Find Your Tribe

by Nick Palmisciano

Oh shit. It’s over.

I barely got those thoughts through my head as the lion sprinted out of the tall grass, leaping in my direction. I braced myself for impact, but I was far too slow. I was going to end up on the ground and there would be no chance for me there. 

But those thoughts didn’t come until later. The raw, unbridled, power of this creature was overwhelming. All I know is that it was ungodly fast, incredibly large, and it was coming right at me.  And then, it stopped just shy of me. It roared, leaving spittle all over my face and chest, which had my heart leaping out of it, and walked away. I was not going to die that day.

In a very weird way, this moment led to the creation of my latest project, television comedy series, Office Joe. That’s foreshadowing, for you, the reader.

That night, as I drank wine at the bar of my hotel in Zambia, only one year after I got out of the military, I kept wondering how the hell we got to the top of the food chain. Objectively, I know our brains have allowed us to build tools, but guns are a recent phenomenon, and I have to tell you, I don’t like my odds against that lion with a spear or really any bladed weapon. So how did we survive to this point? Hell, one time I was running at night, and I stumbled upon a herd of deer that got spooked, and they knocked the hell out of me. How are we at the top when even our food can kick our ass?

When the lion charged, the other Duke University classmates that were with me leapt backwards, placing themselves behind me. I don’t blame them for that – it’s survival instinct. But I also think if I had been attacked, I would have been on my own. Not because they aren’t good people, but simply because they didn’t have that gene in them. I remember thinking that my compatriots in the infantry would have tried. And I remember feeling very very alone as I realized my new life did not have those kinds of friends in it.

And it hit me, we’ve survived as a species because of tribe. One guy with a spear gets merced 9/10 times, but a dozen, well… that’s different. Like-minded people have gathered together throughout the annals of time for the purpose of surviving and thriving. Apes apart, weak. Apes together, strong. I didn’t really miss the Army, so to speak, but I missed those Apes.

Kind of a lot has happened since then for me. I got a fortune 100 job for a very short period of time. I started an apparel company that became, for a time, the largest veteran B to C company. I cornered fighters in the UFC. I made a movie called Range 15 with some friends. I sold the apparel company. I started a new company, called Diesel Jack Media, to help companies market their brands. I wrote a New York Times bestseller with Tim Kennedy. I went to Afghanistan with eleven other guys and evacuated 12,000 people.I started a non-profit called Save Our Allies with three of those friends to help people in need in the worst situations imaginable. That organization has taken me to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ukraine, Poland, and Haiti, and has done work in those places and Syria and Israel as well.

When you spend a lot of time dealing with bad things, life can get really depressing. We’ve helped tens of thousands get out of Afghanistan, but we also have pictures sent to us by the Taliban of the ones they caught and killed. We helped thousands in Ukraine, but many of those we helped have since been killed, and the war continues, with no justice in sight.  Gaza is a nightmare for Israeli and Palestinian alike. Haitians suffer as their corrupt leaders bicker for power, using murder as their tool of choice.

I was bone-weary. And to make matters worse, I heard through the grapevine that a longitudinal study tracking veteran mental health (yet to be released by DoD) is showing that Afghanistan Veteran suicide rates are up fifty percent since the fall of Kabul. I needed something that wasn’t pain and seriousness.  I needed something fun. And I felt like the veteran community did too. 

So I thought about what I could dig into and make fun of that was not only universal for our community, but maybe universal for all people – transition. Change is hard. Life is hard. And my work with the American Legion and the Independence Fund has showed me that not only are veterans struggling with Tribe and Purpose, but the entire nation is as well.

We spend less and less time together as humans and more time behind screens, even though we all know it’s not healthy. We won’t reach out to our friends for help or venting, even though we know they’re available for us. We look at everyone’s digital life and see our lives as imperfect, or even failures, even though we know influencers are offering a scripted vision of what their life really is. And we don’t laugh enough. The digital world makes everything binary. Life or Death. Good and evil. Trump or Kamala. It’s all too much.

So, I sat down with one of my creative tribes, namely Air Force Veteran Hollywood Heard, Army Veteran Mike Lavigne, and Marine Corps Veteran and Vet TV founder, Danny Maher (AKA Donny O’ Malley) and talked through my concept. At the end, with their guidance, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do, and I sketched out a five-season story arc for my new protagonist – Staff Sergeant Joe Hauser.

Joe has spent a little over a decade in the Army Infantry, with multiple combat tours, and our show starts with him getting his DD214 at Fort Lewis, Washington and heading out to start his dream job as a graphic designer in a boutique marketing agency in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Once ‘Season One’ was written, I reached out to the rest of my tribe to see if they would help out.  Tim Kennedy, Jarred Taylor, Vince Vargas, Jack Mandaville, Ashley Gutermuth, Jack Raia, Eric Tansey, and Austin von Letkemann (AKA Mandatory Fun Day) all selflessly answered the call. They all turned out for me.  And they are all incredibly busy people. Even if their performances had been terrible, the fact that they were willing to drop everything and work on this project meant the world to me.  And in case, you were wondering, they were all amazing. Not just their on-screen performances, but the energy and positivity they all brought to set, showed why so many people look up to them.

So as I stood behind the display on set directing this incredible cast, led by Dan Mercer as Joe Hauser and my wife Suzanne, who did not want to play the co-lead Karen Underhill, but was pressured into it, take every word I had written to the next level, I couldn’t help but feel that if not a single person watched this television show, it would still be completely worth it.

I was able to bring my friends together while having a great time and building something we all valued.  I was able to remind myself how much I treasured all of them – how much I needed them in my life. We laughed. We celebrated. We made art. And we did it together.

Ten months after we wrapped, I can finally share Office Joe with the world. It’s for sale on Amazon, Apple, and Google Play. I love the show, and if the three sold-out premieres that we have had thus far are any indication, so will you. But if you hate it, I’m still glad I put nearly two years of my life into making it.

Sometimes you just need to define your purpose and bring the tribe together to make your mission a reality.  We all did it in uniform to do incredible things. There’s no reason to stop now.

That lion would have killed me. Even if I was armed. But it couldn’t kill a tribe of men with spears. 

So, figure out what you want to do, find your tribe, and grab a spear. It’s time to thrive. And if you feel like it, I hope you enjoy my show. It was a hell of a lot of fun to make

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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on November 15, 2024.

Nick Palmisciano is a West Point Graduate, former Army Infantry Officer, NY Times best-selling author, filmmaker and CEO of Diesel Jack Media, a creative agency based in Chapel Hill, NC.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.