#397: You Can’t Heal What You Hide: A Story of Trauma, Truth, & Redemption with Joe Smarro

Kevin Lowe: I'm talking about abuse, neglect.

Kevin Lowe: Even setting his bed on fire is just a child. But the battles that Joe would face, they didn't just end with childhood.

Kevin Lowe: They weren't just confined to his home.

Kevin Lowe: Because Joe, he would go on to join the military. He would serve as a Marine.

Kevin Lowe: After the Marines, he'd serve as a police officer, a crisis negotiator, and a mental health advocate.

Kevin Lowe: But even through all of these chapters in Joe's story, all of these different titles, these different hats that he's worn, the most amazing transformation, it's what happened inside.

Kevin Lowe: This is a story of trauma, of transformation, of radical truth.

Kevin Lowe: It's a story that proves that true healing, it doesn't come from hiding the pain, but rather from having the courage to face it.

Kevin Lowe: If today's episode goes the way I hope, my friend, you yourself are going to leave a better version of you than when you came. Now, listen, before you dive in, I want you to do me a big favor.

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Kevin Lowe: And with that, my friend, this is episode 397 of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: I'm your host, Kevin Lowe. And who, baby, if you can't tell I'm excited you're here, well, please just know from the bottom of my heart, I am thrilled you're here today.

Kevin Lowe: And I believe without a shadow of a doubt that you're here for a reason.

Kevin Lowe: And I have to believe that there's something that you're going to hear today brought to us by Joe Smarro that might just change your life. Welcome to the podcast.

Podcast Intro Song: I Got Grit, Grace, & Inspiration on my mind...

Kevin Lowe: What's happening, everybody. Welcome back to today's episode. I am in the studio today with a guy named Joe Smarrow.

Kevin Lowe: Joe, man, it is a pleasure to have you here. Welcome to the podcast.

Joe Smarro: Thank you, Kevin. Really looking forward to the conversation with you, brother.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, man. Well, I'm excited to get to dive into your story.

Kevin Lowe: And obviously, I mean, it makes no sense, but to start at the beginning.

Kevin Lowe: And so specifically, though, you know, my first question is kind of going back to childhood.

Kevin Lowe: Would love just to kind of hear a little bit about that aspect of your life, just snapshot of childhood memories that you stand out to you, just kind of getting a picture of where it all kind of started.

Joe Smarro: Yeah. And Kevin, you have my full permission to cut me off anytime you want.

Joe Smarro: All right. Cause I heard like, tell me childhood.

Joe Smarro: And then you said snapshot. So I was like, Oh, I got to wrap this up.

Kevin Lowe: No, no, no, no. That's all good, man.

Joe Smarro: Yeah. Thank you for that. And I, I still, to this day, I'm 43 years old and I don't have any memories prior to seven years old.

Joe Smarro: I've been in therapy for about 16 years.

Joe Smarro: But my first big trauma, I guess we'll call it big T trauma, happened around that seven, eight-year-old mark where we were stationed down in Norfolk, Virginia.

Joe Smarro: My father was in the Navy and my mother, they were married. I have a sister who's three years older than me.

Joe Smarro: And my father was on a deployment. She had an affair with another sailor and he was consistently coming over to the house. And then he decided to start sexually abusing, molesting me, and this went on for And sometime I eventually had like brought it to my mom's attention to which it wasn't well received.

Joe Smarro: You know, she said something to the effect of like, no, we don't say those things. That's not happening.

Joe Smarro: And, you know, as a, as a child, you don't know how to process something.

Joe Smarro: So you're like, oh, okay, maybe this is what normal is.

Joe Smarro: But at some point, and this, this part of the story is important because it really is what drives the work I do now.

Joe Smarro: But at some point it was a weekend.

Joe Smarro: It was during the day. My, my father was still gone. and my mom was taking a nap on the couch and my sister was in the bathtub.

Joe Smarro: And my mom used to be a smoker. So I went out into her purse and I grabbed a book of matches.

Joe Smarro: I went into my bedroom and this is on base housing. And I shut the door and I laid underneath my bed and I was trying to set my bed on fire.

Joe Smarro: And I'd light a match and it would go out. I'd light a match, it'd go out.

Joe Smarro: And I just kept burning matches trying to catch my bed on fire.

Joe Smarro: And eventually the fabric underneath like burned through and it like caught.

Joe Smarro: And I rolled out, panicked, banged on the door. to the bathroom, got my sister out of the tub, woke up my mom, and we ran outside.

Joe Smarro: Now, luckily, because we were in base housing, the fire department was very close. They showed up quickly.

Joe Smarro: My sister, mother, and I are standing outside.

Joe Smarro: And I'm not realizing the severity of what I had done, but it wasn't catastrophic.

Joe Smarro: It did not burn the house down, but it definitely burnt my bed.

Joe Smarro: It charred the floor and then part of the wall.

Joe Smarro: But this fireman comes out real aggressive.

Joe Smarro: And he just straight lines towards me and leans down in my face, like pointing his hands in my face and just says, young man, if you ever start another fire again, you'll spend the rest of your life in prison. Do you understand me?

Joe Smarro: And I was like, whoa. So that's when I started crying and I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm in trouble. I didn't, I don't want to be in trouble.

Joe Smarro: Like I didn't mean to do anything bad.

Joe Smarro: And then I say, pause the story here because again, no ill will towards that fireman.

Joe Smarro: We trained them all over the country, but I just thought it would be really cool in hindsight if that fireman had learned our protocols that we teach now with our company what we call our CCRTC model of de-escalation, but it's curiosity, connection, rapport, trust, and compliance.

Joe Smarro: And I'm happy to talk about that later if you want, Kevin. But basically, it's like, focus on the person, not the problem.

Joe Smarro: What I tell people is, if someone doesn't listen to your words, their behaviors will always reveal the truth.

Joe Smarro: And now this is on a very deep subconscious level because I told my mom something that was happening.

Joe Smarro: And because it wasn't received, now, I escalated with, again, it wasn't like a straight line thought for me, but on some level, it was like, yeah, I don't like what's happening in my bed.

Joe Smarro: And so I'm going to burn my bed down. That's not normal behavior.

Joe Smarro: And if that fireman would have just stayed curious and pulled me to the side and said, Hey buddy, what's going on?

Joe Smarro: Like, why did you start the fire in that bedroom?

Joe Smarro: Is there something you're trying to communicate with us? Because what we know is that all human behavior is communication.

Joe Smarro: And instead of him offering me help or hope, he threatened me.

Joe Smarro: And so the abuse continued. At some point, my sister knows what's going on.

Joe Smarro: She calls our grandmother up in New York. This is like 1989.

Joe Smarro: She calls our father somehow on a naval ship, tells him what's happening, says, your daughter just called me, told me this stuff.

Joe Smarro: So he tells the Navy. The Navy gives him emergency leave to come home.

Joe Smarro: And chaos ensues. My dad ends up getting pushed out of the Navy.

Joe Smarro: My parents are getting divorced. We moved up to New York. I didn't go to third grade.

Joe Smarro: I was held back my third grade year because I wasn't in school a lot.

Joe Smarro: I was in and out of court. I was in and out of therapy three days a week.

Joe Smarro: And so I just missed most of a year of school. So they held me back.

Joe Smarro: And then my dad got custody of my sister and I, and he worked hard.

Joe Smarro: We never really saw him, but our relationship took a terrible turn.

Joe Smarro: He became an alcoholic, became very abusive, quite violent, hit me routinely, just horrible abuse.

Joe Smarro: And I remember at 15 years old, I was like, I don't want to do this anymore.

Joe Smarro: His girlfriend, whoever it was at the time, because he had three more relationships after my mother, every one of them cheated on him openly.

Joe Smarro: Every one of them after my mom was physically abusive.

Joe Smarro: And I just remember getting to this point where I was like, yeah, I don't want to do this anymore.

Joe Smarro: Like I, that's when my, I had my first suicidal thought was that 15 years old where it crept in of like, yeah, I just don't think life is worth living when there's this much like chaos and lack of safety and fear and nothing about this feels good or fun.

Joe Smarro: I mean, I was going to school every day.

Joe Smarro: My nickname was Smiley. I got really good at putting on a mask and hiding behind my fear and my wounds.

Joe Smarro: And if it wasn't for athletics, you know, I probably would have never finished high school, but yeah.

Joe Smarro: What happened to wrap this up now is I start leaving the house, staying with friends more.

Joe Smarro: I had the same girlfriend, ninth grade, 10th grade, 11th grade.

Joe Smarro: And finally, her parents took me in and were like, hey, you can start staying here for a little bit.

Joe Smarro: And this is a joke, Kevin. All right. This is a joke for all the listeners.

Joe Smarro: But my joke is just because you can't see my face or my expressions.

