Can you tell me about your early life and what led you to join the military?
Photo Credit: One More Wave
I grew up in Beacon, New York. I was essentially going to begin by joining the Green Berets; I wanted to go Army, Special Forces. And one day, my Dad came home with a book about Navy Seals. So I start doing some reading and I stay up late that night, well into the morning, reading that book. Long story short, I was like “This is what I’m going to do.” So I did it. I went out, and after high school and all that jazz, I joined and went through the training and the rest is history- I’m almost at twenty-years now.
At a young age, that’s what I wanted to do, and I realized right around seventeen or eighteen that I wanted to go out and conduct the type of operations that special forces were doing, and I knew I could do it; it was just a matter of me proving it to the military that I could do that, so they could approve me to go out and conduct those types of missions. So once I was able to do that, I found out that the types of missions that I thought I was going to be doing, which were all water based because I was a water guy, weren’t so much, and the rest of my career I pretty much spent in the sandbox.
You mentioned you had a confidence in yourself that you could carry out those missions. What in particular gave you that confidence?
I was born with it. Since day one, I’ve definitely had a lot of ignorant confidence over a lot of aspects of my life. Not all- but I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was ten, so especially when I’m in the entrepreneur space or non-profit world. My wife and I own a small business and I’m actually working on a third startup as well, a mobile application, that I’m seeking funding from, from venture capitalists. When it comes to startups or businesses, I’ve always been extremely confident. When it comes to military, or special operations, I’ve always been extremely confident. But there’s certain areas in my life, just like everyone else where I’m not. So it depends on the area of my life.
Photo Credit: https://news.starbucks.com/news/upstanders-the-wave-to-recovery
What is it like running a non-profit and being active duty in the military at the same time?
It’s challenging. Just like any business, especially in the non-profit world, time is king and you only have so much time to offer; especially being a family man- I’ve got two daughters and a boy on the way. The demand signal for my time is through the roof, so time management is the most critical aspect of doing those things, and being productive with my time. Me, running the non-profit, is all about time, because on a daily basis, or at this time of year an almost hourly basis, I will have someone reaching out to me, and wanting some of my time; which is awesome for the non-profit, but until we get to that point of sustainability where we can afford to bring more people on, it’s been quite demanding. And it’s the same for every start-up. We are truly a startup non-profit; we’ve only been around for three years, so we’re still expanding and scaling.
So the time expenditure is through the roof right now. That’s the biggest thing, is trying to make sure that you’re giving both our customers or clients, which are veterans, the best possible experience and interaction with our non-profit, the best possible gear, the best possible equipment known to man, while simultaneously giving back good experience to all our supporters. So you have to play that fine line between giving all of your donors quality attention, as well as your customer quality service.
Do you think that there is there something that resonates particularly well between veterans and surfing?
I do one-hundred percent. I’ve seen the ocean truly wash away negative emotion by putting people, while they’re surfing, in the zone. Surfing requires total focus, and that sole focus will take your mind off of a lot.
Every time I surf, when I’m actually dropping into the wave, the sole focus that it absolutely requires from you is so great that people will be hooting and hollering for you, and a lot of times it’s not uncommon for a surfer to be like “Dude, I didn’t even hear you guys hooting and hollering for me, because I was so in the zone.”
So while it’s putting you into that zone and creating a clear picture in your mind and removing all other distractions, it’s doing something else: you’re simultaneously getting an adrenaline rush. And then you’re also simultaneously getting tired, and most of the time you’re getting UV. So UV exposure, which you get even when it’s overcast, helps with insomnia and lack of sleep.
There’s numerous studies out there that have found that surfing can reduce the symptoms of PTS, and can help relieve the pain associated with amputations, and just being near the water can remove some psychological distress like anxiety and depression. There’s multiple avenues and layers of how you can look at it, and we’ve witnessed it over time that surfing, in my opinion, and the ocean will not just help with physical therapy, but mental therapy.
Photo Credit: https://news.starbucks.com/news/upstanders-the-wave-to-recovery
Some of the boards you have made, have the letters CKIV at the tail, to honor Charles Keating. Can you tell me about why you did that?
So yes, absolutely, it is to honor Chuck, but the reason why we did that is not just because of Chuck being a friend. We’ve lost multiple friends; If Alex and I were to put the initials on every board of a friend that we’ve lost over the years, we would run out of ink. But the reason why we did Chuck and haven’t done any of our other friends is because when Chuck passed away one of our mutual friends did a t-shirt for him, called the Chuck Heavy t-shirt.
A portion of the proceeds from that shirt was donated to One More Wave in Chuck’s honor by URT URT, which is a Coronado, California based apparel company. So they donated it to us without any type of ask. So we said “Okay, we’re going to do something that we would never do, which is put a name or logo on a board.” We never do that without our veteran asking for it. But with these, we decided to find eight or ten veterans that would not mind, that would approve it, that would want it, that would be honored to have his name on their board, and let’s do that in a way to show the family gratitude and thanks for their generous approval of a donation to our non-profit. So that’s how that all came to be. I’ve known Chuck for years, we did a couple of deployments together at Seal Team Three, but it wasn’t just because he was a fallen brother of ours, there was more to it than that.
What is the biggest goal for the foundation in the next five years?
Photo Credit: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/
Our biggest goal is to expand our chapters. If you go on our website to the donate page, there’s a tab on there, about a quarter of a page down, that will say donate time. If you click on it, there’s a couple of different places where you can donate time. And what we are doing is slowly building up all those locations with volunteers so that we can launch chapters in each one of those locations. So over time what we would like to do is not just have the footprint here in San Diego and Hawaii, but we would like to expand to Virginia Beach, to North Carolina, to New York and Boston. And here’s why: we have riders all over the country, but we don’t have any representatives. For a guy or girl that surfs, say in Boston or New York, they’re out there alone and unafraid, but they don’t necessarily have any local or regional support to reach out to, so we’re trying to expand that.