Entrepreneur Intel

Wes: I am super excited for today's guest. Uh, he is a former Navy SEAL and Marine who created the two minute report. That quickly informs over 30, 000 decision makers across the special operations, paramilitary, and clandestine service community. Uh, he was a program manager for the Department of Defense. He's managed over a billion dollars in programs on different voting systems.

He is the CEO and founder of the S. O. F. X. Network. Welcome, Sam Hevlak.

Sam Havelock: Hey, how are you?

Sure.

Wes: awesome, Sam. I'm so appreciative to be here. I can't wait to unpack. Uh, your intro, it's, it's pretty fascinating to me, but I got to start. I ask every guest the same question. Uh, so your company has about 12 headcount, about 4 million in revenue.

And you've been doing this for about 11 years. What's the most important lesson you've learned thus far in this entrepreneurial journey?

Sam Havelock: Um, I think it's often repeated, or at least I've seen it, and then it took essentially years and years to sink in, but I absolutely believe it's sort of the holy grail of, commandments with regards to entrepreneurialism. And I think that the Holy Grail, uh, it was mentioned by Steve Jobs and, uh, uh, Ivy, so on and so forth, that, that focus is the most important thing.

Like if I had to roll back the clock 11 years back, once I retired out of the U.S special operations community, you know, I had a set of ideas with regards to what I wanted to create as an entrepreneur, um, and to feed my own intellectual curiosity as, as is the case with many entrepreneurs, they love To ideate on all sorts of different things, but sometimes your greatest strengths become your biggest weaknesses.

And, uh, If I were to roll back the clock, I'd say, uh, in order to generate the type of traction and momentum you need to push an early stage venture forward in time and capability, you have to focus like a laser.

Wes: So just to reiterate, you were a Marine and then you became a Navy SEAL. Is that the order?

Sam Havelock: correct. Yeah.

Wes: So for me, like I'm an entrepreneur and I apologize. Cause I'm not, you know, maybe super ignorant when it comes to the military, but I look at Navy SEALs as like super focused. I mean, what, what is the, like, what's a good data point of it?

Like, what does it take to become a Navy SEAL? Or like, what's the percentage or, you know, I hear things about boot camp or like, how hard is that to become a Navy SEAL?

Sam Havelock: I think, um, if we were statistically speaking, if we were to say that, um, on average, if there's maybe 150 entrance per class, per BUDS class, and BUDS stands for basic underwater demolition SEAL training. Typically, there's usually around anywhere from 15 to 20 original class members that graduate with that class.

Now, that doesn't mean you won't have additional graduates in that class, because oftentimes you'll have injury rollbacks. There are other people that started in an earlier class, but graduated with you. So let's say, you know, statistically speaking, uh, about 10 percent of the people who enter BUDS eventually graduate.

Um, that's for a variety of reasons. I think more often than not, it's that people don't get, they get in over their head because they don't, um, they probably underestimated, you know, The grit and determination and stick to itiveness it would take, which is no different than entrepreneurialism, right?

Wes: Yeah. I was going to say, I want to save it for later, but like, what's harder. You know, I mean, there's probably some days where you're like, I mean, cause I give you, I, I've, I've only here, right? Like I think until as an entrepreneur, like you have to experience things yourself to go through it, but I can only like hypothesize about a Navy SEAL.

Like you hear things, but until you go through it, so like early, early on, like, was that your like natural path where you're like, I'm just going to go in the military. Is that what you wanted to do from an early, early age? Or

Sam Havelock: I was the type of kid who was constantly reading Soldier of Fortune magazine, getting dressed up in camis that were way too big for me, running around in the woods, you know, playing war and stuff with, so I always knew I wanted to be in the profession of arms. And so it basically, the college that I went to was the Citadel.

It was a military college in South Carolina. I was always drawn to that concept of being a soldier. Um, and so I would graduate from the Citadel, go into the Marine Corps. And, um, that was extremely valuable set of learnings. I think anything that I did in Naval Special Warfare in my SEAL team career was because of.

