Green Berets are America’s best problem solvers. There’s no challenge too great and no solution that cannot be found. This mentality exists in service and beyond.
Ben Harrow solved complex challenges as a West Point Lacrosse star, leading soldiers in Iraq, and as he joined Special Forces to be a Green Beret in the Army. Today he’s the President of PAM Jets solving aviation’s largest logistical problems. But the biggest challenge Ben ever faced was when he stepped on a land mine.
Ben is a double amputee who nearly lost his life in Afghanistan. From the sidelines of the 2024 Stars and Stripes Classic, the first ever lacrosse battle between Green Berets and Navy SEALs, Ben joined Fran Racioppi to share his story. After months of surgery and being told he would never walk again, he took his recovery into his own hands.
Ben explains the meticulous research he conducted, the doctors he challenged and the method he developed to ensure he would walk and move on with life. He explains his resiliency mindset, how he applied it to becoming a Green Beret, solving his recovery challenge and how it drives him in entrepreneurship today.
Most importantly, Ben shows us that there’s nothing special about being Special Forces, you just have to want it more than anyone else.
Watch, listen or read our conversation from Gillette Stadium and don’t forget to check out the rest of our series from the inaugural Stars and Stripes Classic as we gear up for the round two on September 1, 2025.
The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by University of Health & Performance, providing our Veterans world class education and training as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.
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Ben, welcome to The Jedburgh Podcast.
Thanks for having me. I guess we can consider this a Jedburgh/Team Harrow episode. I’m going to copy all this and then just repost it. Free content.
It is free content. We’ve had people who’ve done that, who’ve taken our episodes and then just recut the intro and put it out as themselves, which I’m fine with. The more that gets out there, the better. It’s been a long time.
It has. The last time we sat down and chatted or saw each other would have been in October 2006 in Iraq, which is ages ago.
It is because you came in and replaced me and my unit in Balad, Iraq, and then took that mission from us. A lot has happened since that moment in time.
I’ve been missing a few body parts since October of 2006.
It was too easy.
You set them up, and I knock them down.
It’s good to see you.
You too. First off, I feel that week of working with you in Iraq was very eye-opening, of we’re not in Kansas anymore. That was a good trip. I enjoyed it. I felt we accomplished a lot, a lot of things that I think that you guys were doing, maybe a lot of things that you attempted to do. I felt we left that area just in a better situation. For me, my next challenge after Iraq was SFAS and selection.
Similar paths. I think that one of the things that that deployment in that place showed me was that there are other opportunities out there. The infantry was a great place for me. I enjoyed it. I loved it. My time as a platoon leader was awesome. That year in Iraq was a hard year. There was a lot of stuff that happened that year, but it was a great opportunity to learn what combat was, how to lead, and know that you’re going to go through these ups and downs, not only in yourself, but in your unit. How do you manage that? How do you lead through that? How do you keep folks motivated to do things that they don’t want to do?
Completely. You’re asking them to do it day in and day out. We had a guy one time just sit down and quit on us on an infill in the Golden Hills area. I remember when we did our left seat, right seat ride with you. I remember you saying, “This is a really bad Al Qaeda area.” We ended up doing some stuff in there. He was new to the platoon. He just sat down and just having quit. I was like, “This isn’t the schoolhouse.”
As a leader, how do you deal with that? There’s no, “Lieutenant, show us what you do.” It’s like you had better figure it out. I think on that same mission, we walked up on a farmer farming in the middle of the night. I think half the guys are like, “Let’s just shoot him.” The other half are like, “We can’t do that.” It’s these leadership lessons that you train for a little bit, you read about, and then you’re in this shit, and you got to figure it out.
That was the time to talk about 2005, 2006, where we were decisively engaged on a lot of fronts. It wasn’t going well.
