, I was, I was.

really pushing the envelope in my professional sense and both in a physical sense. And I got very injured, playing soccer outside of the military. I broke three ribs, tore a hamstring. And when I got back to work, none of my colleagues were in the, were in the, you've run out of free disc space. Are you okay? Still recording. I think we're good. Okay. Good.

none of my colleagues were in the section and I had this huge schedule that I was to perform, including fitness assessments, unit PT, rehabilitation programs, and I could barely walk myself. And so when I did some research, looked at some chemicals that could heal tissue pretty quick, come up positive in the drug test and got asked to leave the military.

All right. So was that like a dishonorable discharge? Is that like, is there a equivalent of that in Australian military? If it was, if it was simply, you know, me just using that to get back to health and wellness and I got caught, it probably would be if I was using it disingenuously, maybe. But my CO was always impressed.

with me as a performer and my credibility on base doing what I did was very high. And he knew my circumstances, what was going on. And there was also another investigation between myself and my superior running alongside of this. So it was a conflict of interest on their part because they stepped on themselves. And then that became apparent. And so he pulled me into the office. He goes, take your hat off. Okay.

sat down, took my hat off. This is, this is the CEO. And, he's like, mate, you are an outstanding performer. You are an absolute asset to this unit. And we have this circumstance. I don't want you to dishonorably discharge and not be, not have access to medical, et cetera, with veteran affairs after. so what I'm offering here is for you a chance to go, I'm going to put in my discharge. I'll take my long service.

as pay and I will be on my way. And I don't have to, I don't have to go in the reserves. I don't have to do anything like that. I can just be on my way. I said, acknowledge boss. I would like to do that. he gave me a bit of a going away, you know, soiree with the, with the unit, nothing was ever said, but as in the, as you know, in the military, mate, it's, it's a very close network. So people soon, soon work shit out. And it.

comes to the surface. Yeah, yeah. What was it like? What was your first day out like? It was horrible.

I had gone through a divorce during this time when I was getting discharged from the military. And I was also in Australia, the, when you, when you're married, you have to separate for a total of 12 months and then you can apply for a divorce. And then that's a process in itself and takes a little while as well before you're officially divorced. So it's a long process. Prior to my last deployment, deployment, I was going through this separation.

And then, I met my now wife on my last deployment. So as I was getting discharged, which didn't feel like I was at the time, it didn't feel like I had that, like I was making the decision on my own. I felt like at the time I felt like I was being robbed. You know, I felt like I was just the fan. I was in the military for 12 years, man. So I felt like it was my family. We're just turning around and like, get the fuck out of here. Go like we don't want you to come back. That's what it felt like.

And as I was going through that, I had my now wife joining me in Australia. She left the U S to come live with me in Australia. And we had had a miscarriage at this time, stress induced. We now know. and so there was all these things piling up, man. So when, when I, my first day out, it was like, I've, I've, I'm ever going to like really sink fast if I don't get my shit together or like,

I can, I can really use this to my advantage and go out and put myself in the world early because I know the time between leaving and not I've known military people before where they're like, yeah, I'm getting out and this is my date, but I've got like three months of long service before I get out. That time's tough, man. Like it's if you look them back, I'm glad I went all in real quick, even though it was hard, but that time's tough.

That's, that's very hard for a lot of veterans to come out and have that space and be like, Ooh, do I like it out here? Do I not? Like, because it's so tempting to lean back into that comfort of stability in the military and what you know from an institutionalized standpoint. I found myself at an F 45 applying for a job.

Yeah. That's as real as it gets. Yeah. Yeah. So you went from feeling like when you say like you had a family to just being cut loose and now you're getting a job at, you know, a fitness studio.

Yeah. What was what was, yeah, tell me about how that felt like, you know, it felt bad, but like.

It was very intense because I wasn't at a point in my journey where I could acknowledge when the ego was playing a role, you know, more or less my ego was still well in intact and running shop. And so to be, I just stepped out of creating a what's now a international rehabilitation program for military working dogs. I just spent 12 months developing this program.

six months implementing it on the job. So getting in there and implementing the training and strategies to, and to it going across the Commonwealth as a set model for rehab for military working dog handlers to being in my lounge room with no job with a wife or a soon to be wife, two kids, we just had a miscarriage and being like, I have to do something. I have to do something. And.

Whilst it put me in a state of survival, I am super grateful that it was such a bandaid effect.

Yeah.

How long ago was that that you got out? 2017. 2017. So you've been out for seven years now. Yeah. Walk, walk us through what the last seven years have been like.

I have noticed that each year,

I've learned a little more and I've made less of the same mistakes. And that has come from...

First and like firstly, when I got out, I went straight into, well, not straight away, but I was pretty close. I went into the strong coach program, at least the community. You know, I, I'd been listening from afar for a while. I think your first episode when you had the strong coach podcast. And so it was acknowledging that, shit, there's some, there's some other homies out here that are trying to do the same stuff. You know, whether they're, whether they're veterans or not, they're.

They're trying to better their lives. They're trying to help each other grow.

Yeah, I'll get, I want to give the audience a little bit of a context because I imagine some people don't know who I am or like you've referenced a few things. Like I used to run a barbell shrug podcast. I had another podcast called the blood so show, which is my last name. And then I also started a program called the strong coach and had a podcast for that. And the strong coach, was a program.

for health and fitness coaches to build out their businesses. And we tended to attract a specific type of health and fitness coach. It was the type of coach that wanted a more holistic approach to health. A lot of people, you have a background in breath work. So we had people that were interested in breath work. The...

the plant medicine, not everyone was into plant medicine or psychedelic medicine, but people were aware of it at least, or there was plenty of people in there that were part of that conversation. So people who were not only interested in physical health, but psychological health, emotional health, there's a spiritual component. So we attracted that type of person. So we had cohorts of health and fitness coaches coming through and learning how to build their businesses and.

