270: Are You Who You Are Capable of Being? The Relentless Pursuit of Excellence w/ British Special Forces Soldier Frogman, Dean Stott

0:00:00 - Opening 0:06:00 - Dean Stott, British SBS 3:21:42 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:37:00 - Closing Gratitude 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 270 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  I'd made a mistake that was going to cost me my life.

• 0:16Jocko Willink?

  I turned to the man beside me. He was a Yemeni. We called him H and he was the only passenger in the beat up local car I was driving.

• 0:26Jocko Willink?

  The air around us was stiff with heat and tension. The vehicle almost rocking as the press of humanity outside began to shove towards me, pointing. I kept my eyes down, not out of fear, but so that they didn't get a good look at them through the dirty glass.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  I knew exactly what had happened, how they'd spotted me. I was dressed head to toe as a local, from flip flops to a turban. I had a dyed beard and my skin colored, but what I hadn't added to my disguise was my brown contact lenses and now my bright blue eyes were drawing the locals in to point and stare. I knew it was only a matter of minutes before the neighborhood bad guys started slipping out of their hiding places and tonight I could look forward to an orange jumpsuit. The last thing the world would see of me was the image

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  of a former special forces soldier about to meet his end courtesy of an enemy unfamiliar with the Geneva Convention.

• 1:34Jocko Willink?

  Bollocks. I wanted to talk to H. I wanted the local man's opinion, but if the people outside saw my lips moving in a funny way, then we were truly fucked. And so instead, I raised an eyebrow and hoped that people would just think I was commenting on the traffic that had packed us into this bustling marketplace. H gave a shrug in reply as if to say, "What can you do?"

• 2:04Jocko Willink?

  What could I do? Get my head chopped off or go out fighting? Those seemed to be the choices. I knew which one I'd choose if it came down to it, but I couldn't help but hear the voice in the back of my head, the voice that had told me always, "You'll never last two minutes in the Army." Well, if this was the end, I'd show them how wrong they were. I'd been showing them for years. This wasn't my first covert mission as a civilian. I'd cut my teeth as a special forces soldier, and as such, I'd had my metal tested again and again. I tried to remember that as yet another local pointed at me and began waving towards my door.

• 2:46Jocko Willink?

  I pretended to be busy looking ahead at traffic and checked the mirror behind me. No sign of our second car. I wanted to rub my eyes. Despite the danger, I was knackered. Maybe that's why I had made the mistake. Maybe that was why I had to get on my radio, hidden away, out of sight from the Yemenis who continued to walk by peering in and pointing at me. I kept my message short, trying to move my lips as little as possible. "I've been compromised." My mate Sam came on the net from the second vehicle. He was out of sight, but I was sure that he couldn't be more than 100 meters away. "Are you compromised?

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  Over?" He asked. I confirmed that I was. "Are you happy with the immediate action drill? Over?" I knew that drill off by heart. The first part would involve me pulling a snub-nosed machine gun from beneath my seat and emptying a full magazine into the windscreen. This would send a very loud signal that it was a good idea for people to get away from me. It would buy me seconds to grab my wrapped-up assault rifle, wedge between the seat and the door, and exit the vehicle. Then me and my flip-flops would be racing for the nearest safe house. Sam came back on the net. "Your call. Out."

• 4:18Jocko Willink?

  My call.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  When it comes down to it, the biggest moments in your life always are.

• 4:25Jocko Willink?

  I thought about letting out a deep breath, but looking ice cool in front of H was important to me. Fear is contagious, and so I put mine on a shelf until I got clear of the situation. Instead, I imagined everything that was about to happen in this shitstorm. Bloody hell, I almost laughed to myself, all this over a pair of contact lenses.

• 4:51Jocko Willink?

  I looked at H, gave him the slightest of nods.

• 4:56Jocko Willink?

  He was probably sending up a prayer at that point, maybe more than one. My own thoughts went to my wife and children.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  If someone wanted to stop me seeing them again, then I promised it would be a fight like no other. And then, with the thought of my family pumping like fire through my veins, I reached below my seat and took hold of my weapon.

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  And that is the opening of a book. The book is called Relentless.

• 5:37Jocko Willink?

  And is written by someone named Dean Stott, who is a British soldier, who served as an engineer in the commandos and eventually went on to the British Special Forces selection and became one of the first army soldiers to opt into joining the Special Boat Service, counterpart to the British SAS.

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  And that is just the beginning of this story.

• 6:05Jocko Willink?

  And luckily for us, Dean is here himself to help talk us through his experiences in the military and beyond. Dean, thanks for coming. Thanks for coming aboard.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  No, pleasure to have me.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  It's been a long time that we have been getting requests to have a Brit on here. So you're the, you're the first. Well, we had, we had one photographer who had been to Iraq, but I think you're our first British military person. And there's been a lot of requests.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Oh brilliant, great.

• 6:35Jocko Willink?

  So glad, glad to have you here, man.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, no pressure.

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the whole, the whole nation is riding on, on your shoulders. So, um,

• 6:47Jocko Willink?

  that's the, that's the beginning of this book and the beginning of the books starts off sort of the middle of your, your operational career. When you talk about the military operations and then civilian operations. But I guess we should start at the beginning. I always like to start at the beginning of, you know, where you came from and, and how you ended up in this particular situation in life. And, um, yeah, let's get to it.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I was, um, I was born into military family. My father, he was in the Royal Engineers and, um, so very much immersed in that, in that environment. And I grew up in a town called Oldershott, which was the home of the British Army. So it's just airborne heavy. You had two parrot there. You had three parrot there. I'd never even heard of the Royal Marines or the Special Boat Service. I mean, it was just SAS and airborne. Um, my father and my mother, they, they ended up splitting up when I was quite a young age. Um, by the age of eight, my mother, um, left my father and took me and my sisters to Manchester up north. And we ended up in a homeless home in Moss Side. And Moss Side back in the eighties was the roughest estate in the whole of the UK.

• 7:55Jocko Willink?

  Now, now when Brits say estate.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  When you see when Americans say estate, they're thinking of like a country estate with big houses. When Brits say estate, you're talking about the ghetto.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Yes, it's a ghetto, yeah.

• 8:07Jocko Willink?

  And it's, it's a government housing, right? Is that what, isn't a government housing estate? That's where the word estate comes from?

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, they call them council estates. And yeah, but obviously to get your, your name on, on the housing market, you have to then go into a homeless home. So that's what we did. We ended up in a homeless shelter in Moss Side. And, you know, I was the only white, me and my sisters, the only Caucasians in, in the area. So we were attracting attention from an early start. The, you know, this soon ended up with me learning how to fight with my fists quite early, you know, protecting my sisters in, in, in the school playground. Actually, I ended up having to leave that school because there's too many fighting and we moved to another, another place within Manchester. My mother, we then got housing. My father, however, used to travel up and pick us up every other weekend. It's about a two hundred and forty mile drive one

• 8:54Speaker 02

  way and take us back down. Me and my father were very close. My sister was very close to my, to my mother. And three years later, my father got custody, you know, of, of me and my sisters.

• 9:07Jocko Willink?

  Wow, that's, that, is that hard? I mean, America, it's pretty hard for a, especially a military dude to get custody.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:14Jocko Willink?

  Over the mom.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, there was. I think obviously, you know, he, he put his career on pause. He, he got promoted to regimental sergeant major and was posted to Germany and he said, no, I want to stay in UK. I want, I want to look after my kids. And so he put his whole career online. And I think the judge at the time, um, didn't want the siblings splitting up. You know, he didn't want like two sisters being in Manchester and the son down south. So the judge said, no, the children make the decision. And being the eldest at the age about ten and a half, I had to make that quite hard decision. And so, no, I want to live, live with my father. And he, he got custody and I, and, you know, even to the day, I, I remember the day that my mom dropped us off and the reaction she saw when my father took us away. You know, that sticks with you, something, something like that. But for

• 10:01Speaker 02

  me, we moved back down to Aldershot and, you know, I'm very close to my father. I, I never actually wanted to pursue a career in the military myself. I actually always wanted to be a fireman. Um, but we, we, we grew up around there. But my dad is, he was, he was a Scotsman. He was old school sergeant major. He was old school, uh, through and through. And I remember finishing like junior school and we went on to what you call high schools, secondary school.

• 10:26Jocko Willink?

  So this is what age? What age is this?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Well, I would have been about thirteen at this age.

• 10:30Jocko Willink?

  So at thirteen, you're, you've been living with your dad for a few years now.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Couple of years.

• 10:35Jocko Willink?

  And you're seeing the military, but you're still not quite. You're not quite like enthralled by it?

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and I, as I say, when I was immersed, our school playground was where the Red Devils used to take off, which is the British parachute and freefall teams. Every day you'd see the parachutes. The guys would be walking around in their uniforms and their maroon berets. And it was just, it was almost like the norm, living in Aldershot. So, but my father was now going to transition out the military. My father, his career wasn't very, he was more sports, he was what we would call a tracksuit soldier. He was very good at a sport and soccer was his. So he was the army manager, coach and player. So I very rarely saw my father in green kit, you know, it was more tracksuits trainers and on the

• 11:25Speaker 02

  football pitch. So I didn't really know much about the military and the layout of the military.

• 11:30Jocko Willink?

  Was he, was he going on deployments?

• 11:34Speaker 02

  He, he went on deployments to like Northern Ireland, but that was, but when he then got custody of the kids, you know, that obviously stopped him going on, on any deployments. And this was a period of time, actually, you know, the last conflict was 1982, which was, was the Falkland. So there's, there's a dry period up until now. We had the Gulf War in 91, but that was still to come. Actually, that was two years, two years later. So other than Northern Ireland, there wasn't really any sort of overseas deployments. So it didn't, didn't really affect him going away. But he was now coming to the end of his career and transitioning to civvies street. So growing up in Aldershot in these military schools, he then decided to put me in secondary school in a, in a

• 12:15Speaker 02

  local town. It's called North Camp. But being old school, my, my, my father dressed me up day one in a blazer, carrying like a, a briefcase, a leather briefcase, you know, it wasn't even real leather. That's what I was more upset about. But my hair was, was, was a crew cut, you know, rather than going downtown and paying for a normal haircut, my father would take me to camp and just put me in straight at the front of the queue with all the recruits.

• 12:41Jocko Willink?

  That's legit.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I really stood out. When I turned up at school day one, I, I stood out.

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  Wait, so is this school, what, what kind of, is this school like a, what we call in America, a private school where you have to pay to go to? Or what was different?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  No, it was a public school, but it wasn't in a military town. It was next to the military town. So the, the children that went there, their parents weren't from the military because it was so close to Aldershot. There was a lot of rivalry between, and so the haircut just, just, I just stood out. And um, yeah, unfortunately, a week later, I, I got suspended from that school for fighting.

• 13:16Jocko Willink?

  Like, were you just an angry youth or what?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  No, I just think I was just put in some really awkward positions and, and that, that being one. But I always remember my father, I know you guys do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, you know. My father, again, always taught me to fight with my fists and as soon as the guy was down.

• 13:33Jocko Willink?

  We call that Scottish Jiu Jitsu.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  But as soon as the opponent's down, that's it, you, you, you know, you stop, you got the better of them. And um, there's no like follow up like there is nowadays. So I, I, I was so nervous when I got home and I sort of left the, left the letter on the table and quickly ran upstairs to the toilet. My father couldn't, you know, screams out my name and um, I come down and his, his, his one question was, did you, did you hit him when he was down? I said, no, he said, that's fine. And then I had to, I then explained to him, I said, look, you dressed me in this, this. And he, he just thought he was doing good by me, when in fact he was bringing too far too much attention. Um, we then left actually not long, a few months after that and moved out into the country. Um, totally away from any sort of military town and, and that was almost

• 14:23Speaker 02

  the start for me. That was the start of a new life. You know, I'd left that military background behind me.

• 14:28Jocko Willink?

  So how old are you now?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  I'm probably about fourteen now.

• 14:31Jocko Willink?

  Right on. And, and then you get to, what, what, where, where'd you move to when you got this new start?

• 14:36Speaker 02

  So I moved to uh, into Surrey. So it's just south of London, but it's um, more, very, very green. Um, you know, country, the country, exactly.

• 14:46Jocko Willink?

  And now did you uh,

• 14:49Jocko Willink?

  how was that? Was that like uh, you said it was a new start? Because you were able to fit in a little bit better? Your dad didn't shave your head to send you to school?

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. There was no military barbers, but it was also that no one could judge you. You sort of left your, your past behind you, you know, Manchester fighting and um, you know, it's almost like this is the baseline. You, you start from now. So um, And again, it was actually nice to um socialize with kids who parents weren't in is learning stuff that was out of that military lifestyle, you know, all my friends back in older shot, their dads were all airborne because my dad wasn't, they called him a hat. You know what I mean? It was just like, he didn't have any that I didn't have to prove anything to them or or feel like, you know, you know, because your father's career, you're you're part of that. And that's what older shot was like. It was like, oh, what what ranks your father? Is he para? Is he not? And it's like, oh, God.

• 15:38Jocko Willink?

  I had a friend who was a who was Australian SAS and he was saying, I, you know, him and his wife, we were talking and he was like, they're they have an expression. It was like, oh, their wife wears the rank of the family. So it's like, oh, we, you know, he's lieutenant colonel. Who are you? It sounds like, but I can't imagine little kids telling me my dad's not airborne.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:00Jocko Willink?

  That's great. Why they call him a hat?

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Uh, it's just thing that the parachute regiment call him hat. I don't know. We say heli airborne troop, but it's it's not. They just call them a hat because they they don't have the maroon berry. And then, you know, some of the army commandos also take on that terminology and call them call them hats or or screamers.

• 16:18Jocko Willink?

  We in the army, the American army, they call someone that's not airborne a leg. And it said with such disdain. I remember when I went to airborne schools, I come here, you nasty leg. And then in the the in the Navy, the the the aviation guys, people that are in helicopters or jets or whatever planes, they wear brown shoes. It's part of their uniforms. So they call in a derogatory way, they call anybody that's not a brown shoe, which no one's used that term, but they call everyone else a black shoe. And so then in the teams, we take that one step further and like the derogatory, who's that guy? Some shoe came over and told us if we couldn't wear that, whatever.

• 17:03Jocko Willink?

  So that's a it's funny how you get these little little little words that stick, but hat.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, hat hat is the parachute regiment. And then the Marines, obviously from the army, it's pongo.

• 17:18Jocko Willink?

  Little kids telling you your dad's a hat.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And again.

• 17:23Jocko Willink?

  No wonder you had to fight on a regular basis.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, if it was airborne, I'd probably been all right.

• 17:29Jocko Willink?

  And then so, so, so you end up in, in Surrey.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:32Jocko Willink?

  You're in the country. Do you feel like your life's taken a better direction? So your dad was a good, a great athlete, apparently. Well, did you inherit that athleticism and love for the game?

• 17:43Speaker 02

  I did. Yeah. I think that's where, you know, I'm very competitive. I like, I like to compete and I, I think that's, you know, from my father, you know, even to, on Christmas day with the board game, it got that competitive. Um, you, you had to win, you know, and, um, you know, so I did inherit that, that from him. Um, sport wise, I, and I, I followed in his footsteps, you know, played, uh, played football as well. I, I wasn't great at sport, but I just tried everything, you know? I was very fortunate at school. I ended up getting sports personality of the year award, which sounds amazing.

• 18:14Jocko Willink?

  That does sound pretty amazing.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I wasn't the best at football. I wasn't the best at rugby, you know? I just helped out, you know, if they said, right, we need someone on the basketball team. Um, I don't really know basketball, but, but I would step in. So, so I saw, I had that from my father. But, um, and I think that's what helped later on in the military career, you know? I always found myself competing with others or having to prove, prove a point or be an ambassador.

• 18:40Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's two different things, actually. Prove a point or be an ambassador.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:44Jocko Willink?

  I don't know how, that's, that's like, that's two different things, right? If I'm trying to prove a point, that's one thing. If I'm trying to be, it's like one's going to come at you. The ambassador is going to be cool. So you found that nice like middle ground between those two things.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I, I found myself that, you know, when you're in the army and you, you were working alongside Marines, you're an ambassador for your cat badge, if that makes sense, you know what I mean? And then when you go to the SBS from the army, you're an ambassador for the, for the British army. When you're on Jocko's podcast and you're the first British guy, you're an ambassador to the British army. It's, it's, so there's, I was proving a point to myself and to them, but almost representing your, your unit or your cat badge.

• 19:22Jocko Willink?

  So you talked about you wanted to be a fireman and in the book you, in the book. You, it sounds like at some point you realize there's a lot of applicants to be a fireman and like thousands of applicants to be a fireman. It's sort of like in America, we get a similar thing here.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:38Jocko Willink?

  You realized it's probably not gonna happen?

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, back to the schooling. My father, again, being old school, he wouldn't let me go out and play unless I did my homework. So he would check everything. So in school wise, I did quite well. I didn't look beyond school. I didn't look at college. I thought I was just gonna join the fire brigade and you had to be eighteen anyway, so I was still underage. And at the time, there was a big recession and it was two thousand applicants for one job. I went to college, but every summer holidays as a young kid, my father would take me and my sisters down to the southwest of England to Cornwall. And we would go surfing. So I've been surfing since, you know, a young boy. So during college, we had a two week summer holiday. So me and my mates were like, right, let's go down to Nuki.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  None of them surfed, but they just wanted to try and find gills. So we, you know, we all went down to Nuki for two weeks. I was in the water all day and they're just sat on the beach doing their thing. And I met a Norwegian guy called Jan and, you know, we just got chatting and he was a silver surface waiter at the local hotel. So Fishtal Beach is actually on the surf tour, the pro surf tour. And Fishtal Beach Hotel is on the peninsula. And he said, well, I'm getting thirty pounds a day. I serve breakfast. I get a free breakfast. I serve, I surf all day. Then in the evening, I serve the evening meal and, you know, I get a free meal. I get thirty pound in my pocket. It's only ten pound for the hostel. I thought brilliant, you know, being an entrepreneur, I thought I'll have a piece of that.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  So two weeks later, my father came to pick us up and this is now, what are you talking, ninety four, long before any mobile phones and things like that. And I wasn't in the car park with my friends and my dad's like, where's Dean? And they said, oh, he's staying.

• 21:21Jocko Willink?

  So your friends met your dad?

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, my dad dropped us off and he came back to pick us up two weeks later, but I wasn't there. Yeah, so again, I just didn't want to confront my dad and I didn't want to go back to college. So I just didn't want to get into an argument.

• 21:35Jocko Willink?

  So when you got done with what we call high school, how old are you?

• 21:38Speaker 02

  So we're about sixteen.

• 21:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so then your college starts after that and this is taking place during this two week break. You go down there, you're surfing, you're living the dream and you see this Norwegian cat that's got it all figured out. And you figured you're in.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it. That's my life all planned out now, the roadmap. Um, then my father then came back six months later, you know, looking for me. Uh, and he found me working in a local surf shop. And he's, you know, right, you know, you've messed up your education. That's it. Your life is over. You know, giving it all, all these, all these little one liners. So for me to really just silence him, I just said, well, I'll, I'll join the army. And you normally expect some, you know, warm, comforting words from your father, but I was sort of met with a response, you'd last two minutes. Um, probably wasn't the response I wanted, but I thought, okay, no, there's no point in getting into an argument. The best thing to do is try and prove him wrong. But I was about five foot seven and sixty five kilos. So I could probably see where he was coming from at, at the time.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  But he drove me back down to Surrey and then the, the following Monday, you know, we went, I went into the careers office.

• 22:46Jocko Willink?

  Did your dad go with you?

• 22:48Speaker 02

  No, he didn't. But his office was only four hundred meters from there. So I, I walked in and it was in Aldershot. Obviously para heavy airborne, uh, and I came out and, uh, went to my dad's office and said, I'm, I'm joining the parachute regiment. He says, you're bloody not and marched me straight back in. Um, I didn't, obviously he was Royal Engineers. I didn't know much about the Royal Engineers. I didn't know that you actually can do P company and be an airborne engineer or do the all arms commander course and be a commando engineer. All I'd known was him playing football. So when he actually explained a bit more to me, I thought, okay, that, that's a good idea.

• 23:22Jocko Willink?

  And he wanted you to go engineer. So you'd have some kind of a civilian skill set, whether it was building or pouring concrete or whatever.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:29Jocko Willink?

  Skill you're gonna get.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. He was thinking obviously short term, I'll probably do minimum three years, you know, be a bricklayer, a plumber. So, but also within the military, there was A trades and B trades. Your B trades in the engineers were your artisan trades, which is like carpenter, plumber, you know, everything else. And then your A trades was like you, you're electricians and, uh, plant operators, sort of big J C Bs and, and diggers. So my dad said, what about a plant fair? Um, so I was out gardener. I didn't know what he was on about. He said, no, he then explained. But again, before that, once, once he'd marched me back in the office, a week later, I had to go in and do this touchscreen test. And basically I passed it and they said, you can choose any trade you want.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Obviously, back in ninety four, I was thinking more with my my penis and I was thinking bomb disposal, that sounds sexy. I said, let's go bomb disposal. So I went to my dad's office. I said, I'm going bomb disposal. He said, you're not. And he just marched me straight back in. And then he said, right, why don't you be a plant fear? And again, you know, he was, he was sort of carving my path or put me in the right direction, you know, if I stepped off.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  And that's it. So then, so then you're enlisted. And how long was the was the wait between when you enlisted and when you actually shipped off to basic training?

• 24:46Speaker 02

  It wasn't long at all. It was about two, two to three months. Um, I went to a place called Purb, right? You you have like a, um, it's almost like an acquaintance, you know, three days there. You do all your your fitness tests and then you speak to other recruits, you know, get their perception on on on basic training. So I was actually, I think my dad pulled a few few strings because I seemed to get get quite quick to the start point than others.

• 25:08Jocko Willink?

  And then in the book, you say, you basically say that basic training is what basic training is. Was there anything that shocked you about it? Or did you feel like you were pretty ready for it?

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Um, again, my my father, you know, he started steering things. I I had to turn up. Uh, it's a place called Bazenborn. And all I'd known about Bazenborn is where they filmed Full Metal Jacket and Memphis Belle. And that's the only research I'd done on the on this place. Um, but you had to be there, um, from zero eight hundred in the morning to seventeen hundred at night. You had to parade on the on the Sunday, actually, between those times. My father had me dropped off at zero seven fifty five with my hair already cut and my bag already packed because he knew it was all about first impressions. You know, if you start coming in, you know, just over five or about half four, you know, I mean, the the instructors were already at martial cards. But I I had arrived at five to eight and I I stood there from eight o'clock till five o'clock

• 26:03Speaker 02

  in the in the in the evening. So, you know, in reflection going back, I know why why he did it at the time. It was raining. I didn't appreciate it. But, you know, it's a culture shock. Uh, training, everything you're you're sort of used to having your your home comforts is taken away from you. Guys who did have hair soon lost their hair and we all look the same. Um, but it's good, you know, it still instills that discipline from from the off.

• 26:27Jocko Willink?

  How how long is British Army Boot Camp?

• 26:31Speaker 02

  So it depends what what cat badge. So for the Royal Engineers, we do um ten weeks basic training and and literally that just is as what it says it's basic training. We then have phase two combat engineer training, which is about fourteen weeks. And then you go on. If you then want to go do the commando course, the commando course is ten weeks as well. So if you start putting them all together, it can be quite long. If you join the Royal Marines, that's nine months from from start to finish. Um. So yeah, it all depends on what cat badge you're going to. But originally, the basic training is about ten weeks.

• 27:05Jocko Willink?

  And then you got picked up to become. When did you get picked up to become a physical training instructor?

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I

• 27:12Jocko Willink?

  It seems like they had a lot of faith in you out of the gate. Or was that your dad working behind the scenes?

• 27:16Speaker 02

  No, well, what it was, when I when I finished my phase two training, I I got my posting order. And I remember ringing my my dad and my stepmom Penny. And I said, Yeah, I've got posted to two eight. And then she starts crying on the phone. And my dad's my dad picks up the phone and said, What have you said to Penny? I said, I've been posted to two eight. And I can hear him in the background. He said, two eight, not Q eight, like that. But what it was, because my father was the army manager, two eight engineer regiment were in Germany were the army champions, football champions in Germany. So it was like, you're Stott, son. So you're coming out to Germany. So I I got posted to Hammel

• 27:57Speaker 02

  at the age of eighteen, which at the time was good, you know, it was it was the Deutschmark before the Euro. It was like, must cost about seven dollars for a crate of Bexa twenty four, you know, you know, I was I was seeing Germany, which which is now collapsed now. Everyone's back in UK. But as soon as I arrived, my sergeant major knew that they call us kissballers, the footballers. You're a kissballer. He goes, I'm not going to see you. Because literally, it was almost semi professional. You didn't work. You trained every morning between eight and twelve on the AstroTurf. And you had a bit a big match every Wednesday afternoon. And then we used to all play play semi pro for local teams. So he knew that he was never going to have me as a soldier. So he said, Well, I need to fill a slot, a

• 28:41Speaker 02

  billet in the gym. So you're going on your PTI course. And that's how I managed to get it fast track so so quickly.

• 28:47Jocko Willink?

  And then what that course consists of?

• 28:50Speaker 02

  So I flew back to Aldershot and it was right next to one of my old schools and it's basically you they get into a position that you can you can teach physical training. So when you go back to units, there's different types of training you can do. You can do gym PT, you can do green PT. The hardest thing is gymnastics. You actually have to do gymnastics and it's like, you know, it's like a flying tracksuit. Just throw a T-shirt in the air. Probably look more elegant than me. But it's just so you're in a position when you go back to the unit, you can run PT sessions.

