Use failure as a stepping stone to achieve greatness. Understand that failure and defeat are not synonymous. Embrace challenges, be open to failure, and distinguish between acceptable risks and mere attempts to avoid risk. Winning often requires taking informed risks.
Use failure as a stepping stone to achieve greatness. Understand that failure and defeat are not synonymous. Embrace challenges, be open to failure, and distinguish between acceptable risks and mere attempts to avoid risk. Winning often requires taking informed risks.
Chuck Ritter, Deputy Director/COO of Objective Arete and a retiring Special Forces Sergeant Major, emphasizes the importance of using failure as a path to becoming legendary. He discusses the necessity of making the best possible decisions, even when they are not ideal, and highlights that success involves identifying acceptable risks.
Charles “Chuck” Ritter is a retiring Army Special Forces Sergeant Major with 27 years of service. He recently completed his tenure as the Deputy Commandant for the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School’s (USAJFKSWCS) Non-Commissioned Officer Academy at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Before this, He served for over 18 years in the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne).
During his time in the Army, he held roles as a light infantryman, Special Forces Weapons Sergeant, Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant, Special Forces Team Sergeant, and Special Forces Sergeant Major.
Chuck’s military career spans the globe, including seventeen deployments, twelve of which were to combat zones. His service has earned him a Silver Star Medal, a Bronze Star for Valor, an Army Commendation Medal for Valor, three Purple Heart Medals, and numerous other military awards. His work has taken him to Japan, Yemen, Kuwait, Oman, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and more, giving him extensive experience in tackling challenges alongside international partners, the United States Department of State, and various government organizations regarding U.S. national strategic interests.
In addition to his military career, he is the founder and partner of LYCOS Group, LLC, a leadership consulting company based in North Carolina. His portfolio includes work with Lennox, Hibbett | City Gear, Crispian Consulting, and Celebrity Greens. He is a founding partner at Bric R Media Group, which owns Runt Graphic Design, Sandhills Equestrian Magazine, and Sandhills Fairways Magazine. He served on the board of directors for the Talons Reach Foundation from 2022 to 2024 and currently serves on the board of directors for the Dreams4All Foundation. He co-produced and co-hosted the USAJFKSWCS Pineland Underground podcast, helping it reach the number 3 spot on Chartable for government-related podcasts.
He resides in Southern Pines, NC. He recently co-founded Objective Arete, an organization focused on enabling personal excellence and self-efficacy in people, systems, and organizations. He is also a student at Norwich University, completing a B.S. in Strategic Studies and National Defense. In late 2025, he plans to apply for Duke’s MBA program.
Contact Chuck at:
Email: chuck@objectivearete.com
Mike: Welcome to the Objective RFA podcast, episode number four. I'm your host, Mike Lerario. And today, we get to speak with Chuck Ritter. Chuck Ritter is a Green Beret Special Forces Sergeant Major, still on active duty as we record this, but soon to transition to civilian life. He's a combat veteran and a great friend of mine, and it's a pleasure and an honor To talk with him today, one of the things you're going to want to pay attention to in this discussion with Chuck is, and it doesn't matter if you're a Ted Lasso fan or a Walt Whitman fan, your life should be about being curious, not judgmental.
And you should recognize that your personal example. The most important and powerful tool you have to influence other people. He's a great guy with a great story. So let's get to it. Here we go, Chuck Ritter.
So Chuck, tell us a little bit about what it was like being a young Chuck Ritter growing up and, uh, being you young. Chuck Ritter. So a young Chuck Young, excuse me. A younger Chuck Retter because you're not old, younger, Chuck.
Chuck: I'm pretty old. That's okay. It's, it's cool. So younger, Chuck Retter. So now I've, I met.
I've been 26 years in the military. I'll be out at 27. And I've been successful. But I wasn't always successful. I was a little problem child growing up. I had a 70, 000 credit card fraud charge on me from working at Radio Shack, a little scheme I came up with. I failed my first drug test in the military.
Wait, wait,
Mike: okay. Can we dig into that a little bit?
Chuck: I was a smart dumbass, let's put it that way. So I was, my priorities weren't in the right. Place, but I had a photographic memory. I could, you know, somebody came in and memorize everything about their credit card information. I found a flaw in the inventory system where if I purchased a, you know, a 3, 000 item and immediately refunded it back to their account, it would take it off the inventory.
It would go into Neverland, but and they wouldn't get charged. So then I take that item, put it back by the dumpster, grab it, You know, they're crude and I'm getting caught anyway. A criminal enterprise from, uh, how
Mike: old were you
Chuck: when you were doing this? Uh, that was when I was 16 or 17 and the loss prevention guy.
And in case there's
Mike: any young people out there, I don't want to get, leave them with the impression that it's okay to do shady stuff like this. That
Chuck: was pretty dumb. Like, that's a felony, like, I very well could end up in jail for the rest of my, you know, for a good portion of my life.
Mike: But did you get caught?
Yeah, I got caught. Ultimately, you got caught, which is the lesson we want our young listeners to really take away from this is that ultimately, you get caught.
Chuck: When you decide to do dumb stuff, you're going to have to pay the price, so that's the accountability part. Yeah, you know, I didn't really fully embrace and appreciate till later in life.