And also interacting with each other and picking up on skills. Like, you know, there were a lot of people who wanted holistic, wanted to be more holistic, but then they met someone like yourself. It was like, shit, I never even thought about breath work here. this guy's like a, he's a G at this. And so, yeah. So as William's talking about this, he's, he, so you got out of the military and within a year you were diving into strong coach program.

and that's, that's when you and I met. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And to like, I was interested already in.

psychological realm when I was in the military, especially the last two years, I'd spent so much time in the lab with the dog handlers that I was, I got so refined with what I was looking for from a biomechanical standpoint, a nutritional intake standpoint versus what they're doing rehab and in their social lives. I got so refined in that, that almost became the autopilot and I started watching them as human beings interacting with canines. And that

there became my ultimate fascination with like, shit, like I'm looking at behaviors and I'm analyzing all the behaviors from movement to body language, to verbalization, to a lot of things. And that, whether that fired off new neural pathways to connect myself to that part of my brain, I'm unsure, but that settled a lot of internal like curiosity and discovery off. That's what triggered me there.

Yeah. Yeah. And like you said, like that community, I was so inspired by every single individual because not only were they looking at a holistic approach to life, but a holistic approach to business in a, in their professional lives as well. And so I was, I surrounded myself with people that to me, there was a level of accountability that was there. It was unspoken.

It was like a, I used to, I used to trick myself cause I'd say, you can't let them down. Make sure you do that to a really good standard. I was just saying that to myself and that was the accountability and that I imagine if I had conversations with those people and I have, they're like, yeah, I absolutely hold you accountable. You know? And so I surrounded myself with these people, which forced me to go inwards. It forced me to like have a really deep look at who I was.

And I was 16 and a half when I got in the military. Yeah, that's really young. In the US, they won't let you in at that young. I know at one point you could have your parents sign off when you were 17, but I don't think they even do that anymore. I'm uncertain. But I do think they're actually opening it up to all sorts of people because I think that recruitment's low.

So we'll see what happens with that. Yeah. So, so you got out, you started working, you joined the program. Was everything hunky dory after that? No, it was not. I went, dude, I went through like even, even in my time in there, I went through the, like a super dark couple of years, man, like, like D suicidal depression.

really, really bad. And because I threw myself in, I started a business as soon as I got out. Cause I couldn't work at F45, not just, I didn't align with the programming and the intensity to which they were facilitating the program. Like, cause I just stepped out of the rehabilitation realm. And so I'm like at the other end of the scale now and I didn't align. So I got out of there and started my own business. Once again, state of survival. And I just made.

Mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake, whether it was starting a business, choosing the partner, committing, over committing myself under selling myself. Like it's just mistake after mistake after mistake. Yeah. I want to note something here is it's really common for someone to get out of the military and then throw themselves into the career and then end up sacrificing themselves along the way. Like one of the things in the mission after program that we have, one of the first things that we cover.

is service and sacrifice and how these two things become conflated. And we separate these two things out. And I actually did that in the Strong Coach as well. Because I just, it's definitely most prominent in the military is thinking that I have to sacrifice myself in some way in order to be of service. But I do think it's just a blue collar mentality too. It's a blue collar thing.

But in the military, it's like put on steroids. And that's why we started off in that program. And so it's super common that I don't know what else to do. The military was my life. And so now I'm going to try to take that same energy and throw it into a career. And yet, you know, family life still suffers. My own psycho -emotional state is still suffering. And I...

I believe that if I can create a really solid career, then that's going to solve the problem, right? But it almost never happens that way. It's like this idea that I'm going to do something externally and it's going to fix an internal issue just is an illusion. And so it's good to hear you say that like, yeah, I just, I did the thing that I thought was going to solve the problem. And then.

you know, still had like, sounds like suicidal ideation and I chose business partners that didn't work out. Would you say that there was like, you felt like you were doing the right thing, but looking back on it, you can see self -sabotage in your actions? Yeah, absolutely. It's the law of attraction, you know, like, and I come to learn this the hard way. I left the military with a

preconceived idea of who I was, because I was this military identity. And the stubborn, arrogant part of myself wouldn't recognize that there was a rebirth occurring, you know, of me stepping out of that part of my life into a new part. And when I look back at every decision I made that fell,

fell to pieces, it was one, not researching enough, not knowing enough of what I was trying to do, just feeling into it. I did a lot of feeling into things without studying or strategically planning the drive or the mission. And the other thing is,

When you're in that state and I've referenced it a few times, like the state of survival is heightened arousal. The nervous system is in a sympathetic state, meaning it's just ready to run, kill, fight, whatever, maybe freeze. It was like that for like two years, man. You know, two years of just coming from this irrational freaked out place and trying to one, make ends meet and like,

to find out what the next sting is. And I learned that the hard way. Like that's, that wasn't easy at all. I was fortunate enough that I had an intervention, my wife and my dad, they like, it got to a point where I was able to see the chaos I was causing. And when I saw both of their faces, I was just like, shit, I've got to change. You know, I've got to do something about this because,

I'm destroying my life, all inclusive of everything that is in it. And that's not the way it makes no logical sense to me to continue to do that simply because I don't know something. And so I made that switch early on in my transition out. I think it was 2018, 19 were my pretty dark years and 2000, funnily enough, and COVID happened. That was when I was like,

I was hitting my stride when COVID happened, you know, I was coming out and I was doing everything. And it's kind of a funny uprising, I guess. But I started to turn my attention and my awareness to what I had as a responsibility. And my responsibility was I was experiencing these things and I wanted to pass them out into the world. So I was making better decisions for myself, for my family and for my business. And progressively I can't, I went back into that.

that same lab that I had in the military with the dog handlers. I went back into that same lab, but this time I was testing everything that I'd learned, everything that I was studying, everything that I was practicing from breath work, meditation, primal flow, some paleo style nutritional diets. Like I was testing and playing with different things. And I have this one.

