314: Making Your Part Of The World Better. W/ Carlos Mendez, Navy SEAL (Ret.)

0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:50 - Carlos Mendez 2:39:11 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:17:23 - 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 314 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  The machine rolls on.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  That's what happens when your time is up and you leave, the machine is going to roll on.

• 0:21Jocko Willink?

  And that can be, can be hard on your brain, can be hard on your ego. It can also just be hard because you love the teams, you care about the boys. And when you leave,

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  you worry about the void

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  that is there and you think, oh, who's going to fill that void? And, and you wonder if you did a good enough job passing on what you learned.

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's rough. It was, that was one of the hardest things for me when I left, when I got out of the Navy. Because my whole life, my whole adult life had been in the SEAL teams. I was full on institutionalized by the SEAL teams. I didn't know, didn't know anything else in the world. And I couldn't help but feel that I was leaving them hanging, leaving my friends hanging, that I was letting them down.

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  But the reality is

• 1:25Jocko Willink?

  that the machine rolls on. And there are guys that are ready to step up and take your place and take things to the next level and do a better job. And carry the torch and take the fight to the enemy and uphold

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  the traditions and uphold the reputation of the teams and elevate it.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  And so, because this next generation of frogmen step up, the machine rolls on.

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  And I am lucky enough to have one of those frogmen here with me tonight. Carlos Mendez Los, who I figured out checked into SEAL Team One about a decade or so after I did.

• 2:13Jocko Willink?

  I think, but who upheld and uplifted the reputation of the teams while he was in. Carlos, thanks for joining us, man.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Pleasure to be here.

• 2:25Jocko Willink?

  What year did you check into Team One?

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Two thousand five, January.

• 2:30Jocko Willink?

  Two thousand five, okay, so it was like I checked into Team One in nineteen ninety-one.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  No fun one. It was still no fun when I got there.

• 2:39Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Uh, well, we'll get there. Let's go back. Let's go back to where you came from, because damn. I mean, it's a weird ride, right? It's a, you, you, it's, you got a, you got an interesting background story. So you're, you're not even, you're not born in America?

• 2:55Speaker 01

  No, I was born in Guatemala.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  So, um,

• 3:01Speaker 01

  you know, it, it, you know, I'll, I'll even start before that. Um, so my father passed away when my mom was pregnant with me.

• 3:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  So, yeah, actually she got the news on the day of her baby shower.

• 3:16Jocko Willink?

  What did he die from?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Car accident.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  So, uh, I was born in Guatemala to a single mom, obviously, and, um, you know, my grandparents, my, my dad was their favorite son. So when my mom had me, I was the favorite grandchild. And, um, they had, they had a lot of, they wanted a lot of control over the way she raised me. And it was this conflict back and forth. And, um, you know, when I talked to my mom, she said, ultimately, that's what, drove her to the decision to, to immigrate to the US. She's like, I need to get you away from here because I was, I was spoiled rotten.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  From what I hear, I was an absolute terror, uh, and I can get away with it because grandma was there to protect me. And, uh, yeah, she used to babysit me. My mom would drop me off. In the mornings and it was funny because the things that you remember just so weird. I remember we would go get gas in Guatemala, you know, people don't have a lot of money. So if you filled up a full gas tank, you got a baby chick.

• 4:27Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my mom, you know, filled the gas tank up and we would get a baby chick. So I remember I would drive back to my grandma's house and I would have that baby chick. And we had all kinds of them, you know, from all times we filled up the gas tank. So me chasing, chasing a bunch of chickens and chicks in the backyard.

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting that your mom, she's got to be a pretty interesting human because you would figure here she is, single mom, and she actually has the, this kid, you, that is getting swooned over by the grandparents. It seems like a single mom would be like, thank God, these grandparents are here to help me through this. And I'm, I'm totally, I'm kind of set now, right? I got like backup as opposed to no backup, which you know, your dad was dead. I mean, that's, but she, but she just thought, oh, he's being spoiled. We're out of here.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. My, my mom's a gangster. She is a very old school Hispanic.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Just very, you know, disciplined, screw your feelings kind of thing. It's always your fault kind of thing. Uh, I remember anytime I got in trouble, she's like, what'd you do? It was your fault. And I'm like, everybody else's parents stand up for them. Not my mom. My mom's like, what'd you do? I know, I know it was your fault. Some way or another it was your fault. So that's why I always kind of joke around with JP that I had extreme ownership.

• 5:46Jocko Willink?

  At birth.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically. But yeah, that's what drove her decision to, to leave Guatemala and come to the US.

• 5:51Jocko Willink?

  So how old were you when you came to the US? Do you remember? I guess you must remember because you remember the chicks.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, things here and there that you remember. I, I was like four or five, but I do remember I was in school. Uh, and I remember showing up to school and not being able to speak English. And my mom set me up for total success. And I say that sarcastically because she would dress me up in like a collared shirt. Everything was, had to be like a, because you know, Guatemala, you dress nice to go to school. You have a uniform and now we were in, in San Francisco, not a nice area either, you know?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  And so I'm wearing this, you know, button up shirt with some some docker type pants that we got at the Goodwill. Shirt had to be tucked in and like these alligator skin shoes. Cause in Guatemala, they're they're cheap, you know, like alligator skin shoes. So that was like the thing. And she's like, you know, Guatemala, these are like a luxury. I'm like, well, over here it's getting my ass kicked. Wearing these alligator shoes and dockers and tucked in shirts. So, yeah. I needless to say, I ran into a lot of issues when I first showed up, didn't speak English and dressing like a complete dork.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  And, and you know, the kids that I'm with are a little rough around the edges.

• 7:03Jocko Willink?

  What'd your mom do for work when she got here?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  So I remember she worked at, she worked at the school that I was at, so she can keep an eye on me. As a teacher's assistant. And then after school, I remember she worked as, um, she would clean houses. And I remember going after school, we would go to, you know, whoever's house and she would clean it and I would do my homework while she cleaned. And if I didn't have homework, like I would help her out and, um. And then I think like twice a week or so, she would go to English. School to learn how to speak English. And I'll go with her there.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  And are you, but you're, you're getting, uh, what's immersion training at school? Cause you're just showing up and they're speaking all English.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, uh, it's kind of funny cause when, so my mom's side of the family was already in San Francisco, Oakland area. So that's why we moved there. She had her side of the family there. My dad's side of the family was the one that stayed in Guatemala. Cause they're actually pretty well off there.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  So she had that support system and I thought it was, it was interesting how my family was like, oh, the kids need to learn how to speak English. So the kids won't make fun of them. And my mom was just like, I don't care about his feelings. Like, okay, they make fun of him. So what? He's not allowed to speak English at home. Because he's gonna forget Spanish. He's gonna learn English regardless. But I want him to, to remember how to speak Spanish. So at home, I wasn't allowed to speak any English.

• 8:31Jocko Willink?

  Your mom is a gangster, huh?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Oh dude, she's, she's heartless.

• 8:38Jocko Willink?

  And then, uh, so then you ended up, she ended up meeting someone else or getting married to someone else, right? Like, uh, stepdad showed up, basically.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yep. So she actually met my stepdad in San Francisco in, uh, English school.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  So he was from Czechoslovakia when it was still Czechoslovakia.

• 8:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and his story is is pretty amazing. You know, when he was in high school, so he was there when it was still under communist rule. So when he tells a story.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  You know, he was in high school and he drew a cartoon criticizing communism. And I guess like a week later, some some men showed up, they dragged him out of school, they beat him up. And then they told him, hey, when you graduate, we're gonna send you to the mines and you're gonna die there. You're gonna work there for the rest of your life till you die. So he was just like, nope, not happening. Um, he started planning his escape and um. Didn't tell anybody, not a soul, packed his stuff in like this green bag that he actually still had when I met him. Packed everything he had in there and and and ran away and um, he just recently told me this story too, like maybe two, three months ago, like the actual details of how he crawled for days across the border.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  And somehow made it into Yugoslavia and yeah, i- it's a pretty crazy story.

• 10:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the the, when you're in those communist countries, the amount of in government inform, like. It's some crazy number, like fifty percent of people are government informants. It's a crazy number, it's a crazy number. So your stepdad couldn't have told anybody, because if you tell one person, you might as well just tell everybody. And you're gonna get ratted out, and he's already got the threats of being in the mines for the rest of his life and dying there. Good lord.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:24Jocko Willink?

  Freaking savages.

• 10:28Jocko Willink?

  So they end up getting married, I mean, is that that the next phase?

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, they they started dating and um, in my head, I'm thinking like, oh, sweet, I'm finally gonna have a dad. You know, little did I know, he was meaner than my mom.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, he's he's a hard, hard man. I mean, he's, you know, communist block. They grew up very, very hard up there. Life is hard. Um, so he was hard on me.

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  So what were you doing growing up? What was, uh, what was, what was a day, day in the life of Carlos? Um, let's say age 11.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Oh, age 11. Oh, by that time we had, I'm not sure. I don't remember if we had already moved out to Sacramento. At one point, you know, they were like, hey, you know, the Bay Area is just too expensive. It's not a great place to raise a family. And we moved out to Sacramento and I remember we started renting this house out that had this huge yard. Well, for me it was huge because I hadn't seen a backyard, you know, in San Francisco or Oakland. And, um, and, and he just gave me a ton of chores. Like, that's what my life, so my life was, I come home from school, I do chores, I do homework, and then after we eat dinner, you know, I wash all the dishes. I take everything off the counter, wipe them all down, sweep, mop. Like, that was something that I did every single day.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  And then in the backyard, I always had all kinds of chores that he had for me. And, um, I think a lot of it too had to do with, he, he worked a ton. Like, he is probably the hardest working man I've ever met in my life. Like, yeah, he was mean and probably growing up, I, I wasn't, you know, I hated him growing up. But now that I, I'm, I'm all, I'm all grown up and I look back like, man, that guy worked his ass off. Like, he did anything and everything he could do. Like, I remember he used to sell like, uh, vacuums for Electrolux, uh, he used to deliver pizzas for Domino's Pizza. He finally got into IT tech to become a drafter.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  So he became a drafter eventually, uh, designing like elevators or something like that. And then I remember he would do that all day. He would come home, he would take a nap, and then he would go back and deliver pizzas all night long. Get maybe like two, three hours of sleep and do it all over again. So, you know, looking back now, I'm like, okay, that's why I had to do so much stuff around the house. Because he just, he just wasn't around. He was providing for the family.

• 12:49Jocko Willink?

  And when you get to, like, what, what kind of kids are you hanging out with?

• 12:56Jocko Willink?

  You playing any sports or anything?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  No, my mom and like I said, my mom and dad were both really strict on me and the only two things that I was really allowed to do growing up, I remember were Legos and reading. So I would devour any book I can get my hands on because we weren't allowed to watch like TV. Actually, I don't think we owned a TV for a big portion. And then finally, when we did, we weren't allowed to watch a whole lot of it. They had a subscription to Reader's Digest, so I would read Reader's Digest cover to cover. As soon as it came in, I was actually the one that would rip the wrapper open and I would just start reading. And it's funny because it was actually the first time that I was exposed to the teams. Even though I didn't know it, there was an article in Reader's Digest when I was a kid and it was something like the hardest school.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  You know, I don't remember exactly what the title, but it would, it talked about this gentleman who was in the army, saw some team guys and went to BUDs and he talked about his experience going through BUDs. But at the time, I didn't know what it was. I was just like, oh, cool story. But yeah, Legos, reading, I wasn't allowed to really play with other kids because my life was like chores and homework and my parents were both perfectionists, so you know, I would turn in my homework and if the handwriting was sloppy, they'd do it over. Or like the dishes, like if I do the dishes and like one of them was wrong on my step, I'd be like, do them all over. I'm like, dang it.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  So that's kind of how I remember my childhood. It was a lot of chores,

• 14:20Speaker 01

  homework, and then kind of just reading a lot and playing with Legos a lot.

• 14:23Jocko Willink?

  Yes, sir. Right, um. Did you end up, I think you've mentioned to me you had some kind of like little farm or something at some point?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:31Jocko Willink?

  Or like at least some little animals running around the house?

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so at one point, you know, we got accepted for this program that was like for, for low income families, where they allowed you to build your house and it would offset some of the costs, but it would allow, you know, it was like a path to ownership.

• 14:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's legit.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  And so my parents both applied for it. We got accepted. So for a long time, that was, that was actually a big part of my childhood too. For a long time, I remember like going to school and then going to help at the construction site. Um, my weekends, same thing. They were, they were spent at the construction site helping build our house. And when it was completed, you know, my stepdad had all kinds of stuff in the backyard. Like we had this little farm. So we had, he built like, when I say he built, I mean mostly I built. Cause my weekends were like, I remember my weekends like, oh, I'm gonna get to sleep in and I would just hear a bang on my window like at five thirty in the morning and it's him like, hey, get up. It's time to work. I'm like dang.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  You know, so I go out there and we, we, we built a greenhouse. We, we had all kinds of fruits and vegetables. Uh, we had a compost pile. So I remember digging that hole. He made, he wanted it so big and I spent forever. I did all our irrigation. So I dug all the holes for that. And then he got this idea for, so we had all our fruits and vegetables. He's like, now we need our meat. So he's like, we're gonna, you know, in Czech, we used to rabbits.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  So I remember going to the state farm, like looking at all these different rabbits. And then he's like, oh, these are the kind that you can eat. So we bought like a male rabbit and like two or three females and we started breeding rabbits. Little did I know that was gonna be that. So that's another chore now that I had like taking care of these rabbits, feeding them. You know, cleaning up their poop. And then when I got the poop, I put it in the compost pile and everything, like all the clippings from the grass and, and everything we grew, we throw in the compost pile. And now I had to get in there and like mix it up and it was miserable. But then the, the baby rabbits got to the, to age. And, uh, he's like, hey, your chore from now on, another chore is gonna be like, hey, you're gonna kill the rabbits. You're gonna skin them and you're gonna put them in the freezer.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  And I'm like, well, I don't know how to kill a rabbit. He's like, you're gonna learn today. And he's like, well, let me know. He's like, let me know when you kill that first rabbit. Let me know and I'll show you how to skin it. So I, I remember being a kid cause I'm looking at, I'm like, How old are you at this point? I wanna say junior high. Okay. So what's that like? Like twelve. Twelve or thirteen, something like this? I'm more around eleven or twelve. Okay. Cause I remember being young. Cause I remember, so the first one, I'm like, okay, I think, I think I'm gonna drown the rabbit. Right? So I grab a bucket, I fill it up with water. And I grabbed this rabbit and I put it in the bucket and it freaking won't die and I'm and now I'm crying. I remember crying because I'm like, oh my God, please die, just die, damn it.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  And I'm just holding it and just like finally, you know, the rabbit dies and I'm just like, oh my God, that was the most miserable experience ever. I'm like, I'm literally, I'm crying, I'm a kid. And so finally I go back in, I'm like, okay, I killed the rabbit, you know, and he's like, stop crying, Fifina. That was his nickname for me.

• 17:34Jocko Willink?

  Which Fifina is freaking Czechoslovakian for what?

• 17:38Speaker 01

  It's Czechoslovakian for pussy.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  So, um, so you know, he, he shows me how to skin the rabbit and I'm like, okay, and I'm not really paying attention because I'm still traumatized. And then he's like.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  So now he's like, okay, it's time to kill the second one. And now I'm like, I'm gonna do it a different way. So I, I'm like, I grab a two by four. I'm like, all right, I'm gonna hit this rabbit on the side, on the head. So I grabbed the rabbit. I'm like petting it. You know, and then I, I hit it, but I kind of half ass hit it. So now he's just like twirling in my hands. And now again, I got snot running down my nose, tears, and I'm just like hitting this rabbit again, like, please damn it, just die. And finally, after whacking it like a million times, it died. Same thing comes out, teaches me how to, how to skin it. And then on the third rabbit, something happened. You know.

• 18:29Jocko Willink?

  Something already happened twice.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  But something happened that actually stuck with me for, for till today, actually.

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  All right.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  So I remember I got this rabbit and I'm petting it and now I'm, now I'm talking to myself and I'm like, all right, motherfucker.

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  By the way, this is how serial killers get created.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  So when I told my wife the story, she's like, I get it.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  But I'm, I'm looking at this rabbit and I'm like, you know, talking myself up. I'm like pumping myself up. I'm like, you know what? I gotta commit, like 100% commit. So I remember I grabbed that rabbit, I grabbed that two by four and I hit it as hard as I could and it was out. And from that point on, it's crazy because even in the teams, when I did something that I was a little bit scared of, or even in, you know, anything, I'm like, commit. That thought has always come to my head, like, if you're scared of doing something, you gotta 100% commit or it's not gonna work. And, and in that moment, I had that epiphany as an 11, 12 year old kid. So, yeah, that's my rabbit story.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 19:34Jocko Willink?

  I, you know, a lot of times people ask me questions about, cause I got kids and parenting and all that stuff. And one thing I warn ki- warn parents of, you know, if you push hard against your kids,

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 19:45Jocko Willink?

  They're gonna push back. And by the way, this isn't just with kids. This is with a SEAL platoon. This is with a company. This is with a business. You start imposing stuff on people, they're gonna start to push back, cause they're humans and humans don't like to have things imposed on them. And you can, by the way, you can impose things on people permanently, but you have to like crush them. And you have to continuously crush them forever. And you have to be willing to go to that distance where you crush them, which is not gonna produce the type of humans that you want. So was there any pushback? And, or let me rephrase that. At what age did you start to say, I'm pushing back against this stuff?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  I'm gonna say around my sophomore year. Um, you know, I'm 15 and, um, you know, like, like I said, my, my stepdad ruled with an iron fist. And at that point, I'm like, you know what? I'm not scared of you anymore. Because his punishments were so extreme. Like his punishments were like, oh, you're grounded for the weekend. It was like, you're grounded for the next two months. And if I messed up, it was like another month. And I was like, dude, there's like no light at the end of this tunnel.

• 20:46Jocko Willink?

  Two months when you're a kid.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  It's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, and you know, they didn't let me play sports. So I wasn't hanging around the jocks. So guess who I hung out with? I hung out with thugs. Hung out with the people that, you know, weren't the best influence on me and, um, I got into some trouble.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  You know, um, and I got, I got, I got locked away in, in juvenile hall and, and.

• 21:12Jocko Willink?

  So how old are you?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Uh, 15, 16 years old. And, um, I remember when that happened, cause my, my stepdad at this point, he had actually just graduated the CHP academy. So now he's law enforcement.

• 21:26Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's law enforcement and I'm running around, you know.

• 21:31Jocko Willink?

  Little mini gang banger.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, breaking the law and at one point I got caught. I got arrested and I remember the cop bringing me in and interviewing me and I'm just like, I don't want to talk because you know, I got that stupid mentality. I'm not, I'm no snitch. No, I'm a gangster. So I don't snitch. I don't say anything. And he's like, hey, it's not going to go. Little did I know, everybody else was singing like a bird. So, um, so it's crazy because I, I remember going to court. So they put me away. They called my parents and my parents like, leave them there. Like, you don't want to come get your kids? Like, nope. Leave them there. And I knew, and I even told the cop, I'm like, don't bother calling my parents. They're gonna leave me here. He's like, oh, you were right. So anyways, I'm in court and, and you know, the judge is like,

• 22:16Speaker 01

  hey, do you want an attorney? And I was like, no, I don't. And he's like, are you sure? Do you know what you're doing? I'm like, yep, I don't need an attorney.

• 22:21Jocko Willink?

  Fifteen years old, I'm going to represent myself in the court of law.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Well, I was like, hey, I'm, I'm guilty. I did it.

• 22:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay, check.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  And then he's like, so you plead? I was like, I plead guilty. Like, I'm not even gonna fight it. And he's like, check. And he gave me my sentence and I remember seeing my parents and no expression on their face, but I, I could tell like my mom was, was disappointed in me.

• 22:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  As they, they took me away in, in cuffs and, and had to do my time in juvenile.

• 22:46Jocko Willink?

  How, how long were you in juvie for?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  I think, I think a couple of months and that's because they, they were full and, and honestly, I, like, I, I was a good respectful. I was a, I wouldn't say good. I made, but I was a respectful kid because of the way I was raised. So when I was in juvie, like, you know, the correctional officers were like, you're like the politest criminal I've ever met.

• 23:05Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you start to see the path that you were going down at that point and, and realize like, maybe this is the way it's gonna end up?

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, having different roommates in juvenile hall kind of opened my eyes. I'm like, man, I don't belong here. Like some of the kids that were in there, like one of my roommates was in there because, you know, he tried to murder this girl with his friends and they were so high off drugs that when they tried to dig, they dig the hole to bury the body. They were so high that they did, they buried the hole like not even a foot deep and they put her in there and just put some dirt. Didn't even realize she was still alive. You know, I mean, those are the kind of roommates that I had. I think at one point they put me in with like a kid who was in there for a hate crime, like a skinhead. He was in there for a hate crime. And that, you know, just being there, I'm like, Dang, I don't belong here. And I felt terrible that my parents, because I knew my parents had raised me the right way.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  And I'm like, man, I really let them down here. Um, so that's when I knew I was like, this is, this is not what I want to do. So.

• 24:07Jocko Willink?

  Then so was that a, a lot of times you people think that, but then, you know, as soon as they get out and they get back around their friends, you know? Was that a good enough, like scared straight situation that you actually were scared straight?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Uh, I wouldn't say scared straight because now I'm like, okay, I did it. It was fine. Um. In my head, I'm like, I'm, I'm hard, you know, like I go back into juvie. Now I'm on probation and any, any little thing is like an automatic 10 days you go back. So when I got out, same thing, it was actually even worse now, you know, and it got to the point where I'm like, hey, you know what? I'm gonna do whatever I want. Whenever I want, whatever I want, whenever I want. And I would wait for my parents to go to bed and I would just sneak out of the house.

• 24:49Jocko Willink?

  So you kind of got emboldened.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 24:51Jocko Willink?

  Cause you went in there, you, because it wasn't really a scared straight thing. It was more like you got emboldened because now you think, hey dude, I could. Juvie wasn't that bad.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  You know, no factor. I'll get out. And so you actually got, you actually got worse.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  So I, I stopped committing crimes, but I was going out. I just wanted to hang out with my friends, honestly, because it was just so strict. And where I made my mistake is this, this is around the time where cell phones started coming out. So I would, you know, my parents went to bed early too, and they would put me to bed like at eight o'clock. I'm a teenager, put me to bed at eight o'clock, but at, at the time I'm like, cool.

• 25:25Jocko Willink?

  You in.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:26Jocko Willink?

  Put me to bed early, you know, because the earlier you put me in, the earlier I'm leaving.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I would wait for them to go to bed. I would go to the, to the, uh, living room. I would grab my dad's cell phone. And then I would roll out and now I'm the only kid like rolling around like with a cell phone. I'm like, yeah, let's call so and so, let's call so and so like, you know? Until the cell phone bill came out. I didn't know that because I didn't know how cell phones were.

• 25:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Cause back then, this is in the nineties.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:50Jocko Willink?

  So you get charged per minute, per call.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't cheap either.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  No, it was not.

• 25:55Jocko Willink?

  It was like a dollar a minute.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:57Jocko Willink?

