EP82: UNCOMMON with Isaac Lee, Marine Aviator (Ret.) and Author of Hangar 4

About the Guest:
Isaac Lee is a former United States Marine Corps officer and aviator who served with distinction and achieved the rank of Captain. His military career was notably marked by deployments and combat experience in the Pacific, as well as engagements in high-risk environments globally. As a testament to his leadership and tactical expertise, he was promoted to Captain on September 1, 2001, just days before the tragic events of 9/11 which significantly altered the course of his service. He has authored a book titled Hangar 4, capturing his profound military experiences and offering insights into the personal transformations faced by many in service. His narrative delves deep into the ethos of a Marine aviator, examining themes of mental toughness and the realities of life before and after combat.

Episode Summary:
In an engaging exchange on the "Becoming UnDone" podcast, host Toby Brooks navigates the remarkable journey of Isaac Lee, from his early dreams of becoming a professional baseball player to his transformative years as a Marine Corps aviator. The conversation offers a riveting look into Isaac Lee's life, unveiling the trials, tribulations, and triumphs that come with military service and leadership.

Isaac's story begins in the sports fields of West Texas, where commitment and camaraderie were imbued in him through rigorous coaching. His path takes an unexpected turn as he embraces a newfound purpose in the Marine Corps, scaling the ranks as an esteemed aviator. The episode poignantly captures the moment known to every service member — when training and simulation give way to the stark reality of combat. Amidst personal and professional challenges, including introspection on risk tolerance and mental health, Isaac navigates through life with unwavering determination, culminating in his decision to write his memoir.

Key Takeaways:

• Isaac Lee's transition from aspiring athlete to a Marine Corps pilot illustrates the potency of self-belief and adaptability in facing odds.
• His candid reflection on the impact of 9/11 on military personnel underscores the profound shift from theoretical training to the tangibility of combat.
• The challenges of balancing the mental demands of military service with personal life reveal a common struggle among veterans.
• Isaac's proactive approach to mental health and personal unpacking of experience underscores the importance of seeking help and self-awareness.

Notable Quotes:

• "The mental aspect of competition and athletics where if you are mentally dialed in, that you can really perform at the highest level possible for yourself." - Isaac Lee on the lessons from his father and high school coach.
• "It either ends on your terms and your timeline, or eventually someone tells you, like, hey, thanks but we don't need you anymore." - Isaac Lee on deciding to retire from the Marine Corps on his own terms.

Resources:

• https://www.isaacglee.com/
• Buy Hangar 4

Transcript

[TRANSCRIPT]

0:00:00 - (Isaac Lee): And so, you know, I took off on my first deployment that summer of 2001. Got promoted to captain on September 1 of 2001. And at that point, it was just this big adventure and kind of a little bit of a party. We're just banging around the Pacific and going to Korea and doing all these ridiculous things. And then we got back to Okinawa, Japan, where we were based out over that deployment. And we were in our barracks one night.

0:00:23 - (Isaac Lee): There was literally a typhoon happening, so we were on lockdown. So, of course, like any good marines, we were having a couple of beers and antagonizing each other, and 911 happened. Someone ran in the room, turned on the tv, and it was a very sobering moment that I'll never forget, because in that moment, myself and I think everyone else never realized, like, wow, everything just changed. The enemy is no longer simulated, and we're all about to find out who we really are.

0:00:50 - (Isaac Lee): M Isaac Lee and I am undone.

0:01:08 - (Toby Brooks): Hey, friend, I'm glad you're here.

0:01:10 - (Toby Brooks): Welcome to another episode of Becoming Undone.

0:01:12 - (Toby Brooks): The podcast for those who dare bravely.

0:01:14 - (Toby Brooks): Risk mightily and grow relentlessly. I'm Toby Brooks, speaker, an author and a professor. I've spent much of the last two decades working as an athletic trainer and strength coach in the professional, collegiate, and high school sports settings. And over the years, I've grown more and more fascinated with what sets high achievers apart and how failures they can hurt in the moment can end up being exactly the push we needed to propel us on our path to success.

0:01:40 - (Toby Brooks): Each week on becoming undone, I invite new guests to examine how high achievers and transform from falling apart to falling into place. Id like to emphasize that this show is entirely separate from my role as a professor, but its my attempt to apply what ive learned and what im learning and to share with others about the mindsets of high achievers.

0:01:59 - (Toby Brooks): This your first episode?

0:02:00 - (Toby Brooks): Welcome. I hope you love it. And after enjoying this episode, I hope youll dig back through some previous episodes where I interview high achievers who didnt let failure setbacks stand in the way of their eventual victories. And if you're a regular, God bless you. I hope you know just how much.

0:02:16 - (Toby Brooks): You'Ve meant to me on this journey.

0:02:18 - (Toby Brooks): Becoming a podcaster has literally changed my life. More on that in the next few episodes, but you are a big part of that. My deepest hope is that the show can encourage and inspire you on your own journey toward success. For Lubbock, Texas, native and high school coaches son Isaac Lee, early dreams of professional baseball began to fade into the reality of life after sport near the end of high school, after a brief moment of now what? He enrolled at Texas Tech University and managed to complete three years before surrendering to a fairly sudden but unmistakable urge to become a military pilot, Isaac found success as an aviator in the US Marine Corps.

0:03:11 - (Toby Brooks): The tragic events of 911 and the years of military campaigns that followed would forever change his life. Battling through loss and adversity, Isaac emerged stronger and ultimately decided to recount his experiences in his new book, Hangar Four, which I will tell you is a fantastic read. I hope you'll enjoy this second of my two conversations with military personnel turned authors and my chat with marine aviator and author Isaac Le in episode 82, Uncommon.

0:03:43 - (Toby Brooks): This week. We've got a guest with a fantastic background. Had a lot of authors on the show lately and a lot of vets, and Isaac Lee checks both of those boxes. So, Isaac, welcome to the show.

0:03:54 - (Isaac Lee): Hey, thank you very much for having me. Happy to be here.

0:03:57 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, you were kind enough to send an advanced copy of your book, Hanger Four, and we'll get to that a little bit later. But I always start off asking my guests a little bit of an easy one, what'd you want to be growing up and why?

0:04:10 - (Isaac Lee): It's a great question. I really wanted to be a major league baseball player growing up, so I actually grew up right there in Lubbock, Texas, where you are. My dad was a baseball and football coach at one of the local high schools. And that's really how I spent my time throughout my youth, was on the dusty ball fields of West Texas. A lot of great athletes there. So I had great competition growing up. All my best friends were out there on those fields with me, and that was really my focus of through the time I graduated from high school.