My first night out with you, I don’t know if you remember, we were in your Humvee in Tampa doing the standard vehicle ambush setup. I remember an Apache flew over. They saw guys IED emplacers. Your lead, Brad, started a fire. We’re going down Tampa with this Apache shooting and this Bradley shooting. It’s day one. I’m in Iraq, and I’m like, “I feel like I’m over my head.” You were like, “This is what we did. This is where we are on the map. I just remember where we were at. You’re probably going to come back here, and you’re cool as ice.” I was like, “Okay, all right.”
That was a year, though. That was the back end of the year because the first few weeks, that was you’re describing, white-knuckling the whole vehicle, digging my fingers into the steel of the Bradley going, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if I’m going to make it out of here. I think you find a way to get through it. You find a way to motivate yourself, motivate others, and find what works for you and your team. We’ve had the opportunity now.
We’re sitting here at Gillette Stadium two decades later. We’re sitting here. The Green Beret versus Navy SEAL Stars and Stripes Classic was hosted by the PLL. We’ve been here the last couple of days. What a phenomenal event in terms of getting these two great organizations together, get them on the field, get them in front of the populace, get in front of America and the world on ESPN Plus, and saying these folks who do these jobs are just like you.
These guys played college lacrosse. They played high school lacrosse. We’ve got a whole stadium here of college and high school lacrosse players and youth lacrosse players who can now look at that and say, “I can go do that thing and set the foundation now at a young age to be able to go forward and be elite, do great things.” We’ve heard that term a lot in our week here, this term. How do you be elite?
What’s the difference between being good, being great, and being elite? I want to talk about your story. It is because we spent that time together in Iraq, and we both came back, went to selection, and became Green Berets. For some reason, you went to the seventh group and thought that was a good idea.
I thought I could expand this idea.
I was a little more pale. They’re like, you’re going to tenth through. We had these career trajectories that, in a lot of ways, paralleled each other but also were very different. I want to know from you, why you chose to go into SF and talk about the decision points that were, you said in your mind, “I’ve got to go do this.”
My decision point to go Special Forces, I think I was already leaning that way when I was a cadet at West Point, and I think it goes to what you’re talking about before about so many college lacrosse players and high school lacrosse players out here. You have these truly units playing lacrosse. There’s a parallel between the mental toughness, being an elite athlete, being a college lacrosse player, and being in special operations. I felt it was just a natural next step to go from being a college lacrosse player into the infantry.
It’s not always about going after the bad guy. It’s about problem-solving.
Especially once I was in Iraq, I had the opportunity because I was there for fifteen months to work with different ODAs. I worked with a 20th-group SF team, a 10th-group SF team, and a 5th-group SF team. I was able to, as a young PL, like a kid at Christmas, when we got asked, “We want you to work with us and be the exterior perimeter for the objective.” We were riding in on the 160th birds. I was like, this is it. This is the varsity.
As a competitive athlete and a competitive person, I’ve always wanted to be on the best teams. I wanted to be the best hockey player. I wanted to be the best lacrosse player. I wanted to be the best professional soldier and special operator. It was in Iraq that, after working with the SF guys, I knew I wanted to go SF. I knew I wanted to be a Green Beret. I put my packet in for SFAS while I was in Iraq.
I think working with those units shows you the difference between being in the regular Army and being in special operations and in Special Forces becoming a Green Beret. I would say it’s not that any one of them is better. They’re different. I think people ask me a lot, “What was it like being in Green Beret? Why was it different? Why is it special?” I stop them and I say, “It’s not special.”
There’s nothing special about any of us. The difference is that you execute the fundamentals and basics to a higher standard and never compromise that standard. It’s not just the talk. It’s not just, “We’re going to come in here and talk about it.” We’re going to go do it, and we’re going to keep doing it, not until we get it right, but until we can’t get it wrong. That slight difference in how you think is what sets the standard and conditions for you to be a leader, whether that’s in the military, whether that’s as an entrepreneur, whether that’s on the lacrosse field or in athletics. That simple mind shift puts that special in front of forces.