  Or some, something crazy like that.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my dad blew a casket when he saw that bill and. Long story short, it was just this constant back and forth between him and I. And it got to the point where I told him, I'm like, hey, I'm not scared of you. I'm gonna do whatever I want, whenever I want. Like, what are you gonna do? Beat me? You ground me? I'm already grounded for life. And so at this time, I'm still getting in trouble for smaller things. And my probation officer was like, hey, listen, you're like at the point where we're just gonna put you away till you're 18. I was just like, oh dang. And I had a teacher at the time that I had built a great relationship with. He was like my, it was like a life skills class where I teach you how to like write checks, pay your bills, you know, stuff like that. And him and I had built a good relationship and I don't know how he got wind of it, but

• 26:43Speaker 01

  he knew the judge or whatever. And he was like, hey, you know, he's a good kid. He just, he's got a situation at home where he doesn't get along with his stepdad. And the judge is like, well, if you think he's such a good kid, then you adopt him. And he said, okay. And he adopted me. And at that point, like, I think my stepdad was like at the end of his, you know, his way, he's just like, I can't, I can't handle this kid. He's like, go. And he signed, he signed away and. So were you 16, 17 at this point? Seventeen, yeah, 17. So you're gonna basically. My senior year. Your senior year of high school, you're gonna go live with your teacher? Yeah, so I lived with him and it was a. What was the deal with this teacher? Is this like the coolest teacher ever? I don't know.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  So he was very religious, like him and his wife were very religious. They had five kids. They had raised them all to be very like successful people, like they were just good people. But in my head, I'm like, what is this guy thinking? Cause I wouldn't let some little thug move in with me. But honestly, when I moved in with him, I was so grateful that I told him, I'm like, hey, this is your house, your rules, and I'll follow them. And I didn't give him like a heap of trouble because I was so grateful for what he had done. And he treated me, he treated me like an adult for the first time. You know, he was just like, hey, if you're gonna go out, just let me know who you're with, what time you'll be back. And for me, that was like, what? You're gonna let me go out with my friend?

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Like, it was something that I wasn't allowed to do before. So I was so grateful for that. I'm like, dude, this is a great thing. I don't want to mess it up. And you didn't hear a peep from me for the rest of the year. Like, I was on my best behavior with him.

• 28:25Jocko Willink?

  Are you getting good grades in school?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So actually, that's the funny thing, because I actually did really well in school.

• 28:30Jocko Willink?

  Even this whole time?

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. And it was funny, because I had my probation officer required like a progress report. I think so. That's how he got a wind of it, because the teachers would look at me and be like, dude, you're a good kid. You get good grades. What are you filling this out for? And I'm like, my probation officer?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so there were a couple of teachers, actually, during that time that had a big influence on me. And one of them's name is Bobby Pryor, prior Navy vet. And he talked about Navy SEALs, too. And he had a big influence on me as well. And I remember him like telling stories about, you know, when he was in the Navy. And he told me this story that stuck with me for a long time about these two SEALs. They were on the beach, and they got in a fight with some biker dudes. And they just got back to back and got after it. And he's like, these bikers were laid out. And he just talked about how badass Navy SEALs were. But I still didn't make that connection. You know what I mean?

• 29:22Jocko Willink?

  The connection being that this is something you could actually do with your life?

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Correct. Yeah, I was just like, oh, that's cool. You know, so between him and the other teacher that I lived with, they were a big influence on me in a different way. Like, I might, you know, my stepdad taught me a lot of things that I'm super grateful, how to be tough, how to be, you know, work ethic. But they they had like a softer, more empathetic mentoring. I think that's a better word. They were more mentoring me.

• 29:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know the, well, here's your dad saying, hey, you can't go out with your friends, or sorry, your stepdad saying you can't go out with your friends, etc. Your mom's super strict. And it makes you want to not do what they're telling you to do.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Oh, 100%.

• 30:01Jocko Willink?

  When they impose things on you, makes you not want to do it. This other dude says, hey, you do what you want. Just, you know, just let me know what you're doing. And you all of a sudden want to follow the rules. It's like so such a simple psychology on human beings. When you impose things on people, they don't like it. When you give them freedom, they're gonna take advantage of it in a positive way. I don't, here's something interesting. Like, I have grown kids now. I have one that's not grown, but my other kids are. You know, uh, how old twenty two, twenty and eighteen, they didn't have curfews. Like, like, I'd just be like, oh, yep, cool. Oh, you know, go out. This is when they were thirteen years old, fifteen years old. I'd say, okay, you know, let me know where you're going.

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes, hey, you know, when are you going to be back? Are you coming back tonight? And I just let them do what they want to do. And they all turned out. They, they all are fine, you know, which.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  I mean, you're like stuttering, then they all, well, you know, they're fine.

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  I mean, they're all good kids. I mean, they're all, they are actually all, they're all good kids. They all like, you know, are on really good paths in life. And I, I never, now, if you were to step, there was some incidents that took place along the way. Some, some things that need some corrective measures need to be imposed from time to time. If things got a little bit too far out of line and that happened a few times. But then it was like, oh, they'd get back in line and realize and then I would just give them, kind of give them their freedom back. But you know what one of the key things is that you said is, and I tell this to people all the time. Treat them like adults, especially when they're in that age. This is, this is a trick too. There's a little trick to this. There's an age where, oh, you're fourteen years old. Oh, you think you can, you want to be, you want to be an adult?

• 31:43Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool. Guess what adults have? Jobs. Guess what adults do? Pay bills. They pay rent. They pay for their cell phone. They pay for their food. So you want to be treated like an adult? You want to do it every hour? Cool. I can treat you like an adult. You owe rent or, oh, you know, you need to pay for food and all that stuff. And they realize really quick, that's a real good appreciation tool. They, you want to make somebody appreciate what they've got? Make, treat them like an adult and, and they kind of, they're thinking they want to get treated like an adult. And then when they start getting treated like adult, they go, hey, I'm cool with being a kid for a little bit longer.

• 32:19Jocko Willink?

  So what, what'd you do when you graduated from high school then? Was it straight to the Navy?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  No, no, I actually had no intentions of joining the military. So after high school, I started working construction full time. And then on the weekends, I worked at Long's Drugs on Saturdays and Sundays. And this was the summer after I graduated. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And, and then, you know, those two teachers I talked about, they're like, oh, so, you know, you got to start college. I was like, no one had ever talked to me about college. And I was like, oh, I don't, you know, I wasn't excited about it. So they signed me up for college. They helped me out and I started going to community college and I didn't like it. I was there and I'm just like, I feel like this is high school all over again. Cause you know, you're taking the prereqs. So you're taking the same stuff. So in my head, I'm like, I'm not learning anything right now that's going to help me in life.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  So I dropped out very quickly. I think I was there for like two minutes and I went back to work in construction because I was making, you know, for an eighteen, seventeen. Actually, I was still seventeen because I graduated when I was seventeen. I was making good money for, you know, seventeen, eighteen year olds. And I would work seven days a week because I loved the fact that the more I worked, the more money I would make. So I'm like, dude, you mean I can work seven days a week? So I did it. And it was around that time at Long's Drugs, they used to have VHS, you know, still have VHS. And we rented out movies. And so every Friday night, I would go and pick a movie out for myself and that would be my Friday night. And one day I picked up the movie Navy Seals with Charlie Sheen.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  And I went home and I watched it and I was just like, whoa, this is badass. And then that's when I, this is, these are the guys that Mr. Prior talked to me about. And that's where I made that connection. And I'm like, I'm gonna go be a Navy SEAL. And I didn't even know how to swim that well.

• 34:05Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. I went into the recruiter's office, I think the next day and, you know, I told him, I was like, hey, I'm here to sign up for the Navy. I want to be a Navy SEAL. And of course, they allowed.

• 34:13Jocko Willink?

  God, he was stoked. That recruiter goes.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I was a recruiter's.

• 34:16Jocko Willink?

  That's outstanding, son. You look like you'd make a great Navy SEAL.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. Oh, yeah. This guy totally set me up for failure. Like, yeah. So he, you know, I went through the process very quickly because I'm like, hey, I'm committed. Let's do it. You know? And so I, you know, I take the ASVAP, whatever. And then he gives me the corpsman rating. He's like, what do you think about being a corpsman? And I was like, what's that? And he's like, oh, it's like a medic. When you get out, you're like a registered nurse and you can have a job. I was like, okay, cool. So when I get out, I'll have a skill. So I'll be the medic on the team. So I'm like, yeah, let's do it. So.

• 34:54Jocko Willink?

  Were you in the dot? Were you, did you get some kind of a SEAL contract like how?

• 34:59Speaker 01

  They didn't have that back then, but here, here's the thing. I didn't know anything. So this recruiter totally me screwed me over. One, I wasn't a citizen. So you can't be in the teams without being, but you know, this, this part of it will come into play. So, you know, I go off to boot camp. He ships, he ships me off under a corpsman contract. So I go to boot camp. Yeah.

• 35:17Jocko Willink?

  So you're, so just so everyone knows, you joined the Navy as a regular Navy dude as a corpsman. And that, that gives you no leverage whatsoever to try and get to Bud's. I mean, very little leverage. What year is this you figure?

• 35:31Speaker 01

  1999. And by the way, I, I, I barely got into the Navy because I had, I had felonies on my record. So I had to get like multiple waivers and back then, you know, being in the military wasn't cool. So they were like, all right, you know, cause I told my son now, I'm like, listen, he knows I got in trouble as a kid. I'm like, listen, you can't do that nowadays.

• 35:50Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  I mean, you gotta have secret clearances. You gotta do this. I mean, you do.

• 35:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's totally, they're way more selective now.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:58Jocko Willink?

  In every branch and for SEALs for sure. It's. Yeah. Cause the, there's so many kids that wanna go into it. They get to pick and choose.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. So. So I go to boot camp and they have the video, you know, with all the cool stuff. And then I'm like, this is it. And like, who wants to try out? And I'll, I raise my hand. I'm like, heck yeah. This is it. But the problem is I didn't know how to swim.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  So we take the screener. We take the screen and, and I can get from one end of the pool to the other, but I am not what you would call a good swimmer. Like I never took, you know, swimming classes. I, I could do this.

• 36:37Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Like kinda doggy my way over and I wasn't scared of the water. It just, I just wasn't good. And I failed it the first time around. I was like, dang dude, what am I gonna do? You know, now I'm really stressing cause now I'm like, damn, I wanna go to the regular Navy. And I was really, really scared of the regular. I was like, I don't wanna get stuck on a ship. And so they're like, um, my RDC really, really liked me. You know, I was her yeoman. So I had, I had a lot of freedom, you know, the yeoman cat, it like takes all the paperwork. So you have actually a lot of freedom in boot camp to walk around. Cause I would deliver all the, all the stuff.

• 37:07Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you go to boot camp?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Great Lakes. Yeah, so she was like, hey, I'll let you try out one more time. I was like, oh no. So I go. And by the way, everyone and their mother's trying out. So there's like 50 people in the pool. So I'm swimming and I'm listening to the times and I'm like, oh my God, I'm not gonna make it again. So I just stood up at one point. I was like, I'm done. And they're like, okay, get out and get ready for pushups and pullups. I was like, oh shit, that worked. So I got out.

• 37:34Jocko Willink?

  So you just cut a lap off your time.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Oh, I was gonna say, cut like two. I'm gonna say it was like at least two. I was nowhere near finishing. And but there's so many kids in the pool.

• 37:45Jocko Willink?

  Did you do any work? Like, had you worked out at all?

• 37:48Speaker 01

  So I was very athletic. Yeah.

• 37:51Jocko Willink?

  But you didn't play sports?

• 37:52Speaker 01

  So I played sports in high school.

• 37:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. Yeah, we didn't cover that.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The coaches. So I played, you know, at PE, I would play football, basketball, anything. And I would catch on to it very quickly. Like, coaches were always hitting my mom up.

• 38:04Jocko Willink?

  Did you play any sports before the school?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  No, I wasn't allowed to.

• 38:06Jocko Willink?

  So it was just PE?

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's why the coaches, because the coaches are usually the PE teachers. So they call my mom and they're like, hey, like, your son really needs to play football. I really need to do that. Because I was really athletic. I was fast and I was functionally strong. Because I did so many chores that I was, I was a very, pretty strong kid, you know, for my age. So. So I was athletic. I could do pushups all day, pullups all day, you know, I could run. I just couldn't swim. So when I got out, you know, I crushed the pullups and pushups and everything else. And so I'm going through the process and then. The dive motivators like, hey, just so you know, corpsmen are not, it's not a SEAL rating. It was the only year that they did it where for whatever reason, they were like, if you want to be a corpsman with the teams, you gotta go to the Marines first.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  So I was like, I don't want to do that. So I went to the office. And I changed my rating to like a boatswain's mate.

• 38:59Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  And then I go back and I'm like, hey, you know, I'm a SEAL rating now. He's like, cool, now we can get you in. And then as he's doing my paperwork, he's like, you're not a citizen. You can't go. I'm like dang it. So I go back, I change it back to a corpsman because I know what a boatswain's mate is. So I go back, I change it back to a corpsman and you know, they're like, hey, sorry, man, we really liked you, but you gotta get your citizenship first. So from there I went to corps school.

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  And then from corps school, where, where, where you ended up with the Marines, right?

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So about the majority of the corpsmen, especially if you're male, you're gonna go to the Marines. So they sent me to a school called FMSS where they basically teach you how to be a Marine. You know, they teach you like Marine Corps, uh, like ranks, etiquette, whatever. And then at one point they, they ask you if you want to go Marine Corps regs, which is basically you gotta cut your hair like them. And if you do, you get like to wear their, their green uniform. I forget what they're called. And they're, and like everybody was like super moto and they're like, yeah, I want to be Marine Corps regs. And then they're like, what about you, Mendez? You want to be Marine Corps regs? And I was like, no. And like, but you get a uniform. You get to wear the Marine Corps uniform. I'm like, I got enough uniforms. Before you had to always carry them around in your sea bag and you had inspections all the time. I'm like, I don't want another uniform.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  And it was right around that time where I met the, the recon corpsman that was there.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  I mean, you just looked at him, he just looked like a stud. So I immediately gravitated towards him. And then he's like, hey, just so you know, we're gonna have tryouts if you want to be a recon corpsman. At the time they were like 40% manned. They're like, we're really hurting. We could really use people. So I go and I try out and I fail to swim again.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  But you know, he's like, hey, man, get out, do the rest of it. And, and that screener was actually legit, like it was tough, like it was a ruck run. It was like pull ups, push ups. It was like the Marine Corps PFT. And then it was like all these different calisthenics with, with no number. You just did it for time and they had a number that they wouldn't tell you. So like, hey, you gotta do this amount of mountain climbers and they wouldn't tell you what it is. It was like a day long screener. And I passed everything else, like I crushed everything else. And he was like, hey, I'll tell you what. He's like, you have until the end of FMSS to pass the swim. He's like, you're obviously, you know, athletic, you have the physical abilities to do, you just can't swim. So I'm like, okay, perfect.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  And at one point, I remember going in his office and doing like the dive physical and getting my chest x-ray and whatnot. Somehow through conversation, I was like, yeah, I want to go to BUDS. He's like, you want to do what? He's like, I was like, I want to go, I want to go to BUDS eventually. Like, I'm just kind of doing this, you know, my time with the Marines until I could get to BUDS. And he grabs my paperwork. He like crumbles it up. He's like, you will never be a recon corpsman. And he chucked my stuff in the garbage. He's like, get out of my office.

• 41:50Jocko Willink?

  That was it?

• 41:51Speaker 01

  And I was like, oh, sad. Yeah, so. Then I got orders to, uh, two, four, which is a grunt, grunt battalion there in Camp Pendleton. And as soon as I get there, I'm like really regretting it. I'm like, dang, what did I do? You know, maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut and just gone with it. And as soon as I get there.

• 42:10Jocko Willink?

  That's usually good advice.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. And so as soon as I get to two, four, they're already like, hey, we're getting ready to deploy. So I basically, I didn't do a workup or anything. I basically just, I think I was home for maybe a month and then we deployed to Japan. My first deployment.

• 42:27Jocko Willink?

  And what are you doing? What did you do on deployment? Would you exercises and stuff?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Um, so I was like the, the coverage corpsman and, and you know, my chief knew that I wanted to go to BUDS. So he, he would attach me to like the amphibious assault platoon or whatever, like where they did all the boat stuff and OTB stuff. So I did that, uh, was like their, their corpsman. Basically, if anybody got hurt, I was the corpsman coverage for that. But during that deployment, that's where I like got really serious about learning how to swim. And I was in the pool every chance I could get. Like if, if I had the time, I would go in the mornings, I would go to lunch and that's why. Oh, because there was a guy that I met that had dropped out of BUDS.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  And I told him, I was like, do you know how to do the combat side stroke? He's like, yeah. I was like, teach me.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  So he taught me and, and that's where I, I got proficient at, at swimming was during that deployment.

• 43:17Jocko Willink?

  This is still pre nine eleven. So it's just all kind of yeah, just going on training missions and big exercises. And so that's a normal six month deployment you go on with the Marines.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty uneventful.

• 43:28Jocko Willink?

  Get done with that and what happened? You come home from that?

• 43:31Speaker 01

  So I come home and then uh we get a new chief and we start talking and then he's like, hey, have you ever thought about going recon? I was like, uh, I was like, yeah, I've thought about it, you know, but I want to go to Bud's or whatever. He's like, hey, why don't you have the conversation with this this recon chief? And so the recon chief and I start talking and then he's like, um, he's like, hey, we have a guy here who's not really working out. And we we want to see if you want to come over here. And I told him, I'm like, hey, I want to be honest with you, like, my goal is to go to Bud's. He's like, hey, listen, no problem. He's like, why don't you come over here, see if you like it. If you like it, stay. If not, I'll send you to Bud's. And I was like, okay. And then he's like, um, he's like, if you come over here, I'll give you B A H.

• 44:12Jocko Willink?

  Which as an E.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Damn, what's B H?

• 44:15Jocko Willink?

  Basic allowance for housing, but it's legit. It's legit money. No, it could be like twelve hundred bucks a month.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:23Jocko Willink?

  And when you're what were you?

• 44:24Speaker 01

  E four.

• 44:24Jocko Willink?

  Yo, you're in E four, you're sort of like maybe almost doubling your paycheck, not quite, maybe like fifty percent of your pay. You're gonna you're gonna make extra. It's a big deal getting that B A H. That's why dudes get married, by the way. Dudes, that's why you see eighteen year old Marines are like, yep, getting married. Why are you getting married? Oh, you met the woman of your dreams? No, but I'm gonna get B A B A H, son. They want that B A H.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  I understand.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's it's a big deal, especially in the Marines, because in the Marines, the the barracks had to be like ninety five percent man and you had to be like an E five or above. And so I'm an E four and he's like B A H and some magic words. I'm like, let's do it. So I headed over there and uh and I see the guy that I'm supposed to replace and the guy looks like Superman. I mean, he's super tall, just jacked. And I'm like, I'm replacing this guy? And then, you know, I kind of like, I could tell that the L P O there kind of saw, I was like, oh dang, you know, I see this guy. And then he's like, his, yeah, he looks like Superman, right? And I was like, yeah, he does. He's like, you know what's his kryptonite? Water.

• 45:27Jocko Willink?

  Ooh.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  And I guess he he would freak out during the water evolution because they had him like tread water with, they do a lot of stuff over there with water. And um, I guess he would just like freak out. So I'm like, okay, cool. So that's how I ended up there. Um, they put me right into. My first introduction to them was was was an SR. So they were like, hey, you're gonna do an OTB SR. At Pendleton? Yeah, Pendleton. I had just been there. I had just gotten there. And there was a corpsman there who had at the recon battalion who had orders to go to BUDS. So they're they're like, hey, can you take, you know, Carlos under your wing, kind of show them how to pack out for an OTB SR? And by the way, I've never swam in the ocean before. So now I'm about to, you know, at night, get dropped off, swim through the surf zone. Yeah.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  With a recon loadout. Oh, yeah. Which is no joke. Enormous. So he's like teaching me how to like load my stuff out. And then I'm like, hey, what about like warm weather stuff? He's like, this is recon, bro.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  And then, by the way, this is winter time. And and then he's like, this is recon, bro. Like, we don't take that stuff. And I'm like, OK, you know, it's like, check. He's like, we take batteries and this and that. He's like, I'm like, OK, got it. And then I'm like, hey, question, how am I getting this ruck through the surf because it's heavy? He's like, oh, you can put flotation on it. I put a ton of flotation on mine because I'm like, damn, I'm gonna drown. So we go and we do the SR. I make it through the surf zone, just sheer will. But I mean, I must have swallowed like a gallon of water going through the surf. That was my first time ever. But I, you know, I'm trying not to be the weak link. A Fifi, what is it? A Fifina, yeah. I'm trying not to be a Fifina.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  So we make it through and, you know, we change out and we start patrolling and then we get to the to the place where we're gonna set up camp. And then everybody starts busting out their warmies. Hell, yeah, they were. And I look around and I'm like, damn it. And they're like, hey, what's up, doc? Like, where's your stuff? I'm like, We're recon. I was like, I thought that we didn't bring warmies out. And they're like, no way, bro. Like, we bring a ton of warmies out. And I was just like, oh, and I'm and I'm freezing cold. Oh, yeah. Because it's winter time out in Camp Pendleton. We just went through the surf. So I'm still wet. And finally, I'm just like, you know what? I'm gonna volunteer to just watch the radio all night. I was like, there's no way I'm sleeping tonight. And so I did. I just

• 47:50Speaker 01

  jackhammered all night long, watched the radio. And we'd get up and walk around just to try to keep myself warm. And the Marines loved it, you know, because I volunteered to do watch all night long for for the rest of the SR. But that was my introduction.

• 48:03Jocko Willink?

  I was, when I got to the teams, I was a new guy, didn't have my bird yet, and I got sent to a comm school out on the east coast. That was run by, uh, by the teams. And I was a new guy and my butt, my swim buddy was a new guy, two of us. And we, we, there was a, like a six day, five or six day FTX that you went on at the end of this comm schools, a two month comm schools. Freaking legit, it was a great course. And the chief that was running it, you know, I was like asking him questions because I was wanting to know, you know, what would be a good thing to bring when we're in the field. And I said, hey, you know, our guy, you know, should I bring like a sleeping bag? Should I? And he goes, if you're hardcore willing, because you know, I was always trying to be hardcore. He's like, if you're hardcore willing, he was bringing a poncho and a poncho liner.

• 48:47Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, well, check, I am fucking hardcore and I'm just bringing a poncho and a poncho liner and I did. And that's what I went out in the field with and as we inserted, the first night, it was raining as we inserted. It turned to sleet, like as the vehicles pulled up to drop us off and then it turned into snow. It was balls cold, balls cold. And on this course, you had like a comms window every, every two to four hours, you'd have to make comms to some different part of the country. And most guys would like miss comm windows and that would be, you were getting graded the whole time. And if you had the best grade at the end, then you get extracted early. And so we, my swim buddy, same thing, like we were, we were trying to be hardcore.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  So we didn't have warmies for shit, we freezing. And we never missed a comm window and the reason we never missed a comm window is because we couldn't, we couldn't sleep. We just, just like freezing, but yeah, that's, um, always bring a ground pad and always bring a bivvy sack. Cause that's what I learned eventually. The bivvy sack is the deal. If you got a bivvy sack, you can climb in there. And you can pretty much just gut through some serious shit. But, um, yeah, that's good. That's the way, that's what, that's what happens to the new guys.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:01Jocko Willink?

  Don't believe when your chief says we don't bring warmies, he's full of shit.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, actually the, the recon corpsmen that were there, they were cool about it because they were like, hey, we heard what happened. Like dude, I'm not going to say the guy's name. He's like, he totally hooked you up. I'm like, yeah, he did. So at that point, they put me into RIP, which is the recon doctrine nation platoon. So basically it's you competing for a slot at their at BRC, which is like their selection process.

• 50:29Jocko Willink?