I have this one moment through that phase where I was down at the beach. I had just smoked some cannabis and I took my dog for a walk and I'm sitting down at the beach as I usually did, just cross -legged, nasal breathing, just looking at the horizon out on the ocean.

And I have this profound experience just hit my body, just like hit my body, flood me with information. I would assert in my experience, I was conversing with something, but it was just flooding my body with information. And I walked back home, put my dog away in the backyard and I walk inside and I tell my wife, I'm going to run across Australia. And she's like, what?

But I'm like, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to run across Australia. And she's like, this is the moment I look at her and she's, I could tell that she knew I was serious. And also she was kind of angry. I'm going to run across Australia. But I want to rewind. What was, what was the intervention talk?

So the intervention talk was...

My dad pointing out to me that this isn't what a man does. I mean, a man protects his family. He takes responsibility for his shit and he gets up and he fucking makes shit happen. He gave me that talk and I could see the disappointment in his face and that I felt that. I felt that. And my wife's talk with me was,

Less about the dialogue and more about what I could feel in her energy. What I could feel sitting in front of her, looking at her, looking at my world in front of me. Like I'm so obsessed with this, this person. I'm looking at my world, but not receiving that exact energy.

And that feels like a sense of losing something or have lost something. They were together when they had this conversation. They were two separate. Two separate. Okay. That would be a wild conversation. shit. You're making me look bad dad. You gotta hold the standard. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, so you're,

you've had this intervention talk and then you're like reflecting. You go to the beach and you receive a message to run across Australia. And I remember, I remember you, I remember hearing about this. You're like, I'm going to run across Australia. I'm like, what for? Cause I'm, I'm looking at it from like, he's supposed to be building a business.

But now he's just going, you can't build a business while you're running across Australia. That doesn't make any sense. but you can. And here's the other thing, too. I love that you. I imagine despite people like myself are like, I didn't discourage you from doing it. I was just in my own mind like, I don't know what the fuck. I'm a big believer. You got to let people do whatever it is they're going to do.

And I know that I have quote unquote gone off the rails and repeatedly done things over the years that nobody in my life understood. But I knew that I had to do it. I remember I started podcasting in 2012. I was like, I took the little bit of money I had and just invested it in a bunch of audio and video gear and started recording shit in my garage.

And my family definitely didn't understand. My wife, who's now my ex -wife at the time, was like, he's just playing in the garage. Fast forward two years later, it's like, yeah, you got the biggest podcast, like one of the biggest podcasts on the planet and you're making a bunch of money online and you're interacting with the top.

Experts in the world around health and fitness. Okay. All right, you did something but Sometimes it's good. It's good to listen to people if they're like you're fucking up. Hmm, but also You have to also listen to your own heart and Know like I may be taking a very unique path here So say you

So you get the message, I'm going to run across Australia. You tell your wife, how does she respond? What's the plan? Like, okay, you're just going to run across Australia, but what for? Yeah. And you know, like you get to, you get good at seeing the difference between people's projections and reflections. And one is largely reliant upon that person's believability. You know?

So I got really good at seeing that. So when I remember we were on a call when I told you, you were just about to go do the documentary, I think. no, it was right before then. And I rang you to say thank you because I was going to do my documentary and it was because you spoke about I have Asuka and you're like, why? Because Mike. The documentary he's talking about that I recorded will actually be.

that was a part of it. I didn't lead it. I was just a part of it. we'll be, going up in June. So this will, this should be dropping right before that documentary comes out. Good. I'm good. I'm keen to see that. And mine's up on YouTube. It's called Unbreakable Will. It's a 45 minute documentary and it just, it's a truncated version of my story and the run itself and how it came about. why I did the run. So.

When I got discharged, I went back because somebody told me I had access to medical support through veteran affairs and I could already feel my body was severely injured. I used to say broken, but it wasn't broken. It was severely injured. And in fact, I had some pretty severe medical conditions that would have put me in a wheelchair had I not had addressed the circumstances in the way that I did.

And so I was medically, I ended up getting a retrospective medical discharge and I was retired, medically retired at the age of 27. And when I got into starting my own business and, you know, self -development, I was studying all over the globe actually under some amazing human beings. And I was interested in the breath and how breath as a practice,

can create different states and changes in the body, psychologically, physiologically, it can create massive changes and shifts. And I was very interested in this. So I got on the internet, I looked at who the five top five best practitioners were in the world. And one by one, I blew through my savings and went and studied with them. Some for 12 months, some for a lot less, some were in person, some were not.

