EDC is everything from head to toe featuring Mike Glover

Mike Glover of Field Craft Survival shares his thoughts on expanding the way you view what constitutes every day carry while sharing stories from the field.  If you have ever wondered what it is like to roll solo in Yemen or to be caught in Pakistan during not one, but 2, earthquakes, this episode is for you.  

Transcript

Ron Dan  00:00

Hey, Aaron, have you ever ridden solo through Yemen?

Aaron Silvestain  00:03

Yemen? I mean, dude, my wife doesn't even let me get to target by myself.

Ron Dan  00:07

Well, our guest today, Mike Glover, he's ridden solo through Yemen. Wait till you hear what he has to say about his time in the field.  Shall we head into the briefing room?

Aaron Silvestain  00:15

Let's do it.

Music 00:16

Ron Dan  00:29

Mr. Mike Glover, you're quite a well known guy in the industry. We're very excited to have you as our first guest here on the podcast.

Mike Glover  00:36

Yeah, it's an honor and pleasure. it's pretty cool. I always think great companies like you guys should have podcasts. And it's kind of cool to be the first guest. That's a rarity.

Ron Dan  00:46

Well, you've made quite a name for yourself in the industry. But there are going to be some listeners that don't quite know you, your background, or what fieldcraft does? Would you mind giving the little elevator pitch on all of those,

Mike Glover  00:58

Like many in the industry that are especially out front teaching, I have a military background and spent many years in special operations, then I started contracting for the Central Intelligence Agency.  I did that for a few years. And in 2015-16 timeframe, decided I wanted to start a company on survival, which is the modern take of survival, and preparing citizens, military, law enforcement, really, anybody that is going to listen for the worst case scenarios. So I own that company and we teach six day courses a weekend throughout the nation.  We’ll teach 10,000 people this year alone.  We have products, we have content, we’re all over the place.  It's been a long road but in the industry, for sure.

Ron Dan  01:45

If you look back 10 years ago, there were a lot of companies and one of the most famous ones for training wise was Magpul Dynamics, right.  A lot of their focus was mainly on the gunfighting portion of things and Fieldcraft was one of the first companies that really took a unique approach at it. And now you have a lot of companies that are doing a lot of their focus on the medical side of things on their survival side of things. What was it that made you passionate about what you guys focus on opposed to every other company that's really just doing a lot of mainly gunfighting portions?

Mike Glover  02:19

Yes, that's interesting, because I started the company and I didn't want to be a technical instructor, because our backgrounds, that's an easy transition, to teach on a flat range, but I grew up on a flat range, you know, training all over the world. So I was not disinterested, but I knew that preparedness was very diversified. You had to do a lot of things. When I started training citizens or civilians. I was criticized at first because guys were like, “Why are you training civilians, like you should be training MIL or LEO” and I said,“I’m training self defense, which is very different than counterterrorism operations. I'm not training them on how to conduct raids and ambushes, I'm training them on how to defend their lives.” And the argument was typically squash when I said, “Hey, what do we do overseas to empower people?  We train them, we provide support through methodology, and we build culture, and that culture transitions into people's lives. Where they're able to protect themselves, their families, their community, and by proxy their country.” So for me, out of the gate, that was what we were doing. And what I've seen, which I think is a very positive thing, is a lot of the tactical guys decide, “Hey, man, this is a not only a viable market, but there's a lot of purpose there. There's a lot of passion there.” And civilians are now starting to see more companies step up to train survival, to train mindset, situational awareness, all these diversified things that are in the field of preparedness,

Ron Dan  03:54

What are some of the biggest things that you learned in the army that you wish civilians knew? And I'm sure those are some of your biggest topics for your Fieldcraft courses.

Mike Glover  04:05

You know, growing up in the infantry in the Army is a very different experience than most services. And I don't think civilians understand that, you know, if you grew up in the Navy, and you become an E7, for example, I mean, your God.  The army experience I had was, growing up in the army, every single whether it was like an E1 private, that was in the the squad or the team, every single person had a responsibility to continue the mission, no matter what happens. So the idea came from Vietnam, most certainly where you have platoons of infantry that were getting in the woodline losing the leadership, and then guys, the onesie, twosie, threes lower enlisted guys had to pick up that mission and continue it. So for me going to Ranger School at 18 years old, I rapidly and quickly learned how to plan and how to conduct this process. So the military decision making process allowed me to think about contingencies about how things come together to meet the desired objective or end state. And so that transitions into life into business into preparedness into tactics. So what I wish civilians knew more of which is basic processes, from Troop leading procedures to five paragraph operations orders to contingency based planning, just the simplicity of even understanding a five paragraph Ranger doctrine, operations order, you could translate and transition into business.  My business plan was written via the military decision making process, which is very robust and very detailed. And I know other companies like Evan Hafer, Black Rifle Coffee, I've seen his business plan. It was written, like a private would write in Ranger School, on the right in the red notebook.  An entire plan that they've flawlessly executed.