0:04:40 - (Isaac Lee): And then probably the most mature decision I ever made, or at least the first really mature decision I made, is I came to this realization at the very end of my senior high school that I probably wasn't quite good enough to make it to the major leagues. And that was a big pill for me to swallow at the time, but I knew I was a good student and I needed to figure something else out. So really about the last minute, I made a decision to just enroll in classes there at Texas Tech.

0:05:07 - (Isaac Lee): I went to school, but had no clue what I wanted to do from there. So college was really, those first few years for me, were challenging, and I was just trying to find my way and figure out what I wanted to do once I lost that first dream, if you will. Sure.

0:05:24 - (Toby Brooks): My son's a baseball player. And in West Texas, baseball is not even second string around here. There's a scene in the movie the rookie where he's a high school coach in Texas, and he looks out at the pristine grass of the football field, and then he looks at the neglect of the baseball field. And so for a baseball guy in West Texas, I'm a basketball guy, so I'm no better taken care of out here than most. So I certainly understand you played for a coach who's a legend in this part of the world.

0:05:56 - (Toby Brooks): You alluded to Texas Tech. What did that high school athletic experience teach you that you carried on in the later seasons of your life?

0:06:05 - (Isaac Lee): Yeah. Coach Bobby Magl there at a Monterey high school. And I would tell you that the combination of my father, Jerry Lee, and Bobby Magl really gave me the foundation for everything that I went on to do later. It started with my dad. Despite the fact that he was a high school coach, he always made time to coach me personally. And the lessons were always about being a great teammate, being a competitor, physical toughness. But the most important lesson he really hammered home to me at a young age was what he called mental toughness, that mental aspect of competition and athletics where if you are mentally dialed in, that you can really perform at the highest level possible for yourself.

0:06:48 - (Isaac Lee): And so then when it came time for me to go to high school, we made a joint decision that I should go play for coach Mel because it would be better for my development. Dad thought at that point, he'd given me everything he could. And plus, neither of us really wanted deal with the whole coach's kid thing as a high school athlete. So he handed me off to coach Mel, who was a living legend, but just an amazing coach, but also like old school hard.

0:07:17 - (Isaac Lee): I would tell you that coach Megel didn't say a single nice thing to me until after I graduated. And then he had a lot of nice things to say to me, and I was almost surprised. That's just was his demeanor. He pushed us hard. He expected us to be very conditioned, very tough. And that mental toughness aspect was huge with him as well. And years later, I realized how valuable that had become to me. And I really credit everything that I went on to do in the Marine Corps for that one thing, primarily over everything else.

0:07:48 - (Toby Brooks): That's fantastic. I've heard it explain that short term hard leads to long term easy, and certainly day in and day out. Living under a coach like that feels stifling. It feels like, man, I can't please this guy. But you realize after the fact that instilled a resilience within you that could.

0:08:05 - (Isaac Lee): Certainly serve you well for sure. And just the level of discipline that is uncommon and important. You know, I'll never forget this. The first game of my senior year of high school, we were playing Midland leaguee at Angel Stadium in Midland and I hit a home run in my burst at bat and I was so excited. And as I was round on the bases and approaching third, he looked me right in the eye and said, I can't believe you. You're a senior still hitting fly balls.

0:08:33 - (Isaac Lee): He was all about ground balls and line drives and small ball and execution. And so even in that moment where I thought it was really cool for hit the home run, he was reminding me, you didn't do what you were supposed to do.

0:08:47 - (Toby Brooks): Certainly some of that coaching can be a little hard to swallow. So you mentioned in the book that you're at Texas Tech and at the time, Lubbock is a military community. Reece Air Force Base, west the town. And you get this idea that, that the college life, maybe you've got a bigger purpose. So talk me through that within you and then maybe even the conversation you had at home and how that went down.

0:09:12 - (Isaac Lee): Yeah, I would say the Sed got planted with me in high school. I had a teacher there at Monterey High School, Colonel Howell Womack. He was a retired Air Force colonel. He had planted the seed with me, but I never really thought about it seriously. And reh Air Force Base was there as a training base. We go to the air shows and stuff, but in our household we were so focused on sports I didn't really feel connected to it.

0:09:35 - (Isaac Lee): But I did have, call it a passive interest in what was going on over there. And then the summer after my junior year of college, I was doing an internship at an advertising agency there in Lubbock. And I did not like it at all. I really was having this like kind of crisis moment where I was like, oh man, I really don't know it. I want to be when I grow up, one out to my parents house. And they lived in southwest Lubbock at the time, was in the country. It's not in the country anymore.

0:10:04 - (Isaac Lee): Out on 116th off Frankfurt. And my dad was sitting in the driveway and from there you could see the aircraft in the pattern at Ree Air force base in the distance. So I sat down. I start telling my dad I don't like this internship. I don't know what I want to do. He gets a little frustrated with me. I, his son, he's floundering here. And he eventually asked me, like, well, what are you gonna do? And I just looked at those aircraft in the pattern over there. Resur. Force bas. And you know what? I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna be a pilot in the military.

0:10:35 - (Isaac Lee): And when I said that, I knew almost nothing about the reality of what it takes to become one of those people, but I just decided in that moment, you know what? That sounds like it makes sense, and I'm gonna go chase it. And he looked at me like I was crazy, which was a fair reaction, given the randomness of what I'd said. And he just got up, went in the house. He didn't say, you can't do that. He didn't say, yeah, go for it. It was just like, this end of the conversation, based on the randomness of my comment and how probably ridiculous it sounded at the time.

0:11:07 - (Isaac Lee): But right there, I just decided, you know what? I'm gonna figure this out. And that really set me on a course to go figure it out. And ultimately chose the Marine Corps aviation and ended up going to officer candidate school with the aviation contract. Yeah.

0:11:23 - (Toby Brooks): Sometimes I've had guests who had a clear vision of who and what they wanted to be from their earliest childhood memories, and then others. Like you said, you get this glimpse of purpose, like, it's certainly late arriving, but after that point, was there second guessing? Were you just locked in that this was going to be your path?

0:11:47 - (Isaac Lee): Yeah. From that point, I was completely determined to figure it out. And as I started doing my homework and research and talking to people and telling people that's what I wanted to do, I will honestly tell you that I'm quite certain the only person that actually thought I could do it was me and to some degree, my mother. And that was the end of the list. Everyone else I said to, hey, I'mn to go be a pilot in the military had a similar reaction to my dad. They looked like, are you crazy? It doesn't work that way. You can't do that.

