I Built TSV to Be “the Guy I Didn't Have.”

I followed the blueprint. Got out of the Army after 13 years, four combat deployments, and a medical retirement I didn't ask for. Resume. LinkedIn. Networking events. The whole checklist.

And I still ended up lost.

Flight school. Five FAA denials and $10,000 in evaluations to prove I was fit to fly. College. A gun shop. Final expense insurance — knocking on doors of the rural poor, watching myself become someone I didn't recognize. A sod farm in Florida. 321 pounds. A botched surgery. And a moment on a motorcycle where the simplest solution felt like the last exit.

I applied to five or six plant medicine retreats. Every single one told me I didn't qualify because I was conventional forces — not Special Operations. As if my deployments and my pain didn't count.

Then the Heroic Hearts Project called. They didn't care about my MOS. They cared that I was drowning.

I went to Peru. I sat in ceremony with the Shipibo healers. And for the first time in my life, I stopped running from the version of myself I'd been trying to kill.

People call it impressive. I call it what happens when you get out of your own way and move in a direction that actually resonates.

TSV started as a podcast because I wanted real conversations — not highlight reels. It grew into a newsletter, then a consulting practice, then an academy. Every piece is built on one principle: you deserve to enjoy the freedom you fought for and not be a slave to the identity and purpose you lost.

The Strategic Veteran doesn't mean I have the answers. It means I'm willing to go first.