Joe Smarro: But my joke is, you know, as a junior in high school with a girlfriend of three years, and I don't have a job at this point, I'm not really working.

Joe Smarro: And so because her parents took me and I didn't know how to thank them.

Joe Smarro: And then it hit me and I was like, oh, I know I'll get their daughter pregnant. It was a gift for them.

Joe Smarro: The second punchline to that is in hindsight, they probably would have preferred a fruit basket, but my daughter is now healthy and she is 25 years old and doing well living in Dallas, Texas.

Joe Smarro: But that decision obviously was very hard because I became a father my senior year of high school.

Joe Smarro: And that changed everything for me. And it was the greatest blessing in disguise because I had zero desire to join the military.

Joe Smarro: But because now I'm a father as a child, you have limited options.

Joe Smarro: And the Marine Corps recruiter came in, did a great job selling me the dream, told me I wouldn't have to worry about finances, healthcare, my daughter would be taken care of. And that was in 2000.

Joe Smarro: And so I joined the Marine Corps and then 9-11 happened and that completely changed my world for the second time.

Joe Smarro: And I had two combat deployments. I was with the first Marines as we pushed up into Iraq, March 19th of 2003.

Joe Smarro: And it was a lot of trauma in that deployment for me.

Joe Smarro: And then I got out of the Marine Corps, moved to South Texas, where I currently reside now and joined the San Antonio Police Department.

Joe Smarro: That was more trauma, spent 15 years with them, eventually got on the mental health unit.

Joe Smarro: That changed and saved my life. And then at 15 years, I was like, yeah, I can't do this no more.

Joe Smarro: It's not good for me. I'm frustrated all the time. I love the job.

Joe Smarro: I don't love a lot about the job.

Joe Smarro: And so I decided to resign in 2020 and focus full-time on the business I created, which is what I'm doing now full-time as the CEO of Solution Point Plus.

Kevin Lowe: Wow, what a heck of a journey. Rewinding a bit back in the story as a kid, before you would go to live with your dad, And besides for the incident of lighting the bed on fire, did you have anything else?

Kevin Lowe: Like I think of kids maybe running away or anything like that.

Kevin Lowe: Did you ever do anything else?

Joe Smarro: Oh, I was a menace. So part of my mask at school just to survive it was to be funny.

Joe Smarro: So, you know, I'm quite witty still to this day.

Joe Smarro: Like comedy and humor come very natural for me.

Joe Smarro: But it was a protective mechanism for me, right? I'd rather people see me as funny than depressed or sad.

Joe Smarro: And outside of school, I became a bit of a thief.

Joe Smarro: It's funny, I have no business being in the military or a police officer, but I promise both of my careers were quite honorable, which is kind of a testament to how effective is the psychological evaluation that they actually give to get in, right?

Joe Smarro: But I would go to like, we had a penny candy store, a comic book store, and we'd have these It's like, you know, and it wasn't anything significant, but it was definitely like, it was just, again, it was just enough negative behavior that if I had gotten caught and arrested as a child, like how would that have changed my life completely, right?

Joe Smarro: And so for me as a police officer, I was always sensitive to dealing with the adolescents and the choices they were making because one, it was, and this is what drives my focus on the person, not the problem thing is anytime I would catch a child doing something, what we'll call stupid.

Joe Smarro: They know is against the law, but I would catch them. I'm very aware that the only reason I was in the position I'm in is because I got lucky enough to not get caught.

Joe Smarro: And so instead of me like shaming them or, you know, threatening them or talking down to them, it was always just like, Hey, look, we're not going to like debate the fact that we know what you're doing is wrong.

Joe Smarro: You know, it's wrong, but like, help me better understand what's causing you to get to this place where you're wanting to sabotage yourself because ultimately that's what it is. And they don't realize that at the point. Right.

Joe Smarro: So stealing things, I had a little graffiti stint where I would just like spray paint stuff.

Joe Smarro: I remember, you know, this is an upstate New York and smaller community, but we would just go around like some of my buddies or my half brother at the time or stepbrother, I guess.

Joe Smarro: And we would just like check garages. Like they had a side door, right?

Joe Smarro: It's not like, I don't know where you live, but here in Texas, it's like you have the A lot of the garages in New York were detached garages.

Joe Smarro: And so they had like the actual garage door, but then it had like a regular door on the side of it. And we would just check them.

Joe Smarro: And many of them were open. So we would just go like pillage through and just like, look at people's stuff.

Joe Smarro: And I mean, just absolute ridiculous behavior, but I'm not exaggerating.

Joe Smarro: Like I was very unsupervised as a teenager, really no parental oversight or attention, unless it was some type of violence or abuse.

Joe Smarro: And then my stepmom, whoever it was at the time, would just complain to my father nearly daily, but several times a week about like, oh, Joey, as I was called growing up, like, oh, Joey was mumbling under his breath again, or Joey was talking back to me, or Joey walked out of the house when he wasn't supposed to.

Joe Smarro: And then my dad would just come in and put hands on me, yell at me, treat me terribly, and then go crack a beer and go to bed.

Joe Smarro: And I was like, yeah, this is a quite terrible life.

Joe Smarro: One more I'll share just because it came up just to show how not well I was.

Joe Smarro: I remember, so we lived right on the Hudson River.

Joe Smarro: And it was right at the fork of where the Hudson River and I believe it's Ticonderoga maybe, but these two rivers come together and one of them had rapids and it was, I don't know, class two or three rapids. And there was people that would go down them.

Joe Smarro: And so I was used to just seeing people come by the house, and then also we had a bow bridge a mile up from our house, but you could see it from in front of our home.

Joe Smarro: And so people would frequently stop and look up the river to look at this bridge, because it was one of the last bow bridges in New York, I think, or I don't know.

Joe Smarro: So it was a popular spot. But anyway, people would drive by on their bikes.

Joe Smarro: And I remember one time, I have no clue what the hell I was thinking, Kevin.

Joe Smarro: In my mind being funny, I was up in the second story of my house with the window open and there were people just like riding by on bicycles.

Joe Smarro: And I decided to take a bow and arrow and shoot an arrow out my window towards people driving by on their bikes.

Joe Smarro: And one of them was so close that I actually had like a holy crap panic moment where, cause I think I'm being funny in the moment, right?

Joe Smarro: Obviously, I have a very underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. I have a lot of trauma.

Joe Smarro: I have all kinds of chaos. And I'm just thinking this is funny until I remember shooting one arrow.

Joe Smarro: It went right by this person's head, went right by their face.

Joe Smarro: And they're wearing a helmet, but still, I don't think that would have stopped it.

Joe Smarro: It went right by their face as they're riding a bike.

Joe Smarro: And I remember like, oh my God, if that would have just hit that person, oh, my life would be done.

Joe Smarro: What the hell am I doing? And that was one of those moments where that, and I know I said one, but just one more is there was this big rock wall a mile up from the house and we would go up there and cars would drive by on route nine and we would just like throw little rocks off and see if we could land it in the back of people's trucks.

Joe Smarro: And one time we threw one and it landed right on the person's windshield.

Joe Smarro: And it wasn't like a boulder, but it also definitely cracked the windshield.

Joe Smarro: And this one car came to a screeching halt. this guy got out, started screaming cuss words, and started climbing up this wall, and I was like, oh my god.

Joe Smarro: And I just ran deep into the woods to the point where I actually got lost.

Joe Smarro: That was pretty routine for me. At school, I was the funny kid that was naturally kind of gifted athletic, not size-wise, but just I had natural athletic talent.

Joe Smarro: So I was pretty good at whatever sports I played, which was tennis, soccer, and basketball, but I mainly focused on soccer. And so like at school, you would see me as one version of myself.

Joe Smarro: But what I realized is I got really good at like morphing into my environment to just fit in to try to feel safe.

Joe Smarro: And I'm not proud of those things. I'm not encouraging them at all, but I can definitely understand how they happened because of just, again, no real oversight of my life.

Joe Smarro: Like I would go to school, come home, and then it was just like, yeah, I knew I had from about 3 to 9 p.m.

Joe Smarro: Or 8 p.m. maybe to just kind of screw around.

Joe Smarro: And it didn't serve me well. But again, thank God I never got caught doing any of the stupid things I did that would have got me jammed up.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, absolutely. Wow. So I guess my next question is, as I listen to you talk about this wild childhood, teenage period, what possesses you with that amount of just unlimited freedom to join the military where I think like complete opposite? it.

Joe Smarro: Yeah. That's why I tell people I grew up super fast in the Marine Corps because you're right.

Joe Smarro: Like that was the first time in my life where I had like real structured discipline, but another fun story.

Joe Smarro: Uh, and if you know anything about the military or any in your audience, listen, we can all just agree that when it comes to basic training, the Marine Corps has it the hardest. It's not, it's a non-negotiable.