Through that journey and studying with specific individuals, I went and studied psychedelics and psychotherapy. And the two together now being a harmonious package, I've seen a lot of shift there as well. And so I went and practiced these things. After I had this download at the beach,

I went away and I set myself an experiment to test these things, breath work, meditation, visualization, movement, clean water, clean food, full UV spectrum, you know, just doing the things that were said to help heal the body. Every single day, right? Every single day. I got a little bit of a payout from...

veteran affairs at this point in time. So I was able to have the space to do this research. And over time, I started to see patterns in my theory, my theories. And lo and behold, I went back for medical assessment. This was a three year journey. I went back for medical assessment and everything had disappeared, including some parts of the body, skeletal, mainly.

straighting in itself out like my spine collapsed disc coming back like You had back pain. Man, I I had arthritis Osteo and rheumatoid arthritis in nearly every single joint from my shoulders down to my feet

Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I talked to, talk to veterans all the time, but especially the guys that were airborne and they just have all these, their backs are just fucked up. Just like they're just in pain. And it's, it's interesting. Cause when I talked to them, they go, they they've already accepted it as a it's permanent. or they've had a discotomy, you know, they've had some type of surgery and they've just accepted they're going to be in pain every day for the rest of their life.

And I remember I was talking to a guy a couple of weeks ago, we were in Vegas and he was like, yeah, you know, I was asking him about pain in his body. And I was like, yeah, you know, that's, that's repairable. You don't have to be in pain. He goes, well, the doctor said, I was like, no, man, no, no, no. If you want to stay in pain, just keep listening to what the doctor said. And if anybody tells you that this is permanent, like the pain is permanent.

Go start, keep looking. There's another way. Nothing is permanent. Now, you know, they've installed some hardware in your spine. You know, I'm not saying that you're going to be able to just rip that out, but you also don't have to experience pain even with that too. So there's always something out there. Keep looking, keep looking. Absolutely. It's like the...

I mean, my journey specifically, I was also researching whilst healing my body. And so it's quite a strange space to be in. I remember reading, just some little snippets through the red book, through Carl Jung's red book, or even the black actually was in the black books. Just little pieces of that I could relate to when he was, you know, when he was putting himself into a psychosis, just to study, you know, just to study the mind. I really related.

to that because I was in this space of healing, but also like playing this observer whilst I'm in the space, you know, and it was, it was quite funny in a sense and very empowering as well. You know, in that time, as you say, there, there is something else all the time. What I learned was pharmaceuticals were fucking with my system, you know, that it just something as small as paracetamol, you know, just as an over the counter.

would mess with my system. I didn't, I couldn't think straight. I couldn't get words out. Like, and if it's doing that, then what else is it doing? That was like my curiosity was like, okay, well, these things aren't working. What if I stopped using them? Okay. I'll be in a bit of pain, but I can think better. And if I can think that I can create better, if I can create better, then I can execute better, you know? And so I just cleaned everything. I just detox my life and cleaned everything. Even going back through.

relational struggles where I just like, I've got to close the loop there. I'm going to go back and add an apology here. I've got to go back and, and, I've got to cut this person out of my life. I've got to bring that one in. Like that was what detoxing my life meant. And it wasn't fucking easy by any means. It was actually felt more heartache through it, through that, then the actual run itself. Because by the time I got to the run, which was the final experiment, it's like, okay,

Wilbur net supposed to be in a wheelchair right now, but here he is running an ultra marathon for 81 days straight across Australia. Tell me this shit doesn't work. Tell me it doesn't work. You know, like, so that, when that was the intention was to create an experiment to deliver a message so that it can be heard and then start.

start the education piece, then start the building piece, which it was hard because when I was in the Strong Coach, I was there to build a business and everything that was in there, I was like, I'd have it done. It landed, my speed of implementation was super fast. I was on it, but somewhere in my body, I was like, I'm missing a step here. I'm missing a step.

And I think it needs to be this piece first so that this business piece can grow later. And that's the, that's the phase I'm in right now. It's the, that grow phase of the business part. It's the building of systems because that thing is done. Yeah, that was it. man. I am loving hearing this. And, well, another, one of the things that made our program different than others, and it made it very hard to market.

in a lot of ways because anyone who's in the health and fitness world and they interact with these business coaches, all these business coaches are like, have it. And I've marketed this before too, but it's not really why I started the Strong Coach. I had made a bunch of money as a coach and I realized that I still was really dissatisfied and unhappy. And I realized I had built a business that was just not the

not aligned with what I wanted to create, even though it was generating all this income, it generated all these earnings that allowed me to, you know, have the house at the beach and like travel around and do all the cool things and meet cool people and have the status. And yet I was still really dissatisfied. So when I left a really successful company, which was called Barbell Shrugged, and I took a

six months off from doing anything and in that six months it hit me one day I go, I am going to create a business that helps health and fitness coaches avoid the same problem I hit, which is like, yeah, money is there, but you really got to create something that you love. Like, do you really got to be following your heart? And so going out on the internet and saying, hey, I'm going to help you build something you love and you're going to make money doing it. I also have to add the caveat like,

I can't promise that you're gonna like, you're gonna even make a sustainable wage within 90 days because I'm way more interested. By the way, I do work with a handful of health and fitness clients who are influencers. Currently, I have two of them and I only, I work in 18 month contracts now. Like I don't work with you for 90 days because I know, I don't, if we work for 90 days, we're not gonna,

We might be able to get you to $10 ,000 a month, which is what most people desire to have, like, quote unquote, financial freedom. But you might end up building something you hate, or you might build it so hastily that it consumes all of your time and you don't actually get to take care of yourself anymore. Because a lot of this grind mentality.

is it'll work for a period of time until it stops working. And then you don't know how to build a business without grinding. What good is that? That's not good. So I, you know, it took you longer than even 18 months. And I think that's okay. That's, that's beautiful. I, it warms my heart to hear like, okay. I was able to take some of those lessons. It contributed to where you're at now. And,

It sounds like you had to find all sorts of other things along the way. You know, that was just a piece, you know, you went out and did a bunch of work on your own. And you ran across Australia. I did. When you set the date for to run across, were you pain free? Had you like felt like you'd really healed your body or was there still some, was there still like a race against time to go, okay, I need to get an even.

even healthier before I initiate this run. Well, it's the project itself. so the, the objective was to run an ultra marathon a day. so that gave me 50 kilometers above 50 plus. So 50 K a day for however many days it takes to get across Australia. 81, 81. Just, just, just a 50 K one time makes me, I was like, fuck.