Ron Dan  05:57

I know for a lot of instructors, one of the biggest things that gives them that rewarding sense of feeling from going out and teaching people are when you hear back from your students, “Hey, Mike, something you taught me in class, it saved my life, or it saved me, an my family in this scenario. Have you had any great feedback from any of your students for how your curriculum has helped them in their real life?

Mike Glover  06:20

Yeah, and to me, that's the affirmation that we get daily here at Fieldcraft HQ of people saving their lives, saving somebody else's life using situation awareness tactics that we taught to get them out of a bad situation.  That happens routinely and the feedback loop that we have of training, one of the concepts and ideas that I had from the very beginning, because it's kind of ingrained in my DNA is we will never come from a position of power and trying to influence the students that we're trying to teach. It's a shared collaborative effort of learning. So we take a lot of the lessons that we learned that we get routinely in every single class and implement change in a very fluid and adaptive period of instruction. So we're never regimented or constrained to one way of thinking and doctrine, which allows us to think about adapting, and every circumstance, because there might be a better way, there might be a civilian, inner collaborative effort in your feedback that says, “Hey, I just saw this happen and this was different.”And we include those teaching points. So we're never conforming to convention. I think convention breeds complacency, in a lot of ways. So yeah, the positive affirmation that we get is an indication for me that we're doing the right things but for me, it's never good enough. We always have the room to evolve and adapt, and grow and learn as a company and as trainers especially.

Ron Dan  07:51

I love hearing that. You know, traditionally, in the past, there were a lot of instructors that took that mentality of hey, we know it and we're the experts, and you're not going to teach us anything. Thinking about that, what are some of the common misconceptions or myths that you hear from students that maybe they would expect something going into a Fieldcraft course, but a common misconception for those people that don't know it as well as they should?

Mike Glover  08:14

Great question. I think most certainly, people are intimidated, because as some of the guys backgrounds, including my own, for people who have trained with me, they immediately understand right out the gate that there's no ego involved in this process. I also think that people in the tactical industry has have overcomplicated this thing called gun fighting. What I mean is, you have institutions because of safety constraints, they have limited our ability to do realistic training. And in that created this doctrine or this protocol, that doesn't work in real circumstances, and I think is compromising, and potentially a liability to officers, military, and even civilians lives. So a great example of that would be the idea that, specifically, you're going to find your front sight in a gunfight. I used to talk about that all the time. Because from my own experiences of killing bad guys in war, in close proximity.  The first guy I ever killed in combat was hiding behind the door, my barrel was touching his chest, and all of the adaptive training, even in Special Operations at the highest levels, where you're going to manage to find your red dot. Now there's a right answer, right? You could train to the standard, but then you have to train to reality. And so if you're trying to do a standard and the standard is fine, the red to break your shots clean. That's one element of training that's fundamentally important. But the other side of that is you got to be able to see what you can get away with. So when you take a shooter, for example, I can take a 10 year old girl, I could say, “Hey, here's a gun. If you pull the trigger, it goes boom, you hit the steel target 10 yards out in front of you. That's the objective.” I don't give her a lot of constraints. I don't give her fundamentals of marksmanship. I don't overwhelm her and she accomplishes that objective. So I should build off that base because I said, “Hey, point the gun at the target and pull the trigger.” Don't overcomplicate that, let's get through this and she hits it and she hits the still we do it again, she hits a still, we're confirming our bias that, hey, maybe she's not doing this, because it's luck, I should build off that base. Instead, I say, “Hey, I want you to consciously at the same time, do seven to eight or seven to nine different things” depending on your school you come from in fundamentals of marksmanship. And then I expect the same result, except she's overwhelmed. She brings a shot, she misses. And then I'm like, “Hey, for 99.99, I can get you in the next course, we will build up your skill sets and focus on front sight, focus, or stance or breathing.” I think that's the detriment of this legacy group of people, institutions, instructors that I grew up in. Where we're not willing to adopt change based on real world experiences. And so if you sign up for a course, understand, you have to have basic gun handling skills.  We expect you to be safe, we expect you to handle a firearm safely on the range like an adult. But after that, we're reverting back your training. And we're making it primal, almost ancestral at a level to where it's very easy for you to comprehend. And I see the light bulbs going off all the time where people are like, man, I thought we're going to ninja school, like no man, there's no ninja school, there's only the mastering of the fundamentals and the basics. And that's what will make you a ninja. So I think primarily, that's the biggest concern we have is that this stuff's not hard. We're not a bunch of egotistical Special Operations guys.  There are those guys out there. And we want to make and create an environment that people are willing to learn in, that's comfortable for people.

