552: How The Mindset of A Sniper Apply to Life. With JP Dinnell.

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< https://app.redcircle.com/shows/64a89f88-a245-4098-8d8d-496325ec4f74/exclusive-content Being a sniper isn't just about shooting. It's about observation, patience, preparation, adaptability, and making the right decision at exactly the right moment. Jocko and JP Dinnell explore the unseen skills behind elite snipers, telling stories from combat while revealing how those same habits create success in leadership, business, and life. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 552 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:05JP Dinnell?

  Good evening.

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  The sniper has special abilities, training and equipment. His job is to deliver discriminatory, highly accurate rifle fire against enemy targets, which cannot be engaged successfully by the rifleman because of range, size, location, fleeting nature, or visibility. Sniping requires the development of basic infantry skills to a high degree of perfection. A sniper's training incorporates a wide variety of subjects designed to increase his value as a force multiplier and to ensure his survival on the battlefield. The art of sniping requires learning and repetitiously practicing these skills until mastered. A sniper must be highly trained in long-range rifle marksmanship and field craft skills

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  to ensure maximum effective engagements with minimum risk. And that right there is a quote from the US Army Field Manual 23 Tac 10 Sniper Training. Gives a pretty good overall look at what a sniper does. And there are many, many skills that snipers develop or they amplify that are not only good for combat and good for long-range target interdiction, but also many of these skills are good for other aspects of life as well. And to talk about some of these skills and how they apply across the board, we have with us once again, my brother JP Dino. And JP has been on this podcast, I think, six times before.

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  He is the Chief Training Officer at Echelon Front, our Leadership Consultancy. I originally met him when we were at SEAL Team Three together. He was the point man and then lead sniper in Delta Platoon Task Unit Bruiser. He played a critical role for Task Unit Bruiser in the Battle of Ramadi, where he used a multitude of skills. Machine gunner, point man, assaulter, and of course sniper, where he executed the sniper mission exactly as it is explained in military doctrine. Quote, "The primary mission of a sniper in combat is to support operations by delivering precise, long-range fire on selected targets.

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  By this, the sniper creates casualties among enemy troops, slows enemy movement, frightens enemy soldiers, lowers enemy morale, and adds confusion to enemy operations." End quote. And that right there is exactly what JP did. And he did it with extraordinary effectiveness. And so, back once again, JP Dino. Good seeing you, brother. In town for the 20th anniversary of Task Unit Bruiser.

• 2:58JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 2:59Jocko Willink?

  So we got a bunch of the boys coming into town.

• 3:01JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, it's gonna be good. It's good to be back.

• 3:02Jocko Willink?

  It'll be over by the time this comes out. So that's why I don't mind saying we're gonna be here in force. We got a night at one of our go-to bars. And then we have a night that the UDT SEAL Museum in San Diego has opened up the museum for us at night. We're having food and drinks and whatnot. And of course, then on Sunday, we're gonna go visit our boys at Rosecrans. So Mark and Mikey and Seth and Chris and Ryan are not buried there, but of course, we'll be thinking about them as well. It's gonna be awesome.

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  Ramadi was...

• 3:38Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, I don't know if we could create a better environment for a sniper than Ramadi. It would be tough to create a better environment for a sniper.

• 3:46JP Dinnell?

  I agree.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  I was, it was interesting when I had General McFarland on. And I've always had this thought in my head, but I've, I never really said it aloud. And then, not only did he, did he say it, but getting ready for that podcast, I was reading articles where he had been interviewed. And he said that putting in the combat outposts was like bait for the insurgents so that the snipers could kill the insurgents.

• 4:18JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, it's pretty awesome.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  And to do that over and over and over and over and over again was, again, you're not gonna get much better of an environment than Ramadi for a sniper.

• 4:31JP Dinnell?

  I agree.

• 4:33JP Dinnell?

  And the, and what you said, over and over and over, that's an understatement. Because there were, I was just, yeah, the, the environment in Ramadi was target-rich because of how many evil people were there, how many insurgent fighters were, that were just doing, as you've talked multiple times on this podcast, just horrific things to the local populace. And I love that you said, I'm sorry, I love that you used the word "support" in there. Because, you know, as a sniper, it's really cool to have that title and to be a sniper. And you can definitely feed into like the egotistical side of that.

• 5:18JP Dinnell?

  Like, yeah, I'm the sniper, I'm one of the lead snipers. But you and Leif and Seth did a phenomenal job

• 5:29JP Dinnell?

  reiterating like what our job was, was to protect those soldiers, Marines, and our SEALs that were on the ground, to support them in their clearances, in the operations. And if we did our job well, well, we gotta kill evil people. So for me, it was the best thing ever. And because of that target-rich environment, it really allowed us to progress those skillsets, to try things new, real time. You know, like, you know, in the movie Warfare, that opening scene where they're in the sniper hide, those loophole charges? I came up with that on a rooftop, just talking with the guys.

• 6:12JP Dinnell?

  And then was talking with one of our breachers. You know, because the rooftops were awesome. They provided, for the most part, covering concealment with those big, thick walls. But the problem is, like, you have to stand up, look over, you're scanning. You do that long enough, the enemy fighters and enemy snipers see you and they're gonna take shots. And if you come up in that same spot two or three times, that's an easy shot for them to take. So you're squatting down, you're moving around, you're popping up, look, scan, alright, they see me, I'm down. And that gets exhausting every time, especially when it's 100-plus degrees, full kit. And so we would start rotating out, okay, you're up, you're looking, scanning, moving around. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, man, it'd be awesome if we could like bust a hole through this wall. And we had these like little masonry hammers.

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  I remember the phase of masonry hammers. Did you guys have to buy them? Where'd you get them?

• 6:59JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, I, so myself and a few of the other guys, we built out those urban sniper kits.

• 7:04Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 7:05JP Dinnell?

  I went to Home Depot. And literally just went up and down all the aisles, just thinking, hey, what would help? And that's where we got the Stanley rolling boxes, we got...

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was like, it was like, uh, what's the, it was like Shawshank Redemption. It was like Shawshank Redemption, these dudes were up on the rooftops.

• 7:22JP Dinnell?

  Just chiseling.

• 7:22Jocko Willink?

  Just chiseling through, through the freaking walls, Echo Charles.

• 7:25JP Dinnell?

  Which sounds good until you realize how thick and well-built those walls are. I mean, if those walls are able to stop RPGs being shot at us, I think it's gonna take me a while for that masonry hammer.

• 7:37Jocko Willink?

  Plus, it's 120 degrees out. And it's not like you can stand up and get good swings.

• 7:41JP Dinnell?

  No.

• 7:42Jocko Willink?

  If you stand up, you're shot.

• 7:43JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, you're on, like, you're kneeling or you're on your side. I remember laying on my side, swinging the hammer, just getting so pissed off. But yeah, we, I mean, I'll kind of backtrack to, it was cool because of the ownership that you, Leif and Seth drove down into our task unit. As nobody dictated for us to build sniper, urban sniper kits, we realized, hey, we're, we need urban sniper kits. Guess what? There was none provided to us. Cool. Hey, can I go to Home Depot and buy stuff? Yep, cool, put, you know, and so that's what we did. And then eventually they're like, alright, cool, this is what's needed. And then the Navy was able to go make those purchases so that guys could have their, you know, urban sniper kits.

• 8:27JP Dinnell?

  But yeah, that was, you know, those little masonry hammers was part of the kit, which is super cool to be carrying extra weight in Ramadi that, you know, and, but yeah, so we started, I started thinking about it. And, you know, I know from our breaching, I'm not a breacher, but the breaching training that we, explosives training that we go through in third phase and SQT and just basics in the teams. Hey, we can build a charge that can punch a hole through something without damaging everything else around it. So I'm thinking about it, and I started talking with one of the other guys in the platoon, our lead breacher, who is a savant when it comes to breaching, like Bob Holland, right? Just a phenomenal breacher. We had him in our platoon. And he's still, uh, yeah, he's still in getting retired. I'm not gonna say his name, but loved the guy, awesome dude.

• 9:12JP Dinnell?

  And so we're like talking on the rooftop, I'm like, hey, could we build this, be able to do this? And he's like, yeah. I'm like, cool, let's do it right now. And so we did that, we built it, put it on the wall. You know, started the wall with the, the things that we have that allow us to do that. Put a six-second time delay fuse. Guys get off the rooftop, pop it off, we run around and goes off. And it was, it was so awesome. Like, come around the corner, it was just like, oh, like angels are seeing you. Like, there's this little hole and the smoke's kind of moving away and the dust and the dirt and everything. And I was like, sweet, I can now lay behind my sniper rifle, which gives me a better platform. I can lay behind my sniper rifle for days, which we did in Ramadi at times.

• 9:57JP Dinnell?

  You know, obviously, somebody's like, you weren't awake the whole time? Yeah, okay, we would sleep, we'd rotate out. But I could, I could literally lay behind my sniper rifle, have a very stable shooting platform, have protection of the rest of the wall around there. And then it made me more efficient and more effective with my, with my ability as a sniper to support whoever was on the ground and whatever was going on. And I like sharing that story when we're working with clients at Echelon Front about innovate and adapt. Because nobody was doing that. And it was just, it's just a culture of the SEAL Teams. How can we get better? How can we make what we're doing better? Through conversations, through thinking, and just trying to refine your craft. And I was infatuated with, infatuated with trying to refine my craft as a sniper

• 10:42JP Dinnell?

  because of the example that the older snipers set for me. Benny, Doug, Smurf, those guys in my platoon, you know? And then Chris over in Charlie Platoon, and those snipers were phenomenal. But, you know, Benny, Doug, and Smurf really poured into me a lot. Specifically Benny because of our friendship and just our positions in the platoon. And Benny doesn't get the credit he deserves for being as good of a sniper as he is.

• 11:07Jocko Willink?

  Benny's just awesome across the board.

• 11:09JP Dinnell?

  Yeah. And the only reason why Benny didn't have more kills than me or as much as Chris is because Benny, when we're in Ramadi, you guys put him in a leadership position when we're out there. So Benny being a good leader, instead of, you know, put himself, he would put us in good positions. Now he would get on the gun and do the good Lord's work and he was very efficient at that. But he was humble enough to know like, hey, that wasn't his primary purpose and roles and responsibility. But man, he was a phenomenal teacher and he really helped me be somewhat good at my job.

• 11:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was awesome because when, after that deployment, we came back and he took over as the LPO of the next platoon. So I was putting him through land warfare and stuff and he was just, it all just, it, it's like it made sense to him. Like war just made sense to him and you could watch him and you're like, oh yeah, Benny's just crushing.

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  Some of the, uh, the interesting thing was that we had 13 snipers in Task Unit Bruiser, which is a big number.

• 12:07JP Dinnell?

  That's a lot.

• 12:08Jocko Willink?

  It's a lot. Very lucky.

• 12:11JP Dinnell?

  Yes, partial luck, but also wisdom and experience from Tony and Dale. Because they were snipers. And I, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but Tony was the one to push for, hey, we need more snipers.

• 12:24Jocko Willink?

  Probably.

• 12:25JP Dinnell?

  And because we went, even though we had that condensed workup, there was a big push for us to go to sniper school. Like some guys like Wes, uh, he was able to go to the actual full-blown army sniper school. And you know, the rest of our guys, we went through the NSW short course, which was phenomenal. You know, Charlie Milton was one of the sniper instructors. That dude is a frogman. And he's also a great instructor, but holds very high standards. I think it's been broken, but a few years ago, he set a world record for a long shot. I'll have to look up the details later, but yeah.

• 13:03Jocko Willink?

  No surprise.

• 13:04JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, but those are the guys that I was getting to learn from and it was just crazy. But yeah, I think the big push for having that many snipers with the potential of us going to Ramadi came from Tony. And then obviously Dale supported it. He's like, uh, yeah, let's get more guys.

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, when you, when both of your platoon chiefs are snipers, that's two that you normally wouldn't have, right? So you just go down the list and you get, okay, this guy happened to go, this guy went and you end up with 13, which is

• 13:31JP Dinnell?

  awesome.

• 13:31Jocko Willink?

  Going into a really good environment and, and having such a good relationship with the army and with the Marine Corps to be able to, you know, get their support when we needed it and support them when they needed it.

• 13:43JP Dinnell?

  And we, yeah. And we were able to learn a lot from those Marine Corps, Army, uh, sharpshooters and snipers. Uh, when we got to Ramadi, just sitting down, talking with those guys, hey, what are you guys doing? Why are you guys doing it this way? Like we learned a lot of lessons. I, I, I know we, I can say we, because I know our whole Task Unit did. And I, as a sniper, learned a lot talking with those guys that were out there, which led to modifying your gear and changing things up. Um, but it was also really cool. Realizing how good we had it in SEAL teams. Because I remember talking with some, and I, I know we talked about this on a previous podcast, but talking with some of the, uh, army snipers that were right across the hallway from us at a Camp Criggerton in full metal jacket.

• 14:28JP Dinnell?

  And they, you know, we were just talking rounds, the type of rounds, and we were talking about the, the rounds that we had for five, five, six. Man, how do you guys get that? And I'm like, what are you guys using? And it was just like a standard five, five, six round. And, uh, so we're just talking and Benny and I went back across the hallway because we weren't using the five, five, six sniper round. We were primarily using the SR25, which is a seven, six, two caliber round or the 300 Winmat, which was my sweet baby girl. And so I wasn't using the 300, I'm sorry, the five, five, six round. I also knew that if I did need it, I could get more from y'all. And so we went back over there and had a, uh,

• 15:09JP Dinnell?

  Benny and I, we grabbed a bunch of cases, had some other guys grab cases. We walked across the hallway and we're like, here you guys go. And they're like, you would have thought we gave them a million dollars in just unmarked bills. Because they were, they were so appreciative of that. And it's like, well, one, we're out here working together. Why would we not do that? If we can enhance your capabilities with a better round,

• 15:33JP Dinnell?

  hell yeah, let's do it. You know, and that's cover move, which we talk about all the time.

• 15:37Jocko Willink?

  For sure. Yeah. And if you think about the opportunity to do that type of mission over and over and over and over and over and over again. Like if you don't do 10 of those, you're still good with the, with the, with the freaking mason, you know, hammer. You're like, you just deal with it. You're like, okay.

• 15:54JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  You know, but by the 14th time, you're like, wait a second, there might be a better way.

• 15:58JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  My first deployment to Iraq, we, we were doing direct action missions and we were doing them a lot. And so you just get, you get to really hone it and get it good. And that was the deal in Ramadi was having that opportunity over and over and over again. I mean, Leif tells the story, speaking of Marines, the first time we were not on patrol with Marines, like Leif was gonna die. Not from enemy contact, but because he had brought enough ammunition and weaponry for World War III. And he was just completely overloaded with weight.

• 16:32JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, you know, he, the Marines are running from, you know, from cover to cover out there, cover to cover, cover to cover, cover, cover. And he's running from cover to cover and from cover to cover and from cover. And he's going against, and you know, he came back like, bro, I gotta lighten this up. But that's one, that's one mission. Yeah. So then you go, okay, I can get rid of this. I can streamline this. What I can bring that. And you, that's how you get good. And it's very, you know, in the nineties, bro, you didn't do one mission.

• 16:59JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 16:59Jocko Willink?

  You know, didn't do one, like we did VBSS, but even we did VBSS, even if we did a few of them, you didn't do enough to where you really get to hone it, hone it the way you should. So man, the GWAT for the American warfighter was freaking legit.

• 17:17JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, it's crazy. You know, uh, repetition and taking action helps with innovate and adapt.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  Like just go out there and do it.

• 17:25JP Dinnell?

  Just go out there and do it. You know, that's one of the things I love talking with companies and the, you know, they know they need to change. And it's like, hey, just go take an iterative step, try something out. If it works, keep doing it, expand upon it. When it's consistently working and then that's your new direction. If it doesn't work, cool. You made a small iterative steps, not a big deal. We were doing that all the time in Ramadi. Hey, this sounds like a good idea. Cool, let's try it. Oh, that was a horrible idea. Well, good thing we didn't make a, you know, a, a big commitment to that. But you actually have to go out there and, and do it over and over and over. Uh, like our brother, our frogman brother, Andy Stumpf. He got his black belt in crazy amount of time. And there's not one other black belt that could challenge that black belt he has.

• 18:07JP Dinnell?

  Because he was training seven days a week, every day for years and years, and sometimes twice a day.