The training I got in the Marine Corps and at the Citadel, having to deal with hard things, I don't think I probably, I probably couldn't have made it through BUDS. Had I not been an experienced Marine, having been through Citadel, I was both an enlisted and an officer Marine. So I'd been through boot camp at Parris Island and then, uh, OCS, you know, in the Marine Corps.

So, and then Knobbier at the Citadel. So by the time I hit Bud's, I was already, had been through, Sort of, let's call them three or four trials by fire ahead of that. So it wasn't too different for me. I knew what to expect when I showed up at Bud's, even though I was an old guy, but I was 28 when I first showed up at Bud's, which is not typical.

Wes: meaning you're on the younger side or older side,

Sam Havelock: Older. Yeah. A tip more typically it's, uh, you'll, you'll find people about 19 to about 24 is the 25, 26 is the sweet spot of, of Bud's. of where people typically, uh, show up at BUDS.

Wes: So going through that, like, what is that experience like, you know, to go through, you know, you're a Marine, and then you go through to become a Navy SEAL, which,

Sam Havelock: Sure.

Wes: you mentioned, 10 percent of that group makes it to that level. Is that sort of where That stops, or is there more advancement from there?

Or you talk a little bit about that transition into that.

Sam Havelock: Sure. Um, well, I had an extreme set of incentives to make it through BUDS because essentially the reason I wound up in the Navy at all is because I'd gotten kicked out of flight school in the Marine Corps. And so they had, they had assigned me into an occupational field that was for the most part, uh, All administration, straight of things and like personnel records and things I had absolutely no intention of doing for 20 years. So I pestered the department, the Navy for two years solid to give me a shot at going to Bud's, uh, to the extent where I was essentially resigning my commission as a Marine officer or captain at that point in order to enlist in the Navy to go to Bud's, well, the Bureau of Naval Personnel was like, well, we're not too comfortable with a captain of Marines.

Going in as an E1 in the Navy. And in fact, there's a restriction against that. So basically we'll make this exception and we'll let you go in as a Lieutenant. But if you don't make it, like one of two things is going to happen. You're either going to get kicked out of the Navy or you're going to go to service warfare officer school to learn how to drive ships and do that kind of stuff.

So like for me, it was basically burn the ships. I've got to get through this. Cause I didn't want to, I certainly didn't want to conclude a naval career on a low note. And I certainly, and I really didn't, not to take anything away from the great work that the service warfare officer community does, but I just didn't have a knack for driving boats, ships.

Wes: So, you know, part of your intro, you know, talking about, you know, you managed over a billion dollars in programs, like how, how, how large is the U S government defense and all this? I mean, is a billion dollars, like, is that a little, is

Sam Havelock: Yeah, it's a rounding error in the big scheme of things. They spend billions upon billions of dollars each year, uh, in procurement, research, development, testing, and evaluation, in operational funding, uh, all kinds of different things. Um, when we talk about a billion dollars worth of assets, what we're really talking about is expensive combat systems.

So in the big scheme of things, I was a program manager managing a billion dollars worth of assets at US Special Operations Command, but these were expensive boats that carried SEALs around the world doing the things that Naval Special Warfare, uh, typically does, everything from high speed assault craft to riverine boats, to then they had, uh, patrol coastal boats and Mark Vs and 11 meter ribs, all fancy terms for the inventory.

of boats that are assigned to Naval Special Warfare. So the reason I wound up managing boats, uh, was just because I had, uh, a background in the community. I was the executive officer of a boat team in years prior, so I had at least enough functional understanding to, uh, to not get in the way of my very experienced assistant program managers that did all the work, right?

I would take the blame for stuff, but they were the, they were the resident subject matter experts on it. All things having to do with the boats.

Wes: Do you find, is there a traditional path for Marines or, you know, ex Navy SEALs? I mean, is it,

you know, is that, is entrepreneurship like a typical route or is that, again, another 10 percent of the, you know, guys who retire out of, out of service?