I think I've been decent about taking responsibility for my own actions.
Mike: No, I mean, I knew that story and I know that you carry that as like a great lesson learned, but that wasn't the end of it, right? I mean, you did that and then.
Chuck: Yeah, I filled my first drug test for the military. I got, I filled out a bowling class and I had a free ride in college.
My mom was a, an instructor at college, so I had a free ride there, so I was pretty embarrassed. And then at some point I was like, all right, I gotta, I actually gotta get my stuff together here. I think the Army is the way I, Where I'm at, I feel like I'm pretty smart. I did really poorly in school. So, and since I failed a drug test for the military previously, it took, uh, it was, it was hard to get in.
And then when I joined, I wasn't in very good shape. I still sucked. So I had a ridiculously low physical fitness test and, and basic training that they brief you during the two mile run that you can walk, but it's not recommended. I took that to heart and I had like a 24 minute two mile, which is, I don't even know how you.
You walk that slope. But I ended up passing basic training. My parents had a bet, uh, when, after graduation, they were transferring money. And I was like, what are you guys doing? Oh, you know, your dad bet that you weren't, there's no way you were going to pass basic training. But I bet for you, you know, I bet, I bet on you.
Mike: That's true love. Only a mother's love to not bet against you. Right, yeah.
Chuck: And I wrote an article about this recently, but luckily, there was people in my unit, my very first unit, that invested in me. They took the time, even though I was a lost cause, and they shouldn't have invested in me. They did, and that really helped me to become a successful human being.
Mike: So, I mean, okay, spoiler alert, Charles P. Ritter is a very successful soldier. Sergeant Major, E9, like there's no E10 in the army, there's no enlisted rank 10, there's, there's pretty much the highest rank you can go. And yet, here you are, you're telling a story about these hoodlum things you did as a civilian and then.
How pitiful you were as a young enlisted guy. What do you think people saw in you as a private that said, Okay, here's this, this fat, well, you're kind of fat and chubby still, right? I mean, no, can I say that? I don't know about that. I mean, we don't have cameras running, so no one can, can challenge me on it.
I will say the, no, the first time my wife met you, she goes, who's that? I'm like, why? Why? Man, he looks pretty good. I'm like, hey, wait, stop. No, you're, you're in great shape, especially for a guy who's been blown up once and shot twice. What do you think they saw in you as a young, can I say stupid? Yeah, absolutely.
Young, stupid, enlisted soldier, private, to, to invest. I don't think they saw anything in me.
Chuck: I think what they saw was that they were good leaders and that it was their job, regardless of what was in front of them, to invest in this thing that they were inheriting and, and put some time into it. I mean, at one point I had to take a PT test every week until I scored one, because I thought, you know, my first.
PT test and basic, I scored like a 93 or 94 points out of 300, which was horribly failed to pass, right? But when I gra when I passed basic training, I had like a 210 or something like that. I was like, man, I'm like a stud. But when I showed up to the unit, like, you can't be showing up to an infantry unit with that.
What are you doing? Like, gross. And just making me study, like, a lot of reading. It's kind of, I think that's where I really got into doctrine is like, hey, you will understand this. Like, not just I just have that chauffeur knowledge where you can kind of regurgitate some words.
Mike: Chauffeur knowledge? I have not heard that before.
You've never heard that? No, I love the concept. The story
Chuck: about it was like the scientist and his chauffeur and he was going around the country giving these presentations, right? And it came to a point because the chauffeur being the presentation. The chauffeur was like, well, you know, I've been doing this for years.
How about I stand up there and give the same thing? Cause I can say a word for word. And he's like, yeah, that's a great idea. So the chauffeur got there dressed as him and he dressed up as a chauffeur down in the audience. This presentation to a bunch of scientists and one of the scientists stood up and said, like, I'm kind of disappointed that you didn't think about this thing.
Can you explain that? And the chauffeur is like, well, you know, that's weird. I'm really disappointed. I come to this city where you guys are supposed to be really smart and you're asking such a basic question. I'll tell you what, this is so basic, I'm going to let my chauffeur answer this question. So, you know, the scientist who drives the chauffeur, like, answers the question, right?
But I don't know if that's true or not, it's just, it's just a story, but it goes back to like, chauffeur knowledge is that, yeah, you can, you can say the words, but you really don't know the substance behind it.
Mike: But you know enough to bring up the expert when you don't have the answer. Even though, but the point is like.
Don't have the
Chuck: chauffeur knowledge, don't, don't need to know what you're talking about. Right. So, but that was like ingrained that into me, like, don't, don't just have this base level, like superfluous knowledge to actually be able to know it and understand how to deconstruct these things that are in these document manuals.
And that, that really helped me later in life. It sucked at the time in Hawaii, like that was very hard training, but I think it set me up for, for success later in life. If you enjoy our podcast, then take a second to check out our new website and online journal at www. ObjectiveRTA. com. We publish articles there under the RTA Journal on topics that can help you dominate and conquer all obstacles in life.
Also sign up for our weekly newsletter. Check us out and give us some feedback on how we can positively impact the world at www. ObjectiveRTA. com. And back to the show.
Mike: But you're living in Hawaii. Yeah, it's awesome. Hawaii's pretty awesome. It is truly paradise. Okay, so how long were you in the infantry before you went Special Forces?
