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The Protectors® Podcast
Welcome to The Protectors® Podcast, where the valor meets the storyteller. Hosted by Jason Piccolo, a seasoned veteran and retired special agent, this series is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the courage and tales of those who pledge to protect us. Beyond the front-line stories of bravery and dedication, this podcast goes a step further, weaving in the perspectives of those who bolster and narrate the protector's journey—featuring a remarkable lineup including New York Times Best Sellers and acclaimed Hollywood actors.
The Protectors® Podcast offers a diverse array of voices, from those who wear the uniform to the authors and entertainers who amplify their stories. It's a unique blend that highlights not only the raw realities faced by our protectors but also how their sacrifices inspire the narratives we cherish in literature and film. Each episode is a testament to the interconnected worlds of service and support, bringing listeners an unmatched depth of insight.
Dr. Jason Piccolo is a retired federal agent, former U.S. Army Infantry Captain (Iraq 2006), and author.
Past Guests Include:- Sean Patrick Flanery - Andrews & Wilson- Mark Greaney- Stephen Hunter- Remi Adeleke - Florent Groberg - Clint Emerson - Travis Mills
The Protectors® Podcast
508 | Trevor Thrasher | 88 Tactical | Former Green Beret | LEO
Trevor Thrasher, a combat veteran and former U.S. Army Green Beret, recently joined the show to discuss the 88 Tactical training program and facility. With over 20 years of experience in special operations, military, law enforcement, and high-risk government assignments, Trevor brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. His background includes combat deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, where he trained and led national commando units. As a close-quarters combat expert, Trevor has trained foreign special operations units and served in various roles including SWAT team member and academy instructor. Currently a part-time certified police officer, he also has extensive experience in protective services and counter-terror operations for the U.S. government. Trevor's unique blend of experiences gives him an unparalleled perspective on human performance and behavior in combat situations, making him an ideal guest to discuss tactical training.
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Hey, welcome to the Protectors Podcast. I'm here with Trevor Thrasher and we are at 88 Tactical on-site in Omaha, nebraska. Well, we're a little bit outside of Omaha. How are you doing today, trevor? I'm doing excellent today. I love doing podcasts in person. There's something better than being on a Zoom camera. I'm telling you that right now, being on a Zoom camera is kind of like hey, how are you? Let's talk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little distracting, but maybe focus on a little more substance maybe.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Let's do it, focus on a little more substance, maybe exactly. Let's do it. And you know, we took a tour of the facility. I am absolutely impressed. Now I believe this is the wave of the future when it comes to what a range is supposed to be like.
Speaker 1:You know, I took my parents shooting about six months ago in florida, middle of nowhere, and we end up going to this one range and they literally had nothing. It was like a warehouse and they were really belligerent. It was like these are two people in their 70s who, quite frankly, never really shot guns right, so to teach them how to shoot was really tough. So then we take them to a place called shooters world which is in florida, ocala, and it's like state of the art and they felt comfortable, they felt like they were at home.
Speaker 1:You walk into it and you don't feel like you're at a gun range. You feel like you're at a Toys R Us for adults. You look around, it's clean, it's crisp. People show you how to get to there, they show you how to get to the range. You do a little safety block instruction and you get on the range and you shoot. Now I get that same feeling when I come to a place like this this is probably about the third one I've been to in the country where you walk in the door and you feel like you're welcome there and I'm not saying like you know, sometimes you go into a gun shop quote-unquote gun shop and people look at you like what is this? People you walk in here and you're like, hey, you know what, I'm going gonna look at some guns if I want to go to the range, right, and there's going to be instructors. So this is kind of a cool concept but it's not new.
Speaker 2:When you guys started this a while ago, right, uh, we did, we. Uh jesus, I get my ears right. I think we've been around seven years now. Uh, we actually started before that doing the training aspect of it, but as far as the building, it's about seven years of business now when you when you say seven, I mean you guys mostly started off doing the tactical stuff, or were you open up to everybody?
Speaker 2:Yeah, initially our training involves civilians and law enforcement, and then we just kept getting requests from people hey, I want the next step. I got my CHP, my concealed handgun permit. I've got the basic training, but I want more. I want continuous training. And we realized that there's a pretty sound culture of people that believed in the human right of self-defense and we were coming up with some concepts for a business and we looked at what the other ranges were doing and some that succeeded, some that didn't, and we hated the whole range attitude that you talked about. You walk in. There's some crusty, honestly, usually some old, fat dude that looks like he knows more than you, even though the guy's never fought anything other than to get in his pants that day. So we didn't want to have that culture. We wanted to have an inviting culture, no-transcript, and we patchworked a few things together and realized that we didn't just want to do a shooting range.
