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It Pays to Be a Winner: The SOFREP Sweepstakes Winners

SOFREP takes great pleasure in announcing the winners of our quarterly membership sweepstakes. We reached out to the winners and ask them about themselves. If you were expecting that they would all be Green Berets, SEAL Team Six Operators trimming their beards with a rusty tuna can lid and eating molten glass for breakfast, get ready for a surprise. All three winners were civilians who just worked their own plan.

1st Place: A Leica Spotting Scope Signed by Brandon Webb

Winner: Trent Lytle

Trent joined SOFREP in 2016 giving his reason for joining as follows,

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SOFREP takes great pleasure in announcing the winners of our quarterly membership sweepstakes. We reached out to the winners and ask them about themselves. If you were expecting that they would all be Green Berets, SEAL Team Six Operators trimming their beards with a rusty tuna can lid and eating molten glass for breakfast, get ready for a surprise. All three winners were civilians who just worked their own plan.

1st Place: A Leica Spotting Scope Signed by Brandon Webb

Winner: Trent Lytle

Trent joined SOFREP in 2016 giving his reason for joining as follows,

“My main reason for joining was to support a Veteran-owned business. My second reason for joining was that SOFREP was delivering content no one else was. They cover subjects that other news outlets, including some military-oriented ones, missed or glossed over. The in-depth articles are very informative. The writers and the community are great. Lastly, I liked that SOFREP was geared towards Special Operations. There is little information out there about them and this site has filled my need for more information.”

“Some of the articles have caused me to shift my points of view on some subjects and others have helped me understand the world around me a little better.”
We are very pleased to be of this kind of service to our members. And this happens to us as writers, too. We read each other’s stuff and discuss how our own points of view shift or become more concrete based on our work.
Like many civilians, Trent wanted to join the military but had a medical issue that got in the way. This is actually quite common. There is a whole slew of medical conditions that are disqualifying when it comes to serving in the military. Nonetheless, this did nothing to dampen his enthusiasm for the military and veterans.
“I’m a civilian with a love of the military, especially Special Forces; I like their mission. A minor medical problem kept me from joining even though I was cleared by my doctor. Now I support the military and Veterans [in] any way [that] I can. My only hobby is photography.”
Trent had a pretty simple strategy for winning.
“I dedicated myself to posting every day, sometimes more than once. I talked about the site with friends that share the same interest in the military and gave them my referral link. I need to work on my sales pitch, not one friend used my link. That’s okay, just getting the word out about SOFREP works for me.”

2nd Place: Steel Fear Advanced Reader Copy. Very Rare

Winner: Keith Watson

Keith Watson tells us he joined SOFREP in 2020 after thinking it over for several weeks. “I can’t remember how I found the site, but once I did it wasn’t long before I realized how good it was. I was initially drawn to a few of the writers. Namely Geo, Nick, Stavros, and 14Charlie.”
We  always want to know what our members get out of being a SOFREP member. Keith put it this way to us,
“Since I was a kid I’ve been a news junkie. More importantly, I’ve always loved all things military. I was the kid with the Army and Marine Corps stickers on everything fully intending on joining the military. I must have watched Navy SEALs a thousand times. However, I’ve been playing guitar since I was eleven and my dreams of playing music for a living pulled me in a different direction. I graduated high school in ’93, so it was a hard choice for me. Keep playing in rock bands or join the military. A decade later I started questioning my choices. Anyways, I never lost my fascination with the military. Combine that with my love of reading and what’s going on in the world, and SOFREP was exactly what I was looking for. The place to read about things I wasn’t seeing in the mainstream news. Things that were so important to me. For the past 20 years as a CAD/CAM Programmer, my interest in military news has only grown stronger. “
Like most members, Keith wants to understand the world’s news from the perspective of veterans.
“As a civilian I feel it’s so important to do my best to understand what American men and women have done in the name of freedom. Maybe the best way to show my gratitude is to listen to what they have to say and pay attention to their sacrifices and lessons learned risking their lives for the rest of us. People need to know what is being done and the reality of the world we live in.”
(We couldn’t agree more here.)
For those of you looking for the secret to winning the Sweepstakes, Keith’s approach was pretty straightforward, “I won by reposting SOFREP articles in the [hope] that someone will come across them and want to know more about our military and what they were doing… I stuck to reposting the articles and taking part in the team room, which I wish more people did.”

3rd Prize: X-TALKER T71VP3 Two-Way Radio and $200 SOFREP Store Voucher

Winner: Holli Brook.

We reached out to 3rd prize winner Holly Brook and asked her about joining SOFREP and how she signed up new members;

“I joined SOFREP officially last year in October but I had signed up for the Pro-Crate subscription in December 2018 as a Christmas gift for my husband. I am a civilian and a stay-at-home mom. I home-school my two girls. Enjoy spending my days in the garden, and do a lot of pressure canning. My family enjoys all things outdoors. My husband works for a veteran-owned and operated company and I felt SOFREP was a good way to sponsor a great cause. I have enjoyed reading all the articles put out by your great writers and Brandon always makes me laugh with his crazy life stories. I won third place by interacting with fellow SOFREP members and sharing news articles.”

The winner of our currently ongoing Sweepstakes will be rewarded with his choice of either a brand new iPhone 12 Pro 128GB or Samsung and Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G 128GB.

You gotta be “In it to win it!”

Learn more about our new Sweepstakes here and good luck to all!

 

About Sean Spoonts View All Posts

Sean Spoonts is a former Navy Anti-submarine Warfare Operator and Search and Rescue Aircrewman in SH-2f LAMPS II Sea Sprite. Graduate of Naval Aircrewman Candidate School Pensacola, AW "A" School NATTC Millington, HS-1 SAR School NAS Jacksonville, FASOTRAGRUDET SERE NAS Brunswick. Duty with HSL-30, NAS Norfolk and HSL-36, NAF Mayport.

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