About three years. And
Chuck: why did you decide to go Special Forces? So I was now successful in the infantry. Pretty decent, I thought. And this recruiter came, and we'd work with some, some guys coming out of First Special Forces group. They'd flown in, and they were just blowing off all the doors on our shoot houses.
Did you
Mike: have a deployment as
Chuck: an infantry guy? Uh, just to Japan. No, there was no combat. But not a combat deployment? No, no, there was no combat going at the time. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Uh, the recruiter just came This seems very interesting. It seems like a challenge. Talked to one of my buddies, who I'm meeting with this week.
He lives here now. Let's go to selection. We did. And we went to selection and barely passed. Got boarded. Probably shouldn't have passed selection, but made it. And yeah, I went to the special force qualification course, came out of the backside and deployed a lot, took four bullets at different points in time, got blown up, about to have, uh, my next hip replacement on this coming Monday.
So that should be interesting. I had my, my right hip replaced last year. So that'll be my 33rd surgery in the past, well 2008. It's been 33 surgeries since. 2008. And then, uh, yeah, I'll be retiring here shortly after that.
Mike: Wow. You've got how many months in a combat zone? That I
Chuck: don't know. I know it's over four years, which isn't, there's plenty of people that have way more time to deploy than that.
How many overseas service bars do you got on your uniform? Ah, I'd have to look. I don't know. I'm not a uniform guy. I
Mike: know, but your humility is like killing me. I know I've got 12
Chuck: combat deployments. I can tell you that for a fact.
Mike: 12 combat deployments, they average, minus getting blown up and sent home early, 7
Chuck: months, 9 months each?
They're about 8 months each on average, you know, the ones I got. I decided to go home early, because it was You decided
Mike: to go home early because you had a bullet Multiple bullets in your
Chuck: head. Seems like the best way to do it.
Mike: Yeah, so we've talked about this before, too. So, I mean, I'm kind of jumping a little bit, fast forward to So I was impersonating Patrick Swayze on this That was my, that was my role.
Like, they brought me into, like, you know Old Patrick Swayze. How tall was Patrick Swayze?
Chuck: About the same size as
Mike: you. Is he? Okay, cool. Like 4'8 Oh, dude. So I met you in 2013 in Afghanistan. It was kind of cool because, you know, we were on the cusp of the transition, putting the Afghans in the lead. And, uh, and it was funny because I was with a bunch of people that were trying to do these, you know, Oh, we can do this and we can do that.
It's very high and elevated. And you bring this Afghan major into a meeting.
Chuck: You guys, this, this conglomerate of people like, Hey, we need to do this. I'm like, this isn't going to work. Like I get what you're trying to do, but it's not going to work and nobody would listen. So then I was like, okay, this is what we're going to do.
I'm going to bring this Afghan in. And then, yeah. Yeah.
Mike: We're doing this big planning meeting on how we're going to have the Afghan, uh, special operations command and the major, the Afghan major that you brought in. Someone finally turns and goes, well, what can we do to help you? And he's like, I just want to learn how to read a map and use a compass, which is like a skill level two or three thing in our army.
I feel like going, okay, regardless of what your intentions are, they've got to be grounded in reality. You got to meet people where they're at. You got to meet people where they're at. And help them get to where they want to go, not drag them to where you think or you used to be or where you are. It's kind of a cool, cool thing.
Chuck: Everybody kind of just went real quiet in the room.
Mike: Everybody went real quiet in the room. That's what I've been trying
Chuck: to tell
Mike: y'all. Does it make sense now? Yeah, it makes huge sense. Yeah, it's interesting that, you know, you and I left Afghanistan about the same time in 2013, except that I, I walked out on an airplane to meet my wife in Bermuda and you went out on a stretcher because you'd gotten stitched up with A machine gun saving an Afghan commando in a firefight.
As an aside, like, you know, I think about this. When I was a battalion commander in Afghanistan, one of the places we went into was Tagab. They didn't want us going. They, when I say they didn't want us going in there, I mean my bosses didn't want us going in there because it was very quiet. And I reminded them that the neighborhoods that the mafia lives in in New Jersey are very quiet also.
And they're that way for a reason. Keep the cops out. Some very interesting things that we learned after we went in there. But we never got to go back in there again. And so, ten years later, I'm back in Afghanistan. And you go into Tagab and you get shot up, like, big time. It's kind of a, an interesting thing.
Chuck: Hatchet Brewing Company. Hatchet Brewing Company provides the primary beer found in the Falcon Snail Pub, which is an Irish pub we built in my basement. It's pretty awesome. Hatchet is also owned by Greg Walker, CEO of Objective Arte, and a former Army Special Forces officer. If you find yourself in the Southern Pines, North Carolina area, stop by the tap room.
Otherwise, check them out online at www. hatchetbrewingcompany. com. And back to the show.
Mike: So what do you think are some of the greatest lessons you learned out of being a team sergeant? Um, working in Afghanistan, working around the world. You've done work in Africa, right? You've done work in all kinds of places.
I
Chuck: never went to Africa. My language has been French the whole time I've been in a group. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Mike: You've never went to Africa?