0:12:18 - (Isaac Lee): And the truth is, even though Reese was there, joining the military wasn't a super common thing in my peer group or anyone that I even. So it sounded like this kind of wild idea to go do something like that. But I just really became determined and really believed. I think this will be a good fit for me. The things that I missed about not having in my life being part of an athletic organization was the teamwork, the camaraderie, the group of guys that you're working your butt off with to get ready to go win.

0:12:49 - (Isaac Lee): And I just slowly became convinced that I would find that again in the military, and that proved to be 100% accurate.

0:12:56 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, we've certainly heard that. I say we. This is a one man show. I'm not gonna oversell it. I have heard stories from others. We had Mark Green, former Navy SEAL, on here, who was a collegiate athlete, and he certainly found that once he arrived in the military and found his family there. And so you head to Washington and begin training, and I guess talk me through how the path forward started to become clearer for you. Not everyone that that shows up on the doorstep of a recruiter gets to fly a multim million dollar piece of machinery, and it's certainly competitive. So talk me through that marine aviator.

0:13:37 - (Isaac Lee): Aspect of your journey for sure. You start out by going to officer candidate school there in Quantico, Virginia, and I will tell you, I knew going in that the attrition rate was gonna be between 30 and 40%, and I was very aware of the fact that I was not the smartest, the fastest, or the strongest candidate in that pool. And to be honest, it was really intimidating when I first got there, because just the group of people that I was with was extremely impressive. Everyone was a great athlete, super smart.

0:14:06 - (Isaac Lee): I felt like all of them were probably smarter than me. They'd gone to more prestigious schools. They had cooler sounding degrees, so it was intimidating. But I really just leaned into two things. One was falling back on that mental toughness aspect. I just knew, hey, if I'm gon toa make it here, I have to be one of the toughest candidates in this group of people. That's my ticket. And my initial strategy was really just pay attention to what's going on, keep your mouth shut, and figure out who around you looks like they know what's going on and do what they're doing.

0:14:40 - (Toby Brooks): There's a point here worth poking at, and I think it's a key aspect of Isaac's path towards success amidst a deep and talented pool of other would be marine aviators. For starters, he's honest in his assessment, and while he's concerned by the potentially long odds, the highly athletic and the talented academic group around him, he isn't discouraged. He simply takes an initial inventory, makes some mental notes, and recognizes that he's in for an uphill battle.

0:15:09 - (Toby Brooks): But he doesn't quit. When I was just a couple years younger than Isaac, in midway through undergrad, I had some big dreams, too. After two years at a community college and practicing every day, I showed up at Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana, with a goal of playing college basketball. Like Isaac, I arrived at my new destination hungry. And like Isaac, I looked around and felt a little outgunned.

0:15:32 - (Toby Brooks): After all, I was in the heart of Hoosier country. Every person and their dog fancied themselves a basketball star there. But unlike Isaac, I failed to see a path forward. After just a few weeks on campus, I made the painful decision to quit. I didn't think I had what it took to make the team, and at the time, I was too fragile to face that possibility. It's a decision I will forever regret. But not I.

0:16:00 - (Toby Brooks): While he realizes that he might lack the athletic or academic prowess of his peers, he also knows he has a secret weapon, grit and toughness, forged over years of playing in the dusty fields of West Texas for some of the hardest coaches the game has ever known. He decides then and there to lean in and to rely on that mental toughness to get him through round after round of progressively more difficult cuts in the middle of progressively more elite company.

0:16:30 - (Toby Brooks): And it works.

0:16:31 - (Isaac Lee): That'll keep you off the radar until it starts to click. And that really worked, to be honest. So it helped me adapt quickly. I was quiet, observant, and really just fell in line. Don't draw any attention to yourself, good or bad, out of the gate. But then I really quickly settled into that and did well in the program. So obviously went on to graduate, got commissioned as a second lieutenant, and from there, you go through a six month infantry officer course. All marine lieutenants go through in my line, with every marines of Rifleman mantra, that went well.

0:17:06 - (Isaac Lee): So my confidence is like, building as I'm going through these training pipelines and feeling better about myself and. And feeling more and more confident, hey, yeah, this is a good fit. I can do this, I can succeed. And then from there, I went to flight school, and for marines, we go to Navy flight school. We're all naval aviators. Same program. But then it was the same process all over again. You get there, it's intimidating, it's a grueling program. It's about two years long.

0:17:34 - (Isaac Lee): The pressure is high. If you fail an event, be at a test or a flight event, that's called the down two of those, and you're probably getting tossed out of the program. Going in, the expectation is really perfection, and you got to get through this two year training pipeline to become an aviator again, knowing that about 35, 40% of those that start aren't going to make it. But it went well. And the same thing. I just started gaining confidence and feeling better and better about it. And by the end of the program, I actually graduated at the top of my class. So it was a good path for me. That made sense for me, and just me executing the way I'd been taught in the dusty ball fields of west texes.

0:18:14 - (Isaac Lee): Really paid all.

0:18:15 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, we're about the same age. I graduated high school the year after you did, and so I can remember.

0:18:22 - (Toby Brooks): Crystal clear it was the only movie.

0:18:24 - (Toby Brooks): My dad and I ever went to go see together, just the two of us. Was Top gun there on Myamamar, and not being in that military space, I remember hearing rumblings that they were going toa make a sequel to it and started doing some research.

0:18:37 - (Toby Brooks): I'm like, top guns?

0:18:38 - (Toby Brooks): Not at Miramar anymore. That's a travesty that they don't do it there. They're in Nevada. That's not how the movie goes. So talk me through. Your book certainly takes place. Miramar is a critical part of it.

0:18:49 - (Isaac Lee): It is.

0:18:50 - (Toby Brooks): Talk to me about what it was like to be there.

0:18:52 - (Isaac Lee): It was pretty surreal to start with. And like everyone else, I will freely admit, I watch Top Gun probably a hundred times. Few months before I went officer candidate school, I was excited about it, but it still seemed like this thing that wasn't quite real that you're chasing. But flight school went well. I ultimately picked helicopters, really, because I had a mentor in flight school who was a helicopter pilot. That was just an awesome action figure of a human being. That convinced me that was the really cool thing to go do.