Whenever I’ve done speaking engagements and just talk to people, they’re like, “You’re in Special Forces. Is that like, you’re like a Navy SEAL?” I’m like, no. I think I told you when I was here in 2015 and I talked to the Patriots. The first two things I told them were, “First off, I was a Green Beret, so I wasn’t a Navy SEAL. Number two, I’m a Giants fan, so let’s just lay that out.”
Not in this stadium.
Something I always say is, Navy SEALs, Rangers, Green Berets, we all have our unique thing, but where I like to think what Green Beret is and what makes us so special is, compared to the Navy SEALs or the Rangers or something, is for us, special operations and combat, if it was a board game, we’re like chess masters, and everyone else is checkers masters. That’s not a put-down. It’s just two different games but with some similarities.
What I liked about what SF guys do is it wasn’t always like, here’s a bad guy. How do we go kill him? It was about, let’s use our mind to figure out, is there a better way instead of just whacking some guy? Maybe there’s another way to influence the population. Maybe we can replace him with somebody else. Maybe we bring hi
m over to our side. Maybe we have his enemy take him out.
There are a lot of different other ways to do that. Honestly, fast forward to figuring out how to get myself up and walking to my new life in the civilian world and running an aircraft factory, building up a business. It’s that thought process of problem-solving. I’ve got to be a problem solver. I think that’s not to say that we’re not special, you’re saying, but I think that important piece of what makes SF so special is we’re great problem solvers.
Let’s talk about the biggest problem you had to solve. You stepped on a landmine.
That was an oopsie.
Talk about that day. You can laugh about it now. It’s serious in nature, but you’re here. We do get to laugh about it.
Totally. I also think that being an athlete, you’re able to have a sense of humor. There’s some grit and resilience about that. I’ve always had a good sense of humor. In fact, when I first got injured, everyone was asking Gina, “How’s Ben? How is he? He just lost his legs. I heard he almost died. How’s Ben?” She’s like, “Honestly, it’s Ben. It’s just Ben without legs.” She’s like, “It’s weird, but like, it’s Ben without legs.”
May 15, 2012, it was my second trip to Afghanistan as a Special Forces detachment commander in the seventh group. I ended up stepping on a pressure plate IEDs. At the time, I played hockey growing up. I played college lacrosse. I’ve had my fair share of hits. My first thought when I stepped on that bomb was I was hit by a car. It just rattled me. Both the eardrums were blown out. All the air in my lungs was sucked out from the overpressure.
I remember trying to catch my breath. I just remember laying there, trying to come to and figure out what was going on. Off in the distance, I hear someone screaming. All of a sudden, I’m back in my body and I realize it’s me screaming. At first, I thought it was someone else. I was like, “Just be here and be cool and try and figure out what’s going on.” I was back in my body in this weird, out-of-body experience. It was me screaming.
I’m off in the distance again, floating away and then I’m back in my body. I can’t see anything. I could just feel my teammates working on me. I remember him leaning over me and just saying, “Holy shit, oh my god.” I remember hearing gunfire because me stepping on the IED kicked off an ambush. There was a PKM on the outskirts waiting for someone to step on the bomb.
I was the lucky winner. I remember I started to drift off. I just remember thinking about my son and my wife at the time. My son was nine months old. I had a picture of it on my wall back at the firebase. I just remember saying their names over and over, like, “Gina and Peyton and Gina, Peyton and Gina, Peyton.” It was my mantra. I just knew I was in a bad spot. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m in a lot of pain. I’m screaming. I’m having this out-of-body experience.
There’s a lot of religious shit going through my mind, too, other people around me, holding me. I just remember saying their name over and over again. I knew whatever I had to do, I was going to fight to get back to them. I was able to hold on long enough for my teammates to get to me. They had to fight through the ambush to get back to me. Did a textbook job of putting tourniquets all over me and getting me on a medevac, eventually back to Kandahar and then Bagram. I woke up three days later in Germany, which is another story that I can tell my first conversation in Germany.
I want to hear what happened when you got to Germany. You weren’t conscious on the way to Germany?
