The Origin Story: From Omaha to the Army to the Green Berets | Ep 1

Welcome to Beyond The Beret. In this first episode, Spencer and MJ sit down in the garage studio to lay the foundation for the whole show. The idea: the brand and the videos cover the present, but a lot of people who follow Alpha Country don't know where any of it actually came from. This podcast is for the deeper stories that don't fit into a reel.Spencer starts at the very beginning. Born in Belleview, Nebraska, parents divorced when he was around six, splitting time between two houses on two very different schedules. Strippers and college football players as roommates at his mom's place who, in a strange way, taught him everything he knows about hard work and falling in love with sports. The grease fire that burned down his mom's apartment when he was 14 and how losing the little they had pushed everyone into darker ways of coping.He gets honest about the years that followed: an all-state football and basketball career running in parallel with addiction, partying, and pain pills. Almost dying more than once. Walking away from a Nebraska Cornhuskers walk-on opportunity. Waking up one night in a college dorm and realizing he had to enlist or he wasn't going to make it.From there: the recruiter's office, the Marines plan that died over half-sleeve tattoos, getting clean enough to pass a drug test, basic training in 2014, the note handed to him a week before graduation telling him he was about to be a dad, airborne school, the 82nd, the platoon sergeant who asked him if he was a [redacted] and then handed him a Ranger School packing list six months later, getting promoted to corporal, the Jade Helm exercise with an ODA that changed his trajectory, selection, the Q course, language school, military free fall, and getting picked up by his ODA at 7th Special Forces Group.This is the foundation. Future episodes go deeper into Ranger School, SFAS, Afghanistan, and everything that came after. If you've been following Spencer for the brand, this is the part of the story you haven't heard yet.Mentioned:thealphacountry.comThe Alpha Country appIf this resonates with you, share it, rate the show, and stick around. We're just getting started.