  And that's the one that's, is it still in Coronado?

• 50:31Speaker 01

  It's in Camp Pendleton. So RIP is in Camp Pendleton.

• 50:34Jocko Willink?

  What's the one that used, there used to be something in Coronado?

• 50:35Speaker 01

  That's BRC.

• 50:36Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  So in RIP, they put everybody in there who just showed up to the battalion and you're, because there's only 30 slots. So you're competing. So the top 30 guys go to BRC. If you didn't make that cut, you go through RIP again and hopefully you make it through the, you know, you're in the top 30.

• 50:51Jocko Willink?

  How long is RIP?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  So there's no like real timeline to it. I think it was just like, hey, you're just doing it until the next class of BRC shows up. And then they start ranking you and then you get your, your slot. And so, you know, the corpsmen were like, hey, just so you know, like, you know, Marines are always harder on the corpsmen. Don't let us down. And so I go to RIP and I'm doing well on everything except for land nav. I can't freaking land nav to save my life, dude. I was just getting lost and I was really getting down on myself. And, and then one day it just clicked. Like I looked at the map and I'm just like, ah.

• 51:25Jocko Willink?

  It kicked the life.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  I get it. Yeah. I don't know. It was just like this moment, like a light bulb moment. And from that point on, like, I was like, land nav, got it. So I was able to secure a spot to BRC. So I go to BRC, which is in Coronado, and that's where I start seeing like the buds guys and I'm like, dang, you know, I wish I was here. But I'm, I'm here now and, um, you know, I did pretty well in BRC. There was a guy there named Mendoza and he was not good at all. And the instructors would get us confused. And so I would be running by and like, hey, you drop. And I was like, okay. And like, where's you, I heard you lost your map and this and that. And I was like, that wasn't me. That was Mendoza. And they're like, oh, like, well, push them out anyways, you know?

• 52:08Speaker 01

  And then finally this guy, I, I don't remember if he quit or if he got dropped, but thank goodness. Cause then once he got dropped, I'm just like, cool. Cause he, he was just messing up left and right and they would get us confused. Mendez and Mendoza. So I had to pay the man a few times for his stuff. And then sometimes they're like, you know what? Both of you, just pay the man.

• 52:26Jocko Willink?

  How long is BRC?

• 52:27Speaker 01

  If I remember correctly, back then, I think it was like two months long.

• 52:32Jocko Willink?

  And so you, obviously you finished it?

• 52:34Speaker 01

  I did not. I actually got a stress fracture about two weeks from graduating. And, um, you know, they, they sent me back to the, to the BAS with the corpsman. I got x-rayed and everything like, yeah. And at the time, you know, they were like, hey, how was he doing? And like, actually, he ranked number one in the class before he got dropped. So he's like, he's welcome to come back.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  And then at that point, they're like, hey, do you want to go back? And I said, no. I was like, I want to go to BUDS. I made my decision. And I was like, hey, I, I want to do this. Like, because here's the thing, like, if you finish,

• 53:08Speaker 01

  now you owe them time. Because after that, they sent, yeah, if you finish, then they send you to jump school, dive school, and now you belong to them because they've invested money into you.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  And it was kind of funny too, because when I went, they were like, somehow it came up that I wasn't a citizen. And they were like, oh shit, you're not a citizen? Like, you actually weren't supposed to go to BRC if you weren't. So they were like, let's get you some citizenship. So they, they kind of fast-tracked me and I was able to get my citizenship. And so they're like, hey, for the rest of the time here, you know, we're just going to attach you to a platoon. Uh, and

• 53:40Jocko Willink?

  So they approved you going to BUDS? They were like, all right, if that's what you want to do, cool.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  They were really, yeah, they were awesome about it. They, I had great leadership there. They were great, great, like, super professional guys. I still keep in touch with some of them. So hey, I'll tell you what we're going to do till, till you get orders and you go, we're just going to put you in a platoon. And you're going to do workup deployment and you just be the corpsman. And then when you get your orders to go to BUDS, you go. So that's what I did. So I got orders to go to BUDS.

• 54:06Jocko Willink?

  Were you worried about the stress fracture scenario? Cause like, that's all kinds of people get stress fractures in BUDS.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  I wasn't. Cause I, I, I never, you know, I was like, oh, I'll heal up. I'm young.

• 54:17Jocko Willink?

  No factor.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, I got orders to go to BUDS in November of 2003, right? Or 2002, sorry, 2002.

• 54:28Jocko Willink?

  November of 2002. So where were you when, uh, nine 11 happened?

• 54:31Speaker 01

  I was at the recon battalion. But they were like, hey, I, I don't think we got deployed or anybody from that battalion got deployed.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  To Afghanistan at that time, but I was still there. But you know, at that time, I already had my pass. So they were like, hey, even if you go there, you're not going to go with the platoon.

• 54:51Jocko Willink?

  So then when did you, when did you get to BUDS finally?

• 54:54Speaker 01

  November of 2002.

• 54:57Jocko Willink?

  What you expected? I mean, you must have been pretty freaking kinda ready for it at this point.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I had, I had run with a ruck. I had done OTBs, countless OTBs. I was really good at LANF. I mean, like I got attached to a platoon, did a workup deployment with them. So I was, I was ready.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  And so when I showed like, oh, here's the thing too. They, they, they sent me to like a, like a combat engineer battalion. They're like, hey, we're going to send you, you can't be in the platoon anymore because they're about to deploy. And you know, obviously it's going to overlap. You're going to start BUDS before we're not going to bring you home halfway through deployment. So they're like, go to this combat engineering battalion and you can work out all day. And that's where I met this guy named Captain Gwynn.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Who had like a master's degree in kinesiology and was all about in the fitness. And when he learned that I was going to BUDS, he's like, let me train you. I was like, are you serious? He's like, yeah. So he got me even more prepared. Like we worked out three times a day in the morning, at lunch and afterwards. And then he started teaching me how to eat properly. So when I got to BUDS, I was, I was ready. Like I could do 30 or more pull ups, 120 pushups, 120 sit. Like I was, I was a machine when I got there.

• 56:08Jocko Willink?

  And your water had obviously improved?

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. At that point I'd done countless OTBs and yeah, that was good to go.

• 56:16Jocko Willink?

  And then did you get what you expected there in BUDS? Any, any issues or anything?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  So when I got there, I'm like, you know, everybody tells you, oh, you gotta be the gray man. So I'm like, okay, cool. I'm going to be the gray man. But unfortunately.

• 56:27Jocko Willink?

  And by gray man, people that don't know, this is just a term to, to explain. If you can go to BUDS and you can kinda not stand out, that's a good thing. Cause. There's very few people that stand, there's only, might be one or two, maybe three people in a class that stand out because they're good. But the people that stand out because they're bad, and then once you got someone watching you.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:49Jocko Willink?

  Then everything, you're, they're gonna start seeing all kinds of things that you're doing that are jacked up. So. One of the strategies of going to Bud's is to try to be the quote gray man, meaning just be in the middle. Finish the stuff, don't stand out, don't draw any attention to yourself. And that's a good strategy for getting through and you had heard, I don't think we had that. I don't think that was a term when I went through. Uh, but I kind of instinctively, well, everyone instinctively knew you didn't want the freaking instructors to know your name or your face. Or you just wanted them to ignore you as much as possible. So, you know, you're just trying to do what you're told and try and, you know.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:27Jocko Willink?

  Try not to stand out.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was the plan. I'm like, all right, I'm not gonna shine. You know, I'm just gonna stay in like the top 25%. But that was not possible because when I first got to Bud's, you know, you're standing watch when you're waiting to class up. And, um, you know, a buddy of mine there and Buzz is like, hey, let's go out one night, you know, let's, before we go out. So we go out and we party and.

• 57:51Jocko Willink?

  How, how old are you?

• 57:52Speaker 01

  I'm 22.

• 57:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, 2002, I'm 22.

• 57:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was like, I was young, so I couldn't, going out wasn't a thing. I could go to the, the bar, the, the E-club on base you could drink when you were 18. But I wouldn't even want to do that. I just wanted to make it through Bud's. So it's weird to me, it would have been, it's weird to me like having a guy like, hey, let's go out to a bar. Cause I can't fathom what it would be like to go to a bar when I was in Bud's.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we go out and he starts talking to this girl. And then he's like, hey, bro, like I need you to, you know, her friend really likes you. Like I need, I need you to, to, to entertain her while I'm with this girl and blah, blah. And I'm like, dude, I got a girlfriend. He's like, come on, man, we're gonna be in the teams. Like you're supposed to have my back. You don't want to be known as that guy. And I'm like, really? Like you're gonna play that card with me? So I'm like, dude, I'm, I'm not digging, you know, I'll talk to her, I'll keep her busy for you, but I could tell she, she's into me. Like she wants, she, she wants more. And he's like, dude, we're gonna go back to their place. And I'm like, dude, I really don't want to. He's like, bro, come on. You gotta do this for me. I'm like, listen, I think she wants more than than what I'm willing to give.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Cause one, I wasn't attracted or two, you know, I had a girlfriend at the time and then um. So I'm like, all right, dude, like I'll go, I'll go back to their house with you. And when we get there, I I see her car and it has a first recon battalion sticker on it. And I recognize that sticker because it's a sticker for different parking lots. You had different stickers. And that was like an operator sticker, like if you got to park in the operator parking lot. And so I was like, hey, where'd you get that sticker from? She's like, oh, I could tell she's getting flustered. And she's like, my hu- my husband. And in my head, I'm just, I'm just like, Yahtzee, this is my out. And I'm like, bro, we cannot do this. We gotta go. I was like, I am not doing that. Now I have a legit reason to not go through with this.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  So we take off, we go back to Bud's. And uh, now I'm standing watch on on Monday morning and I get a phone call. I'm I'm standing watch at the quarter deck with another guy. And I get a phone call from the six eighteen quarter deck. So six eighteen is where the barracks are at. So you have the Bud's quarter deck and you have the barracks quarter deck. And it's it's one of the guys in in my class and he's like, hey, Los, there's there's some marine here to see you. And it didn't even cross, honestly, dude, it didn't even cross my mind. Yeah, cause you you're in the Marines. Yeah, and I was like, oh, cool. One of my, one of my buddies is coming here to visit me. I was like, that's awesome. I was like, cool, man. What's his name? And he's like, hey, bro, what's your name? He's like, he doesn't need to know my name. He slept with my wife.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  And I was like, what? I was like, I didn't sleep with his wife. And I'm like, bro, tell him I could, I could explain like nothing happened like. I didn't know she was married, blah, blah. So I'm trying to explain. And all I hear is this guy in the background saying like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill this guy. Like, I wanna talk to him right now. And I'm like, dude, I'm on watch. Tell him I'm on watch. And when I get off at noon, I can talk to him. And he's like, no, I wanna talk to him right now. And then I'm like, fine, tell him to come up to the to the Bud's quarter deck and I can talk to him here. And I guess tell him nothing happened. Like, dude, I don't know what's going on in your marriage, but nothing happened. So then my buddy's like, dude, he's headed over there and he's, he's big. He's a huge dude. I'm like, oh my God.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  So I'm sitting there and, and then the other guy that I'm with, he's like, bro, you have to tell the instructor. Nick, you have to tell the O D. He's like, there's no way you get in a fight here on the quarter deck, you're done. And the O D happens to be a first phase instructor that day.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  So I'm just like, oh my goodness. So I'm like, all right. All right. So I go to the first phase office, you know, I ring the bell. I'm like, you know, H M three Mendez here to see instructor so and so. And the whole first phase staff is in there. Cause this is in the daytime. Yeah, it's in the daytime. Yeah, this is morning. So I go in there and at that time, all the instructors at Bud's were like enormous. They're all like six, two and up, just jacked out of their minds. Like I, I swear they do it on purpose for intimidation factor, but at the time they were all enormous. So I go in there and they're like drop turd. So I'm in the push up position in my dress blues, you know, and they're like, what do you want? I'm just like some Marines coming over to kick my ass.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  And they're like, would you screw his old lady or something? I was like, nobody thinks I did. And they're like, like, who's this Marine coming over here to start some shit? Like, let's go over there and beat his ass. So the entire first phase staff is like, yeah, let's go over there. So they all head over there to, to the quarter deck. And at the time, there's like some guys from like team five that were waiting there to, to screen for another team. And some of them knew each other's like, hey, you know, what's up, what's up? I'm like, oh, you know, some brain coming over here to start some shit. They're like, hell yeah, let's beat his ass. So now I'm like, yeah, come on over here, you know? And, uh, and so we're waiting and nothing happens. And I'm like, dude, where is this guy? And then the phone rings and it's my buddy from six eighteen. And he's like, hey, bro, I heard what happened. I was totally messing with you.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  And I could literally feel the blood just like drain from my face and then the instructor's like, is it him? And I was just like, I just, I, I, I didn't, I couldn't speak. So I just handed him the phone. And then he's like, this instructor so and so, who is this? He's like, oh, this is Airman so and so. Like, where's the Marine? He's like, it was a joke. He's like, oh, you got jokes? I got jokes too. He's like, you and Mendez in your wet suits, two canteens on the grinder.

• 1:03:27Jocko Willink?

  Get some.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. We got beat. He ended up quitting shortly thereafter.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  But there was no being the gray man. They all knew my name.

• 1:03:40Jocko Willink?

  You were the man.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And it was just like, from that point on, I'd be like, where's Mendez? Doesn't matter. Hit the surf. Oh, you passed your uniform inspection. That's great. Hit the surf. So, yeah. So I was like, all right, well, if I'm not gonna be the gray man, just go balls out, I guess. Might as well.

• 1:03:55Jocko Willink?

  Friggin legit.

• 1:03:58Jocko Willink?

  So you're not the gray man anymore and you're going, just going hard. Is there, was there any, did you have any issues in BUDS?

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did. Um, no, not with the.

• 1:04:11Jocko Willink?

  BUDS finds the issues, man. Finds your issues.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, during one of the surf passage, um, evolutions, I had one of the paddles come across and like, break across my shin. So I had this huge bruise on my shin for a while and I was like, you know, whatever. And I just kept going through training and at one point, I realized that when I would press down on my muscle, it would just stay. And my knee got really swollen. I could barely move it and I'm a corpsman. So I know, I'm like, dude, these are like, um, symptoms of compartment syndrome. But I didn't want to say anything. So I, I made it to the weekend and I went back up to the, to the recon battalion. And I'm like, hey, guys, like, is this what I think it is? And like, I think it is like, dude, you need to go to the hospital. So I was like, well, I don't want to go to BUDS. Cause I don't want to get dropped or rolled or whatever.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  So I checked myself into Camp Pendleton Hospital and then they're like, dude, you gotta get this drained. You either have to have surgery or you have to get this drained. And I was like, well, can we try draining it first? And then he was like, yeah, sure. So they got this enormous needle. I mean, it was thick too. And they just started like draining the blood from there and they're like, Dude, you're not gonna be able to to finish BUDS and whatever. I was like, no, I'll be fine.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  So I go back to BUDS and then the instructors got word that I had checked into to medical up there and they're like, dude, we have a medical here. They were cool about it. Like, I thought they were gonna be pissed, but they were like, hey, you know, they liked me at that point.

• 1:05:37Jocko Willink?

  What phase was that?

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  First phase. This was before Hell Week.

• 1:05:39Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, before Hell. So it was like the week before Hell Week. And then they were like, hey, no big deal. We'll just roll you to the next class. And I was like, you know, it was extremely disappointing. So I got rolled. And then I got rolled into two, four, five. And then the run before, like the the last day before we started Hell Week on a run, I stepped in a pothole. Or I stepped in like a, you know, hole in the sand and I twisted my ankle really bad. Like, the thing was enormously swollen. And then I was like, no, it's fine. Like, I'll go through Hell Week and, you know, I'll be fine. And they're like, dude, you're not gonna be able to go through that. And in my head, I'm like, this is twice now. There's no way they're keeping me.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  And the the Proctor at the time, he, you know, he's looking through my record and he's like, dude, you haven't failed a single evolution here. Like, not a uniform inspection, not a room inspection. And you know how they are over there. He's like, not one? I was like, no. So, you know, I had attention to detail from A, my childhood, and B, you know, my time with the Marines. Like, I had attention to detail and I could follow directions. I was like, that was the one thing I could really do. So they were like, you know, you haven't failed anything at all. They're like, you know what? We're gonna roll you one last time. And then, you know, last time, I made it all the way through, no issues.

• 1:07:03Jocko Willink?

  And then where'd you end up going from there?

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  So, you know, you got jump school, SQT, Alaska, and then I was a corpsman. So they sent me to eighteen Delta to to go through the special operations medic course.

• 1:07:22Jocko Willink?

  Which is freaking long, too.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a little over six months. If you go through the full course, it's like a year long.

• 1:07:28Jocko Willink?

  Did you go through the short course or the long course?

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I went through the short course. They asked me if I wanted to do the long course. And I said, no, I didn't want to do that. But before I headed out there, you know, I'd been dating the girl I was telling about Bud's and we actually ended up getting married before I went out there. And I did it because when I was going, so I had just bought a house too. So I bought a house around that time in San Diego or not in San Diego is in Temecula because I'm an idiot. You know, and I was like, oh, look at this big ass house I could buy out here for cheap. You know, back then it was really cheap out there and I didn't realize like how long that drive was.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  So, um, so I, I got married because I'm like, hey, I really need the San Diego BH because I spoke to the admin lady at Bud's and she's like, yeah, if you have a house and you're married and you have, you're here, you're going to get San Diego BH and not North Carolina BH, which is like, it's pennies compared to, to San Diego.

• 1:08:20Jocko Willink?

  So once again, why did you get married? Want that BH?

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  I did love her.

• 1:08:25Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure there's other reasons.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  But yeah, so the, the reason I bring that up is because that was actually a sticking point when I, when I was there, it was an issue because as I was going through the training, I wasn't getting paid at all. I was getting zero.

• 1:08:40Jocko Willink?

  Like no money?

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  No, no BH.

• 1:08:42Jocko Willink?

  No BH, okay.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Which is a big deal because now I got a mortgage. And so I'm digging into my savings and I had been going, you know, you know, to the, um, to the cadre that were there. They have some seal cadre there as well. It's not like army guys. Obviously they have the liaisons for, for NSW. And, um, I, you know, I kept going up to them and telling them like, hey, I still haven't gotten paid, still haven't gotten paid. And they were just like, oh, don't worry about it. And like, it'll happen. Like they, I just felt like they weren't concerned about it at all. And for being honest, I wasn't a fan of theirs. Like I could just, I just didn't get a good feeling from them. And I'm really digging into my savings and now I'm running out of money. And I don't know if you know Captain Smithers is.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  So he was the CEO at Bud's when we were there and obviously like they knew who I was because of what happened. So, you know, him and I had chatted every now and then, and he actually came out and did some jumps with us. And at one point during one of the jumps, like he was sitting next to me and he was like, hey, you know, just so you know, if you ever need anything, reach out.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  You see where this is going? So I call Bud's quarter deck and I'm like, like, you know, Bud's quarter deck and I'm like, yeah, can you please transfer me to Captain Smithers office?

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  So I told him the story. I'm like, hey, I haven't gotten paid. Like, these guys have totally blown me off. They haven't been helpful at all, blah, blah. And he's pissed. He's like, check. So he has Commander Zinke call me and Commander Zinke calls me and then he's like, that's, that's unsat that you've gone that long without getting paid. So he calls over to the school. I get paid like two weeks later, but I get brought in and just chewed out by this senior chief and chief that are over there. And they're like, you know, do you not understand how the chain of command works and blah, blah. I mean, they were furious. And they're like, you know, we're gonna take you to a Trident review board. We're gonna drive you down to Virginia Beach and have a Trident review board. And I'm like, dude, are these guys serious? So I go back home and I start calling like my recon buddies. I'm like, hey, is it cool if I

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  come back? Like, I think they're gonna pull my Trident. And then they're like, dude, heck yeah. If you, if you get dropped, come on back. So, you know, I go in there and then during one of the, the ass chewings that I'm getting, I'm like, you know what? I'm like, if you guys really take me to a Trident review board, this is like, what, what, you know, what consumed you to call Captain Smithers? And I was like, we're friends. And I was like, if you take me to this Trident review board, I'll call him again. And they were like, now they're like, lost their minds. And then they're like, you'll be hearing from us when it's time for your Trident review board. And I just never heard from them. They left it alone. And I got paid like two weeks later.

• 1:11:16Jocko Willink?

  Damn. Check. Anything else from 18 Delta?

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Well, that's where I met Neil. I met Johnny Kim.

• 1:11:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right on.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  That little genius. Yeah. So he was in the class behind me. I met Johnny Kim. I was also roommates with, with Dauber.

• 1:11:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right on.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  He was my roommate at 18 Delta. So it was pretty cool going through with him. Yeah.

• 1:11:42Jocko Willink?

  And then you, those guys ended up coming to Team Three and you ended up going to Team One?

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I actually was initially supposed to go to Team Three. And then the corpsman that went to team one, for whatever reason, he couldn't get a security clearance. So they're like, hey, you're gonna go to team one now, who's already started their workup. And then, you know, Dauber was the first one to get orders to team three.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  So yeah, that's how I showed up team one, I think, 2005.

• 1:12:12Jocko Willink?

  Are you just fully amped to be at team one, just like beyond? And the war's going on, guys are going on deployment.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:20Jocko Willink?

  You get thrown right into a platoon?

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I get thrown into the platoon, we start, uh, they've, they've already started their workup.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  And it was everything that I thought it was gonna be. It was awesome.

• 1:12:34Jocko Willink?

  Best, best job ever.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  I mean, it really was. I mean, we would go to, you know, Mississippi for training and do CQC. And then we would go to Kentucky for SAWK. And then we, you know, around that time, the PSD mission was going on, so hey, we gotta go to driving schools. So we would go to driving schools and it was just awesome, like, I loved being around the guys, like, it was, it was everything I thought it would be. It was, it was pretty cool.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  We had some, we had some issues in the platoon though.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  We went through three different chiefs.

• 1:13:07Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the leadership was a little bit of a

• 1:13:11Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  of a problem. And then I think the last chief that they brought in there, like, I don't think he was really into it. He was just like, yeah, I'll do it, you know?

• 1:13:22Jocko Willink?

  The crazy thing, one of the crazy things I learned at Trade Ed, when I was working at Trade Ed, was, look, you're gonna, you're gonna have some weak chiefs, you're gonna have some weak officers, but if you have some good dudes in there,

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32Jocko Willink?

  you'll just overcome all that. You just overcome all of it. And you'll fit, you guys are, the guys are gonna figure out.

• 1:13:39Jocko Willink?

  Oftentimes, the SEAL team succeeds.

• 1:13:43Jocko Willink?

  Because of the lower, because, because of the leadership from somewhere in the platoon, doesn't have to come from the OIC, it doesn't have to come from the chief. Now, those guys can be bad enough that they actually squash the junior leadership, and that's when you have a platoon that just falls apart completely. But if the, you know, I've seen OICs that were just completely getting carried by some, two E5s in the platoon, the OIC and the chief getting carried by two or three good E5s. I've seen that all day long. I'm sure you did too.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  But occasionally you'll get a chief or a OIC that, look, when they're great, that's great. We're all good. But occasionally they'll squash the junior leadership because their ego gets involved, and they don't want the, you know, someone else making calls, and it just turns into a total disaster.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  The OIC wasn't very well-liked either.

• 1:14:32Jocko Willink?

  Where, so you guys are getting, do you guys know where you're going on deployment?