No, not at all. They said I was mumbling. In fact, because of what I experienced mentally, I asked him, I said, “Did you give me any drugs?” They said my medic was like, “No, dude, your breathing was so shallow. Your breathing pulse was so shallow and weak. If I gave you a bump of anything, you’re gone.” He said, “You were twilighting where basically you’re on the verge over here on death, you’re back in life and you’re on the border.”
Outside of your leg injuries, what else?
When I wake up in Germany, I find out what’s wrong. I was woken up in Germany three days later by a nurse, and she said, “Captain Harrow, do you know where you are?” I said, “No.” I felt all my five senses had been reset. Everything’s blurry. She said, “You know what happened?” I said, “No.” She said, “You stepped on an IED.” I know guys that have stepped on stuff before. I’m sure you do where it’s like, in my mind, I’m like, I probably shattered my foot.
You have to step back and look at your wins and losses and figure out what’s working and what’s not.
The worst-case scenario is I’m missing a foot. I said, “What does that mean?” She said, “I’m sorry, but you lost both legs above the knee.” I was quiet for a second. I asked, “Do I still have my dick?” I think that she was like, once again, I can’t see her face, but I just remember the tone and the pause. I think she was a little surprised by that. She’s like, “Yes, you still have your penis. You had significant soft tissue on your right forearm. The doctor is going to be able to save your arm. You’re not going to be a triple amputee. We’re going to save it. You lost two fingers on your right hand.” I just remember, fingers, arm, but I still got my dick. My dick’s still there. She’s like, “Yes, that’s still there.”
Priorities.
I pass back out. To be honest, that’s one of the only things I remember from Germany.
You spend time in Germany. They stabilize. Bring you back to Walter Reed and into the center where now you’ve got to start this long journey for rehabilitation.
When I got flown back to Walter Reed, the first two weeks at Walter Reed, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I would go into surgery for washouts because I had so much dirt blown up into me. I had four fungal infections and a bacterial infection. I had no concept of time. The only reason I was able to know what was going on because I was so drugged up and in and out of it so much going into surgery is that the foot of my bed, they had these wound vacs.
There’s seven of them just sucking gunk out of me from my stumps, from my arms. Every time I would pass back out and I would wake up, I wouldn’t know what day it was, but I would count the wound vacs. Eventually, we got down from seven to none. Over two weeks, I was able to figure out a timeline of things.
That’s essentially your progress.
Come weeks 3 and 4, when I’m more aware of stuff, I realized that I am super drugged up for good reason. I’m on two types of oxycodone. They had me on ketamine at one point, morphine, everything. I didn’t feel like myself. Around week 3 or 4, I had a moment of clarity where I realized, “I need to get off these drugs now because if I’m going to start the healing process, this is step one.” They come in one night, they give me my little cup of cocktail, the pills. I’m like, “Nah, I’m cool.”
Screenshot
I remember the nurse was like, “What?” I’m like, “Nah, I don’t want them.” They’re like, “Okay.” The next morning, the doctors, when they come and do their rounds, they’re like, “Captain Harrow, the nurse told us that you didn’t take your pain meds last night.” I’m like, “No, I didn’t want them. I don’t need them anymore.” They’re like, “Don’t be the overly macho Green Beret. We know your type. It’s called pain management. We don’t want to get behind the power curve. If you need them, take them.” I was like, “I got it, but I’m going to deal with it.”
They’re like, “We’re going to leave you hooked up to the morphine. You don’t have to take the pain pills, but if you need any morphine, just let them pass.” That week was the most painful I can remember. I felt my limbs getting ripped off me again. I was having crazy nerve pain. I was sweating like crazy, going through withdrawal. Every morning, I was throwing up because my body was detoxing itself from all the drugs. After about 3 or 4 days, I plateaued and I just woke up, and I was good.
One of the biggest things that helped me get through that, when I was in the most pain trying to go back to my mental happy place, was I would think about when I was playing college lacrosse and the smells and the sounds of like this, the stadium, walking out on the concrete, walking out to the field and hearing that clack of the cleats on the concrete, the sound that the ball makes when it kisses the pipe.