0:19:22 - (Isaac Lee): And unbeknownst to me at the time, Miramar had been a naval aviation base for a long time. But the base realignment and Closure commission moved some things around. So the Marine Corps took possession of Miramar, and the squadrons that had previously been up in Orange county at Tuston and El Toro, moved down to Myiramar, and there were already some other marine Cor aviation assets at Camp Pendleton.

0:19:45 - (Isaac Lee): So when I was going through flight school, I had just decided, hey, San Diego, I want to go west coast. And I was more interested in west coast than I was actual aircraft, but it worked out. I selected CH 53 echoes on the west coast, which were stationed at Miramar, but it still just seemed like a big adventure to me at the time. And I was newly married, and my wife and I drove across the country with the handful of things that we owned and re in an apartment here in San Diego, and next thing I know, I was checking in into hangar for at Myiramar, and I was like, wow, I made it like, I'm on the team, I'm gonna get to play with the varsity now.

0:20:20 - (Isaac Lee): And it was just super exciting to check into that unit for the first time. And my timing was either amazing or terrible, depending on your perspective. But that was December of 2000, so things were about to get real interesting. Yeah.

0:20:32 - (Toby Brooks): And that kind of brings me to my next question. The focus of this show is how high achievers can transform when stuff doesn't go their way, and how not every step on our journey to success is a win. And so at this stage of your career, what relationship did you have with failure, and how did it play a role in you moving forward?

0:20:56 - (Isaac Lee): I would say I was extremely aware of it because failure was all around me throughout that training pipeline, and the margin between pass and fail on a day to day basis was razor thin at times, just in training events as a pilot and doing all of those things. But I will tell you, at that stage of the game, I had completely convinced myself that wasn't an option and it wasn't going to happen. But I also hadn't experienced the level of adversity that I was on the cusp of experiencing.

0:21:27 - (Isaac Lee): So what I didn't realize, or couldn't have possibly known then, was that it was about to get real challenging in all aspects of my life on a level that I couldn't even have comprehended before it happened. And then that's where I got into it and started really having to deal with success, failure in a very real life and death way. Yeah.

0:21:52 - (Toby Brooks): I mentioned previous guests, Mark Green, and one of the things he shared that really stood out to me. Society today has really grown romanticized. The Navy SeAL or special operators of any sort, shape, whatever. But he said, everyone talks about Bud's training and how, like you mentioned, the attrition is so high. And he said, when looking back at it, that was like the easiest part of my career because all it did was qualify me to go do real things. And now people are actually shooting at me and lives are on the line.

0:22:24 - (Toby Brooks): Not to say that training doesn't involve risk and tragedy at times, but I assume going to flight school is a similar experience where it's the hardest thing you've ever done, and then three years down the road you're thinking, wow, how easy was that Tuesday? Back then it was.

0:22:40 - (Isaac Lee): And I'm someone that's always said, I would say, arguably unrealistic goals for myself, and then I go try to chase them. So in marine craviation, the pinnacle qualification is to become a weapons syn tactics instructor. And to do that. When you first shake into squadron, you're nobody. You're a lieutenant co pilot. And whether you're worth it, you might be worthless until you prove otherwise, but the pinnacle is to get all of your qualifications and honestly, ultimately be picked to go to that school, which is essentially the Marine Corps version of Top Gun. Although in the Marine Corps, we bring all platforms, fixed wing, rotary wing, everybody plays.

0:23:18 - (Isaac Lee): So I walked in the door of my first quarterro with, that is my goal. And again, not having a very realistic understanding of what it was going toa take to achieve that goal or even what it was realistically going to be like to be in a fleet squadron. And so, you know, I took off on my first deployment that summer of 2001, got promoted to captain on September 1 of 2001. And at that point, it was just this big adventure and kind of a little bit of a party. We're just banging around the Pacific and going to Korea and doing all these ridiculous things.

0:23:50 - (Isaac Lee): And then we got back to Okinawa, Japan, where we were based out over that deployment. And we were in our barracks one night. There was literally a typhoon happening, so we were on lockdown. So, of course, like any good marines, we were having a couple of beers and antagonizing each other, and 911 happened. Someone ran in the room, turned on a tv, and it was a very sobering moment that I'll never forget, because in that moment, myself and I think everyone else in that room realized, like, wow, everything just changed.

0:24:18 - (Isaac Lee): The enemy is no longer simulated, and we're all about to find out who we really are. It's our turn to go do what we need to do for our country. And I remember thinking, I hope I have what it takes to do this. And not really even knowing what that meant, because up until that point, combat was just an idea, a theory. It wasn't tangible. And so there was, like this kind of ominous setting that came over the room immediately.

0:24:50 - (Isaac Lee): And all of us who were in that room went on to do multiple combat deployments, and not all of us survived those. So the war was about to get very real for all of us and ultimately did.

0:25:00 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, I hadte goosebumps, as you're talking. Those early formative years as an athlete, all those hours of training, and whether it's time in the cage or tackling drills, whatever you're preparing against a simulated opponent, always. And then you're proving to yourself in the game or in the scrimmage that, okay, that worked or that didn't. This is that on a wholeher level, because it's not that you're going to get tackled or struck out swinging, you could die. And yes, I love how you said that. It got real, real fast.

0:25:36 - (Toby Brooks): So from that point, without going into the particulars of deployments and things like that, talk me through what the next few years looked like for you and yours.

0:25:47 - (Isaac Lee): So it was a whirlwind. And I will tell you, the highs were really high and the lows were really low. And I learned a lot about myself quickly, but essentially, the way it played out, I came home from that first deployment, we were still spooling up for combat. We didn't know exactly where that was going to be. The rumor about going to invade Iraq was happening. But my wife and I had our first child, our daughter, that next summer, and she was premature.

0:26:17 - (Isaac Lee): She was a 27 weekr, two pounds 7oz. And that was our introduction to parenthood. We spent ten weeks that summer basically living at the neonatal intensive care unit here at Balboa and San Diego. But I was still going to the squadron and flying during the day and getting ready to go to combat. And we ultimately brought her home that fall. It all worked out. She was in good shape. She still had a lot of appointments and was on monitors, and she was still in that state when I got called off a Christmas leave to get back to San Diego and get on the ship to go to Oif.

0:26:51 - (Isaac Lee): So leaving that first time, I had a lot on my plate. And then what ultimately happened is I went to Iraq three times in three years. And the breaks at home were pretty sure for the most part. And I started personally going through a very rapid transformation just as a human being because of the experience. And I've often said that combat, or the thing I appreciate the most about combat is that it tells the truth about who you are as a person, meaning you just simply can't be'your way through it. There's a lot of things in life you can do that with. Combat is not one of them.