• 18:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're gonna get better.

• 18:16JP Dinnell?

  You're going to get good when you put in the work.

• 18:19Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, you were training once a year. Maybe.

• 18:25JP Dinnell?

  You talking about my jujitsu?

• 18:27Jocko Willink?

  I would say. You started jujitsu solid. What year did you start? What year did you start in jujitsu?

• 18:33JP Dinnell?

  My first actual exposure to jujitsu was in Guam. When Cowie and I, I know we shared this story before, Cowie and I were out at a bar, grabbing dinner and we're standing at the bar and I noticed that we were surrounded by a bunch of Chaborn, Chabornans, which is what the locals for in Guam. And these are dudes like, I mean, these are all big dudes, small dudes, but you could tell these, these are some hard dudes. Like scars on faces, cauliflower ear, and they're surrounding Cowie and I. And I'm like, and I grabbed the knife and fork that was on for my food and I turn around and I'm like, all right, I'm taking a few of these guys out before I die. And we turn around, I kind of bumped Cowie, he turns around and they're like, you Cowie? He was like, yeah. And all of a sudden they're like, oh, bro. And I'm like, why don't we start with that posture, the smiling?

• 19:18JP Dinnell?

  Well, they had recognized him because before we deployed to, uh, to Guam, he had taken leave, went back to Hawaii where he's from, did this big jujitsu tournament and won the whole thing.

• 19:28Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 19:29JP Dinnell?

  So they recognized them and they're like, hey, bro, you gotta come train with us.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because jujitsu's big in Guam.

• 19:34JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, big. And those guys had all traveled from Guam to do this tournament. And, uh, that was my first introduction was in a backyard MMA jujitsu gym setup. Lily cage in the backyard, weights in the grass and dirt. Uh, they had to do climb up the pole to connect into the power so that they could turn on the lights back there. And, uh, that was my first actual jujitsu training with, uh, with Cowie and these guys from Guam. And then it was just here and there. And then we.

• 20:01Jocko Willink?

  So that's 22 years ago?

• 20:03JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Jocko Willink?

  22 years ago.

• 20:05JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Jocko Willink?

  And so Andy Stumpf got his black belt in what, five years?

• 20:09JP Dinnell?

  I think six.

• 20:10Jocko Willink?

  Six years?

• 20:11JP Dinnell?

  Five or six years, yeah.

• 20:12Jocko Willink?

  And, and your black belt is where?

• 20:16JP Dinnell?

  I would say maybe a solid two to three, maybe probably four years away.

• 20:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 20:23JP Dinnell?

  You know, I'll probably be forty six, forty seven, my time I get my black belt, which I'm fine with.

• 20:27Jocko Willink?

  It's the path is hard, is it not?

• 20:29JP Dinnell?

  It is hard, yeah.

• 20:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Right on. All right. So, hey, in some of these FM's, some of these field manuals, like some of the stuff that they talk about when they're selecting snipers. Marksmanship, isn't it weird that marksmanship can be taught to just about everyone, just about everyone? Like occasionally you get a person that gets rolled from BUDS. Because they just can't shoot a pistol or they can't shoot a rifle. It's like one out of every hundred, I would say.

• 20:58JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Jocko Willink?

  A person that just cannot, and generally they'll get it the second time around. But something about their hand eye coordination or something about what's happening, they just can't do it.

• 21:09JP Dinnell?

  I, and I think I know why, that I would wager a very large sum of this. They don't have an open mind. They're not humble. They're not coachable. And even if they have a bad instructor, like so when I was, I had never touched a weapon and before going into the military. My first time shooting an actual pistol was in boot camp. I, I didn't even hit the target because they're like yelling at you. They, they don't give you any instruction and you're shooting this qual, they're yelling at you, super stressed out. I mean, I hit the target, but I didn't hear what I was supposed to be shooting. I'm like, this is horrible. And I just knew like, they're not.

• 21:42Jocko Willink?

  Maybe I'm going for the wrong job.

• 21:43JP Dinnell?

  They didn't teach, well, no, I didn't think that because I also, I was, I at least had enough awareness that like, they didn't teach me anything. And I knew going through SEAL training, they're going to teach you how to do the job, like they have to. But in, in, in third phase, when we're doing all of our weapon stuff, I had some good instructors and I had some really bad third phase instructors that literally didn't teach us anything, just yelled at us and trying to stress us out. And as, you know, as soon as you understand, you're like, I'm getting ready to graduate. Okay, cool. I get it. Like this isn't first phase. This isn't how we, we, you know, I've proven that I want to be here. I had passed every evolution first try going through BUDS, except for the tread, but they had changed out our whole classes fins for, to try these new fins.

• 22:28JP Dinnell?

  Everybody failed. And so they went back and they're like, oh, cool. And then we got the original duck feet fins and I passed. So I, I literally passed every evolution first try. You're in third phase and I'm like, okay, I, I get it. We're still on BUDS, but you're not actually like, okay.

• 22:48JP Dinnell?

  And I wasn't doing well on the pistol. And I was stuck with an instructor that did not actually teach us the fundamentals of how to shoot a pistol, all those things. And I was super stressed out. Well, I had some of the older guys, uh, some of the officers in our class and other guys that had grown up shooting and they did really well. I went and asked them for help. My, hey, can you guys help me out? And so in our off time, I was practicing and doing dry fire. And I was doing everything on my off time, which is very limited in third phase. And so, and then I would ask the instructors that were cool, that would talk to the students, that would teach us, I would ask them for help.

• 23:28JP Dinnell?

  And, and so I, I truly, but I could teach anybody, you could teach anybody to shoot. If they're willing to have an open mind, show humility, listen and be coachable. And here's the other thing, just like we teach companies and at, at Echelon Front, it's on you to seek that out. If you have a bad boss, okay, what are you gonna, how are you going to mitigate that impact? And at the end of the day, you have to get the job done. At the end of the day, I had to pass that, those quals. And it was 100% on me. And, um, there might be a, like a point zero zero one percent, like anomaly of somebody that can't shoot because of whatever reasons. But I mean.

• 24:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, even at sniper school, guys get dropped from sniper school. Most of the time it's not for marksmanship. Most of the time it's for stalking.

• 24:17JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, because they're, yes.

• 24:19Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? Like you can teach, generally speaking, you can teach most people the marksmanship piece. And, and of course there'll be some people that will be just better. Maybe they're naturally better. And even at the end of the course, they're still going to be a little bit better.

• 24:32JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 24:33Jocko Willink?

  But like everyone will get the passing or most of the time.

• 24:36JP Dinnell?

  Yes.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  Occasionally people don't make it, you know?

• 24:38JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, there's a few, but again, those guy, I've, I've seen guys that were struggling on the shooting part of sniper school. And I would watch them and guess what? They weren't listening. They weren't paying attention. They were distracted. They weren't. And also when it was, when our time was done, they'd go do other things. And it's like, okay, cool. You're putting in the minimal effort. You're going to get the minimal results.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  Isn't this kind of why females will learn to shoot faster? Like a female that's never shot before will learn to shoot faster than a man that's never shot before.

• 25:07JP Dinnell?

  When I teach shooting, um, typically the women, uh, are able to apply what you're teaching them much faster.

• 25:16Jocko Willink?

  Guys have some, you know, thing in their head that they are James Bond.

• 25:20JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 25:21Jocko Willink?

  Or Jason Bourne, is that his name?

• 25:24JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, yeah, Jason Bourne, hell yeah. And they want to impress you. And, uh, you know, I've been, when I teach shooting and, um, it's crazy, like, and I recognize like, okay, I need to set better expectations, like before the shooting course. And that's part of like the intro talk as I'm like getting ready to like run somebody through a course is talking about having an open mind. Being patient, slowing down, listening. And I'll remind people like, hey, you're paying us to teach you how to shoot. Have an open mind and listen to what we, yeah, listen to what we have to give you and apply what works. And I always tell people, hey, if what I'm teaching doesn't work, then don't do it. I, I will help you find something that works for you.

• 26:05JP Dinnell?

  And I, I always like to start off with a, a test cold and because hey.

• 26:11Jocko Willink?

  Baseline them.

• 26:11JP Dinnell?

  Baseline, baseline is always cold. No warmups, no dry reps, nothing baseline. I'll run them through it. And I had one guy who wanted to sign up for more of an advanced course. And I was like, hey, you gotta come through the, uh, the beginner course. I was like, but hey, if cold, uh, or even at the end of the day, if you can pass eight out of the 10 tests, first try. Like you can take the next course and like, I'll give you your money back for this and you can go towards the next one. He passed zero out of 10. Zero out of 10, zero out of 10. And but at the end of the day, you get everyone where they need to be. And like, I, I love when I'm teaching long range shooting.

• 26:47JP Dinnell?

  You're like really taking your time, slowing it down. Um, and I've, I've worked with people that, um, have never shot past a hundred yards with their hunting rifles. Um, and at the, by the time we're breaking for lunch, day one, I have them on target, hitting steel at a thousand yards.

• 27:05Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking epic.

• 27:06JP Dinnell?

  Batting a hundred percent on that because we'll take our time, open their minds. And I think a part of that is really taking the time, because I also realized like, I'm not putting guys through a selection course. I'm trying to help them refine their skillset. So it's on me as a teacher to get them where they need to be. So let's, let's set the standards and expectations, open their mind, build a really good relationship with them. And what, as, as we know, what we teach, if you build relationships with people, they're going to listen to you.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  It, it, shooting is one of those things where if you don't know what you're like, you're talking about shooting, if you take someone that's never shot before. And there's, they're not hitting a target at a thousand yards. It's not happening.

• 27:45JP Dinnell?

  Nope.

• 27:46Jocko Willink?

  And yet if you, it's a skill that you can learn very rapidly. And by the afternoon, you can be shooting, hitting a target a thousand yards.

• 27:54JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Jocko Willink?

  When you watch TV shows and you see, it's, it, you can, you can make anything make sense. Because when you see some like person shooting another person and they miss and miss and miss, be like, dude, how, how could you miss? But then you gotta remember that person's never trained before.

• 28:10JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Jocko Willink?

  And you see someone else in another movie where they take a shot and they hit someone. And you're like, oh, that's like, they're going to hit him the first time. Well, if he's trained, yeah.

• 28:18JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 28:18Jocko Willink?

  I, I see, have you seen the clip where the cop pulls up, there's like an active shooter? And this cop pulls up, he's like, hey, we got an active shooter. He's just so chill, gets his, gets his, uh, M4 out of the back of his vehicle, like watches through the window where the dude is, kind of posts up on the, on the vehicle. He takes a shot and he, he literally says on the radio, he's like, uh, shot fired, not shots fired. He goes, shot fired, you know, perpetrator's down.

• 28:45JP Dinnell?

  Just so awesome.

• 28:46Jocko Willink?

  And that's exactly, you know, when someone's trained, you can do that.

• 28:50JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 28:50Jocko Willink?

  If you haven't trained, there's no, well, there's a, a very small chance that you're going to hit a moving human being at a hundred yards or 200 yards. It's going to be very, very difficult. If you've never trained, if you've trained, it's going to, it's not that difficult.

• 29:02JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Jocko Willink?

  So it's one of those things, marksmanship, you're gonna, you, you can get the skill, occasionally get someone that just doesn't have the knack for it. But you'll get through it. Some of the other stuff they talk about is like physical condition, of course, vision. Smoking, like they're, they're looking for people that don't smoke and don't use nicotine. I, I know we'll get plenty of pushback on that one, uh, cause quite a few people use tobacco products as snipers. Mental conditions. When commanders screen sniper candidates, they should look for traits that indicate the candidate has the right qualities to be a sniper. The commander must determine if the candidate will pull the trigger at the right time and place. Some traits to look for are reliability, initiative, loyalty, discipline and emotional stability.

• 29:46Jocko Willink?

  A psychological evaluation of the candidate can aid the commander in the selection process. That's important stuff.

• 29:54Jocko Willink?

  Emotional stability, discipline. It's interesting that they say loyalty. That's an interesting one. You know, to throw, this is from an army manual.

• 30:02JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 30:03Jocko Willink?

  Um, like you get reliability, you get initiative, you get discipline, you get emotional stability, but loyalty, that's an interesting one to put in there.

• 30:12JP Dinnell?

  I could see how, I don't know if this is where they got it from, but as you said that, I was like, that's interesting. And I'm really thinking about it. You know, in, in combat.

• 30:25JP Dinnell?

  You know, enemy fighters come around the corner. They have weapons, they're shooting at you, or you see them, you engage them with a machine gun. You know.

• 30:36JP Dinnell?

  It's awesome. It's a lot of fun. But it's not intimate and personal. When I was taking shots as a sniper, I could see the whites of their eyes and watching their facial expressions. I think it makes it a little more real. And maybe they threw in loyalty because now when you're looking at somebody where it seems like you're up close and personal. And you're watching Lily like body language and everything else like that. It's not, it's not a silhouette in the distance. It's not just that's a figure with a weapon. That is a real human. And I could see how that could be hard for some people of going, oh, but then you also have to understand like your loyalty to the mission and your nation.

• 31:21JP Dinnell?

  That is an evil person. And also our loyalty to those innocent Iraqi families that we were trying to keep safe. And I never had that issue of wondering if I should take a shot because we knew. And the reason why we knew is because you, Leif and Seth were telling us about Ramadi before we got there. And then we get there and it's like, holy. And then, you know, we attended that memorial service for the Marines and, you know, it was very real. And I'll tell you, probably one of the, the images that will never leave my brain. There was a few from Ramadi and we, we've talked about this.

• 31:59JP Dinnell?

  But the first time I saw a grown man.

• 32:05JP Dinnell?

  Use a kid as a shield, as a human shield.

• 32:12JP Dinnell?

  Like that's evil, man. And to, and to know that they had zero regard for this innocent kid.

• 32:20JP Dinnell?

  It was just like, okay. It made, it was already real, but then the first time I saw that.

• 32:29JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, I guess it just, it changed the way I looked at things and it made me want to be better at my job.

• 32:36Jocko Willink?

  I actually remember, uh, reading like Seth sent me or, oh yeah, sent me the, the, um, write ups, right? Of who you shot. And I remember reading, I was like, oh, that's new because you, you, I know you shot at least one of those dudes.

• 32:52JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 32:52Jocko Willink?

  That was, had a, a kid. If I remember correctly, the guy was carrying ammunition.

• 32:58JP Dinnell?

  Yes.

• 32:59Jocko Willink?

  And he was holding a kid in front of him.

• 33:01JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, a little girl.

• 33:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you, you killed the guy.

• 33:04JP Dinnell?

  White dress with, uh, red flowers.

• 33:09Jocko Willink?

  Um, I guess that's why they got loyalty in there.

• 33:12JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, Field Craft, it talks about all this stuff, you know, um.

• 33:21Jocko Willink?

  The, the. Thing that we get into and the thing that we were going to talk about today, which we've not done very much of so far, but we'll get into a little bit more now. Um, is the kind of, kind of these lessons that you learn from being a sniper and how they apply to, to life, right? And you know, it's interesting. I was going to talk about the fact that being a sniper is like a blue collar job. It really is like a straight up blue collar job. You got your tools, which are your weapon, you know, your scope, your binos, your ammunition, your camouflage equipment, all that stuff. The, and then you also have like radios and all that stuff, but. So you have these tools and then you need to know how to use those tools. You know, so you train to use those tools.

• 34:06Jocko Willink?

  So it's a very, a very technical, like blue collar type job of what you're doing. And by the way, that's what the SEAL Teams is. The SEAL Teams is like, you, that's what you're doing. You're working with your hands. Whether you're building pallets to go on a trip or whether you're out in the field building a hide site. It's, it's just work, man. It's just hard ass work, which, which makes it awesome. But you also, the reason I think about that is because as guys, the more you do it, it's like when you see a good drywaller. Like a good drywallers, man, they're drywall. It's like, it's like incredible how fast they can do it. Or a good framer, like they're just can make stuff happen very, very quickly. They know all the little tricks of the trade. You know, you see a guy with doing drywall and the only thing they have is just their drywall hammer.

• 34:49JP Dinnell?

  It's crazy.

• 34:49Jocko Willink?