Joe Smarro: And so I'm in the Marine Corps, right. And they're very strict.

Joe Smarro: So we're in our squad bay. It's nighttime.

Joe Smarro: And we used to have to, I don't remember how frequently because bootcamp was three months long, but maybe once every few weeks, we would have to go shower and then we would stand online naked and a nurse would come by with our drill instructors and they would just like scan our bodies to make sure we're not all bruised and beat up and hiding injuries and all that stuff.

Joe Smarro: And so they come by our line and now there's two lines, right?

Joe Smarro: Cause there's bunks on like both sides of the squad bay with like a big row or aisle down the middle.

Joe Smarro: And we're online at attention facing forward and they come, the two drill instructors and the nurse come by, they do their scans and then they go to the other side.

Joe Smarro: And right when they get to the other side, they're right across from me.

Joe Smarro: Now, obviously both drill instructors and the nurse are facing away from me.

Joe Smarro: Their back is towards me. And I decide in this moment, I'm gonna be funny.

Joe Smarro: So I take my cover, as they call it, which is my hat, right, that we wear for a uniform.

Joe Smarro: I take my cover and I put it on backwards and I kind of start just doing a little dance.

Joe Smarro: And what I'm trying to do is to get the people across from me that are looking in my direction to laugh so that the drill instructors would smoke them.

Joe Smarro: But what happened instead was I didn't understand at 18 years old light reflection.

Joe Smarro: And the drill instructors are able to watch me through the reflection in the window, the direction they're facing.

Joe Smarro: They're seeing this happen. I have no idea. I think I'm being slick.

Joe Smarro: And I'll never forget it, man. I got my cover on backwards. I'm just doing a little quiet dance like an idiot.

Joe Smarro: And this drill instructor just kind of like takes a half step back and so fast.

Joe Smarro: He just whips around and comes straight at me.

Joe Smarro: And I'm like hand up on my hat on my cover about to take it off it's backwards and he's coming for and I don't have time to get it off and I'm done and he just starts like slamming his the covers they wear is called a smoky it's got that big like brim on it and he's just like slamming his smoky into my head screaming at me and I'm like oh my god my life is over but that's when I realized there's a time and place for comedy apparently and I need to get better at channeling that because

Joe Smarro: and I don't know that I ever did, honestly, because this kind of followed suit into the police academy as well.

Joe Smarro: And I've always just been someone that's like, let's push the envelope and see how far we can go with this.

Joe Smarro: But truth be told, you're absolutely right. And that was a great point that you made there, Kevin, is because it was such an opposite for me. And that was pre 9-11.

Joe Smarro: So even just the structure of it, having to wake up at a certain time, having to go to bed at a certain time, having to clean our room a certain way that would pass a white glove inspection.

Joe Smarro: There were so many lessons that, yes, they were hard, and yes, they challenged me, but they really did prepare me for the real world in a very, very fast way, which sadly didn't happen throughout my childhood years.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah, no doubt. Now, I'm curious, the fact that here you were just joined the military, and then like you said, then 9-11 happened.

Kevin Lowe: What was that experience in terms of, I mean, before 9-11, And had you even deployed like overseas?

Joe Smarro: No, because I was in an infantry unit out in California. So with the Marines, if depending on what unit you're with, if you're deployable or not, I was with a deployable unit.

Joe Smarro: And so over a four year contract, you're typically going to do two six month deployments just for training.

Joe Smarro: So we had one scheduled for January of 2022.

Joe Smarro: So we were going to go on a routine float. they call it, a six-month float, where for us, like you leave San Diego, you go to Hawaii, you go to Guam, you go to Singapore, Thailand, and then maybe Africa, and then you come back, right? And it's just training.

Joe Smarro: It's really just to keep a presence throughout the water.

Joe Smarro: But then 9-11 happens in September, and by...

Joe Smarro: October, we were already leaving. So it was, it got pushed up a couple months, but the big difference was all the things we heard about how great the Westpac floats are. So the Western Pacific, right? It's called Westpac.

Joe Smarro: So we heard all these great stories from other Marines about how fun these Westpac floats are, like how fun it is to go to these other countries and get what they call Liberty, which is just like time in country where you get to go and like play and explore.

Joe Smarro: And so I was excited about the idea of doing a routine Westpac float.

Joe Smarro: But then when 9-11 happened, suddenly it's like, oh, everything just changed.

Joe Smarro: This is no longer going to be fun. This is all business now.

Joe Smarro: And yeah, it was quite the psychological shift for sure, where it was the most difficult, challenging time of my life, regardless of all the trauma stuff I had been through.

Joe Smarro: Being in war is something that I truly believe no words, no journalism, like the brilliant journalists that are out there, the brilliant writers that are out there, the people that have written incredible stories, movies, Novels, whatever it is, it'll never truly capture the essence of being in it.

Joe Smarro: And it's no fault of anyone else's.

Joe Smarro: I just believe that so completely to be true, that if you are not in country, if you are not having to live in that level of stress and fear, being surrounded by chaos and explosions and death and hearing the whistle a bullet makes when it goes by your head and just seeing dead children and women and exploded vehicles and buildings and just pure chaos.

Joe Smarro: And then even Americans killed and shot and dismembered and burnt and to experience suicide where people in our own unit were killing themselves.

Joe Smarro: Just the amount of consistent saturation of chaos is life-changing and life-altering And to the ones that have truly been there and survived it, not just physically, but psychologically, Like hats off to them, because I don't know how that's, humanly possible to do, to see that level of, because what I tell people, Kevin, is I was trained, like the Marine Corps does a great job of training us.

Joe Smarro: So I knew how to shoot and move, fight, clear buildings, what they call mount training, military operation of urban terrain.

Joe Smarro: Like I, they prepared us for what we were going to deal with mostly, but then there's certain things that you can just not prepare for, right?

Joe Smarro: You can't prepare for the breakdown in communication. You can't prepare for the fact that like no one actually knows what the hell they're doing.

Joe Smarro: And everything that was done in a routine exercise where we knew it was safe, even with stress inoculation, when you get over there, there's always going to be an outlier that we didn't prepare for.

Joe Smarro: And so you're constantly having to be creative, to think on your feet, to be adaptive, to be malleable to your environment.

Joe Smarro: And communication is the most important aspect.

Joe Smarro: And my first day into crossing into Iraq, it was March 20th of 2003, because March March 19th is when the war started, but it was late at night and we were doing like a few hours of driving up Highway 1.

Joe Smarro: But that first day of war, that became very apparent to me that there were a massive breakdown of communication just amongst our own Marines as we were doing the invasion.

Joe Smarro: And there were some friendly fire incidents. They're just absolute mayhem.

Joe Smarro: And to deal with that for, you know, nine and a half months consistently was incredibly difficult.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Now, you said you ended up remaining in the Marines for a total of four years?

Joe Smarro: Yes.

Kevin Lowe: Now, when you first signed up, how long were you committed to? Just four years.

Joe Smarro: Yeah. Four years. It was a four-year contract. Yep.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. Okay. Was there any part of you at the end that ever thought about continuing on or were you glad to get out?

Joe Smarro: I was very glad. And so sad story here, Kevin, is when you're over there, they throw money at you.

Joe Smarro: And a lot of us are young, 18 to 22 years old, maybe 19 to 25 years old.

Joe Smarro: Is the probably median for most that are over there.

Joe Smarro: And they were throwing tax-free re-enlistment bonuses.

Joe Smarro: And if my memory serves me correctly, I want to say it was like $35,000 tax-free.

Joe Smarro: Now, as a 19-year-old kid, 20-year-old kid, you're like, oh my God, that's a million dollars in your mind.

Joe Smarro: And to know that you don't have to pay any taxes on that, I can just put that in my bank account and it's just there when I get back.

Joe Smarro: You're already starting to buy the vehicle in your head.

Joe Smarro: This is awesome. But I remember, so my first deployment, I didn't bring this up, but my first deployment was to Afghanistan.

Joe Smarro: And that was right after 9-11 because of, again, what President Bush was saying and weapons of mass destruction and all this stuff.

Joe Smarro: So my first deployment was to Afghanistan and it was a pretty inactive deployment.

Joe Smarro: Nothing really happened. We would do some helicopter operations, fly into Afghanistan, take over an airfield.

Joe Smarro: But when I say take over, It was really just like land, do a perimeter, do security.

Joe Smarro: Most of every time they would just leave, they would just give it up.

Joe Smarro: They didn't fight for it.

Joe Smarro: So I really didn't see any quote unquote action in Afghanistan.

Joe Smarro: So I was like, oh, this, you know, war's not so bad. This was pretty easy.

Joe Smarro: And then we came back home and did about a four month workup.