• 29:21Jocko Willink?

  And then you end up from there, you get done with that and then you now is when you check into 59 Commando?

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a little period before between that. So when I was in the gym, I was like, I could see, I could see me almost mirroring my father's career. And I was like, I don't want to be a tracksuit soldier. You know, I want something different.

• 29:43Jocko Willink?

  So you saw the possibility of mirroring your father's career and something about it, you didn't really, you wanted to be, you wanted to, you wanted to get after it in a different way?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I wanted to do something different. And so I actually filled out the application form for nine squadron and five nine. But actually on reflection, so nine squadron is the airborne engineers, which is back in Aldershot where I grew up. And five nine commando is down in North Devon and it's, you know, surf heaven down there. You know, got Saunton Beach, Croyde Beach. So for me-

• 30:14Jocko Willink?

  We are in San Diego and he's from Hawaii. So maybe it's not quite surf heaven.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  For England, we'll give it to you.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  For England it is. I'll give you that. But for me, you know, you join the military because you want to, you want to see the world. You want to experience new things. I didn't want to go back to Aldershot. So five nine commando was well suited for me. So I applied for five nine commando and you have to go do a four week beat up with the unit before you can go on the all arms commando course.

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  So you go to the unit first and they kind of do an assessment?

• 30:43Speaker 02

  That's it. Yeah.

• 30:44Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then from there you go to, that's sort of like Ranger School in America. You can go to Ranger Battalion and you haven't been to Ranger School yet. And then you go to Ranger School.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  That's it. Yeah, it's like that. But back in Germany during this process, when the paperwork was in, one of the, one of the squadrons had just returned from Northern Ireland and they had like a welcome back party in the camp, camp bar. There is a course called Assault Engineers where infantry can come do engineering courses. And there was an infantry unit called the Fusiliers who were on camp doing that. But they're troublemakers, basically. They were banned from downtown because they're always causing troubles. So they were on camp this evening that they had the big, the family get together. They were in the bar as well. And me and my friend could see they were being quite rude to some of the, we call them Pads' wives, you know, the lads' wives, you know.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Uh, so me and my friend, you know, decided to open up on a couple of them. So we ended up, you know, putting down three guys. My, my, my, my sergeant major came in, he's like, right, you boys go to bed, you know, brushed under the carpet. I was then rudely awoken by a military policeman two hours later saying, you're, you're under arrest. And, um, so before I went over to five nine command though, I, there was possibility that I could be getting court martialed for this fight. So I, I went over anyway. I did the first week of the beat up. Um, then the corps staff sergeant pulls me in, he said, you, you've got to fly to Germany. They're doing an ID parade. I was like, okay.

• 32:12Jocko Willink?

  So ID parade is some kind of investigation?

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Investigation with the police, you know, they want to line you up with other, other, other guys and say.

• 32:19Jocko Willink?

  Are you, are you like totally distraught at this point?

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Um, I'm not totally distraught. I, I, you do worry about your career, how this can, can affect your, your career. So I, I flew over and me at the time, I still hadn't grown into my ears. So I just stood out like, you know, a sore thumb and, and they all knew me as the PTI. So straight away they just beelined, yeah, that's the guy. My friend who did it with me, however, his, his brother was in the squadron as well. So he never got picked out. So I was like, okay, great. Um, so I flew back to finish the beat up, you know, they said, yeah, you're fit enough, you're ready. So I went on and did the, did the commander course. And, um, when we finished the commander course 10 weeks later, we go back to five nine commando. And the OC is like that. He said, right, guys, you guys are going across the water.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  And the squadron were in Northern Ireland. So I thought, perfect, we're off to Northern Ireland. He said, not you start. He said, you're going across the other water. You're going back to Germany. Said, we need to get this, get this cleared. So I went back to Germany and, um. Basically, they said, look, you can go court martial and it probably would get thrown out, but that's gonna be another twelve months to eighteen months. You know, I've just passed the commander course. I wanted to go be with the commandos. So I just pleaded guilty. Um, I got charged. And so I spent fifty six days in the military correction training centre, which is Colchester Prison, known as the Glass House. And but the the commanding officer, actually, because everyone knew it was me and the other guy, you know, they and they knew these guys were troublemakers. They're like, yeah, you just unfortunately

• 33:51Speaker 02

  got caught out. So the commanding officer was an airborne guy, airborne engineer.

• 33:55Jocko Willink?

  This is the commanding officer at Colchester?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  No, no, this is this is the German, yeah, no, this is in Germany.

• 34:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  But, you know, so I have to leave that unit first. And so the RSM marches me and the RSM was one of a football player with me. And and he's like, right, no, Sapporo Stott, um, I was gonna give you sixty days, but because you've done the all arms commander course, I've taken four days off. Any questions? I said, yes, if I go on airborne, what I got more days off? And he sort of giggled and he said, like, you know, it's time for you to go. So, so, yeah, I spent fifty six days in Her Majesty's Corrective Training Centre.

• 34:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was looking, I didn't know what Colchester was, but it's basically with the same term echo Charles, when you hear somebody say Leavenworth, what do you think of?

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, prison.

• 34:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, military prison. That's kind of the way Colchester. I think it's the last military prison.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Really?

• 34:47Jocko Willink?

  In England or so. Yeah, it's everybody knows it, the Glass House.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  It's the Glass.

• 34:51Jocko Willink?

  It's the equivalent of Leavenworth.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And and everyone has, you know, you hear horror stories coming out of the Glass House. And what and what it actually is, is because when you you have an escort that drops you off and the instructors are there to meet you and it's like, it is like a scene out of Full Metal Jacket, they are screaming and shouting at you. But as soon as they've gone, they just treat you like adults. You know, I mean, it's, they take away all those sort of. Those creature comforts, you know, you don't, you're not allowed to phone anyone. It's um two P T sessions a day, it's room inspections all the time. I actually really enjoyed Colchester. Um I I said, if if I got paid full, full wages, I I would have, I would have really enjoyed it. And it got to a stage actually where guys were going into Colchester and coming out

• 35:36Speaker 02

  better soldiers, a lot better soldiers. And they were actually getting promoted when they got back to their units and they had to stop that. They said, no, it's, you know, you're there for the wrong, you know, for bad, bad reasons. You can't be seen to be be promoted. So I did, I did my time there and um went back to five nine.

• 35:54Jocko Willink?

  Right, rewind a little bit to the commando course.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:57Jocko Willink?

  How was that?

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I remember my father dropping me off at driving me to North Devon to do the beat up. And then, you know, I haven't obviously hadn't told him about the incident in Germany at this point. And he said, you know, these guys will, you know, these guys will will make you a man, you know what I mean? So you're obviously really nervous about things like that. But um but it is that the beat up's great, you know, the five nine beat up, they actually is harder than the all arms commander course. So if you can reach their levels or their expectations, then as long as you stay away from injury, when you go on the all arms commander course, you you should be fine. So the all arms commander course is for any cap badges, so engineers, artillery, anyone who's going to be serving alongside

• 36:39Speaker 02

  free commander brigade with the Royal Marines or or any naval, um you know, doctors, dentists as well. So you've got a mixture on on that course. And you've got guys who are young privates all the way through to quite senior officers who may have just been a attached to the brigade. And we also have foreign, um foreign militaries there. I remember we had a a SEAL, uh no, a Marine on our course as well, US Marine on our course. We had some guys from Lebanon, we had some guys from Russia, you had, you had all sorts on there. And basically they get you to a standard, so you're understanding the Royal Marines sort of T T Ps, air SOPs. So when you go to unit, you understand how they operate as well, you know, you you do amphibious warfare as well.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  I mean, you also do their commando tests. So their commando tests, you know, the thirty miler, which is the last one to get you your green beret and all the all the other tests that that build up to it.

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  And it's ten weeks long? And I could be a doctor that's gonna get attached to, I could be a thirty nine year old doctor that's gonna be attached to commando and I gotta go through that and get a thirty pound ruck on.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  I think for them, they have, they volunteer for it, you know, they can still serve with a brigade, but it's almost like, you know, I mean, you, they see that you've made the effort and you've got to cover it at Green Beret, um, you know, probably to get less pressure if they've done the course. But actually saying that, the Navy guys were really good because a few years later, which we'll touch, and I ended up being an instructor on this commander course. So the Navy guys, because they have no military background before this, they've not picked up any bad habits. So what the instructors were telling them, they were picking up straight away. Whereas you may have a sergeant or a staff sergeant who's, you know, been in fourteen years and he's already picked up his little bad habits and

• 38:29Speaker 02

  it's having to, you know, realigning or reset that whole cock. But for us, our course, I didn't learn anything if I'm on, I learned nothing on our course. Every one of our instructors got sacked at the end of the course. Our course was very officer heavy and it was like, we weren't allowed to wear Gore-Tex if it rained. We didn't learn anything. It was about who could survive in the cold and who was the first. Actually, learning anything soldiering wise, I picked up when I got to the unit. But that backfired on the instructors because at the end of the course, they do like course critiques, you know, how was your course? And because it was so officer heavy, they went to town on them. They went, they went to town on them.

• 39:12Jocko Willink?

  Because enlisted guys get handed a critique and they're like, good, good, good, good, good. I'm going to get a beer. Officers like, well, let me state my opinion on this matter.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, it backfired. Every, every instructor got sacked apart from the two army guys, the engineer and the artillery officer. But for me, I'm still, I'm only eighteen, I'm, you know, you're still developing as a, as a young man. I wasn't. I wasn't fully grown. I remember the load carries being really difficult. You're carrying some excess weight there. And it's very different from like P company, the Paris. That's all more that they're leaner and then they go faster with less weight. Whereas the commandos, they sort of tend to be bigger guys, carrying more weight but at a slower speed. So I do think that's probably one of the hardest courses still to date, but that's because I hadn't developed yet fully.

• 40:01Jocko Willink?

  Now, I gotta pull this one section out of the book because I thought it was worth reading. This is when you're in Colchester and you have this conversation. You say, drink was a big problem in the forces at the time. I'd be surprised if it isn't still. And so when I was interviewed by the officer of the prison, I was grilled about my alcohol consumption.

• 40:24Jocko Willink?

  You were drunk when you hit the other soldiers, correct? Yes, sir. So do you have a drinking problem? No, sir. I'd have hit them anyways. Hmm. What happened to your wrist? And this is another thing you explain. I fell out of a window, sir, trying to urinate, sir. Were you drunk? Well, yes, sir. Hmm. So you don't have a drinking problem?

• 40:45Jocko Willink?

  I didn't really know how to reply to that one. As far as I saw it, it was just part of army life, part of being a squatty. If I had a drinking problem, maybe the whole army did. Personally, I felt like it was just being one of the boys. The officer dismissed me. And then you go on to the fact that you enjoyed being at Colchester, which is, which is cool. You had a good time. But that's, that's one of those things as I was reading it. I've, I had quite a few conversations with young SEALs. You know, hey, so you've gotten another fight in a bar, right? And that's why you're in here talking to me? Yeah. What are you drinking? Yeah. And you also were here three months ago, and you were also in another fight in a bar, and you were drinking. You see any common things here? No.

• 41:31Jocko Willink?

  Any commonalities between these incidents? No, I don't know. I like to fight, I guess.

• 41:38Jocko Willink?

  Gotta watch out for that one.

• 41:42Jocko Willink?

  You get to, um, you get to, to, to, do you call it five nine or fifty nine?

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Five nine, yeah.

• 41:48Jocko Willink?

  You get to five nine and, uh, I thought this was cool. Couldn't have asked for a better beginning to my time at five nine. The admin officer took one look at my report from Colchester, seemed happy with what he saw and ripped it up. Fresh start. But it was a lonely start. The rest of the squadron was in Northern Ireland, finishing the tour I'd missed out on doing to my, to my time in Colly. I was gutted not to be a part of that, but it ended up working my favor. We're sending you on a diving aptitude course. Usually guys have to wait years to get on this, so consider yourself lucky. So because the other guys were deployed to Northern Ireland, you got an opportunity to go to this dive course.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it. So in the Royal Engineers, we, we have divers. So everything, um, you can do on the surface, be it, uh, broco cutting, um, welding, carpentry, scaffolding, everything, we, we, we can do subsurface.

• 42:39Jocko Willink?

  Do you guys call that hard hat diving?

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Um, the OSDS, which is the open supply diver system, the Kirby Morgan helmets, that, that's part of it. So scuba's part of it and, and, and so is, and so is that, but.

• 42:51Jocko Willink?

  We group everything. If you're not doing combat swimmer operations, like if you're just, if you're doing any kind of work, we just call it hard hat diving. Like it's a hard hat diver. It's like, good, good for you.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:00Jocko Willink?

  But like, yeah, that's the way we classify anything that's not Drager, yeah, combat swimmer, ship attack, you know, it's like hard hat diving.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:08Jocko Willink?

  Hey, before, before we dive into that, so this, this going to Colchester, that's, is that on your record or when that guy shredded it, was it gone?

• 43:17Speaker 02

  I think it stays on my record. I think he was just trying to prove a point is, you know, we draw the line, fresh, fresh start. But actually a lot of, a lot of guys who do well in the military, a lot of these RSMs, you look back, especially the guards, they've been to Colchester. It's almost, you touched on it then, in that you'd, you'd brief up a guy for drinking and three months later you're coming in and you tell him it's again. Well, obviously he's, he's making a mistake. Though I learnt from my mistake and I learnt at an early stage. Thankfully it didn't happen later on in my career. Um, and then obviously have. Bigger consequences, because I still didn't have rank at that point.

• 43:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  You know.

• 43:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's I. So in the in the Navy, you have service stripes on your uniform.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:55Jocko Willink?

  And if you've never been in trouble, those service stripes are gold. So when you're in your dress uniform, and you see a Navy guy, a Navy Master Chief, or a Senior Chief, and they're in their uniform, they'll have service stripes. So it's like one stripe for every four years.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 44:10Jocko Willink?

  So you can have a lot of stripes after 28 years.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:13Jocko Willink?

  And if you've never been in trouble, they're gold. But if you've been in trouble, if you have like a captain's mask or something like that, they're red. And it was it was always interesting to see that there would be guys that would be Master Chiefs, and they'd have they'd have red stripes, meaning they got in trouble at some point in their career. And the reason I ask that is because, you know, it's a as more and more focus, sort of more and more attention to the SEAL teams, you know, was like a lot less of a there's there was more of a zero defect mentality. And if you got in trouble one time, it was gonna stay with you, and it's gonna be a problem.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  So those gold versus red stripes, was it kind of like, it's kind of cool to have the red one? Or is it kind of cool to have the gold one? Like, what is the deal?

• 44:58Jocko Willink?

  It depends on your assessment of the situation.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  That's what I mean. Like, what was the common, like, the culture? Like, if you've seen a guy, and one guy had a gold, one guy had a red?

• 45:06Jocko Willink?

  Not a huge deal, not a huge deal, but like, BTF Tony?

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:10Jocko Willink?

  Red.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  All day.

• 45:12Jocko Willink?

  He was one of my buddies, and he's like, you know, just a break glass in case of war type of dude. And yeah, he had red.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  So it kind of depends on the person's like, personality? Like, it's a case by case?

• 45:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and this is this is, you know, back in the day when guy, yeah, you know, when guys were getting in trouble more, because there's also less going on. And really, a lot of it boils down to leadership, too. You know, if you're if your leadership isn't giving you stuff to do and pointing you in the right direction, where do you end up? If you're 18 years old? If you're 21 years old? If you're 19 years old, and you don't, you're not given good direction, where do you end up as a as a young male? Where do you end up, Echo Charles?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Jail?

• 45:53Jocko Willink?

  Well, possibly, but definitely in a pub, definitely, you know, being aggressive, definitely doing the, that's what you're gonna do. And so if you haven't gotten some good guidance, then it's gonna be problematic. And, you know, we're getting better at it, but it definitely is, it's good to hear that you could, you could have a, a mistake like that. And look, you could be, how many times did you not get caught, right? Of course, yeah, plenty of times, this time you got caught. It's good that you could get caught, learn a lesson and move on. It's also very interesting that people would come out of that highly disciplined environment, highly disciplined environment in Colchester and do better as humans.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:32Jocko Willink?

  Do better as soldiers. That's freaking legit. That's proof.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Proof of what?

• 46:37Jocko Willink?

  Proof that discipline equals freedom.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Well, that, that's kind of a good deal where like, yeah, you can go to prison essentially and get what, I mean, would you call it rehabilitated? Like if you're improved, when you come out of it, I mean, isn't, shouldn't that sort of be the goal?

• 46:53Jocko Willink?

  I think so.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. You know, like I said, it's, you know, we, we have something similar. We don't have the, the bands on our arms. But if you have 15 years of, of, of good discipline, you get the long service, good conduct medal.

• 47:05Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have things, you know, to aspire to. But, you know, I think everyone will, will get in trouble as, as, as long as you learn from it. It's, it's character building as well. And thankfully for me, it was at an early age. My good friend now, he's, he's the RSM in the SES. He was in Colchester prison with me as well. So, but as it is, it started to be almost like, oh, uh, people are getting promoted. And it's the wrong reasons for be going there. Um, but as you, if you come out a, a different man, different soldier. But like I said, the instructions in there were amazing. And that's probably, you know, that was reflective on the guys when they came out.

• 47:38Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's interesting that you actually call them instructors and not guards, right? When you go into the Navy brig, if you're in the Marine Corps or the Navy, you get in trouble, you go into the brig.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:47Jocko Willink?

  And those are guards. They're not instructors. So it's kind of cool that they were actually trying to, well, do you think that they were trying to teach you? They were trying to move you forward?

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you, you have military lessons. It is just being on camp, but you're just locked up at night. That's the only difference. Um, you know, you are going to, uh, you're doing drill, you know, the guards, we're like, today we're going to take off on the runway. And they're just be marching as fast as you can. I mean, you have the gym instructors. I mean, you do. Aircraft recognition, you'd be on the ranges, you'd go for runs, P T, you would run out of the camp gates. And I remember running like, I'm thinking, but I knew that if someone wanted to take a bolt for it and you stopped them, it reduced your sentence. I was keeping an eye out, you know, for any sort of, any sharp movement.

• 48:26Jocko Willink?

  If you tackled somebody.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think you have an interview when you go in and they, they sort of say, you know, you've got all sorts in there. You've got guys who, who don't want to be in the military, you know, got A W O, you've got guys with drugs, you've got, you know, you know, there's all things. And when I, you know, you're just on it, so you're like, I got into a fight and a lot, you just got caught. That's it. At the end of the day, they, they understood, they've probably been in a position you've been in before, but just didn't get caught. So.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  So it's like more, I mean, it's like a different approach essentially than like, you know, like when you think of prison outside of the military, you're like, no, that's your punishment, straight up. Like you, you're, it's essentially like the, the difference between a beating and a counselling kind of thing. So like, you know, what you're talking about is kind of a counselling, like, hey, you did this, let's, let's, let's kind of reap benefits from this whole situation, improve you.

• 49:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, they have programs like this, now that I think about it, they have programs like this in America, I don't know if they have them in England, but they take kids that are on the wrong track and they put them into like a highly disciplined military, militaristic environment and it definitely can straighten them out. I, I sponsored a kid going through one of those things and went up there and saw what they were doing. And it's like, a lot of those kids really turned around and started doing well.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah. And then, but then if you just get the beating, it's like, you just, it's, yeah, it's just a different approach, right? It's more effective.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  I think for the military, you know, if you come out a different person, you know, if you've come out and then you re-offend, then obviously there, there's a problem. But I think it's almost like, yes, it's one strike. Yeah. Cause you, you, you can go in and you have 28 days and under and 28 days and older. It's like two different wings. And you sort of look down, you look down at the 28 days.

• 50:06Jocko Willink?

  You said that in the book, you're like, I'm competitive about it. You guys are over here for 28 days. I'm big time.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  I mean, you've got the ones that actually were going to get discharged from the military as well. But rather than just throwing them out the gates, they would go do plumbing courses, carpenter courses. So there was stuff there there to help them.

• 50:22Jocko Willink?

  Man, that squirt away. Okay, so I cut you off when you were starting to talk about dive school. I'm sorry, but.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's yeah. So, um, but for so the Royal Engineers have divers, I think we have about four hundred and fifty divers at the moment. And and basically, what, um, when I was in Germany, there was always things on orders asking for guys who want to go on a dive course. Because everyone's heard of P Company, the Paracourse and the All Arms Commander course, but the dive course, I I think it's probably one of the most arduous and underrated and underrated courses. But it's also an additional qual, so you get you get more money. Back back in the day when I did, it was only two pounds sixty five, so about five dollars a day. But now you're talking, you know, twenty pounds, so thirty five, forty dollars. So there used to always be anyone want to go on a course, right? Exactly, yeah, exactly. But there was they'd struggle to get volunteers from other units.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Because of the guys from airborne engineers and commando engineers, because it's already physically robust, that that there's a waiting list. You know, you are at the back of that list. Um, but because they're all in Germany, uh, so all in Northern Ireland, they're out, or you're going on the aptitude. So I literally must have just fast tracked two or three years to get on the on this course. So I went and did my my aptitude and and how I've seen diving change over the years. This was back in ninety, in ninety seven. Um, and it was it was called a DESCA, diving set self-contained compressed air. It's like scuba. But it was no comms, we don't have any comms, it was nil visibility.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  The only way we communicate, we had a lifeline, a rope around our chest with a bowline, and they'd just do pulls and bells. So it's an alien, as you know, underwater, it's an alien environment. Um, so a lot of guys don't like it, but for me. Been surfing and I I love the water. It was almost like for me, I'm more comfortable underwater than I am on on land. So so I did that course, came back. And the squadron had just returned from Northern Ireland. So here's me now in this new unit. Just stolen everyone's dive course, which everyone's on the waiting list for. Uh and they've obviously heard I've just come out of Colchester Prison. So there's a couple, there was a couple of names within the unit, like, you know, squadron bullies.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  And they're like, oh, wait till such and such seizure. And I thought, here we go. We had a Christmas party. And one of the lads just comes over and says, oh, you think you're handy and just, just full on, straight in the face. I was like, oh, God. So I, you know, I just, I just right hooked him back. And, you know, he stepped back and said, that's all I needed to know. And I think that's sort of. You know, gave me my foot in the door within the unit. But. Well, uh, five nine commando used to be the army minor unit boxing champions. And each year they were, because they won the final, they'd automatically go to the final the next year. And each year our opponents were the airborne engineers. So this was coming up in January, three months training. I didn't have a choice to that. Well.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  You've been to Colchester Prison, you're on the boxing team. I was like, really? So um, so we went, I just spent three months. Did you ever box before? I did in in Guilford, where near Surrey, uh, one of my friends from school, we went to a place called Bellfields. So I did a bit of boxing there. And again, my father didn't want me boxing. And I sort of had an agreement and I said, well, look, I'll box until I get beat. And then, you know, then I'll stop. So thankfully, I never, I never got beat. I only had two, about three fights, I think, when I was, when I was there. But in the military, in five nine commando, it's, it's just pure fitness. Uh, there's no boxing skill uh at all. And we would have three or four P T sessions um a day. And rather than like, lose the weight over a period of time, they lose the weight in a short period. I mean, you've got to maintain it.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  But um, three months later, we had the army mine units finals. And there's other guys from the squadron based at other training units. And you can see him reading the book like. Who's this start? Who's this new lad? And we thought we were going to walk away with it. And at the interval, it was two all. There's seven fights of the night. It's two all at the interval. And I remember the sergeant major coming in and he's just like, in my chest, he said, you need to do, you know. Poking me right in the bill of chest and I was like, oh my god. And I came out and I think I had tears in my eyes. The drenning was pumping. But I went out and I knocked the guy down three times in a minute and 20 seconds. And that literally, you know, I'd made my mark within 59 Commando and I settled in quite well.

• 54:47Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. Good story. You go, you go here in the book, you say, it wasn't, it wasn't long into my time at 59 that I was selected for recce troop, a kind of elite within the squadron. It was a huge privilege as recce was known as being a great stepping stone towards the special forces, an idea that I'd begun to toy with, thinking about my future in the army. So you end up in recce troop.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  That's it, yeah. So in Free Commando Brigade, you have 59 Commando, the engineers that support the brigade, you have 29 Commando, the artillery. And within Free Commando Brigade, they have their own sort of reconnaissance troop called Brigade Recce Force, or Brigade Patrol Group, Brigade Patrol Troop from the Marines, which consists of snipers and mountain leaders. But also part of that group is naval gunfire from the artillery and also 59 recce troop. So we're almost like eyes on the ground, advanced eyes on the ground, you know, giving input on potential combat engineering tasks. So you have to be selected from recce troop within 59 Commando and they did that in Norway.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  So each year, we used to go to Norway for three months, the whole of the brigade. And we do Arctic warfare training. It was all due to the Cold War. If the Russians were starting to head west across Norway, that we'd be able to, you know, to stop them. So, you know, and Norway's an equalizer. And that separates the boys from the men. So I'd got, my name had been picked up to go recce troop and

• 56:21Speaker 02

  So yeah, so very fortunate to get selected again at a young age to go recce troop. And within five nine commando, it's actually classed as a posting. So my time had started again as I entered into recce troop. As you touched on there, recce troop had a hundred percent pass rate for UK special forces selection. So guys, I would see guys leaving and never come back. So for me, it's when I then started, my head started turning towards the opportunity of special forces. You know, my dad told me I'd last two minutes. I managed to get through basic training. I've done a P T I, I managed to get through Colchester, I managed to get through the command, of course. I'm now just about getting my parrowings.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  And you're also then amongst like minded individuals, those who want to go or aspire to be special forces. So, so yeah, that was recce troop for me.