  Like it's got like the, the sharp edge that they're doing all the cuts with and they're hammering like it's. It's impressive. So there's things that they know in that job, but. Same thing with, with drywalling or being a carpenter. There's things that you can apply to the rest of your life. Um, and sniping certainly has a lot of that. So you sent me over a bunch of lessons that kind of apply on, on both. And we'll talk through some of them, but, um, tactical patience. Moving slow and, and moving slow sometimes, and then knowing when you gotta move fast.

• 35:24JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Jocko Willink?

  Something, and it's very easy for us as humans to develop a pattern and get stuck in a pattern where we always move fast. Or we always move slow.

• 35:34JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  So talk to me.

• 35:38JP Dinnell?

  I, I struggled with the moving slow part.

• 35:43JP Dinnell?

  At first in sniper school.

• 35:45Jocko Willink?

  Big shocker.

• 35:46JP Dinnell?

  Yeah. You know, uh, like, like Leif reminds me often, um. Hey, you're a default aggressive JP. That's great, but there has to be a balance there. And, uh, it's one of the things that you and Leif have really helped me work on is just, all right, hey, that's a great trait to have being default aggressive. But we can't be default aggressive all the time. And we actually have to know when to slow down and when to pause and when to not do anything. And so as a sniper, I remember I was having that issue. Oh, I wasn't a sniper yet. Going through sniper school, I was having that issue. And one of the instructors, he was joking, he was, um. One of the instructors was joking and he's like, bro, am I gonna have to like inject you with some estrogen to like lower your testosterone?

• 36:30JP Dinnell?

  Because you're just going, going, going. He goes, you have, he goes, if you want to make it through this training, you have to slow down on the stalking. Here's why. And, and as soon as he said, here's why, I was like, yep, got it. And I just had to remind myself to slow down. And there was times that when you're in sniper school, because of when you're moving from one train feature to the next. There, there is nothing blocking you. And so your movements, it might be a few. Feet within an hour. So you're, you're not, you're moving like a quarter of an inch at a time and settling. And you're praying, hey, let there be some sort of breeze.

• 37:10JP Dinnell?

  Cause if there's a breeze and it's moving all of the things out there, then you can kind of move with that same motion. And now allow you to move. So there was a time to slow down. And then now I get to that point. If they can't, if I can't see them, they can't see me. So now I can stand up. I can crawl, I can walk, I can run depending on that train feature. And it allows me to progress and move forward. And it was the same thing with shooting. There's times that you really have to slow down your shots. And there's other times like you're, you have a, a very brief moment of taking a shot. And so you gotta make sure all your fundamentals are done in this, in just a very smooth fashion.

• 37:53JP Dinnell?

  And, um, and so that's why starting slow is really important. And when you think about it from business, like we need to be making small iterative steps, like what we teach at Echelon Front. Especially if we're implementing change. Take, make a small iterative step. All right, cool. I move that direction, pause. See the impact to the organization, see the impact to your team. Was it a good impact? All right, cool. Let's do it again. Let's do it again. And then you eventually can create a little momentum if. You're moving in the right direction. And, um, and so it was hard for me to, to slow down, but when I realized the why behind it. And also understanding.

• 38:38JP Dinnell?

  That burden of like, hey, I'm in cyber school. This is an opportunity. It was a dream. It was literally a dream of mine to be a sniper. And, um, and so, yeah, just knowing, having that tactical patience, letting things develop. So that you can get a little more information and, you know, and that was something also when you're observing targets or you're observing a bad guy moving. It's like, okay, well, let me see what he's doing. Okay, we're trending towards being within the rules of engagement for me to take a shot. And over time, you, you really are able to run that OODA loop and that feedback loop faster and faster and faster. Cause you're like, all right, that's a trend, that's a trend, that's a trend. Okay. I know where he's going. Cool. You know what? Um, as soon as he does this, the slack is coming out.

• 39:23JP Dinnell?

  It's not like, oh, he did this. Now I need to get, and I need to get in position to take my shot. No, I am ready to take that last ounce out of the trigger. Once they do the next step. And if they don't do the next step and they went somewhere else, then it's like, okay, hold, I'm not letting go of the trigger. I'm not letting that slack back. I'm holding, scanning, observing, watching. Oh, he did some, okay, he's trending back there again. Okay. I just need him to do this to be well within the rules of engagement. Keyword, well within the rules of engagement because there was no gray zone for us. And you guys set that expectation from the very get go. And, and so just having that tactical patience to observe, collect information so that we can make a good decision.

• 40:06JP Dinnell?

  And you have to have information to make good decisions.

• 40:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 40:10JP Dinnell?

  So you don't make a mistake.

• 40:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's weird how just like doing building clearance too. You, sometimes you move really fast and sometimes you gotta slow down.

• 40:19JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 40:19Jocko Willink?

  And being able to figure out when it's time to move fast and when it's time to slow down. And what's interesting in business is you can have one project or process or task that you have to really move quick. Simultaneously, while you have two other processes that you have to be very slow and methodical. So being able to bifurcate your brain into like a fast mode, a slow mode and a medium mode. Cause I'm telling you, I see people all the time get stuck where they've been super methodical about this project. That was a big strategic project and therefore it had to, they really had to take their time and make sure that everything was squared away and in order. And the league leaves was all correct.

• 41:00Jocko Willink?

  And then they apply that to something else that's, you know, basically barely even matters. But you know when it matters, it matters when it doesn't get done because we were being so methodical with something that doesn't really matter. It's taking up a bunch of time. So that idea of knowing when to go fast and knowing when to go slow is something to pay attention to. And I think more than a, more than a skill, it's just an awareness. Like pay attention, just pay attention. How much, what speech should I be going on this project that I got? Is this something that's going to be inspected by, you know, the, the regulatory committee? Okay, then I'm probably gonna have to be more methodical. Is this something that's in-house that just needs to get done? And no one's really gonna look at, look underneath the hood to see how it got done? Okay, cool. Then I can move a little faster.

• 41:41JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 41:42Jocko Willink?

  So just, those are good things to think about.

• 41:44JP Dinnell?

  And these are skillsets.

• 41:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:46JP Dinnell?

  That you have to develop, but they also, if, if you're listening to this and you're in that position where you need to be doing it. And no one's taught you these things, seek the knowledge. If you're in a position where you're, have the ability to teach these things, teach them. Like, and that's why, and that's what I loved about the SEAL teams is we were always talking about things. The, the older guys, as much as they give younger guys a hard time, they were always pouring into us. Benny, Doug and Smurf were always pouring into the snipers. And you know, those are things that I didn't just come up in my, in my brain with these things. I'm like, oh yeah, I should move fast here and I should go slow here. It was taught to me.

• 42:25Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Um, you talked a little bit about the terrain and reading the terrain and navigating the terrain. That's just critical importance, obviously on the battlefield. You know, it's like for you guys picking out, um, where are you going to set up a sniper Overwatch position?

• 42:43JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 42:44Jocko Willink?

  I mean, that's just a terrain drill, a hundred percent terrain drill. And then it's like, okay, then how are we going to get to that sniper Overwatch position? Well, that's a terrain drill as well, but that's not the only place it applies.

• 42:54JP Dinnell?

  No. And the, the principles are the same. Study, study, study. I was, I would study the battle maps. I would study the city. We, we had videos and pictures to study. And it's just having awareness of the environment that you're moving into. Where am I, where am I starting? Where am I going? Okay, this environment to that environment, what changes along the way? What, what are some key indicators that I have, um, hit these, these objectives? That tell me, all right, I'm moving in the right direction. I'm trending in the right direction. And it's the same thing in business. Okay. Hey, here's where your business currently is.

• 43:39JP Dinnell?

  Here's where you want to go. All right, things are going to have to change for you to go from here to here. That means that you have to have a clear understanding where you're at, which means that you have to do an honest self-assessment and evaluation of you and your team and everything included with it. And then you have to take the time to educate yourself on that market that you're trying to push into. Or the changes that you want to implement into your business. Study, do research on different companies in that industry. Um, have an open mind to what other people are doing, be, be willing to change what you're doing. And then make an iterative step, move in that direction. Cause there's times I would plan our routes as our point man. And I had my primary route and then I had a secondary route.

• 44:24JP Dinnell?

  And then there was a tertiary route that I was aware of, but I knew if I went from primary to secondary, we were going to slow down.

• 44:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 44:31JP Dinnell?

  And then evaluate and then, all right, let's say, if this doesn't work, I'm going to go to the third option. Well, if I go from primary to secondary, I have to slow down. And if I go from secondary to third option, I'll stop. It's the same thing if, you know, in our, with our weapons. Primary weapon rifle, rifle goes down, get that pistol out. But I'm slowing everything down. If my pistol is out, if my pistol is out, I'm not making entrance into that next room. Because if my pistol goes down and I'm transitioning to a knife or a hatchet, man, that's a really bad situation. As cool of a story as that might seem, that's a bad situation.

• 45:12JP Dinnell?

  But having that awareness, but also training your team on what to expect when things change. When we were teaching close quarters combat, when I was working at trade at, under you, we would teach the guys, hey, listen. If you're next to go inside that room, they made entrance, whether it's a four man or two men, whatever. You better be paying attention and listening because we know what a rifle sounds like and we know what a pistol sounds like. Two completely different sounds. And we would tell guys, because again, all these things that we talk about at Echelon Front and on your podcast and everything, they're all skillsets. You have to teach people these things. Hey, if you hear guys go in there and they are engaging targets with a rifle and then you hear the pop, pop, pop of a pistol.

• 45:58JP Dinnell?

  Get your ass in that room because that means that guy needs support. Because now in a room that we said, hey, we need rifles for a gunfight, he's down to his secondary. We can't go, we, that pistol can't go down.

• 46:11Jocko Willink?

  That is non-verbal communication.

• 46:12JP Dinnell?

  Yes. And so you have to be aware of what your team is working on so that you can come in and support them.

• 46:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 46:18JP Dinnell?

  And, and so, hey, you hear the, you hear the pistol, rifle goes down, pistol shot. All right, cool. That next guy is coming in. And you also know that if you transition from rifle to pistol, somebody's coming in. So you need to also position your, your, yourself in a manner that allows them to come support you properly. You can't block them, you know, you gotta let them get in past you. They're going to bump past you, they're going to address that threat in the target. I'm sorry, that, that, um, that target threat in the corner, they're going to do their scans. You're going to keep your pistol out because you're still in the fight. Once that room is cleared and now they're lining up on the next threat, you're going to go to a corner where you're not exposed. And you're going to get your rifle up so you can get back in the fight. And, um, but it's just having awareness.

• 47:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. And that, you know, when you talk about the terrain, you know, you got your big picture terrain when we're moving through the city.

• 47:07JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 47:07Jocko Willink?

  You also have your small picture terrain, which is when you're in a room or in a hallway. And you know, you talked about in the business world, you're like, oh, where, where are we strategically? What market are we trying to move into? What, but it's also the same thing when you go into a room.

• 47:20JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 47:20Jocko Willink?

  And how well do you know the human terrain that's in that room? Do you have that person that's in the room that you already know, doesn't like, you know, your, the plan that you have or doesn't like what you're presenting or has a bad temper? Or someone that you're hypersensitive to like, oh, I know Echo is going to be in this meeting. He's got a big ego, I'm going to, and I, that means my ego is triggered. So now we got a scenario going on. You gotta pay attention to that before you go into the room. Same exact thing. You gotta be aware of what is happening. Learn to read the terrain. That's what we gotta be able to do. Uh, you talk about in these notes, knowing your gear just by feel and by position. And being able to find stuff in complete darkness. And that's something that obviously we do, but how do people get there?

• 48:05JP Dinnell?

  Start small and you have to put in the time and it's reps. Yeah. I mean, I could say nothing else and that applies to every listener in their life, but I can dive a little bit deeper if you want me to. Um, you know, you're, you want to set your gear up, uh, towards best support to you. Now we had SOPs for how guys would carry their gear, you know, you know, where they put the med pouch and all those different things. Um, but for me, I had to be very mindful of how the gear affected my ability to do the job. Having all these other things on your gear for extra stuff, sounds great until you're trying to carry it. It sounds great until in a hundred plus degrees, right?

• 48:48JP Dinnell?

  One 20, one 30, like when it's a hundred and 20, a hundred and 30 degree, 30 degrees plus, like, man, like. You'll quickly think about, did I need to bring that?

• 49:00JP Dinnell?

  Like, did I need to bring that eraser for my pencil? I mean, you are, you're really thinking about cutting things down. But then also for me as a sniper, like, how is my gear set up? Am I able, am I going to be able to lay down in a position comfortably to be able to do my job? Okay, cool. Nope. All right. What does it need to do? Do I need to bring it up? Do I need to change it to where, you know, I have to keep my body armor on, you know?

• 49:24Jocko Willink?

  That was a rapid change. When we all got to Ramadi, everyone adjusting their gear so that their gear, so we could all take off our gear and still have our body armor on.

• 49:31JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  Cause it, you know, it seems, when you're doing direct action, it seems like, oh, I just, I'll just have it all integrated into one thing.

• 49:39JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 49:40Jocko Willink?

  Seems kind of cool.

• 49:41JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 49:41Jocko Willink?

  It's very slick. You put it on and off very quickly. But then you get over there and you're like, wait a second, I'm going to be sitting in this Overwatch position for the next 48 hours. And I'm going to have my gear on this entire time? I don't really like that idea. But I don't want to take my body armor off.

• 49:55JP Dinnell?

  Yep.

• 49:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay, that's another good little evolution that happened.

• 49:58JP Dinnell?

  So laying down, like, okay, cool. All right. So I need to have a setup that I can pull off, put right next to me. But when I, when it's on my gear, I'm pulling mags out a certain way. When it's off and face a different direction, I'm now having to pull those magazines out a different way. So I, it was either, all right, do I switch the magazines around once I take it off? Or do I change how I grab them when the gear is off? And I chose to change how I grabbed it, because if I'm grabbing something, and I can feel it, I can feel the magazine, I know when I grab something, if my thumb is touching this, the rounds are pointed one way. If my thumb is touching this, index finger touching this, rounds are pointed a different way. So I can just manipulate that magazine to go into my weapon,

• 50:43JP Dinnell?

  or the rounds to go into my 300 Win Mag that I'm manually loading in there. I didn't want to be, I didn't want the risk of, okay, I take my gear off, and then I switch it, magazines around, and then all of a sudden it's like, hey, we got to roll out of here quick, which would happen, like, we got to move to the next spot or something changes. And then I, because that's a little bit of stress, right? Just a little bit at times. Sometimes a lot of stress, all of a sudden, like, hey, we got to roll or whatever. So I never wanted to be in a situation where I'm putting my gear on and my magazines are in a different direction, and having to then fumble that football.

• 51:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 51:21JP Dinnell?

  When it really came, when the time really counted. Because I wasn't having to do quick mag changes as a sniper.

• 51:27Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 51:27JP Dinnell?

  Especially, I wasn't doing any of those when I was carrying my 300 Win Mag, which I had to transition from weapon platforms, from SR25 or 300 Win Mag, which I know we'll talk about a little bit later. But yeah, knowing your gear in the dark, and I would practice just changing things, zipping things, unzipping things. How do I, okay, if I, if I pinch and grab it this way, and my wrist is, you know, here, then cool, I can easily pull it over. Hey, when I do this, the fabric is actually really soft and worn out. So instead of the zipper unzipping easy, there's like some give in that. And it's like, all right, cool. Okay, put it like a little piece of cardboard, tape it on the inside

• 52:07JP Dinnell?

  to add, make it a little more rigid. So then, in and out with the zippers, I was just tweaking my gear. And, you know, those were things that guys would talk about, that I taught, you know, and I remember Seth, just one time I was leaving work, and I was, I thought I had been there late. And I was leaving work, and he was just in his cage, just like, tinker, tinker, right? Just playing with his gear.

• 52:31Jocko Willink?

  Getting it dialed in.

• 52:31JP Dinnell?

  Yep.

• 52:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Know your gear, rehearse it. That's what we got to do. And it doesn't matter if it's your computer, it doesn't matter if it's your, how you interact with other people, like, you've got to rehearse stuff that you're doing. This is an interesting one. Acceptable sight picture versus perfect sight picture. If perfection even exists. If perfection even exists. Talk about that.

• 52:56JP Dinnell?

  I love talking about this, and I love mentioning it and teaching it in shooting.

• 53:05JP Dinnell?

  And so the principle behind that is, can I take an effective shot to do my job? And if I can, take the shot.

• 53:15JP Dinnell?