Chuck: No, it was always to Southwest Asia, Middle Eastern places. I wish I had. I recently wrote a long paper on Africa. You know, with the topic being Great powers competition and how
Mike: in that third group's area of
Chuck: it is and people back in Africa.
I just I missed that boat. I was just always in.
Mike: Maybe we kept you out of Africa for a reason. Have you ever thought about that?
Chuck: I don't think so. I think Africa would be cool. I could actually practice my language a little bit, you know? I mean, I've worked with the French a couple times, so I got to practice a little bit.
Mike: So, across all your deployments, all your tours, what are some of the greatest insights that you walk away with?
Chuck: One of the things I learned traveling the world is, one, out of all the countries I've been to, which have been amazing, I've been, I've been, Really enjoyed all my experiences, but a great appreciation for the United States of America.
I firmly believe that we're humans. We're all flawed. This country is by no means perfect and it never will be. It wasn't, wasn't founded on perfection. People always go back to the founding. I was like, oh, well, this is, this is pretty like, no, nobody's perfect back then. Nobody's perfect now. With all our flaws, this is still the greatest nation on the planet, in my opinion, and I will still fight for it, and bleed for it, and die for it, any day of the week, just like I have in the past.
I'm appreciative of it, and I enjoy it, and I think some people that always find themselves hating on their own country, maybe need to go out and just enjoy what's out there. I just got back from Montana shooting an elk. I mean, this place is amazing. Did the elk shoot back? You know, he, he, he'd get close enough to those things, they'll probably mess you up.
And what's the
Mike: challenge in that? Like, if the elk's not shooting back, really, where's the challenge?
Chuck: Well, I never had this concept. I was like, what if I, like, go and hook up with the elk and sell them weapons, right?
Mike: Yeah,
Chuck: yeah.
Mike: Yeah, no, I think that's, that's an incredibly important insight. I, I spent time, before I came back to Fort Bragg to command a battalion, I spent time in Southeast Asia, in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
And, um, when I consider that time, With also the time in Afghanistan and in, in Cambodia and Laos and in Vietnam, there are people living in dirt floor huts with no running water. That's poverty. When you sleep with your animals to protect them and
Chuck: for
Mike: warmth and for warmth. That's poverty. Don't come, you come back to the United States and poverty is a different level, right?
I mean, like there's, there are some people in America who are probably maybe close to being that poor, but most, most quote unquote poor people in America. And I think if they could appreciate how better off they are.
Chuck: One of the things like we're talking about animals, right? You go through those areas. I remember going through a village one time.
I was like, why, why is there just poop everywhere? Like people just not killing. No, it's here for a reason. I was like, what's the reason? Well, they let it dry. And he's like, look, when we walk past these walls, I mean, you're going to see it stuck on the walls. They dry it. This is how they heat their houses.
This is how they cook.
Mike: Yeah.
Chuck: Like this is how they survive. Right. It's not just because they're nasty. It's just if they don't. Right. Do this and they will not live that right,
Mike: right
Chuck: in the infantry. They, they ingrain into you the three to five second rush, right?
Mike: When you decide
Chuck: to go above that, you, you go to six to seven seconds.
That that's what happens. So the last three second, I'm up, I'm running, I'm down is important. When you try to rely on your own innate genius and ability to reinvent the wheel. Go outside the box with things like that. That's what happens. I'm up, I'm running, I'm running, I'm down now. I easily got another second.
It will give you every time. So outside of that, outside of the 3 to 5 second rush. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that if you truly 100 percent believe in your own, in your own headspace, that you are an unstoppable force of nature and that absolutely nothing It's gonna keep you down and that's what you'll be, right.
And people are like, oh yeah. How happens when a bus hit you? It's like, well, I can't control that, but I can control what I can control. Yeah. I can control my own actions and my own reactions. Right? I can control to my own emotions to a point right in between, you know, stimulus and reaction. There's that space.
That's what you can control. I can't control those other things. I'm not gonna worry about them as, as much as I can. But I can control what's up here and I can control the way I view the world and the way I view the world is that I'm a juggernaut once I get moving, there's nothing that's going to stop me.
There's going to be things that are going to try and there's going to be setbacks and I'm going to need some ego checks here and there because this sounds a little bit arrogant the way I'm explaining this and maybe it is on that cusp of hubris which we need to stay out of that, that wavelength. But I know in my mind that I have an objective like what the objective are today that we've set out what we want to do and I know there's no doubt in my mind we were going to, we're going to achieve that because.
What's going to stop me, right? And if anything that that does decide to trip me, I don't want to use that as a, as a springboard, right? I say a springboard to being. legendary springboard to success, but every failure, every bit of adversity, it's in one of our tagline, right? Embrace adversity. Yeah. Take it and use it.
Right. I think that every time I've been wounded, like the first time I got shot when you're going home and I got, I took three PKM rounds and that all the surgeons said, Hey, you're not going to be able to raise your arm for. Almost a year, I lost, I died on the operating table. They gave me a ton of blood, like 13 units of blood.
In my mind, I was like, no, I'm going to go back. I had all the, the trainers and the sports psychs. I had the dietitian, everybody meet me at the hospital before my last surgery on my shoulder. And I was like, let's come with a game plan. I came with a game plan, had that last surgery. That next Monday or Tuesday, I'm in the gym with tubes sticking out of me, all the drainage tubes and stuff.