Speaker 1:When I used to go on a shooting range so I'm what 51 by the time I started shooting it was like, really shooting was about 30 years ago and I've seen the ranges progress. It used to be where you go into almost like a beat-up old warehouse, or you're going to an outdoor range where it looks like there's shells everywhere, it looks like vietnam. But when you walk into places like this, nowadays it's clean. One thing that strikes me always is like the cleaning stations, the access control, the hearing protection and eye protection. I mean, these are things that are basic, but it's really progressed over the years to where it almost feels like.
Speaker 1:When I bring up that inviting aspect of it, I feel like it's different inviting to someone who's prior service, someone who's LEO. You can go in there and you're like okay, I need my eyes, you need your eyes, I need this and that. But when I was thinking, there's 80 million gun owners plus and that's just. There's probably more than that. Right, but you have to imagine that. You know we were talking to the political spectrum. There's a lot of people on both sides of the aisle that really want to one learn how to shoot and to find a place where they can shoot at where they don't feel like they're going to get shot, if, if you don't, I mean sometimes you go to these ranges and you're like, oh well, you saw how many RSOs we have here Like we have an overabundance of caution and it's really it's.
Speaker 2:It has to do with the numbers, right. If there's a one 1000% chance that someone's going to have a negative discharge, but you have a hundred thousand people come through your doors, like you've, eventually you're going to have one, you have to do everything you can to mitigate that and we definitely want people to be safe here. But really the environment here is a community environment, almost like a country club, so we're not one. You come in, you shoot, you give us money for your ammo and the range time and you're out Like we don't want that. We want a community here. That's why we have the amenities the fitness center, the restaurant, repelling tower, we have the rooms that you can rent to have meetings. Well, let's backtrack there, Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm going to walk you through this now. All right, you just glossed over some huge aspects of these things that I have not seen before. Now, one is a restaurant, and this is like a bona fide. This isn't like Shake Shack, this is like a bona fide restaurant. There are two chefs working there like real people, like real chefs, like line order, like you know, the real chefs.
Speaker 2:Nothing is shake chef, but you know what I mean. Uh, yeah, I'll kill some of that every now and then. Uh, we have, we do have great hamburgers and french fries too, but uh, they definitely go the extra mile. Um, we originally had a smaller restaurant, where the speakeasy is used to be our main restaurant, and it was limited because our kitchen space was small. And then, as part of our expansion, we just went all out and said this was the thing that our we're very responsive, this is what our customers really wanted, and we gave it to them and went overboard with it. So we, I think we probably have uh, well, we have the biggest restaurant in the whole county actually here, and you can order everything in there for, like I said, hamburger and French fries too. You got to say steak.
Speaker 1:We're in Omaha. We're in Omaha.
Speaker 2:If you look right across there, that's Omaha Steaks right across from us. So, yeah, you could definitely get steaks here and everything in between, but it's just an amazing, amazing restaurant.
Speaker 1:You know, you said the speakeasy and that's what really kind of blew my mind was. I'm like there's a speakeasy, the knock and talk, which is, you know, that's pretty awesome. So it's actually like a door where you have to like, do something special, get in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a secret code word you have to say to get in there and you have to have a special membership. For corporate clients that want something a little more secluded, a little more secluded, a little more upscale, a little more private, we have a place for them too.
Speaker 1:You know I really dig this idea, I like this idea, but I do want to. You know, when you gave me the tour, we actually met a couple of your instructors and when we were talking to them they were talking about, like you know, basic pistol. When we get back to training, when you guys are teaching, some of the best things are to teach the basics.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We always try to get people from the ground up because if they come in with bad habits and you know as an instructor it takes so much effort to extinguish a bad habit it's much easier to set someone on the right path from the very beginning. So we do our best to give them correct habits and eliminate incorrect habits right from the very beginning. And we found that if we take a new student and they go through our structured training by the time they get in the mid-level handgun courses they are absolutely no worry as an instructor, safety-wise and they're a pleasure to have in your class.
Speaker 2:But if we get people from the outside that come in to our mid-level classes, that could be a problem because they just don't really have the foundation that they really need. They don't know exactly where they're, even how they're going to manage their grip. They don't know where they're going to keep their trigger finger. They don't know exactly how they're going to holster or draw their gun, exactly how they're going to move and use a piece of cover. All those things are variables for them and we kind of take that out and we give them some correct habits in the very beginning.