• 57:12Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you go through any official training for recce troop? Do you have to go to a school or is it just from the unit itself you get trained up?

• 57:19Speaker 02

  They, they had their own selection process within the unit. And then you used to have to go do P company, which is the airborne engineers course. But when I, when I got there, our troop staff sergeant, you know, said, there's no need to do P company. You know, we would run our own selection process, which disgruntled some of the older boys. They felt, no, you have to do P company. But there was a big difference as well now in the guys that were going recce troop compared to the guys of old. The guys of old were like you, Jocko, they were just huge, you know, they were just massive guys. It was all about fitness, whereas now, you know, the world was sort of evolving. The Balkans had kicked off and so five nine commando went to Bosnia. And recce troop, we went to Kosovo with Brigade Recce Force.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Well, this was the first operational tour for recce troop since the Falklands War. So the guys in between that period hadn't seen any action. And then we then went over to Kosovo, which was great for us.

• 58:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you you say here, uh, one day I called home to the UK with news for my dad. He'd probably forgotten long ago about our two minutes conversation in the car. I had and I had a big smile on my face as I gave him the news. I'm going to Kosovo, I told the old soldier. I'm going on tour. And this is in, this is in 2000. So if you were going to do something real, going into, going into the, going into Kosovo was as good as it was going to get at that time.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  At that time, yeah.

• 58:44Jocko Willink?

  Then, um, what, what types of missions were you doing there?

• 58:48Speaker 02

  So Brigade Recce Force, so we were, we were doing as a, you know, forward observation. Um, example, one, the first, I mean, it's in the book, actually, the first op we went on. It was like, right, we're going on the ground. We're on ops. Uh, and so basically there was a 5K buffer zone between Serbia and Kosovo. And they didn't want any sort of, any Serbians in there, any Kosovians in there because that, you know, that's where it was all kicking off. So a lot of our work was on the border. But there was also those that, that have committed horrific crimes, crimes of war as well. So we were also identifying these HVTs, getting imagery from them and then obviously getting guys to come in and pick them up. So we were having to grab, you know, camera kit straight off civilian shelves, you know, walking in with a great big lens and things like that.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  And, uh, I remember the first job we went on and we inserted, we had our, our intelligence brief, we inserted. And as we were patrolling, you know, to the FRV, uh, I was a real man and I, I kept hearing something, those sorts of that. Stop the team, get down on one knee, you know, all around the fence. And we're all looking through our sights, you know, there's nothing there, but you can hear almost like the creeping in the leaves, you know, someone sneaking up on us. Anyway, this, this carried on all the way through. We got to the position, even when we're in the OP position, we could hear it. Um, we got the imagery we needed and about, you know, two weeks later, we, we extracted.

• 1:00:14Jocko Willink?

  Through the field for two weeks.

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  In the field for two weeks.

• 1:00:16Jocko Willink?

  The whole time you're hearing this noise at night, you hear these probable enemy approaching your position.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Jocko Willink?

  Ready for the fight the whole time.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  You, you're thinking of the worst, you know, you, you shouldn't be there and things like that. And, uh, so when we extracted, um, we, we went back to camp and we, we have the, a debrief. And I, you know, any points, I'm like, yeah, you know, I don't know whether we will compromise. It felt like we'll compromise, but there was a lot of movement, you know, especially at night. And then some, some, you know, call them green slime, the intelligence corps. This guy that I did forget to mention is breeding season for the tortoises. So actually, what we were hearing was the tortoises are coming out to mate. But it kept the whole patrol on stand two for two weeks.

• 1:01:02Jocko Willink?

  So you guys are doing recon patrols. How big of a teams are you guys rolling out with?

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  So we're in six man team, yeah, six man team.

• 1:01:08Jocko Willink?

  And, and you're staying for up to two weeks out there?

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  We did four weeks once. Yeah, we, we got to, um. Basically, we got an int report in that there was a, a training camp in the, in the 5K buffer. And the Serbians basically said, you deal with them or we'll deal with them. And so we inserted, I remember, you know, snow on the ground as well. And because we were Arctic trained, we were the best guys for the job. So we inserted, did our tents and we're in observation OPs for, for four weeks. And, um, just feeding back all the intelligence. And then they were, it was a military training school. They were doing heavy, heavy weapons training, small arms training. It was, it was quite well disciplined. And we were actually then relieved by the Americans. Americans, you know, came in and took over from us for, uh, four weeks later.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  And I think subsequently from that SF did go in and actually take down, take down the, uh, the, the training camp. But, um, for me, yeah, four weeks in, in the snow, um, you know, separates the boys from the men.

• 1:02:10Jocko Willink?

  What's the op tempo like when you'd get back? How, how often would, how much downtime would you get and then you'd roll back out?

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  Uh, we'd be rolling, you know, we'd, we'd obviously de-service and reservice. But it was, it was everything from urban to rural. You know, we, we were doing stuff as well in, in, in vehicles. We had snipers in, in, in the tall buildings in the middle of Pristina.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  So the jobs had ranged from that to, you know, we, we did get into about one of, one of the local government guys is going to be assassination attempt on him. So we're obviously having to keep an eye, eye on him all the time as well. And I remember actually seeing two guys and we, we got out, we were in civilian attire. And we walked up to, walking up towards him because we see, could see the big, the guys that we knew were going to take him down. And they caught our eye and they caught theirs and they just went the other way. And actually it was a dry rehearsal. We just compromised a dry rehearsal. They weren't doing it then, which obviously kept him alive probably for another month. I think he did get assassinated after we left.

• 1:03:06Jocko Willink?

  So you had to be. How old are you at this point?

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Uh, ninety-nine, I'm twenty-two.

• 1:03:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so you're just all kinds of fired up for this. This is living the dream.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. It's everything you dream about and read about, yeah. You're doing it for real.

• 1:03:21Jocko Willink?

  You go through this, uh, this here in the book as you close out this chapter. We were just about to head home from Kosovo when we were fastballed onto a task. "We're going to apprehend a bomb maker," we were told, "and the adrenaline began to buzz in my veins." Sitting through the intel brief, we learned that someone had been cooking up bombs that were being used to take out politicians. The bomb maker wasn't the one using them. He was more like a chef for hire. Understandably, NATO were keen to get him off the streets. I wasn't the one to grab him, but a couple of the other guys bundled him into the back of our vehicles, of our vehicle. His hands were tied behind his back, and despite our orders to keep his eyes on the floor, he kept looking up and around him. I put a hand on the back of his head to help his concentration.

• 1:04:06Jocko Willink?

  "That's bang out of order," the man shouted in a sharp Manchunian accent as I've ever heard. So that's a Manchester accent?

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Manchester accent.

• 1:04:15Jocko Willink?

  My jaw dropped, and I looked around at the other guys in the team. Not for one moment had we suspected that the bomb maker could be a fellow countryman. When we dropped him off for questioning, I bet he wished he'd stayed at home. There was a solitary chair in the center of a courtyard with two bright spotlights shining onto it, very James Bond. We left the bomb maker to answer for his crimes. It was time for us to go home. So you guys were running, so those are great ops, you know, great ops getting bad guys. Who'd you turn him over to? Who was gonna interrogate him?

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  Um, it was our intelligence services, yeah.

• 1:04:50Jocko Willink?

  Relatively gentle, then.

• 1:04:56Jocko Willink?

  So then, this is the point where you get the offer to, or the selected, once again, to go be an instructor.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it, yeah.

• 1:05:04Jocko Willink?

  At Limstone, am I saying it right?

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  Limston, yeah.

• 1:05:06Jocko Willink?

  Limston. So you go to Limston to, to be an instructor of that commando course, which you...

• 1:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Which you had gone through and the one that you said everyone got fired.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yes.

• 1:05:20Jocko Willink?

  And so how was that?

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, great. Obviously, it's a great privilege to go back. So, so what we used to do with five nine recce troop, we each, each troop within five nine had to have a guy who did guard duties and things like that. So we were exempt from guard duties and from that we would send an instructor on the commander course for a year. So you're actually, again, it was classed as a post in out the unit, but you you were still attached. So again, when I talk about being an ambassador, you're an ambassador now for the cat badge. And this is only about four years after me doing my own course. So I always remember my course thinking, well, you know, when we were on our course, we had to build, build up the instructors tents, you know, we were doing a lot for them. When I got there, it was night and day.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  Now, we did our own tents, but instruction had changed completely. They, we were doing everything that the students were doing. We were wearing the same equipment. We didn't have any, you know, Gucci kit as well. We were wearing exactly what they they had. And because you were, you were, as an ambassador, you obviously had to be seen to be doing what what they were doing, which I thought was a great way of teaching. Don't ask of them if you can't do it yourself. And, and so, yeah, it was night, night and day. The, we had a couple of instructors on the course and, you know, I soon learned how you can get the most out of of your students. I know when I was on my course, you know, I didn't learn anything. And I always remember that I thought, well, I don't want this to happen to these

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  young boys, you know, I want them to be in a good position when they go to their unit because you're going to go back to five nine and you're going to be serving along alongside these guys as well. But we had a couple of instructors and they would just come out every morning, just scream and shout. You know, I mean, I think the the marine instructors, they felt they, that they had a bad, a bad deal going on the all arms commander course. But in fact, actually, they enjoyed it. They did, they really opened their eyes to how good these guys were at soldiering. You know, the Marines, because it's nine months long, they're so. Proud of their tradition and they see these, you know, these army guys coming in and doing ten weeks, but they don't realise what they've done before they've got there. But these guys would come out and scream and shout and you can see the students' eyes, it was almost like

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  straight in the press up position and, you know, they got nothing back. Whereas for me, it was all about the banter, it's about humour. You need to have a sense of humour and be approachable. So if I had to tell them to do press ups, I would do the press ups with them. I remember also there was a law that we could only do thirty press ups. Really?

• 1:07:50Jocko Willink?

  A law?

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, within Limston, yeah. They started introducing the maximum you can do is thirty press ups. But there's ways you can get around that, you know, because you can do a press up, you can do a half press up, you can hold it for a few seconds, then fully down, you know, so we did that. I mean, there's ways around it. But for them as students, you know, I was seeing a better product at the end than probably what they did of me four years before, so I did like, I did like that change.

• 1:08:16Jocko Willink?

  Do you feel like you were able, like I was very lucky because I was getting new instructor roles and was able to teach. I taught everything, it was awesome. I felt like I learned a lot while I was teaching because now you're observing. I mean, from a leadership perspective, you know, when I was at E5, so I was like a young junior guy, I was teaching the young officers that were going through our basic, it was called SEAL Tactical Training at the time. So I'm out there telling them how to run immediate action drills and telling them like, hey, no one's listening to you, you need to step back, you need to take a look around. I learned so much from doing that. Did you feel like you, in this instructor mode, got to learn?

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got to learn a lot myself, yeah. And like I said, we used to call it the sugar pedestal. We used to have to always do the demonstrations before the students, so it's like, do not mess this up. So our drills had to be slick and quick. But on my first course, we had the first female candidate to do the All Arms Commander course.

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in the book you call her what, Lieutenant Y?

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Lieutenant Y, yeah, yeah, we had to protect her name for legal reasons. But she'd done two, she had two previous attempts and this was her third attempt.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  And so the instructors who took on her initial two courses were dismissed from the training team and we had another training team sort of come in. So you can already see it's gonna be, it's getting steered that way. But basically, what it was is they wanted a female to pass the commander course. And people don't realise this actually. Basically, if a female hadn't passed the commander course, they were gonna lower the standards until a female passed. But that would be standard throughout, male and female. So the fact that she went on and passed, we didn't lower the standards. So people don't see, see the bigger, the bigger picture behind the scenes. So.

• 1:10:02Jocko Willink?

  So when you talk about her in the book, she didn't pass.

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  It's not that she didn't pass. There was two ladies on the course. There was Lieutenant Y and I'll say Lieutenant X. Lieutenant X was a doctor who's actually from five nine. And she did everything that was asked of her. You know, she, she struggled and things like that. Whereas Lieutenant Y was almost playing the system. She knew that if she could go to the doctor, she would get two days light duties. But the way, the timings of that used to always be for a commando test. So she'd rest up for a couple of days for the commando test. And it was that. It wasn't the fact she didn't, it was the fact that she played the system well. Lieutenant X, you know, she, I remember one of the guys, Daz, who went on to be chief instructor to the sniper school. We were doing some close

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  quarter CQB. And you know, you'd follow the student through and then at the end, you'd give him a debrief. And he's like, he comes through with a student, he said, that guy was brilliant. And then me and him started chatting. And as we looked over, it was like a scene from a shampoo advert. She took her helmet off and just brushed her hair down. And both of us, our jaws hit the floor and all that. I said, well, if she was good, you tell her. You know, you tell her that she was good. And he did, yeah, you were excellent. But unfortunately, week five, you do your, your bottom field test, which is like an assault course. And you have to climb a 30 foot rope. And she was about a foot and a half just below that rope. So she didn't progress on that course. But I do think, you know, if she had non-instructed, with any qualms.

• 1:11:33Jocko Willink?

  So was that Lieutenant X or Lieutenant Y?

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  That's Lieutenant X.

• 1:11:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And but you're saying eventually she did make it through?

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Lieutenant, uh, no Lieutenant Y, she, she, she made it through on that course. She made it through on that, on that course. And it was almost to just dampen the white noise, you know, white, white hall out. We need a female to pass. We need a female to pass. Um, but you can imagine what the airborne lads were like, you know what I mean? It was like, oh my God, you know, I used to get phone calls. My wife's on paternity leave for 10 weeks. Can we just come down and do your course? Yeah, it was the good banner.

• 1:12:05Jocko Willink?

  And then you also talked about a guy that was what 50 something years old, just a beast.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, even when, you know, Lieutenant Y passed, I was getting blueies from the lads who are in Afghan. You know, yeah, well done. You know, and it was like, you know, lads from the special forces don't even bother coming on selection. It's like a big thing, a female passing. But to be honest, you know, she deserved to pass. And I, I generally believe that if you deserve to pass, you know, you, you earned the right. And so, yeah, the next course, this gentleman turns up Captain Fox, and he's basically going to be the family officer at two nine commando. This guy's 55 years old and he did P company four years before I was born, the airborne, you know what I mean? So, uh, we're there, we're there on parade and, and the first thing we do is we do a, um, I think we do a six mile booted march.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  And it was spring and we came back and it'd like you'd just thrown two buckets of water over this guy. And I was like, I said, are you all right? You know, Captain Fox, he goes, oh yeah, I, I had pneumonia, you know, 15 years ago. So I can't control my, my, my, my sweats. I was like, oh my God, this guy's going to die on me. But this guy, basically, he had like four wheel records. He was an ultra marathon runner. He had, I don't know what it was called, but basically has to keep moving, has to be physically active. But this guy was, was old school. I remember when, you know, teaching, uh, the students, students messed up. And, you know, so I had him on beastie gnaw up and down this, this hill. And I remember him coming down and every time he'd come to me, he'd get in the press up position. I, I used to feel really embarrassed. I'd be talking to my granddad. I was like, please, please stand up Captain Fox. I said, what is it? He said, can I take my warm kit off now?

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  I was like, God, I was like, yeah, yeah, please do. But, you know, really humbling, uh, being with him. But I remember he was in my, my group and he's, we were doing the 30 miler next week, you know, it's the commando test. And the final test is a 30 mile endurance march in, in eight hours. And at the end you get, you're covered in green beret. He's like, he said, Corporal Stott, he said, um, is there a grid reference to the finish point? And the finish point actually is a public car park on, on Dartmoor. I said, yeah, you shouldn't know it, but I said, this is it. Fine. So when it came to the thirty miler, I bring him up.

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  And so he wanted to know that. Did he clarify why he wanted to know that? It's because he wanted his wife or whatever.

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, he wanted his girlfriend to come along. He said, my girlfriend wants to meet me at the end. Do you mind? I said, yeah, fine. So we came over.

• 1:14:23Jocko Willink?

  Cut the old man some slack.

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:25Jocko Willink?

  Much appreciated. Us older dudes say, yeah, right on. Thank you.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just had so much respect for him. In fact, the P company four years before I was born. So I said, yeah, of course. And then we did the thirty miler. And on the last phase, you bring them up a hill called Pooper's Hill. You come, bring them in. I mean, you stop them short of the end. And you get them to sort themselves out. They put their cap comfort on and we marched them in. And so I was doing that. And as we came around the corner, oh my God, it was like the Super Bowl. There was banners there, no balloons. How was that? And I said, I thought it was just your girlfriend. He said, oh, yeah, my grandkids as well, my kids. Brilliant. I did Google.

• 1:15:04Jocko Willink?

  I think this is a good section you had in here, just on, you touched on it, but just the, the attitude of being an instructor. You say, I think a lot of NCOs came into their positions on courses and, and at units, thinking that being shouty, shouty and swearing was the way to behave because that's how it had been for them. And perhaps they thought it made them feared. Personally, I didn't want to scare people into learning. If they didn't want to be there, they'd end up failing themselves without me shouting and screaming. I found it far more effective to use humor and to be quiet at times when others would shout. Using that old, old parent's line of, I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed. Just a look would be enough. They wanted the approval of those already wearing the green lid.

• 1:15:46Jocko Willink?

  And so if they saw that they had failed you, they'd double their efforts on the next task. No need for shouting or swearing. When you fill a void with swearing, it looks rightly or wrongly like it's down to lack of intelligence or to anger issues. Instructors were being assessed by their students just as much as the other way around. I always decided early on that I would have, that I would share in any punishment that I handed out. If I gave them press ups, then I'd get down in the mud and do them too. Not only did that earn their respect, but it gave them no excuse in their minds to feel hard done by. At the end of the course, those that earned the coveted berets would be serving alongside me. And so I wanted to treat them as my equals, even if I was in a position of authority,

• 1:16:28Jocko Willink?

  especially if I was in a position of authority. We needed each other and that's the same whether you're on a training exercise, in combat, or attempting a world record. No person is an island. Yeah. Good, a great attitude that I think a lot of people

• 1:16:48Jocko Willink?

  could use, you know, from a leaders, not just instructor, but from just a leadership perspective. You know, that you think maybe you need to yell to get someone's respect. No, it doesn't. You actually lose respect when you act like that.

• 1:17:02Jocko Willink?

  You get done with that and now you go to see the careers management officer and he's asking you about what you want to do next. Now, did he, did he chime in about selection? About going to selection? Did you see the one that brought up you possibly go into selection? Or did you already have it in your mind?

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  I, I had it in my mind, so he, he pulled me in. So the whole period of time now from joining five nine to where I was now, I was now a sergeant. I'd spent eight years in five nine and that's purely because of the recce troop, the all arms commander corps. So normally in, in the military, you spend three years and then you move on to another unit. And you know, you progress in your career. So to have eight years there and seven in every brigade recce is unheard of. So I, I basically had to move on. So I, I put my paperwork in for, for pathfinders, which was the brigade recce for the airborne unit. And we, each year we have a confidential report and my report was excellent. And he pulled me in, he said, can you not see the wood through the trees? He goes, you need to go to then come back as the, the recce troop staff sergeant.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  Going, you know, pathfinders isn't the way. So he probably like, yeah, give me a bit of a rollicking. Um, but that afternoon, actually, um, I got a phone call from Glasgow. Glasgow runs all our manning and records. They tell you where you're getting posted and things like that. And so the engineered, Royal Engineer divers, we also have Royal Navy search divers. There've been a few deaths recently in the Royal Navy divers, um, just purely because they're not full-time divers and there's, you know, lack of, um, No, I would say lack of uh.

• 1:18:37Jocko Willink?

  Protocol.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, protocol training. So unfortunately, a couple of deaths. But then HSE had now started creeping into diving. You know, when I said earlier that there's no, no voice comms and things like that. Now you can't dive unless you've got two-way visual camera and voice comms. HSE was really creeping into.

• 1:18:55Jocko Willink?

  So wait, what's HSE?

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Health and Safety Executive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The, the big banners. So they'd introduced a new dive equipment called the Sabre Mod One. Um, and so it didn't disrupt the other diving courses. They introduced another dive team to come in and train all the current divers within the engineers. So I just passed my army diving supervisors and got top student. So, you know, that, that same day, the sort of majors like that, having been moronic it, I then get posted to the dive school. So it was out of both our hands. Um, so I went down as the, the senior dive instructor.

• 1:19:33Jocko Willink?

  And then you're down there as a senior dive instructor and it sounds like you guys are basically just, uh, uh, partying a lot. Because in the book, I mean, you guys are divers, but you kind of, it's a bunch, you're training people that are already divers, right?

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:47Jocko Willink?

  And you're just training them on a new piece of gear.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  That's it. Yeah, they're already qualified divers, but for them, they, they go into Portsmouth. It's like probably coming to San Diego, you know, you've got two weeks in the gas lamp. You know, for these guys, they're, they're saving up their money.

• 1:19:58Jocko Willink?

  They're ready to rock and roll.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but every two weeks you get another, another, another course of qualified divers. So for them, it's, it's a holiday. They knew, they knew they were passing. They were just going through the procedures.

• 1:20:09Jocko Willink?

  So they're on holiday and they're dragging you on holiday.

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. You're coming out and that, you know, I was a single guy, yeah, of course.

• 1:20:16Jocko Willink?

  And at one point, at what point did you realize, did you decide you're going to go selection?

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  So, uh, a couple of mates have gone SAS and we, we met up about three months later. And, um, you know, it really opened my eyes and I, you know, I, I like to party hard. And they were like, you're not even drunk. And, and I said, ah, see, I'm going to go on selection. And there was one in the back, no, you won't. I said, yeah, well. So that Monday, I, I just stopped drinking and then, and then I trained. Um, I went on, I had an attempt at selection before that, a couple of years before, not long after the All Arms Commander course. And my knee blew out on the hill.

• 1:20:55Jocko Willink?

  How deep into selection were you on that first time when you got blown out knee?

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  Within the aptitude phase, the first four weeks on the hill training. So I tore my lateral meniscus. But my training for that selection, I was up and down the North Devon coastal path, carrying weight. I was just pounding and pounding the knee. So for me, I didn't want to have that same approach with this attempt. Also, I was running dive courses at the time. So the only time I had, you know, off was the evening. So I'd spend two hours on these spin bikes, you know, these spin bikes. I'd just be on a spinner for two hours each night for six weeks.

• 1:21:30Jocko Willink?

  How was, when you, when you got dropped from selection the first time around? Like you're kind of making it like it's no big deal. I only know from my experience. It's a, when you, if, if people don't make it through like basic SEAL training. It's, it's, it's horrible because you're going to be in the regular Navy and that's not what you do in the Navy to do. And all of a sudden you're doing this other thing. Or you're doing like a regular Navy job and that's not good. And I can't even fathom like my mindset if I wouldn't have made it. But it seems like it's a little easier on someone that's, you know, you're, so you were, were you at five nine?

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  So I was in recce troop at the time.

• 1:22:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you're in recce troops. You're like, okay, I didn't get through it this time and I still have an awesome job. So maybe it wasn't quite as psychologically devastating.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, we, we, you, you get two attempts at selection, you see.

• 1:22:19Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  I knew I had another attempt. It wasn't the be all, be all or end all, but I learned a lot from that. And it was, and it was the, the approach to training, you know, a lot, you know, we have the first four weeks, which we'll talk about soon on selection, which is the aptitude phase, which is the hills phase, which is the physical. Once you're at, once you pass that, it's, it's when the soldering then comes in. And I sort of knew I just needed to get past that first four weeks because soldering wise, you know, I spent years in recce troop, you know, I was on the all arms team, you know, I was, I was quite current. So when I approached, did it the second time, like I said, I was on a spinner bike for two weeks. So it was low, low impact. And actually we'd do a, a run in the UK ministry called BFT, the basic fitness test. It's a, it's a run for a mile and a half.

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  And I got my fastest run at the age of 28. I did it like seven minutes, 10 seconds. So I thought, right, you know, the fitness, fitness, fitness is up, up here. Um, so I then went on selection. I decided to, um,

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  To go SBS, I went and did the, they do a thing called a briefing course because there's two attempts at selection, days of old guys, you know, if you weren't from the Marines in Paris, guys would go on selection and get caught out, they'll get a big culture shock, they didn't realize actually what was involved and what training and preparation you needed to do. So rather than wasting one life than coming back and potentially getting injured, both units then introduced a thing called a briefing course, which you can have as many attempts at as you want. And it's a one week course and basically it's like an aptitude. It gives you an insight of what, where you are fitness wise, navigation wise.

• 1:23:54Jocko Willink?

  Did you get to do that the first attempt that you did, they didn't have it yet?

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  They didn't have that yet. So.

• 1:23:59Jocko Willink?

  So you had wasted one life.

• 1:24:00Speaker 02

  So I'd wasted one life, yeah. So I went and did the SAS briefing course for a week. And then the following week I went and did the SBS one, because I still wanted to, I wanted to make my decision. But obviously a lot of all my friends were in the SAS, I sort of knew all them and you know, sort of the way that they operated. And then I went down to pool indoors on our south coast. And then, and the guys are there, you know, they've got frog shorts, T-shirts, they've got, you know, reef sandals and Oakley, I was like, yeah, this is me. This is, this is where, this is where I belong. So I did both and then you have to make the decision before you go on selection. So I said, right, I'm going.