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  No, because we're, we're competing for where we're going at the time. And, you know, like I said, unfortunately, the leadership didn't build good relationships up the chain of command. So even though the platoon was awesome, like we had some really talented people in that platoon, really, really talented people in that platoon, and, you know, it is what it is. It is to build really, we were not the favorite platoon. And it was around that time when they're, you know, the LPOs came up to me, he's like, hey, you know, we're short snipers. Do you, I know you were a Marine, you were good at land nav, blah, blah, do you want to go, do you want to go to sniper school? And I said, uh, yeah.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  He's like, two caveats, he's like, one, it's Army sniper school, and two, you got to go to UAV school afterwards. And I'm like, yeah, fine, whatever, just send me.

• 1:15:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's so, it's so weird how your mentality can be so unaligned with other people, and they're giving you these quote caveats.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:32Jocko Willink?

  Bro, when, when, when we ended up going to Ramadi, we were supposed to go to Baghdad and tasking a bruiser. And my commanding officer calls me in, and he's like, he's presenting this thing to me like it's the worst deal ever. And I'm like, so happy, and I'm trying, I'm just poker face, you know, like, hey, Roger, that's wrong. We can make some adjustments. And then I was like, oh, I can negotiate. And I said, well, we're going to need this, and I'm going to need some more people and some more like support. And he was like, yeah, we can take care of that. Totally hooked me up, bro. But I was like, oh, are you serious? You're going to send us to Ramadi instead? Let's do this.

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:04Jocko Willink?

  He was throwing caveats at me. I'm like,

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:16:07Jocko Willink?

  No problem.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  It's Army school, you know, we're gonna have to send you. I'm like, okay, you know, I'm trying to hold my excitement. Yeah, let's do it. So, yeah, so I ended up going to Army Sniper School and that was, uh, that was cool, going to Army School and, you know, it's pretty funny dealing with the Army guys. So at one point, so they sent another guy with me. So they sent two of us to Sniper School. We go out to a bar one night and we see some of the guys from our class. And at that, you know, at that point, they were kind of standoffish because we were being quiet too. You know, we weren't really talking to people. They see us at the bar. And they're like, hey, you guys are, you guys are the SEALs in our class, right? And we're like, yeah, like you guys, you guys mind if we buy you a shot? And I was like, yeah, let's do it. So I'm like, cool. So they buy us a shot and, um,

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  I take this shot and it's the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted in my life. Like I'm, I want to throw up. And it's, it's funny because I, so I take the shot and they're like looking at us. And I'm like, thanks, guys, even though inside I'm like, what the hell was this? So I set it down. I'm like, thanks, fellas. And they're like looking at me like, dang, that's why they're Navy SEALs. They didn't even flinch. So I guess they gave us like some gag shot. That's supposed to like make you throw up.

• 1:17:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  And both, and both of us were just like,

• 1:17:20Jocko Willink?

  Normal face all day long.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  No expression like, thanks, fellas. But inside I'm like, what the fuck was that? Um, it was disgusting. And then they're just like, dang, that's why they're Navy SEALs. Did you see that? They didn't even flinch. They didn't even flinch. And then, um, yeah, then we had another, you know, we were back in, back in, in training and they were like, oh, you guys didn't load up in the truck fast enough or something like that. And they're like, oh, this one guy was like freaking out like, guys, if we don't do this fast enough, we're gonna get beat. I'm like, so what if we get beat? Like, okay. And then one of the instructors heard me, but he didn't know who I was. So he was just like, oh, we got, we got a tough guy in the group. He's like, all right. He's like, come on out. So he's like, pushups, you know, I'm doing pushups, I'm doing pushups. And then he's like,

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  okay, flutter kicks. And by the way, like I used to do so many flutter kicks that I got tired of counting. And I would literally set my timer for 10 minutes straight. And we'd just do flutter kicks for 10 minutes straight because I didn't want to count anymore. So he's having me do these flutter kicks. And I could tell one of the other instructors like giggling behind him. Cause the guy doesn't know who I am. He's like, oh, uh, you're kind of good at these. And then the instructor's like, bro, you know, he's a SEAL, right? He's like, dude, why didn't you tell me I'm over here like an idiot trying to break this guy? He's not gonna break. And then afterwards, like, he's like, you want, you want to dip?

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  No, I don't dip, but thank you.

• 1:18:43Jocko Willink?

  So you, you end up going on deployment, you go to, you go to a, you have a PECOM deployment. That's where you guys went, right?

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, uh, the majority of the platoon got sent to Guam. And then they were like, hey, if you're a UAV pilot, a sniper or a corpsman, you're gonna go to the PI. And I was all three.

• 1:18:58Jocko Willink?

  Three for three.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  Three for three. So that deployment was kind of weird for me because I wasn't with my platoon for the majority of the time. Like I was literally getting farmed out to whoever needed me. So I went to Tawi, Tawi, Holos, and Belonga. There was times where I got attached to like an ODA unit because they didn't have their 18 Delta with them. And, um, you know, I got attached to them and, and there was a point there on the deployment where I got,

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  I got sent on a ship, you know, because that's how I was getting transported from one place to another. And at the time I had another OIC.

• 1:19:31Jocko Willink?

  The way you said that, you're like, I got sent on a ship.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that was like the one thing that I dreaded. You know, I was going on a ship. So this was like my first ship experience. And I'm there with my, my JO who is a prior force recon gunny. You probably know who he is, very tall dude, looks mean, just tatted up. And so we're on this ship together and we, we go to chow and he, I was like, hey, sir, you know, this is where you and I part ways. I gotta go eat with the enlisted. You gotta go to officers. He's like, I'm not eating by myself. He's like, you're coming with me. And we're wearing sterile camis, so no name tapes, no rank, nothing. So we go into the chow hall with the officers and I'm just like, oh no. So I'm sitting there and you can tell like there's this, this surface warfare officer.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  He's looking at us because he sees, he sees my, my JO. I mean, he's tatted up. We both don't look like officers.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  So he, he's, he's looking at us and finally he gets, he gets the courage to come and sit next to us. He's like, so, uh, who are you guys? And then he's like, oh, I'm Lieutenant so and so. And this is Lieutenant Mendez. I was like, oh dang, I just got promoted from E5 to lieutenant. So for like the rest of the deployment or sorry, the, the rest of the time on the ship, he's like calling me sir and whatnot. And at one point, You know, I'm getting off the Hilo with my with my sniper rifle because we were doing like some sniper stuff. I'm getting off the Hilo with my sniper rifle and the CEO knows who we are. We're on his ship. And he was standing next to CEO and the CEO was like, hey, HM2, do you mind if you mind if I check out your your sniper rifle? And you just see this guy's look. He's just he's steaming inside that he'd been calling me sir for like two weeks.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  And he's like, turns out I'm an HM2.

• 1:21:13Jocko Willink?

  HM2, man. Spot promoted. That's like Andy Stumpf. Spot promotes himself to whatever rank is required.

• 1:21:22Jocko Willink?

  And then you come back from that, just roll into another platoon.

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:26Jocko Willink?

  And how's that one go?

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  Uh, it was awesome. Um, I had a new OIC, new chief, new LPO.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  And the this OIC was was pretty awesome. He, I remember when he first got there, he he set a meeting with me. And I'm thinking, oh, man, I'm in trouble. Like, what's, you know, because up to that point, I had very little interaction with my my OIC, like very minimal. And I'm thinking, dude, I'm in trouble. So I go in there and it kind of shocked me that he asked me like, hey, so what, you know, what's your family situation like? Like, how are you doing? Is there anything you need? Where do you want to go with your career? It was like the first time anybody had really asked me. I was like, I don't know, I was just having a great time being in a platoon. You know, and he's like, you know, I noticed you don't have a college degree. There's this program, you know, where you can get commission and we send you away to school for three years. You come back as an officer. Is that something you'd be interested in?

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  And I was like, oh, actually, you know, I I actually had never heard of that. But yeah, it's interesting. I'll keep it in mind. And, you know, I always say that this guy built a better relationship in the first two weeks with us than the prior OIC had built like in two years. So it was pretty cool. He we tactically speaking, he probably wasn't the best. But strategically, he was, he was great because he knew who his subject matter experts were. He was a very humble guy, leaned on them a lot and you know, the same group was, was together again. And it was an awesome, awesome workup for me. Like I had a even better time in the first time. Cause I'll be honest, like I was, I was disappointed the, the first time around with leadership. Because I had been exposed to really good leadership with the Marines.

• 1:23:05Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  I mean, they were like just absolute professionals. And then when I got to that first, uh, platoon, I was a little disappointed. So I'm like, okay, cool. So I, that's when I started realizing like, okay, leadership is, you know, ebbs and flows. Sometimes you get good ones, sometimes you get bad ones and anything in between. It's a bell curve, just like anything else.

• 1:23:23Jocko Willink?

  When you going through, was that when I was running trade at, when you were going through that workup?

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think you were there yet. Yeah. I don't think you were there yet.

• 1:23:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, yeah. You know, one thing I've always said is the, the Marines have like a tighter shot group. Or like a tighter standard. So like, if you have like the best, you know, the best SEAL platoon, they're going to be freaking off the charts awesome.

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:47Jocko Willink?

  And, but the worst SEAL platoon is going to be off the charts shitty. And the Marine Corps has like a tighter, more standardized group of like, hey, this is where, this is where they're going to be. They're going to fit in there better, um, which is nice. Cause you don't end up with those low points of leadership. And then where'd you end up going on, on deployment?

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  So, um, so before deployment, actually they sent me to, to Central America for a while. Cause they had, they had, you know, a mission going on down there, a JSET type mission. They were like, hey, does anybody speak fluent Spanish? I was like, I speak fluent Spanish. So they sent me down there. And so I was there for, for a while. I'll say it was long because they switched other people out. Like, so there were, there's like other guys would go there for two weeks or so. But I was there the entire time just because I was teaching all the classes and going out with them and stuff. So. I did that first and then, um, we ended up getting, uh, Ramadi. So like, okay, cool. We're going back to, we're going to Ramadi for, for our deployment. And so far I'm like, finally, this is it.

• 1:24:49Jocko Willink?

  And when did you show up there?

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  October.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  Let's see, my son was born in July. So yeah, September, October timeframe.

• 1:25:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Cause I was home for like a couple of months after my son was born.

• 1:25:03Jocko Willink?

  But it had mellowed out a lot by that time.

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:05Jocko Willink?

  A lot.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 1:25:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:08Jocko Willink?

  So what was the deployment like?

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  So it started off fantastic. Uh, like when we got there, um, we hadn't been in country that long. And I remember we got our first mission. And, um, it was pretty cool cause they're like, hey, it's, it's a little bit outside of Ramadi. So you guys are going to take helos there. So I'm the point man, you know, I'm planning out the routes and, and stuff. And I remember getting in the helo and, and looking around and being like, whoa, this is legit. Like this is finally here. Like I've got my, you know, I look around, everybody's got their, their nods on, everybody's got their weapons, wearing the helo. And, um, you know, it was a DA mission, like it's, it's basically everything that you want to do. And so, you know, we get dropped off.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  A few clicks away, I patrol into the target and, um, I see some guards out there with, with AKs and, and it's the first time like, like literally first mission and I get to shoot someone right off the bat. And I'm like, this is awesome.

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  So I'm thinking that that's the way things are, you know, cause I go back to the base and I'm like, oh, I gotta, you know, I gotta reload my mags. So I'm thinking this is going to be like a normal thing. I better go get some more ammo. Cause you know, if it's going to be like this all deployment long.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  And then we actually don't do anything for like a month. And I'm just like, uh, we suck again.

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  But then they're like, hey, listen, there's, there's work to be done, but if you want to do it, you gotta go to the outskirts. So we actually ended up packing all our Humvees and going out to Starthar. And then from, from there, we were at some small base and we're like living out of our Humvees, but, but we were working, which is what team guys want to do. So I thought it was, is a great deployment. You know, when I hear you talk about your, your first one. That's kind of how I see this one. You're doing DA's all the time. You know, no one really got hurt. Uh, you know, it was great. So.

• 1:26:54Jocko Willink?

  And you get some good experience. Good to do those reps, man.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:58Jocko Willink?

  Like you just, the whole cycle from the planning to the, to the transit, to the execution and things aren't going quite right, but you get them sorted out. Like you just get good reps, man.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yep. And, and as a point man, like it was, it was a really good experience for me. And it's funny cause like around that time. You know, my, my OIC, at one point, we, something changed in the plan. And then he's like, hey, uh, he's like, hey, we need, we switched course or whatever. I'm like, checks. I was like, let me, let me get in my poncho and my red, red lens. He's like, what are you doing? I was like, I need to look at my map. He's like, how have you been navigating this whole time? I was like, map and compass, because in the Marines, that's how we did it. He's like, you don't have a GPS? And I'm like, no. He's like, if you're gonna be my point man, you need to know how to use a GPS. Cause I'm like, you know, under my poncho, my red lens, like looking at my map and trying to figure it all out.

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  And then, and so I go back to camp and I'm, I bust out my GPS. It's still in the wrapper.

• 1:27:55Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  It's still in the wrapper. So I'm reading the directions and when I, I'm reading the directions to this thing. And, uh, then I'm like, where has this thing been my whole life?

• 1:28:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  This is awesome.

• 1:28:10Jocko Willink?

  Damn, that's crazy. That was in 2007.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:14Jocko Willink?

  And you're still just getting your map and compass.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause that's the way I had always done it. In the Marines, we did a ton of land nav. And that's actually how I became the point man, cause one of the more experienced guys was like, hey, bro, I don't know how to land nav. He's like, you know how to land. And this was like my first, first up, uh, platoon. So he's like, hey, you're really good at land nav, right? You used to with the Marines? I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty good at it. He's like, wanna be a point man? I was like, heck, yeah. So that's how I became point man, but no one knew that I was just going off my campus, my, my compass and map. Until then, and then when I discovered that GPS, man, it was a game changer.

• 1:28:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, especially by that time, because by that time in 2007, it was like one of the, you'd have them on your wrist.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:50Jocko Willink?

  You'd have them on your wrist.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  So that's what I had. I had the little Garmin one. I was like, man, it even goes on your wrist? I'm like, this is amazing.

• 1:28:54Jocko Willink?

  Freaking ridiculous.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  And then I started carrying two of them around, like one in here and one in my pocket, just in case that one broke down. Cause now I really liked it. So I'm like, I don't want this thing breaking down on me.

• 1:29:03Jocko Willink?

  Hey, what up that story with the S vest?

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  So, um, there's a couple, actually. So the, the one, um, that, you know, we always talk about complacency. We had, there was like a drone that had watched some guys like planting some IEDs in the road and followed them back to their house. And they're like, hey, you guys are gonna go hit this house. Like, cool. So our, our platoon was tasked with hitting that house. And when our, you know, my platoon gets there, they're like, oh, it was kind of odd because it's just like an old man. Some women and children, like, it's kind of odd. And, you know, as we're on target or whatever, um, we start finding some like propaganda. We start finding like some small stuff, but nothing huge. Um, and we'd been on target for, I'm going to say, at least like three, four hours.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  So we were there for a while. Like, we got pictures of guys like sitting on a couch. And, and by the way, this is like a painful story to tell afterwards because, you know, you like to think that you're professionals and it was definitely a slap in the face like, whoa, it's, it's really not over.

• 1:30:04Jocko Willink?

  Cause, cause leading up to this, like, how many ops did you run at this point?

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  We'd been there for a while.

• 1:30:09Jocko Willink?

  So you, so you were kind of.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  We were in a good rhythm.

• 1:30:11Jocko Willink?

  You were getting the reps, but the reps start becoming routine.

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  Yep. And we were in the outskirts too. So like this, this house was out in the middle of nowhere. It's not like in Ramadi where it's like a very dynamic environment where everybody starts coming out and, and they know you're there.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  So anyways, so we're doing SSE and one of our guys.

• 1:30:29Jocko Willink?

  So wait, so you hit this target, it's in the middle of vehicles?

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:32Jocko Willink?

  So you drive vehicles up, you hit the target. Now you've done this a bunch of times. You get the target cleared, no contact when you hit the target. The people that you find on target is sort of the, the typical sort of people that you're going to find. Old man, couple of women, some kids. The houses looks like all the other houses look like. So in your mind, you're probably thinking this is probably, probably nothing here.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And we had to have targets like that as well.

• 1:31:01Jocko Willink?

  And you're there for three hours doing SSE?

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause we started finding stuff. So like guys actually had their helmet and they were like picks and shovels and stuff.

• 1:31:07Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  Like we were actually like breaking down some walls. We found some false walls and stuff and.

• 1:31:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So, so suspects, so as you're searching it, you're like, oh, this is some propaganda. We need to go a little harder.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:17Jocko Willink?

  Now we're going a little bit harder. We find more stuff.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:31:20Jocko Willink?

  And so, but at the same time, there's been no, no bad guys.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:31:24Jocko Willink?

  So you're just really just doing an intel recovery at this point.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:31:29Jocko Willink?

  Which means your guys are kind of chilling out a little bit.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Very much so.

• 1:31:32Jocko Willink?

  They're sitting on couches.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  I actually have a picture of that, but so anyway, so one of our guys goes into one of the rooms and lifts a rug up and there's this um there's something on the floor that that's a little different color than the rest and you could tell it's kind of like a door or something. So he calls the EOD guy over. He's like, hey, come check this out, you know, make sure it's not booby trapped. And he's like, no, we're good. And I think we're good. Let's open it up. So we open it up and there's, there's a bunch of dudes down there. I think it was like 13 to 15 dudes down there and the first couple had like suicide vests on.

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  Guy chucks a grenade up. It hits our EOD guy in the chest. They dive like behind some furniture. The grenade went low order. So you want to talk about someone looking out for you that it was old, you know, so it didn't blow up to its full potential and um the avalanche call came out because they saw they saw the S vest on the dude. So avalanche, everybody runs out of the house. And as the last dude runs out, you know, our Humvees are already ready to go. And as soon as the last dude, last man out, it was like 50 cows like boom, boom, boom. And we don't know if like a 50 cal hit someone's vest or if the dude clacked himself off, but the house blew up.

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  The house blew up and some of the guys were were still alive, I guess, that were still under even that even after that explosion. So guys are coming up. Some guys left their helmets and nods inside the house. So some guys got no nods. I think a couple of weapons were left in there as well.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, as a matter of fact, I'll tell you that some of the stuff we recovered afterwards, but anyway, so yeah, we're laying down fire. And um at one point, a rocket is shot and it hits like five feet from our Humvee. So we're like, hey, we need to back out and we need to drop air on this thing. So we back out, we drop air on it. We actually dropped a couple of bombs on it. And then uh, you know, afterwards, when we go and recover stuff, you could tell that these these guys that that were there, they weren't they were they were foreign fighters. They were different than some of the other guys that we had come across. But we recovered some of the nods that we left in there. We recovered um one of the weapons that we had left in there.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  And it's crazy because I guess one of them must have picked the weapon up like our our M4 and started shooting with that M4. And when we picked up that M4, uh, at the front of the barrel, you can tell that the 50 cal round had gone through the front of the barrel.

• 1:34:01Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:34:02Speaker 01

  Out the back, blew this guy's head off. And then we found this guy's head like 50 yards down, down the road. But I was crazy. So, I mean, you, you know, we have a picture of the gun like with a 50 cal. So doing that, uh, report on all the lost stuff.

• 1:34:18Jocko Willink?

  That stings. Were you the LPO of this platoon?

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  Oh, no. No, I was just a.

• 1:34:23Jocko Willink?

  Just a door kicker?

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. You said you were the point man. Yeah.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love being a point man.

• 1:34:30Jocko Willink?

  So that gets your, uh, that, that snaps you back into reality.

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. So, um, yeah.

• 1:34:38Jocko Willink?

  You said there was a couple S vest stories?

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the, the other one was, I guess they were, uh, they were smuggling some S vest in. I forget from where it was, you know, when you're young, you don't pay attention to, to some of the details that, that are passed on. But they were, they were importing some S vests. Um, and at one point that the Iraqi police pulled this guy over who they thought could be one of those guys that was smuggling S vests. So we take the vehicle and we, we rip it apart completely. And behind the glove compartment, we find an S vest. And so our EOD guys take it out and then they're like, hey, um, let's make it inert and let's put it back and let's see where he goes. And then we'll catch him and his friends. So they do that. They make, you know, they, they, they make the, the vest

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  inert. We put it back. We give the car back to the, to Iraqi police. And at that point, you don't know who's, you know, who's who. So they're all corrupt. You know, there's people that had infiltrated all forms of government and police. So we didn't tell them what we found. We're just like, hey, we're good. So they're like, okay, cool. So they let the guy go. And of course he goes back to his house. And at this point now, we're being mandated to bring, you know, the Iraqis with us. Cause for a while there, from what I could remember, we were by ourselves, like just us. But this point, like, okay. So anyway, so we end up hitting this house and old boy has his vest on and he's like trying to clock himself off, but it's inert.

• 1:36:01Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  And he had actually two switches, like he had a primary and a secondary. So, you know, he's yelling out, you know, he's like click, and he's like, oh crap. And then he's like click, click, trying to do the other one and.

• 1:36:11Jocko Willink?

  How's that working out for you, homie?

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  He's got no head now, you know?

• 1:36:16Jocko Willink?

  Good stuff, man. And no one got hurt on that freaking though, where the, uh, spider hole was, huh?

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  No. Damn. Like I said, that's about as good a deployment as you could do. It's a lot of work and no one got hurt.

• 1:36:29Jocko Willink?

  You get done with that and then is that when you come to Trade It?

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I come back and they're like, hey, you're gonna have to go to Trade It. And I'm like, I don't want to go to Trade It, you know?

• 1:36:38Jocko Willink?

  Are you an E6 now?

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  I'm an E6. Yeah, yeah, I just made E6 on that deployment, actually. So, um, you know, I come back home, I'm having some personal issues, um, you know, with my wife at the time. And, um, you know, and instead of trying to work things out and be a good husband, which, you know, I look back on, I could have done a much, much better job of. You know, I look back at that marriage, I'm like, hey, you know, that's 100% my fault. I wasn't a very empathetic person.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Marriage is tough thing and it's even tougher when you're young and, you know, it's even tougher when you married a teen guy who's gone all the time. And I didn't think about that, you know, I'm just like, you know, she moved right from parents' house to me. And I'm just like, I don't understand what you're complaining about. Anyways, there's a lot of tension between her and I and she served me divorce papers. And, um, instead of, you know, trying to take a knee and work things out, what do I do? They're like, hey, uh, there's corpsmen needed for this Afghanistan deployment. And I'm like, I'll go.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  So I end up volunteering for a very short augment before I go to Trade It. And they knew that I didn't want to go to Trade It. So they were like, hey, you've got some time here, Team One, before you check into Trade It. Cool. That was kind of like, you know, my gimme. So they're like, cool, go do that. And so I come back from that deployment and then that's when I check into Trade It and, um, that's where I meet JP Danil.

• 1:38:11Jocko Willink?

  And did you go straight into, uh, straight into Salk, straight into CQC?

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so back then, the senior enlisted of the Assault cell, he would like interview guys to go to Assaults. Cause he was like, hey, if you're gonna come to Assaults, like, we're screening you. And so I remember him coming up, talking to me while I was still at Team One, I'd just gotten back from deployment. So like, yeah, you're going, you're going to Assaults. So I ended up going to Salk, but, you know,

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  Being the team guy I was, I was like, can I go to CQC too? And they're like, yeah, sure. You can do it. Yeah. So I was doing CQC trips, south trips, and it was, it was pretty cool. And you were there. That's when you were there. And then JP was the LPO at the time.

• 1:38:53Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep.

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:55Jocko Willink?