When that started to fade off and I started to have pain again, my next thought was I would be in the locker room, and I would just remember the smell of the lacrosse locker room. I would play this mental game where I’d be sitting in my locker, and then I would go around the locker room naming all my teammates and their numbers until I got back to me, just to trick my mind into thinking of things I enjoyed and not so much of feeling my legs were getting ripped off from me again.
I just was able to finally deal with it mentally, and because of that, I took myself off the pain meds like 2 to 3 months quicker than what they normally do. Dudes at the hospital, even a year out, are still on pain meds and nerve medicine. I got off of that after four weeks, and because of that, I was only inpatient for two months. Usually, a guy with my type of injuries was like 4 to 6 months inpatient. I’m pretty seriously wounded. I think part of the reason I was able to get out and start the process of figuring out how to walk again was because I took myself off the pain meds so quick.
What is the process to learn how to walk again?
For me, the process, everything I do, wasn’t easy. Much of my right leg was blown off from the blast, and which caused the infections and was blown up to me, and they had to cut away at my femur on the right side. I wasn’t able to wear full-size prosthetics like I’m wearing now. I had to wear this cumbersome belt. I wasn’t able to wear full-size prosthetics that are heavier. It would fall off and it was super frustrating. I got injured in May of 2012.
Fast forward to Thanksgiving of 2012. I’m down in Boca Raton, Florida. My in-laws, I bring my little practice legs down there and I like trying to walk around and I’m back to working out and getting back in shape. I’m in the pool, I’m trying to do anything and everything because I got injured as a 215-pound tactical athlete to waking up in the hospital bed weighing 130. I hadn’t weighed 130 pounds since seventh grade.
I was going to say middle school.
I’m building myself back up, but I can’t figure out how to walk and am super frustrated about it. I’m talking to my wife Gina and I’m like, “It’s super frustrating because it’s not the magician, it’s the wand. It’s like nobody’s telling me there’s got to be something else out there with the equipment that can help me get up and walk because I’m ready to go.” There’s nothing. Gina’s like, “You’re at Walter Reed. Shouldn’t someone be there to help you or guide you with this because it’s the epicenter of trauma and amputees at the time in 2012?”
Nobody said anything. She’s like, “I saw this show on the TLC called Little People where little people had their shin bones broken and stretched out to get a couple of inches of height.” I’m like, “Gina, I’m an amputee, not a fucking midget.” I’m sure they kicked off a fight, but I’m sure it’s very not politically correct. It got me thinking and I was like, “Here’s a process that people are doing to get taller shin bones. Why not use it on a femur?”
I was doing all my research on Wolf’s Law, how bones regrown, the Ilizarov method, who Dr. Ilizarov was, what he was doing in Angola to Cuban soldiers and figuring out how to realign bone. I went back to Walter Reed and I met with my orthopedic surgeon and I was like, “Talk to me about osseodistraction, bone lengthening.” He’s like, “You mostly do it on kids that break their growth plates, and as they get older, they need to realign their bones because one leg grew and one leg didn’t. That’s when we use it. We’ve never done it on an amputee and when I say never done it, we’ve never done it on an amputee.” I said, “Who do I need to talk to get this done?”
We go up to Johns Hopkins, and we talk to the American guru of bone lengthening. He’s like, “Ben, I can get you 2 to 3 inches of bone.” I’m like, “I’m in.” He’s like, “Let me just tell you that you’re going to be bedridden for a year, and you’re going to have this chunk of metal sticking half in you and half out, and three times a day, you’re going to have to turn the screws on this device and stretch out your broken femur, and there’s a risk of infection.” I’m like, “All right, man.” We were talking about it like, “I know this is what I got to do to get up from walking, so I’m going to do it.”