Joe Smarro: And then it's like, okay, now we're going to go into Iraq. And we were kind of like, eh, I doubt it.

Joe Smarro: Like, I don't think that's true. But I'll tell you, as far as psychological warfare on us, we got to Kuwait in January of 2003.

Joe Smarro: Between January of 2003 and March 19th, when we actually crossed into Iraq, we were probably told, I don't know, six to 10 times in those couple months, hey, everyone, pack up your stuff. We're not going to go in after all.

Joe Smarro: We're going to fly out tomorrow. We're heading home. We're like, oh, the first time I was like, awesome. So we packed up, we get our stuff, we're heading home. Cool.

Joe Smarro: The next day they're like, nope, change of plans. President Bush says we're going in. Everyone unpack, get ready.

Joe Smarro: Start doing your workups, do your preps, get everything ready.

Joe Smarro: We're going to head in tonight.

Joe Smarro: And then we wouldn't. And then four or five days later, all right, everyone, pack your stuff. We're going home.

Joe Smarro: Well, after five, six times, you just stop believing it.

Joe Smarro: And I remember vividly the time they were like, all right, let's go, everyone load up. We're going to cross in.

Joe Smarro: We're just like, we're so relaxed in our demeanor because no one believes it to be true.

Joe Smarro: And then the moment they're like, no, we're loading up into these Amtraks and we're crossing into Iraq.

Joe Smarro: I remember thinking like, oh, damn, like we're actually not going home.

Joe Smarro: And we're actually going to war this time.

Joe Smarro: They've been telling us this for two months, but like, it's never been true.

Joe Smarro: And now we're actually in Iraq.

Joe Smarro: Holy crap. Like it suddenly became very, very real.

Joe Smarro: And that deployment for me was the one where they were trying really hard to get us to reenlist.

Joe Smarro: Cause that was, so that was March to like October of 2003.

Joe Smarro: And I was, I was supposed to get out in June of 2004, which is when I did get out.

Joe Smarro: But because I was coming up on the end of my enlistment, that's when they were like, hey, you're on your last year. Do you want to re-up? We're going to give you this money. It's tax-free because we're overseas.

Joe Smarro: You can take this money now, sign up for another four-year contract.

Joe Smarro: And I was like, there is not a chance. I was already a father at this point, remember? That's why I joined.

Joe Smarro: I don't know that I would have had the courage to join, if I'm honest with you, Kevin.

Joe Smarro: If 9-11 happened when I was in high school and I had a baby, I don't know that I would have still been able to join the military just out of pure fear.

Joe Smarro: And I'm just being honest. I don't know that I would have had the courage to do it knowing, oh, I'm going to war.

Joe Smarro: I went to war because I was already signed up and felt I really didn't have a choice.

Joe Smarro: And I'm truly grateful for the experience, even though to this day, I still have to deal with a lot of that.

Joe Smarro: I still am in treatment for a lot of that. I'm diagnosed clinically with PTSD and persistent depressive disorder from the VA.

Joe Smarro: And I stay engaged in treatment, but man, what a difficult time for sure.

Joe Smarro: And so, no, there was no world in which I was wanting to reenlist and just do more of that because the writing was on the wall that we were nowhere close to done.

Joe Smarro: And if I were to reenlist, I was going to go right back.

Joe Smarro: And to end this part of the story, a good friend of ours, Moses Rocha, he was our sergeant in the Marine Corps, great guy.

Joe Smarro: He ended up taking the re-enlistment bonus. When we got back, obviously it's towards the end of my time. I start getting out.

Joe Smarro: They go right back over about four months after they got back.

Joe Smarro: And he ended up getting shot down in his helicopter and died.

Joe Smarro: And yeah, it was like, man, it was such a difficult thing because he got killed in combat.

Joe Smarro: And then one of our other good friends ended up killing himself from our unit.

Joe Smarro: And then another guy, it came out that it was an ATV accident.

Joe Smarro: But this guy was like the chief, he was the colonel's driver.

Joe Smarro: He was a very good driver, but he apparently slammed his ATV into a tree.

Joe Smarro: And while it was ruled an accident, a lot of us wonder if that was the case or not. So yeah, and it's been tough.

Joe Smarro: It's been tough, whether dying in theater or taking your life from suicide after it.

Joe Smarro: I'll tell you, I've struggled with those thoughts since getting out in 2004 throughout my time in the police department as well.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Now, it's something that I'm always curious about for anybody who's served in the military, and especially as a state that you did, deployed overseas, fighting like that.

Kevin Lowe: How in the world do you transition back to just normal civilian life?

Joe Smarro: Not well, Kevin.

Joe Smarro: Yeah. I mean, this is why I always tell people like, yeah, I survived war physically, but psychologically there's no world.

Joe Smarro: Right. And just to pull that thread a little bit for you, Kevin.

Joe Smarro: So for me, I'm 22 years old, right? I don't have a college degree.

Joe Smarro: I sucked in school, like in high school, like my grades were terrible.

Joe Smarro: Cause again, I didn't like going. I wasn't very smart.

Joe Smarro: I legit thought I was a stupid person because I never did homework because I rarely went home because, you know, so I obviously failed a lot of tests because I wasn't doing the homework to prepare.

Joe Smarro: School was very hard for me. So I legit thought I was a dumb person. So now I'm 22.

Joe Smarro: I legitimately don't think I'm very smart. I don't have a college degree.

Joe Smarro: I don't have any real skills except for like, I know how not to die in war.

Joe Smarro: Okay. So how does that transfer? Like, what do I do with this?

Joe Smarro: And yeah, it's like, what profession kind of mirrors the military in the sense that like you get paid every couple of weeks, there's a pension, there's benefits, and it has a very low barrier of entry. Oh, I know I'll go be a cop.

Joe Smarro: And, you know, that's not an offensive thing to anyone that is a police officer, as family that's a police officer. That's just a fact.

Joe Smarro: It is not hard to be a police officer in this country.

Joe Smarro: If you have a decent credit score, you haven't done drugs in a few years, and you're a relatively decent human being, and you can pass the MMPI saying you don't still wet the bed or burn cats, and you have the physical fitness standards to pass the PT test, you can be a police officer.

Joe Smarro: And again, I have a problem with that. I really do. I think the standards needs to be raised for this profession.

Joe Smarro: I remember, and I'm not jumping, but I want to make this point, Kevin, is the first time I went to the VA for treatment, like I was acutely suicidal.

Joe Smarro: I was a cop for about eight years and my wife's leave. My second wife is leaving me.

Joe Smarro: I've got three divorces by the time I'm 30 years old. I'm just a whole mess of a, of a person.

Joe Smarro: And my wife's leaving me saying, Hey, I hate you. And something is seriously wrong with you. Like something is legitimately wrong.

Joe Smarro: And I remember sitting there, I'm staring at my gun belt and I'm thinking like, I just, I just don't want to live anymore.

Joe Smarro: How long am I going to be just thinking about suicide before I just make this choice and just be done with it?

Joe Smarro: And for whatever reason, in that moment, it was so vividly clear to me.

Joe Smarro: We'll call it the still small voice. We'll call it the loud booming voice.

Joe Smarro: I don't know, but it was so vividly clear that two things happened in that moment of me looking at my gun thinking, I just want to die.

Joe Smarro: It was, Joe, you need to go to treatment and you need to go to college.

Joe Smarro: And both of those were the furthest things from anything I ever would have thought I would have done.

Joe Smarro: And I'm like, what the hell was that? Like, why would I go to college? I hate school.

Joe Smarro: I'm stupid. Like, why would I ever go to college and then go to the VA?

Joe Smarro: Like, why would I go to the VA?

Joe Smarro: I have my limbs. Now in San Antonio, it's one of the most prevalent places for treatment for warfighters.

Joe Smarro: We've got the Center for Intrepid. We've got SAMSI. It's a level one burn trauma center.

Joe Smarro: So I'm used to seeing very physically injured veterans or active duty personnel in this city.

Joe Smarro: And then here I am like, yeah, my body is fine. I have no burns.

Joe Smarro: I have all my limbs. I'm not on prosthetics. Like I'm not in a wheelchair.

Joe Smarro: I don't walk with a cane. Like what the hell is my excuse? Like I don't need help.

Joe Smarro: And that was, and I worked on a mental health unit, which is the absurdity of all this.

Joe Smarro: And, but that's how real stigma is. And so I remember going to the VA And they're doing my background and my life. And same like you have like, tell me about your childhood, your life and all this stuff.

Joe Smarro: And I remember Charlie tells me the first session, he goes, Joe, just so you know, with your level of childhood trauma, you are 300 times more likely to develop PTSD with any combat exposure.

Joe Smarro: And my first question was, well, then why the hell did they let me join?

Joe Smarro: And he's like, oh, because we don't screen for that. It's like, can you do pull-ups and run three miles? Welcome to the military.