Aaron Silvestain  11:45

That's really interesting, Mike, one thing that I think you said there, and it was really interesting as the story of the young person handling a firearm for the first time or going out and getting that training, you know, for people that are like yourselves, a lot of the times we think of their post career special operations or special forces, but we don't often think of how they got there. Can you give us a little understanding of your background growing up? Did you always have this preparedness mindset? Or is that something you learned on the way via the military?  Give us some ideas of where you started from.

Mike Glover  12:15

Yeah, I want to lie to you and say like, a lot of people pretend like this is something that you could be bread into. But you have to have the willingness, the motivation, to volunteer to go into this in the first place. And that came from my origin story. As a kid. I mean, I grew up in a military home, like a lot of military families that serve, they grew up in a household. They see their dad in fatigues. They're listening to the same verbiage. They're watching the movies and grew up in a culture at a very young age. I played army until I was playing it for real. And, for me, even planning, I used to plan operations in raids and ambushes against my playmates. I don’t think the kids do that anymore. They do it on Call of Duty. But I grew up in that environment. And for me, the only objective that I wanted to accomplish was joining the military and being in special operations. And so I did so at a very young age. As a 17 year old, I think a lot of people in military service, especially who are willing to be all they can be have opportunities to grow to learn. And I became a leader, not because of my natural leadership capabilities, but because the military trained me and gave me the opportunity to excel as a leader. So a lot of my experiences derive from that. And what's interesting is a lot of the things that I teach, or a lot of the things my guys teach, you know, we’ve got 20 subcontracted tactical instructors, a lot of the things that we teach as a brand, as a company, derived from my experiences as a GRS guy that didn't derive from my experiences necessarily as a special operations guy. I mean, special operations guys think low viz is like putting a shemagh around your face, and you know, putting your AK 47 underneath your man dress.  That’s no low viz. So a lot of the things I learned, especially with a pistol, how to react and respond in an environment where you're semi permissive stems from GRS experience. And what I tell civilians all the time, is that you live in a semi permissive environment. You live in an environment where everything's safe until it's not. And so in a semi permissive environment, which is one of the most dangerous, you can get easily complacent, because it's 99% routine, and then that 1% of your life that's filled with trauma, accidents, self defense, whatever it may be, you have to be prepared for. So that balance came from my GRS contracting experience where I was mind blown that I didn't have a platoon of rangers on cue to come rescue us. It was just me, another guy riding shotgun. And that's how civilians roll. It's you. You're your own first response. And so yeah, there's a few seconds of my life that kind of transition into what's known as Fieldcraft Survival today.

Ron Dan  15:05

That was actually going to be one of our questions was what surprised you the most when you left the army and started contracting, with GRS was that it, the fact that you had to step up and you were your own backup?  It was just you and one other person, potentially and that was it. 

