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John served 13 months in Iraq, with the USA military. He had numerous near-death experiences. Today he shares the most prominent one with us, and the effects it had on him.

After his time in the army, he was able to find his passion and created EntrepreneurOnFire, a 7 day a week podcast. He interviews top and successful entrepreneurs and has was awarded Best Of iTunes in 2013.

From there, John and Kate created an amazing forum of podcasters from around the world, called Podcasers' Paradise,  and were featured in Forbes magazine.
How To Podcast For Profit ($2M Sales In Year 2) With Entrepreneur On Fire John Dumas
 

I listened to an interview he did with Ryan Holiday about Stoicism. I have been touched by learning about it, and although I could go on and on about all the good that John is doing in the world, I will let you hear in this interview for yourself. What a truly inspiring and amazing person John is, but most importantly to me, he was my first mentor in the business world, and I wouldn't have created the podcast without his guidance.
Stay tuned after and I will share a review and a few words with you.

 Near-Death Experience
John was deployed to Iraq for 13 months. In his platoon, 4 soldiers gave their lives in sacrifice, to defend the U.S.A, and bring freedom. John saw first hand, "freedom is not free."

John had a sense of foreboding before his very near death experience. At about month 12.5 of his 13 month period in Iraq, he was sent for training. He had a bad feeling about it.  They were sent for training in a room, at a base, watching powerpoint slides for an hour, and he could have watched the information over skype from safety.

They had to travel two hours down a road, known as RPG alley. RPG stands for a rocket-powered grenade. They were going in a slow-moving convoy, which was very appealing to the Iraqi army.

John had to follow orders, and about halfway there, a massive explosion shook his Humvee, spun it around in a circle and blew the back-end off. The big convey truck behind, slammed into them at full speed, further damaging the vehicle. John had a big gash under his chin, the lieutenant next to him was basically unconscious.

It was an IED. improvised explosive device. The firing started and there were bullets flying everywhere.  They had to jump to another vehicle.  The lieutenant suffered a concision and had to be flown in a helicopter, all the way to Baghdad. Then his helicopter was fired at. He had a really messed up experience. This was all because one person high in command wanted to feel important, and forced everyone to attend this training in person.



From this near-death experience,  the entrepreneurial seed was planted.  It never lost its grip, and years later, still with the same mindset, John has turned it into a good thing, and taken control of his own life.


They proceed like nothing happened and continued their training. John had a bandage placed on his chin, still bleeding and continued as if nothing happened. Then they took the slow trip back to the base, about 5 hours round trip.
DEALING WITH TRAUMA
There is no special training, but they try. The military thrives in war, battle, winning and taking the fight to the enemy.

It comes up short re-integrating soldiers into society and the civilian world. It comes up short giving the soldiers support getting through these traumatic experiences and having a normal life after and post-military.

John tells me it is not really the militaries job. There job is to take the fight to the enemy and win. If they dedicate a lot of resources to other things, you might not win. If you don't win then nothing else matters.

John tells me, "don't begrudge the army, especially not the US army, --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lvmountaintops/message