Joe Smarro: And I was like, well, that's a problem. He's like, yeah, it is a problem.

Joe Smarro: So that same thing kind of carries over into policing. So I get on the police department and lo and behold, I get on the police department. I want to help people.

Joe Smarro: I'm still the class clown at the police academy. So many people are stressed out. People are quitting. They're like, oh my God, they're yelling at me. This is scary.

Joe Smarro: I don't know if I can do this work and I'm just having the time of my life.

Joe Smarro: A lot of the instructors told me afterwards, they're like, dude, we don't know how you even graduated.

Joe Smarro: We all were taking bets on the fact that like you were never going to make it through just because you're such a jackass and you just love like, you know, joking around all the time. You took nothing serious.

Joe Smarro: And I'm like, well, yeah, because I know that this is just a mind game.

Joe Smarro: You guys are just trying to break us to see who's going to be weak and not be able to finish this psychological game you're playing with us.

Joe Smarro: And yeah, I might struggle psychologically and I might have an undiagnosed mental illness at that time, but the Marine Corps prepared me very well to like never fold to the games.

Joe Smarro: Like it's just a mindset thing. And like, yeah, when it comes down to mindset to mindset, I won't lose. I really believe that.

Joe Smarro: And I still struggle with like my own stuff for sure.

Joe Smarro: Right. But anyone else like playing a game with me or psychologically trying to break me, it's like, yeah, that's not going to work.

Joe Smarro: But I can break myself because I am my own worst enemy for sure.

Joe Smarro: And I get on the police department and 364 days into my policing career, one day before my first year anniversary, I get a call. I'm working the south side of San Antonio.

Joe Smarro: It's nighttime. I get a call for a guy screaming in a parking lot.

Joe Smarro: I show up. He's there. He's not screaming. He's just staring into space.

Joe Smarro: And I'm trying to talk to him. He won't respond. Trying to engage. He won't respond.

Joe Smarro: I'm like, all right, man, I got to get you identified before I can let you go.

Joe Smarro: Like you're not in any trouble, but just tell me your name and birthday so I can say I was here and then I'll take off.

Joe Smarro: He wouldn't do it. And so I'm like, all right, we'll come to my car.

Joe Smarro: And I grab his arm. We start walking to my car. He's complying.

Joe Smarro: And as soon as we get to my car, he pulls his hand, his arm away from my hands, turns around, punches me in the face, fights on and nothing came off my belt.

Joe Smarro: No taser, no pepper spray, no baton, nothing.

Joe Smarro: We're just doing Brazilian jujitsu. We're just grappling on the ground, but he is screaming.

Joe Smarro: He is screaming his face off. Help me.

Joe Smarro: Please help me. He's killing me. He's going to kill me.

Joe Smarro: I didn't have any mental health training. I don't know what the heck's going on right now. I'm like, what is going on? Like this dude must have a felony warrant.

Joe Smarro: He's just trying to get away from me, but it was right at shift change.

Joe Smarro: And so it was terrible timing, but I ended up rolling with this guy for seven minutes and 24 seconds, which is a long time before the first cover officer showed up.

Joe Smarro: And it took four of us to get this guy handcuffed, no weapons, just rolling with this guy, trying to get his arms behind his back to handcuff him.

Joe Smarro: And as soon as we got handcuffs on him, he died.

Joe Smarro: And so I've got an in custody death. Now as a cop, I got out of the Marine Corps because I was tired of being surrounded by death.

Joe Smarro: I was tired of causing death. I didn't like being around death.

Joe Smarro: So now I'm a cop and oh, I get a call for a guy. I'm just doing my job.

Joe Smarro: And now this dude's dead. And of course the media puts him out.

Joe Smarro: There is like his name, father of five, 35 year old man, father of five killed by the police.

Joe Smarro: And I'm like, damn, man. So I went into a dark, dark depression and that's when all of my childhood stuff, my military stuff, and now my police stuff all hit me at once.

Joe Smarro: And that was the first time I was, I was probably 24, 25 at this time when that happened. And that's when I just took like almost two decades worth of trauma and just spiraled.

Joe Smarro: And then I spent the next seven, eight years actively working very hard, trying to destroy my life.

Joe Smarro: My vice was, thank God, not alcohol or marijuana or heroin or meth or anything like that or opiates, but my drug was women.

Joe Smarro: And I would use women to validate myself because I hated myself.

Joe Smarro: I had no self-esteem and I didn't believe love was real. I didn't think relationships would last.

Joe Smarro: And so I would get into a relationship. I would have an affair.

Joe Smarro: I would get caught. I'd break up. And this just happened over and over and over until finally I woke up and was like, wait a minute.

Joe Smarro: I actually think I've discovered the common denominator in all this. And that's me.

Joe Smarro: What if I'm the problem here? And that was the greatest blessing of my life was it's a mantra I live by to this day now, which is everything is my fault.

Joe Smarro: And for your listeners, I'm not being harsh on myself and I don't want you to be harsh on yourself. but please understand that anything that happened to you all as children was not your fault. You didn't deserve it.

Joe Smarro: Anything bad that happened to you, if you were a victim of something in your childhood, that was not your fault.

Joe Smarro: And you did the one thing that we're all supposed to do as kids, which is just survive. All we're supposed to do in this life is survive our childhood.

Joe Smarro: But then the great blessing is as adults, it's now on us to figure out what worked for me, what didn't work for me.

Joe Smarro: What I'm doing through therapy right now is what they call like it's inner trauma work.

Joe Smarro: But she told me like, hey, Joe, listen, the structures you created to survive your childhood were incredible because they helped you survive your childhood.

Joe Smarro: The problem is those are not going to serve you now as an adult.

Joe Smarro: And it's like, oh, so it's a lot of unlearning in my trauma work is accepting what happened to me as not my fault, but now taking responsibility for the choices I make as an adult because I'm sabotaging myself because of course I want to get in trouble or have my wife leave me because I don't believe I deserve to be loved. I don't think I'm worthy of anything good.

Joe Smarro: And so let me actively try to destroy my life so then I can be a victim to it.

Joe Smarro: And that's a lot of the work I've spent the last decade doing.

Joe Smarro: And it's still, I'm a work in progress. It's hard. It really is hard, Kevin, that I have to do this Daily with my mindset work, managing my own thoughts, like giving myself grace, learning the power of gratitude and not future tripping or past dwelling, but really just rooting in the present moment to find something good.

Joe Smarro: And it's a daily journey for sure.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. When that happened with that man who died, was there any part of you that wanted to just go ahead and quit being a cop at that point?

Joe Smarro: Absolutely. But with my company now, Solution Point Plus, we offer training all over the country, right?

Joe Smarro: And to various groups, it's not just for first responders, it's everywhere.

Joe Smarro: But so much of our work with first responders is like, hey, listen, you have to learn to be honest with yourself.

Joe Smarro: Like I was an anomaly leaving at 15 years.

Joe Smarro: My own peers were telling me how stupid I was like, dude, what are you doing?

Joe Smarro: Like you don't get a pension at 15 years, like just do five more years.

Joe Smarro: Like just wait till you have 20 years and then you'll get your pension.

Joe Smarro: And I'm like, yeah, but I'm not happy. And they're like, none of us are, but you don't leave.

Joe Smarro: And I was like, well, that's terrible advice. And so it was me stepping out on faith of like, yeah, I don't know if this is going to work or not, but I'm going to pursue this passion I have of this company that I've created that I, you know, that I want to see where we can take this.

Joe Smarro: And, you know, it was just me and Jesse. Cause as soon as I quit my business partner, Jesse left right after me two weeks later, he had about almost 11 years as a cop. I had 15 years.

Joe Smarro: I quit, he quit. And we're now four and a half years into this full time.

Joe Smarro: I mean, we're still doing this together.

Joe Smarro: And, but it's like, man, if I just stayed stuck there, You know, if I call it playing small, but it's, it's because we become a prisoner to our pension.

Joe Smarro: And for me, I think a pension is a great idea, but understand a pension is fixed income most often.

Joe Smarro: And if you are not happy doing the thing you are spending a third of your life doing, then change it.

Joe Smarro: Like none of us were drafted into our professions, right?

Joe Smarro: Like no one came to your door, Kevin, and said, Hey, sorry, Kevin, bad news, but you're going to start a podcast and you don't have a choice, right? If you didn't get joy from doing this, I imagine, I would hope that you would just stop doing it, but it's because you still enjoy it.

Joe Smarro: You love doing this is why you have a great show, right? It's why your audience loves listening to you because they know you're passionate about it.

Joe Smarro: There are far too many police officers that have lost their purpose and passion in the work. They become so frustrated.

Joe Smarro: They have just become pawns in the system. They don't love the leadership.