  Because that's going to be much faster than trying to make micro adjustments and get it absolutely dead perfect. I'm not doing a competition marksmanship shooting event, where I'm trying to keyhole my rounds. I'm trying to eliminate an evil person and shut off birthdays. So anywhere in that chest cavity with a 300 Win Mag, or that, in that face meat, is going to do the job. And so it was understanding, like, based off a distance, round, what's going to be effective? You know, now, if it's, you know, a 556 round, you know, you're probably not shutting off the light switch right away in the chest cavity. That's what you, headshots.

• 53:57JP Dinnell?

  That's one of the things that we changed at Trade At, was instead of shooting to the chest, one in the face, sorry. That's one of the things that we changed at Trade At, instead of shooting to the chest, one in the face, it was, you know, I was just talking with the guys, I'm like, hey, why don't we just shoot three to five in the face? That shuts off the light switch right away. And if that guy has an RPG or grenade or something, and you're in that same room, like, you don't want to shoot them in the chest, and they don't die right away. And if they're all hopped up on opiates, which these guys were, they're not going to die right away. And so it's, what's the, what's the most effective shot place, like, sight picture that you need to have, based off that individual and the environment that you're in, and the caliber of round that you have?

• 54:38JP Dinnell?

  And so understanding, like, hey, if you have that acceptable sight picture to get the work done, do it. Do it.

• 54:45Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 54:46JP Dinnell?

  Now, we want to refine that craft in training, and absolutely, in training, we would practice quick shots, quick acquisitions, going from one distance to the next without changing anything. It's like, is that acceptable? Boom, ding, right? If I hit my piece of steel at 500 yards, and you hear ding, and it's on the steel, and you shoot, and I, and I, let's say I get that done, because I'm going from one distance to the next, and I shoot at 850 yards, and I shoot at 300, and I shoot back at 500. And it's all boom, ding, boom, ding, boom, ding. And let's say that takes me three seconds. But you do it, and you're like, boom, ding, dow, dow, dow, boom, ding, dow, dow, dow, boom, ding.

• 55:31JP Dinnell?

  But all your shots are dead center.

• 55:33Jocko Willink?

  But I'm dead.

• 55:34JP Dinnell?

  Exactly.

• 55:37JP Dinnell?

  I did what was needed to execute the work in the most efficient and effective manner.

• 55:44Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yeah, and I think, I think the translation to civilian life is very obvious here. You're gonna, you're gonna have to go sometimes. And if you're waiting for the perfect scenario to unfold, for the perfect situation to be there, it's not going to be there. It's just not going to be there. It's never going to be there. And by the way, if you wait and hold and hold and keep looking at that sight picture, and guess what? The, the, the target moves.

• 56:08JP Dinnell?

  Yep.

• 56:08Jocko Willink?

  Like, the target moves, so it's, it doesn't matter anyways. So if you're waiting for the, absolute perfect time to, to enter this market, or to, to hire this person, you're waiting for the perfect time for everything to be lined up, it's not going to happen. So if you have a good sight, but look, I'm not trying to randomly hire someone, or you randomly enter some, you know, market that you're not prepared for, but you've done the research, the numbers look good, okay, we, we need to make this move. Cool, let's do it.

• 56:35JP Dinnell?

  And I think the key phrase of that, that I really want people to listen to is, are you able to execute the task at hand?

• 56:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, will it get the job done?

• 56:44JP Dinnell?

  Will it get the job done? Which is what we teach also in, at Echelon Front with decentralized command. When you're driving ownership down to us, and we'd come up with a plan, that was a workable plan, not even close to how your brain was working at the time, your default response was, execute. I like it. What can I do to support you? Just get the work done. And this is the OODA loop, which Dave Burke talks about, teaches. Dave Burke's explanation of the OODA loop on YouTube, in like, 2 minutes and 36 seconds, is the best explanation of the OODA loop. We didn't call it the OODA loop in the SEAL Teams, but it was the decision-making process of, hey, observe what's happening, orient yourself,

• 57:26JP Dinnell?

  decide, act. And if we take too long, observe, like, orienting ourselves based off what we observed, and then deciding to come up with this absolute perfect plan, well, guess what? By the time it is come, by the time it's time to take action, your environment's changed. And it's a missed opportunity.

• 57:43Jocko Willink?

  So 80% solution. Do you got an 80% solution? Maybe a 75% solution? That's good enough, man.

• 57:50JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, I mean, 75, right? Cs get degrees.

• 57:53Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 57:57Jocko Willink?

  Zooming in and zooming out on targets. Again, this to me is a little bit like, a little bit like when I talked about the fact that sometimes you go fast, and sometimes you got to go slow, and sometimes you're going fast with one thing, and you're going slow with something else. This is, you know, if you're not careful, you zoom in on the target, you're going to get target fixation, you're going to miss what else is happening.

• 58:15JP Dinnell?

  Yeah. Well, that's, that's exactly what it is. Target fixation, you zoom in. But the thing that we would have to be aware of is, and this goes back to what we were just talking about, I want to zoom in on my optic at just enough to be capable of doing my job. Because, I mean, and especially now the technology with scopes, it's unreal. I have a bunch of scopes from Vortex, which I absolutely love. I know you got a bunch, a buddy, Seamus.

• 58:40Jocko Willink?

  Thank you, thank you, Vortex.

• 58:41JP Dinnell?

  Yes, thank you, Seamus.

• 58:43Jocko Willink?

  I got rangefinders and binoculars and scopes, the whole, it's pretty good loadout.

• 58:47JP Dinnell?

  Absolutely. Seamus took care of the, took care of us. But, you know, those, even back then, in 2005, 2006, we had good technology, good scopes that we're using. And you could zoom in, and it's incredible what you see. I don't have to be all the way zoomed in to do my job. And so it was teaching guys, okay, zoom in enough to be able to execute the work. Don't get so target fixated on that one thing, that you lose situational awareness of what's happening around the target. Because I can have my optics dead center on your face, and I can zoom in all the way to where literally all I see is your face, but I don't know anything else that's happening around you.

• 59:27JP Dinnell?

  But if I zoom in, and I have my optics here, and that crosshair is still in the center of your face, but I'm able to see echo, I'm able to see what's going on around you, I'm able to see what's behind you, because when that round travels through you, what's the backdrop? What's, what's the potential collateral damage of behind you? Hey, zoom in enough to be effective at your job. And then, once you're done with a task, zoom back out. You mean it. And that was part of, we would just run drills, all right? And we'd do this dry. Click, zoom out, scan, all right? Potential threat, zoom in. And you're, you're also practicing staying on your weapon and stabilizing it as you zoom in, so you can maintain your crosshairs.

• 1:00:10JP Dinnell?

  With the right, in the right place. So you're staying focused on the task at hand, but not being too target fixated that you lose situational awareness. But it was, you know, this is detachment. Is teaching yourself, hey, you got done doing something, step back. And so when you zoom out, you're able to see what's happening around you. Okay, next problem, zoom in, execute the task, zoom out, scan, boom. And it's, you know, I mean, the application to business in life is, I would say very, very easy to connect to. Cause hey, you're working on something. Cool. You're done, step back. You know, one of our big FTX clients that we were working with up in

• 1:00:51JP Dinnell?

  Michigan, the field training exercises that we run at Echelon Front, this one always connected with them. Every, cause after every single mission, we sit down and we do a debrief. This would come up 99% of the time, this analogy of not being target fixated and having the ability to focus in on the work and step out. Focus on the work and step out. And this is a big one in the construction industry. We've been doing a lot of work in the construction industry and this connection is huge from a safety standpoint with the clients that we work at Echelon Front. Hey, zoom in on the task, but don't zoom in so much that you lose situational awareness. But then also, hey, when that job is done, step back, detach, look around, next problem,

• 1:01:37JP Dinnell?

  boom, go in. You have to have the ability to go in and go out.

• 1:01:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Cause if you're focused on what's right in front of you, cool. Then you come to work the next day and guess what? The supplies haven't been ordered. So that's a problem. I had a, uh, my first deployment through Iraq was we had those vehicle mounted flares, flares like the, the infrared. And we were in this position that had been getting a lot of attacks. And so we, we went out there to, you know, try and kill some bad guys. And so I'm sitting there on in this Humvee on a flare and I'm looking and I'm looking across this river and across this river, you know, I'm scanning and looking and looking and looking. All of a sudden a vehicle pulls up and I'm like watching. I'm like, okay. And then it stops. I'm like, oh, okay. So I zoom in a little bit closer. Now a guy gets out, I zoom in a little bit closer. Another guy gets out.

• 1:02:24Jocko Willink?

  Now these guys are both out, zooming closer. Now they open up the trunk and I'm, now I'm zoomed in like, oh, these guys are getting ready to attack us. They start like, kind of messing with something. And as they're messing with something, boom, we get hit with a couple RPGs. And I mean, just the perimeter of where we were at. And sure enough, I don't know if these guys were a decoy, it worked, but I completely fell for it like a hundred percent. I just zoomed in and it's almost like textbook. They did, they, each, each thing that they did made me get more and more, zoom in more and more and more and more. Cause that flare could zoom in like crazy. I mean, I'm watching their hands, you know, not quite their hands. I could see their whole body clearly.

• 1:03:06Jocko Willink?

  And sure enough, we got hit from, you know, probably 200 yards away as I, as I pulled the thing back and like figured out where we just got shot at from. But yeah, it's so total mistake. It's very easy, especially for, especially for leaders, you know, like I can easily have JP, JP, make sure nothing's happening over there. Like you can a hundred percent focus on that. Cool. But I gotta make sure that I'm back far enough going, okay, while JP is focused on that, I gotta be looking heads up. That's what we have to do as leaders. So as you have your team focus on some construction task of doing the concrete pour that day, you gotta be stepped back enough to be looking around going, oh, hold on a second. Do we have the material that's ordered for tomorrow? Where's that at? Well, how's it tracking? Are these other subs showing up tomorrow at the right time? Who talked to them? What about in four days? Do we have that dialed

• 1:03:49Jocko Willink?

  in? So definitely know when to zoom out, zoom in and know when to zoom out and, and, and modulate between the two. Uh, this is a good one. So reading wind and we can go in a little bit of reading wind, but I, I think that one of the most interesting thing you wrote in your notes is gauging the wind right in front of you is stupid. Where is the wind going to have the most impact on the round, which is farther down range. So you're looking at the wind does all kinds of weird stuff. And you can get sucked into looking at the wind that's 20 yards in front of you, but you're taking a 600 yard shot.

• 1:04:22JP Dinnell?

  It's crazy to me. It's absolutely like, I'll watch guys teach shooting, whether I've been there helping assist or watching on YouTube or something else like that. And, you know, they'll have, you know, the firing line of long range rifles lined up. It's all clear and safe. Guy goes out 10 feet, 20 feet, maybe in front and they're holding up the cast roll, which is great. It's gives you data. Okay. Cast roll is a great tool and they're testing the wind and they're like, all right, guys, this is the wind. I remember the first time I heard that I was, I looked like, I thought he was joking. Like that's the wind right in front of us, but we're, these

• 1:05:04JP Dinnell?

  guys are taking 700 yard shots. I remember like, just like looking down, I'm looking at like the grass kind of blowing, which is great, but that round is so much higher than the grass. So I started looking at other like trees and bushes that were about the level of that path that that round is. And I'm, that's where I gauge my wind. Because that's where the round is going to be going. And at the farther the round goes, the less energy it has, which means it can be much greater impacted by that wind. And, uh, you know, you just have to learn to be able to read the wind all the way down. And, um, you know, I've, I've been teaching at things where other instructors

• 1:05:48JP Dinnell?

  like, hey, here's the holds. And I had my group and I'm like, do not listen to that. And I would explain why. I said, hey, here's why. Here's where the wind is going to have the most impact on that round is down there. And so this wind will actually counter that wind. I don't want you holding anything. And they're looking at me like, the other guy's telling him to hold off the target. I'm like, just trust me one time. And if I'm wrong, you can switch instructors. But I want you to hold dead center. And these other instructors are like telling like crazy holds. And I'm like trying to also teach them like, hey, here's why, like, look at the, look at the train, look at what those, look at the bushes. Look at the top of the trees. Like look,

• 1:06:31JP Dinnell?

  see what they're doing. Hey, see the dirt moving down here? That means the wind's also doing this. And hey, we're, we're shooting over a ravine where the wind's going to be doing this, which it can actually, there can be an updraft, which I'm, I'm just telling you, just please hold dead center and let's try it. My guy holds dead center. Fundamentals are perfect. Dink. Less than a minute, less than a minute of angle off dead center. Everyone else, guess where they were at? In the dirt. And my guy looks at me, he's like, damn. And, but it was cool opportunity just explaining, hey, you've got to look at the big picture. It's not what's right in front of

• 1:07:16JP Dinnell?

  you. You have to be able to see the big picture. Where are you at? Where are you trying to go? And then reverse engineer it back to you.

• 1:07:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and the business world, this is difficult. Uh, because you gotta, you're, you're taking, you're placing bets, right? And a lot of the time people place bets on where they are right now, based on the data that they have right now. But you, you need to be placing bets, just like you need to read the wind that's down range. You need to be placing bets on where you anticipate you will be in the future. And so when it comes, when it comes to, um, you know, like how much, let's say stock you're going to have, how much stuff you're going to have in stock. If you read that wrong, you could be very, it could be problematic.

• 1:08:01JP Dinnell?

  Yes. And that's another thing I would tell guys, and I'm glad that you said this because I missed it earlier and it applies to this. The other reason why I don't want to be all the way zoomed into my optic, I can't see the environmental data around it. And I would tell guys, all right, hey, based off of what we're seeing right now, if you were to pull that trigger, this is what it'll do. And so you need to be on your gun, ready to go, reading that wind. And if you have a spotter giving you those corrections, cool. But you also have to be open minded to stop at any moment. Because if I say hold, you, you can't pull the trigger. When I say hold, you hold. And then I'll give you a course correction. Like, all right, move one minute of angle to the right or one mil

• 1:08:45JP Dinnell?

  to the right, depending on the scope you're using. Um, and I'll, you know, I can say hold, all right, send, right? Cause there, there might be a gust of wind that came up. And also as a spotter, I'm looking big picture. I'm literally scanning left and right. There's not a lot of movement here, but I see movement at 200 yards to the right, moving in our direction. Cool. Guess what's coming shortly after it? That wind. And so you have to be able to look at things big picture. You also have to be able to stop and recalibrate, make a small minor adjustment. But the big thing for long range shooting is you have to have everything ready to go and then execute at the right time.

• 1:09:22Jocko Willink?

  You're hunting elk, man, the wind is, the wind is every, it's, it's everything. It's like the top of the list when you're trying to maneuver. It's way more important than what the elk can see. Cause they can, their sense of smell is so much better than their sense of, uh, sense of sight or hearing. And so, but you start paying attention, I'm obviously, I'm not good at it, but when you're hunting with someone that's good, they're like, you're same thing. You're like, oh, there's the wind there, but then 40 meters, it's like this, and then another 200 meters. So we're okay right now, but we're gonna have to maneuver. It's, uh, definitely stuff you gotta pay attention to. Uh, next one, and I'm going, not reading all of these, but this is a good one.

• 1:10:02Jocko Willink?

  Cause this is so common you hear, and this to me was always the most, the most important fundamental of shooting is guns surprising you and not anticipating the shot. Our bodies will try to counter the recoil if we are anticipating the shot. Whenever I'm blowing shots, and this is true in archery and true in, in firearms. Whenever I'm blowing my shot, I know that it's this. I know that I'm, I, I need to let the shot surprise me. What do you got?

• 1:10:28JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, you know, especially when you're shooting a long range rifle, which is typically uh, a larger caliber round, not all the time, because the evolution of weapons and rounds now, it's, it's crazy what people are actually doing with like 22 long range and then two, two, three, five, five, six rounds. But typically, you know, you're shooting a 6.5 Creedmoor or a 308 or 300 wind mag, that gun's gonna kick. And the basic, your human instinct is to counter that. You know, if I push you, you're gonna push back. Unless you know that if you let me push you, it puts you in a better position for like jujitsu. You're like, all right, cool. Push into me. You're giving me the advantage.

• 1:11:12JP Dinnell?