And I'm working on getting back. And they told me, the boss was like, hey, you're not, you're not coming back. But I still redeployed within two months and I finished out that combat training. When I got there, they said, okay, you came back here. We don't want you back. You kind of snuck back in. That's, we can't really kick you out because you're a testament to the program.
But you're not going back on a combat mission. Still going back on a combat mission. Because of that mindset, like, this is what I'm going to do. I'm not going to do it just for me. To me, it was, I'm getting back in the game. That's what I convinced myself. Whether this is real or not, I convinced myself, like, I'm getting back in the game to prove this point, that nothing in life can stop you, and I want to show that to other people.
I want to show that to my team, and me not going back is, is, It's a disservice to them.
Mike: Yeah.
Chuck: Right?
Mike: Well, and you just missed your team. Like, your role, you were a team sergeant when that happened. They were still your team when you got wounded. I think that's one of the things I love about your story and your example.
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Mike: So you get wounded in 2013. I come and visit you in the hospital at Bagram before you get medevac, and I don't see you again, but we stay in touch and maybe I saw you back here in Pinehurst at some point in time.
But then I'm in Durham, North Carolina in November of 2014. With my wife and another friend, I'm getting ready to go speak for a veterans group in Pennsylvania. And I get this text on my phone, and there's this picture. It's, I couldn't tell who the picture was, except that I could tell that whoever they were, they had a bloodied, bandaged hand.
And, uh, they're in kit, you know, combat gear, and kind of a beard, scruffy looking. But the text came from you, and I'm like going, Chuck, is this, is this you in this picture? And like you said, yeah. And I'm like, well, where are you at? And I'm like, well, I'm in Germany about to get a second surgery. I took two PKM rounds in the hand.
I'm like going, holy cow, what the hell? And like, so this is like not even a year and a half from when you were wounded pretty severely. I mean, like you said, on the table, coded out, bring you back 13, uh, 13 units of blood and a year and a half later. You're back in combat, getting wounded. Now I'm thinking you were probably leading your team, too, at that time, but you're getting wounded a year and a half later.
Like, what drove you to go back into combat that soon? I mean, did you have to go back into combat? Could you have taken a pass on any of that?
Chuck: They were trying to stop me. One of, uh, one of our mutual friends, a guy named Mike Sullivan, our battalion commander at the time, one of the greatest battalion commanders ever.
Besides Michael Averio? Besides, yeah. He was actually told by the group, he got in trouble. The group commander was like, hey, you can't deploy Chuck. Like, he's not going to deploy again. And then he's like, um, whatever, I'm done. Why would I, why would I leave my, that team sergeant on the bench, right? So I ended up deploying and then he obviously, when I got shot, he was like, yeah, okay, Chuck got shot.
So you're right. Cause the guy's like, if Chuck deploys, he's out. You're a bullet magnet. There's a high probability he's going to get
Mike: shot.
Chuck: And it's, it's weird because I don't think that I'm, I'm this risky person, right? When I got shot in Halo 13, it's like the best bad decision we can make is this Afghan is wounded.
The enemy is literally about to take him.
Mike: Yeah.
Chuck: We have no air support. Like we have to fight out there. And the reality is we're, we're going to get messed up. Right. To getting this guy. We're probably, some of us are going to die.
Mike: But it would not be a good thing for them to get this guy.
Chuck: This is the right thing to do regardless of the consequences.
Right. I think that's one of the things in life that we should commit ourselves. Like whatever your values are and the virtues you recognize, you need to be dedicated to those and be willing to execute them regardless. of the consequences. Yeah, amen. So, same thing, next year, get out of this helicopter. We already knew it was going to be a bad situation.
We knew what we were getting ourselves into. It was landing in the middle of the day, and rushing helicopters in the middle of this firefight, where the Afghans had been pinned all the way. We knew it was going to be bad, a little bit worse than we expected. Got out of the helicopter, and I was like, okay, well, we're definitely not where we thought we were going to be, or we were, but the Afghans weren't there, and the enemy was like right on top of us, in multiple machine gun positions.
Like, the best bad decision we can make is, is to move into machine gun fire. You know, to, to go on that mission, it's just like, okay, well, it's my job, this is what I volunteered to do, this is, this is what I enjoy doing, I feel like I'm pretty good at it, and it would be a disservice to my detachment if, if, you know, I didn't go on this mission or continue what I was doing, it's just, it's not like this big patriotic thing, like, oh, I'm here for America, and it's like, no, just, this is, this is what we're doing, this is, this is what This is what we're dedicated to at this point in time, and we're going to see it through.
Mike: I mean, I've come to believe strongly that life is nothing but a collection of experience, and it's not the experiences that matter, it's the people that you experience them with. And I use that story of you getting shot, uh, in that LZ. That landing zone, uh, going to rescue a bunch of Afghan commandos who had been pinned down.
I used that for years in a leadership academy that I was doing with one of my clients. And it was at some point where I was like, Hey, Chuck's back. Why don't I bring you along to tell your story so they get it right? And, uh, because to me, the key lesson of that The story, as I understood it, was, you know, people are watching you all the time when you're in charge, when you're a quote unquote leader, when you're in a leadership position, and that's not the reason to do the right thing.