Joe Smarro: They themselves are bad leaders, but they won't leave. And I've heard this countless times all over the country.

Joe Smarro: And again, not just police, fire, EMS, corrections, dispatchers, nurses, teachers, public transit workers, all of our clients, everything I just named, we have clients in all of those professions.

Joe Smarro: And I have heard it every single time from somebody saying, I just have to do X more years before I can be done. And I'm like, why?

Joe Smarro: Like you have one life to live. Why not? What I call maximize the human experience is like, if we can just accept that we're here, right? Whether it's whatever you believe in, God, karma, faith, Big Bang, it doesn't matter to me.

Joe Smarro: That's between you and you.

Joe Smarro: But for me, it's like the thing we cannot deny is the fact that we get to be alive is a miracle.

Joe Smarro: And the best estimates I found in research is that the odds of us being born is one in 400 trillion.

Joe Smarro: So we can't argue the fact we are a miracle. And we know that on average in America, our life expectancy is about 78 years.

Joe Smarro: All right. So if we're alive for 78 years on average, and for me, like I'm 43 years old, I already look about like, not that I want to die at 78.

Joe Smarro: I don't want to die. I want to, I want to, I want to live to 150 if I can be healthy.

Joe Smarro: But because I've learned now to start enjoying my life and it's taken me a long time to get here, but I also realized that the statistics and data would tell me because of my high ACEs score, my adverse childhood experiences score, that I have a lower life expectancy because of the amount of trauma I have, because of my poor life choices I've made, because of these things that I've endured, I have a lower life expectancy.

Joe Smarro: So if 78 is the end of my line and I'm 43, it's like, oh, I'm already more than halfway into my life. I want to enjoy this. I want to have fun.

Joe Smarro: Like to me, life is meant to be enjoyed and we have way too many people taking it far too serious and then not willing to do the things required to make changes for themselves.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, 100%. What for you was the, I guess, the turning point, honestly?

Kevin Lowe: I mean, after that incident, after the year mark of being a police officer, you spiral down, we go through all of this stuff.

Kevin Lowe: But what was kind of the turning point when things turned around for you?

Joe Smarro: There's two things that saved and changed my life.

Joe Smarro: The first one was therapy. 16 years ago, just starting that journey and kind of breaking through the own stigma that I had, that was incredibly powerful for me.

Joe Smarro: And it was my wife, my second wife leaving me the first time.

Joe Smarro: And then the second thing was about seven years ago, I discovered a channel with Tom Bilyeu called Impact Theory.

Joe Smarro: And it was just like a mindset. It was all about growth mindset, and he would have incredible guests on his show as a video podcast on YouTube.

Joe Smarro: And I remember he had Ryan Holiday on there, and Ryan Holiday, who I had never heard of before, was talking about stoicism, which I had never heard of before.

Joe Smarro: And when he was speaking, it woke up something in my soul to where I was like, whoa, what is this?

Joe Smarro: And then I went down the stoicism path and started reading Ryan Holiday books.

Joe Smarro: The obstacle is the way stillness is the key.

Joe Smarro: The daily stoic, all this stuff. And I was like, this to me feels like truth.

Joe Smarro: And I have a tattoo on my arm that says, I'm more fati, which is a quote that just says it translates to love of fate, which it's like, hey, if it's happening to you, it's happening for you.

Joe Smarro: And what I tell people is you can either learn the lesson through it or you can hold the pain of it, but I'd rather learn the lesson.

Joe Smarro: And then just another beautiful quote that I love, which is, I've learned to become grateful for the things I wish never happened.

Joe Smarro: Like, sure, I wish I was never molested. I wish I was never abused.

Joe Smarro: I wish that I didn't have to join the military out of necessity of being a father as a child.

Joe Smarro: And I have learned to become so grateful for all of those things in my life because it's what drives the work that I do today that gives me meaning and purpose.

Joe Smarro: And so without those, who knows what I would be doing.

Joe Smarro: And when we can have that reframe, and again, stoicism has really helped deliver me and get me there to that, it really just makes the world binary.

Joe Smarro: And while human beings are incredibly complex and I have such deep love for people, I really do see the world as simply binary.

Joe Smarro: And it's like, is this in my control or is it not? If it's not in my control, then why am I going to stress and worry about it?

Joe Smarro: And I think we just have so many people right now operating from a place of things that are so far outside of their control, and yet they carry massive amounts of burden because of it.

Joe Smarro: And while again, I have so much empathy for them, I also see it as voluntary suffering.

Joe Smarro: Because if we learn to manage our minds, if we get into therapy and heal things, if we get into coaching and have accountability and someone revealing our minds to us and how they work so that we can learn how to leverage them, then there's incredible freedom on the other side of that.

Joe Smarro: Right. But there's something about the fact that like some people just for whatever reason it is, there's a myriad of reasons, but it's just a form of sabotage.

Joe Smarro: But sadly, there's a lot of people that just want to stay stuck because it's comfortable.

Joe Smarro: And it's like my therapist told me, it's like, Joe, you thrive in chaos.

Joe Smarro: So like when things are calm, when I have a really good day, I have to be very careful because I'm like, uh-oh, the thoughts start to creep in of like, okay, this is going way too well. I need to make sure I ruin this.

Joe Smarro: And so what can I do to cause conflict in my own life to make sure my day gets worse?

Joe Smarro: And I have to be very, very mindful of that. But again, I have committed to doing the work.

Joe Smarro: So it was divorces, it was therapy, and it was the discovery of stoicism that really woke me up and realized I've got to start taking control of my life.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. That's incredible. That's absolutely incredible. And I guess my next question is, as I listen to you talk, I can't help but wonder, A guy who has struggled himself with mental illness, how do you then, like, you would almost think in my head, you would want to steer clear of that.

Kevin Lowe: Like, you have your own struggles, but instead, you've kind of dove deep into it, helping others with their own mental state.

Joe Smarro: Yeah, and I think, Kevin, it's a great point. I will, I'll admit that my first two years, year and a half to two years on the mental health unit for San Antonio police department, I was a massive hypocrite.

Joe Smarro: I showed up every day telling people again, I'm a, I'm good at putting those masks on.

Joe Smarro: It's why my TEDx talk, I titled, I see you because it's about seeing beyond your mask.

Joe Smarro: And, but I would show up every day telling people, you know, if you just took your medicine, if you just went to the doctor, if you would just stay on your meds, if you would just go to treatment, you wouldn't have to deal with the police. You wouldn't have to be mad at us.

Joe Smarro: And then I would go home. I struggled with like a pornography addiction for three years.

Joe Smarro: I would drink four or five beers after my shift, just trying to like calm myself down and go to sleep.

Joe Smarro: And I'm like, I'm a mess. Like I'm an absolute mess of a human being.

Joe Smarro: But then I would show up to work every day on time with a good attitude.

Joe Smarro: And people were like, oh, wow.

Joe Smarro: And I did. When I went to therapy, I also started going to school.

Joe Smarro: And guess what? I finished number one in my school as the top graduate with the highest GPA. And it wasn't because I was the smartest.

Joe Smarro: It was because I was the most distracted. And what I mean by that is I used school as a crutch. School was 6 p.m.

Joe Smarro: So I would work 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. And then school was 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Joe Smarro: And anytime I'd go to school and the professor would say, hey, good news, guys, we're going to be out of here tonight by seven o'clock, I would panic.

Joe Smarro: And I'm like, no, I can't leave at seven o'clock because I'm not going home.

Joe Smarro: Home is not a safe place for me. I don't like being home.

Joe Smarro: So when we would get released at seven, I would just stay there.

Joe Smarro: I would go to the library. I'd sit in my truck and I would just do the work.

Joe Smarro: And so I think because I just put the most time into the assignments, that's how I ended up finishing top of the class. But it was all out of avoiding wanting to be home.

Joe Smarro: And again, when people create their distractions or their masks or their avoidant behaviors, it's so hard for them sometimes to agree or see it when it's something positive.

Joe Smarro: Because on the outside looking in, if you didn't know any better, you'd say like, Like, wow, look at Joe. He's a great cop. He's doing great work in the community. He's well-respected. He's never getting in trouble.

Joe Smarro: In fact, he's getting awards and accolades. And he's in school.

Joe Smarro: And he's finishing top of his class. He's on the dean's list.

Joe Smarro: He finished number one. Like, man, what a great guy.

Joe Smarro: And yet, I'm still thinking, I just want to die.

Joe Smarro: And it wasn't until again, after that two year mark where I decided I need to go to treatment and start going to therapy.

Joe Smarro: And then to actually answer your question and make the point, Kevin, this work became cathartic for me.

Joe Smarro: And what I learned was every time I go to therapy and learn something about myself, I was like, whoa, yes, this is good for me.