Mike Glover  15:20

There's a couple of specific moments where I was taken back. One at my vetting where we go to get trained, and we go to vet, basically establishing that everything we said on a resume is true. There's validating the resume. It's funny, because I remember one of the guys who showed up, and they issued us night vision and lasers and we had a period of time to get our guns up, zeroed and ready for the next validation. When the guys is like, “Hey, are they going to show us how to put this stuff on?” And the instructor was like, “Oh, no, bro. We don't teach you anything here. All we're doing right now is validating that everything that you said on your resume is true. And so if I'm handing you night vision and a laser, you've already ran that, and you should know”. And he was like, oh, crap. We helped him navigate that, because he just wasn't an experience guy that way. But when the first time, we did CQB, they dumped us into a warehouse to go rescue a case officer. And they did so by yourself and said, “Here's a carbine, here's a scenario, go in and do it.” And I remember walking into the hallway, and then going, oh, my God, like, CQB is a collective task. The reason it's so impactful, and optimized for performance is because it's a collective task of like minded individuals using standard operating procedures to attack problem sets. So you only have a small sliver of the pie CQB, like one of the easiest things to do with your mates, except nobody tells you how to do single man CQB. Because if you do single man CQB, you've done something wrong. Like if you're standing on a threshold, your support, and you don't enter a room by yourself. Well, for anybody who's been to war, you know, that's not the case, you just make things happen because you have to adapt to change. So I remember going in that scenario going, oh, my God, it's only me. And they taught us single man CQB topics. And I went, man, I wish I had this 15 years ago. And the most surprising thing for me in that job was the latitude we had, which I wasn't used to. I mean, you have to submit a 15 page document QRS to get approved to do a route reccce. But we were doing some crazy stuff where I was even uncomfortable. And I'm known as that guy that was like, let's just do this. Let's just saddle up and do this. So I gained a new found respect for the contractors that serve this country. And they've been doing it when I was riding on little birds and MH60s with my buddies, with 10 aircraft stacked on top of us providing close air support, they were doing it by themselves. So that whole paradigm made me for the first time look at myself, look at my everyday carry, look at my bag, look at my kit and go, it's all on me. And that new dependency and cutting the umbilical cord is what created the idea for Fieldcraft Survival, but also how we teach, which I think is a testament to your brand, your company. Vertex makes civilianesque looking bags that have capability, their bags that fit in any environment where all the capabilities internal, or it could be on the outside, but it's all masked and reduced in signature. That's so important for civilians to understand and to know, and I never knew this world existed, even of EDC and the civilian aspect of it until I went to GRS where I went, hey, man, can I get that Vertex bag to deploy with? I should start looking at my own habits as a civilian. Again, I wish I had all of those tidbits prior to me starting my special operations journey.

Ron Dan  19:02

I don't know that a lot of people realize that transition or the seamless transition from GRS tasks, where you're a one man CQB team, and what that means for a civilian.  You know, if Aaron has a bump in the night at his house, I'm sure a lot of those skills are very seamlessly transition from one to another.

Mike Glover  19:22

Yeah for sure, man. The idea that everything I was doing in GRS was like what that undercover police officer or that soccer mom, or that the average person could be potentially faced with kind of changed the ideas that I had in everything, even in business. Like man, why? Why is there no company teaching civilians, how to be better prepared, when crime statistics are flying through the roof? Why is nobody focused on first aid training and collaborating that into tactical training? Because if you pull a gun, there's going to be casualties on either side. So why is nobody focused on stop the bleed. So it definitely was an eye opening experience, and then made it an opportunity for me creatively to go, oh, wow, there's a world that exist that's similar to the civilian world. And I'm going to transition a lot of those or a lot of that expertise over to the civilian side. And again, it didn't derive from 7-8 or doing raids with Task Force 16. It derived from rolling solo in Yemen, where the nearest QRS was two hours away via helicopter.

Ron Dan  20:26

So I'm going to be that guy and ask you specific questions for your EDC or in your truck you have, I'm assuming, a pistol on you, a knife on you, you have a flashlight on you and maybe a gun. What do you have for like your go to pistol? And what do you have for your go to, what I'm assuming, is a carbine, but for long gun?