0:27:27 - (Isaac Lee): When the BoL start flying and your friends start dying, you find out who you are pretty fast, and then you have to live with that for the rest of your days. But getting into the appropriate mindset to do that and to fight and fly in those situations and to do that well, it takes a toll on you. And it comes with a lot of strings attached. And by the time I got to my third combat deployment, I realized that I had changed quite a bit as a person.

0:27:55 - (Isaac Lee): And I had adapted and changed in a way that was very effective for me and my job and as a leader and as an aviator. But it came with some strength that were not good, particularly at home. It's like living on two different planets, where on one you're supposed to be this warfighter, and on the other you're supposed to be this sane, normal guy in the suburbs of San Diego with your wife and kids, and it's damn near impossible to do that well, because it's not a switch that you can flip, and once you're there, you're just there.

0:28:27 - (Isaac Lee): But it was interesting in that by my third combat deployment, I started to really recognize all of that and think about it in a very introspective way. And at that point, I wasn't sure exactly what all that was or what it meant, but I was at least aware of it. And that's sort of where I started getting really intellectually curious about how to unpack that appropriately at some point, although I knew that the time was not then.

0:28:55 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, I know that a lot of people talk about the duality of their job, and certainly in the case of our military, but also high achieving athletes, where aggression and being ferocious on the field is celebrated, applauded. You get contract extensions, 100%. But then anywhere else in society, it's toxic. It is something that can destroy you as a human being, and it's gotta be a difficult space to navigate. During that time, did you feel like you had an outlet for those thoughts and emotions to process, or were you on your own?

0:29:35 - (Isaac Lee): No, I really didn't. And it's interesting in that, especially in aviation, you being in a good, sound place mentally is really important. And we look at each other, there are safety boards every month, et cetera, et cetera. But the bottom line is you don't ever want to be perceived as having any kind of an issue, because that could pull you off the flight schedule. So all of us were just finding our own ways to deal with that and process it.

0:30:01 - (Isaac Lee): And it wasn't necessarily healthy in the way that we were doing it. And I'll be honest and tell you, at least for me, I didn't even really understand it. It was more of this like 6th sense that I had. That was like, I know I've changed. I know the way that I'm say coping with this at times isn't probably good. However, I had come to believe that me being me was my best option because it at least kept me and other people around me alive.

0:30:31 - (Isaac Lee): So I was very hesitant to tinker with that formula at all, because the alternative could literally be losing your life or even worse, being the cause of other people losing theirs. So it was like once you were there, I just had to stay there, even though I was aware of it. And then fast forward a few years later, I really started to understand that better and slowly unpack it in a way where I at least understood it for myself and was that became very helpful down the road.

0:31:07 - (Toby Brooks): We'll be back after a quick break. This episode brought to you by Forte are you looking to prioritize the mental well being of your employees? Look no further than Forte, the comprehensive mental wellness platform designed to empower everyone in your organization to thrive, both professionally and personally. It provides employees with unlimited access to certified guides for 30, 45 or 60 minutes confidential audio calls.

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0:32:13 - (Toby Brooks): Visit getforte.com to learn more. That's g e t f o dash r d tash e.com dot retired in.

0:32:22 - (Toby Brooks): 2017 as lieutenant colonel in the US Marine Corps. Talk me through that transition. You've spent your entire life late to the party in terms of figuring out that this is what you wantna do. But then it's your life and your identity is, I'm sure that you introduce yourself as your rank of what you do in an aircraft. So when that suddenly switches, what was that transition?

0:32:47 - (Isaac Lee): I'll tell you what it was like leading up to and then actually going through it. After that initial flurry of deployments to Iraq, I did achieve my goal. I became a weapons and tactics instructor, and I actually got invited to come back out to the school to be an instructor there, which was a pinnacle achievement for me that I felt great about. But at the same time, that was right at the time where I was struggling to understand myself and what I become and what does that mean?

0:33:14 - (Isaac Lee): But I got all that in the box and kept things at home. Okay, we had another child and things that settled a little bit. And then I got promoted to major, went right back to the floo did a deployment to Afghanistan, did another marine expeditionary unit deployment. It was like this whirlwind of things that happened and then ultimately got promoted to lieutenant colonel and selected to be a commanding officer of one of the squadrons here at Miramar.

0:33:38 - (Isaac Lee): But at that point, going into that tour, I had really decided that I needed to transition out of the Marine Corps when that was over. And I would have. I did have the option to stay and likely would have been promoted at least one more time. But the stuff I was talking about earlier and having this innate feeling like I need to unpack this before it gets me was really important to me. And so I was very aware of who I was, who I had become, and knew that it wasn't necessarily a good thing for me. And I was really concerned that if I didn't figure that out sooner rather than later, that I was going to be one of those.

0:34:21 - (Isaac Lee): The many people who, you know, you just go off the rails in whatever way, and all of a sudden everyone's ever known he's, oh my gosh, what happened to that guy? You always seemed so together. And I didn't want to let myself get to that point because I felt like I was close, like I had this awareness of I know myself and I could see this happen. Not in any particular way. It was just. Just aate feeling. I don't know how much longer I can keep this together this way.

0:34:51 - (Toby Brooks): Again. You have to be impressed by the self awareness Isaac has in this moment. To the outside world, he is an absolute rock star, a military hero who's an instructor in the Marine Corps, equivalent to the Navy's top gun fighter school. Justice elite and competitive at best of the best, but not yet with the pr that a couple of Tom Cruise movies spaced three or four decades AP park can bring. But on the inside, it's a different story.

0:35:17 - (Toby Brooks): He's a man conflicted by the duality of fierce soldier, tender father, ace pilot, caring husband in a job that requires precision and a cold, emotionless execution duty. He couldnt just turn that off when he got home. It'about a mini face, but its'one Isaac saw within himself. And if it didn't frighten him, at the very least he concerned him. So he decided it was time to call it a career.

0:35:44 - (Isaac Lee): So I decided to transition. And that was definitely the best thing for the family. So I started working on that. And similar to when I decided to join the Marine Corps, I just got it in my head that I wanted to get into business operations, which was a very non standard thing for me to do with my background. Most people in my background, they become airline pilots or they go work for Northrop blockee, pick your DoD company.