Sam Havelock: Right. Um, So

I happen to have a theory of special operations. The majority of people in special operations, whether it's SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force, what have you, from a personality standpoint are natural born entrepreneurs in that they seek risk, not for seeking risks sake, but because they, they like to be in control of decisions.

They like just to make direct impacts. They thrive under conditions of stress, pressure, and ambiguity. They are, they seek alternatives and the ability to use their creativity and imagination on a day to day basis. I don't think that the special operations community personally, that your average soldier, sailor, airman, or marine in U.

S. special operations or any other special operations force has a lock on bravery, athleticism, physical prowess, all the things that most people think of when they think of special operators. And the reason I say that is because all of those characteristics are extremely resident in the infantry units, in a variety of other warfare specialties across all the militaries, all the military, uh, branches.

So it's not that, it's not superior Service, like a deeper desire to serve, all service men and women serve, right? It's just different types of service that are provided. So when you look, when you start to boil away, well, if it's not strength, athleticism, so on and so forth, what is it? What is that thing that sits at the heart of every special operator?

And I think it's that, um, desire to serve in a context. that gives you a lot more creative degrees of freedom. And that's that if that thesis works, it starts to explain a whole lot about why soft guys drive the rest of the conventional military nuts when they show up at a base with their long hair and their strange uniforms.

And it's almost as if they're trying to act differently. They are different. They would not do well in the conventional military. That's not always the case, but more often than not, the people that found themselves in the special operations community would have had a harder time conforming to the constraints of, and rigidity of, uh, more typical conventional forces.

Wes: it's kind of cool. So you're 28, which is kind of late to become a SEAL. And then you kind of parlay into, into becoming an entrepreneur. So introducing you and in your company, it's a two minute report that informs 30, 000 individuals, um, across special ops, paramilitary, clandestine service community, what transpired from leaving the, and I'm saying leaving the military, assuming you left, to becoming an entrepreneur, like what's that timeframe look like?

Sam Havelock: Sure. Um, well, I would basically, so I retired out of, uh, out of the, out of the Navy in September of 2012. Um, and my intention was to become an entrepreneur. Um, but basically the impetus behind what is now called the SOFX report, which is basically a daily newsletter that goes out to over 30, 000 people, um, was to really inform the community about open source reporting that was on the internet or nowadays in social channels that was talking about the community.

Because oftentimes I believed that we were so heads down focused on our mission that we oftentimes. Didn't take the time to even understand what the world was saying about us on the outside, right? We don't, didn't have the time to be on Quora, what nowadays, on Quora, on Reddit. We didn't have the time to be scouring the world's different news sources for articles and opinion pieces on special operations.

So what the SOFX report does, Essentially, as we've got a team, we scour all the globe's news feeds and social media sources, so on and so forth, and we find the most impactful, uh, Pieces of content that are out there. We analyze them, depoliticize, depoliticize them, summarize them, and then publish 'em to the community so that our community understands what is being said about them out in the real world.

We never do reporting on the community. We don't. That's like in that violates so many different sensibilities about the choir professional, right. We, you'll never catch us doing an interview, like a behind the scenes team room interview of what certain NCOs might think about a certain command decision.

That's not what we do at all. We just take a look at the world, what has happened over the past 24 hours in the world. Of special operations, private military contracting or paramilitary operations and clandestine service slash the, uh, the intelligence community that has basically appeared in open source reporting and then we package that and deliver it back to the community.

Wes: So, so you retire in

Sam Havelock: 12. Yeah,

Wes: 2012 and you're like, I want to be an entrepreneur. Did you discover, did you come out and you're like, I want to be an entrepreneur? And then, then like there was this void and you're like, I'm going to pursue this. Or did you know that that void existed? And they're like, I, I can maybe become an entrepreneur and build this and monetize this because I'm, I'm thinking that you probably, I would reflect and say, man, if while I was serving, if I would have had this information, this would have been really helpful.

You discover that it took action. So I'm just, I'm curious around which one. Came first, like what was stronger?