Joe Smarro: This is all for me, but other people need to know this.

Joe Smarro: And I have a privilege of working on a mental health unit where I get to interface with people in the worst moments. and what am I doing that I'm learning through my own therapeutic journey that now I can help other people?

Joe Smarro: And again, I'm not providing therapy in crisis context.

Joe Smarro: I'm doing de-escalation, but I'm learning skills that have allowed me to better connect to myself that now I can take and use on other people to help them better connect with themselves.

Joe Smarro: And even if it was just to give them hope to wanna stay alive one more day.

Joe Smarro: And now I am in a position where I help people that help people.

Joe Smarro: And as a training company, we fuse all of these concepts and the things that I've learned through my various treatment modalities, even stoicism.

Joe Smarro: Stoicism influences all of our content and our curriculum.

Joe Smarro: And so I've taken all of these things on my own journey, right?

Joe Smarro: And the saying we use is facts tell and stories sell, right?

Joe Smarro: Jesse, who has a PhD, he's just got to finish his dissertation.

Joe Smarro: I'm four classes shy. My master's degree, my goal is to never have to finish it because in business, I don't need the formal education. I just need execution and decision-making.

Joe Smarro: But for me, like we are intelligent people.

Joe Smarro: And I just want people to know, like when they come to our trainings, that it's like, we're not just going to give you a whole bunch of research and data.

Joe Smarro: We're going to let you connect to us as people that have lived experiences and stories.

Joe Smarro: And this is the power of like peer connection and peer support is when you have people with lived experiences, it's so much easier for an audience to connect to them versus just saying the data says, or the research says, and it's like, yeah, but have you lived this life? And my answer typically is yes.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah, I love it. As we've kind of walked through this story today, we've talked about these multiple transitions in your life, whether from going from living at your mother's to your father's, to you leaving home, ended up living with friends and then your girlfriend, then joining the military, then becoming a cop.

Kevin Lowe: All of these transitions that really were things that weren't quote unquote like the thing, the, say, the choice that maybe you wanted to do, but you just didn't. When you made the choice...

Kevin Lowe: To chase a passion, leaving being a police officer into this world of kind of entrepreneurship.

Kevin Lowe: What was that transition like? Because it was really the first time from my kind of perspective that you chose something based really on what you wanted to do.

Joe Smarro: Incredible, Kevin. Yes. You're an incredible listener and you are really skilled and talented at seeing the throughput here.

Joe Smarro: So right before I left, it was doing the work with my therapist that I'm still with now. I've been with her almost seven years.

Joe Smarro: And she was a big reason why I left because, you know, again, I had all the fear. I fought it for 18 months.

Joe Smarro: I was like, I know I'm not happy, but I can't just walk away.

Joe Smarro: And yeah, I have this business, but like, we're not making any real money.

Joe Smarro: I mean, we're making like $30,000 a year as a side hustle.

Joe Smarro: Like I can't live on that and pay my child support and health insurance and all that.

Joe Smarro: So I'm like, yeah, I don't know that leaving is smart, but I also don't love being unhappy every day.

Joe Smarro: And I remember my therapist telling me, she goes, Joe, just like you brought up right there.

Joe Smarro: She's like, you have been a victim or a passenger in your whole life or in your life, your entire life, right? You chose the military because you had a kid.

Joe Smarro: You chose the police department because you didn't have a skill or a job that you thought would transfer. So you just became a cop.

Joe Smarro: You went to school and therapy because you thought this was a better alternative to suicide.

Joe Smarro: And you've always done things from the passenger seat of your own life, and you've never really taken control of it.

Joe Smarro: She was like, I want you to pull out your phone and let's just pick a date on the calendar and you're going to quit.

Joe Smarro: And I was like, ah, terrified, like so afraid.

Joe Smarro: And she goes, Joe, I promise you, if you just focus all your time on this one thing, because it's what you're actually passionate about, you can't fail.

Joe Smarro: And other people had told me this, right? Other people in the entrepreneurship space that I belong to, some mentors are like, you're not an entrepreneur, you're a wantrepreneur because you still have your safety net.

Joe Smarro: You know, you're getting paid in two weeks, so you don't have to grind on your business. And man, were they right?

Joe Smarro: Because I'll tell you, in fact, in 2020 was our best year ever.

Joe Smarro: So things started to pick up, which was a blessing. We did like $70,000 in 2020 as a side hustle, but still it was COVID, right?

Joe Smarro: We're in the midst of COVID, COVID's March, 2020, and we're now in September.

Joe Smarro: And that's when I resigned was September 24th and the world shut down and I own an in-person training company. So all odds are stacked against me.

Joe Smarro: And yeah, I honestly don't know. We just figured it out, but lo and behold, everyone was right.

Joe Smarro: And again, I'm not bragging. I'm just trying to make a point here and answer the question, but Wouldn't you know it, in 2021, we went from $70,000 to over $700,000 in business our first year.

Joe Smarro: And we had like 900% growth. And I was like, oh my goodness.

Joe Smarro: Now, these are fun problems to have because I don't know how to actually manage money.

Joe Smarro: So now I've got to learn this skill because I've never made this kind of money before, right? And so we made mistakes there. We were just burning cash.

Joe Smarro: One of my mentors said, dude, you didn't create a business. You just created an ATM machine. This is not sustainable.

Joe Smarro: Slow down. Um, yeah. So, but to bring all that home, yes.

Joe Smarro: The point is when I finally decided I'm going to do what I want to do, it's what one of my, I got some custom shoes made Kevin.

Joe Smarro: I got these like custom Nike air force ones made and how I signed every one of my books, right?

Joe Smarro: Cause my first book just came out 2024 called unarmed.

Joe Smarro: And a lot of the stuff that we've talked about today is in that book.

Joe Smarro: And so I'd love to just offer some to your readers, but I sign every one of my books the same, which is be selfish.

Joe Smarro: And this idea of learn to choose yourself for yourself, it's not bad.

Joe Smarro: As a society, we've created such a negative description of what being selfish is. And there is a negative side of selfishness for sure.

Joe Smarro: But my version of selfishness is I want to be known as a selfish person, a selfish man, a selfish individual, because you know, based on my actions, that I'm a very selfless person.

Joe Smarro: And when I say be selfish, it means I go to therapy, even if I'm on the road, I'm gonna do it over Zoom. I have to play golf.

Joe Smarro: And not daily, not even weekly, but if I don't get a tee time in at least once a month, I start losing my mind a little bit because I'm like, oh, I am way too focused.

Joe Smarro: I'm business right now. I'm not bringing in enough pleasure because golf is my number one self-care for me personally. So it's like, yeah, I have to make sure I schedule my tee times so I know when my fun is going to be scheduled in.

Joe Smarro: That's just my idea of what being selfish is, my morning gratitude, right?

Joe Smarro: Every day, starting my day in reflection, where am I, why am I here, who contributed to this?

Joe Smarro: Every day, the same thing, right? So I have my practices that I have to do for myself, but I see that as selfish because if I don't take myself serious and I don't prioritize myself and love myself first, then I'm not gonna be able to show up as the best version of myself for everyone else.

Joe Smarro: Yeah, so the idea of being selfish is just learning to choose yourself.

Joe Smarro: For all the listeners to this, Kevin, you, everyone listening to this, friends and family, the greatest cure you will ever have is your cure of the disease to people, please.

Joe Smarro: And when we can stop living our lives in accordance with other people's expectations of what we should have done or what we should be or what we should be doing, there's so much freedom in learning to choose yourself, What drives you?

Joe Smarro: What are you passionate about?

Joe Smarro: And how can you learn to create a life around that? That to me is the beauty of life.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow, man. What an amazing, amazing example of the blessings that can come when you truly find your place in the world.

Kevin Lowe: When you chase that passion, when you chase that desire, when you know the thing that you were meant to do and you do it. You're not choosing out of obligation.

Kevin Lowe: Or what you think you're supposed to do, but you just do it.

Kevin Lowe: And to hear how business exploded, how not only just having this business, which I want to ask you more about here in a minute, but then you do TEDx talk, you've written a book, you're doing podcasting, all of this sharing your story, but also just your pure, utter passion for what you do.

Kevin Lowe: So it's absolutely amazing and such a beautiful example of your world was just your world, your life was just waiting on you to finally choose you.

Kevin Lowe: And then it could all open up.

Joe Smarro: Amen, brother. Well said. Absolutely.

Kevin Lowe: Yes. Yes. Well, talk to me about the business that you and your partner started and exactly what you guys do.

Joe Smarro: Yeah. So we say we're international only because we're up in Canada as well.

Joe Smarro: But we are a training and consulting firm that operates at the intersection of public safety and behavioral health care.

Joe Smarro: So all of that to say, to make it very simple, we offer de-escalation training as our expertise.