  For shooting, you just have to let the gun surprise you. And that's the other part that's really important is putting yourself in a good, stable shooting position toward that recoil doesn't drastically affect you. Because the better you are able to support that weapon platform and absorb the impact of that round going off, absorb the recoil. If you absorb some of the recoil, less recoil means less time off target. Less time off target means faster shots. And that's a big thing. And when I'm teaching pistol shooting, how you grip to eliminate that recoil um, is, is really important, but for, yeah, long range shooting, like, hey, you have everything going.

• 1:11:53JP Dinnell?

  It has to surprise you. And that's why you have to start dry. Like, I love starting dry fire, like just having run through the motions of chambering around, getting set up. All right, your position on the trigger, that's really important with your finger, because you want a smooth trigger pull. You don't want to squeeze. I hate when people say squeeze the trigger. No, you're an idiot. Because when you're saying squeeze the trigger, you're also squeezing your hand. When you're squeezing your hand, those other three little amigos are gonna throw off your shot. So you need to isolate a smooth trigger pull, whether it's long range, pistol, rifle, smooth trigger pull. If I have a smooth trigger pull and I can get used to those fundamentals and boom, click.

• 1:12:38JP Dinnell?

  And if you didn't move, if I put you on a rifle and it's, you don't know if it's live or not, that's another thing I like.

• 1:12:45Jocko Willink?

  The dummy rounds.

• 1:12:46JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, always show the.

• 1:12:48JP Dinnell?

  Yeah. And I love it, because I'll do that when I'm teaching long range shooting. I'm like, all right, cool. Hey, you're set up. I'm gonna put you around in. And I'm just putting an empty casing, because it'll, it'll chamber in there and it sounds very similar. They don't know the difference. If you try to do that with me or, you know, like Jason Gardner, your legendary SEAL sniper, or Benny Olson, you know, our, like our guy likes. If you were to try to put a casing in there and chamber it, they would be like, hmm, that sounded different. Cause it, your gear sounds different, like your weapon sounds different. And so anyways, I would put an empty, uh, uh, empty round in there, boom, go through. And then it would show them what their natural tendencies are. And so now that you know your natural tendencies are, you can create habits to change your behaviors and tendencies.

• 1:13:32JP Dinnell?

  And like, all right, cool. This is what you did. This is what we have to do to correct it. We're gonna do that 10 times in a row. And once you've got it, cool, now we're gonna do another 10 times perfect. Once you have that, you can do that 10 times perfect, now we can move on to the next thing. And so it's exposing their natural tendencies so that they can now create habits to change it. And that's what we need in business and in life, right? And I, I, as you and Leif have been working with me and helping me, my natural tendency is to be a little too aggressive. Which even though my intentions are pure, you guys know my intentions are pure. It can send the wrong message.

• 1:14:07Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yeah. And that's the big thing on this one is that our bodies, our, our minds, our brains, our lizard brains have all these instincts. And if we're not paying attention to them, they will screw you up. And so when someone walks into the room and they get aggressive to me and my natural, my natural instinct is to get aggressive back, that's not gonna help me. If there's some high pressure situation going on, and my natural instinct is to start to escalate my own emotion, that's not, that's not, it's not gonna help me. And we can go down, down the list of all these natural human instincts that we have that are great for lizard survival. They're great for lizard survival.

• 1:14:49Jocko Willink?

  They're not great for human interaction and they're definitely not great for leadership. These are emotions that make you make bad decisions. These are panics. These are fear. We make bad decisions when we're afraid. We make bad decisions when we're in, in the, in the animal world. If you roll into my space and you start looking at my food, what I should do is attack you. And I should be defensive. In the human world, if I start doing that, well, you're, you're growing into my space, but we, that's because we have to work together. And so when my instinct is to get hostile with you, because you're in my space and I'm afraid you're gonna get credit for the, the, the project that I'm supposed to be in charge of, bro, what does that do? So these instincts are things that we absolutely, we've gotta control them.

• 1:15:34Jocko Willink?

  And if we don't control them, gonna be problematic.

• 1:15:36JP Dinnell?

  Well, we also have to understand, like, why are we trying to be better at what we're doing? And if I can remind myself that the only way I can lead people is by having a relationship with them so that I can influence them, that changes the way I think about every interaction. Is what am I about to do or say going to build or hurt the relationship?

• 1:15:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, um, I'm trying to think of good ways to kind of use the dummy round for interacting with other people.

• 1:16:06JP Dinnell?

  Role play.

• 1:16:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, role play for sure. I did it the other day. I got asked a question. A guy said, you know, because I was talking about the indirect approach and a guy said, hey, you know, um, I, I understand you like the, the indirect approach, but where I work, we like the direct approach, because the direct approach, you know, we just need to get the stuff said. And I go, uh, I said, well, that's dumb and it's not gonna work. Next question.

• 1:16:30Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, there's this weird awkward silence and I looked at him, I go, how'd that feel? And he goes, not good. And I, and I go, that's the direct approach. That's what you do to people when you give them the direct approach. You make them defensive, you make them not want to hear what you have to say. I was like, I just did the direct approach to you so you'd see what it feels like. That's kind of like a dummy round.

• 1:16:50JP Dinnell?

  We, uh, the national FTX, I'm sorry, the national muster that we had, uh, a few musters ago. We were doing a pre muster FTX.

• 1:16:59Jocko Willink?

  I know, that's awesome.

• 1:17:00JP Dinnell?

  And we got done with a run and we had a leader that was doing that. I, I, and so Cody and I are debriefing before we kick off the debrief. And I said, hey, I'm gonna do something that is counter to what we teach, but to prove a point, and then I will explain it afterward. I just want you knowing what I'm doing before I just do it. Cause it's, it's his program now, you know what I mean? Like, this is his program. I don't want to like, I'm not, I'm not trying to throw him off to the expose or test anything. It was to get a reaction so that they could feel it. And I did exactly what you did, but I went level 10.

• 1:17:41JP Dinnell?

  And I just, it was, it went on for about a minute. I was just like, and then I, and then I just paused.

• 1:17:48Jocko Willink?

  How'd that feel?

• 1:17:49JP Dinnell?

  And I smiled.

• 1:17:51JP Dinnell?

  And I said, that's why we don't do, you know, and whatever I said, right? And then we broke it down in debrief. And actually afterwards, one of the FTX attendees, uh, when we're actually getting ready to head back to go check in for the muster was like, that was the most impactful thing I got from it. He goes, I didn't realize that's how people feel when I do that. He goes, you weren't even talking to me and I was getting so uncomfortable and mad and emotional. He goes, thank you for doing that, but you can, you can do that in a controlled environment. That's the dummy round. Is it a controlled environment that you can learn, talk, address, assess, and then recalibrate?

• 1:18:30Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:18:32Jocko Willink?

  Reacting to a missed shot. Boy, this is a, this is a good one. There's nothing worse than being on a range and getting totally, uh, self-destructing because you missed a head plate. You missed the number two head plate out of six and then you've missed seven more shots, eight, nine, 12, and you have to do a mag change.

• 1:18:57Jocko Willink?

  Just a meltdown. How are you supposed to react to a missed shot?

• 1:19:02JP Dinnell?

  You miss a shot, no factor. Like, that should be your response. I missed a shot, no factor, detach, don't get emotional, meaning don't get frustrated with yourself. You missed a shot. Go back to the fundamentals, reengage. Because if I, the worst thing you can do is now try to do everything you just did faster. All you're doing is missing faster.

• 1:19:26JP Dinnell?

  And so if you can teach yourself to pause, recalibrate, and then reengage, you're gonna be good to go.

• 1:19:35Jocko Willink?

  The, I think at some point we had, the SEAL teams had. Tiger Woods, sports psychologist come out.

• 1:19:44JP Dinnell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:45Jocko Willink?

  And, but one of the things that, that he was saying was you don't think about your last shot. You don't think about your next shot. You just think about what you're doing right now. And even the, the quote unquote, think about what you're doing right now, even that is, you can, you can blow that too. Cause if you start thinking about like the 19 things you've got to do correctly, you've got to have that process down and that, just, just do it.

• 1:20:07JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, I would, yeah, if, because yes, people that are thinking about it can overthink. I would just say be present.

• 1:20:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:20:14JP Dinnell?

  Be present in what you're doing. And if you're doing the right things at the right time, in the right order, you're going to hit your shot. And if you miss, recalibrate, like literally pause, recalibrate, reengage.

• 1:20:28Jocko Willink?

  Honestly, I think that the, the, the reaction to a missed shot shouldn't even be no factor. It, you shouldn't say no factor. It should literally be no factor. Like, like you pulled the trigger, you didn't hear a ping and you shouldn't even, you should just, you know, shoot again. Like it didn't even happen is where you want to be.

• 1:20:46JP Dinnell?

  I missed a shot in Ramadi with a guy that was running across the street. Homeboy had some speed on him. I was not expecting that. And, uh, older guy in the platoon that I really looked up to, I looked up to all those guys. He's just

• 1:21:01JP Dinnell?

  the epitome of the silent professional, right? There's no photographic evidence of this guy existing in the teams. And, uh, he actually was right next to me. And, um, I missed a shot. And you know what's funny is when I pulled the trigger, I knew that it was a missed shot. And so I pulled the trigger, knew it was a missed shot and was already in motion. Cause one of the things also that we'd get really good at is, hey, when you pull the trigger, you can't do anything else other than prepare yourself for the next shot. And with the 300 wind mag or any bolt action rifle, that means ejecting a round, chambering a new one. Well, hey, the gun's moving, it's off target. Now's the time, baby.

• 1:21:43JP Dinnell?

  Like use that time to your advantage. So, cool. I pull the trigger. And as soon as I pull the trigger and the way I would hold my weapon for long range shooting, I would teach people this. Is I would pull the trigger and because I'm not gripping the weapon and holding it, my thumb is over here to the side, which allows it to go up, hit the bolt, pull it back. And as my, as my hand is pulling it back, this opens up, catches the brass, sets it down right next to me. Uh, like, you know, drop it and then slide a new round in. I'm already off target. It doesn't matter. Like I'm, um, efficiency, economy of motion and time. And so then I knew I had missed a shot, like I said, so I get back on,

• 1:22:24JP Dinnell?

  make my adjustment based off of the miss that I, the, yeah, Speedy Gonzales.

• 1:22:31JP Dinnell?

  And, uh, yeah. And so I, I now made the adjustment based off the previous hold I had, which is, you know, when we're talking about holds and how important that is to know, it's like, all right, cool. That hold did this, I need to do this. And then my, my follow-up shot, dude, dude, just dirt nap.

• 1:22:49Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yeah.

• 1:22:52Jocko Willink?

  The, this is so important. It's such a good, this is a skill that you definitely need to learn. And, uh, you know, uh, being a new guy, when you're shooting headplates as a new guy and you blow one shot and you just melt that full meltdown. And especially because everyone's putting pressure on you, you know, it's a competition, you're shooting against someone else. You hear their ping, ping, ping, ping, and you hear your, you're like,

• 1:23:13Jocko Willink?

  and then what do you do? You, you, you, you shoot harder, you know? Like, no, that's not the answer. The answer is not to shoot harder. This is a scenario for goldfish memory next play, right? The, um, the, uh, something we take away from the lacrosse finance segue pipeline is just goldfish memory next play.

• 1:23:34Jocko Willink?

  Have you seen this guy? There's a guy on, uh, he's like a comedian or something. And he, he just goes through these verbal, uh, uh, repetition of what he does in his life.

• 1:23:45JP Dinnell?

  That's cool.

• 1:23:46Jocko Willink?

  He played lacrosse in college. Now he's on, in finance and the segue from, from lacrosse to finance pipeline. And then goldfish memory next play. Just, that's what I'm gonna do.

• 1:23:56JP Dinnell?

  I thought you were going with that line from Ted Lasso.

• 1:23:59Jocko Willink?

  What did Ted Lasso say?

• 1:24:00JP Dinnell?

  Very similar. He pulled the guy aside. He's like, you know what the happiest animal is in the world? He's like, ah, I don't know, coach. He goes, goldfish.

• 1:24:07Jocko Willink?

  Goldfish memory next play.

• 1:24:08JP Dinnell?

  Cause he doesn't remember what happened. Be a goldfish out there. And he's like, Ted, the show Ted Lasso is, is awesome.

• 1:24:15Jocko Willink?

  I've only watched one season of it, but it was, it's a great show.

• 1:24:18JP Dinnell?

  It's, yes.

• 1:24:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a great show. I, I gotta watch more of those. We'll, we'll get into that. Um, so goldfish memory next play and don't think about what just went wrong. Instead, think about nothing. Don't think about what's next. Just, just, just get, what'd you say? Be present. That's what you're doing. Man, it's weird how you can get archery. You can, you can have a meltdown too. Like you can have a full meltdown in archery. You blow a shot and then it's just, this is where I will get a vision. I'll get that glimpse of over, I'll start to overthinking. I'll be like, dude, shut up. Just do, do the protocol, do the protocol. That's what I'm doing.

• 1:24:54JP Dinnell?

  Yeah. Being present is so important in life, in all aspects. Hey, you're at, you know, you're on the road for work, be present with your client.

• 1:25:05JP Dinnell?

  You're on a flight, be present, working or interacting with the person next to you to get to know them and build that relationship and get a, you know, and hey, you're at home? Cool. Be present with your wife, be present with your kids. And, and be thankful for what you also have. Because I can choose to be frustrated or I can choose to be happy. Joy is a choice. Anger is a choice. And if I miss a shot, I can be angry. That doesn't help me. Or I can say, all right, be present, go through the motions, take the next shot.

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep. I, I have a lesson learned on this. I have a lesson learned on this and it's kind of, it's not the opposite of what you said, but it's not completely aligned with. So

• 1:25:51Jocko Willink?

  I went to see the last Black Sabbath show ever.

• 1:25:56JP Dinnell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:57Jocko Willink?

  And so Jack Osborne, he knows that, I'm, I'm friends with him. And he knows that Black Sabbath has been my favorite band since I was a child. And it is the soundtrack, uh, to my life. And when he found out that they were gonna play their last show in England, he's like, he sent me a text. He says, don't say anything. Do you want to come to this show? And I was like, uh, let me think about it. Hell yeah. So I went with my wife and we went over there and it, it was, so I get there and I literally had this conversation with myself. I'm like, you know what? This is, this is the, this is the, uh, the Mount Everest of my, of my

• 1:26:41Jocko Willink?

  music, my love of music. This is it. It's not gonna, and by the way, it wasn't just Black Sabbath. If it was just Black Sabbath, uh, it would have been just amazing, but it was Metallica, Guns N' Roses. It was everybody. Tool. It was, it was ridiculous. So I get there and I say to myself, I literally had this conversation with myself of like, okay, listen, just, just freaking live and enjoy this day. And the thing that I was putting out of my mind was like, don't sit there every 30 seconds and take out your phone and take a picture of everything all day long. Just, just, just freaking just, just soak it in, right? And I did, and I took, I took a handful of videos and pictures.

• 1:27:26Jocko Willink?

  And dude, it was, it was beyond, it was, as good as I thought it was going to be, it was beyond that. It was freaking epic. And, um, and when I got back, I mean, I, I got done and I took some pictures. I took some videos. But I wish I would have just, I wish I would have, I wish I would have honestly mounted a damn GoPro to my chest.

• 1:27:50JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:50Jocko Willink?

  And filmed the entire thing because every second was epic.

• 1:27:55JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:55Jocko Willink?

  And so, uh, yeah, I, I, I think I misinterpreted the idea of being present with like, oh, that means you shouldn't, you know, uh, document what's happening. So I kind of blew it. Um, and the other thing that is in my mind still, like there was a lot of recording going on. I mean, obviously they had like the full video, you know, they're going to release at some point.

• 1:28:21JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:22Jocko Willink?

  Like, uh, uh, an entire digital reproduction of the whole thing. So I'll have it. But god damn dude, it was freaking epic. And I'm, I'm happy I took what I did, but I actually would have taken more.

• 1:28:36JP Dinnell?

  Well, it's the same thing when we're in the teams. Like you look back at the photos and videos we have.

• 1:28:40Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you know why there's the same.

• 1:28:41JP Dinnell?

  I wish I would have taken more.

• 1:28:42Jocko Willink?

  The same nine pictures of me in Ramadi. Cause there's no pictures of me in Ramadi. Cause we weren't taking, I mean, I wasn't taking pictures.

• 1:28:49JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:49Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, yeah, absolutely. I wish I would have recorded all kinds of stuff.

• 1:28:54JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:54Jocko Willink?