• 1:24:33Jocko Willink?

  And that was a new thing. Before, if you were in the army, you're going in the SAS. If you were in the Marines, or I guess, would they take regular Navy dudes into the SBS?

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  There's only ever been one Navy guy pass, although it's the Naval Special Forces, only, only one Navy guy's passed it. Up until then, it was 100% Royal Marines.

• 1:24:52Jocko Willink?

  So normally you, or in the past, you would have been SAS 100%, not even a choice. That's you're in the army, you're going to the SAS. And at some point during the joint environment of, hey, we all need to work together.

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:05Jocko Willink?

  They said, pick which one you want to go to. You saw the, you saw, you saw pool, you saw flip flops and surf shorts and Oakleys and said, I'm, I'm heading there.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was it. The, so what it was, was the Marines could go to the SAS. So the Marine, the SBS were losing candidates to the SAS because not everyone likes diving, you see.

• 1:25:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then some guys have head injuries as well. It means they can't go underwater. So they were losing. Students to that. And so they decided to then open up try service that the Navy, the Army, the RAF can come. And they just literally just done that. So for me, having spent eight years in free commander brigade, having the green beret anyway, and being the sea and dive, it was just seemed a natural transition, the perfect transition for me. But in my head, I thought, well, if I go SAS, you know, because I'm senior dive instructor, I'm going to end up in boat troop. If I go SBS, these guys are all divers. So you know, I'm a level playing field. And that was where my mindset was. And so, yeah, I did it much to the disgust of my friends in the SAS. They're like, what are you doing? Because especially like recce

• 1:26:14Speaker 02

  trip, we had a hundred percent pass rate. And it was like, you know, if this guy goes, then, you know, people are going to look at those options. You know, UK Special Forces, forty percent of UK Special Forces made up of the Royal Marines. That's because they were all in the SBS.

• 1:26:31Jocko Willink?

  You, you had to explain this a lot. Here's the, here's the book, Talking to Your Instructors. Why the fuck do you want to go to pool? One of the DSs asked me, the Special Forces selection encompassed all those who wanted to go to SAS and SBS. So it's the exact same training. You're going to go through the exact same training, the exact same selection course, I should say. I knew I shouldn't give them a real answer. I didn't want to go to boat troop in Hereford. And I liked the way the SBS guys cut about in t-shirts, shorts, and Oakleys. As a surfer, that appealed to me. And pool would certainly put me closer to the surf spots of Devon and Cornwall. I love diving, staff. Shit answer. Who likes diving? The DS snorted, picking up a rock. Put that in your kit and you better fucking have it

• 1:27:14Jocko Willink?

  when we're, when we get to the end of the day. I had it with me every day. Each morning, the DS would ask me the same question. And each day I'd be told to put a rock into my already heavy burden. Then one day I had an idea. My chances of being the gray man were long gone. And so I decided to deploy a bit of humor. Back in the camp, that evening I got busy and in the morning I was prepared. One, two of the DS walked over to me. They were both from Hereford and both had been at 5'9". They had a keen eye for horrible rocks. "Oi you, why the fuck you want to go to pool?" I placed my weapon down across my boots so that it was out of the dirt and opened up the, one of the map pockets in my trousers, pulling out a laminated photo. "What the fuck is this?" one of them sneered.

• 1:27:58Jocko Willink?

  "It was a fold, it was a photo of Bournemouth. Am I saying that right?" Bournemouth, yeah. Bournemouth. "Bournemouth. God, I'm an American." "It was a, it was a photo of Bournemouth." "Beach during a heatwave." I'd pulled it off of Google and laminated it in the office. "You don't get topless girl, girls on the beach in Hereford staff." I told them with a straight face and both men burst out laughing. I kept the photo in my pocket for the rest of the course and didn't carry another rock.

• 1:28:27Jocko Willink?

  Actually, one of the main reasons why I, well, I, I grew up surfing too. Yeah. In, in cold, the cold water of New England. And I was looking at, you know, when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to go into. And one of the things that was, seemed like a really good deal was either being stationed in Virginia Beach, which is good waves on the east coast and, or San Diego, which is San Diego. And either that, you know, are you going to Fort Bedding or Fort Lewis or, you know, just, there's some other places to get stationed. So that definitely helped guide me in the right direction. And I didn't know any seals at the time, otherwise I would have seen sandals, shorts and Oakleys. And that probably would have steered me even more in that direction.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  You continue on here. Despite the rocks, I did really well on the hills. The training on the spin bike worked out. My joints felt fresh. On my last basic fitness test at dive school, I even ran my fastest time ever. 28 years old, avoiding injury on the hills is key. There's no time for recovery. If you get hurt, you're done. That's that. And so I was pleased that I'd learnt the lessons of my first attempt at selection and adapted my plan accordingly. Yeah, my buddy John Dudley's a bow hunter and like, he's, he spends a bunch of time on the stationary bike, getting ready for hunting season. And I, I was... Like I just put on a rock and walk because I'm maybe not as smart. Um. But yeah, it seems like that's a seems like that works.

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think obviously you're gonna have the impact anyway. You know, for for me, when I did the first selection, you know, I've got quite big hill legs. So actually ascending hills was not a problem. Where you need to be making up your time is on the on the downhills and on the straights and you know, and that's where I need needed to improve. So that's that's why I introduced the spin bike. I didn't want to inflame that injury again. I didn't want to, you know, put start in a bad position. So I just looked at what worked and what didn't, you know, I knew I was I had the strength you know, for the in my legs. I just didn't have the speed and how was I going to be able to improve on that? And that's where the spinner bike was was perfect for it. But the our our aptitude, our first four weeks is, you know, it's twenty twenty to thirty kilometers, you know, up to seventy pounds.

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  Uh, you you have then then have like the test week. Um. And they say, you know, you need to be moving at four K an hour, which thinks that's fine. But that's as the crow flies looking at a map. So if you've got a mountain in the way, you need to get over that mountain. So you need to really be moving about five to six K an hour. Because if you then have any issues navigational wise, you know, you you've got some fudge and you and you you're not scraping in. But Groundhog Day for four weeks doing that on the Brecon Beacons in in Wales is a

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  And you don't know, there's no like cutoff time. They just tell you to go and get it done as quick as you can.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  That's it. Yeah, you you basically get to your your your start point, you know, the DS will give you your grid reference. You you then step aside, work out. You know which direction you're going, tell him in time, speed, distance, and you sort of working on your your four K an hour, how long it's going to take you. And and then you go. I mean, you get to the next checkpoint, which is the top of the hill, where he's always meet the DS, tell him to pick up a rock. And then they will just give you the next one and you just keep going until you get to to the finish point. And they also have a couple of little games in there as well, where you you think you've finished for the day and they'll outright your next checkpoint. Um. And then you, you know, you go, you start going and caught a couple of guys out. They were they were done. And didn't realize actually it was it was just a test. Um. You just have to be.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  Self-disciplined and self-motivated.

• 1:31:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, you wrote, you wrote about that in the book, how they'd come up, you think you're done. You've been walking for what 12 hours, 14 hours, or whatever it is. Nineteenth day in a row.

• 1:32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:07Jocko Willink?

  You come up to the, to the drill sergeant and you say, um, you know, him checking in and he's like, yep, here's your next point. And guys would say, I'm done and they'd quit.

• 1:32:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  And then someone else would come up and say, they'd say, here's your next point. They'd start walking and say, hey, just kidding, come back. And then that guy would realize that they just quit for no reason.

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I think it was on ours, it was a lot of the, the para lads, a lot of the parachute regiment lads would go as drivers to drive the vehicles on the selections before. So they knew the start and finish points. And it was actually to catch them out because in their head, they're like, right, I've just got 30 kilometers. I've just got 30 kilometers. And so they built themselves up. And when they get to that point, they think it's finished. And then when you throw a little curve ball in there, they weren't expecting it.

• 1:32:52Speaker 02

  But then, yeah, then test week, you know, it's called the aptitude phase, but test week itself, you then have five marches. And if you don't come in on the times, you know, you get, you get a red card, you get two red cards, uh, you're done. I think the first three marches are about 30 kilometers. The fourth march is, is 35 kilometers, but then you have four hours rest. And then that evening, you do 40 miles with 70 pounds. It's called endurance and you have to do that within 20 hours.

• 1:33:18Jocko Willink?

  It's called other things besides endurance. I can tell you that right now.

• 1:33:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, um, but you finish that and you think brilliant, you know, I've, I've just passed the hills phase. It's, it's quite a big thing. But for instructors, they call it aptitude. They don't even call you by your, your name. They don't even know who you are at this point. It's like, and you probably lost 50% of the course at this point, either voluntary withdrawal, injury, or actually just not meeting the grades.

• 1:33:42Jocko Willink?

  Injury level's gotta be high.

• 1:33:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:44Jocko Willink?

  Okay. That's a beat down on your joints. I mean, well, it happened to you the first time.

• 1:33:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, and obviously like I, I, I broke my ankle as a young boy. So my, so my nemesis in the military was my, my left ankle. And so it would go over.

• 1:33:57Jocko Willink?

  We can, we can edit that out. We don't want everyone to know his weaknesses.

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  So for me though, I knew that and I would take, you know, I'd take my ankles up and things like that. And I remember on test week, um, I had these, these military boots lowers had great ankle support because, you know, cause lads were, were failing, they were leaving. So in the evening, you'd, you'd put your boots in the drying room. And I remember going in the next day and I'm like, they look a bit small. And one of the guys who'd left had taken my boots. And I was like, oh no. I still had about three more test marches with these, with these almost like jungle boot style boots, you know, running across all these babies heads. So, uh, yeah, but you know, it's also administering yourself and looking after yourself and prevention.

• 1:34:46Jocko Willink?

  You continue on, you get past that, that phase. And like you, you say in here, like, that was just the beginning. Um, and you, you also say this, you had to be totally self motivated. You either had the mental strength or you didn't. Unlike P company or command of course, there were no shouts of encouragement from the staff. Anything the DS did say would be an attempt to undermine your confidence and make you second guess yourself. My preparation for the course helped a lot. I never doubted my decisions. I knew I'd done the work over the years to be spot on with my map and compass. I knew I'd left enough sweat in the gym to have my fitness up to standard. I'm only human and I'd listened to the DS's cutting criticism, but then I could calmly say to myself, it's just part of the mind games, mate. You're doing fine. Times like those, I'd think back to when my dad had told me I wouldn't

• 1:35:31Jocko Willink?

  last two minutes in the army. He'd been wrong. And so with the DS. Yeah, they play, they, they learn what to say to people to get them to quit, you know? They, they say all kinds of things. And what you, what'd you say right there? Uh, it's just part of the mind games. But man, they go hard.

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they do. Yeah. We, we, we go to the jungle. So when, once we finished the hills phase, we. We start doing some infantry skills as well, because basically you're learning all over again. So whether you're a marine or para, the way that they operate in UK SF is totally different. And you're introduced new weapon systems. So the C eight de Marco is only used by UK special forces. You're having to learn a whole new weapon system again. And yeah, but you know, from your friends who've done it before you that they're going to start playing mind games with you. And I remember we go to Brunei, spend six weeks in the jungle and that's a great, great part of selection. You lose a lot of guys there, you know, some guys really thrive in the jungle and some guys it's almost like it's claustrophobic.

• 1:36:33Speaker 02

  You know, you spend a lot of time in there day in day out and you hear the helicopter coming in to pick up the lads. And you see guys, you just see guys randomly packing their bags, you know, Jesus. And I love what you're doing. I said, oh, well, you know, I'm going to fail this instructor said, yeah, I ignore what the instructor said. But I remember when it happened to me, I remember we were marching up to a range. And everything we do on selections, live firing, we don't do blank, everything is for real. You know, because on a day of race, you don't fire blank and it's all about weapon handling that you're safe, but you know, effective. And I remember one instructor's coming straight up to me, fucking in my face, screaming and shouting. And he's like, if I see any weapon handling like that again, because you'll be off, you'll be on the next helicopter. And I just said, yes, stuff.

• 1:37:16Speaker 02

  I didn't get into an argument. I hadn't even been on the range yet. He didn't realize that, you know, I hadn't been on the range. So I knew it was my day that he was testing me. And you could see it as well, you know, throughout the course, you can see, oh, he's getting it today. Because the instructor would be on you. I mean, you get guys that, you know, who don't pass and they said, oh, yes, because I had a personality clash with the instructor. And a lot of them tend to use that. But what they do on selection is as great as actually, especially for the final exercise, the last 10 days, they swap your instructors around. So if there is, you know, human beings, there's always going to be personality clashes. If there is anything like that, it's sort of, you get, you get a fair chance at it. So I enjoyed, I enjoyed the jungle for me.

• 1:37:58Speaker 02

  You know, I was going through a court case at the time, my ex-wife and trying to get custody of my, my, my first daughter. And I remember passing and we have a barbecue.

• 1:38:10Speaker 02

  And they always say, don't go on selection with any welfare issues. You need to go there fully focused, you know, so guys, guys would get letters from their wives, you know, blueys. And she's having a bad day, you know, she's at home with a free. Would you call it a bluey? Bluey, it used to be like blue, uh, blue envelopes, which are free, free post. Got it. Um, and you know, you write in there and it's purely just military. So it's known as a bluey. And you know, if your wife's having a bad day and she's got the kids and she thinks you're on holiday in Brunei, you know what I mean? Um, and she's like, I mean, you know, pleasure your mind and guys pull themselves off and then phone their wives and all that. Oh, I'm actually all right now, you know what I mean? So they do say, just cut off all the white noise.

• 1:38:50Speaker 02

  So when I finished, my, uh, my chief instructor's like, oh yeah, guys come on air with welfare. I said, I'm going through a divorce and custody of my kid. He said, really? I said, it's the only place the solicitors can't get letters to me. Uh, and that's what I mean. So for me at the time, it was a, it was a big escape. Escape.

• 1:39:07Speaker 02

  Just. I got back in a big pile of letters. That are great. But, um, but yeah, you, you come back from that and I, I, I got the, uh, troop sergeant role for the final five days of the, of the final attack. And you saw, that's almost an indicator that you, you're doing well. Hmm. Um, so I sort of knew I'd done well on the course, but when you come out of jungle, you have the barbecue, the instructors get together, they have their little, you know, final decisions, but you don't know for another five days when you get back to UK. They don't, they don't tell you there and then it's like, so you know, one of the instructors came up to me at the barbecue, a friend of a friend, a South African lad, drunk, totally drunk. He's like, yeah, you've done my, I said, but you should come SAS.

• 1:39:49Speaker 02

  So it's almost like you've been given the nod unofficially. And so you're telling lads, have you been given a nod? Yeah, I haven't. So lads are self critiquing over the next five days and, and, and a member, the, the same DS came up to me the next day. He said, Stott, he said, did I give you the nod last night? I said, no, he said, did you pass? I said, I don't know. You said I did. He said, oh, drunk.

• 1:40:13Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, that's like psychological, all kinds of psychological games. Hey, it's been nice knowing you've really made good effort out here.

• 1:40:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, but actually, the, the jungle drums, it's quite a big thing selection, you know, those instructors who go back, they'll sort of tell things. It doesn't take long before it starts. So I got a text of my friend's wife saying, well done, you passed. How does his wife know in Devon that I've passed? But even though you, you, you're feeling confident that you've done it, you still, you still, when you walk in five days later, it's like, you know.

• 1:40:43Jocko Willink?

  Cause occasionally guys are getting the, the down check because whatever.

• 1:40:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it. You know, they, they may have got through the jungle phase, but it may be like, you know, not, not, not this time. But with the jungle, you only get one attempt. So that, that, that's your only attempt. So yeah, that's a, that's quite a big, big color as well. But once you've finished the jungle phase, you know that they want you, you know? So the next three months, you know, unless you're a real, you know, do a Neil Diamond negligent, negligent discharge or something like that, you're, you, you should, you should be safe.

• 1:41:14Jocko Willink?

  And what's the last three months? What are you doing for that section?

• 1:41:16Speaker 02

  So you do continuation trains, you do SEER, survival evasion, resistance extraction, uh, running through greycoats around the Scottish Highlands. Um, you do your, your parachute and your squares, you do communications kit. And then the final phase is counterterrorism. Um, so basically they, they get you into a position that when you join your Sabre Squadron, that you can fit into the team, but you're, you're, that's just your start point within the squadrons. But so it's a six month process. It's, it's actually quite long drawn out. And we, we basically, the SBS and SAS, as you touched on, is, is joint selection. And the accommodations at Hereford with the SAS and you're seeing the guys on the course already been given,

• 1:41:59Speaker 02

  you know, what squadron they're going to, told what deployments they're going, having to go see the quartermaster to get kit. And you guys in the SBS are like, oh my God, you know, not getting anything. Um, so it is quite frustrating that they get their beret and belt. And then we used to just get given a blue tracksuit. You've got then another three months continuation.

• 1:42:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's, it's, it continues on.

• 1:42:19Speaker 02

  It, it does.

• 1:42:19Jocko Willink?

  Is it still selection or is it just continuation?

• 1:42:23Speaker 02

  It's days of old, it used to be selection. Cause if you failed the dive course, they'd accept you in the SAS. You know, the whole thing, you know, what's the difference between the SES and the SBS? I always say surprisingly avid soldier, slightly better soldier, you know, sort of joking. But, um, you know, but, but actually they then introduced that we then got, we then got our own sort of unit recognition. We got our own cap badge recently and, you know, we got our own belt because days of old, you wouldn't know who was SBS because it was a Royal Marine cap badge.

• 1:42:53Jocko Willink?

  That was it.

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. The only indicator was his long curly hair.

• 1:43:06Jocko Willink?

  You go here, an elite club, it may have been, and the journey to get there was incredibly difficult, but all of the other men at the squadron I now joined had done exactly the same. So no one remarked on it. For me, selection had been the most monumental thing in my life, but for these guys, it was a tick in the box to get me to work. You the new guy, are you? All right. Simple as that. I'd be the, the exactly the same way. Once I'd spent some time at pool and the next cadre of new guys came in, but for now I was the new book. And I was about to begin one of the most intense periods of my life. What year is this?

• 1:43:39Speaker 02

  So this is 2006.

• 1:43:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. So it's on. So when, where were you in September 11th happened?

• 1:43:45Speaker 02

  So September 11th, I, we were about to go on a, an exile called Save Syria in Oman. It was a big, a big excise. And I remember obviously seeing the Twin Towers, you know, getting pulled into the cinema, watching it. And then that, um, that afternoon, I got a phone call from the, the dive school saying that, you know, there's an army advanced diving course started yesterday. Yesterday, one of the guys has failed his, his entrance test. So our diving courses are in phases. You have your basic course, which is, um, which is six weeks. You had advanced courses is 10 and you supervise it. So you have to pass each before you, you progress. And so I got a phone call to come down to dive school. So I was heading down the road and then obviously see the Twin Towers. Everyone's going to Oman.

• 1:44:30Speaker 02

  I think, oh my God, I'm going to miss out on this. And, uh, you know, so I missed the initial, the initial phases. And then I was at Limston on the training team when the lads, lads deployed. So yeah, I, I missed out with Free Commander Brigade, my Afghan tour. So I was fuming, fuming. So my, my first deployment in Afghan was the, with the SBS.

• 1:44:49Jocko Willink?

  You say here, "I totally understand that some people will be disappointed that I can't divulge details of special forces operations, but our country has enemies and we can't hand them information that could endanger the lives of my former colleagues who continue to operate around the world, selflessly providing the blanket of freedom beneath which we sleep." I know you'll appreciate that, and in light of what they sacrifice, we can sacrifice some stories. Let me just say that those years gave me some of my best friends and that I love the job. So this is now, you're going on deployments with the SBS and obviously, we're not going to go into any details of them. Were you guys primarily doing like direct action?

• 1:45:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so when we, I was very fortunate, my first, you know, I'd missed that opportunity with Free Commander Brigade. So when I went out with the SBS, my first, our first deployment was the first ever operational jump for the SBS into Helmand. So I was like, wow, it's my first time in Afghan and it's an operational jump at night. So yeah, we were doing, it's called Task Force 42, TF42, which was the door kicking. But also alongside that, the intelligence services were also picking up agents and things like that. So I was having to work between both. Normally, the guys who would go on that were from our reservists and it all failed the course. So when I first got there, it was literally door kicking at

• 1:46:14Speaker 02

  night and then in the day, dressing up as a local. But for me, we then did numerous operational jumps. We were very fortunate on that, so we had the most HVTs in any squadron. And we had more HVTs in first three months than the last three squadrons back to back. Because we were just changing the way that we operated. As you know, out there, you had to change. You know, they all knew your TTPs and you had to change and adapt to that. So for me, I was at the pinnacle, you know, I'd missed out that time with Free Commander Brigade, but I made up for it in abundance.

• 1:46:47Jocko Willink?

  And what's your position? Are you like a breacher? Are you a sniper? What's your role?

• 1:46:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, so actually, one thing I forgot to mention, so unlike, so when I went on selection, I was a sergeant. When you finish selection, your rank goes, you start again

• 1:47:01Jocko Willink?

  As a trooper.

• 1:47:02Speaker 02

  As a trooper. Yeah, well, actually, they said I was going to be a Marine. I was like, whoa. I said, I said, "That's fine, but know that no other army lad, especially airborne, is going to come in to SBS if you call us Marines. You have to call us troopers." So when I went there, I was almost like the guinea pig. You know, what works, what doesn't work and and things like that. So, yeah, but then you do.

• 1:47:21Jocko Willink?

  Were you literally the first army?

• 1:47:25Speaker 02

  There was two, two other guys with, uh, two other guys with me. There was an officer and another engineer lad.

• 1:47:29Jocko Willink?

  In your selection class?

• 1:47:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:31Jocko Willink?

  And so you three were the first army soldiers to go into the.

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  I think there was one before, there was one, one before us, but uh, first time in the, in this squadron. But from the engineers, especially wreckage have been, been the first. And I think now fifteen percent of the SBS is now made up of the army. So it was almost like the floodgates uh, had opened, um, which I think is good because the Marines, as I said, they're so proud of, you know, their background and things like that, but you need diversity. You need diversity in there and that's what the army, the army brought in. Also the fact that at the time, the SAS were running Iraq and the SBS were running Afghan. So again, you know, for guys who want to go on selection, you know, Iraq was starting to wind down. You know, guys were looking uh, towards Afghan. So the SBS was a good option there.

• 1:48:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that, uh, that's my interaction with, well, I had two interactions with the, with the British special forces in my career. One of them was before nine eleven and um, it was, it was, it was very cool and I'll tell you about it later. And then the other one was, um, it was, it was just in, in Iraq. You know, we were hitting target sets and there was like multiple targets that were all somehow connected. And so I just sat down next to the troop commander and we talked through the plan and really good guy and obviously just, you know, when people ask me about the, the Brits and I, I, I've worked with other British units, but

• 1:48:59Jocko Willink?

  all of them, what I say about the Brits, the British are just professionals, like just professionals, the way they behave, the way they operate. It's just always awesome. You know, they're going to be squared away. It's um, that was always my impression of, of the British special forces and of the British military in general.

• 1:49:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:16Jocko Willink?

  Except for one person that I'll tell you, also tell you about later, which was really strange. And he was British Navy. So, uh, which is strange, right? Cause that's the Royal Navy.

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  That's the Royal Navy. Yeah.

• 1:49:24Jocko Willink?

  Right? We should be just totally squared away.

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, that's probably where the drinking, drinking problems are.

• 1:49:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. This guy was, uh, I don't know. Maybe he could have used a beer at this particular individual. Uh, so you, so I cut you off when you were talking about, I'd asked you, were you a sniper?

• 1:49:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So when you, when you joined, um, it depends. So we have four troops, um, so you have air, mountain, boat and mobility. I mean, you go in there and as I said, when you, when you pass selection, you think, ah, I've just done six months. You know, you're at the, the baseline, you're at now another baseline and you have to then get all these other skillsets. So within the teams, it's where there's any gaps. So whether it's language demolitions, you know, I was, I was the forward air controller. So mine was anything to do with air, uh, was me. So I was, I was the FAC within ours. And then.

• 1:50:10Jocko Willink?

  That means you get to go on every mission.

• 1:50:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. But then you obviously stacking up on the doors, you know, you would be point man. You know, there's guys out there who've got books like first man in, I'm the leader. Well, you're not, you know, the first man in is, is the new boy. You know, the, the, the section commander or the commander is like number three or four. So, but then obviously when you bounce onto the next door, it just depended who was there, you know? And that's what we used to do, you know, we didn't really have say, right, we have to go in this order, you know? When we did our training, it was unrelenting, you know, we, we knew it inside out, the drills, it was just second nature, very slick.

• 1:50:43Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, but you were, so you're just, you guys are doing a, a rolling point. Doesn't matter who goes in. But did you, did you guys have breacher? Did you have a special assignment for that? Cause you were an engineer. I figured you were going to say breacher, cause we always kind of associate breacher with engineer. Was that a no?

• 1:50:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it wasn't actually. When I, when I, yeah. So out there, no, no, it wasn't because it, because their demolitions is slightly different from the Royal Engineer demolitions. Like, no, we'll, we'll take down a bridge, not, not put a nice little hole in it. We know, we'd probably drop the whole compound, uh, with things like.

• 1:51:12Jocko Willink?

  They didn't trust you to be a breacher. You'd be using too much explosives.