Well, that was, so I gave myself that room, but it ended up being 56 every single day. Nearly. There was a, there was a plus or minus when I was injured and a few more where I did extra. I did like an 80, a 60, I did a few sixties. I did a hundred and then the final, and that was what was so cool. You can't, you can't plan for something like this, Mike. Like you can, you can prep the body and trust me, I spent three years prepping the body.

I trained the nervous system. I trained my adrenal system. I trained my metabolic system. I trained my aerobic anaerobic. I trained everything. Everything. And I got coaches. I had, I had experts there on the sidelines and I had the wheel the whole time. And still after that first day, I was like, Holy fuck, this is going to be massive.

This is going to be massive. And you get to a point where one, it starts hurting. So week two, I broke my right foot. I had multiple stress fractures in my right foot. Week, end of week three or four, I tore my MCL in my right leg. And then week five, I had torn, I had a microtear in my left piriformis. If you look.

If you're looking at the body folks and you look at, and you start at the right foot and just work your way up and across, it's the compensatory behavior due to an undulation like on the road. So I was running on a camber and just repetitive. You know, repetitive. So I'm at week five with all three of these injuries and at no point.

Did I, that was one point and it wasn't like I was sitting there. I was actually walking because of these injuries, still doing the ultras. And I stopped and I ring my buddy, who's my support. He's my only support out there on the road. My wife and kids were at the trailer path. And I rang him. I said, can you come back please? He says, yep. He comes back. And between the time he turned around to come back to me, which is about a minute, minute and a half. And when he got to me,

I was in this serious contemplation of whether I'm going to continue this. And it was a minute and a half, 90 seconds. And he gets to me, I see his face and I go, false alarm, brother. I'll see it the next stop. And he goes, okay. He's on the ready. I was like, everything all right. And I'm like, everything's fine, man. Everything's fine. But I had to achieve the 50 a day. And so I continued to walk for 12 days. And during the walk.

Here I am in the laboratory in my own experiment in the darkest part that I could have perceived possible. And I'm like, what are you going to do? Well, what are you going to do? You're going to roll over and fucking call it, or are you going to suck it up, dig back into what you know, tune back into the body and start to recover and build back, build back what needs to be built back. So 12, 13 hours of walking on the road. That's a lot of time to be.

focusing on the breath, chanting mantras, listening to binaural beats, eating good food, drinking lots of water, you know, moving. It's a good time to do all of that. And at the end of the, I think it might've been 11 days actually, 11, at the end of the 11 days, it was like the scene from Forrest Gump, right? You know, the scene where he's like, he's in his braces and they start to like come off while he's sprinting. Yeah.

That's me, this whole ass across Australia just like, I'm running again. Holy shit. So you got injured and you just literally walked it off. Yes. Yes. man. Well, there wasn't as many oranges though. I don't remember seeing the oranges.

What was the rest of that run like? So that was what you said five weeks in you were at that point five or six weeks in. Yeah. Five weeks in. It was halfway. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful. Like I was in such a balanced place in my body, in my spirit, in my head. I was so balanced to the point I had.

three separate occasions where I nearly got killed by road trains. So they're like hauling ass towards me and I've got less than a shoulders width to run on of road before it falls off into gravel. And they'd hook down to in Australia, the logistics, they import foreigners and then they put them through a two week driving course and then they gas them up and send them on the road. And they're like, they're crazy man.

What do you mean? These are professional drivers, people driving trucks or what? These are people that will work for a very low amount of money and do long hours on the road. And yeah, it's not, not a good situation. And like when that's hauling at you, like you're looking at 140 miles, 120 miles an hour, like hauling and it's 50 meters long. And like,

Yeah. Three, three times separate times. I nearly got killed. Like I'm talking just moved out of the way nearly got killed. my God. And I knew I was in a balanced place after each time I was rattled, but could instantly bring myself back into my body, breathe my way through it and just be like, Hey, you're still here, bro. You're still here. Yeah. Let's talk about, I want to talk a little bit about.

Something that happens in the military, which is like this. There's this way of getting through hard times, which is suppressing the experience, right? What's happening emotionally, like almost everybody I talk to, I haven't run into anyone who says otherwise, is you go through these stressful experiences and you just got to suppress your emotions.

And you got to just, any pain you're feeling, anything that's pain, you just got to like stuff it away and then just keep going. And then by the time you get out of the military, you don't really know how to feel anymore. But it sounds like you were very engaged with the full experience, the full human experience while you're going through this really painful thing. You're getting rattled by cars almost killing you and you're able to recenter yourself.