Speaker 1:You know, when you bring, you're bringing up the civilian aspects. But everything you're saying right there is exactly what I'm seeing in the law enforcement world is like you think, because you went to an academy, you think because you have a base of training and that you qualify every quarter or you qualify every year or whatever, that you're already at that advanced level too. The problem is, after you get through your basic training, you're going, you're qualling. Yeah, qualling is cool, but it's not training. Maybe you need to step back to maybe like a basic pistol too not as an instructor, but as an officer and then start moving back up. Yes, Worry about your basics and then become moving back up. Yes, Work, worry, worry about your basics and then become proficient enough to get into that area. I've seen so many officers that want to go straight into tactical, tactical, tactical.
Speaker 2:You've got to earn it All right, you've got to put in the time and the focused effort to get there. But really it's a lot about consistency and I think, well, we could talk about the entire police training paradigm which is broken, and we have a great group as part of our business and we train law enforcement all over the country as well. So I see that firsthand. But it's really about consistency and getting the basics down and then, instead of just they forget what they've learned and then they relearn it once a year, it's like there's no advancement for the average patrol officer. In fact, they're the best that they are marksmanship-wise right out of the academy and then statistically they tend to get worse unless they're part of a specialized team.
Speaker 1:Your background is pretty unique too and that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you and I actually wanted to talk to this place ADA Tactical was because you come from that SF background. And listen, I'm not going to bust on the other instructors out there, they have their own personal thing, but when you're teaching law enforcement it's different than teaching civilians. A civilian is using that firearm to protect themselves or their loved ones. They're not running towards the danger. Now, to teach someone in law enforcement, you really have to understand a couple of different things. That aren't just tactics. It's the legal aspect of it. It's that if I'm going to shoot what the target, the threat, I'm shooting to stop them, but if I miss that threat, the bullet's going to go somewhere and it's going to be a hell of a lot of liability. Outside of the liability, someone's going to get hurt, maimed or, worse, dead.
Speaker 1:So with your background, you have the LEO background, you have the SF background, but now you're also part-time, so you're keeping on top of the dynamics when it comes to law enforcement. But that also shows you the reality of law enforcement. The reality of law enforcement is we don't have the training. Shows you the reality of law enforcement. The reality of law enforcement is we don't have the training. I mean, even as a fed we had four quarters we'd call nah, you know, if we had time we'd do some training, but as local LEOs and stuff, you're not getting anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, considering that we're involved in high risk type events, the amount of training that law enforcement gets is pitiful and it's different than the military. The military paradigm is you can train forever for one event and that law enforcement paradigm is you train once for something that you're going to do for the rest of your career. So they're really kind of reversed and we have to find some middle ground between those two. I'd go on a deployment overseas in my unit. If we were lucky we could train up four to six months for a six to eight month deployment. You can't do that in law enforcement. You don't get four to six months of training to go hit the street for eight months and then you come back and you prep again for your next eight months.
Speaker 2:I mean it's. You are constantly deployed. You know every pretty much every day is an operational day for you. So your training days are are few and far in between. We've got to strike the right balance on that. It's tough budget-wise, it's tough logistics-wise. There's no easy answers to it. Unless Americans come together and say this is what we demand and we're willing to provide the resources for it, you won't see a change.
Speaker 1:And that's the greatest thing about. People say, okay, well, we need training, we need this, we need that, but still, if you have a 30-person, 20, 30-person agency, you're expected to handle the same exact calls as someone who has a 2,000-person agency. One of my friends was an LEO and they were responsible for the same things that big city police were, let's say, responding to a gunshot victim, responding to arson calls, responding to this and that and everything. And what blew my mind is like well, don't you call in, like the state or someone, to do the murder investigation? Or like, no, like there's a gunshot investigation, who does it? We do.
Speaker 2:You'd be a lot, You'd be really specialized, and I worked for the Omaha Police Department for about, I think, 12, 13 years Denver Police as well as patrol officer, and you can be very specialized in a big department. Now I work as a deputy for a smaller department. I have to be able to do a little bit of everything and we have a little. We're small enough that we don't have a full, you know, TAC team, but we have a basically a REAC team that can respond. And the truth is like if you're in the county and you're in trouble, somebody from that small department is going to be your SWAT team. They're going to be your homicide investigator, your accident investigator, your drug investigator, everything. They're going to be your fugitive task force. You have to be able to do it all. So you have to wear a lot of hats, and to be a jack of all trades like that takes a lot of effort.