It's just another reason to do the right thing. And as I understood your story, I took it as like, you know, here you were doing the right thing because it was the right thing. There were people whose lives were on the line, but also because. You needed to be the example. Your personal example was what was going to keep your guys in the fight, the Afghans in the fight.
And so I think it's, I thank you for what you did that day, but also the fact that it relates for the rest of us, an example of stick to your values, do the right thing, because it matters, regardless of the consequence. And people are watching. I mean, that's how I see it.
Chuck: Quantum Dagger. If you like future war, great stories, A military thought experiment type fiction and check out the book Quantum Dagger.
What makes this book special is that it was written by an active duty army special operations officer named Tom Gaines. He wrote the book as a realistic thought experiment on what the next war could look like between peer competitors with current technology trends. It's about as real of a what if as you can get.
You can find Quantum Dagger at Amazon. com and I highly recommend it. And back to the show. Maybe it motivates others to do the same thing, right? Yeah. Don't just sideline something, right? And sometimes it comes to a point where people are like, Hey, I can't do this, and that's perfectly fine. But also, if you have your mindset on something, that's what you want to do.
A juggernaut. Don't let anything stop you. I mean, I got this hip surgery on Monday, and my goal Wait, wait, wait. I'm not going to kid you. My goal is to run a marathon within 12 months.
Mike: A marathon. Why not a half marathon? Why not a going
Chuck: to run a do a half marathon, and people were piped up. They're like Well, you're, you're Chuck Ritter.
That sounds stupid. Like, why don't you just, that sounds like you're just, like, he'd probably do that in eight weeks after the thing. I'm like, probably not. Just go for a marathon. Have
Mike: you ever run a marathon before? I didn't know this. I, I thought, like, you're gonna do your first, your first foray into running after him.
I run all the
Chuck: time now. Yeah, I can run a marathon. That's not going to be a fast marathon. Pace, pace is everything. It's going to be like a 14 minute mile or something like that. I don't know.
Mike: So again, because we have this personal relationship, so that's, that's not a secret to anybody listening to us today.
But again, another thing I appreciate about you is your approach to learning. I mean, like I, I am inspired and in awe of your approach to learning. Talk to us a little bit about that. How do you take on New subjects or an interest in things. What is it about you or how you approach learning?
Chuck: I enjoy the reality of being ignorant about things.
Like, okay, I'm ignorant on this topic. Whatever it might be. Case in point, recently, I'm finishing up my bachelor's degree right now. Well, I saved on my math test or my math class till the end, knowing that I was weak on math and I haven't done math since I was in high school and I sucked in. So I went and purchased a bunch of different books, everything from fourth grade math, I would sit there for four hours a day.
I'd be here in the brief lab in the quiet workplace for sometimes more than four hours a day. Just getting myself to where I thought I was ready to take, I had to take an ALEC exam to see if I could take these tests. Getting to that point and then just recently taking this, it was only a 100 series math course too.
It was a bunch of concepts I was never, I'd never been, you know, statistics and sequential theory and, and stuff I just wasn't familiar with. And it, it crushed me. I had to spend three to four hours a day on it. But I really enjoyed, I enjoyed feeling like I was barely going to pass every exam. And I think I got mostly eighties on 'em and one seven, and I enjoyed the fact that it just crushed my soul with, and it reminded me, I'm thinking like, how, how have I been this ignorant my entire life and made it this far?
Right? Like, stuff like that. But it's enjoyable. I mean, the last, the final exam, I, I got up, I was like, okay, I gotta prep for this. I spent, I think three to four hours just prepping for the exam. And then the, the exam was three hours and I finished it with two minutes to spare, right? I think that's the one I got like a 78 on.
And I was like, man, that was really difficult, but it was enjoyable. I enjoyed the fact that. It reminded me of my own ignorance and I got to work harder and study. And I like, I like doing that with any, like, even what we're doing here with Objective Arte. I've been spending a lot of time recently looking into our model of the virtues.
Like, okay, what do these mean? Like, let me look at these different sources of what they say it means. And then talking to Greg and, and figuring, okay, what does it mean to us? Right? Let's, let's have these conversations and figure out what it actually means. It's interesting, funny, like right now I'm reading Undaunted Courage because I like, you know, you, you got me turned on an Endurance about the Shacklin expedition about all these people that have far more courage than we could ever have, right?
Like that's some crazy stuff and just learning about like, okay, well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How do they do this stuff? Like, how do you have all this frontier knowledge and be able to do these things and look at the stars of these instruments and navigate off that and know where you are? It's crazy. And it's just, it's just cool to always dig into something new that you don't know about and you can share that with other people.
Mike: So one of my, another one of my heroes is a guy who worked for me as a lieutenant when I was a company commander. And he's, he had a 10 or 11 year break in service and then came back on active duty, currently teaching math at West Point. And he would tell you that, you know, he doesn't really teach math, he teaches leadership, he teaches character, math is just a vehicle.
And uh, but listen to your story, and he would say like, you know, Hey, are you ever going to use a differential equation on the battlefield? No, but you're going to have to solve problems on the battlefield. And that's what it's, it's all about. And I, and as you were talking about that, it just made me think of Rob, Rob Craig, this guy, who's amazing.