Sam Havelock: Um, I always had a, uh, I always wanted to be an my plan. The, oh, the plan was always to be an entrepreneur. Once I got out of the military, there was no ifs, ands, or buts. I did not contemplate. A chance to go work for Lockheed or General Dynamics is, you know, looking back, it probably would have been easier and in some ways more rewarding given the amount of money and stuff I've spent on building different, different things.

But, You know, I've been a venture developer because I enjoyed building early stage things. So SOFX is one, SOFX Media is one thing. We've built Blast Talent, which is a recruiting agency. I've been involved in a number of other, uh, early stage ventures. Uh, sometimes technology related, sometimes, uh, not so much, but to answer your question, uh, the reason I retired was actually because of my mom at that stage of the game, uh, was suffering from cancer.

And, uh, She really wasn't getting, uh, she needed an advocate and I couldn't do that from where I was in Tampa. So I basically had to, uh, retire a bit earlier than I had planned. I was probably planning to be a captain or an 06 for another couple of years. Uh, at least, um, to make it to about the 25 year mark.

It just, that situation, that life situation, uh, curtailed that. So I, you know, had to leave, take care of her and then cross her sort of two remaining years. And then, um, then went into the SOFX report being one venture I started. And then there was, there were other ones that I would, I've been involved in over the past 10 years, if that makes sense,

Wes: Yeah, no, for sure. It is F as S O F X. Is that your main? Is that like your, your main baby or

Sam Havelock: correct. Yeah. It's, um, If you were to look at sort of what I've been as a venture developer, what have, what have I, what have I been doing? I've basically been running almost a split, uh, a split office where half the time or with one half of my attention, we are helping, we're doing what's called corporate venture development, assisting corporations to expand market share within the Department of Defense and more specifically the special operations community.

And building alignment within their teams to ensure they can execute against their promises by virtue of installing business operating systems. That's one half of the work I do. It isn't just me. There's, there's a team. The other half of the work we do is building and scaling early stage things. Under our own head of steam, SFX Media being one, Blast Talent being another.

Um, Xeriscope was a, is a telemedicine company that we co founded. Uh, we've been involved with, uh, to help Gator's Eyewear expand. Uh, that's a much loved brand in the special operations community. Um, fantastic eyewear, still American made. And so. Had a role there, stuff like that. That makes sense.

Wes: yeah. So like, how does your training and background apply? Like you could, you know, kind of joking a little earlier about like being an entrepreneur and a Navy SEAL and like how much of that is real, right? I mean, I think as an entrepreneur, you kind of face things that it's uncertain. It's kind of scary.

I think there's half people like, you know, want to go the traditional route, get a nine to five. You know, I don't want to say it's the easy path cause that's not easy, but you know, becoming an entrepreneur, I kind of relate to like, Hey, I, I remember somebody asked me one time, like, what is it like? And I'm like, man, I just, I feel like I'm in the jungle with a machete at times.

And like, I'm just dropped off in the middle of nowhere and you just got to figure it out. Sometimes you got to survive. Sometimes you have an overabundance of food. Sometimes you don't, you just have to like thrive and survive. But. Like you, you have that experience as a SEAL, and then you now have the experience of building a really successful, multiple organizations.

Like describe that, like that, that's a

Sam Havelock: Yeah. I mean, when you look at what it takes to build and scale early stage things, it typically centers around. Aligning the efforts of human beings around a common goal in a condition of uncertainty and ambiguity, which is not fundamentally different than what the United States does with its special operations forces capabilities.

So what do I mean by that? You know, the government writ large doesn't need tons and tons and tons of SOF, Special Operations Forces. It needs a handful of them that can be thrown into extremely ambiguous, high risk situations with very little guidance and be told, go figure it out. This is the commander's intent.

The objective is this and what the constant that's going to happen, that you're going to encounter is extreme difficulty, pressure, a thousand different decisions you're going to have to make all at once and everywhere. When you look at the business of entrepreneurial endeavors and the building scaling of early stage things, it's always the condition of being under resourced, it's always the condition of there's more tasks to do than we have time or people to do them.