This is the equivalent of telling me I go through ranger school and on graduation day telling me, “You got to day one yourself.” I’ll do it, but is there any other way? He’s like, “There’s this doctor up in Minnesota that uses this all-internal device, and you can’t do much, you can’t walk, but at least you can probably still work out. There’s not that much of a risk of infection.” I was like, “Why wasn’t this like option A? Why couldn’t we talk about that first?”
Integrity is big because you don’t have someone always looking over your shoulder. Higher-ups need to know you’ll do the right thing when no one’s watching.
Anyway, I send the X-rays to the guy up in Minnesota. He calls me, and he says, “Ben, I can get you 2 to 3 inches of bone, but I need you to fly up here to Minnesota.” In a very SF way, I figured out a way to get up to Minnesota by myself. Fast forward eleven months, three surgeries, one minor setback, I end up setting two medical world records, one for the shortest stump ever lengthened on an amputee. The second was for the most bone regenerated on a human, because originally they said I was going to regrow 2 to 3 inches of bone. Instead, I ended up regrowing about five and a half inches of bone on myself.
It’s cool I did that. I got myself up and walking, but to be honest, the thing that I take most pride in is it’s a procedure that they were doing for guys like myself at the hospital who were short on one side, and were looking to get out of the wheelchair also. I was able to do that because if you were my therapist and you told me “No,” you weren’t my therapist. If you were my doctor and you told me “No,” you’re not my doc. Literally, I fired my first physical therapist on day one. I was like, “This is too weak, this is too slow. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I need another therapist.”
How do you learn how to walk?
It’s a lot of balance.
I watched you here. I haven’t seen you. We’ve spoken through social media a bit over the last couple of years, but I haven’t seen you until we got here. I’m so impressed. Watching you yesterday at practice, walking around, carrying your bag, watching you out here pacing up and down the sideline, yelling at guys to go do things, and the balance- it’s incredible.
I’ve always been an athlete. I grew up playing hockey, so knowing that edge and having to feel your center of gravity and balance, I feel it. I had to go and take my legs off and sit there for a little bit, almost when we were in the military, and you take your boots off to let my feet air out, but I never let it stop me. We went to Disney after I got injured, and I was in a wheelchair.
Before that trip to Afghanistan, we went to Disney as a family, and I loved it. I had never gone to Disney before. My wife was a big Disney person as a kid, and we took our little baby, and I just thought it was a cool experience. We went back, and it was still cool, but I was in a wheelchair. Call it pride, call it determination, but I was like, “Fuck this. I’m not coming back in a wheelchair.”
The next time we went to Disney, I was walking, and for three days, I walked around Disney. I kid you not, it felt like I did the trek every single day. I kept my GPS on, and we ended up walking 10 to 12 miles a day just walking around Disney, which, for me, walking as a bilateral above-the-knee amputee, is 3 to 4 times the amount of caloric effort. Take ten, multiply it by three, and every day, I’m doing 30 miles. When we go back to Disney, I’m like, “I did it. I know I can do it. If I ever have to do it again, I’m either going to rent the handicapped scooter or just grab a wheelchair and reel myself around.”
What was the most challenging part?
I think it’s made me a better person or grown up, but it’s learning to have patience. SF guy, we’re type-A go-getters, and it’s like, “Let’s go. We got to go through this. Let’s go through that. I’m the leader. I’m going to beat you there. I need to be the first one there.” Not having legs, I’m literally forced to sit there and have patience. That was the biggest thing for me, but it definitely helped me later on in life as a husband and father, learning patience, especially in the business world. It just doesn’t happen like that, and you need to realize that it’s a process, every day you’re doing the right thing, and it’s going to happen.
As you were talking about patience, I was thinking about how that translates into the other things in your life and how we sit here as entrepreneurs, as founders of businesses, and that’s the most challenging part. I was talking to a guy who retired a couple of years ago out of Delta, just in the lounge over here, who came here for the game, and we were sharing some challenges of being an entrepreneur. He said, “Everybody says, ‘What was the hardest thing you ever did? You were in Delta.'” He said, “It’s building a business.” You are now building a business. You’ve gone from West Point collegiate division one lacrosse player to the infantry to Special Forces to rebuilding your body, and now you took on an equally as large challenge of building a business.