And your story, like, it's like, can you embrace the suck? Can you embrace the challenge? Can you, what are the lessons here to learn? Besides Algebra or differential equations, right? To me, that's like, that's a great perspective to take on life. One
Chuck: of the biggest things it taught me too recently was we're doing graph theory, right?
And after I got done with the graph theory section, I remembered, um, what was it? It was, uh, bad, goodwill hunting, right? Goodwill, you know, they have the math problem on the board and they gotta figure it. So I went to this hunter and said, that's graph theory. That's like, not even that difficult of an equation.
Like, what are they talking about? Like, that's ridiculous. It's not the easiest equation by any means, but it's not like, Something I would think like some advanced MIT level, like math genius, would it only he could solve, right? Yeah. Like if you put a little bit of work and brain power behind it, you could probably solve in a couple hours.
I'm sure that that's just brute force, like the, what they're doing with figuring out the, you know, the different,
Mike: but it, it's an, it's interesting to me in part because you are so senior in rank. Right. And yet here you are pressing yourself, challenging yourself to learn and grow. And one of the things I've seen on the outside, I mean, I think I've seen this in the army too.
Right. And again, as people achieve higher ranking and move up the scale, they feel like they know it all and they don't need to learn as much. And it's, I see that in the civilian. There's people who feel like they get to a certain level, they know it all, they don't need to learn as much. And this is something I love about you and your story and your journey is you're, you're certainly not there.
You're at a point where you're still embracing the learning and embracing the challenge of all of that. And I think that's a, that's a huge example for anybody that wants to, um, be a better human. Like, why would you be satisfied with Being the way you were yesterday, like, isn't, isn't a life really about being better every day?
Chuck: Every day, right? Every day. People like to wrestle their laurels. It becomes a, I don't know, people stop being curious. Stay curious. Stay curious. Stay relevant, because interesting doesn't equal relevancy, right? Just because you did a bunch of, just because you did all those interesting things, I got shot like Okay.
What's the relevancy now? Like how am I in, how am I making those experiences relevant now? Well, the only way to do that is to continually educate yourself and ensure that you know what you're talking about. So you can combine your experience with knowledge, right? And then, you know, because training, education are different.
And being able to apply what you've learned with an education, pragmatically, is also different. So what do you bring to the table? Right,
Mike: because the lesson learned from what you did in the military might be a lesson that is applicable on the outside in the civilian world. And it might not. Or it might be in some cases and not in others.
Chuck: Because nobody cares what you did yesterday. What do you bring to the table today? That's all they should care about.
Mike: Yeah.
Chuck: Okay, what's in it for me now? What do you bring to the table right now that I can take from this?
Mike: Yeah.
Chuck: Besides a cool story.
Mike: Right. Right. And I think that that's so everything that we look at in life, that's a lesson that we can carry forward with other people.
It goes double for us, right? It's like, you know, it's, it's, it's even more important for us to remember and to take on. So what are your objectives? What are you, what are you hoping to achieve besides? Objective R. I. T. A. What is, what's the future hold for Chuck Ritter? What are you up to?
Chuck: Well, I'm about to obviously retire.
I'm about to have my last couple of surgeries. I got this hip replacement. Okay, so
Mike: let me stop you right there, right? Okay, so how old are you? 47. And you're talking about having to look forward to your 30, what?
Chuck: Well, this will be my 33rd surgery. Hopefully this hernia Surgery that's after that is my last surgery for a while, so I'll be 34.
I'll graduate in the spring for this bachelor's with, in strategic studies and defense analysis. And then I'm going to probably apply, well, I will apply to Duke's MBA program and continue with the Objective RTA. And that's, it's an EMBA program, so I'll still be able to do this. And yeah, continue to learn, continue to try to inspire people and do great things, be a better human being.
Mike: Okay, I know Mike Krzyzewski is going to be listening to this podcast episode. Sir, if you can help. Chuck Ritter get accepted to the Fuquay School of Business, make that happen? No, man, that, that's, uh, knocked down, but never kept down. I mean, that's, that's, uh, if I were to encapsulate the
Chuck: Chuck Ritter story.
Other people, like, people, like, I don't know, it's like a, like a national pastime, or it feels like it's a national pastime with people just trying to bring me down for some reason. I was getting shot or You know, a couple of years ago, you're, you're well aware I was in a bunch of tabloids, woke up one morning and like daily mail and all kinds of stuff for a bunch of nonsense for all that.
Right. Every time I turn around, somebody tries to bring me down because people have different reasons. Right. I always try to ensure that ends well for everybody. Like, what are we going to take it? How are we going to turn this into a win? How do you take this really shit situation and turn it into a win?
Not just for you, because sometimes that's easy. How do you turn it into a win for everybody?
Mike: Right. So we've talked about Stoicism and we've talked about, uh, Socrates, but, uh, that sounds rather like, uh, Nietzsche right there. That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Chuck: Take everything and flip it, right?
And things are gonna, things are gonna stress you out, they're gonna suck, but don't, don't have this victim mentality where like, oh, it's, okay, well, we probably had some responsibility in some of it somewhere. What was that, for one? What can we take from it? What can we learn from it? And then, how can we change this?