0:36:09 - (Isaac Lee): Those are very standard, well laid out, obvious options. But the thing I'd come to love the most in the Marine Corps was the people part, the leadership part. And I just got this idea that I think if I go into operations lane of business, I can find that again, or it'll be at least similar. And so I started charging down that path. And at the same time I was doing that, I went to work my on myself in a really meaningful way.

0:36:35 - (Isaac Lee): Started going to counseling at a veteran center here in San Marcos, California, really to just start unpacking with some assistance. Like these things I've come to believe about myself. Is this. Is it true? Am I crazy? Can, you know, help me navigate this? So I was doing all of those things simultaneously. We call it the professional transition and the personal transition. But I just believed like I had before. Hey, I think I can figure this out.

0:37:02 - (Isaac Lee): And ultimately I was able to do that and transition out. And initially was the chief operating officer for a manufacturing company and did that for about a year and a half, and that went well. And then I started a little consulting business, and then I got recruited to go work for another company. And I've been there for a few years now and we've doubled in size, and it's been a good run. And then.

0:37:24 - (Isaac Lee): But that personal quest to figure some of those things out is ongoing, and it probably always will be. Yeah.

0:37:31 - (Toby Brooks): I've become particularly fascinated with the lasts in our human experience. And I think as a parent, you'll relate to this. It's easy to identify the firsts. I know exactly where I was when my daughter or my son took their first step. I know the first time I played catch with my son or the first play I saw my daughter in. But lasts the first yell and the lasts whisper. But in transitions like this, there's a last time you shut off your office life or the last time you took off that uniform that had your name on it. And that transition, for a lot of people, especially if you've put in your entire career, can be jarring.

0:38:10 - (Toby Brooks): And to go, as Mark described it, my previous guest who was in the Navy Seals, he said, I was Mark Green, navy Seal, on Friday and on Monday I was just some guy named Mark. And it was like I never really thought about it in that life.

0:38:25 - (Isaac Lee): Yeah.

0:38:25 - (Toby Brooks): So talk me through what that specific day or weekend was like for you.

0:38:32 - (Isaac Lee): I will tell you, for better or for worse, I'm someone that spends very little time thinking about the past, either good or bad. I've always believed that life's like a roulette wheel, and the odds reset themselves every day. So being good yesterday doesn't mean anything today. Screwing something up yesterday doesn't mean anything today either. So it was, I think, a little easier for me than most people to make that transition and just really stay focused on where I was going forward.

0:39:00 - (Isaac Lee): I felt really good about what I'd accomplished in the military and my role in that. I'll always feel great about it. But I'll also tell you that for me, and this is a somewhat unique perspective, I think, is that in the military, it ends one or two ways. It either ends on your terms and your timeline, or eventually someone tells you, like, hey, thanks, I don't think we need you around here anymore.

0:39:24 - (Isaac Lee): And it was important to me, or I liked that I was able to make that decision for myself on my own timeline and execute. You know, had I waited around another few years and maybe even got promoted.

0:39:36 - (Toby Brooks): One more time, I would have eventually.

0:39:37 - (Isaac Lee): Gotten to that place where they'd said, hey, thank you, but we don't really need you anymore. And I think that would have been more difficult to swallow. So I've felt good about the fact that I put myself on the path that I did when I did, and it was really proactive in multiple ways. But I will also say there was another aspect to it that I didn't realize for me made sense until someone pointed it out to me.

0:40:07 - (Isaac Lee): But it was a couple years after I'd transitioned out, and it was still going well, and I was enjoying what I was doing, but I was getting concerned about the fact that there was an absence of what I perceived as risk in my life, because I had lived at this extreme level of risk for a long time and come to acknowledge that I actually liked it. Like, I thrived in those high risk environments, and I was really concerned that I didn't have any risk around me anymore, and that somehow was going toa become problematic again. Going back to myself, probably too introspective for my own personal good sometimes.

0:40:45 - (Isaac Lee): But in that conversation, the person I was chatting with was great, and he just started laughing and said, you're so attracted to these risky things, you don't even see it. He's like, when you got out of the Marine Corps, that was the most risky thing you could have done. You werese set. You were gonna get promoted one more time. You were good, you were established. Everyoneder who you were like, that was the easy path. You actually chose the harder, riskier path.

0:41:11 - (Isaac Lee): And now you're over here working on these small companies with these young entrepreneurs and think could go bust tomorrow. Like you basically have bet your livelihood in a way that's way riskier than it would have been if you'd to stayed in the Marine Corps. Just been one more keronel hanging out at the Pentagon. And it wasn't until he pointed that out to me that I realized like, oh, wow, yeah, that's actually accurate, and did it without even realizing that's what I'done until you pointed it out.

0:41:36 - (Toby Brooks): And I think that's what high achievement cultivates within you. You become comfortable operating in that environment to, to the extent that it doesn't really feel like something you should be uncomfortable around.

0:41:50 - (Isaac Lee): Yes. Yeah, probably. Certainly to a degree that it's a detriment at times. I'always had a willingness to just give it a shot. It doesn't really matter what the odds are, doesn't matter whether anyone else thinks I can pull it off. If I think, hey, I think I can take a realistic shot at this thing, I will absolutely do it. But there are certainly the strings attached with that, too, because you still have a life and personal relationships. And I know for certain my riskist tolerance is significantly larger than my spouse I'm host is. You're trying to balance these things in a lot of ways. The things that have helped me be successful are also a detriment in other aspects of my life. And that's a tricky balance to maintain sometimes.

0:42:34 - (Toby Brooks): Sure.

0:42:35 - (Toby Brooks): So you retire in 2017, and the book is a fantastic read. Those are listening. I'll drop the link and put some of that in the show notes. But where does the idea for writing a memoir start to germinate for you?

0:42:50 - (Isaac Lee): Oh, I would tell you I kept a journal throughout the entire time I was in the Marine Corps. And I actually started that when I went to officer candidate school. Not for any real purpose to me. It was just so exciting and so entertaining, and there were so many interesting things happening around me that I knew I'm never going to remember all this, so I need to write some of it down. And that's how it started.

0:43:11 - (Isaac Lee): And then I just kept doing it. And then by the time I started deploying to combat, the journal was just a decompression exercise for me. I found that I liked to write. I don't know that I was particularly good at it, but I liked it. And it was a way for me to capture the events of the day decompress a little bit at the end of the day or whenever I was gonna get some sleep. And so I had this thing that I'd kept 20 years of everything. It was all in there.