  What did you learn in sitting there teaching?

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  You know, so now looking back, I always tell people that trade it was actually the biggest learning experience that I ever had because it's like the ultimate leadership lab. Because you get to watch two different styles of leadership go through. And you're, you're completely detached. You have zero emotion invested into that whatsoever. So you can armchair quarterback that stuff all day long.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  And it was where, you know, I started realizing the, the difference in leadership. Cause if you think about it, the talent is for the most part spread out pretty evenly.

• 1:39:37Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna have some good, some good guys, you're gonna have a handful of new guys, you're gonna have some E5 pipe hitters, you're gonna have some couple slugs, like the boys are gonna be pretty consistent most of the time.

• 1:39:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:39:49Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna get that. So yeah, it all, it all boils down to just how was the leadership? How good is the leadership? And if leadership is good, platoon's gonna rock. And if the leadership sucks, we could have some problems.

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  Yep. So that's when I started seeing that, you know. Yeah, training is the same. And I was like, okay, it really depends on that leadership, how they're gonna do. And it was really cool to see like the leadership that did well. It was simply because they were humble. Like you could just tell their attitude right off the bat. Like they're like, you know, when you give them, you know, criticism or critiques or whatever, they're like, got it, got it. Whereas the platoons that did terrible, they were just like, you could just tell they had attitudes about hearing anything, any feedback that you had to give them. And it was very blatant, like the difference between the, the platoons that had humble leadership and the platoons that just did not.

• 1:40:38Jocko Willink?

  I would like to take this to the nth degree in my own head because I always wanted to make sure that.

• 1:40:47Jocko Willink?

  Hey, what am I doing? Am I doing a good job of getting through to this individual leader? Right? And if it seems like this leader, like maybe they have a big ego and they think they're a badass. You know, I don't care. I always wanted to make sure that it wasn't me, that it wasn't my end. I was like, okay, you know what? The guy's got a big ego. It's okay. We want guys with big egos. Like, hey, you gotta have a big ego. Let me rephrase that. There's not, you can't expect SEALs to not have some kind of ego. Like, hey, I know how to do this. Some level of confidence, right? Like, so it's okay. I get it. You know, you, you think you're a badass. Cool. I don't want to work for someone that doesn't think they're a badass, right? Cool. I'm good with it. Okay, let's move forward with that.

• 1:41:26Jocko Willink?

  But man, you'd get these guys that occasionally, again, most, most of the, most of the leaders are like, cool. Like, we're down. Occasionally, I remember, I remember once we had this one leader coming through Salk. And I talked to our civilian that worked there, who was a prior, you know, SEAL. He was actually my, my T U S E A when I was platoon commander. And I said, hey, bro, man, just can you do me a favor? Just check me on this. Like, just look at this guy's face when I'm putting out word. And just give me, I go, because it seems to me like he doesn't want to hear anything from anybody. I just want to make sure I'm not totally off base, but can you just check him out? And so sure enough, like as I, as I'm talking, you know, the guy be sitting there with his arms crossed and, and, and again, I'm just saying,

• 1:42:12Jocko Willink?

  I'm not even like saying, dude, you're totally jacked up. I'm not saying anything like that. I'd say something like, hey, man, do you ever think about maybe, you know, putting some vehicles over here on this target? And you can see the guy's like arms crossed. I'm not, I'm just offering a suggestion, you know? And the dude, arm crossed. And yeah, we get done with that debrief and that civilian comes up to me and he's like, bro, this guy's freaking crazy. And I said, okay, I just wanted to make sure because it just.

• 1:42:39Jocko Willink?

  I guess the reason I'm saying this is because like guys in trade at the guys in trade at the attitude of our guys in trade at was just to try and help out our friends that are in the teams like that are in a platoon that that was the attitude the attitude there's no like hey I know how to do this you don't there was no matter of fact I wouldn't allow that kind of shit if we had instructors like that I would freaking pull them aside because our instructors realize like oh where these guys are our friends they're our teammates they're getting ready to deploy we need to do our best to help them out yeah and and and a lot of those guys know as much as what we know right so you got a guy that's got a bunch of experience a bunch of deployments they know as much as we know so cool we're not attacking them we're not talking down to them

• 1:43:24Jocko Willink?

  so my point is if you have your friends that are trying to help you and you reject them it's really really bad it's really really bad it's it's horrible actually it'd be such a bummer to see it'd be it'd be such a bummer to see cuz literally like every guy at trade at was just hey these are my friends that I'm trying to help and if why aren't you open to us helping you please like we don't want you to get hurt man so ah yeah good times this freaking um

• 1:44:02Jocko Willink?

  great place to learn yeah and I was like I did that luckily when I was at SEAL Team One as a E5 I worked in our training cell which is when the the teams used to train themselves and so I got to do the same thing when I was young and that's where I learned the most of my stuff was doing that again sitting back detached watching guys go through platoons we used to run the SQT classes in at the team so that was really eye opening too because now you had the young officers and You'd watch them and think, this guy can't make any decisions. Why can't he make any decisions? Oh, it's because he's shooting his weapon right now and he shouldn't be. Give him a two by four. Give him a stick. Let him get off his gun and he'll figure it out. And then you actually learn how to do that for yourself. So yeah, if you want, really want to learn something,

• 1:44:46Jocko Willink?

  it's really advantageous to have an opportunity to teach it as well.

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. That was also where I learned how to like brief and not, not I wouldn't say public speak, but you know, like when you're talking to team guys, you better be squared away.

• 1:44:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:59Speaker 01

  Cause they are chomping at the bit.

• 1:45:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  To like sense any weakness or anything that you say that's maybe not tactically correct. So it's where I learned to be very deliberate about the way I spoke in public or debriefed.

• 1:45:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And if you don't, if you don't have anything that's smart to say, don't say anything. And if you have a thought that you haven't thought through, either think through it or present it in such a way that it's not like an aggressive attack. That's absolutely true. You know, you're in a SEAL platoon. You don't have to be in trade at, you're in a SEAL platoon and you disagree with someone else.

• 1:45:39Jocko Willink?

  What are the chances that you're a hundred percent right? The chances that you're a hundred percent right are almost zero. So eventually, probably two weeks into my first platoon, I realized, oh, I'm very seldom going to be a hundred percent right. Why don't I present ideas as if they're an idea, not some perfectly formulated, perfectly constructed notion that is 100% true. Cause there's so few things that are like that.

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:07Jocko Willink?

  Even the most, like I, I talk about in leadership strategy and tactics. Uh, the, the OIC that I had, that was awesome. He knew more than all of us combined. And he would present ideas as if they were suggestions and ideas. And he was always open to changing those ideas if somebody said something smarter. So you get to see that stuff over and over again. That's what's, that's what's crazy though. You, when you're working at trade at, as you see a platoon tonight, do three, four, five runs. Another platoon, do three, four, five runs. And then a few weeks later, you're going to see two other platoons with a bunch of different leadership, do the same runs, basically the same runs with the same people. And the variable is the leadership. And then a few weeks after that, you get to do it again and again, and again, and again.

• 1:46:49Jocko Willink?

  And you just start to see what works and what doesn't work. And it's real obvious after a certain point.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. My learning curve was very steep there.

• 1:46:56Jocko Willink?

  How long did you do at Tradeat?

• 1:46:59Speaker 01

  So let's see, I got there in 2008.

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  And I think around, what, 2010 or so, it was, it was like my time to rotate out, but we had gotten a new chief in. And um, so it's time for me to go do my LPO, but the new chief that came in, I really liked him a lot. Just, just an awesome, awesome guy. And then he was just like, hey, can you stay at Trade at a little bit longer? And then be my LPO when it's my time to go, because I'm not going to be here very long.

• 1:47:26Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  He's like, I want you to be my LPO. I'm just like, dude, I want to deploy, man. Like, that's a long time. He's like, okay, how about I send you on another augment? I'm like, I want the full one this time. So we're like bargaining here. I was like, I want a full deployment. And he's like, okay, you got it. So I went back to Afghanistan for, for another augment. It was part of the deal.

• 1:47:52Jocko Willink?

  Nice. And you're getting some good operational experience on your augments.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:57Jocko Willink?

  When you're going over there?

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:47:58Jocko Willink?

  Living the dream?

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was, it was really cool. Um, just to see, you know, watch a different team do, do different things and,

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  yeah, I, I learned a lot. I learned a lot from, it was the first time too, where I, I kind of heard the TL like during a gunfight, like just how calm and collected they were. It was just like as if nothing was happening. And then I remember that thinking about that in my head, like, I want to be like that. You know, like, okay, cool. That's how I'm supposed to be. You know, so yeah, it was a really good experience again. And because, you know, my, my skin tone, I was able to, to help them out in ways that, you know, maybe some of the other guys couldn't. So some of the targets had to be done like during the daytime. So we had to like, drive around in like milk trucks or something. And because, you know, I could fit in with the populace, I'd just get in,

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  in like the passenger seat and be the navigation guy.

• 1:48:54Jocko Willink?

  So you're back to being a point man?

• 1:48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:55Jocko Willink?

  But dressed up like a local populace? And you're able to pull that off?

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and that's also because, yeah, so halfway through the deployment, they're like, hey, we need, we need Lo's back. Like at assaults. And then I was like, hey, they want me back. And then the team leader there was like, let me call them. It's like, actually, we really need him over here. So they let me stay the rest of the time.

• 1:49:13Jocko Willink?

  Freaking beautiful.

• 1:49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:16Jocko Willink?

  But you end up, did you end up? Did you end up then going with your chief in Trade at to be his LPO?

• 1:49:23Speaker 01

  No, so around that time, they they sent Johnny Kim over to assaults like just very temporarily because he was on his way to go to school. So he got picked up for this this program where the Navy picks like two people out of the entire Navy. And they send him to go get their

• 1:49:40Jocko Willink?

  Somehow Johnny Kim slid through the cracks.

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. So he's like explaining this this program to me. Uh, where basically, you know, the Navy pays for you to go to med school afterwards and it sounded like a good deal. And at the time, you know, I was feeling really guilty. I'm like, dude, I'm just been gone a lot. And I was like, feeling like I wasn't like the best father to my son, even though I tried to spend as much time with him as possible. I always had that guilt. And then there's a part of me is like, you know what? Maybe I should get like a normal job and be there for my son. So on a complete whim, like I put in my package for that exact same program. And I'm like, dude, if Johnny Kim is getting accepted to this thing, the chances of me getting accepted are like slim to none. And so I'm getting ready to go back to a team with with that chief to go be his LPO.

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  And then I'm flying back from an assaults trip. And then he's like, hey, did you see the result? And I'm like, for what? Like, I literally completely just, I applied and just forgot about it. Like, dude, you got picked up for that program. I'm like, are you serious? He's like, yeah. So I was like, well, I guess, guess I'm going to school.

• 1:50:48Jocko Willink?

  Crazy.

• 1:50:48Speaker 01

  Go try to be a doctor.

• 1:50:49Jocko Willink?

  There was a time period, and it was this, this was the time period where I'm not kidding. SEALs had a really good reputation in the world, you know, and certainly in the Navy. And I, man, guys were getting picked up left, right and center for this kind of stuff. So, I mean, that's freaking crazy and awesome.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what's funny is, you know, like I said, they pick two people a year out of the entire Navy. And the other guy was a team guy, too.

• 1:51:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's my point. That's my point. Like, that's crazy, right? But at that time, man, we like the SEALs were just doing a lot of good work. And I mean, I'm sure that when they looked at your record, like seriously, they looked at your record. And compare that to the other applicants, I bet it wasn't even really that close. Just because of the nature of what the SEALs were doing at the time.

• 1:51:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:39Jocko Willink?

  So, but did you have any intention of like going to medical school for however long that is?

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  So I thought I did.

• 1:51:48Speaker 01

  You know.

• 1:51:49Jocko Willink?

  So are you a year behind Johnny?

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're a year behind Johnny and Johnny went to USD.

• 1:51:55Speaker 01

  So I went to USD.

• 1:51:56Jocko Willink?

  USD.

• 1:51:57Speaker 01

  Just because I'm like, yeah, I'm just gonna do what Johnny did. So, um, so for, we had to go to like that, that officer school in up in Rhode Island. So in January of 2012, that's when I left trade it and we went to Rhode Island. And it's where you learn how to be an officer.

• 1:52:13Jocko Willink?

  Do you get commissioned up there?

• 1:52:16Jocko Willink?

  No, you just go to the school.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just go to the school. You don't get commissioned until you graduate from school. But that's actually where like, you know, they're like, oh, you gotta have blue cammies. I'm like, I don't own any blue cammies. And what's funny about that, so I didn't know, so they have the, you know, the big blue jackets? And those things are expensive, like 350 bucks. And I'm already buying all these uniforms that I didn't have.

• 1:52:38Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:52:38Speaker 01

  Cause I don't have any blue stuff and neither did my buddy.

• 1:52:40Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna have to go to ROTC?

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:41Jocko Willink?

  Is that what you're gonna have to do?

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, afterwards, but you don't have to wear blue.

• 1:52:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, but you had to get those blue cammies for the knife and fork school up in Rhode Island?

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:52:48Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  So my, the other team guy that's there with me, you know, we go there and he's, he's cheap too. So he's like, I don't wanna buy this jacket. I was like, I don't wanna buy it either. I was like, screw it, let's not buy it. You know, I don't need no jacket, you know, even though it's Rhode Island in January. So we form up, yeah, we form up and I'm in my blue cammies and he's in his blue cammies and, and you know, the, the chief, the chief who's like the, the RDC or whatever it's called, you know? He's like, oh, how come you guys don't have jackets? I was like, well, you know, we didn't wanna buy them because we're literally gonna have them here. We're never gonna use them again. And they're really expensive. He's like, well, we're all uniformed around here, so they make everybody take their jackets off. And it's, it's freezing cold. And then, um, he's like, we'll keep doing this until you guys buy jackets.

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  And I told my buddy, don't you dare buy a jacket. And he's like, okay, cool. And we were freezing cold.

• 1:53:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:38Speaker 01

  But we would just sit there and be like, we're not cold, but we were, we were dying. It's not that easy. Well, and it got to the point where they're like, you know, people started crying in the class, like literally like, oh, you know, freezing cold. So they're like, all right, change into your khakis. I was like, okay, I'll buy the jacket for the khakis. Come on, I might use that later on.

• 1:53:54Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with that and then you go to you go to USD.

• 1:54:01Jocko Willink?

  University of San Diego, you're gonna be doing the same, um, whatever, the same thing Johnny did.

• 1:54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:08Jocko Willink?

  Trying to get your pre-med knocked out.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:11Jocko Willink?

  How'd that go for you?

• 1:54:12Speaker 01

  Not well. I'm not Johnny Kim.

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  I'm miserable, you know, I'm taking like eighteen to twenty-one units a semester. I really didn't enjoy the classes I was taking, like chemistry, biology, just stuff that was so boring to me. And then to top it all off, I'm doing parking services because you know USD is a private school. And the Navy only pays like, I think it was like, I don't, I shouldn't say only, they pay ten K. And the tuition at USD is like forty K a year, like forty something K a year. So they're like, hey, if you do parking services, it'll pay off the rest of your tuition. So it was a good deal. Like if you really break it down, the amount of hours that you work, it's a really good deal. So I'm driving around this cart giving people tickets at USD and

• 1:55:02Jocko Willink?

  Bad karma dude.

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I almost, you know, almost got into this big altercation at one point. So you know, so this other team guy.

• 1:55:12Jocko Willink?

  You're the worst ticket guy to mess with. Imagine that, you think you're getting in a, you're gonna argue with some random ticket dude and it's freaking lows, bro.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  Well, it's, you know, it's funny. It's like, if I have to hear, you know, do you know who my dad is one more time? Just like, bro, I don't know who your dad is. I'm really sorry, but you know, you're parking in a handicap spot. But at one point, um, so the parking, so it's me and another team guy. So the, the, the other parking services kids, you know, they actually, they're normal kids. They won't go into school and they're like, oh, if you guys want to get a lot of tickets, you gotta go down to this area right here. And it was like where the football field or the baseball, the baseball field was, you know, by the gym. You went to USD, right? So you know what I'm talking about. So my buddy.

• 1:55:51Jocko Willink?

  I didn't do ticket parking. I used to, I used to put my bike in my station wagon and just, I would park off campus and just bike wherever needed to bike home. Bike back to my car and drive home. Yeah.

• 1:56:02Speaker 01

  So at one point, you know, I, we go down there and it's like, it's like the jackpot of all like violations. Like we got, because we were having trouble meeting our quota. So this other team guy and I, you know, the other parking services kids were like, oh, if you go down to this area, you get lots of tickets. So we go down there and we're like, oh, heck yeah, dude, there's all kinds of violations down here. Like we met our quota super quick. And at one point I had come up to this car and I, you know, you gotta punch in the license plate to, to give him the ticket. And it was like, do not let, like, call the office immediately if you see, if you get this license plate or whatever.

• 1:56:32Jocko Willink?

  No kidding.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I call and I'm like, hey, this thing came up on my little gadget. And they're like, do not let that person leave. They have like nine unpaid tickets or something like that. It was an insane amount. I'm like, what do you want me to do? Like, well, park your cart behind his car until the tow truck gets there and do not let them leave. I'm like, is that legal? Are we allowed to do that? And, and, uh, and they're like, yeah. So I'm like, okay. So I parked my, I parked my cart behind this car. The other team guy, I don't know where he took off to, like, he's gone. He, he must've been finding like lots of tickets. And so I'm sitting there, I'm waiting for the tow truck and now I see everybody getting out of football practice.

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  And the guy's car, the, the car who's, you know, parked behind, the owner comes and it's, it's a really big dude. You know, he's a football player, a pretty jacked dude, big dude. And he's like, hey, you need to move your cart.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  And I was like, hey, bro, there seems to be a problem, like, you know, with your ticket stuff. I'm like, they called the tow truck, but I think if you call them, you know, and work something out. He's like, he's like, move your fucking cart. I was like, I can't, you know, they told me this and, and, and now it's starting to be, and I'm really like, trying to be like, hey, bro, like, listen, I'm like the low man on the totem pole. And now the rest of the football team is coming out and now they're getting fired up. And now I'm sitting there and I'm like, where the hell is this other team guy at? It doesn't matter how good of a fighter you are, there's a bunch of them, you're gonna get your ass kicked. So, and then the guy's like, move your cart now or I'm gonna beat your ass. And I'm like, listen, bro, I really don't want that, but listen, if you put your hands on me, I'm telling you right now, I'm gonna defend myself.

• 1:58:06Speaker 01

  And at that point, I'm thinking, dang it, man, this is really gonna happen. And some guy comes running through them all and then he's like, hey, do you know who this guy is? And I'm like, who is this guy? And yeah, who am I? Like, who does this guy think I am? You know, and then he's like, he's a freaking Navy SEAL. And then you just see their attitude completely like, oh, I'm really sorry, sir. Like, I didn't know, you know, I, and I was like, hey, bro, it's totally cool. Like, you know, I, I'm pretty sure if you just call, you can work something out. Turns out this guy was the running back was a prior team guy.

• 1:58:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no shit.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  And he knew that the parking services guys were other team guys that were trying to, you know, pay for the rest of their tuition. So he saved me that day, cause that probably wasn't gonna go down very pretty for me.

• 1:58:50Jocko Willink?

  And then you eventually just changed to you change your major and you get out of the medical program?

• 1:58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so at some point, I'm just like, I took a finance class as one of my electives. And I'm like, man, I really like this and I really miss the teams. I don't think I want to do this medical thing. So I changed my major without telling anybody. And then when they're like, oh, so where are you going to go to med school? And I was like, oh, about that. I'm actually, I want to go back to the teams if that's okay. So I want to finish my degree and go back to the teams and they were livid.

• 1:59:16Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  They were just like, teams? They're like, no, you're you're going SWO. You're going to go be a surface warfare.

• 1:59:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  So now I'm just like, I don't know what to do. So, you know, I make some phone calls and they're like, that's stupid. You're not going to go be a SWO. You're coming back here. The only, the only problem is you're going to have to go through the process, just like everyone else. So I have to take the screener, do an interview. I'm like, yeah, that's totally fine. So I do the screener, I go do the interview and one of the interviewers is my old CO from Team One and he knows who I am, you know? So I'm thinking, oh, this is going to go great, you know? And at one point he asks me, he's like, hey, so what are you going to do if you don't get picked up for for special warfare? And then, um, as an officer, you know?

• 2:00:07Speaker 01

  And then I said, I was like, well, I'm just going to give up my commission and go back to being enlisted. And you just see everyone's head just go, oh. And then at that moment, just seeing the expression on their faces, I was like, oh, man, I said something I wasn't supposed to. And, you know, because you're supposed to say, hey, I want to be an officer, no matter what. And he was really cool about it. He's like, listen, Los, he knows who I am. He's like, I want to give you one more chance at this. Okay, I'm going to give you another crack at it. It wasn't the best answer. And then I sat there and I'm like, dang it, I might have messed this up. So I sat there for a minute and just thought about it. And I'm like, you know what, sir? I know that the the correct answer that you want to hear is like, if I don't get picked

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  up for this, I'm going to go be the best SWO or the best submariner officer on the planet. And then I'm going to make my way back. But I'll be honest with you, I don't want to do that. I was like, I just want to be in the teams. And whether that's as an LPO, a chief, or as an officer, I was like, that's why I'm doing this. I miss the teams. I want to go back. And he's like, that's the answer you want to go with? And I'm like, yes, sir, because it's the truth. And then he's like, it's a bold move. Don't know if it's going to work out for you. I was like, dang. But yeah, eventually I got picked up. So, um, back to the teams. So.

• 2:01:24Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you go? What team?

• 2:01:26Speaker 01

  So I was originally supposed to go to Team Five and that old, uh, chief that I was talking about, the one who wanted me to be his LPO. And then the Master Chief, who was the SCA Assaults, they're, they're like, hey, because they came to my commissioning, they're like, where are you going? I was like, I'm going to Team Five. They're like, no, you're not.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  You're coming to Team Three.

• 2:01:44Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  And I was like, well, you know, and they're like, trust me, we'll, we'll make it work. So some trades were made. Like they gave up a couple of their JOs, send them to Five and whoever the JO, one of the JOs was in the platoon, because they had already started workup.

• 2:01:58Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  They sent this poor kid away. He already started his workups. So now I, I go in there and I'm there with all my buddies. Like I knew the LPO, I was at Assaults with the LPO, the Chief.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  This is your platoon that you get put into? You're the AOIC?

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  The AOIC, yeah.

• 2:02:13Jocko Willink?

  And you just, they're all your boys?

• 2:02:15Speaker 01

  All my friends from LPO on up. I didn't know everybody else, you know, down, but.

• 2:02:21Jocko Willink?

  And then, cool? Good?

• 2:02:22Speaker 01

  It was awesome. Yeah. The OIC, um, so they put me in that platoon because they were like, hey, the OIC, you know, he's a really good dude. He's just a little, um, they use the word timid. He's just kind of shy. He wasn't a very outspoken guy. And then when I heard him brief and I heard him on the radio, I'm like, oh, I see. Whereas like, I have no problem getting on the radio. I have no problem briefing. So we actually complimented each other very well. Cause he was a good officer, like he knew officer things that I did not.

• 2:02:50Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:02:51Speaker 01

  So he showed me how to be, you know, like a ground force commander. He showed me like all the checklists, all the procedures and, and, um, yeah, it was, it was a good experience and I got a lot of reps, you know, being the OIC, because I was, I was good on the radio. So I got a lot of reps and our, our chief was a complete stud who I'd went to Bud's with. Um, so I learned a ton from him too. He was a JTAC, so he taught me a lot about being a ground force commander.