It's always really a question about editing. What are we not going to focus on? And when you look at it from the standpoint that these are both fundamentally human leadership problems, because in the big scheme of things, all a corporation is, is a, or an organization or a high performing organization is a collection of people that are aligned against certain objectives.

And when, and the bedrock foundational belief within the special operations communities, that humans are more important than hearts, like always and everywhere, we may have the best Blackhawks in the world with the most esoteric and advanced terrain avoidance radar, so on and so forth. None of that means anything without the best pilots in the world, the best soldiers coming out of that helicopter, right?

It's, it's really all about people. When you look at early stage ventures. You're asking people to suspend reality, onboard immense amounts of risk, make tables levitate, and, and, and fend off despair because you're on the roller coaster with me. And so we're going to be going through this together. But ultimately, some people are cut out for that life and others, others are not.

But there's a very close similarity, I think, between the two special operations community and the entrepreneurial world, if that makes sense.

Wes: Yeah, no, yeah, it absolutely does. It, it makes a lot, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, so thinking about like, from the time you entered service till now, the world we live in, like you think about drones, AI, like I think about the time I became an entrepreneur and if I had to put a stake in the ground, say like 2009, like.

The world is very different. Like I'm different. I have kids. I mean, you've got mobile devices that pretty much, you know, chat GPT, all these different things. Like, do you see some parallels there with like the U S military there? Cause even the comment around like, Hey, there's Raptors, Blackhawks, you know, 35 million, billion things, but human capital is so important.

But how are you thinking about AI technology and all these things as, as, as you kind of keep your pursuit as an entrepreneur?

Sam Havelock: Right. Um, I think that you've got to be extremely focused on. You know, post advent of artificial intelligence tools at scale, um, my sensibility is my sense of things is that things are moving so fast that it's for the most part, impossible for most people to keep up, to include the people that are actually building artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, it wouldn't be.

You know, I read a certain article. I forget which one it was, but it would, it was a pretty well respected article that said, Hey, even some of the data scientists that are building these things cannot explain how these tools are working because it's, it's gotten that complex. So on the one hand, I think we are leaning well over our skis in terms of building tools that we don't, that we, we Don't necessarily have the firmest control over. I think it's going to have profound implications for industry in general. I believe that a world where most humans don't have to do anything in order because the jobs are gone, is a really dangerous, bad world because I've lived in those worlds, right? And when you have people who are, who are, when you've got sort of extremes of wealth, and then you also have, time that's unproductive on people's hands. They don't feel like they're contributing towards society, building themselves. They don't feel like they're learning. They feel stuck. That's not, that's not like a good outcome. The people in, in Silicon Valley may believe that, Hey, the answer to all this is universal basic income and a tax on AGI and ML.

That feeds that, right? That's, that's not a future worth having. Right. And so we've got, we've got profound shifts in the economy and an industry that is going to render things obsolete or inconsequential at a speed and pace that we've never encountered. And we are unprepared to deal with it. So I'm not trying to like say the sky is falling, but I worry for my kids and for the future of an America worth having, and a world worth having, where computer systems are, are, Removing the requirement for humans to be productive at all.

Wes: so ironically, my podcast is called Entrepreneur Intel. Right.

Sam Havelock: Yeah.

Wes: uh, but I, I look at your, your SOFX, like you've created a solution for a very specific community. So I think as an entrepreneur, you're, you're, you're using your experience. You're targeting a very niche, you know, market and, and you're delivering this value.

What do you think as an entrepreneur? Use me, for example, or just a basic entrepreneur. There's so much information out there now on the web, right? So, you know, I hate to sound, but like, there's the Fox news, there's CNN, there's all these things on TV and there's all these TikTok videos. Like, how do you, how do you sift through the noise?