Would you say that you were having the experience of having a full human, like feeling experience and still being able to hold that center? Yeah, it's absolutely, man. Like my short answer to that is emotions are, it's this universal language, you know, like, and when you can understand emotion, it really is the key to unlocking.

what I'm experiencing as the human experience, because it gives you this framework on how to understand each one and how it relates to the body. And then when you experience it, you get to piece the two together. It's like, I'm experiencing this thing in this moment, this place with this person, link, link, link, right? That's how kids learn. They put two and two together. And so...

learning, especially the way I process emotions, learning how to do that, like that's ultimately what saved my life. That is ultimately what stopped me from taking my own life was feeling it. Fucking feeling it, man. Like I said, I'm fifth generation military. I was raised by some pretty hard dudes and emotions were not...

highly encouraged.

How long did it take you to get to a place where you could feel it?

I remember the initial stages.

And look, my, my perspective on feeling it, I believe is an always evolving landscape because I don't know how many times I've felt something and gone, that was the greatest amount of joy I've ever experienced. And then you experience it again and it goes a little further and you're like, that was great. You know, it's always evolving. But I remember the first moment where I felt less desensitized to emotions than normal.

And it was when I was at my first ayahuasca retreat. And I remember feeling this immense beauty is how I would describe it. Cause it was an assortment of emotions. It was joy, happiness, love, compassion. It was beauty to me. And I remember feeling it in my body and just being at peace with it. Just like.

Wow. Wow. There's nothing else right now. This, this right now, like, I remember coming back into my body the very next day. And this was the second time I felt less desensitized was the love from the people around me. Some of these people, I had no idea who they were. We're all strangers, you know, but there was this immense love that was there and shown and felt. And I was like,

Why am I choosing to fill these other things, which more than likely I'm bringing on myself, super negative, dark, weighted. Why am I choosing to bring these in instead of this, like this? This is amazing. So you started seeing it as a choice. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

And that unlocked the door for you to be able to access that outside of an ayahuasca experience. I wanted to share it with someone. And in that discovery, it's like, this is the thing. Of course, love's the thing, right? Of course. It's always like, nah, it couldn't be that. It couldn't be that. It's too simple. Too simple. Of course.

It is that simple. It's like, it's like simple, but not easy. Cause it's that ego, which you were referencing early in the show is like that ego steps in and creates that separation from the experience of love. The, all the, all the reasoning, all the thinking, all the shoulds and should nots and all that mess. Yeah. It's like the.

The mind is so powerful and it's so useful and it can be used to destroy or it could be used to create. And so much of the population only knows how to use it to destroy. And when you find the keys to get out of the mind, get into the body, get into the heart, experience love, and then you realize that the mind is actually a tool.

for us to use to create and not who we are.

Then it gets beautiful. Then possibilities open up. Then the life that you have ahead of you is so much more than you could have imagined. And the past, the history of yourself just becomes.

Comical in a way. It's like it can be sad there can be grieving there can be like, my gosh Why did it take so long but also going? Wow, that's exactly what I had to experience in order for me to have this right now and

All, everyone that had any type that, that, that, that darkness that I experienced gives me the ability to go and grab that person who's in that darkness that I know so well that I was there. And I can now say, Hey, I'm going to help you move from this darkness to the light. And there's something here for us. So yeah, appreciate you doing that work. brother. I used to use this. Thank you.

I used to use this analogy. It was a, it was a visual piece in a course I used to run. And I see us as humans very, that our biology is very similar to that of a mushroom. Right. And the way I used to explain it is our heads are more or less the piece that is connected to source or the network or whatever you want to call it. And from the head being connected, we get to come down.

into the heart and the heart is the engine that drives the vehicle, which is the body, the fruit, the thing that behaves in nature. And the more you honor the heart's highest vibration, that being emotions that can be experienced in the material world, the more you can honor that the slicker and more efficient your vehicle will run or your fruit will grow. And

for the most part, we're having this circuitry malfunction where there's that information is trying to come in, but we're compressing it back down and sending it back out. And I've really come to a point where I need to remind myself of that often, you know, because the ego, it can, it can get around and decorate for you or it can get around and fuck shit up.

You know, you can do it if you don't keep a leash on it, but you learn to, you learn to work with it. And that's where I've really come to this desire of rebinding myself. Hey man, plug back in, clear the channel, let the body go back to fruiting how it needs to fruit. Yeah, it's a good reminder. It's not a one and done. It's not like you didn't go drink ayahuasca one time. You're like, got it. Now, now everything's going to be so good.

It's continuous. It's continuous. You get to keep yourself in check. You know what? You'd get bored if it weren't that way. So be thankful. I'm going to take us a break real quick. You're good.

So we had a beautiful conversation about emotion and I want to dive to, you know, what was it like to complete that run?

It was...

I felt complete. You know, like I felt like I was closing a cycle, ready to, ready to move on to the next one. And I wanted to see like, especially towards the end, I started doing some calculations offline. So no one in the camp, my wife or my friend who, my only support.

Not even them knew about the calculations I was doing because I was planning to run a 24 hour on the last day and they had no idea. And so we're nearing the finish line and they're starting to do the math and being like, you have to run this today. Like, and I'm like, no, it'll be right. And so I plan this, this, this run, it was 24 hours and I'd strategically done the math in kilometers.

from one destination to the finish line. I did some research on what the expected time would be for somebody of my, of my, physicality and looked at the three highest scoring times for that distance. I was like, okay, that's what we're going to do. I've got to achieve a hundred and I think it was a hundred and eleven.

112 miles in 24 hours. It's the final day of my run. Like I got to do it. And the intent there was to really push the mind, really push and see, you know, after everything, everything that I'd been through on the run, like not just physically, but mentally what's under the hood, you know? Yeah.