Mike Glover  20:45

Yeah, good question. I advocate for both. And I think it's important to make a distinction between the pistol that you carry and the carbine or a larger bore caliber round that has more energy, and foot pounds and more muzzle velocity. The reason I'd make the clear distinction is because, let's start with the truck gun. If you have a truck gun, it's because you're defending life from potentially inside or around your vehicle. So the idea of just depending on that pistol, and that buying into that, because I know what the external ballistics are on a 9 mil 40, or 45, through a car door or through a windshield, and I want to be able to punch through that obstacle and affect the target. And, you know, in my circumstance, I might be fighting through the door. And I want that to affect the potential target or threat that's on the outside of that door. So for me, I use a BCM, a Bravo Company manufacturing 300 blackout collapsed. I'm running an eight inch barrel with a tactical law topical folder. You gotta have that in your gamut bag that's front passenger readily accessible. And again, I make the distinction because I've been in hostile circumstances in GRS, where I need ready access, and I need it now. So that's why we advocate for access to your tourniquet and your visor, your mobility bag when you're the back of your seat, or the carbine or the AR pistol and your Gamut that's co located with in range of your arm to be able to defend and protect for the pistol. I've carried a Glock my entire Special Operations career. I was in special operations when we transitioned into Glock 19, Glock 17, Glock 20, 22’s, Glock 34’s, or 35’s. So I'm a fan of Glock but I always had an issue with Glock and that is I have abnormally large hands for a, I’m 6-1, but my hands are abnormally large. At 16 I could palm a NBA basketball and I was probably 5-8 at the time. So when I put my support hand on a side of a pistol, the support side of a Glock, any model. I'm pinning the slide catch. And that induces malfunctions, basically things that I don't want to happen, like unintentionally locking the slide to the rear or not locking the slide or to the rear when I run out of bullets and a slide lock. So I have just transitioned over to Sig which took me years to convince me. One of the reasons I switched to Sig is because all my special operations buddies, including Dan Horner, who's a AMU guy, he's a pro shooter, Lena, the whole crew, have done a lot of engineering development on these pistols. And I think personally, they're the best pistols I've ever shot out the box. So I have a Sig p3, 65 XL, no red dot optics. I haven't adopted that yet. And I have a Sig p3 20x carry, that’s obviously a little bit more large than the form factor that I carry, depending on what I'm wearing. If I'm wearing this particular setup, it's a 320 X carry because I have enough real estate to reduce my printing without pistol. So I’m a big fan of Sig, big fan of ECM, and a big fan of both for responsible citizens to carry every day.

Aaron Silvestain  24:08

It's really interesting. One thing that that we talk a lot about is making sure not only do you have the right firearm but a lot of the talks about the apparel and the gear that go along with it. You know, do you guys talk about that with some of the folks that you're training that you know, the material in the firearms that you're handling is important, but the way that you conceal it, the way that you are prepared, and the fact that you can grab it quickly or access it quickly is also important. Give us a little insight of how you train that with your folks as well.

Mike Glover  24:35

Yeah, that's a great question. I'm wearing your pants right now. I'm paying attention from head to toe. A lot of people fall into the hashtag EDC and it means pistol, it means carrying a pistol. It's like the pocket dump, the pistol in my hand with my keys or my surefire light. Everyday carry for me is everything that I wear from head to toe. People ask me why do I wear a hat all the time? Well, I grew up in the military where you didn't go outside unless you have a patrol cap on. I also have gnarly Asian hair, and I refuse to put product in it. But it's branding opportunities, but it's also concealing or masking my eyes. So you'll never catch me without polarized sunglasses and a ball cap. You'll never catch me typically without a button shirt. Mike, you seem to always wear button shirts. Well, the reason I wear button shirts is because, one I could present myself professionally. But I wear untucked button shirts, so I could really access my pistol, and I don't want to print. So that's why I don't wear T-shirts, because I carry every day. I wear you guys's pants, because the functionality and utility of it. I mean, I'm a fat kid. And you know, I need pants that stretch. But I also need the utility in it. Look, when I was in GRS, I remember I was in Yemen. And one of my TL's came to me and he goes, “Hey, Mike, we're not allowed to wear flip flops.” And I had flip flops on. And I'm like, “wWhy I'm off duty. I'm not working, I'm not doing a run, like what's going on?” And he walks me over the wall. And he peeks over the wall, and there's a school, it's actually an academy. And he goes, last rotation, we had a vehicle born ID that detonated here. And at this particular location, you are your own first response and you have to be able to fight for your life and the lives of everybody you're responsible for. So I looked at my feet and go, dude I have never thought about that in my life. So now I make a conscious decision. Even if I'm putting cowboy boots on. I wear cowboy boots and cowboy hats. Well, if I put cowboy boots on, they're likely jJustinboots, because they have tactile soles that can grip. And they're actually kind of like work boots that I can move it because slick boots anywhere here in this environment is not going to work and try to contest or contend and defending your life. So what I would do is for anybody who's listening to this, I would start assessing consciously what you wear every single day. One, it's fun, because you're living consciously, but you get to make cool kit decisions about your attire, you could convince the spouse to buy all this cool, sexy stuff. But all of that stuff is necessary in optimizing your position in life. You wear the right stuff every day, not only are you prepared, but you're building the confidence. And even as a risk mitigation tactic. You are looking like the guy that you don't want to mess with. And when I see a dude who squared away, he's got a nice watch, he’s got a proper attire that fits its utilitarian and functional. I go, I don't want to mess with that dude. It's sloppy the junk wagon that's going to be exploited, because he's not squared away. So the extension to that is the things that we carry, which is again, you know, defaulting to Vertex and all the everyday carry considerations. Those things can blend in your environment, but they extend your capability, because you're extending the capacity in which you could harness your capability. So if I have a tourniquet on my person in my waistband, then I'll have a basic hemorrhage response kit, a stop the bleed kit, in my Vertex bag. I think all of that is living the culture and the lifestyle of being prepared. I don't think this is a hobby. I think this is a lifestyle. And it's important that people adopt inclusive and holistic views of everything that's included.