• 2:03:15Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you guys go on deployment?

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  We ended up going to, uh, Altecadeum. Yeah.

• 2:03:21Speaker 01

  So we were there for the double A, just advise and assist. So there was no company at that time. So we were just behind the flock, just calling in, helping them, the Iraqis call in air to try to retake Al Anbar, which had been retaken by, by ISIL.

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  You know, whatever the name of the week was for them.

• 2:03:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's, uh, how's the platoon, what's the platoon doing as you're doing that?

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  I mean, so really the only ones that are working are the JTACs. Yeah, they're really the only ones that are working.

• 2:03:59Jocko Willink?

  But I mean, at least you're freaking killing bad guys.

• 2:04:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely, but we're also eating mortars a lot because we can't go forward. So we're just sitting back there eating mortars and, and at one point, uh, the mortars got really, really close to us, blew one of our Humvees up.

• 2:04:16Speaker 01

  Uh, as I was running towards it, this Humvee gets hit and just, just blows me on my ass. Um, so this is definitely a TBI. So they, you know, they put me on TBI protocol for a little bit, but,

• 2:04:30Speaker 01

  right around that time, I get an email telling me like, hey, from this chief of mine, now he's the SCA now. He's the SCA at this point. He's like, hey, Loz, you know, we're gonna actually send you to Baghdad. And you're gonna replace this JO as the strike cell commander. And I'm thinking like, why? Like, I don't know anything about JTAC stuff and the JO that was there, he'd actually gone to like a JTAC school. Really, really intelligent guy, like, super intelligent, way smarter than me. And I'm like, what am I gonna do over there? I don't know anything about, you know, now he's like, and so it's funny, cause as I'm getting on the Hilo to leave, he's getting there and we're crossing paths and I'm like, bro, why am I getting sent there? Like, I don't know what I'm doing. He's like, don't worry about it, dude. People like you.

• 2:05:16Speaker 01

  I'm just like, okay. He's like, you're gonna be fine. So, you know, I get to Baghdad and, and I, I'm getting the turnover from this JO and I could immediately see that these gen, the general there is just not a fan of ours. And then through conversation,

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  we had, we had, uh, we had burned some relationships there.

• 2:05:39Speaker 01

  And backtracking though, when I checked into Team Three, guess who my CO is? It's my first OIC. Right on, man. And you want to talk about like a lack of relationship building. When I show up, he was just like, hey, you're that guy that got in trouble for such and such thing. Right on. And I'm like, no, I'm like, that wasn't me. That was someone else who doesn't even look like me. Like, he's a white dude, like, he's nothing like me. So I'm like, way to go, man. We spent two years together, you don't even know who I am. God, that's crazy. Anyway, so back to the story, the, the relationship had definitely been strained. And I could just tell by the way this, this general was talking to this J O. I was just like, he did not like us.

• 2:06:23Speaker 01

  And, you know, like I said, this J O was very brilliant, really knew his J TAC stuff. And so now I'm left there. And I'm thinking like, man, we got to repair this relationship. So that's actually the first thing I started doing. The general was a Marine Corps general. And so I was just chatting him up. He's like, hey, you know, where were you stationed? Where are you stationed at? He's like, oh, Camp Pendleton. I'm like, oh, that was my first duty station. He's like, what are you doing there? I was like, I used to be an FMF corpsman. Boom. Yeah, his eyes just light up. And from that point on, you know, him and I just start chatting and then I, you know, start asking him like, hey, you know, what is it that you guys are looking for when you're looking for these, for these strikes to be approved? What can we do to help out what you guys are doing? And he's like, as a matter of fact, you know, we need this, this and that. And I'm like, check, let me see what we can do about it.

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  And so what my job was, was I would get all these airstrikes for the next day that my platoon wanted to carry out strategically, strategic airstrikes. And I had to brief him to, to him and another general, to one and a two star general, get them approved in a room full of colonels that were all JAGs and super risk averse. Like they were denying a lot of the airstrikes. And that's the reason why I sent him over there like, hey, a lot of our stuff's getting denied. Go see if maybe you can change that up. So, so I go in there and, and I grab one of my J TACs. You know, this is actually where I had like what another epiphany where I'm like, you know, as a leader, I don't have to know everything. I'm like, I have someone who went to J TAC school. So I'm just going to lean on them. Because at the time I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing.

• 2:07:51Speaker 01

  I was really like insecure about it. Like, I'm going to go in there and just not know what to brief. So I told him, I'm like, hey, listen, I'm going to brief strategic picture, like why we're doing these airstrikes. Anything technical, you can answer them. And he was like, check. So that's how I would do my briefs. And like I said, I built that relationship with that general. So every time I briefed, you know, and they went around the corner, taking, taking the vote, he would always take my side. And once he was in, the two star was gonna be in as well, no matter what the JAG said. So from that point on, from where I could remember, we, we got all our airstrikes approved from that point on. And it was just a simple relationship building.

• 2:08:27Jocko Willink?

  What, what had the J O, the smart J O? Was it something he did or was it just?

• 2:08:32Speaker 01

  It was not. It was something our CEO did.

• 2:08:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So it's just a, had a bad relationship out of the gate.

• 2:08:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And then he had a bad taste in his mouth, I think, team guys on that particular deployment. He, he made some, some comments here and there that I caught on very quickly, like, check.

• 2:08:48Jocko Willink?

  God, freaking horrible. Uh, and you're, did, are you married again at this point?

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, um, so yeah. So when I was in trade at, I actually met my wife. She was, uh, my waitress. Uh, a very classy establishment.

• 2:09:05Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:09:06Speaker 01

  Called Hooters.

• 2:09:10Speaker 01

  But, uh, I went in there with a team guy and I remember seeing her and I'm thinking like, oh my God, she's gorgeous. Like, there's absolutely no way someone like that would, you know, go for someone like me. And, it turns out that I had gone on a couple of dates with one of her friends. So she had told, so she told her friend, she's like, oh, you know, I saw that, that guy, he sat at my table that you were dating. And she's like, oh, we're not dating anymore. And she was like, do you care if I get his number? And she was like, no. So that's how we ended up, um, meeting. And so at this point, you know, we've been together for a while since trade at, and now I was already, you know, at my OIC and she was just like, hey, you need to marry me. If you don't marry me before this deployment, I'm not gonna be here when you get back. So.

• 2:09:52Jocko Willink?

  Ultimatum delivered.

• 2:09:55Speaker 01

  And, and, and you know, it was a hard decision for me because I was like, man, I love this woman, but we, we, you know, we fought a lot. And during that deployment, that one to Iraq, our relationship was very, very stressed.

• 2:10:09Jocko Willink?

  And you had just gotten married before you went on the.

• 2:10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm thinking to myself like, you know, I'm gonna fail at this marriage thing again. Like what am I, what, what am I doing wrong here? And what's crazy is like, when I was at trade at, you know, you talked about the, the four laws of combat a lot. And we talked about like, find what your red flags are. And in the teams, my red flag, when I got overwhelmed was. You know, when that thought came in my head, like, I don't know what to do right now. That was my cue to detach, prioritize and execute. And for the longest time, I thought that these four laws of combat, this, this was only combat related. And it was the first time in my life where I realized that it's for your personal life, too.

• 2:10:53Speaker 01

  Because at that point, you know, I got back from deployment, we're still fighting a lot, but I'm like, man, I love this woman. I don't want, I don't want to fail at this marriage thing again. And in my head, I thought, I don't know what to do right now.

• 2:11:04Speaker 01

  And that's when it clicked for me, like, wait a minute, I've had this thought, like, literally hundreds of times when I'm on training missions where I'm like, oh, I'm a little overwhelmed. I don't know what to do right now, detach, prioritize, execute. And so at that point, I'm like, I need to detach, prioritize and execute in my personal life. And it was at that point in my life where I decided to start taking ownership of, of my mistakes and realize that, you know what? I'm an imperfect human being too, and I stopped concentrating on everything that I thought was a flaw on her part. And just started concentrating on how I could become a better husband. So I'm like, hey, you know what? This is what I do wrong, and this is how I can fix it. I have no control over her attitude. I have no, the things that I don't have control over, I stopped worrying about them.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  And I started concentrating on the things that I could control. And at first, it was a little bit of a campaign, because you could tell that she was like, what are you doing?

• 2:11:59Speaker 01

  And then, and then it got to the point where she started doing the same thing. Like, we just started taking ownership of our parts of the marriage, and I stopped worrying about what she did wrong and only worried about what I was doing wrong. And eventually she started to do the same, and her marriage is completely turned around since then. And, you know, it's all marriage, you got peaks and valleys, but it's, it's been amazing. Kind of like when you're in a platoon, like where everybody's taking ownership of stuff. No one's blaming anybody else, we're just trying to solve problems. And that's how that environment finally was in my marriage.

• 2:12:33Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, it's it's funny when you talk about like when you're in a platoon and everyone starts taking ownership stuff, you know, problems get solved. What's crazy is the opposite of that. It's not one level of badness. When people aren't taking ownership, because when they're not taking ownership, they're blaming each other. So it's not just, oh, we're going to blame each other. And that's, that's not good. That's not good, but guess what else is coming? Now we're fighting, we're yelling at each other, like it causes exponential problems beyond just. It's not just, oh, if I take ownership, the problems get solved. If I don't take ownership, the problems don't get solved. If it was that simple, it'd be like, you probably deal with it. But if now we actually are fighting, we're undermining each other, we're yelling at each other, we, we, we turn into freaking idiots.

• 2:13:17Jocko Willink?

  And so, yeah, and that can happen in people's personal lives, too. You know, you, it's not just that, oh, well, we've got this problem in our marriage. And it's not my fault, it's your fault. If that's where it stopped. You might be able to muddle your way through it, but that's not where it stops. It stops and you say, it's your fault. And they go, what do you mean it's my fault? Actually, here's some nine things that are your fault. But all of a sudden, we have not just one little problem. That's not getting solved. You have exponential problems across the board. It's a freaking disaster.

• 2:13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a game changer.

• 2:13:50Jocko Willink?

  Um, now you came back from that deployment. And you actually did a couple of years where you were doing some, uh, some classified stuff. Um, overseas. And obviously, we can't talk about things that are classified. Um, but maybe some unclassified lessons learned from what you were doing?

• 2:14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, um.

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  I think the biggest thing that I learned while I was over there is, is how to build relationships. And honestly, I got, I got really into it and I started trying to perfect that craft by reading books. So I started reading books like, um, How to Win Friends and Influence People, uh, The Like Switch. Like anything I could help get my hands on. Because I knew that when I was over there, it was just going to be me and one other operator. That's it. We didn't have like a support system. We didn't have a platoon. That was, that was us. So we had to build a good relationship with like the local populace in a very short amount of time. Um, we had to build a good relationship with our interpreter. And that's really honestly, when it boils down to it, our lives depended on these relationships because at times. You're asking some of these people to risk their lives for you.

• 2:15:00Speaker 01

  And so that's where I really started delving into, how do I get people to trust? And like me to the point where I can influence them in the shortest amount of time? That's really the biggest lesson I got out of those two years from doing that, that mission set.

• 2:15:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, that's, and that's something that applies across the board. You know, it's funny when you were talking about the switch going off in your head. Of like, oh, I can use this stuff. That's the same thing that happened. That's what started all this stuff. I went and talked to these freaking executives about leadership. They started asking me questions and I was just applying the principles, the four laws of combat, take ownership. Like that's when I started. And it was thirty, it was the first question I got asked, I was like, oh. Oh, you have this problem? Okay. Here's how you solve it. Just based on the principles that we already know. It's like a freaking, such a nice moment in my life where I was like, oh, cause I didn't, again, I didn't, I was totally institutionalized. I didn't understand. I didn't know anything about civilian companies. I didn't know anything at all about them.

• 2:15:58Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden I realized in an instant that, oh, all this stuff applies to all these leadership situations, man. And that's the same thing. Going back to building relationships. It's like, oh yeah, guess what? Have you ever had a moment in your life where having an antagonistic relationship with someone you gotta work with helps? It's like that, that, that, that has never happened to anybody ever. It's never happened where, oh, I don't get along with this person and I have to work with. And it's beneficial to me. Doesn't happen. So why are you not focused on getting to build relationships with people? It's freaking crazy. But good lessons. Um, you come back from that and you go back to trade it again, right?

• 2:16:36Speaker 01

  Yep. I go back to trade it as the XO this time.

• 2:16:39Jocko Willink?

  Damn XO trade it. Yeah. What are you? Are you a lieutenant now?

• 2:16:43Speaker 01

  I'm a JO still.

• 2:16:45Jocko Willink?

  A JG?

• 2:16:46Speaker 01

  A JG. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I did my, so I, because I didn't have to go through BUDS and everything else. I did my first deployment as an ensign.

• 2:16:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:53Speaker 01

  And so, you know, I'm a JG now. And because I'm prior enlisted and I knew the CEO there at the time who's also a prior enlisted guy because actually him and I had done a deployment, we'd done that Iraq deployment together.

• 2:17:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  At Team One and he was like, yeah, come on over. I was like, you know, I need to do a disassociated tour. Cause they were like, you needed, cause I was like, hey, can I go back and do my platoon commander?

• 2:17:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  And they were like, no, they're like, you need to get away from it for a little bit. Cause you know, they have like a limit on how much time you could be deployed. And they're like, dude, you're like right there. You need to, you need to go somewhere and take a knee. So I'm like, trade it sounds good. I really like, I really enjoyed my time there and so I decided to go back.

• 2:17:34Jocko Willink?

  And then you're doing the XO billet, which is not quite as fun as doing the.

• 2:17:38Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 2:17:38Jocko Willink?

  Definitely not as fun as being.

• 2:17:39Speaker 01

  It's not what I thought it was gonna be. So the CEO actually gets the funner job.

• 2:17:44Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:17:44Speaker 01

  Because he's actually going to the training trips and debriefing. As the XO, you're dealing with everything else, the admin stuff, the disciplinary problems. Getting all the, the meetings at group.

• 2:17:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, you're, I, man, my, my career was such a freaking. I was just so lucky and everything like when I went there, I was just the, just the OIC, you know? So just getting, just going out and training trips and freaking awesomeness. At what point, so how many years do you have in at this point? This is like 2018, so you're coming up on 20.

• 2:18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:19Jocko Willink?

  Is this when you start thinking about maybe doing something else?

• 2:18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I mean, um, I figured I had the time. So I'm like, hey, I'm going to go knock out my MBA. I always really enjoyed business. And then through conversations, they were like, hey, after this, they were like, you can't do your, your, um.

• 2:18:36Jocko Willink?

  OIC.

• 2:18:36Speaker 01

  OIC until like 2024 or something like that. I'm like, what am I gonna do until then? Like you do more disassociated tours. And I'm like, you know what? That doesn't sound interesting to me. So I think I'm just gonna retire. I mean, at that point I was gonna hit 20. So I'm like, you know, I'm gonna go get my MBA and um and punch out entire. So that's at that point where I started looking into MBA programs and and trying to see where I was gonna go.

• 2:19:04Jocko Willink?

  And you end up going back to USD.

• 2:19:06Speaker 01

  No, no, I went to UCLA.

• 2:19:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you went to UCLA.

• 2:19:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it was funny about that is I was really set on like getting an M seven school. You know, like the magnificent seven. So I'm like, I'm only gonna go to like Wharton or Booth or MIT or one of those. And so those are the only ones I applied to. And then I realized that the GI bill doesn't cover those because they're private schools. Even though like some of them actually had lower tuition than UCLA. And at that point, I had a really good friend of mine, one of my best friends. If you look at his resume, it looks almost exactly like mine, like FMF corpsman, uh, you know, teams, USD finance degree. And then he's like, hey, bro, I'm actually gonna go to UCLA. And I'm like, why is that? And then he's like, dude, your GI bill pays for it because it's a public school.

• 2:19:55Speaker 01

  And I struggled with that for a little bit.

• 2:19:57Jocko Willink?

  Bill doesn't cover private schools?

• 2:19:58Speaker 01

  It only covers like a small portion. I was still gonna have to take out like a six figure. A six figure student loan. And I've always been pretty frugal about my money. I'm like, dang, I don't want to take out this huge loan. And then I kind of went into thought, I'm like, why do I want to go to one of these schools? Like, why do I really want to go? And at some point, I realized, I just want people to think I'm smart. I mean, we really, we really like, you know, boil it down to this most simple form. I just want people to think I'm smart. I'm like, you know what? I think I have enough to get to where I want to go if I go to UCLA. So I would drive up to LA every weekend to go to school there and knock out my MBA.

• 2:20:38Jocko Willink?

  And then from there, you you went into investment banking, right?

• 2:20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I so I knew that I, you know, like, wait, what do you do after an MBA? Like, oh, everybody does investment banking or um or consulting. And I always really liked finance. And then my buddy, I was talking about Kyle Roy. When I tell you we got exact same resume, she's like, dude, I'm gonna go be an investment banker. I'm like, cool, I'll go be an investment banker too.

• 2:21:05Speaker 01

  So Is he like a year ahead of you or something? No, we're in the same class, but he actually knew how to do it. So he actually got in. So there's a cycle to it. And I didn't know that. So when you first get to your MBA program, literally the second you step on campus, you're already recruiting for it. You're already recruiting for the internship for that summer. And then you go to your second year and after you graduate your second year, you start full time. However, by the time I figured it all out, I was already on my second year. So I was a year behind. And so nobody really wanted to deal with me because it wasn't the traditional path. So I just started reaching out to people on LinkedIn, like sending them my resume. And I would put in like whatever bank, US, like I would put Air Force veteran, Marine Corps veteran. I'm like, dude, if anybody's gonna answer me, it's gonna be a veteran. Got it.

• 2:21:49Speaker 01

  And that's how I started getting in was like a veteran from these banks. They would start reaching out, you know, they saw my resume and like, I think they were intrigued. Obviously, the Navy SEAL part kind of stands out. I'm not gonna lie, I tell you, that's definitely what got my foot in the door. Cause some of these other people, it's an extremely competitive job. And some of these people, A, way smarter than me, and B, had like a legitimate pedigree in the finance world. And so Meanwhile, you were ex-officer. Yeah. So I told my wife You're a good point, man. Jack. Yeah, I told my wife, I'm like, dude, when I go to these meet and greets, because it's like a million meet and greets. Because it's extremely competitive. I'm telling you, it's so competitive. And especially in LA, because in LA, there's a lot less slot. Like if you

• 2:22:34Speaker 01

  go to New York, there's a ton of slots in New York. But everybody wants to be warm weather. So everybody's like trying to apply to go to LA. And I told my wife, I'm like, when I go to these meet and greets, like all these people, they're just ridiculously smart. I was like, it's pretty intimidating. And then we had this one interview process where they actually take you in with your other competitors. So it's like you and two other people that you're competing with. And then you go and you interview with these bankers. And these interviews were like, three hours long. Like you would do half an hour with this banker, and then half an hour with this banker. And that's when I realized that I belong there. That I could, that I had a shot. Because the very first, that interview process wasn't technical at all. It was all about leadership.

• 2:23:16Speaker 01

  So when they start coming up with these questions like, tell me about a time where this happened. I'm like, cool. I have a story for that. I have a story for everything. And it was cool because I would tell my story. And then the guy next to me would tell his story. And it literally got to the point where I'm not kidding you. In the interview, the guy next to me was like, I really hate going after him. What am I supposed to say after that?

• 2:23:47Speaker 01

  So that's when I'm like, oh, I got a shot.

• 2:23:49Jocko Willink?

  And you ended up getting hired?

• 2:23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I ended up getting the internship. So the internship's like, you know, nine weeks long. It's basically like a nine week interview. It was legit. Like you're, you're working your ass off.

• 2:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Grind.

• 2:24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a grind.

• 2:24:05Jocko Willink?

  And then you had another year of school to complete?

• 2:24:07Speaker 01

  No, because I had actually started my second year.

• 2:24:09Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:24:10Speaker 01

  So I.

• 2:24:10Jocko Willink?

  So you got, so your internship went right into job?

• 2:24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that was actually one of the, the, the things where I used.

• 2:24:18Jocko Willink?

  Did you finish school when you were in, did you finish school when you were still in?

• 2:24:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:23Jocko Willink?

  And then when did you do that nine week internship?

• 2:24:25Speaker 01

  I took leave.

• 2:24:26Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 2:24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was already on my way out.

• 2:24:28Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:24:29Speaker 01

  It was like.

• 2:24:30Jocko Willink?

  So like getting close to terminal leave or whatever?

• 2:24:32Speaker 01

  Exactly. I said, saved all my leave specifically for, for, for, you know, me getting out.

• 2:24:37Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:24:38Speaker 01

  And so I used it all up then. And I got hired and they let me start right away because, you know, I didn't have another year of school. So then I retired.

• 2:24:49Jocko Willink?

  And then how'd you like, how'd you like the investment banking world?

• 2:24:55Speaker 01

  I liked, I liked a lot of it and I didn't like other parts of it. I really liked the mergers and acquisitions. So that's what we did. We did mergers, acquisitions, and then leveraged buyouts. And we were dealing with big, because I got hired with a big bulge bracket bank. So we were working on like some big deals. And it was exciting. It was cool. It was interesting. It just wasn't cool for 18 to 20 hours a day. Like I worked long days. It was like, an early night was midnight.

• 2:25:24Speaker 01

  But most of the times, I'm, you know, I'm building PowerPoint and Excel models till three, four in the morning. Those times where I didn't sleep at all, like our presentation was due at like 5 a.m. and I turned it in at 5 a.m.

• 2:25:36Jocko Willink?

  Where were you working out of?

• 2:25:38Speaker 01

  So home, because it was during COVID. Yeah, so I didn't have to move up to LA, which is good because my wife didn't want to move up there.

• 2:25:46Speaker 01

  But we were set on moving up there and but it was. Every time we drove up there to look at places, the drive home would be very quiet because we could just tell that neither of us wanted to move up there. But it worked out for me because like I said, it was COVID. So they're like, hey, we're going to be virtual, you know, for the time being.

• 2:26:04Speaker 01

  And um, and I think when I realized like, I don't want to do this long term is when I saw the managing directors that have been there for a while. Like I would finish a presentation, you know, and it's like four in the morning, like, hey, you need to call them. I'm like, it's four in the morning, like, you need to call a managing director to make, he has to look over that PowerPoint before we turn it in. And I'm like, dang, so I guess this never stops. And you know, it was, and I had had a couple of TBIs throughout my career. So my migraine, because I wasn't, there was literally nights where I wouldn't go to sleep at all. I'd roll right into the next day and then my migraines were starting to get more frequent. And staring at a screen like all day long. And I'm like, this isn't going to be a long term play for me, but I'm going to tough it out.

• 2:26:45Speaker 01

  You know, for the two or three years or whatever you got to be to to make VP and then move on to something else. And I didn't realize that the job offers were going to start rolling in so quickly. So like, once the job offers, like recruiters started reaching out to me, I'm like, I'm going to start looking elsewhere. And around that time is, you know, JP had been talking to me about Echelon Front now for, for about a year. Like even when I was in trade day, he's like, hey, you thought about coming over here and I was, I was interested, but I just never materialized. You know? And I just went down my path and I told him, hey, JP, this is actually what I'm, I'm doing now and I'm kind of all in on it and. So it's around that time, I'm already looking at moving to different firms. I've already got a couple that I'm pretty close to signing with.

• 2:27:27Speaker 01

  And then JP calls me one day and he's like, hey, bro, we have a client who, you know, about 50% of his employees speak Spanish and I told him we could deliver.