Because on one hand as an entrepreneur, I'm trying to stay current, but half the time, like I told my wife, this is years ago in the heat of the campaign, like 2016 ish, she's getting all frazzled and I'm like, just stop watching. Like. You can't change any outcome. And like, do you really care? And she stopped watching and she felt better and she's not all stressed out.

But then I'm like, but at some capacity, like I want to stay informed about what's going on and I want to believe. Right. But who, who do you believe? I mean, so kind of shifting from the military world to the entrepreneur world. What does a guy like you, Sam, with all this, like, how do you navigate all this data and information and media?

Sam Havelock: Um, so one of the reasons I created the SOFX network and the newsletter product is because I believe then as I do now that the economic infrastructure regarding media companies, as we understand them today, both the large social media platforms based out of Silicon Valley and then contemporary news media.

Based out of New York and a million other places, um, that the entire economic model, uh, really informed sort of perverse outcomes because the entire economic model is built on forcing people into extremes, extreme points of view. Uh, making people dumber at scale over time, keeping people on platform for as long as possible by virtue of.

engaging some of the best, smartest engineers in the world to design electronic means of keeping people absolutely addicted to these different platforms. And not even anecdotally, objectively, there is scientific evidence that the incidence of teen suicide rates skyrocketed after the instantiation of, of several of the most popular and famous, uh, Large scale social media platforms.

So my belief back in 2013, 14. was that the world was hurtling toward a future not worth having by virtue of deeply distrusted media. My response to that was to create SFX Network so that I could carve out a high trust environment for people I cared about, right? That was when I remember what a couple of minutes ago I used the words apolitical, essentially de shitifying the news.

You've probably heard the term in shitification, which is what Basically the large search engines have become at this point. Good luck going to try to find a, uh, an unbiased search return, right? That, that doesn't happen. So my point was that my belief about the future is that human beings will do what they have always done when they're threatened, which is essentially to join tribes of people that they can trust.

So I believe that the future, the way that humans will protect themselves Going forward as AI consumes more of everything in its path will be a, basically people coming back to hyper artisanal networks that are mini micro networks populated by people they trust or with one or two degrees of separation. Mainly digital networks that have an underpinning of a human network that is backed by years and years of experiential work. relationship. I think that those hyper artisanal mini networks will be the, will be the breakaway enclaves for where humans derive economic benefit by virtue of their professional association.

So I think that the You know, the LinkedIn worked for a while. And I think we're going to go to thousands of mini LinkedIn's that, you know, the bet I'm making is the, that are sort of professionally denominated because people can make money there. Okay. The LinkedIn, you know, what is SOFX network? It's really about a collection of 30, 000 of my friends and people I can verify.

Wes: Got it.

Sam Havelock: That's, that's what it is because I believe then, as I do now, that, that, that the electronic platforms we're going to contort. People's sensibilities about what it meant, uh, to interact on the internet. I just could see it coming, right? I just felt it. So what, you know, what does the future mean for SOFX?

Eventually we'll probably launch a private email server that is just for our community that is not, you know, being raped for, for artificial intelligence data that you can only be on if you are a human that we vetted, that we know. No robots, no other things. Um, because. A lot of it starts with people's basic email service.

All that free email isn't free.

Wes: Right.

Sam Havelock: at the expense of your privacy, right? Now you're going to spend 10 bucks a day to go get a Starbucks, but you're not going to spend 10 bucks a month to have your privacy intact. That doesn't make any sense. I'll stop there.

Wes: No, it's good. I almost think about it like, like I'm 42, right? So like, cell phones really didn't come out till after I was 18, 19. Like, I couldn't imagine having the iPhone I have today in middle school, high school. I have teens down to like, elementary, like, I'm, I'm scared. Like, the information that they're digesting quickly through TikTok and these other platforms and you can't stop it.

I mean, all he could do is guide and have conversations. I mean, the kids are going to grab it. I don't care what you do. If parents are like, oh, that's why you don't give your kid a phone, whatever that is, they're, they're gonna find access to it. So you have to have those conversations. And I'm kinda, you know, as an entrepreneur, like I joined an organization called EO, which stands for the entrepreneur organization, which is made up of entrepreneur founders.