• 1:51:16Speaker 02

  But what they tend to do, which I thought was great in the special forces, if you already have skillsets, you've already, you've already got that skillset. Let's give you another skillset, you know? So you sort of build on it. So like the Pathfinder lads who, like the airborne recce, when they go SAS, they're already halo trained. So there's no point in them going air troop. They've got that skillset, put them in boat troop, you know? So they try and give you as many skillsets as possible. Yeah.

• 1:51:39Jocko Willink?

  And then how long would you guys go on deployments for?

• 1:51:41Speaker 02

  So ours is six months, six month deployment. We used to do a two year sort of rule month. So six months pre-deployment training, six months training, you then come back and then you're on the green roll. So you're on the pager for any sort of, any other situations around the world. And then six months counterterrorism then. So hostage rescue in, you know, domestic and international.

• 1:52:03Jocko Willink?

  And then um

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  when you, like, like I said, I think that's enough broad, people can kind of figure out what you were doing. Um, but how long, how many years of this cycle were you on?

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  So this cycle, this cycle, every, every two years. So every two years you'd be out for, for, for another six months. Uh, unless you then, you spend four years in your SABR squadron and then you, you have to move on. You then get like an instructional post. So guys tend to do that and then they, they then come back in and slot in as then team leaders. And then go through the whole room on again.

• 1:52:37Jocko Willink?

  So now we're going to jump into one particular pre-deployment training cycle. I'm going to the book. We were in the desert as part of our pre-deployment training. I couldn't wait to get back out on operations, nor could any of the other guys. Being on ops was the reason we'd join the special forces and nowhere were our skills put to the test more than in the daily life or death battles with our enemies. Going on high altitude, high opening training. I loved jumping, jumping. Some guys didn't and just sucked it up, but I always wanted to be the first in the stick so I could stand on the open tail ramp and look down at the earth beneath me. I wanted to soak it all in before I jumped, but on the second jump that day, I was put in the back of the line.

• 1:53:22Jocko Willink?

  I waddled with my kit toward the door as the others left the aircraft. One guy tumbled out after the next. Eventually it was my turn. I jumped. And immediately, I knew that I was in trouble. I felt something on my leg. I looked up and saw that it was wrapped in rigging.

• 1:53:43Jocko Willink?

  I knew that as soon as the static line pulled up the canopy, that rigging would shoot up above my head and the force of it would take my leg with it. I had a second to get my leg clear. Whack! I failed. The static line pulled the chute, the chute pulled the rigging, the rigging pulled my leg. It came up and over my shoulder like I was a yoga guru. Instantly, I felt every muscle, ligament, and tendon rip and snap. I screamed in absolute agony and almost blacked out from the pain. The rigging worked its way clear and now the leg fell back alongside the other, but I knew that I had no control over its movement. I was lucky to still have the leg. The force could have easily ripped it off and if that happened, I'd have bled to death within minutes

• 1:54:28Jocko Willink?

  and some poor local would have had a one-legged corpse landing in his garden. Pain was racing through my body, but I knew that if I didn't get my act together, I could still die. I was so far up that oxygen was thin and I could not afford to pass out. I drifted away from my guys. If I drifted away from my guys, I could end up in the middle of the desert or the sea. It would be browners. I had to stay awake. You'd think that the pain would have made that easy, but it was so intense that my brain was trying to send me into unconsciousness. I wouldn't let it. I just wouldn't. Instead, I fixed my focus on the descending parachutes of the stick and followed them in. It was the longest thirty minutes of my life. Despite the physical agony, I had time, had enough time hanging in the sky to feel emotional pain too.

• 1:55:13Jocko Willink?

  I knew that there would be no deployment for me now. I think I knew deep down that there would be no more time on operations at all. Thirty minutes is a long time to think about that when you're alone, floating through the air. Finally, the ground was getting closer. I saw my mates landing in formation. I wanted to make a good landing out of pride, but more than that, I knew that if I landed badly, I could quite well ruin my good leg too. The ground came up to meet me. I pushed down on my toggles and flared the chute just at the right moment, dragging in enough air under the canvas to take the speed out of my descent. If you do it too early, you just stop in the sky then drop like a sack of shit. But I came in like a feather and landed on one leg.

• 1:55:58Jocko Willink?

  There was only one thing left to do.

• 1:56:01Jocko Willink?

  Medic.

• 1:56:05Jocko Willink?

  What year was that?

• 1:56:06Speaker 02

  So that was two thousand and ten.

• 1:56:10Jocko Willink?

  So. Man.

• 1:56:14Jocko Willink?

  That's it. I mean, your leg, you, did you know instantly you were, you were done?

• 1:56:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, you know, it was actually. The new guys who come into the squadron were getting hey ho trained. So our sergeant major was like, we'd already brought a hey ho train from previous tours. He's like, we'll go do fun jumps. You know, I like jumping, but there's no such thing as a fun jump in the military. And um, and the reason I got moved, I normally I'm at the front. I like to frog, you know, as you exit, turn around and you exit the PGI's, which used to always upset the uh, the RAF. So I then got moved to the back of the stick. And like I said, we'd done numerous of these jumps, just routine, but as I exit, it got caught in the line. So I'm, kick, trying to kick it in time and I, and I couldn't. And then when it got pulled up and over, you know,

• 1:56:58Speaker 02

  you probably hear me from the ground uh screaming. So, but no one else in the team is aware that's anything, anything going on. Um, but because of those thin attitudes, I was drifting in and out, I was vomiting because of the pain and I just needed to get, I just wanted to get to the ground, see and re-establish what's, what's going on. Um, assessed the other parachutists, their approach, you know, took another, a look over the DZ and landed it one legged, but, you know, straight away, I couldn't put any pressure on it, you know, got us, got, uh, we got um medic, medic uh back to the camp. Uh, had a MRI scanner next day and they were like, yeah, you've torn your ACL, your MCL, your lateral miniscus, your hamstring, your calf, your quad.

• 1:57:41Speaker 02

  So all the supporting muscles as well. So normally with an ACL or MCL, you, you can carry on. You see rugby players and just carrying on. But it was all the supporting muscles. But to add to the issue as well, the, it was the Icelandic volcano, which grounded aircraft all over the world. So they couldn't get an air med to me. So basically I was just thrown into a hotel in Muscat. The lads went on to tour from there. I was put in a hotel for four weeks with painkillers, you know, sort of deteriorating. Got back to UK. After an air med, uh, sent home for six weeks. Back to the hospital and they'd lost all my paperwork and it was just a spiral of, of errors within the military medical system.

• 1:58:24Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take for you to get through? I mean, how long did it take to get surgery? And you talk about it in the book, but how long was that?

• 1:58:30Speaker 02

  It was forty four weeks in the end. You know, my, when I injured my leg on the first selection process, it was five days. And then I was running again in six weeks. It took me forty four weeks to get this. So, you know, my whole, my leg had deteriorated completely. And, and for me, I was then transitioning to civilian streets. I wasn't really focused on my, my, my rehab. It was like, what am I gonna do next?

• 1:58:52Jocko Willink?

  Did your, uh, at what point did, did you know? Did somebody say, hey, that's it? You, you can't be here anymore? Did they offer you medical retirement? Like, what did that process look like?

• 1:59:01Speaker 02

  You'd like to think they'd offer you medical retirement, um, but it didn't, you know, I, I had to almost threaten them that I, I needed, with legal, that I needed the operation. And when I left, they, the pay scale they, they put me out on was one below a medical pension. And it said you were fixed within twenty six weeks. I was like, what else? It was forty four weeks. So five years later, I, I had a tribunal hearing against the military. And what the military tend to do is, is basically guys that appeal it, they'll say no. And you can appeal it again, and they'll say no. They'll lose eighty percent of people doing that. So I knew a general who said to me, he said, just keep appealing, said they won't even open your case until it's the third appeal,

• 1:59:47Speaker 02

  which was five years later. So that's what I did. And then I had a tribunal hearing in, in Edinburgh. And I went down and actually you had a QC in front of you and two doctors, uh, from the military. I then brought a military charity in called the Royal British Legion. And they just sort of ask certain questions, which gets your story out. And then you have a representative from the military veterans appealing you. And normally they can be quite aggressive. But this guy was actually quite, quite relaxed. Um, but someone did say to me the week before, he said, look, when you go in this, he, he, he had one and he, he didn't get his medical pension. He said, when you go in there, you can't be Dean Stott, Special Forces, you know, these guys say, can you walk down the street? You say no, you know, it, it was one answer.

• 2:00:29Speaker 02

  So I sort of had that in the back of my mind. And there, I went in and actually they had the timeline that I'd printed out. And, um, you know, I, I then ended up getting a, a full, full medical pension and then backdated. But the fact that I had to go through it with my own, yeah, it, it's crazy. So you'd like to think, you know, especially when you feel like you're the top again, you feel like you're a pop star within, you know, tier one of Special Forces. And then just to sort of, you know, almost put a, A cloud over my my career, not my career, but my last last year in the military.

• 2:00:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a bad, it leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth.

• 2:01:01Speaker 02

  Leave me with a bad taste. I didn't actually realize until I was successful. How, you know, what a weight was on my shoulders, you know, when I felt when I got it, I felt I'd been reciprocated for my time. You know, things and I could almost close that chapter and move on, but that was five years after leaving.

• 2:01:15Jocko Willink?

  How many years then did you, how many years were you in total?

• 2:01:19Speaker 02

  Sixteen.

• 2:01:22Jocko Willink?

  So sixteen years in and so you get, from the day you got injured, how long did it take before you said, all right, I need, I'm gonna get out because I can't do my job anymore?

• 2:01:31Speaker 02

  So it was over nearly a year and I had to extend because I hadn't even been operated on. The military have to return you to civilian industry in similar condition or best condition than what you entered and I was nowhere near that. So, so for me, my mindset, you know, my head's now thinking, well, I'm not, I'm not in the military anymore. I need to look, look beyond that. But you still can't progress because you're waiting on on this operation. So I I got it in the end and then then I finally left in May two thousand and eleven is when I actually got out.

• 2:02:02Jocko Willink?

  And then as you're working through this transition, um, at some point you get a call. It's, can you be in Libya tomorrow?

• 2:02:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah. So to add to the pressure, you know, you know, when, you know, we talk about identity crisis. You spent all this time in the military, working in a tiny knit unit, you know, knowing what you're doing day out, working alongside professionals to like, where do I now fit in society? What is my role? What is my purpose? So I had that going on in my head. I hadn't really had that full transition. So guys, when they're getting out, they have like two year buildup. You know, to do all these workshops and they set up their companies. Mine was almost, you know, crash, bang, you're you're out the door. My wife at this point was eight months pregnant, you know, so I'm like, I can't say any work out there, you know, what am I gonna do? And without sounding like Liam Neeson, people with our our skill sets tends to be the private security industry.

• 2:02:56Speaker 02

  So this was the middle of the Arab Spring and Gaddafi was still in Tripoli at this point. And in Benghazi, a lot of the oil companies, the security companies, the media were forming up. And my friend, who was a director, one of the large security companies said, Dean, can you be in Libya? And I said, yeah, of course I can. So I went, I went straight in and basically it was a, it was a DIFID project, Department for Institute Development, which was the, you know, at the time was the prime minister's little baby. So they would go into the, these sort of countries and you'd have representatives from the, the financial sector, from the, the medical and, you know, the military and it's to basically advise and help these, these countries get back on their feet.

• 2:03:39Speaker 02

  So they're all preparing for, for Gaddafi. So I, he said, can you go in? Can you help set up the DIFID project? I'm going to fly thirty, um, private security operators in from Iraq and Afghanistan. So I went in and straight away, I could see there was no threat. You know, the Libyans were, were very hospitable, but they also were quite adamant that they didn't want this being another Afghanistan and Iraq. You know, once Gaddafi had fallen, they wanted to take control of their country. They didn't want, you know, private security. So we had these MP7s, these, these weapons and these guys came in two days later from this Herc, you know, these Herc from Afghan in Iraq. And where's our weapons?

• 2:04:19Speaker 02

  And I was sort of, sort of changing their mindset that actually there is no threat and, you know, it needs to be all, all low key. Um, I was also trying to find a niche within the industry. And I was looking at all these other security companies. A lot of my friends had their, their security companies were doing, uh, anti-piracy of the east coast of Africa. So I didn't want to tread on their feet.

• 2:04:42Speaker 02

  So some of these big security companies identified with charging, you know, six figure sums for crisis managements and evacuation plans. But when you scrape the surface, there was nothing in place. So having spent two weeks set that up, I, um, I flew back home and Alana gave birth to our daughter Molly. And, um, I said, I think I've got a, a plan. So I, I, I went back into Libya and, and there was a huge proliferation of weapons at the time. It was actually ammunition that was difficult to get hold of. So I bought thirty weapons on the black market and I buried them between Tunis and Egypt. And I just spent a month in the desert. Just cation these pellet cases with comms kits and money and just wrote my own evacuation

• 2:05:24Speaker 02

  plans, hoping never to really, really need them. And, and that's what I did. We lived in Aberdeen, which was the oil and gas capital of Europe. So I had a good links to the oil and gas sector. And that's what I did. I did. That was my niche. I'd, I'd found a niche within, within the industry. Um, so yeah.

• 2:05:41Jocko Willink?

  Now, did you set that up where you were talking to the oil companies? And I've been to Aberdeen, thankfully. Uh, very cool. So have you ever surfed there?

• 2:05:48Speaker 02

  I, I haven't, no, but I know, uh, Thirso, Thirmanoff is one of the great spots.

• 2:05:52Jocko Willink?

  I was there in like the winter and you could have surfed it. Like it wouldn't have been fun, but you could have surfed. I was looking at the waves. I went for a little run down there and I, I was looking at the waves and I was like, well, you could do it. You could do it.

• 2:06:05Speaker 01

  What would make it not fun?

• 2:06:07Jocko Willink?

  It was freezing, choppy. It was like barely, you could probably surf for about, you know, two seconds or three seconds per wave. You'd have the waves to yourself though. There was no water. There was no even on the beach. Um, so did you, did you set that, the, those, all, all that gear up and then go and pitch to clients like, hey, I've got these plans set up. Here's what I can do for you. And then are they giving you some kind of revenue upfront?

• 2:06:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's, so basically I, I identified that I'd, I'd wrote him up first, you know, cause it's almost like, right. I, I have this plan in, in place, you know, I had, uh, the cations. So my sort of mindset with it was I, I knew that the Libyans didn't want security companies with weapons. So before long we, we couldn't do that. So my sort of mindset was if there was a situation, we could drive across the border unarmed, you know, go to the cage points, pick them up if we need the, if we needed weapons, you know, and then, and then get, you know, the client out and then, and then bury them. That, that was it. So it was almost like a retainer and knowing that, that that service was there. Um, and then we, we, I used to have like, like triggers, you know, you know, if there's a certain situation, we go up to yellow, we go up to amber. So really you should

• 2:07:19Speaker 02

  never, if, if you're adhering to that trigger system that you have in place, you shouldn't really need to go full on evacuation. The only thing that sort of.

• 2:07:29Speaker 02

  Is is natural disasters. That's where you can go from green to red overnight. There's is a natural disaster. So really, if you if you have that in place. But that's something I just picked up from the military was was these case systems and these cases that actually with the IRA and the Taliban use these case systems. That's where it originates. But for me, it just wasn't. I was walking around with weapons, but I knew that I had safe houses and I knew that a weapon is available if needed.

• 2:07:54Jocko Willink?

  And you built relationships and you talk about that a lot in here.

• 2:07:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I know. I sort of, you know, I when I got out as well, I didn't want to be going out to Afghanistan and Iraq, you know, I've done my time in in the desert, you know, I sort of the security cut, security industry isn't risk reward ratio balanced at all. You know, you could be in Yemen, Libya or Somalia on 50% of what you're on taking the UAE royal family super yacht from Barcelona to Maldives. So I was like, well, where's the money? And it's in the corporate close protection. So I didn't have cargo pants and tight tops, you know, it was like, it was a nice dinner jacket shirt and brogues. And and that was that was my approach. But everyone has this perception of special forces, you know, is about offensive action. It's, you know, breaching walls, it's kicking in

• 2:08:41Speaker 02

  doors and things like that. That's 25% of what we do. 50% of what we do is is support and influence. It's hearts and minds being embedded with the locals, understanding actually what is the situation on the ground, not what I'm seeing on TV, but what is actually physically going on in the ground. So for me, I really built up good relationships with local fixers. There's 167 tribes in Libya. So my fixer in Tripoli isn't my same fixer in Benghazi. So I quickly understood that, especially during that that Arab Spring. And I just returned from the London Olympics. I was providing security for visa. And I was in Benghazi, the evening that your American ambassador got killed, September

• 2:09:24Speaker 02

  eleventh, two thousand and twelve. And I I got a phone call, could I escort, help a German oil company, eight German engineers, get them out of Benghazi. So while it was all, I think they made a film thirteen hours, while it was all kicking off in the city, I got these guys safely from Benghazi to Tripoli through safe houses that I I had in the desert. And again, I remember we had drivers from Benghazi, and we got to the safe house. And we could, you know, we could drive to Tripoli in a day. But I said, no, we'll wait here for forty eight hours, which was worrying the engineers a bit. And the Benghazi guys had like, big, big beards. And they're like, oh, no, Mr. Dean, we can go. I said, no, no, we wait forty eight hours. But they were nervous. I knew they

• 2:10:06Speaker 02

  were nervous going into Tripoli, because they're from the wrong region. But what they weren't aware of is I was getting drivers coming in from Tripoli to meet us, and they would carry on. It's that sort of knowledge, knowing who to use and when to use. And I remember the morning we were leaving, and these poor guys in Benghazi, because I couldn't tell them, they'd shaved all their beards. And I went outside, and the Tripoli drivers had turned up. It was like a, almost like a scene from the OK Corral. They all started going for their weapons. I said, look, I said, I cannot take you to Tripoli. You will compromise us. These guys can do it. And I said, look, you will still get paid. And it's just all about respect, you know, I, I always say about communication, but

• 2:10:48Speaker 02

  for that operation, I couldn't, I couldn't divulge too much to them. So I got them safely out. And then two years later, I was in Brazil for visa again, covering the World Cup. And I then get a phone call from the Canadian Embassy. So what had happened now is the Tripoli war. It's a civil war between the militias and the government. And Embassies, the only reason embassies are in countries is all about trade and investment. You know, what can we get for for our country, you know, when it when things start opening up. So October thirteen, the they'd done an assessment, the Canadians, and basically it was costing them twenty million dollars a year to have the embassy open.

• 2:11:30Speaker 02

  And their sort of assessment was there's going to be no trade investment for about at least fifteen years. So when we see a window of opportunity, let's collapse the embassy and leave. But they couldn't just collapse them because the locals would be questioning them. So fast forward now to summer fourteen, the Tripoli War, the Americans, the Brits, Italians, they just shut shop and went. The Canadians aren't going back, so they had to shred everything and stay there. Their protection team was Canadian military and they would fly in every four months, rotate, you know, fly into Tripoli International Airport. But during their period of four months, they never left the walls of Tripoli. They just went from their accommodation to the office. They didn't get out the city. So they didn't know what was beyond the city walls.

• 2:12:14Speaker 02

  And it's actually only a hundred kilometers coastal road from Tripoli to Tunis. So I flew in and we'd already evacuated a couple of people from USAID. And I did, I don't go with the big overt vehicles, I like local taxis, just keep it all low profile. And the week before, the British got engaged at every checkpoint on the way to Tunis, which was obviously worrying the Canadians. So me and my fixer, we went out and we just, rather than speaking to the guys who got the weapons, you know, identified who the tribal elders was, sat down with them, you know, shared bread, shared coffee. And it was actually all about communication, showing them respect.

• 2:12:56Speaker 02

  And yeah, the following, following day, they then escorted us safely. So I've got eighteen military and four diplomats, single-handedly from Tripoli to Tunis.

• 2:13:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just to put that in perspective a little bit, when I was a young SEAL before, before, you know, September eleventh.

• 2:13:18Jocko Willink?

  One of the main missions, I did two deployments with the Marine Corps on ships. And one of the main missions that we would train for is called a NEO, noncombatant evacuation operation, which is literally to go into whatever, you know, an American embassy presumably, and go in in some hostile or semi-hostile country and evacuate those people. But they would have an entire amphibious ready group with, you know, several battalions of Marines, the air support, the SEALs, all to go and get whatever that group is out of the country. So when I was reading that portion of the book where you made this happen, that's a that's a huge deal to do this, essentially a mission that normally, that that could

• 2:14:00Jocko Willink?

  utilize an entire amphibious ready group with airframes and ships and the whole nine yards to make this happen. And you were able to do it in a different, from a different angle by utilizing the locals, by having, building relationships with the locals, going and doing it low profile. That's just a, it's a real credit to the way you were thinking about that operation.

• 2:14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have to think out of the box, you know, the fish wagons, there's fish wagons that take fish from Tripoli to Tunis every day. So we used the fish wagons to put the equipment in because they would just go straight through border control. They were a bit slower getting to Tunis and I could see the Canadians getting a, getting a bit, a bit worried. But yeah, it was just thinking, thinking out of the box. We did have UAV coverage, there was UAV coverage to, to the border and then when we were at the border, the Canadians had met. But I did that job for free. And the reason I did that was the year before, I just finished a, probably going to touch in it.

• 2:14:59Jocko Willink?

  Well, I mean, go ahead. It's, it's, it's an interesting perspective. You, you, you, you got yourself into a situation that maybe didn't give the best image of what you were trying to do.

• 2:15:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. So my role within the security industry, I was very ad hoc. You know, when I got out, a lot of my friends went over to work in the UAE and train their military, which is great, good money and things like that. But I wanted to learn more, you know, outside that military environment as well. I actually did more sensitive jobs as a private secure operative than I did when I was in the special forces. And, you know, I worked all over Africa, Yemen, you know, every time I got a phone call, it was a different country, it was a different job. And.

• 2:15:38Speaker 02

  I'd just come out of Yemen and I was in Dubai and I got a phone call from my friend. We just set up a new company in London and he said, can you be, can you be in Libya tomorrow? I said, well, I can't, my visa's expired. So don't worry about that.

• 2:15:51Jocko Willink?

  This is a different call. By the way, I did that quote earlier.

• 2:15:53Speaker 02

  Did you?

• 2:15:53Jocko Willink?

  Can you be, can you be in Libya, Libya tomorrow? This is another time that that happened.

• 2:15:57Speaker 02

  This is another time.

• 2:15:58Jocko Willink?

  This was what, this is what you were doing. Once you got out of the military, you're running these security events.

• 2:16:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:03Jocko Willink?

  You're providing security, you're doing assessments, you're doing evacuations. And so this is another time when you got the call, hey, can you be in Libya tomorrow?

• 2:16:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Can you be in Libya tomorrow? And I was out. Well, no, because my visa's expired. And he said, you don't need a visa. I was like, fine. So we flew via Manchester, flew straight in. And I, I got to the, um, I got to the airport terminal and this young guy comes up to me and says, you Mr. Dean? I said, yeah, Mr. Dean. So follow me. So everyone's in the queue for passports and, and we went in another queue. And, um, we went to, took me into the city. We went to the Tabesti Hotel, uh, which is, uh, part of the Crimpy Hotel Group. But I knew that was owned by the Maltese and also by the government. And one of the guys that he said, right, met my, my, one of my partners there, my business partners. And he said, right, you're just about to go meet the Prime Minister of Libya.

• 2:16:51Speaker 02

  He speaks no English, speaks German. So the health minister is going to translate. I was like, okay, fine. So a bit, a bit bored on the backstory, about 48 hours before, the militias had seized all the oil terminals to stop exporting of oil in Libya. And so we went upstairs and he sits down and he explains his situation to me. And, um, he says, well, now what do we do? And I said, well, I said, what do you want? He said, I want, I want terminals back, the terminals back. I said, look, well, we can, we can pull a team together, you know, do four, four simultaneous assaults. You know, don't want to do back to back because you're, you're warm like that. Four simultaneous assaults, either from sea or from land, but leave the flank open for them to escape.

• 2:17:34Speaker 02

  Said, no, I don't want him escape. I sort of looked over to my friend. Um, and he said, this has been sanctioned. I was like, really? So I said, okay.

• 2:17:43Jocko Willink?

  So let me just translate this for people that might not be tracking. So there's oil rigs that have been seized. The prime minister of Libya is sitting there telling you, I want these things back from these insurgents, or whatever you want to call them. I want these oil rigs back from these insurgents. I want you to do a simultaneous, where you said, hey, I can do a simultaneous assault.

• 2:18:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:07Jocko Willink?

  So you're going to need a lot of people to do this. And then you say, listen, you know, it's a smart thing. You're thinking, hey, I'll give them a way to get out so that way they're not going to stand and fight hopefully. And, you know, we'll, we'll mitigate damage. And he says, no, we don't want anyone to escape. We want you to go and kill all these people that are on these oil rigs. And that's, so that's the, the, the mission tasking that you're getting.

• 2:18:29Speaker 02

  Okay. So that's, that's the mission tasking and, and for the listeners. So basically in Libya, Benghazi over in the east is where all the oil is. And the, the politicians are all in the west. And again, different tribes, they do not get on well. So, and then in the middle, you've got Mizrahi as well. And there's, so there's, it's a big mess. So I, I walked out of this meeting and I'm like, right, I'm going to need at least 150 guys. You know, 50 tier one and 70 tier two. And this was being funded. He said, yeah, make it happen. So, you know, straight away, so I'm like, I'm, I'm having to make phone calls and.

