Ep. 55 • Jett Cruzz Lanoha • Frogman Toasts, Bar Brawls & Building Brotherhood After the Teams 🔱🏴☠️
Liberty RiskShow Notes
This one opens the way every great Liberty Risk episode should - with a shirtless man standing on a table, reciting the Frogman Toast from memory. Jett Cruzz Lanoha, former SEAL Team 3 operator, does the thing right, and what follows is a nearly-lost piece of SEAL culture that the old guys had to physically threaten him into learning. From there it only gets better. Cruz's path to the Teams isn't your typical recruiting poster story. Tucson kid, Catholic school K–12, bouncing between working at Fleming's Steakhouse, Home Depot, and FedEx well into his late twenties - until a buddy turned him on to the Army and a recruiter mentioned the SEALs. He failed the ASVAB three times, got tutored by a girlfriend, earned his PST score, and made it through BUD/S at 28. His dad builds custom choppers and runs in biker circles. The apple doesn't fall far. We get into the culture shift - the pirate era Teamguys vs. the new school, what gets lost when you clean up an organization that ran on controlled chaos, and why you actually need both the pirates and the choir boys for a functional team. Cruz came up in the later era and felt every bit of the shift. The hosts came up in the era that needed three DUIs to make chief. Neither side is entirely right. Neither side is entirely wrong. Hotel Platoon at Team Three gets its full due. A crew Cruz calls the best years of his life - Steadfast, elite, and exactly the kind of guys you want next to you when a Hell's Angels affiliate decides the bar belongs to him. Full brawl in Temecula. OIC in flip flops. New guys straight out of BUD/S jumping in without being asked. Everyone escaping in a van ("let's go, Marines!" 😂). Chief handling the fallout. It's a masterclass in what leadership actually looks like when the textbook is on fire. Then as a speciala guest, Cruzz's wife Marissa joins the pod. The one he married during BUD/S, sent divorce papers to while she was ill, and didn't see for eight years. The one he ran into by accident at an LA Fitness during Navy's Week in Phoenix, completely out of nowhere, and eventually remarried. She tells her side and pulls nu pucnhes. It's worth hearing. So is the conversation that follows about what it actually takes to build a partnership when one of you is wired to solve problems and the other one just needs you to shut up and listen. He's also got a brand - Brother Apparel, launched after separating in 2025. Not operator merch. Lifestyle gear with an emphasis on living LIFE with STYLE. If you know, you know. The crew (who run an apparel company) go deep with him on how to actually build it right. And the deployment stories. Dubai. Abu Dhabi. The Maldives - not on purpose. A $4,000 bar tab at Zuma that he didn't pay for. A porta-potty. A kind cab driver. An out-of-body experience at a beach concert that he did not sign up for. Here are a few highlights from this one: Cruzz performs the Frogman Toast - shirtless, on a table, as it was meant to be The ASVAB fail trilogy and the girlfriend who saved his Navy career Temecula bar brawl: Hell's Angels, flip flops, and a van getaway Chief Kyle and the chess move that changed how Cruzz sees leadership The divorce papers. The eight-year gap. LA Fitness. The reunion. Marissa on what it was like to be on the other side of all of it Getting dosed in a porta-potty in Abu Dhabi and the cab driver who saved him The Maldives emergency landing - two days in paradise, completely by accident Brother Apparel: the origin, the wrong partners, the relaunch, and where it's going The nightly debrief walk - the relationship tip that actually works
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🏴☠️ Want to hang LIVE with Kevin, Nick & Ryan? Join the Liberty Risk Patreon crew: https://www.patreon.com/cw/LibertyRisk
🏴☠️ Want to hang LIVE with Kevin, Nick & Ryan? Join the Liberty Risk Patreon crew: https://www.patreon.com/cw/LibertyRisk