So I, I really like what you said, because for me, that was a catalyst where like, I'll never forget walking to the first EO event. There was like a hundred. Entrepreneurs. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, like these are people that have gone through things. It's kind of like your special operations people that I would imagine you go see these guys or go have a beer.

And it's like, you have this immediate bond. That's my bond in the entrepreneurial world. Cause we're all, you know, we all have our. Our lacerations from being an entrepreneur and share war stories and stuff like that. But I'm, yeah, I'm always really curious and interested, like how people digest the data and, you know, the future's scary.

I, I, but again, I rewinding back to the 1950s, like every, every decade they're probably like, oh, this big change is coming. It's like, how do you adapt?

Sam Havelock: This, my sense of it is, you know,

I think that it doesn't, you don't, wouldn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out at all, but this time it's serious, right? When they launched the internet in 94 about people could sense that that was a profound step change in, in, in let's call it sort of the technology landscape. Um, artificial general intelligence without question is a step change in, in technological advancement.

Right. It's, it's absolutely going to upend industries. It's going to do so at, at a scale and pace that is breathtaking. Um, if you look at the pace of layoffs in the technology sector, they could see this coming probably a year before the rest of us did, like if you, if you actually look at when. The large social media platforms started doing massive sort of layoffs under the, um, rubric of, Hey, we have to right size, return shareholder value, so on and so forth, they can get on a talk track all they want and say that it was really about, you know, trimming the fat and so on and so forth, what it was really about is they had a keen insight as to what artificial intelligence was going to do for human productivity and frankly, a requirement for much less people to run.

Uh, the companies that they were running.

Wes: do you find that's gonna help or hurt men and women enlisting in the military? They're marines, I mean. Is that still what it was like when you, when you entered, relative to where it's at today? Like, does that change anything there?

Sam Havelock: Um, I think that the, let's call them the special operators of the future. And we're already starting to see this are going to have, uh, a much deeper composition of extreme technology talent. Like I think gone are the days where you will always need people to get off of a helicopter at three o'clock at night.

And deal with other people somewhere around the world. And so there will always be that, but if you really understand the nature of how warfare is changing by virtue of just even observing what's happening in the Ukraine, for instance, where people can deploy off the shelf technology in a very agile way, and they can weaponize things in their garage and use it to great effect on the battlefield to essentially turn, uh, or at least slow the advancement of a, of a first world, extremely advanced military, which is Russia.

Um, it's breathtaking. So warfare's changing as we, as we see it, there's going to be a much higher technology content in everything we do. It's going to increase precision. Um, by a lot, it's also going to increase the cost of warfare by a lot. Cause all of this stuff depends on semiconductors, compute power, on and on it goes.

And so it's less, it's probably a less people centric military. And it's much more, uh, technology oriented, but the people that are coming in to that are going to have to be much more technologically savvy to operate those systems, so on and so forth.

Wes: Yeah. I mean, I think as a, as a civilian, I, a buddy of mine just bought that vision pro from Apple, you know, like the new, the new headset. I didn't really think anything of it. I was at his house. He's like, Hey, put this on. I mean, and I know, like, I don't know the depth of the government, but I'm sure they've had that technology for years and that's probably like, you know, but this technology as a civilian is mind blowing on what you can do.

I

Sam Havelock: Yeah.

Wes: as an entrepreneur, you think about it, like, you know, When was the iPhone released? 2006. And what you, you can literally put these vision, this vision goggle on and like deploy your work environment and have like custom displays all over the place. I mean, it is completely wild, um, on what you can do.

It's, it's interesting to see how. You know, I have this vision of the military being like a hybrid of AI and human, almost like superhuman intelligence, you know, Elon Musk with Neuralink, and again, that's what I see as a civilian, there's gotta be stuff behind door number two,

Sam Havelock: there is.