  And, and videoed all kinds of stuff and all that, but it was, not only was I not thinking about it, but also there was rules, like, hey, you're not allowed to. And, and I actually lifted those rules. So the echo Charles, there was some guys from another SEAL team that got in trouble for having pictures before I went on my first deployment. So they were, the, the, the leadership was already mad. And so they're like, hey, you're not allowed to take pictures. And by the way, it's like general order number one, you're not allowed to take, there's got a list of things. So I was a rule follower. I'm like, okay, cool. No pictures. So I didn't have barely any pictures of that first deployment.

• 1:29:34Jocko Willink?

  And then the second, like when we got to Ramadi, um, still the same thing. And then like a couple of weeks into it, I was like, all right, boys, take some pictures. Cause I,

• 1:29:43Jocko Willink?

  I knew we would want some historical documentation of our brothers.

• 1:29:48JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:48Jocko Willink?

  So we ended up with some pictures and some more than others. But like me, I, I have barely any pictures of me. There's one, there's one picture of me, it's taken, there's a picture of me taken by army dudes or by combat camera dudes. But like I have, I took, I took one series of pictures like in the, in the Mark Lee building for my kids, like I'm standing there. Because they were like, my wife's like, can you send us a picture of you? And I was like, yep. So I took a picture, you know, or one of the five pictures.

• 1:30:19JP Dinnell?

  You know, I, you know, and yeah, we can have these reflections and wish we would have done things different, but it's also just part of like your personality. Like you've always been very stoic and professional. And you know, then you have the other guys in, that you work with that while they're professional, there, it's just the way we, we all think about things differently. I like to take pictures and videos. I have a crazy amount of pictures and videos.

• 1:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Do you have a crazy amount of pictures and video from Ramadi?

• 1:30:50JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, on a, on that laptop, I told you that I can't, you know, I'm, I'm sure somebody will help me figure this out, but yeah, you know, and also I was.

• 1:30:59Jocko Willink?

  How long was the last time you had it figured out? Like.

• 1:31:02JP Dinnell?

  Oh geez, like after Ramadi.

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Let's do it quick.

• 1:31:06JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:06Jocko Willink?

  Let's get that thing, let's figure out what you got on there. That'd be awesome.

• 1:31:09JP Dinnell?

  Um, Matthew Moyer was a, a Marine that was attached with us.

• 1:31:15JP Dinnell?

  He actually sent me a good amount of pictures. And um, it, those are some of the pictures that we've used in the muster slice that you're like, where'd you get this from? And I'm like, dude.

• 1:31:25Jocko Willink?

  I met a dude surfing. And he goes, hey, you're Jocko, right? And I said, yeah. And he goes, I was combat camera in Ramadi. I got a bunch of pictures of you and your guys. And he dropped off the, the thumb drive here.

• 1:31:34JP Dinnell?

  What?

• 1:31:34Jocko Willink?

  I, you, you've used those pictures too. They're, they're kind of the part of the.

• 1:31:37JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, yeah. That's awesome.

• 1:31:38Jocko Willink?

  He has pictures of when Gunny Gibson got shot.

• 1:31:43JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:44Jocko Willink?

  Like the pictures of him getting worked on the courtyard?

• 1:31:46JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:46Jocko Willink?

  Those are his pictures.

• 1:31:47JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I didn't have those until I met him surfing.

• 1:31:50JP Dinnell?

  That's crazy.

• 1:31:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:51JP Dinnell?

  Freaking. I um, but as I've gotten older, I've been more mindful of like, hey, I want to take, you know, I want to capture these things. And I, I still don't do a great job, you know? Cause we'll do stuff and man is like, we didn't get a family photo again. I'm like, dang it. And I, I joked one time with her, I was like, man, we just need one of our investments to go through and we'll just hire somebody to just, just capture these moments in our life with our kids. You know what I mean? Cause it's like, when you go do stuff with your family, like you want to be present, but I want to also capture it. See, that's.

• 1:32:20Jocko Willink?

  And that's what I'm saying. I went too far at the Black Sabbath concert. I went too far in the, I'm going to be present. And not far enough into, I'm going to document this shit. Cause it's freaking epic.

• 1:32:32JP Dinnell?

  When we were in Australia for the muster, and we'll get back to track. Uh, when we were in Australia for the muster, uh, you know, we all went to this one spot to, uh, to surf. And when I say we surf, it was us watching Leif surf because Leif surfs and he's awesome. I do not surf, but I enjoy hanging out with my friends and I like watching, hey, if you like to surf, guess what? I like to watch you surf, man. Like I, I just want to be there with you. You remember I talked about this before? Seth loves to surf and we, and I didn't surf. I wish I would have. Now, you know, back in the day, I wish I would have been surfing with Seth in Guam, but whatever, can't go back. But I would go to the beach with him because he would go surf. And I'd go there just to watch. Now there's other reasons, because a few times he thought the locals were going to fight him. And he's like, hey, I need you to come. I think these locals are fighting me.

• 1:33:13JP Dinnell?

  I'm like, I'm done. I'm there. I really don't want to get in a fight with the locals, but if Seth is asking me to be there, I'm going to be there. Anyways, we go to Australia, we go to this awesome place to surf and we're in this like a little surf shop. And I, and I, I'm standing outside waiting, looking around. I'm just like, man, this incredible beach. Like looking around, right? Being present. And I see this dad and his son standing there. He has his arm around his son. His son's holding a surfboard. He's holding a surfboard, silhouetted between the trees and everything. I'm like, bro, that's, that's awesome. And I ran across the street, pulled out my phone and like just took some photos and they weren't

• 1:33:57JP Dinnell?

  looking at me. They're like looking away. And I like took some photos of them. And then they go on, I'm like, hey, like, hey, sir. And he's like, and obviously you can tell I'm an American, not Australian. And I was like, hey, I know this is going to seem super weird. I'm a, but I'm a father and what I just saw was amazing.

• 1:34:17JP Dinnell?

  I captured it for you. I took some photos. Do you have an iPhone? He goes, yeah. I'm like, cool. I'm going to airdrop them to you. He's like, oh really? And so I airdropped it to him. And then I was like, hey, if you want me to delete them, I can delete them because like it's a picture of you and your son. He's like, no, we're looking away. He's like, I don't, he's like, this was the nicest thing someone's ever done for me. A stranger. Thank you. But I just remember looking at that and I, I had that thought, like if I was him, I'd want that photo. And um, yeah, I was just, you know, just trying to be more mindful as we get older.

• 1:34:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I totally blow that all the time. I do cool stuff with my kids and I'm like, we'll get done doing cool stuff. And I mean freaking cool stuff with my kids and I'll get done and be like, uh, there's a friend of mine that his, his daughter wrestled, his son wrestles. And he's like a professional photographer. And now whenever we see him, that's who takes all these awesome pictures. But he's taken awesome pictures of like, I wouldn't be able, I couldn't take these pictures. It's like me and like, my daughter's getting ready to go wrestle. And you know, being, being able to see that and have that. And like a guy, that dude that took a picture of Rana, she's in her first UFC BJJ.

• 1:35:29Jocko Willink?

  This guy took a picture. It, it is the best picture of my, of Rana and me for sure. But she's standing on the top of the bowl, right? Behind her is a giant freaking American flag. It says Rana Willink on it. I'm on the ground looking up at her with a big smile on my face. And this guy got, got this picture. I was like, bro, thank you so, and he sent me, you know, they put pictures on like metal? Like, yeah, he sent a metal one of those. And yeah, just again, I think this is the, the lesson learned for today. Hey, you can only do so much for yourself, but if you see some other cool shit, um, is this out of

• 1:36:14Jocko Willink?

  bounds to be like, if you see some people doing some cool stuff, take some pictures of them.

• 1:36:19JP Dinnell?

  And then give them to them.

• 1:36:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, no, I don't want to get creepy here. I don't want to get creepy here. But like, that is, this stuff just fades. And I'll tell you another thing is your, you know, your memory. Your memory fades. And so I find that, you know, I, I grew up in a small town and don't really ever go back there. And when I do occasionally go back there, people that live there, they remember all these things that I don't remember. And I think the reason is because every day when they drive by, you know, such and such school, they think about all the memories from that school.

• 1:36:53JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:53Jocko Willink?

  I don't, I don't like refire those neurons about that school ever. And so those memories just fade away. I got a bunch of new memories. So if you don't have something to remind you and reconnect those neurons, bro, they just not going to get reconnected. Like even we'll talk, I'll talk to guys that were in Ramadi with us and they, they won't remember something that we will remember because we talk about it.

• 1:37:20JP Dinnell?

  Yes.

• 1:37:20Jocko Willink?

  And present it and look at pictures of it where they might not do that. Maybe they talk once a year to their, whatever, to one of their buddies. So the memory starts to fade if you don't keep it. So documenting and taking pictures. In my mind, I've now moved since the Black Sabbath concert, I have moved taking pictures to a be, a part of being present. It's a positive thing. Do it.

• 1:37:44JP Dinnell?

  And if we pull the thread a little bit deeper on what we're talking about, being present allows you to appreciate what you have. No matter how bad the situation might be, there's, there's good in where you're at. And one of the things I like to say when I'm speaking with companies is my worst day is somebody's dream. Because I know that my worst day in America, millions of people would love to swap and have that bad day that JP's having.

• 1:38:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The freaking Echo Charles over here having a bad day because he got a flat tire on his Cadillac Escalade.

• 1:38:20JP Dinnell?

  That's why you gotta get those run flats, homie.

• 1:38:24JP Dinnell?

  But it also helps you with your perspective. You know, I was talking with a guy who's struggling with his faith and I'm just sitting there listening, uh, which I've learned to do from you and Leif and, you know, just listen, right? Just listen. And I was a little like, not nervous, not scared, but like, this was a serious moment for this guy. And I didn't want to screw it up. And um, but I knew that if I just listen, that I'll be prompted to give him whatever he needs to, to hear. So I'm listening to him. I'm praying silently as I'm listening. And then we get done, you know, talking through some stuff.

• 1:39:10JP Dinnell?

  And I just like asked him, I'm like, hey, I want you to actually think, and if you want to write these things down, write them down or whatever. I was like, I actually want you to think about all the good things that God has provided you, all the blessings, all of the things that you weren't, felt like you weren't deserving of. And also all the times that you've received forgiveness when you probably think you didn't deserve it. I was like, just think about it, write it down and then like we'll talk more. And I wanted him to see the mirror himself of like, hey, you know what? Actually, man, my, my life's not that bad. Actually, every time I've had hard times, I've come out on the other side. And so guess what?

• 1:39:54JP Dinnell?

  I'm probably going to as well here. And so it's just being present and thankful, but then also reflecting upon like where you've, where you've come from and gone is, is pretty dang important. That's why, you know this, that Marco's pizza hat is in my closet as the first thing I see every day when I'm home. Just says, you know what? I'm not delivering pizzas to try to help make ends meet for my family right now.

• 1:40:19Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:40:21Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, last thing from your list I want to cover, what, know what to do when technology fails.

• 1:40:29JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, so going back to the fundamentals of what you know is going to work. There's always going to be an evolution of technology. There's going to be, you know, there's going to be, you know, better, faster ways to do things, but there are things that are tried and true. And so this isn't so much of a sniper thing. But it, but it applies. It's, you know, when we're teaching, you know, rifle shooting. And we have optics on there. Guys would take their iron sights off the back. And it would drive me crazy.

• 1:41:08JP Dinnell?

  And so to teach the lesson, I would take their batteries out if I could without them knowing. And so when they'd be on the, on the line getting ready to shoot, they're like, oh, my, my optics not working. Run the drill. Well, I don't have a, why'd you take it off? And so, you know, you have to have a, you have to have something that is, is a backup plan. And yes, do I want to use that red dot? Or that optic from Vortex? 100%. But if it fails, can I still get the job done? Do I have the ability to get the job done? And, you know, I think about it from like a business standpoint.

• 1:41:49JP Dinnell?

  We have a lot of SOPs put in place at Echelon Front to make it to where we are able to be with our clients. And, you know, some of the SOPs, like at first I was just like, man, I don't know, this doesn't make sense. But then it's like, okay, yes, it does make sense. You know, like the travel SOPs that we put into place. Those are very smart for the business to take care of our clients. Like they're very smart. And we, you know, and so, you know, if technology is going to fail, how are you going to get the job done? And when I got out, I was doing so the financial company, like we had, you know, things on different servers or whatever, but I also kept hard copies. Just in case. And there's one day, there's issues with our system.

• 1:42:33JP Dinnell?

  And nobody else could do work but me. Cause I had hard copies that I could still access and, and make calls and, and do the job. So.

• 1:42:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Contingency planning. Yes. That's what we're doing. You know, one, one other thing I, I think this might be the last thing.

• 1:42:50JP Dinnell?

  I, I gave you a super long list.

• 1:42:51Jocko Willink?

  No, no, it's all good stuff. Well, we'll just do another podcast and get to the rest of some of this other stuff. And I'm sure we'll have more questions that come out of this, but one of the other things that when I was, when I was doing some research and I was reading through a bunch of different, I read the Marine Corps Sniper Manual, the Army Sniper Manual, I didn't read the whole thing, but I looked through them. And the Special Operations, Special Forces Sniper Manual. So those were kind of what, the, the ones that I looked at, just getting some ideas. But one of the things that I found was really interesting was, was they had a little section in one of them. I forget which one it was, but it was about target indicators. It's like, what, why is something seen? And so, you know, it talked about smell or how do you detect a target, right? It talked about smell.

• 1:43:34Jocko Willink?

  And it talked about tactile, which is like what you can feel, which was kind of a, they made a little bit of a stretch there. Cause it's like, oh, tripwire, which for sure, but that's not really a sniper thing. That's just a, a, a soldiering thing. But the visual piece, right? And this is stuff that I was like, I remember learning this stuff. What makes, what makes things? Visible, right? So, and the list of them was like, oh, the thing is out of place. Like it's just a thing that is out of place. So is the, is it an out of place shape? And is that shape recognizable as something? Shadows, like shadows can make something stand out. Silhouettes can make something stand out. A different surface texture can make something stand out.

• 1:44:14Jocko Willink?

  The, the spacing, like a spacing that doesn't match the environment can make something stand out. Obviously color can make something stand out. And then movement can make something stand out. So, and what I thought was interesting about this is as we learn in the SEAL teams and you learn it, you learned all these things at a basic level as just a regular SEAL. And then as snipers, you're going to learn it like probably four times more. Like four times more what this looks like. And what it does is when you, when you learn about how to, what to look for, how to identify a target. And you guys play in sniper school, you play all these KIMs game and you, and as sniper instructors,

• 1:44:57Jocko Willink?

  you spend a lot of time observing, looking for all these things. But my point in saying all this is because once you learn what to look for, obviously you reverse engineer that to figure out how to not be found. And what's interesting is what it boils down to is it teaches you as a sniper, when you learn how to look for things, it teaches you to how to be self-aware of what you, what visual signals you're giving off. And what that teaches you is true self-awareness. And so as you interact in the world, and just as you'd think a sniper that was easily able to find a target

• 1:45:40Jocko Willink?

  using these, looking for these things, how stupid would that sniper be to not then take advantage of that information to camouflage correctly? Well, isn't it interesting that we as human beings, our instinct is to look at other people and pick them apart? And go, oh, I can't believe JP's, you know, talking a bunch during this meeting. I can't believe, I can't believe JP's coming here with this attitude. Or I can't believe JP's got a big ego. I can't believe JP's trying to take credit for this. And I apply all those things to you. But I never say, geez, why am I in this meeting trying to take credit for this thing? Or why am I the one that's running my, we, we need to become self-aware. And I think sniper school and a sniper skill is becoming acutely self-aware

• 1:46:22Jocko Willink?

  of how you are presenting to the world from a visual standpoint and a noise standpoint and a smell standpoint. But really that, that visuals, how you are presenting to the world, whereas you have to apply it to yourself. And in the civilian sector, we can easily see what makes someone stand out in a negative way. And yet we don't apply those rules to ourselves. And that is extremely problematic. So I would say, uh, be careful of that. Yeah. Be careful of that.

• 1:46:56JP Dinnell?

  That's why, uh, I love, you know, that we do the balance assessment at Echelon Front. Because if you're humble and doing it honestly, you'll see the mirror very clear. And the more you do it and the more you understand our principles, the more zoomed in that mirror comes. And it's, uh, it can be humbling.