0:43:37 - (Isaac Lee): But I transitioned out of the Marine Corps, got busy starting a new career, trying to get the family settled down. My kids are teenagers at that point. I'm attempting to make up for lost time. I was doing all of these things that I felt like I should be doing. Wasn't thinking too much about the Marine Corps at that point, or my experience, although I was still working on unpacking it through counseling.

0:44:01 - (Isaac Lee): But I had this idea, at some point around 2020, maybe I should actually turn this into a book. And honestly, for at least a year, I walked around in that land of, who are you? No one cares. What are you gonna do? Write a memoir? Get over yourself. Go do what you're supposed to do. And then in 2021, I started hearing more and more about guys that I knew that other marines I'd served with that were having a hard time, mostly in transition, right? They were having hard time finding jobs, holding down jobs.

0:44:31 - (Isaac Lee): A lot of people were getting divorced, substance abuse problems. All these things were coming out, and I knew exactly what was wrong. Like, this was. There was nothing about it. To me, that was mysterious. It was like, this is the most predictable thing in the world, that we're all having these challenges and struggles as we're navigating at this phase of our life after the experience we had in combat.

0:44:54 - (Isaac Lee): And I slowly convinced myself that if I shared my story in the right way, that maybe just sharing it could potentially be helpful to them and even to other people who have lived similar extreme experiences. And that kind of gave me my why to sit down and do it. So in early 2022, I sat down and created this giant outline and started writing it. But for a year, it was just me and my spare time at night and on the weekends, hammering away on this thing, you know, pages and pages and thinking to myself, I don't know if this is any good or if anyone's gonna publish it. But the exercise of doing it also ended up being very good for me from a closure standpoint, for me personally, to really go back through that experience in a meaningful way.

0:45:43 - (Isaac Lee): At that point, I had just started to feel what I would call normal human emotions again. For a long time, I had shut off all negative emotions completely, like, no grief response. Pretty much fearless. I was never sad, but I was just very even keel. I still had a sense of humor. I could still feel love, give love, but all the negative emotions, I'd shut down. And so that helped me crack some of that back open. Just exercise of writing it as well, which was good.

0:46:14 - (Isaac Lee): And then ultimately, once I got that exercise done, I had to send the whole manuscript to anosite, the Pentagon that reviews these things, to make sure there's nothing that's still classified in there, which is a bit of a process. So I sent it to them and started shopping around for publishers and ultimately landed on one there in early 2023, and then started working with the professional editor, and the publishing process was underway. So it's really neat to now be at the point where it's a real book and it'coming out and people are starting to read it, which has been an awesome experience.

0:46:47 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah.

0:46:48 - (Toby Brooks): A couple of things come to mind as you're talking. First of all, I can somewhat relate, when my daughter graduated high school, I wanted to put together a video, a memoir of her experience. And I know on a very small scale, and please forgive me, I'm not equating this to what you've done, but it was hard, it was traumatic to, like, sort back through 20 years of my existence. And I have to imagine that if I'm that torn up on this small little sliver of life, this is you fully unpacking and sorting through two decades of a military career that involved lots of highs and lots of lows.

0:47:27 - (Isaac Lee): Yeah.

0:47:29 - (Toby Brooks): What was the process like for you in terms of your mental health?

0:47:33 - (Isaac Lee): It was very helpful, but it was also very difficult at times. I will tell you, I had a lot of coup of emotional moments alone in my office while I was working on it. And even as I was going back through and doing revision after revision, there are a few parts of it that will probably always be very difficult for me to read without feeling a lot of emotion. But I will say I welcomed that because it was nice that I could feel that emotion, because for so long, I couldn't feel it at all. I was just completely compartmentalized so expertly that all of that was shut down. So in a roundabout way, even though it said her a little bit, it was nice to be able to feel that.

0:48:19 - (Isaac Lee): And I acknowledged that to myself, so I didn't shy away from it. It was just like I would literally tell myself, head, let yourself feel it. It's okay. For sure. It's good. Yeah.

0:48:29 - (Toby Brooks): And the learning scientist in me is always reminded of the fact that reflection is the critical closure of the learning cycle loop. And if we don't ever take the time to reflect on what we've been presented with. We can't really fully integrate it into what we already know. And so I have to believe that you were actually cultivated not to ruminate on the past, because that would undermine the present and the future. So there's that. The other part that came to mind for me is the genesis of this show. I can certainly relate. Like, this has benefited me, whether anyone ever watches it or not. And writing a book can be a very similar experience where even if no one buys this thing, I hope they do. I hope I sell a million. But if I only sell one or I give away the only copy, I'm better for this process.

0:49:18 - (Toby Brooks): So did you feel like the authorship side of things even before you got to the editor was a valuable step for you?

0:49:26 - (Isaac Lee): It was very valuable for me. It helped me a lot, and it helped me, say, finish answering a lot of questions for myself that I'd been asking for a long time, where there's a lot of I think I understand this. I think I know what's going on. I think I know why I feel this way. But it really helped close that, and I won't ever have complete closure, I don't think, ever. But incremental progress in that direction is extremely helpful. And I got a lot of that out of just writing it, for sure.

0:49:58 - (Isaac Lee): Yeah.

0:49:59 - (Toby Brooks): I will say also the techie and me, I geek out at some of the technical, the jargon. It feels like I'm sitting right in the cockpit as you're going through the checklist. And then also, and you even mentioned it in the intro, like, you could have whitewashed this thing and made it a palatable, pg rated marines talking on a cartoon stage. You didn't do that. You made a conscious decision to tell it the way it is.

0:50:23 - (Isaac Lee): I did. And I will tell you, I know I accepted some risk in doing that in a couple of different ways, but I felt like if I was going to tell this story, I wanted it to be as honest as possible. And because I had the journal as a base document, it allowed me to present throughout the story the perspective that I had at the time, even if I now know that perspective is flawed. So I did not exercise one bit of revisionist history to make myself or anyone else sound better. There are times, there are things in that book that I did or said or even I'm reading it now, I'm like, you're an idiot.

0:50:59 - (Isaac Lee): But it was important to be honest throughout because I felt, I'm talking about some things, especially towards the tail end of the book that really require trust to be built with the reader. And the only way to do that was for the whole thing to be as brutally honest as possible about all aspects of the experience, to include some very personal ones.

0:51:18 - (Toby Brooks): I appreciate that. I'm looking forward to the screenplay in the movie eventually, because like I said, as a dy in the wool Gen xer, Top Gun is probably in my top five. And this has been that vein, but less Hollywood. This is like the real peak under the hood of what that life was like.