My first job out of the Army, I was tasked, it seemed like a good idea, “As a cybersecurity company, we want to get into this government contracting world. Can you do that for us?” That was my first job out of the Army. I was building up government operations for a cybersecurity company, which led me to where I am now at PAMJETS.
I got asked to come over with the two founders, Dave Mendelsohn and Tony Yoder. Tony’s a military guy. He was an F-18 Top Gun instructor. They said, “We’d love for you to come over and be employee number one with us and help us grow and build this business and run the business.” I told them, “I’m in, but I just got to let you know I know nothing about private jets. All I know about airplanes is how to jump on planes and how to talk to bombs or talk to planes that drop bombs. That’s it.”
They’re super cool.
They’re like, “We’ll take care of all the aviation stuff. We just need you to grow the business and run the business.” That was seven years ago. As an entrepreneur, you try everything, and you just try and figure out, “Is this working? No. Is this working? Kind of. Is this working? No. Is this working? Yes.” You have to step back and look at your wins and losses and figure out, “This was kind of working, this wasn’t working, this was working, this wasn’t working,” and figure out, “What’s our new mission statement? Where do we need to focus?”
Have thick skin. We heard so many no’s in the first couple of years of being in the aviation business, managing jets, a lot of “Who are you?” and “What is it that you do?” To be honest, we leave a lot of money on the table because we specifically only take on maybe 4 to 8 projects. We’ll call them new planes. We just look to see if it’s a good fit for us. Our methodology is we’re looking for a partnership. Is it going to be a good partnership for not only us but also for you? It’s not just about the revenue. I was talking to Nick Lavery about being an entrepreneur.
He consults with a lot of businesses and a lot of these entrepreneurs. We were talking, and I said, “For us, it was never about profits first. It was about clients, culture, and profits. We’re going to take care of the clients, have a strong culture, and then we’ll worry about the profits.” He’s like, “Benny, you don’t know how many entrepreneurs I know that we talk to, and they think it’s just all about making money. It’s the guys that want to establish something bigger than just making a profit; they’re the ones succeeding now.”
You talk about character a lot of times, character that you develop. I wouldn’t even say develop; I say the character that is identified and assessed in you, and then you’re selected for when you go into this Special Forces. There are nine of them that SOCOM uses. Every unit, whether you’re a SEAL, a Green Beret, or a Ranger, we’re assessing slightly differently for some of those. What do we care about as Green Berets? We care about drive, resiliency, integrity, curiosity, and adaptability. It is because we need guys who are going to get up every day and they’re going to go do their job regardless of what that motivation is.
It may not be sexy, but they’re going to go and do it.
We need them to be curious because we need them to find solutions to complex challenges. We need them to be adaptable because it’s not going to always work, and they have to find better ways to do it. We need them to have a high degree of integrity because we don’t send guys like the SEALs do, no offense to them, as groups. We send guys as two-man elements, three-man elements, or one-man elements. They might be the only guy in a country.
I know guys that, two at a time, will go down to Argentina, some other country, where you’re like, “Why are Special Forces in there?” We’re everywhere at all times doing things and purposes for the United States. The integrity piece is big because you don’t have someone always looking over your shoulder, and the higher-up has to know that you’re going to be there doing the right thing when no one’s looking.
Decisions are being made on the information that you’re providing. That translates into building a business, identifying something you don’t know much about, being willing to get involved, continuing to find ways to be adaptable, and educating yourself. You talk about curiosity. Your doctors didn’t present it to you, but you figured out there’s a method here that could help me.
It’s better to execute an 80% plan at 100% than to wait to create a 100% plan and execute it at 80%.