How can we flip this? It's a game to me. It's like, okay, this is really crap. Sometimes you can't do that. Like, you know, like in the morning when you like you overcooked your eggs or something. There's like, there's no coming back. It just pisses me off.
Mike: Okay. Let me ask you this question, Mike, the standard question here.
Where were you when you wanted to quit, but you didn't? Physically, mentally, what was going on?
Chuck: It goes back to Kunduz. When I got shot in my hand in 2014. It was right off the bird. I was probably shot within the first five minutes of action off the helicopter. And as we moved to this berm, I He took these rounds in the hand, which, which came in through the knuckle here and blew up most of the bones in my right hand.
First time ever in combat I had a double feat, which you have, which is where you have two rounds trying to go in the chamber. So there's malfunctions. So my weapon wasn't working. I was trying to shoot him off and I'm trying to fix it. I'm bleeding into the chamber. Apache gunship support that was supposed to be on station.
It was on the wrong HLZ. That's why they told us the HLZ was, our helicopter landing zone was clean when it wasn't because they're on the wrong helicopter landing zone. They weren't on my JK. Sure,
Mike: they were on the wrong one? Like, sounds like you guys were on the wrong one. No,
Chuck: we were on the right one. I, I had planned the HLZ.
I was like, this is the right one. Our, our controller, the Air Force controller, he didn't have comms with him. They had comms on my freak. He's freaking out. There's, there's so many rounds coming in. That then there's so much dust I can't see, and I remember for the first time ever, I remember like, man, my decisions here, planning this HLZ, advocating for this mission, we are all going to die because there's, I mean, because we'd watched earlier in the day what the enemy had, and it was very significant.
They had dismounted heavy machine guns. They'd held down two Afghan companies for days. a good part of a day already. I was like, okay, well, there's only 20 of us here on the ground with a bunch of afghans, you know, we're, we're about to perish and my, my controller is freaking out. There's dust. It's super painful.
I'm bleeding everywhere. I'm like, this, this sucks. And then I was like, wait a minute, what am I thinking? I'm like, no, we've, we've trained for this exact scenario. We're okay. I snapped out of it. And I was like, okay, it's not just me as this team. We are, we are a bunch of juggernauts and got to the J tech. I was like, Hey, Check it out.
I'm gonna push the patches to your frequency. This is exactly what I'm gonna do. Call the commander. So I was like, hey, look, you're down there. I'm up here. I'm gonna use your initials. I'm about to drop a lot of ordnance. You're gonna have to trust me. We're gonna get this, this thing going. We didn't drop that much ordnance and by the time we got there is when we dropped most of it.
But getting back in the game with my head and being able to calm like, you know, the team guys were like, we've got assault in here. It's like, hey, everybody calm down. I know that that seems like being aggressive right now is the right choice, but our main objective, the number one priority is to link up with the Afghans that are on the ground, and they are behind us somewhere.
And we don't know what we're getting into there, so we might just be moving away for more support, wait till the AC 130 gets on station, let's get some fires down, and then we can assault forward, you know, so that was pretty cool, like having to hold people back, got that, they did assault forward, we blew up a bunch of stuff, linked up with the Afghans, and then, instead of medevac ing me, we made the decision that, hey, I'm gonna stay on the ground, We're going to assault through this village and control it.
Because if we don't do that, if we land birds here, they're just going to shoot them down. So that's what we did. And that was probably one of the few times in my life where I'm like, man, I'm, I'm checked out. What am I, I'm done here.
Mike: Yeah. So how do you use that, the power of that not quitting and the lessons learned there?
How do you use that in your life now?
Chuck: Just always remembering that, hey, this is what I've committed. I've committed myself. to being an unstoppable force in nature. And I can't control, so I can't control if a truck hits me. I can't control if somebody comes up behind me with a bat. I can't control that. I can only control what I can control.
And within that I'm going to have that mindset that, but there's also the discipline that goes in with, like, if I'm going to do this thing, it can't be based on, it can't be based on hope. It has to be based on that. I'm going to have the discipline to do the things that, that achieve that objective. So that's what I call the objective of our activity.
The objective is to achieve our state of excellence. In order to do that, that's intentionality. So understanding that sometimes we have intentionality and things don't go as planned or. We just make the wrong decisions, that is going to happen, but just be able to recover from that, being able to understand that as humans, we are fallible and we're going to make a ton of mistakes and understand that every day as a human, like I am wrong somewhere and in order to understand where I'm wrong, I probably have to rely on somebody else to point that out to me because my bias and ego is going to not allow me to see that, but being okay with that and being able to reroute when you hit those roadblocks, when you hit those failures, to use those as a springboard and understand that no matter how bad it is, But if you believe that you're going to get up and dominate, then you will.
And if you don't, then you, you died trying. But what's the, what's the saying, it's, it's, it's better to die than be a coward.
Mike: Yeah. Well, thank God we didn't have to test that theory with you, uh, in 2014 in Kunduz. Cool. Chuck, thanks so much. Uh, it's an honor and a pleasure to know you and to be a part of this journey.
Thanks again for joining us. This conversation with Chuck Ritter, please like and share this episode and subscribe to the podcast and the Objective R Tay newsletter. You can follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. Join us next time when our guest will be Joe McCormick. Until then, find your equilibrium and be the fulcrum.