• 2:19:03Jocko Willink?

  I would love to see the invoice on this that you're going to send.

• 2:19:06Speaker 02

  But the, and, and it was, no, the money we were getting for this job was four times your normal daily wage. You know, and so I, I was, I had guys on standby in UK on like twice as much they're doing in, in Iraq and, and Afghan, just staying at home. It, it was huge. It started to grow in, in, into a beast. And every evening I would go up and speak to the prime minister, update where we are in this situation. And you know, this went on for like two or three weeks. The problem I had was some guys were starting to come in and I was trying to hide them, you know, to keep them out of view because there was other private security companies there who I knew. I had a great reputation in Libya and they're like, oh, what you're doing, Dean? I'm like, I'm reviewing

• 2:19:47Speaker 02

  my evacuation plans. It was like, you know, the guys do look very special forces. So this went on for about three weeks and putting all the planning into place, doing all our recce, using his private jet, you know, to fly over the areas, identifying, you know, if there's any aircraft we can utilize. You know, we're at the top of the the equipment list. We had kit coming in from like Platac, you know, all over the world. So yeah, it was a big invoice. And this evening I went up to the prime minister and he said, look, he said, I need to go to to New York tomorrow. It's the UN conference. But each evening he said, please come up, brief up the health minister. I said, it's fine. So the following evening I went upstairs and the health minister and So now the prime minister went to New York.

• 2:20:32Speaker 02

  He's in New York now. And now you're just alone with the The health minister. The health minister. Who actually turns out to be not the health minister, but a hospital manager from London. It's the only guy he could trust. So it's very closed doors. But in the in the corner over my left was a larger gentleman with a big bushy tash and he's just saying nothing. So me and the health minister chatting away. Next thing, he just starts screaming Libyan. They start arguing in Libyan. So I just pulled my, pulled my chair back and let it quiet down. I mean, he just then started talking in the perfect English. He said, who are you? And I told him who I was. And he said, what are you doing here? And I explained. And he was the head of their SIS, the intelligence service. And he said, no one knows this is

• 2:21:17Speaker 02

  happening in government. You know, he's going, the prime minister's gone on his own back. I was like, okay. And he said, where are we with it? I said, well, this is the stage we're at, you know, one or two more weeks and we're ready to go. And he said, So I'm not saying stop it, but can we slow it down? And I'm thinking, yeah, the daily wage we are on can slow it down as much as you want. I said, yeah, of course. So yeah, I said, well, look, I'll tell you what we'll do is why not? We design a special forces training program for the Libyans in the West and then and the Libyans in the East because they will never train together. That way it would be covered the reason why there's equipment coming in, it would justify where this guy is coming in. So we went to an agreement on that. Keep us all on payroll.

• 2:21:57Speaker 02

  Drag this right out. So, um, so that's, that's what we did. Anyway, the, you know, the government paying, it was a third party. I can't mention who was paying for this and about we layer, they said, look, you know, we are siphoning money.

• 2:22:11Speaker 02

  Let's call it a day because we can pick this up anytime. We can come back and pick it up. I said, yeah, perfect. Let's do that. So I sent, I started sending the guys back and one of my best friends, he stayed out with me. I said, look, we'll go back tomorrow. That evening, we're in the, um, there's a restaurant at the top of the hotel, a nice Moroccan open air restaurant. And we could hear a distinct sound of an AC one thirty. You, you know what Hercules aircraft sound like is like distinct and we're like, that's a Herc. But there was four AC one thirties at Milita Military Airport around the corner. But they were grounded. They didn't work because we'd already done the recce on them. See if we could utilize them.

• 2:22:50Speaker 02

  Thought nothing of it. Anyway, the next morning, all over the world news, Delta Force had come in and picked up an AQ guy responsible for the Kenyan Tanzania bombings. So obviously the prime minister, when he'd gone into UN had done an agreement with the Americans and given it the green light, which is fine. But of course everyone thought that was me, you know, me and my mate trying to get out of the airport that day was, was difficult. And, and obviously explaining to the other security companies, I said, that, that wasn't me. We got out, um, the prime minister got back about three days later, he got arrested by the militias. He, he got released in the end. Again, people thought I was responsible for that. I wasn't. So I kept a low profile for about a couple of weeks and I flew back, back

• 2:23:33Speaker 02

  in. And I was winning contracts. I was getting some good contracts, but I wasn't getting your, your oil and gas, your NGOs. I wasn't getting the big ones. And I met a friend who's an ex SAS guy, uh, who's a security advisor for PMC. Um, oh, sorry, PWC. And he says, um, he says, start, everyone thinks you're, you're a mercenary. You, you, I said, we're not mercenary. I said, we're sanctioned by the various governments. It was actually a show of force, how quickly we could pull a private team together. He said, yeah, we know that. And he said, but for the general, you know, all good corporations who do their diligence, they, they don't see it like that. So then when it came to the, the Canadian Embassy one, everyone had gone. No security companies were going to come back in and

• 2:24:17Speaker 02

  help the Canadians. So when I came in, they said, well, what's the cost? And I said, I think it was about $7,000. And that was to cover the fish wagons, my fixer. And, and I, I, I charged nothing. And then everyone's like, you could have made. But for me, it was actually then brushed off that reputation of being a mercenary and then put my name on the top of the pile as being the number one.

• 2:24:38Jocko Willink?

  You did that up for $7,000?

• 2:24:40Speaker 02

  $7,000. We've got 24, uh, sorry, 22 people, a whole embassy, safely.

• 2:24:46Jocko Willink?

  That's ridiculous.

• 2:24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. My wife's like, you should have charged.

• 2:24:51Jocko Willink?

  You could have kept your reputation or earned back your reputation and at least made a little money on the side.

• 2:24:58Speaker 02

  But for me, it's all about, you know, it wasn't the money. I liked, liked to help people. And, and that's what I wanted to get across is that fact. And yeah, it did.

• 2:25:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:06Speaker 02

  You then became number one in the industry.

• 2:25:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's a, it's a strategic move, obviously, to, to do that and take care of those people and, and give them a good deal and, and clean your reputation up after it'd been a little bit, you know, tarnished by this involvement. And, and you know, you, you go into some details in the book on that about just, just the fact that. You know, you can be sitting there talking to the actual prime minister of the country at the time and it's not what it looks like.

• 2:25:34Speaker 02

  No, no, exactly.

• 2:25:36Jocko Willink?

  Um, I want to back up a little bit. There's a one part in the book. You're talking about your new normal and this is what you're doing. Um, your dad had been diagnosed with cancer. You drove to the hospital. When you got to the hospital, your sisters are there, your stepmom's there. They'd been there kind of, kind of just toiling with the whole situation. You show up and put them on rotation like, hey, I'm going home. I'll be back in the morning. Um, you know, you need to get some sleep because they were at, they were at the edge. And then you come back, um, and you go into this, the next eight hours was probably the longest continuous amount of time that we'd ever spent together. This is with your dad in the hospital. He's in rough shape. We had a bit of a chat, but it was superficial.

• 2:26:20Jocko Willink?

  He was on painkillers, but that had never been our style anyways. I knew I loved him. He knew I loved him and I knew he loved me. Anything else I can do for you? I asked him. He told me he had a pain in his leg. I saw he had a problem with one of his pain relief devices. I took a couple of seconds to fix it and instantly he looked serene and nodded off to sleep. When the girls returned that evening, he was still peaceful. I've never seen him look so calm, my stepmom said. Well, that's because he hasn't got three women fussing over him, isn't it? I joked. Every squatty knows that dark humor is how you cope with death. I stood up and gave my dad a pat on the shoulder. When will you be back? When will you be back? One of my sisters asked me. I shook my head. I won't. I'm going

• 2:27:03Jocko Willink?

  back to Aberdeen. They couldn't believe it. I've said my goodbyes, I told them, and my family are up in Aberdeen. That's where I need to be. I knew it would be the last time that I saw him and I was at peace with that. Back in Aberdeen that night, I got news that I had been expecting. How's your dad doing? Alana asked me the next day at breakfast. He died last night, I replied, and went back to eating my cereal. I was that blasé about the whole thing. I didn't realize it then, but death had been normalized for me. So too had my ways of coping with it, a complete numbing of my emotions. My father had passed away and I'd given my wife the news in the same way that I'd tell her that the kettle had just boiled. Over the next week or so, I took control of the practical side of my dad's death.

• 2:27:48Jocko Willink?

  I helped arrange the funeral and made contact with the Royal Engineers Association so that they could be present. I wore my lavats, one of the ceremonial uniforms of the Royal Marines and the SBS. I wore my green beret, my medals, and my father's. It was the last time that I wore the uniform, and I suppose that it was a fitting tribute in itself. My dad had been a huge part of me beginning in my military journey, and now he was part of its end. How are you feeling? Alana asked me after the funeral. I need to leave the house at zero six hundred hours tomorrow to get to the airport, I told her in reply.

• 2:28:28Jocko Willink?

  In a moment when most people are racked by emotion, I was planning my travel for the job in South Africa. I was relentless, but in pursuit of what? And why?

• 2:28:44Jocko Willink?

  Now, obviously, you know, it's a something that,

• 2:28:50Jocko Willink?

  you know, we have to deal with death on a big way and especially when with people that, you know, I don't know how old your dad was when he died, but

• 2:29:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, sixty-seven, I think, yeah.

• 2:29:02Jocko Willink?

  Had a grown son and kids and had lived his life and, you know, I know for me, you know, for us, it's hard because we see our friends that die that are twenty-seven, thirty-two, you know, they haven't had that opportunity. And I think that's something that makes a little sense in my head of when someone older dies, of course, it's sad, but you know that they had a good life and they had that opportunity. And then, like you said, you know, We we unfortunately have to see a lot of people dying. You have to figure out how to get through that. And sometimes maybe it's not the well, sometimes I guess we take the emotional side of it and and have to stifle it down.

• 2:29:47Jocko Willink?

  Maybe not the best thing to do, but it's kind of what we do.

• 2:29:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's how we deal with things like with my with my father, you know, when I joined the army, that was it. That was my new family. One of my sisters stayed with my dad and my other sister went up to her mum. So they they had their own lives. So when I joined the army, that was it. That was my family, you know, I would only get in touch. My dad was old school, you know, I mean, he I remember getting a phone call. He's like, you've got to ring your dad. I'm like, really? You know, and it was because one of cousin had come over from Australia. He would only ring if it was really, really important. So I would do my normal birthdays and Christmas and that was enough. No news was good news in my family. My my dad sort of knew the score. He would know about me coming back from a tour. I wouldn't tell him when I was going.

• 2:30:30Speaker 02

  So we we had that that relationship. So, you know, we weren't close, close. Um, but I think it was just after Christmas. We knew he'd been diagnosed and it was terminal and things like that. And my sister said, you need to come down. You need to come down. And I know that she was being a bit overreactive. And then her husband rang me and said, you now need to come down. So I was like, yeah, I'll come down. And I went in there and literally they're all watching his every breath, you know, their eyes were like piss holes in the snow. They had no sleep for like 24 hours. So I'd just flown in. I hadn't seen him for months. I said, right, I'm just off to my friend's house. And that what I said, because you know, you you guys tomorrow will be useless, you know, I mean, I just the military just kicked in, right?

• 2:31:11Speaker 02

  We need to do centuries. We need to do routines. And I remember my mum calling me from Manchester, Dean, you need to calm down. It's like, you know, they're they're upset. You you deal with death differently than they do. But like I said, the eight hours I had with my dad, you know, that was the longest I had. And, you know, for me, I'd said my goodbyes. And, you know, I just I just went a bit. That was twenty fourteen. It was the same year that I evacuated the Canadian Embassy. When I came back from that trip, I did the same thing again. I sat down and my normal SOP would be to, you know, deservice and reservice my kit, ready for the next phone call.

• 2:31:51Speaker 02

  And one of my shirts was covered in blood. I'd administered first aid at a traffic accident at the border. So I said to my wife, I said, can we get the the blood out? And she goes, yeah. I wanna know why there's blood in there. And I sort of said, well, I've just evacuated Canadian Embassy. And she's like, it's another throwaway comment. Like, you told me your dad's just died. So actually, we sat down that evening, down two bottles of port. And yeah, tears started flowing. And really, what it was, is actually, I hadn't come to terms with the fact that I'd left the Special Forces. I was still trying to match that adrenaline rush that I had when I was still in. So everything, even approaching the fact that my father had died, that hadn't sunk in.

• 2:32:35Speaker 02

  So as you mentioned earlier, it takes a whole brigade to evacuate someone, you know. I didn't have that top cover. I didn't have the helo support, the guys coming in. So that's when the the pin dropped for me, that something needs to change. And it was actually all about communication. And I'd built it up inside me. And it was that evening that it really kicked in that your dad's not here and you don't have to prove a point anymore. So yeah, it was a big, I think it's called, the chapter's called Dead or Divorced as well. So, you know, I'd reached that T junction. I was either gonna die or not have a family if I didn't change the way my lifestyle.

• 2:33:11Jocko Willink?

  You, um, one of the things that you breezed over is when you when you did the World Cup in Brazil and, um, I'll just jump into it. It was at the Brazil versus Cameroon game that I got a chance to catch up with a friend of mine. He was there representing the Football Association because his brother couldn't make it. Happy that my clients were secure with the other lads, I left my place and went to the presidential box to meet my mate from the army. All right, Stadi, he said. How are you mate? I asked him. We'd met back in 2007 at a joint tactical air controller. Sorry, joint terminal attack controller, JTAC course, held at RAF Lehman. There were 18 students and when we'd been told to behave towards a certain individual

• 2:33:56Jocko Willink?

  as we would to anybody else in the forces, no special treatment. It was on the second day that we hit it off when we were being given our call signs. From the back of the room, I'd made a joke at his expense and there was a sharp inhalation of breath as everybody waited to see how it would look or see how he would, see how he took it. He laughed and that was how I came to be paired up for the rest of the course with Prince Harry, who is one of the most decent blokes you could meet. He's a military man through and through and I think part of the reason he loved the army so much was that he could just be himself. He was comfortable in this environment and he could handle his rank and job as well as any other soldier I'd met. It was great to see him in Brazil, not because he was a prince, but because he was a comrade

• 2:34:41Jocko Willink?

  from my days in kit, just like one of the boys. How long was that course?

• 2:34:47Speaker 02

  So that's a six week course, at least we're going back now to 2007 and you know, RAF Lehman, it's got all your fighter pilots, you know, your tornadoes and your Euro fighters, you know, with their, with their brown shoes probably. And the, and literally the RAF, the, the JTAC course is a wooden hut at the end of the runway, you know, no one even knows we're there. So I remember walking in the room and, and clocking him, he's probably about 23. So basically this is when he, he wanted to go on his first tour to Afghanistan, but he couldn't just go on tour, you know, he had to have a role within the unit and his commanding officer was an SAS guy and said, well, look, go on your JTAC course, you could be the regimental forward air controller. So that's what he did.

• 2:35:31Speaker 02

  He came on the course and like I said, could he was there, you know, every man and his dog turned up for some face time with him and you know, it was cringing, but the back four, the, the lads at the back, four in the back were two SAS and two SBS guys. And he was literally sat in front of me and you know, everyone did their, their opening address. Harry then left the room and then the commandant was like, right, gets no preferential treatment, you know, treat him like one in their own, you know, blah, blah, blah. I said, fine. Harry then comes back in and the first lecture is call signs. So on the course, you call jackpot one to jackpot one eight. So at least the pilot knows who the student is. And then, you know, for example, the prefix for special boat service is mayhem. So mayhem

• 2:36:12Speaker 02

  four three and you know, widow maker for the SES. So Harry puts his hand up and he says, um, you know, if successful on this course, do I get a call sign? And I just blurted out, yeah, you're fox piss one, like that. And of course, everyone was just like, ah, you know, you can't say that. And I'm just like, well, you've just told me to treat him like the one. So he turns over, you know, looks at the bar, he smiles at me. I thought, oh God, you know, I'm going to get beheaded by the queen. And that afternoon, the sergeant major comes back in and he's like, right, I've randomly picked these jackpot numbers. You'll be working with me. And he, he pulled the, an SES guy, an SBS guy, Prince Harry and an RAF officer. And then the other fourteen, which didn't make sense. I was like, well,

• 2:36:54Speaker 02

  you've randomly picked those. But you could see on the course, that was when I got my sort of first exposure. So me and him got partnered off because they knew he wasn't going to get any preferential treatment. And I think.

• 2:37:04Jocko Willink?

  You made that quite clear.

• 2:37:05Speaker 02

  I made that quite clear. But also the fact that he, he's probably is most comfortable there because he wasn't being critiqued by the media and everyone else. He could be Harry, he could be, you know, Lieutenant Wales and things like that. And he was actually a, a, a good operator. You know, he's clear and precise over there. He didn't get flustered. Um, so no, he, he's well worthy of, of that role. And, and we maintained that relationship. After that, we, you know, we, we did a lot together. We do a lot in, in charity. And I, I remember. Going to, we had a, it's a big rugby game called the Army Navy each year at Twickenham. It's like, it's the biggest rugby event. A hundred and fifty thousand people turn up. Yeah, yeah. They drink more alcohol on that one weekend than every international rugby game.

• 2:37:48Speaker 02

  So he was, my wife, Alana, she didn't really know I knew him and I'd not long been injured. So my leg's in a brace and we're at Twickenham and I, he texts me, he said, let's catch up in a car park. So we're caught up in a car park and this was, this was now where he was training to be a pilot. And, you know, we started chatting and he said, look, I've passed my course. I need to make a decision, you know, whether I fly Apache or Lynx. And Lynx is like glorified taxi driver for getting generals around. And when we're chatting to the Apache call signs in Afghanistan, their prefix is ugly. Not ugly one, ugly two. So I said, look, I always tell the lads to go ugly early. And so he, he then messaged me a few days later and said, yeah, I'm going ugly.

• 2:38:33Speaker 02

  So he then goes Apache. Fast forward and we're at a big special forces charity event and he's, he's a guest on my table. And they auctioned off a special boat service, like statue, silver plated. We have like forty thousand pounds and Harry's, ah, that's beautiful. And I was like, not for forty grand. I knew, I knew the bronze one was only seventy five pounds, you know what I mean? So I, I did, I, I bought one and I, I got it, I got, I got it laminated and I, and I said, you know, Harry, I said, congratulations on being ugly. Mayhem four three. Got it delivered to the palace. But, but yeah, he, you know, he did ten years and he then did another tour, you know.

• 2:39:14Speaker 02

  That was where he was, he was most comfortable and that's when we started, you know, building our relationship, you know.

• 2:39:21Speaker 02

  The re, you know, he's, he's got me so tight, who, people he can trust. And, and to be part of that thirteen years later is a big thing. I think he knows obviously the integrity of the special forces, you know. You know, people, I get messages all the time. Can you speak to Harry? And I, yeah, okay, whatever. Delete.

• 2:39:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's I just I wonder cause he's gonna end up playing a role a little later. He is, yeah. Um, but going back to the dead or divorced section of this book. So you pretty much, you get the message, like I'm either gonna get divorced or I'm gonna be dead. I don't like either one of those outcomes. So you, you, you kind of stand down from the security stuff. And you gotta get a job, like a regular job. So we'll go to the book here. I needed a job and Alana suggested that I come work with her in, in the property development sector. It would be a chance for me to learn about something outside kicking in doors and sneaking people out of countries. And because I wanted what was best for my family, I gave it a go.

• 2:40:21Jocko Willink?

  I was about an hour into it before I started to fantasize about launching myself out of the nearest window. Everything that I'd done in my life, I had done with the ethos of unrelenting pursuit, pursuit of excellence. The unrelenting pursuit of excellence. And I tried to bring that attitude into the office, but something was missing. And you, uh, you spend some time doing that and, and then she can tell that you're miserable. Yeah. And you're trying to suck it up like a good, uh, like a good man. And finally she says, you know, you look miserable and you're like, yeah, I am. And she says, why don't you, why don't you start biking to the office? Start cycling to the office. And it's 10 miles each way. You start doing that.

• 2:41:03Jocko Willink?

  You're starting to, that's cool. Hey, you're starting to get, you're starting to get after it, you know, on the bike and trying to beat your times and all that. And she says, you know, basically you're still not happy, are you? And you admit to her like, no, I don't like sitting in a cubicle or whatever it is you're doing. And finally, one day she, she rolls in on you and you know, she's holding something. What's that? I asked her. She had a book in her hands. A big one. Alana threw it at me. Read it and pick something, she said. I looked down at what had landed in my lap. She knew me. I smiled, opened the cover and began reading Guinness Book of World's Record. Records. So that's what she did. She threw this book at you and said, figure out what, figure out something to do.

• 2:41:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, so a bit about Alana, actually, you know, when, when I transitioned, you hear horror stories when people are transitioning from the military. Some can be quite turbulent and some quite smooth. So when I met Alana, actually, she was a bank manager for all the, three of the biggest banks in Aberdeen. So when I'm worried about, you know, certain paperwork, she set up my first security company on her phone, watching TV. And I'm like, for me, it's like, whether I've ticked the right box. So she, she knew about the corporate side, which helped my transition and, and is a massive part in, in, in moving forward. So when I came back from the Canadian MC, the dead of divorce thing, it was actually, she thought I wanted to go away and I thought that she needed me to go away to make money. So it was actually a lack of communication. You know, we sat down, we sort of communicated and she said, well, look, we don't need money.

• 2:42:28Speaker 02

  I've got my own property business, you know, come, come work with me. So I said, fine. So this is about five years now from leaving the military to this stage in my life. My leg, my injured leg is now two kilos lighter than my good leg because of the muscle wasted. So when I was away on these security jobs, if there was a gym there, I, I took my TRX everywhere, you know, it was a very upper body focused and just neglected my CV. So I just bought a push bike.

• 2:42:54Jocko Willink?

  Sorry, I gotta look at that guy about that. He's skipping leg days, bro. He's going, he's just worried about those gums.

• 2:43:02Speaker 02

  So I, um, so, so I bought a push bike off Amazon, you know, and bought some Batman Lycra, thinking it was cool. It wasn't. Um, but I didn't know anything about cycling. And I, but straight away, just, it's only about eight miles, eight mile, but being physically active and you, you felt there was a big weight off your shoulders, you know, I can't run anymore. And I just thought perfect. But, you know, with my backstory, sat in these architects and planners meetings, I was like, fuck it, no interest in these drawings. And you know what I mean? And my, my wife could, she could see the glaze over my eyes, you know, I was more interested in the coffee and the biscuits. Actually, when my son was born, I was the one holding the baby, feeding, feeding the baby while she was doing all the work. You just felt like, you know, is this it? Is this all I've got to offer? Now, I didn't want to be taking those risks I, I did before.

• 2:43:47Speaker 02

  So it was about a month before my fortieth birthday and I was getting ground, middle aged crisis, ground rush. And I was like, I always remember doing, I always remember reading Guinness Book of Records. So, you know, I was thinking cycling, because it's not impacting my knee, you know, maybe I should have had twelve Ferrero Rocher days in a minute or something, something a bit easier. But living in Scotland, I was thinking, you know, maybe Aberdeen to Dundee, about sixty miles. My wife had found the world's longest road. It's like from southern Argentina to northern Alaska. So I was like, I said a joke that she clearly wanted me out the house. I was like, fuck. So it's like, it's yeah, it's fourteen thousand miles. It's called the Pan American Highway. Called the Pan American Highway, yeah. So, you know, to give you an idea, because

• 2:44:30Speaker 02

  of the curvature, curvature of the earth, it's just equivalent to cycling from London to Sydney, and then another four thousand miles. It's that big, you know, it's twenty two. So I thought, perfect, you know, so having only cycled less than twenty miles, I applied for the world record, which, you know, some people think is quite arrogant. But I thought in my head, I said, well, no, I had that endurance mindset. If the knee's not going to be an issue, then, then why not? Why, why can't I do this? So I applied for the world record. The world record was a hundred and twenty five days at this point. And then six weeks later, Guinness came back and said, yes, you've been successful on your application. During this period, someone else has already beaten the world record. It's now a hundred and seventeen days. I was like, great. So already I've got to take

• 2:45:14Speaker 02

  eight days off my original plan. So we mentioned Harry already, which is perfect, rolls into this. So Harry and I, you know, we do a lot in charity stuff, you know, he used to come on my table. I had a, an intelligence fusion cell based in Mozambique and Tanzania. So, you know, these guys would give me in reports of where the ivory was going from Africa, you know, to the Far East, you know, so I would be obviously pushing this information up the line to Harry, who'd then be getting out. So we're doing a lot in charity anyway. So I, when Guinness came back, you know, I rang him up and I said, look, I'm going to cycle the world's longest road and, you know, do it in a world record. What should we do it in?