If Manchester United or AC Milan is watching this show, I’m ready to get hired to problem-solve for them. That’s what we as Green Berets bring to organizations, problem-solving skill. I just love doing it around sports teams and building teams, as I have always been an athlete. I think that’s the biggest thing as an entrepreneur. The original question that you asked is being able to solve ambiguous problems.
As team leaders in SF, that’s probably the biggest thing that they’re looking for during selection, can you take this Jeep with only three wheels and move it from point A to point B when everyone’s tired and hungry and accomplish the mission? It is because that’s going to translate to the real world. You have a team of eleven other dudes, and you could be a young guy in a team and not have the same experience as them, and you need to be able to motivate them and show that you know what you’re talking about and get the object from point A to point B and achieve the mission.
It’s funny you bring that up because that example is critically important in that there’s a solution to a lot of problems, but those solutions are rarely 100%. There’s a solution to the Jeep to make it work, but that’s not a 100% solution. It’s about an 85% solution because the last 15% is the work. At some point, you’ve got to grit down, you got to bear it, and you’re going to do the best you can to create this solution. You got to put your head down, and you got to drive, and you got to sweat, and you got to put the hard work in to get there.
It’s funny that you say that. On the work side, we’re developing a new division or a new offering for clients, and I’ve been saying to Dave, “We keep talking about it, but it’s better to execute an 80% plan at 100% than waiting to create a 100% plan and executing it at 80%. Let’s just get together, and we’ll put some stuff on paper, and we’ll go.”
I’ve been building over the last several years, FR6, in my security and operations company. We deal with critical infrastructure projects. I’m primarily in the New England and New York area. My guidance to my team is consistently, we don’t do everything, but we can do anything. Our answer’s always going to be yes. When problems come to us, when opportunities come to us, it’s, “Can you do that?” Yes, but give me 24 hours, give me 48 hours.
It is because I know, regardless of what problem comes our way, what opportunity, what bid gets released by the state, that there’s someone in here that I can call or someone I can call who can call someone, who can then help me to solve that problem. We’re going to put the work in to do that, which comes back to that drive and that curiosity. That’s what gets me up every day, to say, I can’t wait to go do this now because I don’t know what’s going to happen.
The interesting thing is that we shadowed each other because of our mindset, and like you said, I met you in 2006. It’s not like we’ve been buddies for twenty years. If you came and ran Pan and was the president of Panjets, it wouldn’t miss a beat because everything you’re saying is stuff I say. I say we never say no. In fact, I made our operations team write on a 3 by 5 card, “Never say no, we’ll get back to you.” We were asked if we could somehow reach out to this no-name airport in the Dominican Republic and go pick up a lost member of the wedding party for one of our clients. “Give me twelve hours, we’ll get it open for you.”
Me and my vice president of client service who speaks much better Spanish than I do, even though I can still habla a bit. He called the manager of the airport. She happened to be at home throwing a quinceañera for her kid. She went to the airport at 11:00 at night, opened up the airport, got her plane in there, picked up the guy, and flew him to Turks and Caicos. Tell me what the problem is. I won’t say no right away, but we’re going to figure out a way to get it done.
What’s next for you?
I got to go catch a flight from Boston down to Lauderdale. I’m gonna head back home. I got to take kids to soccer practice and dance and an aviation company to run. Back on the road.
The responsibilities don’t stop.
I have a podcast of episodes I have to edit, and episodes I have to create, and shorts. There’s that as well.
There’s a lot of room in the podcast space for competition because people need to experience different conversations. I will plug your show on this one.
I appreciate that.
It is because I do think that people need to go out, and they need to hear what you have to say, and they need to hear your story. They need to learn about you. You said that you haven’t been buddies for twenty years. That’s true. I think one of the biggest things, if not the biggest thing, I honestly say to you right here, that I took out of this weekend was reconnecting with you. I hope, and I know that for the next twenty years, that’s not going to be the narrative.
I hope you come down to Florida soon. We can do this on my podcast and talk for another couple of hours and continue to connect.
Get the families together.
That’d be awesome.
It’d be a good time. Thanks. Appreciate everything.
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