• 2:27:39Speaker 01

  I was like, you did? He's like, well, yeah, I got you. Cause he knew I was fluent in Spanish. Right. And I was like, bro, you ever seen Office Space? I was like, that's my life. I have seven bosses, Bob. You know, so you're, I'm on seven different deals and for each deal I have to get approved. And granted, some of them are, you know, have some spillover. So there's, I'm working with, you know, managing director for two or three different deals. So I'm like, dude, it's going to be so hard for me to get a day off. Like it's going to be near impossible. And he's like, bro, I really need this. And I'm like, all right, you know, JP's one of my brothers. Like I love JP to death. So I'm like, let me see what I can do. So I put in the time for two personal days.

• 2:28:22Speaker 01

  And by the way, a personal day, it's funny when you get the email that says, this is what a personal day looks like. You will check your email, you know, like six times during that day. And if you need something, you will answer it. So it's really like a personal day, you're still freaking working. So I'm like, I took two personal days to come out and help him out with this FTX. And so I would literally, you know, teach all day long. And then I pulled an all nighter trying to catch up on all the work that I missed throughout the day. So I didn't sleep for like those three days that I was there.

• 2:28:52Speaker 01

  But it was cool because I showed up and it was this construction company. And when I showed up, I could tell that, that some of the guys weren't happy to be there and not because they're, you know, lazy or anything, they just wanted to go to work. They're hardworking people, you know? So they're like, they want to be working instead of being in this leadership course. And so let's see, I think, I think it was a Thursday. Yeah, it was a Thursday where the first day of class started. And we split the, the class in two because they had so many people that we were going to teach one class one day. And then the other group that's next day and on Saturday, we did like a debrief tying it all back into their business. So day one, I'm teaching. I could see it that, you know, they'd rather be working than be there.

• 2:29:34Speaker 01

  One of their foremen who, you know, it's like one of their rock star foremen shows up late. Like same thing. He's like, man, I'd rather be working right now. He didn't want to be there. And then at the end of the day, I, I noticed the switch. Like they, I could tell that they were enjoying themselves and they were learning stuff and it was clicking. The light bulbs were coming on. And at the end of the day, this foreman, he comes up to me, he's like, hey, man, I'm really sorry that I showed up late. Can I come back tomorrow and do it all over again? I was like, it's fine with us as long as your, your boss is cool with it. And he's like, okay. So he comes back the next day, you know, and, and does the full day of training with Echelon Front. And um, on the third day, when I

• 2:30:17Speaker 01

  heard the debrief points and the impact that it made, I mean, some of these debrief points, it was like emotional. Like it was like legit and I was like, wow, like you guys are doing something really great here. Um, and I felt good about it. You know, their CEO was just, just cared so much. He's super, super intelligent guy, very caring, very humble. And it was just a pleasure talking to him and, and seeing how much he cared about his team and his people. And then seeing how these other people appreciated now really started to appreciate the fact that he did this for them. Like was trying to develop them as leaders because he cared about them. He cared about the company. And I told JP, I'm like, man, that felt good.

• 2:31:01Speaker 01

  I haven't felt good about what I was doing for work for, for a while since I left the teams. And um, and that's when I was like, okay. Let's have a serious conversation of what this could possibly look like for me joining EF. So.

• 2:31:16Jocko Willink?

  So here you are. You know, that, that little, um, the little obstacle that you get over with, and I know, obviously, I've been doing this for a, a long time now, but there's a little obstacle with some people when they show up for training. And the obstacle is, well, there's, there can be several of them, but one of the biggest obstacles is they don't yet understand that leadership is a skill and that it's something that they use and it's something that they can actually learn and get good at. And it doesn't take very long in those sessions where people go, oh, wait, that's me. Oh, wait, I could use that. And all of a sudden, they realize this is going to make

• 2:31:59Jocko Willink?

  my life so much better and it's going to make my team's life so much better. And that, that is so gratifying to see that. And what's really awesome is when you look up in three months, six months or a year, and now you see where that company is and they, their trajectory that, that changes for a company and how they elevate and move forward. Man, it's freaking, it's very, very rewarding, to say the least.

• 2:32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Every time I do another job, I'm just, just solidifies that decision for sure.

• 2:32:33Jocko Willink?

  It's weird, uh, were you thinking, cause, cause the first gigs that you did was teaching FTX, which is like our field training exercise, which is, uh, you know, I'm JP and I've talked about this where I'm like, hey JP, people don't, they don't need to really like know how to clear a room. It's just, it's funny, almost the human instincts that you have of how you would clear a room are good enough to do the FTXs. It's not about teaching people how, you know, the tactics of combat. It's just, it's about teaching them leadership, but it's funny, like even the plans they come up with, like we give them a target, their plans are like perfectly fine. They're perfectly fine.

• 2:33:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Sometimes they're not that great. Sometimes they make mistakes, but a lot of times it's like, meh, you know what? That's, that, that would work. That would work on this target for real. And these are people that are civilians, cause let's face it, hitting a target of bad guys, there, it's not rocket science. It's not rocket science to figure out what you're going to do. And we give them enough basics that they can figure it out, but. For me, you know, the, the leadership laboratory that we got to work in when we were actually in and actually at Trade Ed and actually seeing platoons go through, that is such a powerful thing because man, when you are in those situations, you feel it. And when you, like you think, oh, I'm good at detaching and then you go on a run where you're freaking yelling and screaming and you, you know, and you say, oh, how was that detachment on the last run?

• 2:34:01Jocko Willink?

  As you were yelling and screaming at everybody and shooting your weapon a bunch and not, and no one took charge of anything. So obvious when you actually experience it and you learn that lesson so much more thoroughly. When you actually experience it's freaking awesome to watch.

• 2:34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I've had messages like on, on Instagram or LinkedIn. Where people have gone through our training. It's like, hey, I had this situation at work and I thought about that time where you took the gun away from me and told me to lead. You know, cause when they're not detached and they're just getting after it with their gun, but they're actually in charge. Like every now and then I'll, I'll take their gun away and I'm like, hey, lead. Now you can lead because you don't have a gun and, and so, you know, they'll, they'll write back like, I remember the time you did this to me or you said this to me. And, and I say that at, at the FTXs, I'm like, hey, you know, going through that pain. Actually solidifies that lesson way more. It's like Bruce Lee says, the pain will leave you when it's done teaching you. It's one of my favorite quotes.

• 2:35:00Speaker 01

  And I tell people that too, like in my brief in the morning, I'm like, hey, we're not here to teach you leadership. I mean, we're not here to teach you tactics. We're here to teach you leadership. And in the absence of knowledge, because you don't have any, you know, knowledge doing this, what do you have to lean back on? Your leadership, which is simply you trying to influence another 25 people towards a common goal. So you're going to have to use all those tools that we've, you know, talked about. And the, the groups that do the best are the ones that are able to apply it immediately. Like they make that connection. And the ones that struggle are the ones that, that, you know. Can't seem to do that.

• 2:35:31Jocko Willink?

  You know what's interesting? I was just thinking about this, um, from a jujitsu perspective. How long have you been training jujitsu for?

• 2:35:37Speaker 01

  Since 2012.

• 2:35:38Jocko Willink?

  2012.

• 2:35:39Speaker 01

  Lots of off.

• 2:35:41Jocko Willink?

  So, so what's interesting is, you know, people, like you take a normal dude.

• 2:35:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:47Jocko Willink?

  And you say, hey, what, that doesn't train. And you think, hey, if you get in a fight, what would you do? And they kind of like, they kind of think, what is it that the, hey, I just see red, bro. You know, I'll go off, bro. Like, that's kind of what they think. They think that that is how they're gonna fight. And that's how they would win in a fight. Like, hey, I'll just freaking make it happen. And that's totally ignorant. That's one of the most ignorant things you could say. And if you go against someone that's trained, then you're absolutely gonna lose. But there's also a really good chance you'll lose anyways. Imagine this. There's people that go, that are in leadership positions. That their mentality is that exact same thing. Hey, oh, if I'm in charge, I'll tell people, I'll handle it. And, and they could literally learn

• 2:36:31Jocko Willink?

  jujitsu for leadership. We have jujitsu for leadership. It's like an amazing untapped knowledge that like the Gracies. The Gracies brought jujitsu to the world. And all of a sudden, people are like, oh, I can joke people. I don't, I can defeat someone that's bigger than me. I can avoid getting hit. Like, there's all these amazing things that we literally did not know as humans. We did not know. And if you would have gotten a fight, and if I would have gotten into a fight in 1990, or 1991, I would do what my instincts are. Throw haymakers, whatever. Like, whatever it is a human is gonna do is what I would do. And then all of a sudden, as soon as I learned, oh, the joke. Like, all of a sudden, you know what to do. And now you can handle all these situations.

• 2:37:17Jocko Willink?

  And it's the same thing with what we teach. It's like, oh, this isn't some, this isn't some mysterious thing. Like, here's, oh, this is an arm lock. It's called cover and move. Here's, uh, taking it back. This is keeping things simple. You can actually learn maneuvers for leadership. And that's what hits people when they're going through our programs. You can see it in their face. They're like, oh, oh, I remember when a guy was doing this to me, and all I had to do back was, was diminish, you know, dim, reflect and diminish. I could have taken that angry person and Reflected some of those emotions, but diminished them. And then I could reflect it in such a way that they would realize that I'm on their side. And then we'd be able to have a real conversation and move this forward. That's one move.

• 2:38:03Jocko Willink?

  There's all these moves you can learn and man, it's just like this. You know what? It's actually the same look. When somebody does jujitsu and whatever moment, because different people get it at a different time. That moment where they go, oh, this is amazing. Like, oh, it all makes sense. I think it's sometimes when people realize that. You know, oh, and then you sweep them and you're in the mount and they go, oh, it all is connected. You see that look in their eyes and I see that look in their eyes. That's what you're talking about. Like the guy that you're talking about that came back at the end of the day like, Hey, can I come tomorrow? Cause he realized that it's all connected, that leadership is a skill, that he could actually utilize these tools to go out there and lead his team with, with skills and with techniques and with procedures, moves.

• 2:38:49Jocko Willink?

  Man, it's freaking empowering. Legit. Um. And that's where you're at right now. We just went through your whole damn life, bro.

• 2:38:59Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:38:59Jocko Willink?

  That, that's pretty impressive. We'll have to, uh, I know there's, I know you had some, uh, some stuff that you wrote down for me that we didn't cover today that we'll probably cover on, cover on the next time. As, you know, get a little bit more granular on some of these things that you experienced for sure. Um, but probably a pretty good place to wrap it up. Of course, Echo probably has some questions at this point.

• 2:39:20Speaker 02

  I'll keep it.

• 2:39:21Jocko Willink?

  What? Got questions?

• 2:39:22Speaker 02

  I'll keep it simple. Oh, have you ever heard that you look like Oscar De La Hoya?

• 2:39:27Speaker 01

  Every day of my life since I was 16.

• 2:39:28Speaker 02

  I understand completely.

• 2:39:30Speaker 01

  As a matter of fact, and my platoons, they already knew it was coming. And so when we would go out, like, you know, people would be like, hey, is that? And they would be like, yep.

• 2:39:40Jocko Willink?

  Yep. We're a security.

• 2:39:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what they would say. And, uh, just, just not, not too long ago, I was in New York. And I was with my wife and this guy comes up to me. He's like, hey, man, I still think pound for pound, you're the best.

• 2:39:53Speaker 01

  And then she's like, are you gonna correct him? And I'm like, I'm tired of correcting people. But then it's like more people started coming. I'm like, hey, guys, I'm not Oscar.

• 2:40:00Speaker 02

  The buff version of Oscar De La Hoya.

• 2:40:02Jocko Willink?

  The jacked version, the jacked version.

• 2:40:05Speaker 01

  I've gotten that forever.

• 2:40:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is an uncanny resemblance. I, uh, yeah. Who do you look like, Echo Charles?

• 2:40:13Speaker 02

  Jade.

• 2:40:15Jocko Willink?

  Too easy, bro. You even asked that one before. That was too easy. Got that twin brother. Uh, yeah, man, like I said, we'll dig into some more of the stuff in the future. Probably a good place to wrap it today. Um.

• 2:40:26Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 2:40:28Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles?

• 2:40:28Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:40:29Jocko Willink?

  Sounds like, it kinda seems like Carlos has gotten a lot done.

• 2:40:34Speaker 02

  Yes, he has.

• 2:40:35Jocko Willink?

  I'm thinking maybe we should all, uh, do more. What do you think?

• 2:40:38Speaker 02

  We should do.

• 2:40:39Jocko Willink?

  Where do we start?

• 2:40:40Speaker 02

  Well, you mentioned jujitsu.

• 2:40:42Jocko Willink?

  Hmm, what a good place to start.

• 2:40:43Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Um, yeah, we wanted to.

• 2:40:46Jocko Willink?

  What do you, a purple belt?

• 2:40:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:47Jocko Willink?

  Purple belt.

• 2:40:48Speaker 02

  Two thousand twelve, it's twenty one, it's nine year. When did you get your purple belt?

• 2:40:52Speaker 01

  Just recently.

• 2:40:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, but off and on that's.

• 2:40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was on deployment a lot and, and then I would, I bounced around a couple of schools and, um, I'm training actually with your buddy, Aaron Hernandez.

• 2:41:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right on.

• 2:41:02Speaker 01

  Dude, he's awesome.

• 2:41:03Jocko Willink?

  Freaking awesome.

• 2:41:04Speaker 01

  His, his, yeah, he, he's, he's awesome.

• 2:41:06Jocko Willink?

  You, you know, like, I started, he started training that when we were at Fabio Santos. He was like ten years old, man, a little kid. I wanna see those pictures, bro. That's freaking rad. What, yeah. He's awesome, man. His dad, like, would just come. I, I, his, a lot of times nowadays you see like the dads all into jujitsu and that's why the kids are there.

• 2:41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:26Jocko Willink?

  Almost against their will. It didn't seem like Aaron's dad was into it, but he's like, oh, this is what my kid wants to? Cool. I'm gonna sit here every day, you know, for two hours on the bench, waiting for my kid to get done with this, whatever this weird stuff is that he's doing.

• 2:41:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:40Jocko Willink?

  Freaking legit. So, what's that? Two thousand twelve?

• 2:41:45Jocko Willink?

  So you're almost 10 years deep.

• 2:41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:48Jocko Willink?

  Got that purple belt.

• 2:41:48Speaker 01

  Underachieving purple belt.

• 2:41:50Jocko Willink?

  It happens.

• 2:41:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so yeah, even Leif was like that too, right?

• 2:41:53Jocko Willink?

  Dude, Leif was a Leif was a white belt. Bro, I started training those guys in 2005, but actually he had trained before that. Leif had trained at Fabios.

• 2:42:05Speaker 02

  Oh, no kidding.

• 2:42:06Jocko Willink?

  Before 2005.

• 2:42:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:08Jocko Willink?

  So Leif was like a white belt for, I mean.

• 2:42:11Speaker 02

  Long time.

• 2:42:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a long time, as we used to say in Hawaii. Long time.

• 2:42:16Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:42:17Jocko Willink?

  Long time.

• 2:42:18Speaker 01

  I was perfectly happy at blue belt.

• 2:42:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:20Speaker 01

  Aaron was like, bro, I got.

• 2:42:22Jocko Willink?

  He got it. He got to do it to you. Yeah, blue belt is the only, blue belt is the last chance you have to be under the radar. Yeah, cuz once you're a purple belt.

• 2:42:31Speaker 01

  People expect.

• 2:42:31Jocko Willink?

  There's a, there's, yeah, you, you can get tapped, you can literally get tapped by a white belt as a blue belt. It is not that big of a deal, right? You're kind of like, well, you know, I'm just a blue belt. Just a blue belt, it covers a lot of ground. I was a blue belt for a long time, too. I was a blue belt cuz I was a blue belt. I got my blue belt in San Diego, but then I moved to Virginia Beach. And I mean, dude, and I was training, when I was in San Diego, I was training all the time. And then when I got to Virginia Beach, I did a couple deployments, so I wasn't training as much. But even when I was on deployment, I would train with the boys. But I was still a blue belt, so it was years. I think I was a blue belt for like, I wanna, and then when I got back to San Diego, Fabio, you know, I had to like re-earn my wrist.

• 2:43:12Jocko Willink?

  It was like I, it was like when I wasn't at Fabios, he's, I wasn't training. He's like, whatever, hey, I don't know where you were, you might have gotten better, but it doesn't count.

• 2:43:21Speaker 02

  We're starting where you left off.

• 2:43:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we started where I left off with him. So it took me another, another probably, I think I was a blue belt for like five years. Blue belt. And I, I never buy my wife anything, like hardly ever, the poor woman. But when I got my purple belt, when I got my purple belt, I got a, I went to a flower store, I got a purple flower of some kind, or like five purple flowers. And brought my best, I was so stoked that I wanted my wife to be kind of stoked too, to get that purple belt. But, and, and I was ready for it too, like, I mean. When I got my purple belt, I was ready for that purple belt. I had somebody, so I got their black belt the other day. Friend of mine got a black belt the other day.

• 2:44:05Jocko Willink?

  He's like, I'm not ready for it. I was like, no one feels like they're ready for the black belt. No, almost no one, right? Maybe you just won Worlds or whatever.

• 2:44:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:13Jocko Willink?

  But you're not just like, oh, yeah.

• 2:44:14Speaker 02

  I forget who it was. I think it might have been Clark Gracie. I think, I could be wrong, so whatever. Um, but it was the kind where he was winning everything as a brown belt, everything. And, and I think he was like, I don't know if it was the coach or whatever, someone was kind of like, oh, wait, is he doing that just so he can win a bunch? And someone was like, bro, like, he, he can't compete as a brown belt anymore. It's like someone has to give him his black belt. Like, that's, that's the only exception I could ever think of.

• 2:44:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, Dean List won ADCC as a brown belt.

• 2:44:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, huh?

• 2:44:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but via submission, by the way. Absolute, by the way.

• 2:44:52Speaker 02

  Dang.

• 2:44:53Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, so we're thinking jiu-jitsu is good.

• 2:44:55Speaker 02

  Yes, jiu-jitsu is good, fitness is good, Carlos is in great shape, you know? And always good to see. So we got some healthy, uh, how should I say, healthy? We want to go in a healthy direction, mentally, physically, you see what I'm saying?

• 2:45:08Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:45:09Speaker 02

  So I'm gonna talk about energy drinks first, because that's, you know, kind of what we do from time to time. So we got Jaco, Discipline Go, energy drink, healthy energy drink, by the way, if you didn't know, Carlos.

• 2:45:20Speaker 01

  I do. Those things power the FTXs.

• 2:45:22Jocko Willink?

  I know.

• 2:45:25Speaker 02

  That was like a softball, what do you call it, rhetorical kind of question, right? Because I know, I know, you know, but the, the, the Discipline Go scenarios. Um, so, yeah, so, yeah, we, we will drink energy drinks now, as long as it's this kind.

• 2:45:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure, because the other kind?

• 2:45:40Speaker 02

  Bad.

• 2:45:41Jocko Willink?

  Is bad. Liter- it's, it's a dichotomy. Well, this kind, completely bad for you, legitimately bad for you. And this isn't like, oh, well, Jaco's trying to sell his energy drink. No, I'm telling you, those other energies are factually bad for you. We have one that is factually good for you.

• 2:45:59Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:46:00Jocko Willink?

  Factually.

• 2:46:01Speaker 02

  You know that there's a, um, I don't know the service, but you can do it online. I was gonna do it for a video, it was gonna make a long time ago, before all this. Where you can make your own energy drink, like if you want, oh, you know, Carlos extra thunder energy drink or whatever, and you can kind of pick a flavor and then like they'll design the thing or you can design the thing and then you just get it. But it's all like the similar, like if you want cherry blast or whatever, I don't know what you'd call it. But if you get like a cherry flavored one, it's like the same cherry flavored as like, you know, Jaco cherry blast.

• 2:46:34Speaker 01

  I would do lemon lime Los.

• 2:46:38Jocko Willink?

  You know what's interesting is you might think to yourself, and this is good because you did the investment banking thing for a while. And did you guys take any companies public?

• 2:46:46Speaker 01

  So actually during my internship, I worked on IPO.

• 2:46:49Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting because we work with a bunch of public companies, obviously. But you might think to yourself like, hey, well, why doesn't everyone just make, you know, a energy drink that's good for you? You think that, right? Like, hey, well, that just seems like, that seems like a good idea. And here's the deal, it's more expensive. It's more expensive and it's going to cut into your profit. And as soon as you get into a point in a company where you're like, oh, we want to do the right thing and make the best product. And we are not going to make as much money. There's like armies of people that tear you apart and say, no, just freaking make more money. It's the same, it's the same thing with, you know, with our hard goods, with our clothing.

• 2:47:34Jocko Willink?

  As soon as you get to a point where you can make jeans, oh, we're making jeans. As soon as someone goes, hey, we could shave forty eight cents off the price per pair of those jeans. There's an army of people that say, do it. They sell, they say, sell your soul. That's what they say. And it works.

• 2:47:53Speaker 02

  Of course, I mean, it works. Think about it too, especially the more you sell, right? Where, okay, I'm going to do this. Oh, we're going to shave forty eight cents. When you're selling like. Ten pair or ten whatever. It's like forty cents. It's like what four dollars. I'd rather keep my integrity, but once the numbers start going way up there and forty eight cents means like another like, I don't know, half a million dollars for you or whatever. You're like, oh, I think that forty eight cents, you know.

• 2:48:17Jocko Willink?

  So it's a literal selling of the soul.

• 2:48:20Speaker 02

  Literal.

• 2:48:20Jocko Willink?

  Literal selling of the soul, man, because like this is pasteurized, right? Which means we don't have to put chemicals in it, which by the way, this is chemicals that everybody uses. They all throw them in there. Hey, that's not that bad.

• 2:48:33Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 2:48:34Jocko Willink?

  It's not that bad.

• 2:48:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, sell your soul.

• 2:48:36Speaker 02

  We'll say industry standard.

• 2:48:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's the industry standards. You can kind of shrug your shoulders and be like, well, you know, that's the way everyone's doing it.

• 2:48:42Speaker 02

  Well, there's certain like toxins, right? Where like the FDA is like, well, you just keep them below this level. And technically it's like it's legal or whatever. It's like considered not harmful or whatever. What if you pound like three of those every day?

• 2:48:57Jocko Willink?

  It's crazy.

• 2:48:58Speaker 02

  Big trouble, big trouble. Nonetheless, not with these, obviously. It's good. So yeah, get on some of that. That'll help you. That'll help us, you know?

• 2:49:05Jocko Willink?

  Move you in the right direction.

• 2:49:07Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Stay in fit and mentally because the cognitive stuff in there as well. Also, keep your joints in uh in the game as well. You know, if you still, if you want to work out as you get older. Your joints have to maintain. No.

• 2:49:21Jocko Willink?

  Do you lift today?

• 2:49:22Speaker 01

  I did.

• 2:49:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:23Speaker 02

  What time you lift? What time do you usually work out?

• 2:49:25Speaker 01

  It's not four thirty. It's I saw today I got up at six.

• 2:49:30Jocko Willink?

  What'd you do? Just like don't not do but like roughly, what'd you do? Do pull ups? Do you? What'd you do?

• 2:49:36Speaker 01

  Today's leg day.

• 2:49:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, me too. I mean, it just happened to be. This is Sunday.

• 2:49:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:41Jocko Willink?

  But here's what's cool. I got done. I was that my my son opened the door to my garage and I could, you know, feel his presence there. And normally he's wanting to jack seal himself. And I racked the weight, squats, racked the weight, turned around, and he goes, how many more you got? And I go, I'm done because I was literally done. And he goes, waves are good at the pier. And I go, let's hit it.