0:51:36 - (Isaac Lee): It's a little bit raw for sure, but I hope that it's well received and I have gotten good feedback from some folks who've read it, which has been nice. But honestly, the most rewarding thing that's happened so far, and if nothing else ever comes of it, will have made it worth it, is a couple of my peers have read it and in one case, one of them came back to me and said, hey, thank you for doing this. He I don't know how to tell my wife what's happening in my brain, but now I don't have to. I can just handle this and say, here he explained it, and a couple other guys that have come to me and said, hey, thank you.

0:52:08 - (Isaac Lee): I think I'm gonna go look at some counseling similar to you, dad, as I'm finishing up here. And to me, that's great. If it's in some way a tiny bit of a nudge that helps other people, then it will be totally worth it. And I say that knowing I will get some criticism from a couple different corners. And of course, but I'm okay with that.

0:52:27 - (Toby Brooks): Sure, it's been a storied career and certainly great things in the present and for the future. If you could go back in time and speak a word of encouragement into young Isaac laboring out in the dusty fall fields of West Texas, what would you tell him and why?

0:52:43 - (Isaac Lee): I think probably just remind myself to do what I'd been taught and thankfully, I was always a very receptive student at a young age. It'just stay the course and believe in yourself and show up every day. I tell my kids this all the time, beyond time, have a good attitude and try, and that's something I've consistently done throughout my life. If anything, that's the thing that's helped me to do well at whatever I've done is just really remind myself of that.

0:53:11 - (Toby Brooks): Write that one down too, kids. In episode 81 with Patrick Holcomb, you got the sage wisdom of his quote. You're either green and growing or ripe and rotting. There's no middle ground and no in between. In this episode, you get Isaac's wisdom, which, if I had to guess, came either from his dad or his high school baseball coach. That coach who happened to be the winningest coach in Texas high school baseball history, Bobby Mal, or maybe both.

0:53:37 - (Toby Brooks): Be on time, have a good attitude, and try three things completely in our control. Combining these two bits of wisdom, we get Sage advice from two highly accomplished high achievers to be coachable and teachable, and to control our controllables. And I promise, if it helped power Patrick and Isaac to success, it sure as heck can do the same for the rest of us.

0:54:02 - (Isaac Lee): It's been a good ride, and I've definitely come very close to derailing myself in one way or another on multiple occasions. But always so far, Kncolm Wood managed to barely scoop it out the nick a to and just learn the lesson and keep going forward.

0:54:18 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, that's great advice.

0:54:20 - (Toby Brooks): Getting close here. Question I ask of every guest, if we're watching a montage of your life, what songs playing in the background of why?

0:54:28 - (Isaac Lee): That is a really good question. I will tell you. In my case, I would have to go with master of puppets by Metallica, and that's gonna sound weird, but I'll explain. So, one, Metallica has always been my favorite, so it's got toa be something they did. Two, that song's actually about addiction. But when I think of it in terms of myself, I don't think about it in terms of your standard. Call it substance addiction. I would say my greatest strength and.

0:54:54 - (Isaac Lee): And simultaneously, my tragic flaw is that I have. I think of it as an addiction. It's like a never ending contest with myself that is ongoing to really push myself hard. And there's goodness in that, and it's a detriment at times and in ways, too. But I also have come to accept that's just me, and I need to thread that needle smartly all the time and be aware of it. But every time I listen to that song, I think about that introspective aspect of myself.

0:55:27 - (Isaac Lee): I've always been that kid or that guy who's, like, right there on the line, know where the line is, and generally writing right on top of it.

0:55:36 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, that's a great answer. I backed into that one. The black album was the one that got me star on Metallica. And then you work your way. Okay, let me see what else they've produced. You're my second helicopter pilot, and thankfully, you didn't say fortunate son. We're bucking stereotypes here, righte? Yeah, for sure we are.

0:55:54 - (Isaac Lee): That's awesome.

0:55:55 - (Toby Brooks): Isaac, I appreciate your time. What for? Isaac Lee is left undone?

0:56:00 - (Isaac Lee): That's a great question. I will tell you, if I'm being really honest, I feel like I still have a lot of work to do, not just on myself or myself, but for our fellow, my fellow veterans in our community. And I feel like I'm very aware of the fact that anything could go south for me pretty quickly. I have every reason, if you will, for that to happen. So I have to maintain that awareness and just constantly work on myself and keep moving forward to make sure that doesn't and hopefully at the same time be the best version myself I can be to help as many others around me to do the same thing. And I feel like that's work that I will never finish and will never totally be done with, but certainly something I will be attempting to do for however long I'm on this planet.

0:56:47 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, that's fantastic. That's selfless and noble and I appreciate your service.

0:56:53 - (Isaac Lee): Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate the time. I'm Isaac Lee and I am undone.

0:56:59 - (Toby Brooks): I'm thankful to Isaac for dropping in and I hope you enjoyed our conversation. For more info on today's episode, be sure to check it out on the web. Simply go to undonepodcast.com epa two to see the notes, links and images related to today's guests. Isaac Lee I know there are great stories out there to be told and Im always on the lookout. So if you or someone you know has a story that we can all be inspired by, tell me about it.

0:57:24 - (Toby Brooks): Surf on over to undonepodcast.com comma. Click the contact tab in the top menu and drop me a note.

0:57:30 - (Toby Brooks): Coming up, ive got some incredible new.

0:57:31 - (Toby Brooks): Guests including the powerful story of entrepreneur.

0:57:34 - (Toby Brooks): And just like todays guest Isaac Lee.

0:57:36 - (Toby Brooks): Monterey High School alum Jeff Horn, ill follow that up with my first ever in person interview for the show with my conversation with former Texas tech chancellor Kent Hans, followed by the Never Quit and never surrender story of professor, physical therapist and podcaster F. Scott Field. So stay tuned. This and more coming up on becoming undone becoming undone is a nitro he creative production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks.

0:58:08 - (Toby Brooks): For now, Im a one person show relying on AI tools from descript, decipher and opus clip to create, produce and deliver the best show I know how to. You, my cherished friends and listeners. Follow the show on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn at becoming undonepd and follow me at tobyjbroks on x Instagram and TikTok. Check out my link tree at Linktr ee tobyjbroks. Listen, subscribe and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart radio or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:58:39 - (Toby Brooks): Till next time, everybody. Keep getting better.