• 2:45:52Speaker 02

  The, this was 2016, so his brother and Kate and him were about to launch a campaign in 2017 called Heads Together, which was a mental health campaign. In the military, I'd seen it firsthand, you know, some of my friends, you know, and but I wasn't aware how big an issue it was for the whole of society, you know, it's very much everyone talks about it nowadays, be it from postnatal depression, young children, teenagers, all the way through. So he said, look, could I do it for that campaign? I said, yeah, Harry asked, would you do it? You're not going to say no. I said, yeah, of course. So, um, so I did that. And then he then introduced me to the Royal Foundation, who'd sort of deal with all their charity work. And, um, first, you know, you walk in the room and they're like, they're probably like, oh, you go, one of Harry's mates again. And I

• 2:46:37Speaker 02

  sat down and, and they said, right, first question is how much are you looking to raise? And I thought, I want, I want to keep them at the table. And I said, a million pounds. I just shouted it out. And, uh, but for me, I, I wanted the enormity of the challenge to reflect how much, you know, you, you can't go do like the LA marathon, say you're going to raise a million pounds, you know, it has to be in comparison. I said, fine. I said, and what's, and what is your messaging? I was like, oh shit, I didn't even thought about it. You know, Harry's just told me to come in here. I was like, um, so I just thought about it. And I said, well, our physical activity helps your mental state. So, no, no, you can't use that. I said, well, why not? I said, well, it's not being scientifically proven. So I said, that's fine. I said, but I don't need a scientist to tell me that I feel good when I'm being physically active. So I ignored them anyway and carried on promoting

• 2:47:21Speaker 02

  that. And then obviously now is very much recognized as one of, yeah, it's one of the coping mechanisms. So, so that was the birth of the, the Pan American Highway Challenge. Um, sort of fell into it by accident.

• 2:47:32Jocko Willink?

  And the, the, a lot of people doubted you because you had no experience on a bike. You know, these other people that are sat in these records, you know, they, they, that's what their life is. They're experienced racers and whatever else. And you just decide, yeah, watch this, hold my beer.

• 2:47:50Speaker 02

  The sponsored marketing team, we did a SWOT analysis at the right at the beginning. It's the strengths, the weaknesses, the opportunities and threats. And the only weakness that came about was my arrogance towards the cycling community, which I took as a strength. And actually, yeah, cycling had evolved so much from when I was a young boy on a BMX. And but for me, it wasn't so much about the physical bit. I thought I'll deal with that on the time. It was the planning. You know, one of the things we're good at in the military is that meticulous planning and the detail, you know, even in the Canadian embassy, I thought if you have the right plan, then you just bring that in. You know, so I just took a military set of orders and put it on it. And I just crossed out ammunition. And that's when I started, started putting the plan together.

• 2:48:31Speaker 02

  But I was taking experiences I had in the military from before and sort of putting it into this challenge. I love the phrase that you can't be experienced without experiences. So I've had experiences before and then what, how can I sort of transfer that onto this? So one thing we used to do in the special forces, which I thought was was great. Not because like we're one of the best in the world, it's because we're always evolving, we're always learning and always changing. And when we used to come off the ground, we used to do a thing called a, before we even go clean your weapons and admin yourself, it was called a hot debrief, you know, while it's still fresh in your mind. And the three questions that were posed were what worked, what didn't work? And if we were going to do that again, what would we do differently?

• 2:49:12Speaker 02

  So at the time I was reading magazines, I was buying books about cycling, you know, but I wasn't getting those answers I needed. And I thought, well, the best people to speak to are those that have done it before you. You know, they've been there, they've been on that road, they'll, they'll be able to give me the answers. So I did, I reached out to the previous record holders and I just posed those three questions and I'm getting all the information in, all their issues, they would all start in Alaska and finish in Argentina, but all their issues are in South and Central America. So for me, I was like, well, why take a gamble with the second half? You know, why not get, you know, bureaucracy at the borders, languages, spares for your bikes? Why not address those issues early?

• 2:49:54Speaker 02

  Then when you get into America, we can then reassess where we are. So one of the things I was proud of is that I'd ignored everyone else and I turned it on its head. My start point was from, uh, from Southern Argentina. So that's, that's how I came up with that plan. But the, you know, there's a lot more to it than just grabbing a water bottle and a helmet and cycling north. You know what I mean? When you're putting the planning together, you know, I had a support team and a documentary team who were very much more risk averse than myself. You had to be considering their welfare. So there's, there's things you, you don't really think about elections, you know, what's the best time, are you going to go through a country in the middle of elections, any civil unrest, you know, what's, what's going to give you the most advantage season wise? You know, there's, there's so much, which is what we do in the military, you know, and, and that's,

• 2:50:37Speaker 02

  that's what it was. And, um, so that's where the planning came from. It's from what I, I picked up before. And then training wise, yeah, I then, you know, uh, Harry and I did a, um, did a little promo video together to promote the challenge. And once the cameras finished, he said, you know, what training are you going to do? And I said, well, I'm going to do Land's End John O'Groats. Land's End John O'Groats is the southern point of England to Northern Scotland. Um, because the Pan American High was 15 of them back to back. So I said, if I can't do one, how was I going to do 15? So I said, I'm going to do that. And he said, well, I do it with some of the members of the Invictus Games. I said, yeah, of course I can. But I didn't want to do it with them and embarrass myself. So I, having only cycled three weeks, I rang my mate and I said, I'm going to go do Land's

• 2:51:20Speaker 02

  End John O'Groats. And everyone's like, whoa, you're not ready yet. You don't know, you haven't even been cycling. You, you're not bike fit. And, and I, I thought bike fit was fitness. It's actually your measurements to your bike. Uh, yeah. So I, You just fooled me too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I set off from Cornwall. We had first two days, it was a huge storm, Storm Angus. The third day I fell off my bike, fractured my skate foot. I got up to Scotland. It was, uh, the coldest it'd been in 10 years. It was minus 16. I, I rode off the first bike and my friend just went and bought one off the shelf. I, I did everything completely wrong in, in, in the cycling world. But for me, if I couldn't do one, how was I going to do 15? And, and then we then did it six months later with

• 2:52:05Speaker 02

  these guys. And I was bike fit. I knew about cadence and things like that. And I understand more the listeners in UK is that Land's End John O'Groats is a, is on a bucket list for cyclists. But for me, it was a training ride and I almost had to approach it in that manner.

• 2:52:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, what I like about all this, I mean, it's, it's something I, I've, I've been saying to veterans for a long time, which is, you know, when you get out, you gotta find a new mission. If you don't have a new mission, that's when things start going sideways. And, you know, for you, your first new mission was doing the security stuff and you did that, you attacked that. And then all of a sudden you had to pull back from that to take care of your family. You, you tried the new mission of the cubicle and the, the drawings that you, as you'd call them, that, that wasn't a mission for you. Then you got this in your head and now you had a new mission, something to focus on, something to do, a positive thing. And, uh, you know, obviously takes, moves you in the right direction. It's just, it's a, it's a really great example of something that I say all the time that you actually executed.

• 2:53:05Jocko Willink?

  This is an interesting section here. Um, it's called who dares win, who dares wins? And you got a, you got a unexpected call and the call, the guy says, my name's Andrew Slater. I'm a television producer. And they had, he had this idea, they're going to take special forces soldiers and going to put civilians through some kind of a form of some kind of selection. And as he's doing this, uh, you know, you're, he's interested in having you be one of the guys.

• 2:53:34Jocko Willink?

  And the question was, has this been cleared through the MOD, through the ministry of defense? And you start running this up the chain of command and you're, you know, asking if this can happen or not. And then you get this, uh, going to the book here, a couple of weeks later, I received the letter. It wasn't exactly a pleasant memo from the MOD. It cut straight to the point telling me to step away from the project immediately. I read over the letter a couple of times to make sure I had everything straight, but it was literally in black and white. Step away from the project or become persona non grata. Which is PNG'd, means you're not, you're not welcome anymore. When it comes to decision making, I always listened to my gut instinct and it was telling

• 2:54:18Jocko Willink?

  me loud and clear that I should comply with the MOD's wishes. I was the SBS ambassador to Scotland and I enjoyed that role. I enjoyed the SBS Association charity events. I enjoyed being able to visit Poole and Hereford. I had good mates still in both. Did I want to cut that away in the vain hope of becoming the next Jason Statham?

• 2:54:43Jocko Willink?

  The answer was clear. "I can't do the show, I'm afraid mate," I told Andrew. "No worries," he said. "We thought this could be a problem. Have you approached the MOD about the show?" I asked him. "You're going to have the same problem with everyone unless the show gets cleared." And you go on, you end up saying the show went ahead and as soon as it became public knowledge, there was a shitstorm at the MOD and in Hereford and Poole. The production company and the guys had pushed on without the MOD signing off and the SAS and SBS immediately declared them persona non grata. They were not allowed to attend any association events or to be on camp. To give you any idea of how seriously this was taken, I'd heard of a former general who was persona non grata being escorted off camp in Hereford from his

• 2:55:28Jocko Willink?

  own friends' wake. I didn't want to see that happen to the guys, but it was their decision and not for me to question. Personally, I felt that this sense of community was important for my own happiness and that wasn't worth giving up. I liked the lads, they're very close friends. And so I felt for one of them later that year when I saw him at a black tie event held by the regiment. He'd come as the guest of someone who was still serving, but when the RSM saw him, he was asked to leave. He looked absolutely gutted. And who am I to blame him? It was in many ways like being cast out of a family.

• 2:56:05Jocko Willink?

  So it's interesting too, because the reason that was interesting to me as well, because then you you wrote this book.

• 2:56:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:10Jocko Willink?

  But obviously you clear this book through the Ministry of Defence. I've written, I've written forty nine books or whatever the number is at this point. And, you know, again, it's always very, you know, I I remember the conversations around when when I hadn't written a book and just saying like, we're not going to do anything that

• 2:56:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:30Jocko Willink?

  sheds any light that puts anything, we don't have anything bad to say about the military, about the SEAL teams, like that's, that's not what we're doing. We're obviously not giving away any information that could be useful at all to the enemy.

• 2:56:45Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, that's obviously of, you know, when, when we ran these books, when I ran these books through the chain of command, you know, we, it was like direct comms with people that I knew and

• 2:56:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:57Jocko Willink?

  that were in the military and senior ranking positions and they read them and said, yeah, these are good to go. And, you know, I I had a great senior officer who said, you know, we're quiet professionals, quiet professionals, but that doesn't mean we're silent professionals. There's stories that need to be told, there's lessons that need to be passed on. So, you know, you look, you could, you never feel good about it because we're, we're, we're not, we're, we're, we don't want the spotlight, you're never going to feel good about it. And there's always going to be guys that are going to look at you and say, oh, you know, there you are in the spotlight. And that they're, they're totally, I understand them because I was that guy too. And so I get it and there's, that's just the reality of the situation.

• 2:57:41Jocko Willink?

  But it was interesting to see how you had to go through that and and make those decisions yourself.

• 2:57:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think to me at the, at the time, when, when Andrew came up, you know, so your name keeps coming up, I was fine. And I, there was an old documentary years ago, SASU Tough Enough, it was a massive failure and I was like, oh God, that's all I had in my head was visions of that. So it went on and ended up being one of the most, most successful film, um, episode on, on Channel Four. And, and the two guys I got on it, you know, one of them, he'd just come out, you know, he got kicked out of the military and then he, he went to prison, you know, for him, you know, there was no other, other option for him. So him, it was a lifeline. And then the other guy, um, Foxy, I'll say it's Foxy, he, he had post-traumatic stress. So, but he had post-traumatic stress because his time served in the special forces, he couldn't work in the private security sector for, so for them guys.

• 2:58:31Speaker 02

  It fitted perfect for them, you know, they they had a means of income. For me at the time, it didn't work because I was smuggling people across borders. Um, you know, I was a rela-, you know, close relationship with Harry, you know, so at the time, it then didn't look right that you you were on TV. Say it wasn't, y- you can't do it. It's not because, as you touched on it, people can learn from the military. Um, and and these sort of things are great for that. What upset the military with this was that they filmed it and then flanked them. You know, so I've, me being able to get my book out and things like that, you know, I've, I'm still part of the group, and I do charity work, but I've been transparent in everything I do. And and they understand. I think it was just the way that they'd they'd

• 2:59:15Speaker 02

  gone about it, and the fact that they caught him out by by surprise. But for the for the two guys that I got on the show, you know, they've now got successful careers in that. And they probably, if they didn't have this show, they'd probably really be struggling, you know, coming out of prison, having post-traumatic stress. But obviously, the military also need to understand that it's a different world, you know, social media, you know. For me, when I was in, it was a taboo. We were talking about it before, you know, it is a way of communicating. And obviously, as long as you don't give away certain things, then you can. There's nothing that you can't get fro- from the internet. And and that's it. And a lot of it is actually jealousy, you know, a lot of it is actually jealousy from those that are still in, is that, because they're not in that position that they can, they

• 2:59:59Speaker 02

  can do that. But for me at the time, I I just, it just didn't, didn't fit right.

• 3:00:06Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. You, you know, you, you're just training, and you're fundraising, and you're getting ready, and you're doing all these, taking all these skills that you learn from the military for planning, and endurance, and mindset, and you, and you get to a point where you're you're gonna launch this thing. And, um, you know, you're you're supported on the ground. This is just so, you you mentioned it, but you're supported on the ground by a sports massage therapist, a bike mechanic, a medic, a two-man camera crew, that would be gathering footage to make a documentary about the event. It was a big team, but with the exception of the documentary crew, everyone was doing it pro bono, so it wasn't a huge strain on our sponsors.

• 3:00:50Jocko Willink?

  And then finally, we get to shortly after dawn on one February 2018. I went with my team to the starting point of the Pan American Highway. I had 22,000 kilometers ahead of me and 110 days to do it. No crowds, no big send off. Start freaking pedaling. Yeah. And you, you, you, you, you cover a lot of this, um, in the book, you know, talking about what, what that's actually like, what is, what you're going through, the wind, the, the crashes, the traffic, the heat, the cold, the illness, the, just the mayhem, you know, you, you talked about, you go through four seasons while you do this. You go through all four seasons.

• 3:01:32Jocko Willink?

  And, um, so then you, you, you're making progress.

• 3:01:38Jocko Willink?

  And then one, one time I'm going to the book here, I got instantly worried when I stopped for lunch and saw I'd missed four calls from Alana. Usually she would just leave me a message, ask me to call her back. I worried that something had gone wrong with the funding for the challenge, or worse still, that something was up with Molly or Tommy, your kids. I FaceTimed her. What's wrong? I asked. What do you wear to a royal wedding? Alana said. I had no idea what she was talking about. What do you mean? What do you wear to a royal wedding? She said again, then lifted up a card so I could see it. Alana and I had been invited to Harry and Meghan's wedding. I didn't see that one coming. I told her honestly. Harry was a mate, but a royal wedding isn't for a few beers in the local. When is it? Alana smiled. She knew that I'd

• 3:02:21Jocko Willink?

  know the date was, the date I was due to finish in Alaska off by heart. 19th of May, she said, and I heard myself groan. That was four days earlier than I was expected, expecting to break the world record. The last flight you can catch is on day 102. You better put your foot down. So you get the invite to go to the big wedding?

• 3:02:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the world record was one hundred and seventeen days. And when I was doing my planning, I thought, you know, there's certain contingencies, but those things that are out of your control, be it natural disasters, coups and things like that. So I thought if I encounter any of them on the challenge, you know, I don't want it eaten into the challenge. So my target was one hundred and ten days. And it's because we had that fudge.

• 3:03:05Jocko Willink?

  So you give yourself seven days of fudge?

• 3:03:07Speaker 02

  I gave myself seven days of fudge. So should there be something out of our control? It wasn't eating into the record time. It was eating into that. I mean, I'd done all my planning on that, you know, I had a thing called the Bible. You know, I knew every inch of the road, we'd planned it out, had it on paper, had it on digital. We, you know, South America, I did it in forty eight days. The world record was fifty eight days. So I took ten days off the first world record. And as you touched on there, you know, you had food poisoning, you had everything else. But there was things that I didn't see as well. You know, when I was putting the plan together, you know, the medic I had to send home, you know, it's not in the book, you know, but I had to send the medic home on day thirteen because he was bullying the documentary team. It's like, my God, the bike ride was actually easier than managing egos. Egos, you know, because they're

• 3:03:50Speaker 02

  pro bono, they all started wanting wanting more from the challenge as they saw it evolving. And thankfully, my wife was the campaign director. She was sort of managing, keeping control of that. We got to, I talked about, you know, going from south to north. That was a great decision from a cycling perspective. I got a tailwind all the way through Peru. That's two thousand five hundred kilometers tailwind. But every checkpoint, every border, we're having to swap vehicles. So that was slowing us down. So the plan was to have an RV and a four by four shipped from Fort Lauderdale to Panama. So then when we did the second part of the challenge, that would take us all the way to Alaska. I was in Ecuador and my wife rang me and she said that the vehicles haven't gone on to the shipping container. She's like, oh, cry. So thankfully,

• 3:04:33Speaker 02

  my wife and my PA and two of my mates had foresight. They flew over to Fort Lauderdale and they drove the vehicles four thousand miles in eight days. My wife left the kids on Mother's Day back in UK. And they drove it all the way to Panama. I broke the world record in the morning, flew across the Darien Gap, and they just handed the keys over, you know, so they're an integral part of this challenge. You know, people see you on social media, but it's the team around you that they don't see. We then get to Mexico and the mechanic and a soft tissue therapist are like, ah, these are our new terms and conditions. I'm now the project manager. We're going to change the name to this. I was like, oh, here we go. You know, this has been going on for like nearly two months now. They said, you can't do this without us. I left them in Pueblo City.

• 3:05:16Jocko Willink?

  Hold my beer.

• 3:05:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, hold my beer. My mate then drove the RV and then we just pushed on and we didn't have a mechanic, but we weren't far from the American border. So when I got to the American border, I got to the American border on day 70 and I was 14 days ahead of the world record. I didn't realise how important it was getting to America. I don't know whether it was because everyone spoke our language. I wasn't on Google Translate for the last two and a half months, you know, the culinary options were better, or probably because the previous record holders, all their issues were in South and Central. If I left all that behind me, well, now it should be a smooth road. And also the fact that if there is any mechanical issues, we can just get another mechanic, you know, we can find a massage parlor. That was the hardest thing for my wife, trying to find a massage parlor, which is the right massage parlor.

• 3:06:01Speaker 02

  So getting into America, I was at 14 days ahead, perfect. And then I had that phone call.

• 3:06:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:06Speaker 02

  Which was great, but I was now going into that phone call was 14 days ahead. 10 minutes later, I'm now a day behind. So all that efforts I've done up until then, all that drama, not that it meant nothing, it's like you've now got a new objective. So cycling in South America, because of the sport team and documentary team being risk averse, you know, I had to consider them. So I had to cycle from first light to last light. And that was it. And I was off the road. But getting into America is a lot more safer. So I could cycle at night. And I got to Lubbock in Texas the next day and 60 mile an hour winds and tornadoes. So I was grounded for another another 24 hours. So I was now two days behind my new target. So.

• 3:06:50Speaker 02

  Again, I just looked at the plan, looked at the paperwork. And there's an app on your phone called Windy TV. It's quite popular with sailors and it gives you the strength and directions of the winds forecasted every hour for the next two weeks. It's about ninety five percent accurate.

• 3:07:03Jocko Willink?

  It's ninety five percent accurate.

• 3:07:04Speaker 02

  About ninety five percent. It's a great, it's a great app. Yeah. And it was known as my second wife on this because I was just always looking at Windy TV. So for me to get out, I love it. I had to cycle three hundred and forty miles in thirty six hours to miss the next weather window. And, and that's what I did with North America. I just played chess with Mother Nature. Through, through North America. And majority of cycling was done at night because, you know, the winds.

• 3:07:24Jocko Willink?

  Less wind.

• 3:07:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, less wind. Got to Cheyenne, picked up the fifty mile an hour tailwinds. And so covered two hundred and sixty miles in eleven hours cycling. So I was also using it to my advantage. So I, I gained up that time. I had about seventeen days originally on North America. I did it in eleven and a half and I thought, perfect. And then we got to a town called Whitehorse, about a week outside from the end. And I thought, you know, we'll record secure. I'm going to this wedding and let's get eaten by a grizzly. And then this gentleman's, uh, this guy's come on, on social media that day, professional cyclist. He's already got three other endurance wheel records, mid twenties, sponsored by all the big brands, Red Bull. And he's, he's announced that he's going to do the Pan American Highway in August. Be the first man to do it under a hundred days. So I was like, great.

• 3:08:09Speaker 02

  So every time I thought I had met my objective, you know, it then moved. But thankfully for me, if I'd known about that at the start of the challenge, if I'd known about the wedding, known about this guy, you know, I may not have pushed, I may have pushed myself too hard. Um, but thankfully for me, when I received that information, I was in a position that I could act on it. So yeah, I cycled for, you know, the last two days, um, had two hundred and fifty miles to do. And it's Dalton's Highway. It's where they film ice truckers. Um, it's, it's that road there. And I thought, well, I'll do two hundred and fifty, I'll do a hundred and fifty miles today and a hundred miles on the last day. And then I'm in, and my family of my wife, my kids are on, on the, on this oil field in Prudhoe Bay at the end. So I know they're only a couple of days away.

• 3:08:53Speaker 02

  Did the first fifty miles and I got this roadblock at noon and the gills were like, no, you can't pass till eight o'clock tonight. So I was like, oh my God. So, so that evening, I had to rest for eight hours and you're not resting. And, and I just cycled from eight o'clock that night to seven o'clock the next night, two hundred miles in minus eighteen to make sure that I came in in ninety nine days and twelve hours. So I talk about the importance of planning, but actually the success of this was being reactive to the situation on the ground. You, you have a plan. That's great. You have a start point. You have an objective. But, you know, things change. As you know, it's best plan in the world survives first contact. And, and that's what it was, is being, you know, reactive to that situation. And that, even to the very last day,

• 3:09:38Speaker 02

  I was having to change, change the plan.

• 3:09:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, even that, even when you talked about the fudge factor, which some people would have planned that and just had, oh, okay, I gotta be, do it in two, a hundred and twenty-five days or a hundred and twenty-three days. Cool. That's what they're gonna book. They don't understand all the things that, the, the amount of room that that gives you to make those adaptations when you need to is, again, that's something we learn about that things are not going to go smooth. That's one thing I can promise you. Um, I'm gonna read one more thing out of the book here. Athletes talk a lot about visualization and how they had imagined their final moment of victory again and again and again. I'd done the same, but now that I drew close to the finish line, my moment was nothing like I had ever imagined it. This was no ride along the Champs de Lise

• 3:10:24Jocko Willink?

  with me leaning back in the seat with my hands in the air. I clung onto my handlebars for dear life, hitting one patch of black ice after another. My face was covered in frozen snot, my muscles were shaking from fatigue and cold, and every blast of Arctic wind cut through me to the bone. But I made it.

• 3:10:48Jocko Willink?

  And there you go. You skidded to the finish line. I pulled my wife and kids into a hug. I was so exhausted that I probably can't remember what I said. I was probably talking gibberish. But I'd missed them all so much and they got big kisses from their dad's cracked lips. Molly was aware of what was going on and full of beans, but Tommy was in a world of his own. I thought I was, I thought I must be hallucinating when I saw the lady from Guinness was braving the cold in tights and a skirt, but there wasn't one ounce of discomfort on her face as she presented me with my record. I was now the record holder for the fastest cycle of the Pan American Highway, completing it 99 days, which also made me the first person to ever do it in under 100.

• 3:11:28Jocko Willink?

  I hugged my wife, but unlike in Cartagena, this wasn't the place to stand around for a post certificate photo shoot. Let's get to the hotel, I told my family and team as we piled into vehicles, leaving the frostbitten finish line behind us.

• 3:11:45Jocko Willink?

  So you made it and um, but that's not the end. That's not the end. Uh, it's not the end of the book. And it's definitely, definitely not the end of the path that you're on right now.

• 3:11:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:11:57Jocko Willink?

  Cause you needed a new mission, right?

• 3:12:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:12:02Jocko Willink?

  Tell us, tell us what's up. What's your next challenge? Where are you, where are you heading next?

• 3:12:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. So my, so my USP is, you know, I take a sport of discipline I've never done before and find the biggest challenge. So I've been arrogant towards the cycling community. It's now going to be the kayaking community. So the next challenge is to kayak the river Nile, the world's longest river from source to sea. So it's never been done before. Um, so unlike there where I can speak to previous record holders, it's not been done before. So the plan was obviously to do it last year and obviously COVID's, you know, put scupper to that. And that's why I'm here in America. You know, whilst the world is paused, let's get over here, get set up and get ready for that. So yeah, 4,280 miles, but you know, unlike truckers and, and support team, you've got to worry out, I've got crocodiles, hippos, civil war in South Sudan.

• 3:12:48Speaker 02

  But one thing I, I'm excited about this challenge, you know, I talk about, we talked about the successful private security missions. You know, everyone's quite quick to tarnish certain communities, you know, with one brush from what they see with, with TV, you know? If it wasn't for those local communities being so hospitable, I would never have been successful on them. And that's where the African Nile is going to be great. It's because it's, I'm going to have to rely on the locals to help me. And so. You know, it's not a world record, whatever I do is the world record. But one of the, so that's the next challenge. But one of the big feedbacks on the book is, yes, great endurance fee, but you are the security guru. Why are you still not in this industry?

• 3:13:31Speaker 02

  So for me, I've, I've got a niche security company, you know, very low key. We help either corporates, ultra high net worths and things like that. Because paddling and cycling doesn't put food on the table. My wife keeps reminding me. So, but yeah, so I've set a date, first of February next year and we set off on that. It's gonna be huge.

• 3:13:50Jocko Willink?

  So you've got a team, you know, obviously that's doing the security work under your guidance. So what's the, how do people get in, get in contact with you for that type of business?

