Aaron Schmidt grew up a military brat and met his wife, Kara Dawn, freshman year of high school when they were assigned to be lab partners. He talks wanting to be a college football coach but being the student manager of the UVA football team cured him of that desire, being raised Catholic, becoming a 7th grade English teacher, and then getting married, selling everything and hightailing it to LA because he and Kara could see the next 10 years of their lives mapped out before them. A series of odd jobs and a series of personal losses left him at loose ends until he found a passion to pursue in Gorucks that ultimately led him to join the Army Reserves as a psychological operations specialist two years before the cutoff for enlistment. He and Bridget have an honest and revealing discussion about being mission-oriented, the hard work of a successful marriage, overcoming loss and aimlessness, and the 4 tenets of his personal ethos.