Speaker 1:And that's what I was thinking is I'm like, okay, so you go to a big department, you might be able to have the resources to send a group of people to training in an hour, a two-day block of instruction, but if you're in one of these small departments and you are the jack of all trades, you don't have the training. I like the idea of a facility like this too for that reason. And you guys have the heroes program. I think it's like six months you get free and then you could join membership, something along those lines.
Speaker 2:but yeah, it's a, it's a limited membership. Uh, it's, you know, extremely inexpensive and we we just limit the hours a little bit, but we do everything we can to to get our first responders in here to train, because we know the departments aren't going to do it, not adequately, unless they're on a tactical team or something of that nature.
Speaker 1:Well, ada Tactical is a business. Yes, and do you guys have anything where you give back? You have the Heroes Program. Is that the primary resource of giving back to the LEO community or the community?
Speaker 2:Well, no, we've donated everything from body armor. We've donated a lot of training to different departments, different veterans events, I mean, you name it. We've got our, we put our hands in it.
Speaker 1:So, okay, we're going to. You know my, we're going to get into some tough questions now. Okay, firearms, ranges, instructors, people coming in off the street, ego how do you deal with the egos around here? There's always, in the law enforcement world and in the shooting world, there is a ton of ego.
Speaker 2:The first step in dealing with you're talking about ego from the students is to make sure the instructor doesn't have any right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, make sure. It's very easy as an instructor to get an ego. I would say in my experience that's one of the you could have a great instructor but ultimately their ego outpaces their capability. That's when they become a problem. And it's very easy because people are like, look, I'm in the spotlight and they start doing it for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 2:You have to be an instructor because you care about your students and their performance. It has to be really focused on them. Sure, entertain them. You know you are the instructor, you've got something to demonstrate to them and show them. You know what they can achieve if they pay attention to you. But it really has to be 100% about the students. So you know, if you walk in there with no ego, it's really going to tone down any egos they have. And I'll tell you, the best compliment I ever got from a student is and he was struggling through one of my high threat CQB classes. He was a SORT corrections SWAT officer and he'd been struggling through the course and he said you know what made a difference to me, trevor, is? He said all of us knew that you really wanted us to do well and that's what really made the difference. That's really why I tried to do my best basically in this course. A lot of it was simply because I knew you had our best interests at heart and you really wanted us to do well.
Speaker 1:We met a couple of the instructors downstairs, which I'm really glad we did two female instructors. I think there's like this wave that's been going on for about a year now of female-only instruction. I think there's a whole base of women out there who want to protect themselves. They want to be their own protector. They don't want to have to rely on someone else. Law enforcement response times are good luck. You need to be able to if you truly want to protect yourself. You either have to have a secure environment where you're never going to get hurt or anything, or you have to learn how to protect yourself. What are you guys thinking about marketing to female only?
Speaker 2:It was kind of tough for us at first because initially it's kind of a small niche of people you would think right, except for the fact that it isn't and our instructors really do a good enough job. Again, no egos, we train everybody, it doesn't matter. And we would get those phone calls. Well, my wife wants to take a class with women only and we would assure them, trust me, there will be plenty of women in the course. If she takes it, she'll be fine and we never really had any complaints. But we did start nurturing the women's only classes. It's been really successful for us. Now it's not a huge part of our business, but it is an important part of our business. And you know, our female instructors just jumped, jumped at the bit to get at it and you heard them talk about, you know some of the issues they have. You know correcting the, the males that may come in with a little bit of an ego. It's hard for them to accept corrections from a female in an industry like this and that's just the truth. And anybody that doesn't want to admit that is just lying to you. But they accepted that challenge and rise to the occasion. They'll teach anybody, but our women's only.
Speaker 2:Classes are very popular. I'd also say that, especially during COVID, we saw a huge increase in minorities that were taking training from us. So I kind of laugh because I think I've probably trained more minorities in the Omaha area to use firearms to protect themselves than anybody else. We had classes of 20 to 40 people almost every day during the COVID era, as people were that concerned about it and, as far as you know, the classes were probably 40% women. Our home defense classes are mostly women. They want to learn how to defend themselves in the home and it's just, you know, it's a big segment. Senior citizens, john, we get a lot of them too. They can be difficult to coach. Yeah, they can be tough to coach, but especially if they come with bad habits or you know here, like I've been around guns my whole life, I'm like that's great. You know, I've been around doctors, my whole life, you don't want to be doing brain surgery on you.