Joe Smarro: We are very good at de-escalation. So we have, I would argue, the best de-escalation training programs in North America.

Joe Smarro: And then we also have wellness and resiliency, suicide prevention training as well.

Joe Smarro: So we do the de-escalation training for me is giving people the skills to deal with the external world and other people that potentially go into crisis.

Joe Smarro: And then the mental health, wellness and resiliency training that we offer is for the individual to help them level up their own life and learn some of the concepts that, again, I have learned and utilized in my own life.

Joe Smarro: Our clients vary. Our largest client is the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Joe Smarro: And so all the federal prisons in America fall under our de-escalation training.

Joe Smarro: And then we've got unique clients like the Valley Transportation Authority up in San Jose, which is bus operators and light rail workers in the public transit space.

Joe Smarro: We've worked with grocery stores. We've worked with schools.

Joe Smarro: We've worked with hospitals and healthcare.

Joe Smarro: So it's really wherever there are people that deal with other people that have a potential to go into crisis, I assure you we have a solution.

Joe Smarro: That's really what the business is. I do a lot of keynotes as well all over the country.

Joe Smarro: I speak at conferences, which again, is more on the mindset, inspiration, motivation side, but then usually that's a funnel to get us in to do more training as well with our company.

Joe Smarro: There are 12 people in the company now.

Joe Smarro: And yeah, we're very easy to find, solutionpointplus.com, all spelled out.

Joe Smarro: And then my website is joesmaro.com and that's where you can find me and the work that I'm doing as well.

Joe Smarro: Or book me to speak at events or get the book. So very easy to find.

Joe Smarro: And yeah, the company's awesome, man. I love it. It's so much fun.

Joe Smarro: It's just all right now. It's in-person training that gives people the skills to increase their confidence and competence in dealing with the mental health crisis of America.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, fantastic. Well, I will be positive that all the links and stuff that you mentioned are in the show notes for anybody interested for easy access. But yeah.

Kevin Lowe: To kind of wrap up today, will you tell me more about the TEDx Talk You Did plus your book? I would love to hear more about both of those.

Joe Smarro: Yeah, so TEDx was in 2018 and I've been a big fan of TED for a long time, learned a lot from their talks.

Joe Smarro: And so to speak on the red dot was a very, very proud moment for me.

Joe Smarro: Although I will say my goal is to do another one where, because when I watch it now and you can just go on YouTube and put in my name, Joe Smorrow.

Joe Smarro: But when I watch that, I'm like, oh, that is so bad because it doesn't feel like me.

Joe Smarro: It doesn't have the right personality, the right gestures, the intonation, because with Ted, it's very memorization driven.

Joe Smarro: You write your talk and then you have a curator, you have a coach, and then your talk starts changing multiple times until the whole group decides, yes, this is good. That's how ours was anyway.

Joe Smarro: And so now I'm like, okay, we just got the final stamp on this, like five days before I go live.

Joe Smarro: Now I've got to memorize this talk, which yes, it's my talk, but I got to memorize like 10 sheets of paper.

Joe Smarro: And I, as a speaker and a trainer, I'm very good at just knowing what my main themes are.

Joe Smarro: And then I can go off the cuff and I'm always like on time. Right.

Joe Smarro: So I've gotten good at that skill.

Joe Smarro: Well, this was very different. And so I felt a little robotic.

Joe Smarro: I felt a little underprepared myself that I didn't put it in the right amount of time because I was like, I can just kind of wing it.

Joe Smarro: Yeah, there's no winging it with Ted. So, but the concept I see you came from the movie Avatar and in the movie Avatar, how they greet each other as they take their like long hair and they like plug it into one another and you see this physical transference of energy and that's how they would actually connect and say hello.

Joe Smarro: And I just thought how interesting that here, especially in the Western culture, that when we say hello to someone or like, hey, what's up? It's super trite.

Joe Smarro: It's a very above surface level response.

Joe Smarro: Think about this, Kevin. If you were walking down the street or in a store and someone was just like, hey, how you doing?

Joe Smarro: And you're like, honestly, not well. I haven't slept well in a few weeks.

Joe Smarro: I've been really struggling with my mental health. That person would be in such panic.

Joe Smarro: They'd be like, whoa, man, Jesus, I didn't ask for all that. Good Lord.

Joe Smarro: They wouldn't know what to do. And so because of that, we've just gotten into the habit of just given these like very flippant responses of like, yeah, everything's good.

Joe Smarro: Living the dream. I'm fine. Hey, how are you? Good. All right. Awesome.

Joe Smarro: There's no real meaning in that. There's no real connection in that.

Joe Smarro: And I think that is the greatest thing that we are lacking as a society right now is true, meaningful connection, not fabricated, not a phantom connection, but like Real, true human connection is the thing that I think that we are lacking most.

Joe Smarro: And so my talk was just how I, as a cop, focused on people, regardless of what they have done, regardless of what they have said, regardless of who they are, but to see the human in them, the one that is worthy and deserving of love and being the one willing to give that to them, if even for a moment.

Joe Smarro: But it was also about pushing the power of reciprocity and that when I say I see you, This isn't one sided.

Joe Smarro: I also want to be seen in return, which is why I would, if the situation allowed for it, I would share my story as well.

Joe Smarro: Right. Like, hey, listen, man, I know right now while you're thinking about suicide and you're thinking that's the best option and you think you're all alone.

Joe Smarro: You know, if the situation allowed for, I'd tell him, like, I can relate to a part of your story.

Joe Smarro: Right. I have been in a similar position because of this thing that happened in my life, man. And it's hard. It's real hard.

Joe Smarro: If you're willing to commit to the work, dude, like there's great opportunity on the other side of this, but right now you're just having a hard time seeing it because you're in the throes of it.

Joe Smarro: And I've been there, man, but it's like, it's not about minimizing their experience.

Joe Smarro: It's about sitting with them in it. And that's a big difference.

Joe Smarro: And so that's what the talk was. And again, it's on YouTube.

Joe Smarro: It's about 11 minutes long.

Joe Smarro: And then my book is titled unarmed. It's deescalation techniques to cultivate courage, compassion, and connection. and a lot of what I'm talking about right now on the wellness stuff, on the suicide prevention stuff, and then the things we didn't really talk about, which is all like the skills stuff.

Joe Smarro: So like four of the classes we teach in person are chapters in the book.

Joe Smarro: And I did that for two reasons. One, I wanted the book to be a great resource for people that go through our training.

Joe Smarro: But two, I really wanted the book to be a resource for people who maybe their agency, or maybe they're just even, I've had like stay-at-home moms read it and get value out of it.

Joe Smarro: So maybe your agency or your employer can't afford to bring us out, cool.

Joe Smarro: Go on Amazon, spend the 19 bucks, or if the money's a barrier, Reach out to me, connect with me on social media and say, hey, Joe, I would love the book, but I can't afford it. I'm gonna send it to you for free if that's what you want.

Joe Smarro: And then I'm working on the audio book right now and it should be done here very soon.

Joe Smarro: I've just gotta read my last chapter because I'm doing it myself.

Joe Smarro: So I gotta read my last chapter, get it edited, and then get it through the ACX checks, and it'll be on Audible or wherever the audio books are that you listen to.

Joe Smarro: So we're getting close, but I just, I wanted that book to be a resource for people that can't take our training and I wanted it to just be another like legacy token for my children or long after I'm gone books or something that just kind of stay around forever.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, man, I love it so much. Joe, man, you are the boost of positivity that I know I needed today.

Kevin Lowe: I can only imagine the person listening that they needed, whether they realized they needed it or not.

Kevin Lowe: By now, they realize, I know I couldn't live without it. And you, man, you're an awesome guy.

Kevin Lowe: And more than anything, I love the way that your story is going.

Kevin Lowe: The fact of you choosing you, you choosing to live, to thrive, and to use what you've gone through to give back and help others.

Kevin Lowe: I think it's an absolute beautiful story.

Kevin Lowe: It's been an honor getting to have you on the podcast.

Joe Smarro: Thank you, Kevin. I really appreciate you sharing your audience with me and for your incredible questions and the conversation.

Joe Smarro: Eternally grateful to you, brother. So thank you.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, man, you are welcome. And for you listening today, I hope that you've taken something away today that you can implement in your own life.

Kevin Lowe: Obviously, I want you to be entertained, but more so, I want this podcast to mean something to you, to do something for you.

Kevin Lowe: And maybe the biggest thing is that maybe there's somebody in your life that you could think could really benefit from this.

Kevin Lowe: Go ahead and share today's episode with them. That would mean the world to me.

Kevin Lowe: And I know in turn, it will mean the world to them.

Kevin Lowe: So until next time, I'm of course your host, Kevin Lowe. And this was another episode of Grit, Grace, & Inspiration!

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