There

Wes: we're not even aware of, and what I'm talking about is probably 5 7 year old technology, but You know, I'm just curious around, like, what's, what's the hardest challenge you've, you've been through as a, as, as an entrepreneur.

And can you relate that to anything that you went through to become a Navy SEAL? I'm just curious.

Sam Havelock: in the big scheme of things, there isn't anything that I've done in the entrepreneurial space that I've done. that comes close to the halfway toughest days of the, much less the toughest days of being a SEAL because it's just different, right? the pressure is different.

And the reason the pressure is different is because when you're making decisions in the special operations community, more often than not, they're, they are, well, I can't say more often than not, but what I can say is on many occasions, the decisions you are making. impact whether people are going to live and die.

And those are extremely difficult decisions to make, and you will live with them for the rest of your life, right? Entrepreneurialism at the end of the day, if you run a company into the ground, run out of money, have to do the unfortunate things of, of, Telling your team, Hey, we, we can't go forward or whatever the case may be.

The worst outcomes in entrepreneurialism, um, just don't hold a candle to the, to a bad day in the SEAL teams, right? Or, or a day where you've got to make, you'll make decisions in the SEAL teams or in special operations or in the military that you're going to have to live with for the rest of your life.

And yes, there's some parallels to entrepreneurialism, but at the end of the day, people are still going to be. They're going to move on with their lives, right? They'll find another job. They'll find another opportunity. Yes, money was lost, time was lost, so on and so forth, but it's just, it's not the same.

It's just not the

Wes: no, that's a, that's amazing perspective. And what I hear is. There's no reason not to go for his entrepreneur. Cause

your worst, your worst day barely scratches the surface on what's really going out there in the world. I mean, that actually gives me a lot of confidence and hopefully gives people confidence to go out there and take risks because

Sam Havelock: well, I will say that there is a reflection that I would share, which I think is, is powerful. Um, and I've thought of this, um, quite a lot. Is that there's going to come a day in, in your life and every single human, every single human being is going to lose every single thing that they love, cherish, spent their lifetime building without question, always and everywhere.

It will not matter who you are, you are going to lose everything at one point in time, or they will lose you at one point in time. And where I'm going with this is don't be the person. That didn't take a swing for things. That lived your life to some other sense set of sensibilities based on what somebody else had planned for you.

Go and do the thing. If it's in your heart to try to be a Navy SEAL, go. The worst that can happen is you don't make it, but at least you tried. What you won't be is one of the dozens of people I've come across that said, I really wanted to do that. But life got in the way. I never, I was never able to. Same with, with, uh, with building businesses.

You have an idea for something, take a swing at it, go after it. Don't be the person that lives regret, right? Because it's just not, it's not worth it. It's, you can afford to take those risks and you should.

Wes: no, yeah. I mean, that, that, that's great perspective. And on that, how can, uh, how can people connect with you or contact you? Is SOFX the best way or

Sam Havelock: Yeah, I mean, I'm super easy to, um, if, if they wanna email me direct, it's just sam dot havelock@sox.com if they want to receive the so FX report. It's, it's fascinating to anybody who's interested in keeping abreast of global conflict. Uh, we've got some of the best stories each day, um, for the same reasons that people buy books.

Uh. That are New York Times bestsellers, except this is like actually real reporting of what's happening in the world of clandestine ops and spec ops. So it's fantastic. There's no cost. They would just go to sofx. com and right on the homepage, you can see where to. Where you would, you would sign up for the newsletter.

Everybody's welcome. Uh, it serves the Spec Ops community, but it's not just for the Spec Ops community. So that's one way. Email me direct is fine. Uh, you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, so on and so forth, but I'm more responsive on email. Um, and that's, that's the best way to get

get

Wes: Perfect. I know, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to, I'm going to. I'm gonna go SOFX and get on your newsletter so I can get the real information. So Sam, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your service. I really appreciate spending time with you today.

Sam Havelock: Thank you. I had a great time. And if, uh, if we need to reconvene another meeting or another, uh, another, uh, visit, let's do it.

Wes: Awesome. Thanks.