Aaron Silvestain  28:19

Yeah, absolutely, we talk about that all the time. And you'll see with even Vertex, you talked about our Vertex pants, but between our jeans, some of our more khaki style pants, even our shorts, you'll find you have almost the exact same setup, no matter the styling of the pants. So you can blend into those various different environments, but still have your exact same kit. So if something happens in emergency, you're not trying to figure out where you put your med kit that day or where you put your tourniquet. It's easy to grab. Speaking in those terms and in that mindset, what would it be like for the novice, the person that's never even thought about preparedness before? What's the very first thing you would teach somebody? Is it make sure you have a medkit on you at all time, or is it teaching of how to use a tourniquet? What would be that number one easiest thing to do, just to start that process?

Mike Glover  29:01

Yeah, if you're talking about trying to live your prep life, I want to default to kit because kit is sexy. But honestly, it's a conversation. It's a Q&A. But what I've realized in teaching civilians across the United States is even military guys have this problem. There's a huge discrepancy between what I think and what I'm actually capable of.  A good scenario is if I tell people in my everyday carry prep class, we do a scenario that's called deadly force. And I have everybody standing up. And I say, “Listen, I'm going to walk you through a scenario. I'm going to give you information. When you hear that information at the point in which you decide in your head, that you're going to use deadly force. I want you to sit on your butt. And that's your commitment. I don't want you to look at me. In fact, I want you to turn around and sit on your butt because you're committed. Your life has changed at that moment.” And so the scenario is home defense. Walk into the living room, see a guy in the darkness, and somebody turns and sits on like, okay, let's continue, the person continues to move. And you see in their right hand, they have a pistol, it looks like a pistol that somebody turns and sits. And then I go, and then as they're entering the middle of the living room, they're gonna go down a hallway and your kids are in that hallway. And then the last two people turn and sit. And then I say, okay, then you go to turn on the lights, and it's your neighbor's kid who's 15 years old, who's returning back your son's airsoft pistol, because he didn't want to get in trouble. And then everybody's like, Oh, you tricked us. And I said, “What's the trick?” Well, you didn't give us enough information? I said, “Okay. So let me allow you to understand one of the elements that you're forgetting about, which is stress. If you're not realizing that this situation is going to be stressful, you're also not realizing that you're partitioning a captions of what you're seeing and observing that eight millimeter, not in 4k,” then you'll hear oh, well, that scenario would have played out that way, because I wouldn't have done that. And then I also said, “You are not in charge of your own scenario, when you're reacting to a threat. You could be in your bed and open your eyes, and there's a gun in your face, because you're not in control. So the situation that I'm putting you in, you could default to any way you want. But what I'm letting you know is that we don't understand how this works, because we've never asked ourselves the question.” So it starts with a Q&A at a dinner table. It's like, Honey, what would you do if somebody kicked in the door? Well, I'd beat him up. What if they had a gun? Well, you know me, I'll take care of things. No, no, I mean literally, what would you do? Oh, well, I'd get my gun. Well, honey, your guns in a lockbox in the safe in the bedroom. Oh, was the front door locked? Right? I need to start using these conversations to distill and figure out what my weaknesses are. And then I could take corrective action and create the plan. When that's the start point, then people start identifying all the flaws in their life. They don't have a fire safety plan. They don't care etc. They don't know what to do in a vehicle accident. They don't know what to do in a second story fire or their kids are up top and they're at the bottom. That's the conversation that needs to be had. That's how we start this whole process of going, Oh, maybe I should start paying attention to this idea of being better prepared.