• 3:13:59Speaker 02

  So we, you know, originally I wasn't going to have a website and things like that. But you know, we, we will have a website, but it's password protected. Cause for me, the, my approach to security is, you know, there, there's certain ways of security. Ours is more intelligence based, you know, you, you have the private element, you know, we then have the intelligence side of it. And then, and then the cyber, you know, we don't, you know, I don't normally walk around with tight black T shirts with tattoos out, you know? We blend in and things like, and it's just having that approach that I've used before. So yeah, if you go to my website, you can get in touch with them, but the new website is getting built. And that's what I've been doing this last four months is setting up the business, preparing for the Nile and next.

• 3:14:39Jocko Willink?

  And your website is Dean Stott. I was calling you Dean Stott, I'm sure you've been called that a million times. I was called you, I was calling you Dean Stott or Dean Stott. My wife was calling you Dean Stott. So it's Dean Stott, S T O T T dot com.

• 3:14:53Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 3:14:54Jocko Willink?

  Is, is where we can find you. Also, you're on Facebook, Dean Stott S B S. You're on Instagram, which Echo only calls the gram, at Dean Stott. It's real quick on the Nile. What's the, what's like the major challenges there? What's the work, what's the, what's the hardest level rapids they have there?

• 3:15:16Speaker 02

  So Murchison Falls is the most powerful waterfall in the world. It's grade six, grade six waterfalls. But the problem you have with the waterfalls there is the, they, they take the, the crocodiles and the hippos from Lake Victoria and put them in Murchison. So when you come down there, they're all in the, in the pools at the bottom. So. Originally, when we were gonna do it for World Record, they said, oh, you can only use one boat. That's just not gonna be feasible. And ninety-three percent of NARL is quite flat, so we'll use like, almost like a ski to go on that. But then, use a creek boat for grades three to four, and then a raft. We'll have to use a raft on some of those big ones.

• 3:15:51Jocko Willink?

  Are you gonna have like a sniper overwatch for crocodiles?

• 3:15:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15:55Jocko Willink?

  And stuff?

• 3:15:56Speaker 02

  There's gonna be a guy coming, a guy called Peter Meredith, actually. He's, he watched his friend get ate by a croc kayaking in the DRC, you know, so he knows NARL inside out. You know, he's talking about throwing stones. I'm thinking use them something a bit more powerful. But local wise, you know, I wanna bring as many locals in as I can, because especially the fishermen, they know them more ways better than anyone. So if there's crocs and hippos in that pool, I'll just portage it. I'm not gonna paddle through, I'll walk, walk around it. Message wise, you know, we, one thing we're passionate about is modern slavery and human trafficking, and we're thinking of using this challenge to promote that. But then that sort of channels in just one campaign. The great thing about the NARL is, you know, it's the lifeline of Africa. We can talk about poverty, pollution,

• 3:16:41Speaker 02

  COVID, you know, so we're gonna talk about the so many, so many things along the challenge.

• 3:16:47Jocko Willink?

  Do you have a date planned to launch that?

• 3:16:49Speaker 02

  First of February, I set off.

• 3:16:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang.

• 3:16:52Speaker 02

  Next year. Yeah, so one year, yeah.

• 3:16:56Jocko Willink?

  Wait a second.

• 3:16:57Speaker 02

  You, you have to have a start point. I genuinely, you have to have a start point. If you don't have a start point, then it just keeps moving.

• 3:17:03Jocko Willink?

  Start point becomes never.

• 3:17:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, comes never, keeps moving to the right. You have a start point, and then you can start approaching sponsors and start working back from that. So it gives me a year now to train at Newport Aquatic Center, and, you know, then look out, you know, get sponsorship.

• 3:17:18Jocko Willink?

  The book is called Relentless. The subtitle is From SBS to World Record Breaker.

• 3:17:28Jocko Willink?

  Echo, you got anything else?

• 3:17:30Speaker 01

  How's your leg from that parachute situation?

• 3:17:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so when I actually started the, the training, I went to see a doctor and, you know, was testing the strength of my quads and my hamstring. I mean, it was, it was him that identified, you know, your leg is two kilos light. I was like, really? When I set off on the challenge, I got the muscle mass back. My hamstring was eighteen percent less power, but, you know, it's, it's still good. No, we're good to go, so.

• 3:17:55Speaker 01

  Doesn't it bother you like day daily, like day to day kind of stuff?

• 3:17:58Speaker 02

  No, no, I, I, you know, I joke that my wife didn't marry me because I look like Lance Armstrong or Chris Froome. I try not going like her as often as I can, but you know, for me, I need, I, I still try and push it, push it on the bike now and then.

• 3:18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 3:18:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, um, I mean, it's awesome. It's awesome. What you've done to support these charities as well. The, the heads together and, and I'm sure you're going to support some, some awesome charities for this next event, Taddling the Nile. Hopefully you won't support the charity of, uh, free food for hippos and Crocs.

• 3:18:33Jocko Willink?

  But, uh, yeah, people can get this book on the, uh, we'll put a link for it on the website. And yeah, awesome. You got any final, any, any final thoughts, Dean?

• 3:18:42Speaker 02

  No, I think, you know, when you see the website, you'll see the frog man and everyone's like, why the frog man? Cause I always got the question, you know, what's the difference between you and the other guys? And going back to my original one, my reason for going SBS, because I thought, no, they're all divers and they weren't. I ended up being the number one frog man. So for me, I'm not, I'm not a cyclist. I love, I love the water. So we, we have the Nile and then another one, which Jocko, you're more than welcome to come along. It's called surfing with pirates, going to surf the Somali coastline.

• 3:19:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's, that'd be fun. That's not surfing with pirates, that's surfing with sharks.

• 3:19:15Speaker 02

  Exactly. But again, it's promoting these, the, these countries and, you know, they're amazing countries as well. But obviously being as close to the water as I can.

• 3:19:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm game. Uh, I'd never got a chance to go into Somalia. I sat off the coast of Somalia for months and months in the, in the nineties, waiting to go in. I never got the chance. So I, I didn't get to operate. I'll go get some barrels. Let's, let's rock and roll.

• 3:19:36Speaker 02

  Well, there's, there's, there's breaks and beaches with no names actually. So the plan is to, you know, from the north to the south. But you know, again, people see what they see on TV and make their assumptions straight away. When I was in Mogadishu, again, I work on my own and worked with the locals and I was like spearfishing for lobsters and, and everything. And you wouldn't think you're in Mogadishu because it hasn't been. Commercially fished for years. There's a huge abundance of wildlife there as well. Yeah. I think my wife, anyone, you you'll pick it up when you when you read the book, you know. It's it's a team effort, you know. My transition from the military, it wouldn't have been as smooth if it wasn't for my wife. We're very much. We know our strengths and weaknesses. No, my wife can't ride a bike. No, I can.

• 3:20:16Speaker 02

  But my wife is very good at all the planning and she was key to the success of the challenge and the success of my time in the security. I generally believe that anyone can break a world record. If you take away all those distractions, you know, the business, the mortgage, you know, who's looking after the kids and that's what Alana does. Does really well. And and then again, my my young children of no. Nine and four, I I saw a joke that when my my son was two and a half. The the challenge, when we finished the challenge, you know. The challenge was older than my son. So I think he he just thought I was a cyclist. And my daughter, she was born after I left the military. So when I tell her that, you know, dad was a soldier, she said, Dad, you weren't a soldier.

• 3:20:59Speaker 02

  So my son thinks I'm a cyclist and my daughter thinks I'm a Walter Me. So I sort of joke about that. But again, you know, they're very. They very much look up to mum and dad, you know, and they travel everywhere with us. They've been all over the world. They know Alaska, South America, Australia and things like that. So very lucky to have that. I think people think once you have children, that's it. That's your traveling days over, you know, don't let them dictate, you know, your life.

• 3:21:23Jocko Willink?

  Well, awesome. Thanks again for coming on and and. Thank you for your service and and Great Britain. Has always been. Our strongest ally and and we as nations have been through hell and back together. In multiple wars and we know we can count. On you in our darkest hour. So thanks for coming on, sharing some of that with us. And good luck.

• 3:21:51Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:21:52Jocko Willink?

  Watch out for those hippos.

• 3:21:56Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Dean Stott has left the building. Talking about his incredibly incredible journey. Pretty crazy stories. The relentless pursuit of perfection. He writes about that in the book. A lot. I only read it once today, but it's in there quite a few times. That mindset, the special, the British special forces mindset of the relentless pursuit of perfection. Awesome to have him on here. And thanks, Dean, for coming on and echo Charles.

• 3:22:31Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 3:22:32Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of a relentless pursuit of perfection. You have any suggestions that could maybe enable our relentless pursuit of perfection? We're not going to get there, by the way.

• 3:22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:22:48Jocko Willink?

  But we're going to pursue it.

• 3:22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I will say facilitate.

• 3:22:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I said enable.

• 3:22:53Speaker 01

  Enable and facilitate for sure. Look, hey, look.

• 3:22:56Jocko Willink?

  With you.

• 3:22:56Speaker 01

  Are all of us trying to break Guinness World Records for the book?

• 3:23:02Jocko Willink?

  We are not.

• 3:23:03Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe not.

• 3:23:04Jocko Willink?

  No, factually, not everyone is.

• 3:23:06Speaker 01

  Not everyone, correct.

• 3:23:07Jocko Willink?

  So I think factually you can say that.

• 3:23:08Speaker 01

  But we're on a path, though. We're on our own path. Right? And that path is not easy. That's why we're on it. In fact, if it's easy, is it even a path, really?

• 3:23:17Jocko Willink?

  Not really.

• 3:23:17Speaker 01

  No. I guess technically it's the path of least resistance.

• 3:23:22Jocko Willink?

  Yes, watch out for that one.

• 3:23:23Speaker 01

  That's a different kind of path.

• 3:23:24Jocko Willink?

  We know that it leads downhill, that path in particular.

• 3:23:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:23:26Jocko Willink?

  We're not looking for that path.

• 3:23:28Speaker 01

  We're not looking for it. We're not on it. We're not even, that's not our jam in any way. But the path that we are on is hard. Obstacles, pitfalls and traps. A wise man once said, but on that path, you're going to endure or you have to endure some sort of pain

• 3:23:45Speaker 01

  in your joints. Depends on what you're doing, obviously, but.

• 3:23:49Jocko Willink?

  Most people are gonna enjoy that.

• 3:23:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:23:51Jocko Willink?

  Endure.

• 3:23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And look, I'm not saying you should worry about that. And in fact, if you really don't want to worry about that, guess what? Jaco has some supplements. How about that? For your joints, okay, we got Jaco Fuel.

• 3:24:03Jocko Willink?

  That's curious about how you're gonna bring it all together.

• 3:24:05Speaker 01

  Well, you know.

• 3:24:06Jocko Willink?

  Like, oh, here it comes. Oh, there he did. He did it again.

• 3:24:09Speaker 01

  Hey, look, we're over here trying to sensationalize these things to make them sensational.

• 3:24:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:24:14Speaker 01

  Hopefully.

• 3:24:14Jocko Willink?

  I don't think there's anything sensational about it. Here's the deal.

• 3:24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:24:17Jocko Willink?

  You don't want to have joint issues.

• 3:24:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:24:19Jocko Willink?

  So you want to do things that take care of your joints.

• 3:24:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:24:23Jocko Willink?

  By joints, I mean shoulder.

• 3:24:25Speaker 01

  Elbow.

• 3:24:25Jocko Willink?

  Elbow, knee, neck, whatever.

• 3:24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:24:28Jocko Willink?

  You want to call it, if it's a joint in your body, you don't want it to give you issues.

• 3:24:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:24:33Jocko Willink?

  You don't want that.

• 3:24:33Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 3:24:34Jocko Willink?

  So that's why we made Joint Warfare. Go to war against that.

• 3:24:39Speaker 01

  Joint.

• 3:24:40Jocko Willink?

  That decay. And krill oil, by the way.

• 3:24:43Speaker 01

  Super krill oil, yes. Yeah. So now we don't even have to worry about that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of things you that you should be concerned about on this path. Distraction, temptation, if you will, your friends sometimes, and let's face it, your joints. You don't want to have to worry about that kind of stuff. Take the Joint Warfare every day with the super krill oil every day, and you will not have to worry about that kind of stuff.

• 3:25:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's how it works.

• 3:25:09Speaker 01

  Get the subscription.

• 3:25:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so check it out. We are trying to make things easier. So you can say on the path, more. So right now, everything at Jaco Fuel, if you subscribe to it, then the shipping is free. And look, we obviously, we are, we understand that there's people that don't want to give their money to some giant companies, right? This is part of it. Also, so they don't want to give money to giant companies, but big, sometimes big giant companies ship stuff for free because they got this mass, you know, economies of scales and stuff. We understand that. We understand that. So if you go to jacofuel.com and you subscribe to anything, we're gonna ship it to you for free. You don't have to give your money to some big giant company.

• 3:25:52Jocko Willink?

  You don't have to, uh, do that. It's fine. We're here. Jaco Fuel dot com. Subscribe. Get Joint Warfare, get super krill, get discipline, get vitamin D3 for your immune system, get Cold War free, any of these things, Molk.

• 3:26:09Jocko Willink?

  Multi flavors.

• 3:26:10Speaker 01

  I just had, I just rotated milk.

• 3:26:14Jocko Willink?

  What'd you go into?

• 3:26:15Speaker 01

  Milkshake.

• 3:26:15Jocko Willink?

  What'd you go from?

• 3:26:17Speaker 01

  Uh, the peanut butter one.

• 3:26:18Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:26:18Speaker 01

  But no, I, I rotated, no, not the flavors. I rotated into a daily or more specifically a nightly.

• 3:26:25Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 3:26:25Speaker 01

  I put a banana in there. I think that's how from, from indefinitely, that's just how right now. Get the kids on board.

• 3:26:32Jocko Willink?

  Well, my kids are all about these different additives, you know?

• 3:26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26:37Jocko Willink?

  I'm good.

• 3:26:38Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I'm all good. Can you get a, um, subscription for the discipline cans?

• 3:26:42Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you can. Yeah. So, yep, that's what we're doing.

• 3:26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the discipline cans, that's for like us who, who kinda like are kinda down for the energy drink scenario, but are not down for the toxicity, sugar and all these bad elements that most of the time come with energy drinks. That's what this is for.

• 3:27:01Jocko Willink?

  They do come with energy drinks unless you get these energy drinks.

• 3:27:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. Right. And that's exactly my point. So yes, the discipline go in a can. There's also powder. There's also pills.

• 3:27:10Jocko Willink?

  You can also get this stuff. You can get the cans at Wawa. And you can get all this stuff at the vitamin shop as well. And also if you are doing jujitsu, which is recommended. Look, this is, you wanna talk about something you're never gonna be, you're never gonna achieve perfection in? Jujitsu is definitely one of them, but it's gonna help you in a lot of different aspects. If you're gonna do jujitsu, go to originmaine.com, get yourself a gi, get yourself a rash guard. And since you can't wear a gi or a rash guard, well, you can. John Donner, representing a rash guard in the supermarket, he doesn't care.

• 3:27:40Speaker 01

  All day.

• 3:27:41Jocko Willink?

  All day. All day. So what are you gonna wear on your legs? Right? You, are you gonna wear gi pants to the supermarket?

• 3:27:49Speaker 01

  Low probability.

• 3:27:50Jocko Willink?

  Low probability. How about you wear a pair of jeans? Cool. Origin jeans, made in America. Origin sweatshirts, made in America.

• 3:27:59Jocko Willink?

  This is all Origin, beanies, whatever, all made in America, boots.

• 3:28:04Speaker 01

  I hear some new stuff coming out with the boot scenario. I'm no, I'm in no position to talk about it, but I hear good things from, you know, Pete. I follow him on Instagram.

• 3:28:13Jocko Willink?

  We're trying to make stuff happen, that's for sure. Originmain.com, all kinds of American-made products where we are bringing manufacturing back to America. Get some.

• 3:28:23Speaker 01

  It's true. Also, Jaco has a store, so jacostore.com is where you can get this "Discipline Equals Freedom" stuff, shirts, hoodies, hats, like that kind of stuff. So we got "Discipline Equals Freedom," we got "Good," we got "Stand by to Get Some," we got "Get After It." Anyway, like I said, jacostore.com, that's where, if you see something cool on there that you want to represent while you're on this path, that's where you get it, 100%. We also have something formerly known as the T-Shirt Club. It's not really a club, I guess, it's just, it's a solid, kinda is a club, to be honest with you, but it's called the Shirt Locker. New shirt every month, boom.

• 3:29:03Jocko Willink?

  By new, you don't mean like, oh, it's just a new shirt, it's a new design?

• 3:29:06Speaker 01

  New design. It's kinda, and, okay, I'm gonna use a word, I'm gonna use it, exclusive. Cause you can't get it on the store otherwise. You see what I'm saying? So you sign up for this, boom.

• 3:29:15Jocko Willink?

  So people that are, like, really into the game.

• 3:29:18Speaker 01

  In the game, on the path, representing hardware, yes, that's it. So yes, jacostore.com.

• 3:29:24Jocko Willink?

  Also subscribe to this podcast, and you can do that wherever you get a podcast. We also have Jaco Unraveling, which, which I can tell you,

• 3:29:35Jocko Willink?

  Daryl's in the house, we're on it. I apologize, it's been a while, Daryl's wrapping up a bunch of stuff in his world, and so now we're gonna get back in the game there. Grounded Podcast, we're, am I even making claims on that right now?

• 3:29:48Speaker 01

  No, we're not making claims yet.

• 3:29:50Jocko Willink?

  Warrior Kid Podcast, I will make claims on, I owe that one, we'll get on it.

• 3:29:56Jocko Willink?

  You can also join us at the underground.

• 3:30:00Jocko Willink?

  Underground is where we're putting some alternative podcasts, maybe some amplifying information, some little behind the scenes. We're gonna do a Q and A. You were just telling me about some Q and A. People can send video questions.

• 3:30:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, audio or video.

• 3:30:11Jocko Willink?

  Audio or video questions.

• 3:30:13Speaker 01

  And you might be like actually featured like on it, like your voice. So you know, clear your throat, submit them, boom. Yeah, it'll be good. I'll make an announcement on where to send them.

• 3:30:24Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:30:25Speaker 01

  On what? Like a Twitter, Instagram scenario?

• 3:30:27Jocko Willink?

  Something like that.

• 3:30:29Speaker 01

  You'll know.

• 3:30:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you'll know. And, and this is all from Jaco Underground dot com. And look, it's cost $8.18 a month. This is the platform that we control. So there's nobody that's gonna tell us what to do. No sponsors are gonna tell us what to do. No platform is gonna tell us what to do. We're gonna do what we want to do regardless. And it's $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford that, that's okay. We're not here to gouge.

• 3:30:56Jocko Willink?

  If you can't afford it, email assistance at Jaco Underground dot com. And that's a little idea that I heard from Sam Harris. Sam Harris, same thing. Can't afford it? Cool. He, we're not, I'm not trying to hold back information. Actually trying to keep information free flowing because if something ever happens to these platforms, we're gonna need something, somewhere to go. We'll have it. Little contingency plan is in action. So appreciate the support over there.

• 3:31:21Speaker 01

  That's true. Also, we do have a YouTube channel for the video version of this podcast. Want to see what everybody looks like. You want to see what Dean looks like. Dean Stott, not Scott, by the way.

• 3:31:33Jocko Willink?

  If you want to see what Dean Stott looks like, if you want to see any of these, you can check it out.

• 3:31:38Speaker 01

  Some excerpts on there.

• 3:31:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And also, I do a lot, I do a lot of work as the assistant director with a lot of these videos. So if you see something that you like, just let me know that you enjoyed my assistant directing.

• 3:31:53Speaker 01

  I feel like we all kind of enjoyed your 10 list of 10 things that you utilize on a daily basis. I think, I think that was kind of a cool little hit that you guys kind of brought.

• 3:32:06Jocko Willink?

  I mentioned that my daughter kind of drove the.

• 3:32:11Jocko Willink?

  The spirit behind that and people think I think people think that that meant that she made it.

• 3:32:17Speaker 01

  She kinda did.

• 3:32:18Jocko Willink?

  Well, she did, but I mean the editing. Oh, she get she get director credit on that?

• 3:32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, she does. Straight up.

• 3:32:24Jocko Willink?

  Good job. Just stepping it up. Um, yeah, I do a lot of assistant directing.

• 3:32:29Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. I understand.

• 3:32:31Jocko Willink?

  Hey, also, Origin USA has a little YouTube channel. You can check that out. If you want to keep it updated as to what it's like to grow a business.

• 3:32:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good one, man.

• 3:32:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they put all kinds of cool stuff on their main tie.

• 3:32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, hell, yeah.

• 3:32:43Jocko Willink?

  Pete, Be Little, they're up there getting after it.

• 3:32:46Speaker 01

  You know what it's kind of like? Like, you know, when you go to work, like, let's say you go to work every day and you kind of, let's say, I don't know, you're a manager, I don't know, whatever. You go to work every day and you kind of get updated when you go in about, okay, what's currently going on? What's the status of this? What's it? It's kind of like that. When you, when you watch like the YouTube things or, or sorry, the, the, the Origin YouTube channel, Origin HD.

• 3:33:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:33:06Speaker 01

  That's the one, right? Origin HD, that's the one I watch all the time.

• 3:33:09Jocko Willink?

  The, the interesting thing is like, if you watch a reality television show, what they do is they take a bunch of people with like weird personalities.

• 3:33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:33:17Jocko Willink?

  I'm not saying all cases, but this is kind of a stereotypical thing. Take a bunch of people and then they can fight with each other about whatever, right?

• 3:33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:33:24Jocko Willink?

  And so it creates drama for your TV show and then people watch it because they like to watch a train wreck. The thing that's cool about, about what we're doing at Origin, when you see behind the scenes, it's not, it's not the team fighting with the team.

• 3:33:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:33:36Jocko Willink?

  It's like, hey, how are we going to make this work?

• 3:33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:33:38Jocko Willink?

  How are we going to get the right materials? How are we going to get this in production? How are we going to satisfy this, this, uh, clients that we've got or the customers? How are we going to take care of them? So it's that, it's that struggle. It's not a struggle against, there's no, there's no like, uh, reality television drama.

• 3:33:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, the producer like, and this is what they do, by the way, from what I hear, it's not like I watch this kind of stuff. But I hear that they'll be like, hey, like there's little writers there that'll be like, hey, look, we're going to send these people on a trip, um, to the Bahamas. And hey, you like, you gotta, you gotta say that you don't want to go because of what this lady said like last month on Instagram or something like this. And you better tell her and we'll just see how it plays out, kind of a thing. See, and just like your point though.

• 3:34:23Jocko Willink?

  How whack that is.

• 3:34:24Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I, at the end of the day, I, I agree, but it makes for good, cheap entertainment, you know? But yeah, so you watch the origin one and it's like, yeah, it's not scripted drama. It's like the actual drama that comes with running and maintaining, growing like a business or whatever. So yeah, if you're interested in like how to run a business and what just the whole, that whole environment and the process and all that, it gets real interesting. Very interesting.

• 3:34:50Jocko Willink?

  Check. So we got that. Also, we got an album called Psychological Warfare. It's me talking to you through your moments of weakness. We got flipsidecanvas.com, which is Dakota Myers company. Hang stuff on your wall. That'll keep you on the path. Got some books, obviously relentless from SBS to world record breaker by Dean Stott. We have that up. We have it linked. Linked.

• 3:35:18Speaker 01

  Books from the episodes on the website.

• 3:35:20Jocko Willink?

  Final spin. A story. Is it a poem? Don't know. Is it a novel? Don't know. I wrote it, but I don't know what to call it. If you want to try and categorize it, you're gonna have a hard time. The, the, the literary critics. Yeah, they're gonna have a field day with that one. We'll see. We'll see how it shakes out. Form Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocol, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. Way of the Warrior Kid Four Field Manual. Way of the Warrior Kid One, Two and Three. Mike and the Dragons About Face by Hackworth. I wrote the foreword. Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. Also have a Leadership Consultant, consultancy.

• 3:36:01Jocko Willink?

  It's called Echelon Front, echelonfront.com. We solve problems through leadership. EF Online. If you want training for you, for your company on leadership, if you want to get aligned, go to efonline.com. We got the muster 2021. Go to extremeownership.com. If you want to come in, if you want to come and get after it with us, you want to meet a bunch of people that are all moving forward on the leadership path. Everything we've done is sold out. These are gonna sell out too. So come early if you want. EF Overwatch. If you need leadership inside your team in the civilian sector, you want someone from the military that understands the principles we talk about all the time. Go to efoverwatch.com. And if you want to help service members.

• 3:36:42Jocko Willink?

  Active duty service members, retired service members, their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, she's got a charity organization, and if you want to donate, or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And if you want more of my, if you're just, you're sitting there thinking, I could really use some more of Jaco's interminable reading, or you need more of Echo's unrelated revelations, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, or for Echo the Gram, and on Facebook, Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink, and Dean Stott is at

• 3:37:21Jocko Willink?

  Dean Stott SBS on Facebook, and Dean Stott, S-T-O-T-T, on the Gram. And thanks to all military members around the world, and tonight especially to the United Kingdom. And I know that we rebelled against you to form our own nation, but we became allies, and we thank you for standing by our side on the battlefield. The little island with the heart of a lion, and to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, and paramedics, and EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders, thank

• 3:38:01Jocko Willink?

  you for your continued service, and for being there for us when we call. And to everyone else, let me ask you this, what are you doing? What are you doing? Are you doing everything you can? Are you who you want to be? Are you who you, are you who you are capable of being? Are you engaged in a relentless pursuit of excellence? And if you are, good.

• 3:38:38Jocko Willink?

  And if you aren't, well, then you just might want to pick a goal, and go get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco, out.