• 1:47:21Jocko Willink?

  You start to see some stuff that's out of place, out of shape. You start to see shadows, silhouettes and surfaces that don't, they just don't match.

• 1:47:27JP Dinnell?

  Yes.

• 1:47:28Jocko Willink?

  It don't fit in there the way it's supposed to fit in there.

• 1:47:30JP Dinnell?

  And, you know, the reason why I brought that up is because as a sniper, when we were learning to build hides and part of stalking and urban hides or hides out in the field. If you had the ability to get everything set up and then go look at it from a different perspective, it allowed you to see, oh, my setup is good. And as you do that over time, you, you can actually build the skillset to know that if I do this, this and this, I don't have to go look because I know how I look. I know how I feel. I, I, you know, and it's like, did I use the right backdrops? Did I use the right environmental

• 1:48:10JP Dinnell?

  things that I'm using to veg up in front and veg up behind to take away that depth perception? Did I break up all my straight lines and 90 degree angles with different things? And, you know, at first it takes, okay, try it. Look, you know, it's like what we teach at Echelon Front, where we're talking about our core values, how leadership is a skill. Well, you have to learn it. You have to put it into practice, assess, and then adjust. And you just keep running that loop. And if you do it enough and enough and enough, you'll know the adjustments you're making are trending in the right direction without having to take too much time to reflect. You can now, you can make real time adjustments in the right direction.

• 1:48:51Jocko Willink?

  And isn't it interesting though, you can, when you first build your first sniper hide site? And you, you think you're good to go and you think no one can see you. And then trade act comes along, pulls you out and goes, hey, come over here. Walk 50 yards with me over here. Now go look at your hide site. And you're like, oh my God, it's, you know, some pathetic just thing that sticks out horribly. And like you said, you, okay, so lesson learned. It's shocking that people do things, interacting with other people, leadership things where they don't think anyone's going to see what they're doing. And it stands out so much. And you gotta be self-aware.

• 1:49:27JP Dinnell?

  I, I'm pretty sure I shared this on a previous episode here. If not, it's been on other podcasts or my podcast. I know I shared this story. When I was a kid, I was building urban sniper hides, not knowing what I was doing. And I set up in my garage, which is elevated off the street. Cracked the garage door, had my BB gun. And I set it up to where I was going to be laying behind it, turned off all the lights in there, walked out to the street. And was seeing if I could see anything in there. And when I realized, oh, nope, you can't see anything. Then I went and got on there. And, you know, was set up.

• 1:50:07Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing.

• 1:50:08JP Dinnell?

  And I definitely was not shooting at the mailman that was driving by. Definitely did not do that.

• 1:50:14Jocko Willink?

  And even if you were statute of limitations, you know, he's good to go.

• 1:50:18JP Dinnell?

  Allegedly.

• 1:50:20Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Right on. Awesome. Um, well, we're about to go meet up with the boys. I'm asking a bruiser in a little bit, which is going to be awesome. And I know I've got a few of them scheduled to come on. I've also got some, some, uh, I got another army guy coming on, which he was, you know, uh, down there with us. So good. Going to bring in some more historical, um, documentation before it all gets forgotten.

• 1:50:46JP Dinnell?

  Dang, we're old.

• 1:50:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So we're going to go do that in a little bit. In the meantime.

• 1:50:52Jocko Willink?

  How's your workout program going right now?

• 1:50:53JP Dinnell?

  It's good.

• 1:50:54Jocko Willink?

  How's your Jocko Fuel intake going?

• 1:50:56JP Dinnell?

  Man, that new Pro Series.

• 1:50:57Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking legit.

• 1:50:58JP Dinnell?

  Let the muscle drive.

• 1:51:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:00JP Dinnell?

  People are like, is it worth it? I'm like, yes. Like, without a shadow of a doubt, absolutely. You know, I've, I'm down about 30 pounds and strength is still worth that.

• 1:51:10Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:51:11JP Dinnell?

  And obviously, when you're down about.

• 1:51:12Jocko Willink?

  What's the biggest change? How long has it taken you to go down 30 pounds?

• 1:51:16JP Dinnell?

  I did it pretty quick. I, I, I'd have to look back through like.

• 1:51:20Jocko Willink?

  What's the biggest, what's the changes that you made?

• 1:51:22JP Dinnell?

  Um, heavy on my protein. Um, like protein first thing in the morning. You know, getting 30 to 45 grams of protein right away.

• 1:51:31Jocko Willink?

  That's a milk, that's a milk cookie and a milk, by the way.

• 1:51:34JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:34Jocko Willink?

  If you're wondering.

• 1:51:36JP Dinnell?

  No, no, no, no. Yeah, getting, getting that, you know, you know, Jason Klepa has this shoulder, shoulder challenge right now where it's 45 grams of protein right in the morning, first thing. So I'm doing that.

• 1:51:45Jocko Willink?

  So like first thing, like when you wake up or is that the first?

• 1:51:48JP Dinnell?

  Yes. No, get fuel in your body.

• 1:51:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:51:50JP Dinnell?

  Your brain needs it. Right now, I know there's some people are going to be talking about fasting and everything, but I'm not fasting.

• 1:51:54Jocko Willink?

  Everything's everything. Every, everything's got to do, it doesn't matter.

• 1:51:57JP Dinnell?

  But I can tell you what I've been doing.

• 1:51:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what, that's what we're talking about.

• 1:51:59JP Dinnell?

  And guess what? I've been trending in a good direction with my health, so I know what works for me. And I know everyone has different methods.

• 1:52:06Jocko Willink?

  When you say first thing in the morning, like you are getting out of bed and you're like brushing your teeth, going downstairs and having a milk.

• 1:52:13JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, good question. I wasn't clear on that. Within an hour to 90 minutes of being awake, I want to consume that protein.

• 1:52:19Jocko Willink?

  Before or after you work out?

• 1:52:20JP Dinnell?

  Um, if I'm, so right now, so when this comes out, is this coming out next Friday or Wednesday?

• 1:52:26Jocko Willink?

  Wednesday, yeah.

• 1:52:27JP Dinnell?

  Okay, so this comes out next Wednesday. So if you're listening the day of, tomorrow night, I'll be starting my 31 mile ruck for the 15 year anniversary of Extortion 17. And so I'm starting in the evening, doing 31 miles, pushing through the night. And now, you know, I have actually like six, seven people that are like, I'm gonna do all 30, like Josh Strasburger, who also works with us, Ashon Front, he's doing all 31. My son Aiden and a handful of other buddies are doing that.

• 1:52:54JP Dinnell?

  But what, what I was saying is like, where I went with that is if I'm gonna go do a ruck, like I'll get some protein in, like a liquid form of protein before you work out is a great fuel source. So it might just be a milk, not additional stuff. So a milk with some carbs and go.

• 1:53:12Jocko Willink?

  Before you work out.

• 1:53:13JP Dinnell?

  Yes.

• 1:53:14Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:53:14JP Dinnell?

  You, you need the fuel, right? You know, um, and then afterwards, another 45 right away.

• 1:53:20Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's a good way. If you're got 90 in the tank, 90, 90 grams of, of protein.

• 1:53:26JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:26Jocko Willink?

  Like in, in the AM, that's solid.

• 1:53:29JP Dinnell?

  And, um, you know, using, um, um, just calculations of like, hey, this is where I want to be. I want to be around the 210 range. Cool. Uh, non-negotiable, 210 grams of protein a day. And then, uh, for me, what.

• 1:53:45Jocko Willink?

  How hard is it for you to get 210 grams of protein down?

• 1:53:48JP Dinnell?

  Not hard at all.

• 1:53:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay, good. Cause some people struggle with that, but maybe that's because they're eating just like freaking.

• 1:53:53JP Dinnell?

  Well, what's, where's their, yeah, what are they eating?

• 1:53:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:56JP Dinnell?

  You know, if it's a high protein source, it's actually not that hard to do. And if you start in the morning, it's really easy to do. And, uh, and so for, for me, to give me good energy, not like, I like clean carbs, uh, rice, potatoes, um, fruit. Um, and then, um, I just, I don't consume a lot of fat, you know? And that's, anytime I follow that, I slim up. But also being physically active every day, just a non-negotiable for me is something every day. Uh, whether it's training jiu-jitsu, lifting weights, even if it's like, hey, I'm just gonna throw on the ruck and just get a mile in.

• 1:54:35JP Dinnell?

  Like, hey, I just flew in, my flight was delayed, I didn't land until 12:45, I didn't get back to my house until 1:45 in the morning. I can at least go walk a mile with the ruck on to know that I did that. You know, there's times where I'll show up to jiu-jitsu just out of discipline. Because it's like, hey, I know that if I don't come, then that, that goes down the path that I want to go. Uh, the other thing is just, you know, taking ownership over my health and my blood work and getting blood work done and recognizing, okay, hey, here's where my markers are. Having, you know, being on TRT, uh, having healthy, sustainable, like, uh, levels of testosterone. And then taking peptides for recovery. And I freaking feel great. I love it.

• 1:55:19Jocko Willink?

  Good to go.

• 1:55:19JP Dinnell?

  And I, I don't, yeah.

• 1:55:21Jocko Willink?

  Are you going to jiu-jitsu camp?

• 1:55:24JP Dinnell?

  Immersion camp?

• 1:55:25Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:55:25JP Dinnell?

  Absolutely.

• 1:55:26Jocko Willink?

  So I'll get, so Jocko Fuel, we talked about muscle drive, right? Muscle drive, we talked about milk protein, we talked about, we're both drinking some energy drinks right now, which is clean and the best. We're both drinking hydrates right now.

• 1:55:37JP Dinnell?

  Yes.

• 1:55:38Jocko Willink?

  It's a pretty good combo.

• 1:55:38JP Dinnell?

  That's the other thing is making sure I'm drinking enough water and hydrates throughout the day, which helps with your energy, clarity, all, all that stuff. And once I wake up also is consuming at least 20 ounces of water or a hydrate, which I know isn't 20, it's only like, what is it? 16, but whatever, 16 to 20 ounces right away. Because when you sleep, you dehydrate yourself just by breathing about 20 ounces of water.

• 1:56:04Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:56:05JP Dinnell?

  So if you don't do that, you're starting off in a dehydrated state. So make sure I'm hydrating with water, the, the hydrates and like the mulks and yeah, everything from Jocko Fuel makes it so easy.

• 1:56:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I was looking at this morning, we had a Jocko Fuel meeting and we were going through the product roadmap for like the next year. And I was like, okay, so next year I will be consuming nothing but Jocko Fuel. Like we got such good stuff coming out. I don't want to make everyone all fired up, but like we got, I mean, bars, they're on the roadmap.

• 1:56:37JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, roadmap.

• 1:56:38Jocko Willink?

  Yep, so, um.

• 1:56:39JP Dinnell?

  Can we, uh, uh, have a request from Josh Strasburger and Brent Casigulo and, you know, a few of my guys from DFW that help on the FTXs and that, they'll also be at immersion camp. Can we keep the raspberry gelato flavor? That's also a request for me.

• 1:56:54Jocko Willink?

  It's definitely, it's definitely, it's definitely under consideration.

• 1:56:58JP Dinnell?

  Okay.

• 1:56:58Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:56:59JP Dinnell?

  Because that is unreal. And the fruity cereal.

• 1:57:03Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:57:03JP Dinnell?

  You put that.

• 1:57:04Jocko Willink?

  By the way, so just so you know, fruity cereal was going to be a limited time, but it did so well. It's permanent time. And, and gelato, raspberry gelato is heading in the same direction right now. It'll take a little bit of time to the logistics behind it.

• 1:57:18JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:19Jocko Willink?

  You know, because we gotta keep, do another run of it, but yeah. Noted.

• 1:57:22JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, just, you know, but going back to what we said, iterative step, if it makes sense for business, right? Which I would think it would, but man, you put that in a ninja creamery.

• 1:57:33Jocko Willink?

  The ninja creamer.

• 1:57:34JP Dinnell?

  Protein ice cream. That, that would be Jocko approved ice cream.

• 1:57:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:57:38JP Dinnell?

  It's a milk.

• 1:57:39Jocko Willink?

  I have not quite mastered the, uh, ninja creamy, but what I have mastered is the Greek yogurt with milk. Uh, this is such a cheat code to just eat dessert anytime you want.

• 1:57:51JP Dinnell?

  My wife and I do the same thing.

• 1:57:52Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking ridiculous.

• 1:57:54JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:54Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, if you don't want dessert, if you just want breakfast, you can put banana in there, you can put, uh, strawberry in there and you can have like a fruit situation. And then at night, you can have chocolate or you can have mint chocolate, you can have peanut butter. So you get, you get like, what, what, what is that called in the morning? What is it called? When something, you eat something sweet in the morning or like something tasty, because it's not really dessert.

• 1:58:13JP Dinnell?

  I don't know.

• 1:58:14Jocko Willink?

  Is there a name for it?

• 1:58:15JP Dinnell?

  No.

• 1:58:15Jocko Willink?

  I guess it's just called freaking milk, Jocko Fuel.

• 1:58:17JP Dinnell?

  All day.

• 1:58:18Jocko Willink?

  Uh, JacoFuel.com, you can get all this stuff and you can also get them, get it at whatever retailer you shop at. We're nationwide. If they don't have it where you are, something's wrong. So tell the people in the store, do you want Jocko Fuel? Or check out JacoFuel.com. Also, Origin USA, so we got a, a jiu-jitsu camp, there's still time to come, we got slots open, it's August 23rd through the 28th. It's between zero and seven hours of jiu-jitsu a day. Like depending on where you're at, bro. Like if you want to come, hey, honestly, I'm not kidding. If you didn't even do any jiu-jitsu, none, let's say, let's say like last year, I had a hurt neck. I couldn't train.

• 1:59:02Jocko Willink?

  So I was just there, does it, was that hurt kinda because I wanted to train? Of course, but even still, you know, it's still fun. So even if, even if I had like a bat, if I, if I had a torn ACL right now, and you still go to camp, you're still gonna have fun. Even if you didn't do jiu-jitsu, even if you're like, oh, I'm just gonna go and hang out with JP and hang out with Echo and hang out with Jocko and tour the factory and see what's going on, swim in the lake and do the stand-up paddle boarding, like, like it's fun.

• 1:59:29JP Dinnell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:29Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's adult summer camp.

• 1:59:32JP Dinnell?

  I'm, I'm, if I'm at immersion camp or signed up to go, like whether I'm on my way there or there, and if I tear my ACL, I'm still training. Like immersion camp is so unreal, you could train with a torn ACL.

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  You make a good point.

• 1:59:44JP Dinnell?

  I'm just saying.

• 1:59:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, because remember when I tore my bicep and I couldn't train? It was like, like two months or something after gut surgery or whatever, I still trained. You told me not to, but I did still train, but I, throughout the, I was responsible, didn't hurt it. But like, are you saying, oh yeah, you don't have to train, you can go hang out with this person, hang out with that person? I was like, I was doing workouts with people, you know, you can do other workouts. So I was like, oh, I'm just gonna, uh, work out or whatever and like eight people will come with me, you know? So it's like, yeah, you're right. It's like this big, uh, yeah, kind of vacation camp, kind of jiu-jitsu in there as much as you want, it's a good time.

• 2:00:17Jocko Willink?

  Jiu-jitsu, food, lake activities, barbecue activities, story, talking story, campfire activities. Cause the campfire has like a full, I did like a two hour Q and A down there last year. Like it's just freaking rolling, lifting, gym, the whole nine yards.

• 2:00:33JP Dinnell?

  When you and Pete sit and do Q and A and talk about business. That alone is worth the cost of camp and it's a jujitsu camp.

• 2:00:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:44JP Dinnell?

  The jujitsu, I mean.

• 2:00:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the jujitsu is completely off the hook, by the way. Yeah, of course, obviously.

• 2:00:50JP Dinnell?

  But what it's like, what 30 black belts there, something like that? You know, I was thinking about this. I knew we were going to talk about this. You know, at Echelon Front, we have a hard time properly communicating the expectations versus reality of what our field training exercise is. Like that, and I know we want to do a podcast of breaking that down. Expectations versus reality. There's a lot of wrong expectations around the field training exercise we do versus the reality of what you get. It's the same thing for immersion camp. And that's actually one of the things I wanted to just kind of talk with you and Pete and to Deco and Amanda about is the expectations aren't, I'm sorry, the expectations aren't bad, but I don't think people truly understand the reality of what you get at immersion camp.