Ron Dan  32:22

There's a portion of our podcasts that we want to try with you. It's called the lightning round, and we're gonna ask you some pretty rapid fire questions, and we just need you to throw out an answer. Shoot from the hip. It's gonna be as fast as possible. We've got four questions here. Are you ready for it? All right, Mike Glover, you’re gonna be the first victim of our lightning round. What are three pieces of gear that you always want with you?

Mike Glover  32:49

Everyday carry pistol and a magnet retention holster, a surefire light of some kind separated from your pistol, and either a Cat 7 North American rescue tourniquet or Tac med solutions, a soft t wide on your physical person at all times.

Ron Dan  33:05

Flashlight tourniquet, everyday carry pistol, but specifically those tourniquets, quality tourniquet. If you're on a desert island, what book music or movie do you absolutely have with you?

Mike Glover  33:17

I'm gonna have my audible and I'm going to have the audible version of Jack Carr's book series, terminal list. Starting “Paternalist” and ending with “Devil's Hand”, hoping that he's somewhere off the island writing the next book so I can get the download.

Ron Dan  33:32

What's the absolute best concert you've ever been to?

Mike Glover  33:35

The best concert ever? Kid Rock opening for Aerosmith. Back in the 90s. Man, it was sick.   You know, that song “Dream On”? They did that in the rain. They've walked through the crowd and got into the grass in the rain with all of the audience that was displaced from it. And it was it was sick, man. It was awesome.

Ron Dan  33:54

That answer will be hard to beat. Alright, last one.  What’s the craziest thing that's ever happened to you? 

Mike Glover  34:01

Probably the craziest thing that's ever happened to me is being in two significant earthquakes in Pakistan, a decade apart. The first one killed over 2000 people.  I was right off the X access of that on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the second one killed hundreds of people. And I was in Pakistan in Islamabad when that happened. But I've never been in an earthquake ever and then the two ones I have been in were both from the same country a decade apart.

Ron Dan  34:35

Wow, that’s pretty intense. Well, we can't thank you enough for being a guest on the podcast. We appreciate you. We appreciate your service. We appreciate everything you do with Fieldcraft Survival to enable us in the civilian community and our LEO and MIL partners that are out there in the world, and thank you for being a continued supporter for Vertex and our products. We absolutely appreciate you so much.

Aaron Silvestain  34:58

Absolutely. Mike, where can people go to find more about you and your company?

Mike Glover  35:01

Thanks, guys for having me on the podcast. It's Fieldcraft Survival on everything. So across the web, Instagram, YouTube, podcast. What I would encourage people to do is just before you even sign up for a course, or buy a product, go and check out the free resources for information. I started my podcast which has over 300 episodes now talking into my iPhone on my notes memo in my PJs, which you know, we've come a long way since then. So that resource is absolutely free. You can go everywhere all over the internet to get that. And I appreciate all the support that you guys have offered me graciously. It's always humbling to be represented in such a way that's positive by companies that are out there doing good for the greater good, which I think Vertex and a slight few others on one hand, I can count them that are having the impact that you guys are having. Especially with civilians, military and law enforcement. So thanks so much.

Music 36:01

Ron Dan  36:12

Aaron, what did we learn in that interview with Mike Glover?

Aaron Silvestain  36:15

Well, number one, the EDC should be from head to toe, not just the weapon system you're carrying. Number two is there's no Ninja School, which is news to me. You have to master the basics. For the record, I would be a phenomenal ninja, especially if they love five foot eight fat ninjas. I’m their guy. And then three, you are your own first response, you have to be prepared. And then last but not least, if Mike Glover invites you to Pakistan, there's a pretty good probability there's going to be an earthquake. So just be ready for that.

Ron Dan  36:44

Well said. And thank you all for joining the Vertex Briefing Room. Make sure you check out the show notes at vertex.com/podcasts. And like, subscribe, and give us a review. Feel free to drop us a line and let us know what topics and experts you would like to hear about on future episodes. Where are you going, Aaron?

Aaron Silvestain  37:04

Target, you need anything?

Ron Dan  37:06

You'd better call your wife first. 

Aaron Silvestain  37:08

Ain't that the truth?

Music 37:09