Speaker 1:Oh, believe me, I know about doctors, but I bring my dad and my mom in to shoot. And my dad, yes, he shot guns in his life, but he's never been in the military, never LAO or anything but 79 years old. My mom picks, she's the one that picks out the guns and she's like I want a Walther. It's a Walther. So I buy her a little .22. And she gets up there. She's listening to everything I'm saying. She's doing the reloads. Then I get my dad up there. He's like I know what I'm doing. The kid's like I'm like Dad, please, please. But that's the thing with seniors though. But I've noticed and they wanted, and my parents aren't just looking at it as defense anymore, it's a sport. I mean, we talk a ton about defense, but picking up a pistol or rifle or anything and shooting that thing and getting bullets on top of bullets and like, wow, this is good. And then, like the competition variable, you're looking the guy, a girl next to you and you're like, okay, I got you yeah, that's good for him.
Speaker 2:I think it's really good, yeah, you.
Speaker 1:One thing I do want to talk about today is I love talking about LEOs because I mean, it is the Protectors Podcast, but dealing with LEOs they don't make a lot of money, and how do you convince someone that's not making a lot of money to come in and do BJJ? That's the other thing. You guys have BJJ. That's the other thing. You guys had BJJ. How do you convince them to come in here and do that and to practice their skills?
Speaker 2:It's really tough. It's almost like there's two, and I'm sure from your experience it's the same in the federal level, where I was working full-time in law enforcement. You'd have officers that saw it as a job and they were going to do no more than they had to do the bare minimum, and we need less of them. And then you had officers that sought us a profession and they would spend a little bit of the resources and extra training if you really could show them the value of it. And then, of course, you had the training junkies right. So we don't have to worry about the training junkies.
Speaker 2:We probably know all of them. They're going to come train with us, but we really want to get to those ones in the middle ground that want improvement. But you've got to show them a return on investment for it. And that's really what we try to do, because they know our backgrounds here that we're not going to feed them any bullshit. We're going to give them practical skills and they're going to be able to put it to use and it's going to keep them safe. So it's really about their families having a husband or a wife that comes home to them and maintaining their professionalism, because that's what the community deserves, and that's the kind of law enforcement we need.
Speaker 1:You know, when you speak about selling the bullshit, that comes down to like selling fear. You know I watch your social media, I watch. You know, coming in here, I don't. I don't feel the fear factor. You know, like either you're going to buy a gun, you're going to train with us, you're going to die. That's one thing I don't like about some of the community out there is like selling the fear, so but and that brings us back to this whole type of situation you have here, where it's it's not just about shooting to protect yourself, it's about having a good time with guns. Yes, listen, I walk in here and I'm like a kid. You can't. You found me because I'm like oh, look look at that over there. What's that shiny object? It's like squirrel, like I look to me. Firearms are like works of art. You know, you got your little, you know. Or it's like cars, yeah, some guys like cars, you know.
Speaker 1:Uh, some guys like fishing reels or you know, whatever it may be, whatever their tackle box and their golf clubs, or we happen to have guns I look at, like you know, you have your lower end stuff, which is like your high-end days, and then you have your Corvettes, and then you have your Ferraris of guns and it's just like I love it, man. I love the fact that you could rent the guns you want and you can get the instruction you want. So what's you guys? Are you guys plan to really expand this out?
Speaker 2:Well expanding the base here as well. We're also offering franchise opportunities, essentially, and a couple probably corporate buildings as well, in a couple locations near Salt Lake and Kansas City. But we have some locations picked out we're working on. Right now I don't want to get deep into any of that, but we are definitely going to expand. You'll see more of these throughout the country.
Speaker 1:I like the protector aspect of it. I mean 88 Tactical comes from the call sign or what's that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a Signal 88 and local police code means situation secure.
Speaker 2:So if you ever say on the radio, hey, I'm Signal 88, they know that other cars coming to help you could slow down or not come Like you had everything resolved.
Speaker 2:And my business partner, Shade, again started a security company and he called it Signal 88 Security and he used off-duty officers initially, then went into civilian security, grew it to a franchise of over 300 franchises throughout the US and a couple other countries, Became kind of a big corporate business, lost a little bit of control over it to outsiders and eventually really honestly got kind of tired of it. But he enjoyed the training aspect of it and through that company we started training civilians and law enforcement and that's where we saw that there's still this big need for people that want it, that want the confidence and the community part of it. Right, and we talked a little bit about the community, but it's definitely a confidence issue as well, and so he wanted to stay in the game as far as the training aspect. So he just threw a tactical at the end of it and became a tactical and branched off and completely unassociated with him now.
Speaker 1:Well, Trevor, I really appreciate you coming on the show today. I really appreciate you showing us around and thank you for all you guys are doing.
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