And, I did, I completed it in 24 hours on the, like, right on the, on the minute I completed at the final step. And it was, that was the most emotional part because I only had another, I think it was like another 10 kilometers into town. So I didn't do the run fully to the beach. I wanted to leave a bit so we could capture someone for the documentary. So I could run into the beach in daylight. So I had 10 Ks left.

But that one there, where I finish, that was it because...

everybody that was there, you know, and the only one that wasn't was my wife. She was at home at this house that we hired or rented with the kids. So I knew I could have my moment with my brothers that had supported me and they held me and they carried me, including my coach. He ran with me for the last leg and then I could go home to my wife and celebrate in a different way. You know, something we'd done as a, as a team and as a couple.

Cause she, man, she's a real MVP. She hold, she hold the caravan across the country with the kids, set up camp every day, fed the kids, did all the washing, made all the arrangements logistically, you know.

Nice. Nice.

So you filmed that and.

You complete what is life like after that? You know, okay, we got all this footage. do I have to go get a job now? Like, what's going on for you? I had that thought actually. shit. I gotta get a job. yeah, when I finished, I went into a, another poor business decision, but a great experience nonetheless.

And it actually triggered why I'm here today in the States. Like that, me having that role was the catalyst to why I'm sitting here right there. Right. That's minute. And, went back into a business and it was coaching. And then I started to develop my own tech and I'm pitching investors and I'm doing pitch decks and I'm doing tech dev stuff and app dev stuff. I'm like doing all this stuff completely different to coaching.

hemorrhaging money, trying to stay afloat, trying to chase the dream. And once again, I had to sit down and have another moment where I rebalance, collect myself and be like, Hey bro, it's okay. Just relax, you know, just relax. And I did that. And through a series of events, I landed here in the United States.

in pursuit of developing my own tech and then have since collaborated. And I've accepted a role at my friend's company doing a very, very similar project and more or less being able to integrate the lessons I have learned over the last, however long I've been out of the military, you know, seven years. Yeah. How many businesses did you participate in?

in the last seven years. How many jobs did you have and how many businesses did you start?

I started.

six businesses.

and by businesses, some of them were projects as well, where there was a lot of dev R and D required in the initial days. And then like, they're ones where you don't get excited about whether you're going to make money soon or not. It's like, this is sweat equity, you know? yeah. So six and I was a part, I got two jobs, two jobs.

Yeah, I was, it was at one there 45 and then I got moved to another for a higher paycheck. And then since then it was like on my own. Yeah. So you've had, you started six businesses or any of them still running or what's the, how's it partners and you left and they're still going or how's that working? We had, we had mutual closure. So both of us decided we we'd close it and split the difference. We had.

payouts, one of us paid out and we had, we had one just closed and it was quite hostile that one as well. And then one, yeah, one's still going. Yeah. So one out of one out of five. Yeah. One out of six. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I want to bring that up because I, so many guys are like, I'm going to do this business.

And I want to point out, it's so normal. So normal for your first business to not work out. Your second business. I'm on my eighth. You know, like eight in eight and 16 years of entrepreneurship. You know, it's the idea that you're going to start your next thing and that's what you're going to do from now on. Very rare.

It does happen. Some people start a business and that's what they end up doing. And that's it. Yeah. I think there's a lot of people who look at like Evan Hafer or something like that. The guy from Black Rifle Coffee is like, yeah, he basically started that when he was getting out or while he was still in and that become his thing and so on and so forth. It's like, yeah, that's unusual. That's unusual. And I'm sure he's had some other, I don't know him, but I'm sure he's had some ventures that didn't quite work out.

as well, you know, and so absolutely. Yeah, I think it's easy for people to see where someone is at now and go, yeah, he figured it out. Like I'm failing at my first or second business. And, you know, maybe I'm not cut out for this. It's like, no. Look, the only failure is if you quit, if you quit trying, right? Like you give up, that's failure. But dude, you have no idea. Like, honestly, we.

If you get out of the military and you open a business, you have no idea what you're doing. And that's okay. That's totally okay. Anyone who starts their first business has no idea what they're doing. I don't care if you went and got an MBA. It doesn't matter. The map is not the terrain. Well said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I want people to get that. Because some people I interview,

It's about career and all that. We're covering a lot of different topics here, but that's one of the things I want to cover is like, you're doing something that fits in your heart's calling now and is really awesome, which I want you to go into here. But I want everyone to also be aware that it was not a straight line.

There was a lot of pain and suffering, as you heard William say, there was like a hostile ending to partnership or whatever. And, you know, closing down businesses aren't fun. I've had to close down a couple. I've had to exit with partners when we were not on great terms. I ended up in a lawsuit once exiting a company and, you know, it's...

It gets crazy. It gets crazy. But it's also OK. It's great. So just want to point that out. Yeah, dude, tell us what you're up to now because I know what you're doing. I know the secret. But I've got the inside scoop. But yeah, what are we working on now? Well, after my journey, there's one thing.

I wanted more than anything for this next stage. And that was meaningful work and meaningful relationships. All right. Like I'd heard Ray Dalio speak about it and I'd been like talking to myself about it through journaling about what I was after, what I was searching for. I want to work with my friends, do fun shit and really have purpose and intention behind it. I want to do that. And...