• 2:01:35JP Dinnell?

  I was legitimately frustrated with you the first time I went to immersion camp because a year prior you and Echo had gone. And in that first year is when they only did like, I'm sorry, they did full week or half on the front, half on the back. I had a gig at the beginning of the, of that week. So I was only able to come in the half, uh, the, the last half. I was so mad that I wasn't able to be there the whole week. And then I got frustrated. I'm like, dude, they were here last year and I didn't get experiences with them. So not frustrated at you, but frustrated that I didn't get, I didn't have an extra year under my belt being at camp. And it was after that first immersion camp that I went to. When I came home and I was talking about it with Amanda, you know, it was from that

• 2:02:17JP Dinnell?

  moment on, I was like, this is a non-negotiable on my calendar. Like I have to be here.

• 2:02:21Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:02:22JP Dinnell?

  Because some of the friendships that people create and business relationships that people create at immersion camp are life-changing.

• 2:02:30Jocko Willink?

  It's awesome. It's awesome. So OriginUSA.com, come and register, come to camp. It's awesome. And, and by the way, Origin USA, 100% made in America, built by freedom. Did you see the speech I gave at the, uh, at the, uh, opening? Yeah, at the, built, built by freedom was in there.

• 2:02:50JP Dinnell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:51Jocko Willink?

  We slid it in there.

• 2:02:52JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:52Jocko Willink?

  Not built by the government, not built by the state, not built by the bureaucrats. America was built by freedom.

• 2:02:59JP Dinnell?

  That's true.

• 2:02:59Jocko Willink?

  And Origin is built by freedom. So 100% American-made stuff. Gis, jeans, hoodies, t-shirts, training gear, whatever you need, boots. Check out OriginUSA.com and get some.

• 2:03:15JP Dinnell?

  It's true. Also, we, we noticed JP's over here straight up representing with a t-shirt. Good. Okay. So that's the newest good shirt, by the way, for people watching on video, whatever.

• 2:03:26Jocko Willink?

  What a dish, what a dish.

• 2:03:27JP Dinnell?

  3.0.

• 2:03:29Jocko Willink?

  Third edition.

• 2:03:29JP Dinnell?

  3.0. Yep. Um, anyways, from Jocko's store, you can get Discipline Equals Freedom stuff. Mine says standby to get some.

• 2:03:37Jocko Willink?

  By the way, you and I did a video, uh, the other day and people were saying they, they saw my shirt that I'm currently wearing, which says Jocko Fuel on it. And people were interested in where this shirt came from and where they could get one.

• 2:03:49JP Dinnell?

  I can guess, maybe, uh.

• 2:03:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Jocko Fuel, but then we don't, we don't really sell this.

• 2:03:55JP Dinnell?

  Oh, okay. That's the inside, inside track.

• 2:03:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's inside. This is my shirt.

• 2:03:59JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:04:00Jocko Willink?

  They literally make these for me.

• 2:04:01JP Dinnell?

  Okay. All right. Like that. Okay.

• 2:04:03Jocko Willink?

  Good thing we were the same size.

• 2:04:06JP Dinnell?

  You don't read that closet. But okay. Yeah. Jocko Fuel. Cool. That's, that's good. Not very helpful. Thank you though for that. Um, but yeah, if you want the good one or the discipline equals freedom, you want the standby to get some, hell yeah, JacoStore.com all day.

• 2:04:19Jocko Willink?

  Maybe I was hinting that we should make a shirt.

• 2:04:21JP Dinnell?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Right on, right on. Indirect approach. That's good. That's good.

• 2:04:24Jocko Willink?

  Which was not received very.

• 2:04:25JP Dinnell?

  No, no, no. Shirt locker. My father-in-law is a member of the shirt locker. And I mean, I, if we're not, the only time he's not wearing something from Jocko's store is if we're, if, if, if we're going somewhere. If we're going somewhere, doing something that he wants a, like a button up shirt on. If it's non-button up shirt wearing, it's 100% shirt locker.

• 2:04:54Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot of people on that, on that representation.

• 2:04:56JP Dinnell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:04:57Jocko Willink?

  Do you ever see Jamie Cochran's entire family?

• 2:04:59JP Dinnell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:04:59Jocko Willink?

  They're just, they, they, cause there's a lot of them. Moms, dads, you know, kids, and there's all, all of them, 100%. There's Jocko's, Jocko's, uh, shirt locker shirts all day.

• 2:05:09JP Dinnell?

  Flynn will send me pictures of all of them, just doing, doing, doing normal stuff, you know, and just all of them.

• 2:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Either doing abnormal stuff too. Like they might be in a sick workout as a family. Or they might be like out of, at the grocery store.

• 2:05:21JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:21Jocko Willink?

  And representing.

• 2:05:22JP Dinnell?

  Yeah. One of them had a bulletproof vest on with a shirt locker shirt underneath.

• 2:05:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, come on, bro.

• 2:05:27JP Dinnell?

  That is hardcore representation.

• 2:05:28Jocko Willink?

  We call that props. Props, props to, props to our homie.

• 2:05:31JP Dinnell?

  So Shirt Locker, if you don't know what it is, we all do. But if you don't, it's a subscription scenario. New design every week. Seems like a little bit more creative than the, you know, the, the, the roots, basic stuff. That's good. Yeah. People seem to like it. Next month, one, what is that, August? It's kind of a masters. Oh, no, no, no. Like a Transformers kind of theme. It's pretty dope. Came out good.

• 2:05:52Jocko Willink?

  JP was in Transformers.

• 2:05:54JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:54Jocko Willink?

  Transformers 5.

• 2:05:55JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, yeah. Hell, yeah. So you're gonna like that one.

• 2:05:57Jocko Willink?

  It's a little bit of a stretch. I was an extra plan in a Navy SEAL.

• 2:06:00JP Dinnell?

  Oh, not much.

• 2:06:00Jocko Willink?

  I figured it out.

• 2:06:01JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:02Jocko Willink?

  Are you carrying a Mark 46?

• 2:06:04JP Dinnell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:06:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:05JP Dinnell?

  When the, there's a scene that you can see me jumping out of the back of the helicopter when it crashes and a guy jumps out and you see the machine gun going off like that's me jumping out, carrying and shooting the Mark 46.

• 2:06:17Jocko Willink?

  That's a real stretch of a character.

• 2:06:19JP Dinnell?

  Yeah. But yeah, so yeah, you like that one. That's that. That's the Shirt Locker. Um, so yeah, I'll leave, uh, if you want to check out what the Shirt Locker is more about, you can, uh, go JacoStore.com, click on the top says Shirt Locker. You can just kind of see what it's all about. It's pretty cool.

• 2:06:32Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 2:06:32JP Dinnell?

  Seem to like it, but everything else, yeah, on JacoStore.com.

• 2:06:35Jocko Willink?

  We'll, we'll look into it.

• 2:06:36JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:37Jocko Willink?

  Much appreciated. Um, also, uh, we got some books.

• 2:06:42Jocko Willink?

  Let's see, we got Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. We got Need to Lead by Dave Burke. I've written a bunch of books for kids, wrote a couple of books with Leif Babin, leadership books, Discipline Equals Freedom. I guess that's a leadership book if you're talking about leading yourself and the Warrior Kid books, of course. Warrior Kid movie coming November 25th, global release on Apple. Are we ready for that?

• 2:07:05JP Dinnell?

  We're so ready for that.

• 2:07:06Jocko Willink?

  Ready for that? We got, uh, JP's working on his book, uh, feverishly working on his book. So we'll get that to you as soon as we can.

• 2:07:14JP Dinnell?

  Did you just paint me in the corner?

• 2:07:16Jocko Willink?

  100%.

• 2:07:16JP Dinnell?

  What the?

• 2:07:17Jocko Willink?

  Apparently privately painting you in the corner hasn't really done it. So here we go. Publicly putting you there on, on notice. Echelon Front, if you have a company and you have problems in your company, there's a decent chance that you do, and the problems that you have are leadership problems. And in order to solve those leadership problems, you need leadership. And so that's what we do at Echelon Front. We teach the leadership principles that we learned on the battlefield that we have now conveyed and embedded into hundreds of companies and incredible results. So if you need help inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com. You can come to one of our events. You can bring us in for a long-term engagement with your company. You

• 2:08:00Jocko Willink?

  can go to one of our field training exercises. You can go to one of our battlefield tours. You can go to the council, the muster, the women's assembly. We've got all kinds of options for you. Check it out at echelonfront.com. Also, we have ExtremeOwnership.com, which is where we teach these principles online. So we have an online training academy where you can, where you can learn these principles and get better at leadership, which is the most important skill you can have in life. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She has an amazing charity organization. It has helped so many veterans and first responders and

• 2:08:41Jocko Willink?

  their families, and it has helped our friends, people that we know. It has saved them, saved their lives. So if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also check out HeroesAndHorses.org. I just got a book in the mail, a cookbook from Micah Fink's wife about food being healing medicine. So Big H, my wife, she ordered that book and it's really good. I'll let, I'll give you, uh, and I can only pass judgment on the, on the physical nature of the book. It's big. It's clean looking.

• 2:09:21JP Dinnell?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:09:22Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's well put together. There's image pictures and stuff. Like it's a badass book and you don't really say a cookbook is badass. I mean, I've never seen a badass cookbook. I've seen good cookbooks before, but I've never seen a badass cookbook. So Micah Fink's wife made a badass cookbook. Cause you know, Micah Fink's involved and let's face it. He's going hard with the cookbooks. So you can check that out, HeroesAndHorses.org. And then Jimmy May's organization got the, you got the Navy SEAL swim taking place in New York. I believe the date is August 15th.

• 2:09:57Jocko Willink?

  BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. Well, it's in August, let's say.

• 2:10:01JP Dinnell?

  If they go to the website, the date's there.

• 2:10:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. It's badass event. It's going to help, it's going to help a lot of people with their lives. So check out BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. And then of course we got Warriors In Need, taking our, our military aviation specialists and getting them in a pipeline to fill the 11,000 jobs that are short in America. So check that out. If you know an aviation person from the military and they're getting out, we got a mission for them. WarriorsInNeed.org. So check that out. If you want to connect with us, uh, Jaco.com. And then on social media, JP's at, at JP Dinnell. I'm at Jocko Willink. Echo's at Echo Charles. You got your podcast too?

• 2:10:48JP Dinnell?

  Yep.

• 2:10:48Jocko Willink?

  The JP Dinnell Podcast. Can check that out as well. When you're on social media, um, obviously just be careful because it's a brain destroyer. Now they're coming out with these studies that are saying that these kids aren't even developing properly. Have you seen these studies? Oh, yeah. Big studies. Hey, these kids' brains are not developing properly because they're all their, if you think about how, uh, how dopamine gets filled into our brain when we as a, I'm a 54-year-old man. And if I look at Instagram, I'll be like, oh, that's neat. And I'll, I'll be excited by some stupid shit that I just saw on there.

• 2:11:28JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:28Jocko Willink?

  And I know it's stupid and I'm at least able to go, okay, that you're wasting your time. But when you're nine, you're just, you have no, you're just, just like you can't control your temper when you're seven.

• 2:11:40JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:41Jocko Willink?

  Well, when you're, you're not going to be able to control your, uh, to stop yourself from freaking looking at this bullshit.

• 2:11:47JP Dinnell?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:48Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. Um, anything else JP?

• 2:11:54JP Dinnell?

  Thank you for having me back on here.

• 2:11:57Jocko Willink?

  When did you say the last time you were on?

• 2:11:59JP Dinnell?

  Uh, 409 or 406.

• 2:12:01Jocko Willink?

  So that's, dude, that's like years ago.

• 2:12:03JP Dinnell?

  Yeah, yeah, it's been a while. Yeah, I appreciate being on here. I love what we get to do at Echelon Front. You know, this October, uh, we'll be in Denver for the next muster and it'll be one week shy of my 10 year anniversary with you.

• 2:12:17Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:12:18JP Dinnell?

  Um, and Leif at Echelon Front, which also was the, the, the anniversary of the very first muster, which was, you know, one year to the date after Extreme Ownership came out, which was also to the date when you guys left Ramadi. Uh, and I just, you know, think back of the last 10 years of what we've been able to do at Echelon Front, you know, just sharing the lessons that we learned in combat. So that people can actually take these things and apply them to their lives, to improve their business, their marriage, their health. It's, it's really incredible to see what has grown from what you and Leif, uh, built.

• 2:12:57JP Dinnell?

  And like I, I know to an extent what it took for you guys to build this. And I don't know all the details and the sacrifice that it took you and Leif to build this. Um, which changed my life, which changed my family's life, which is awesome. But I know the principles in Extreme Ownership and DecaduMia Leadership and Leadership Strategy and Tactics and the Field Manual has changed hundreds of thousands of peoples of lives. And to know that I'm a small piece of it is freaking awesome.

• 2:13:37JP Dinnell?

  Just like to know that we were a small piece of what those soldiers and Marines did in Ramadi is absolutely incredible. And I was doing an event last year in Vegas and a guy came up to me in a line of people to talk with afterwards. And this guy's getting closer and closer and he's a very tall, I, I put this to the group. Very tall Iraqi guy. I could tell you he's of Middle Eastern descent and he's getting closer and he's a, he's a big guy. And I'm just, you know, talking with people, interacting, he's getting closer and he's, he's next up to talk with me. And I could see that he's getting emotional.

• 2:14:16JP Dinnell?

  And he's next up, uh, you know, shake this lady's hand afterwards. She gives me a hug, take a photo. She gives me a hug again and she walks away and I look at the guy and I smile and he, he steps in and just gives me a hug. And so I gave him a hug back and kind of like then stepped back. And, uh, he has tears in his eyes and he's looking at me and he said, my family was able to leave Ramadi before all those things happened. We were able to escape Ramadi when it was starting to get bad. But our whole family wasn't able to leave. He goes, that picture of the first all-girls school that was established, my niece was a part of that. He goes, I just want to say thank you to what you Americans did for us.

• 2:15:02JP Dinnell?

  He's like, can I show you something? I said, yes, sir. He pulls out his phone, pulls up Instagram. He goes, this is my niece. She lives here in America. She's finishing up med school. She's engaged to get married. And her life is completely drastically changed because of what you guys did. He goes, thank you. And to know that we were a small piece of that was incredible. And I still have that feeling doing what we do at Echelon Front, knowing I'm a small piece of what you guys have built. And it's incredible to know that we have these opportunities. And I'm thankful that I get to do what we do every single day.

• 2:15:47JP Dinnell?

  And I know you and Leif always say this, we're just getting started. So I'm looking forward to the next decade.

• 2:15:54Jocko Willink?

  Check. Well, you were, uh, an integral piece, both in Ramadi and Tasking a Bruiser and at Echelon Front since day one. So that's, that's the way you operate. You know, you always bring impact. You always punch above your weight and you always make things happen. Sometimes you make things happen where I gotta freaking pull the reins in, you know? That's, that's what we talk about, but you know, that's what we're here for. And that's an awesome story. I, uh, I just met a guy, same thing. I'm, I was at an event and a guy came up to me. He was seven years old in Ramadi when we were there. And you know, he was just so thankful that we were there and they left before ISIS came.

• 2:16:34Jocko Willink?

  Uh, but just, it's amazing to meet those people that were there at the time. So awesome, man. Thanks for coming back, man. Thanks for what you've always done for me, for, for Tasking a Bruiser, for the teams and for America. And what you're continuing to do by being out there and spreading the principles that we learned. So thanks, brother. Appreciate it. And thanks to all of our military personnel right now that are deployed around the world in harm's way, protecting freedom and protecting our way of life. And as the saying goes, God bless our troops, especially the snipers.

• 2:17:15Jocko Willink?

  Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret services, well as all other first responders. Thank you for protecting us here at home. And everyone else out there, look, being a sniper is a skill.

• 2:17:31Jocko Willink?

  And leadership is a skill. And really, if you zoom out a little bit, life is a skill. And you're not born with the skills of a sniper. You're not born with the skills of leadership. And you're not really born with life skills either. You have to learn them. You have to practice them. You have to earn them. And you do that by paying attention, by paying attention to how you do things, by paying attention to how you do everything.

• 2:17:59Jocko Willink?

  The details matter. So pay attention to what you are doing and how you are doing it and how you are improving your skills.

• 2:18:10Jocko Willink?

  And that's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, this is JP and Echo and Jocko out.