A lot of people, and I've experienced this myself when you go into friend, like go into business with friends or family, there is this narrative and stigma there around it not being successful and that can happen. And I've also found that when you find like valued people, people who value the same things in life as you do, you can create really good relationships and work becomes super meaningful. And you could do that with anything. You and I could go and pick a subject tomorrow.

and be like, Hey, stay true to each other. Yep. Hold you accountable. Yep. Cool. Let's go. And we'll have some fun. Yeah. You know, and that's, that's quite hard to find. That's quite hard to come across. when I moved here to the States, I was moving to develop, develop my own tech. And then I pivoted, within a week and actually joined a friend of mine who's developed, some wearable technology that reads emotions real time. And.

We've just launched the beta test with a few of the verticals and still going through that process. We aim to be out to market. End of this year is the milestone. But the beauty of this tech, Mike, is like, we've been able to build something. Actually, she has been able to build something. She did the work. Being able to build something that is so innovative and at the same time,

so exciting because with an asset like this, we get to discover what the new landscape is. We get to discover what we get to introduce to the world so we don't fuck it up. So we don't go back in to these holes that we've put ourselves in in the mental health landscape environment. And it's a huge responsibility, but such an exciting one. So we've...

We've put a lot of focus into working alongside veterans. You can just imagine how much of an asset this tool is and will become. But the data initially received through the testing phase, it's wild. It's wild. Yeah, so the ability to have a objective measure of something that is up and...

throughout all of history has been a subjective experience is going to help. You know, so many people are unaware of what's happening emotionally for themselves, but to have a wearable come up on an app and say, Hey, this is like, you're actually draining yourself from day to day. And there was this moment in time where you felt stress, like what was the external thing that may have caused that? And so you can start.

Sounds like a fantastic tool. Like it's gonna change some lives. Because I believe that most people go their entire life without having that full human experience. And that's sad. And there's also, you know, there's a lot of tools that will give you access to that. And not everyone is ready to go down that road. And a wearable in an app could be a...

bridge that's going to allow millions of people to cross over into that experience that might've otherwise gone their whole life without it. And that's, that's the vision here is, you know, at the, for what we have available to people specifically in conversation veterans for mental health care, what we have available, the same problem still exists.

We need to learn about emotions, how to express them and process them and how to communicate them. Cause we can sit in front of someone all day, every day and just, you know, talk back and forwards. It can feel good. Cause you, you know, let some stuff off your chest. We can do psychedelics and, but if you cannot experience emotion at the level that it arrives, process it, be able to communicate it effectively. We're still going to be at the same.

same point. So the idea here is to provide the user an opportunity to experience it and then see it in front of them. And the app itself, the machine learning model actually starts to build a score or a picture over time. And the more data it gets, the more it learns about who you are, where you operate, where your habits are, and it'll start to market and graph it for you. So now,

We can actually see, I experienced this level of arousal and these emotions were relatable at that moment in this location with this person at this time. Now we can start to learn. And then eventually the next step is, well, what can we provide to help come back to balance? And that, that gets exciting to think about as well. What can we provide is a series of things, but we give people the opportunity to.

have it available here from the ground up. Beautiful. Can you say the name of it or is it still a secret? No, it's called in truth. So in truth .io people can go check that out. Yeah, it's, it's a phenomenal, phenomenal, exercise in learning, about what we're doing, what the future looks like.

And, and how we can have an impact on so many people, you know, and that that's taken me seven years, bro, to get to a position where, you know, I've been through the practitioner and coaching, chapter of my life. I mean, I've been a coach for over 20 years now, but that last law segment, I've been through that chapter and I've consistently seen the same thing. We're always limited with how far we can take our practices or our.

therapies because of legislation or because of social expectations or because of lack of education, always limited. I just got to a point where I'm like, we need to do something extra. We need to set up the next chapter of whatever that looks like. And there needs to be people doing it. And there are, there's amazing people all over the globe doing it. So it's like many hands make light work. Let's get to work, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful.

Yeah, and you're also giving us a little bit of input in the mission after program. More than a little input. You're giving me some great input on how to improve that program. If it's the same program in a year from now, I'd be disappointed. We're in the initial stages of it, and in a year from now, it's going to look amazing. So yeah.

We're doing similar work, but in very different ways. And I love that we're going to be able to collaborate moving forward. Anything else you want to leave the folks with?

If I could leave one thing, it's that emotional piece. Just be curious about emotions, your own emotions. Be curious about it and watch my documentary because if there's one message that can be driving home this curiosity, it's like ask for help when you fucking need it. Ask for help. The people that want to help you will help you.

They absolutely will. They will, there will be no judgment. They'll carry whatever needs to be carried. That will occur. So ask for help when you need to. And also know that it's, it's actually empowering to be able to communicate your emotions. And it's, it's a little extra when you can communicate them effectively to the right people. That is so empowering. We get to create meaningful work and life out of it.

Hmm. Hang on. Where can people find you? Well, I'm back on the gram. My account got hacked and deleted. I saw that. I saw that. That happened right? Like at a pretty pivotal moment too. So I'm on the gram. I'm rebuilding my account. We're going, we're going back up again. The mine mechanic underscore is my, my handle on Instagram. All they can. Yeah.

jump across to the website intruth .io and see what's happening. You can register to become part of the beta testing program. If you're interested in taking a look deeper into the project, you can express your interest there as well. Excellent. Thanks, William. Appreciate it, brother. You're welcome, brother. Much love. Much love.

Mike Bledsoe (1:24:39)
Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Mission After. Before we wrap up, I want to remind you about our free resource, the 10 surprising military habits that are sabotaging your career and your life. This guide is packed with valuable insights to help you overcome common challenges faced by veterans transitioning to civilian life. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take control of your career and life. Head over to the missionafter .org to download your copy now. It's completely free and could be the game changer you're looking for.

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