• 2:50:04Speaker 02

  Is it cold right now? Kind of cold?

• 2:50:06Jocko Willink?

  It's California. It's California, meaning it's not going to freeze, but it's not going to be warm either.

• 2:50:12Speaker 02

  Are we using a wetsuit right now?

• 2:50:13Jocko Willink?

  I used a wetsuit today. Weakness, weakness.

• 2:50:16Speaker 02

  No, no, no. Efficiency. Look, do you want to enjoy surfing? You don't want to enjoy surfing.

• 2:50:20Jocko Willink?

  You know what the weird thing is, frankly, if you go surfing without a wetsuit, it's only cold for the first, most days, I mean, if sure it's freezing, but most days it's only cold for three minutes. And then it's just normal and you feel fine. Those three minutes though, that's what puts, that's what has people squeezing in that damn wetsuit.

• 2:50:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and also when you're in the cold water, they, like your handle and maybe for, like an eye, I mean, it depends who you are obviously, but after like an hour, it's almost like the coldness, like you get hit with that initial coldness and your body's like, ah, it's not that cold actually. So we're cool. Plus you're generating heat from all the stuff, but then the coldness kinda on a strategic level starts to just seep in. And it kinda hits you like, bro, I'm kinda, this is kinda.

• 2:51:01Jocko Willink?

  Here's a big factor. Do you surf Carlos? No, I don't. Here's a big factor. If you're gonna be catching a lot of waves and there's good waves coming in, you're gonna be fine. But if it's one of those days, we're gonna be waiting and there's a little brisk breeze at your back.

• 2:51:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:51:15Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna get chilly woo.

• 2:51:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:51:19Speaker 02

  Factors with that because one, you're not having fun, you know, like you endure it like you actually don't even notice a lot of stuff when you're having like fun. You don't notice how tired you're getting. You don't know, notice a lot of stuff. Cold's probably one of those when you're, you know, hitting. And then, uh, you're moving way less.

• 2:51:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:35Speaker 02

  And then you're just sitting there just being cold.

• 2:51:37Jocko Willink?

  Just sit there being cold, man. Now there's a, let's face it, that's kinda legit. You know, when I, when I see someone skinning it, I was like, props. You get into, I'm giving you props. If you're skinning it, you're getting props. Maybe if it's the dead of summer, but any other time, if it's not, if it's not August, and you're skinning it, I give you a little bit of, a little bit of, and sometimes myself too. I'll be like, you know what? We're gonna do it.

• 2:52:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:52:04Jocko Willink?

  A little skin. It's funny too, cause when you go through buds, did you have wetsuits that had like legs connected to them when you went through buds?

• 2:52:12Speaker 01

  No, I don't think so. We just had shorties.

• 2:52:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, I had like beaver tail.

• 2:52:17Speaker 01

  Oh, so that's what we had at first recon battalion.

• 2:52:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:52:20Speaker 01

  Beaver tails. So when I got the buds, I'm like, dang, they give these students better wetsuits.

• 2:52:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:24Speaker 02

  What's beaver tail?

• 2:52:25Jocko Willink?

  It's like, uh, your, the back of the wetsuit has like a long tail on it and it comes up underneath your crotch and like snaps into position in front of you. It does nothing to hold in any water at all. It's the dumbest invention ever. Whoever invented the beaver tail is an idiot. You would never come up with that plan, right?

• 2:52:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:52:45Jocko Willink?

  So, cause, but now they have where the, the, the shirt of the wetsuit is connected to the trunks, which is a whole different ballgame. This is a whole different ballgame. This is a totally different situation.

• 2:52:58Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 2:52:59Jocko Willink?

  And they get that in buds, by the way. You got that in buds.

• 2:53:02Speaker 02

  I don't think I've ever worn a wetsuit, ever. I can't remember one single time.

• 2:53:07Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:53:08Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 2:53:08Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it is in Hawaii.

• 2:53:10Speaker 02

  Every now and here.

• 2:53:11Jocko Willink?

  Shredding.

• 2:53:13Speaker 02

  Anyway, back to our joints.

• 2:53:15Jocko Willink?

  What are we talking about?

• 2:53:16Speaker 02

  We don't, we don't want to have joint problems. That's another thing cold water is good for your joints, by the way.

• 2:53:20Jocko Willink?

  That's why you gotta get in that bath.

• 2:53:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:22Jocko Willink?

  In the ice bath.

• 2:53:22Speaker 02

  But if you're not gonna jump in the ice bath as often as maybe you could, you just keep the, what's called joint warfare super krill oil supplement. Just take the supplement.

• 2:53:31Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:53:31Speaker 02

  So, you know, easy way. So you don't gotta freeze yourself.

• 2:53:34Jocko Willink?

  Vitamin D.

• 2:53:35Speaker 02

  Time to time.

• 2:53:36Jocko Willink?

  Take vitamin D, a hundred percent. Take that every day.

• 2:53:39Speaker 02

  Yep, I agree.

• 2:53:41Jocko Willink?

  Cold war. Keep the immunity strong. Uh, you can get all this stuff from jockofuel.com. Get some milk too.

• 2:53:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:49Jocko Willink?

  Cause let's face it, man. Let's face it. That's a tough one. It's a tough one to not, bro, did you see that? Did you, I posted some steaks I had the other day.

• 2:53:58Speaker 02

  Yes, I saw that.

• 2:53:59Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 2:54:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. People, people send me steaks, which is like the only like, yeah, people send me steaks. Those were from, they were, you know, Jack Arnold?

• 2:54:12Speaker 02

  Jack.

• 2:54:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, uh, he's, he's a barbecue.

• 2:54:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:16Speaker 02

  Big time.

• 2:54:16Jocko Willink?

  He sent those.

• 2:54:17Speaker 02

  Damn. Is that the ones that he, he always cooks with?

• 2:54:21Jocko Willink?

  I think it's maybe, I don't know, they're cow K O W, but damn, they were good. They were good.

• 2:54:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, they looked.

• 2:54:27Jocko Willink?

  So good. Even when I got done eating those, even when I got done eating a freaking full on tomahawk steak. I was like, cool. Guess what I wanted? A little bit of sweetness. A little bit of goodness. A little bit, what's that other word? Uh, it's like savory. Savory is like steak, right?

• 2:54:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, like salty or whatever.

• 2:54:49Jocko Willink?

  Right. And then sweet. What's milk? It's got both.

• 2:54:56Speaker 02

  Well, if you think about it, the real good desserts, the flavors have like little bit of like savor, like a little bit of savor. Little bit.

• 2:55:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:05Speaker 02

  And then if you think about it, like the good, like savory has a little bit of sweet too, when you think about it.

• 2:55:09Jocko Willink?

  So we're talking about milk, basically. It's hot milk season, by the way. It's like there's having a hot milk in the morning. Oh, man. I'm not talking early morning, like pre-workout. I'm talking nine o'clock in the morning. Starting to feel a little bit of hunger. It's a little bit cool outside. Hot milk coming at you live.

• 2:55:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a.

• 2:55:31Jocko Willink?

  And do I throw whipped cream on top of that? I do. That's still paleo.

• 2:55:37Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, actually a lot of whipped cream. Well, I don't know, but a lot, but the one that my wife buys, it's actually not that bad for you. It's actually pretty solid. I'm surprised by that.

• 2:55:46Jocko Willink?

  Keeping it real with that keto.

• 2:55:48Speaker 02

  Very happy with that.

• 2:55:49Jocko Willink?

  Jack, did you sell some milk too?

• 2:55:51Speaker 02

  That's clean protein though, by the way. We don't really mention that because like sometimes from back in the day or whenever you didn't take milk, you take protein shake. You got the, let's face it, like you get some secondary effects.

• 2:56:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:03Speaker 02

  You know, from that.

• 2:56:04Jocko Willink?

  Not the kind of effects you want.

• 2:56:05Speaker 02

  Negative. No, sir. No, sir. But no, it's not like that anymore. But yeah, there's that. And then also Jaco White Tea, the old school. If you like tea, hot tea now, obviously.

• 2:56:13Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And if you like deadlifting, by the way.

• 2:56:15Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:56:16Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna want that Jaco White.

• 2:56:17Speaker 02

  The one, but yeah. Yeah, get it all at Jaco Fuel dot com. Also, uh, the energy drinks you already said, right? Vitamin shop and Wawa.

• 2:56:24Jocko Willink?

  By the way, I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about this or not yet, but we got, we got some ready to drink milk coming.

• 2:56:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:56:31Jocko Willink?

  And, um, let's just say.

• 2:56:35Jocko Willink?

  I'm not saying that the creators, that the, the, the creators deserve a Nobel Prize. I'm not saying that it's definite, but they should be in the contention. They should be mentioned. There should be a mention. When you try these things.

• 2:56:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you're going to be able to, in the future, go into a wah-wah, boom, go straight and just get moch on tap, bro, like.

• 2:56:56Speaker 02

  And actually that makes sense when you think about it because it's not like, when you think about, if you spend any time thinking about it. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. I don't know. But either way, it's like, you can't just, because moch is the powder, right? And then you have your mix. Like, you know, we'll put in the banana, we'll put in the whatever, right? And it's like this variations of mixes and variations of results. And it makes sense. So it's like, hey, if you're going to drink the ready to drink one, you got to commit to a very specific mix across the board. Per flavor, you see what I'm saying? So now you got to rely on whoever, expert. I know they're an expert, I'll tell you that.

• 2:57:30Jocko Willink?

  You ever had something come into your life that you just, it just came out of nowhere? Like you couldn't have predicted it?

• 2:57:36Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 2:57:36Jocko Willink?

  Let me tell you something. Salted caramel. I didn't even know what this, this was not in my world. Never in my world. This idea. Salted caramel. What is this? Like, what is this? So we have a salted caramel version.

• 2:57:52Speaker 02

  I'm actually familiar with a salted caramel, so that one to me, that makes sense. That sounds delicious.

• 2:57:57Jocko Willink?

  All right. So there we go.

• 2:57:59Speaker 02

  Also, also, Origin USA, this is American made stuff. Not just any stuff, it's like for real, American made, like products, jeans, boots, small, it's on there. The accessories, I've been going kind of deep on the accessories recently on that website. Pretty impressive.

• 2:58:16Jocko Willink?

  Just getting in there.

• 2:58:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. So yes, everything from the material all the way to the product, all made in America. Quality stuff too. If you care about the people and the process.

• 2:58:28Jocko Willink?

  If you care about humanity.

• 2:58:29Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:58:30Jocko Willink?

  How's that?

• 2:58:30Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:58:31Jocko Willink?

  If you care about humanity, go to originusa.com. Because.

• 2:58:37Jocko Willink?

  You know what you were talking about, you know what you were talking about earlier, Carlos? Um, you know, seeing people, these people are hard workers and the first time you work with an echelon front client, you're like, man, these people are working hard. They want to do a good job. And that's awesome. That's, that's so awesome that we get to experience all these people across the country. But then there's industries and there's corporations that say, you know what? To hell with those people. To hell with those hardworking people. We're gonna offshore this stuff. We're gonna put it in slave labor camps. We're gonna give money to communists. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. That's, that's what we're doing. We're gonna, we're gonna have slave people

• 2:59:20Jocko Willink?

  build this stuff and we're gonna give money to communist regimes. That's what we'll do. How's that sound?

• 2:59:24Speaker 02

  And that kind of goes along with that 48 cents, like.

• 2:59:28Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's what drives it.

• 2:59:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:59:30Jocko Willink?

  Don't let that, don't let that happen. Go to Origin USA. Get to your boots, get your jeans.

• 2:59:36Speaker 02

  Gi.

• 2:59:37Jocko Willink?

  Get your gi for sure.

• 2:59:39Speaker 02

  You have Origin gi?

• 2:59:40Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 2:59:41Speaker 02

  Brutal. Actually, in a way.

• 2:59:43Jocko Willink?

  No, it's a hundred percent my fault.

• 2:59:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:59:45Jocko Willink?

  It's a hundred percent my fault.

• 2:59:46Speaker 02

  I feel like it's a hundred percent your fault too, but.

• 2:59:48Jocko Willink?

  I actually feel bad too, because like what we were just, when I was just talking about something coming into your life, when you put on an Origin gi, for real, when you put on an Origin gi, it's for real, you got some other thing coming into your life that you did not expect was that thing.

• 3:00:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00:01Jocko Willink?

  There's that, I, I will take you, as soon as we get done recording, I'll take you, you can, you can touch one of mine. They're too big for you.

• 3:00:09Speaker 02

  I'm gonna get you one. We'll get you sorted?

• 3:00:11Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 3:00:12Speaker 01

  You can do that too. Touch mine.

• 3:00:13Jocko Willink?

  You can do that too. You can touch one of my Origin gi's and you'll be like, what is this? What sort of, uh, uh, unicorn fur is this that's been used to create this thing? Cause it's a different level, man.

• 3:00:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00:25Jocko Willink?

  It's a different level.

• 3:00:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. I was gonna say, that's kind of good news in a way for me. So like, you know, I can kind of like, you know how someone's about to do something really like, whether it be fun or cool, or it's gonna be real beneficial? And then you get to like, experience it with them, you know?

• 3:00:39Jocko Willink?

  It's like, you get to share that experience.

• 3:00:43Speaker 02

  It's kind of good news. Can't wait for it, you know?

• 3:00:45Speaker 01

  Got Origin rash guards. Those are awesome. So I do use those.

• 3:00:48Jocko Willink?

  Made in America.

• 3:00:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00:50Jocko Willink?

  Just imagine that, made in America.

• 3:00:53Jocko Willink?

  Beautiful thing. Go.

• 3:00:55Speaker 02

  Also, Jaco's store is called Jaco's store. That's where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom shirts. The Jiu Jitsu shirt that I noticed that you are representing hardcore, by the way.

• 3:01:04Jocko Willink?

  That freaking thing was legit.

• 3:01:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:01:07Jocko Willink?

  So there's a, there's kind of a Jiu Jitsu section.

• 3:01:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:01:11Jocko Willink?

  How many shirts are in the Jiu Jitsu section?

• 3:01:12Speaker 02

  Right now, just that one.

• 3:01:15Jocko Willink?

  Limited section, but a section nonetheless. Does it have its own breakout area?

• 3:01:19Speaker 02

  Uh, when Dean's shirt comes out, it will.

• 3:01:22Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna say Foot, right?

• 3:01:24Speaker 02

  Just like yours is good. Says Foot. Actually, that's his, technically, that's his design.

• 3:01:28Jocko Willink?

  Right. I just saw a sticker. Someone put a sticker on the gym out here and it's got, it's got like an old NOM picture of a dude with like a, a steel pot helmet on in NOM, American, but it's Dean Lister's face and it says Foot Soldier.

• 3:01:46Jocko Willink?

  See, we might have to have a Dean Lister sex.

• 3:01:49Speaker 02

  You can go deep with the, with the feet and Dean and that whole thing.

• 3:01:52Jocko Willink?

  It's true. So there you go.

• 3:01:53Speaker 02

  But yeah, good spot to get this stuff. Jaco's store where, uh, the, like I said, Discipline Equals Freedom, Jiu Jitsu stuff, uh, good. It's a good one. You watch the Army Navy game. Let's face it. Good goes deep. We'll say that.

• 3:02:06Jocko Willink?

  We, we, we did, uh, we did appreciate that and it kind of worked for Navy where this.

• 3:02:10Speaker 02

  Yes, apparently.

• 3:02:12Jocko Willink?

  In the assessment fully.

• 3:02:13Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 3:02:14Jocko Willink?

  Seemed like it worked out good.

• 3:02:15Speaker 02

  Speak for themselves. But yeah, um, also we have the Shirt Locker, which is a new shirt every month. Um, they're separate from the regular store, but it's a new shirt. They're a little bit more creative, I would say. Good, good feedback on that one. We got things squared away too, by the way.

• 3:02:30Jocko Willink?

  We got one coming out too, right? There should be a new one coming out pretty soon.

• 3:02:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if, I'm not sure what, so right now, like now, if you join, you'll get that shirt for that month. You know, before it was like, okay, I joined then the next month, your shirt kind of comes, but it's all squared and right away, all that kind of stuff. It's good, squared. So yeah, we got December still going and then yeah, January, there's another one. That's how it works.

• 3:02:52Jocko Willink?

  That's what, that's what monthly shirt means. Subscribe to that if you're also subscribed to this podcast. We got. This podcast, we got Jaco Unraveling, we got the Grounded Podcast, we got the Warrior Kid Podcast. We also have Jaco Underground, JacoUnderground.com. We're on there answering questions.

• 3:03:08Speaker 02

  Life advice.

• 3:03:09Jocko Willink?

  Life advice, alternative topics that apply to everything. If you know, if you, if you know the way broadly, broadly, you see it in all things. It also protects us because listen,

• 3:03:24Jocko Willink?

  we don't know what's gonna happen in the world, but we do know that sometimes people wanna control what you say. They wanna control what we say. We haven't run any major issues yet, a couple, we brushed up against a couple. Then we'd have a couple scenarios unfold. And just in case, just to protect us from that, we gotta have a contingency plan. That's JacoUnderground.com. Go there if you wanna support. Costs $8.18 a month. And we give you this extra podcast, but look, if you can't afford that, it's okay. Email [email protected]. We just gotta have somewhere as an alternative place to be in case. So that's where we're at. YouTube channel.

• 3:04:02Speaker 02

  Yep, we have a YouTube channel. You wanna see Oscar De La Hoya, Carlos Mendez, how he's handsome. You're more Jack though.

• 3:04:10Jocko Willink?

  Thank you.

• 3:04:11Speaker 02

  So that's what, that would be the telltale sign, I think. If the, if someone runs into you in the street, you're gonna be like, dang, that's Oscar De La Hoya.

• 3:04:18Jocko Willink?

  He's like, yeah, I've been lifting.

• 3:04:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. That's true. But yes, if you wanna see what, you know, what he looks like, YouTube channel, video version of this podcast and excerpts. Which is important.

• 3:04:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, also, uh, check out Origins YouTube channel.

• 3:04:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:04:33Jocko Willink?

  It's good to know what's happening. For instance, COVID outbreak in Maine. You know about that?

• 3:04:38Speaker 02

  I did not know that.

• 3:04:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, see? So if you, you would, you would know about that. Uh, COVID outbreak in Maine, we had like 40 people.

• 3:04:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, I did, yeah.

• 3:04:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah.

• 3:04:46Speaker 02

  I watched that.

• 3:04:47Jocko Willink?

  But, which is a bummer. We have people coming back in now, but Black Friday, do you know what that is?

• 3:04:52Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 3:04:53Jocko Willink?

  After Thanksgiving, people go shopping.

• 3:04:55Speaker 02

  I heard, yeah.

• 3:04:57Jocko Willink?

  And we sold a bunch of stuff, which is awesome. And then everyone got sick with COVID or a bunch of people got sick with COVID. So now we're trying to play catch up. And Pete making moves, trying to make it happen. Amanda.

• 3:05:09Speaker 02

  That's a big like learning channel too, when you think about it. Cause you can see like, um, like of course, how the inner workings of American business is. But like how the, just like this, just like, and they, they've done it many times before where it's like an issue will come up. And you can see like how they'll solve the issue. And it's unique to that specific thing. So it's like, oh, okay, you can kind of, it's like a demonstration.

• 3:05:30Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Check. Psychological warfare. If you've got any moments of weakness, you can overcome them. Press play on your phone, hit play. Got an MP3 out there. How many tracks do you remember?

• 3:05:44Speaker 02

  Oh, it's, I think it's seven or nine. I forget.

• 3:05:47Jocko Willink?

  Nine tracks, I'm thinking.

• 3:05:48Speaker 02

  Yep. So nine, nine, give or take moments or types of moments of weakness. You got coverage for that.

• 3:05:57Jocko Willink?

  Check. Also Dakota Meyer has a company called Flipside Canvas, flipsidecanvas.com. Go there, get cool stuff to hang on your wall. If you don't have a, if you don't have a elk head to hang on your wall.

• 3:06:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:06:14Jocko Willink?

  Then you can get one of these things as an alternate, alternate thing to hang on your wall.

• 3:06:18Speaker 02

  Legit.

• 3:06:19Jocko Willink?

  Books, we've got some books. Um, Final Spin, that just came out. Getting freaking awesome reviews, which is crazy. It's crazy to think of something weird and then write it and then people give you cool reviews.

• 3:06:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:06:33Jocko Willink?

  Very, very cool. It's not what you expect. I have to say that. That's a lot of people say, I wasn't expecting this. In fact, some people go, I wasn't expecting the story to go this way. Again, we're not very, we're less predictable possibly than, you know, some people might think. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual.

• 3:06:56Jocko Willink?

  The code, the evaluations, the protocol, discipline, cause freedom field manual. Way the warrior kid, one, two, three, and four. This is the book to get for all the kids that you know. And by the way, sometimes people like, oh, I does it, is it appropriate for girls? Yes. Girls, boys, kids. Get these freaking books for the kids. This is the Christmas season. Get, there's no better gift you can get a kid than these books. That's a, that's a bold statement. Carlos, do you think that's a bold statement?

• 3:07:26Speaker 02

  No better.

• 3:07:27Jocko Willink?

  No better gift.

• 3:07:28Speaker 01

  I would have to agree. I grew up with books, loved books.

• 3:07:31Jocko Willink?

  I don't think.

• 3:07:32Speaker 01

  Kids don't read enough these days.

• 3:07:33Jocko Willink?

  I don't think there's a better gift you can give a kid than the way the warrior kid books.

• 3:07:40Jocko Willink?

  And I got many, many, many kids and parents that will back that up. That aren't me.

• 3:07:48Jocko Willink?

  Mike and the Dragons, you can also get that for the little kids. Warning. Little warning, when you read that to your kids. You might start crying. It's happened before. Echo Charles.

• 3:07:59Speaker 02

  No, that was way the warrior kid one.

• 3:08:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 3:08:02Speaker 02

  Uncle Jake. Oh, no, no. Okay. When I was making the video, yeah, a little bit.

• 3:08:05Jocko Willink?

  From Mike and the Dragons.

• 3:08:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:08:06Jocko Willink?

  Getting a little teared up over there.

• 3:08:07Speaker 02

  Well, that was you.

• 3:08:11Speaker 02

  Way the warrior kid, when Uncle Jake spoiler, spoiler alert, by the way, when Uncle Jake had to went home.

• 3:08:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:18Speaker 02

  That was kinda sad.

• 3:08:19Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I was laughing. When, when I read that one story and you were crying like really hard. On the podcast.

• 3:08:27Speaker 02

  I wasn't crying. That's the thing.

• 3:08:28Jocko Willink?

  He was crying so hard. And he edited it down. People go, you edit the podcast? So I'm like, no, we never edit. He edited it down. I didn't realize it until later. Cause he was crying and couldn't put a sentence together.

• 3:08:38Speaker 02

  Not true.

• 3:08:38Jocko Willink?

  And then I'm, I'm, I started laughing so hard. And I'm like, bro, you can't break down like this. He's talking about, he's talking about Hawaii 5-0 and he's breaking down.

• 3:08:48Speaker 02

  It was a sad scene is what I'll say, or a happy scene, sorry.

• 3:08:51Jocko Willink?

  So, warning, Mike and the Dragons, might catch you off guard if you're feeling emotionally vulnerable.

• 3:08:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:08:57Jocko Willink?

  Then it might catch you a little bit. So just, you know, stay strong.

• 3:09:00Speaker 02

  Stay strong.

• 3:09:00Jocko Willink?

  Stay focused. Don't let yourself break down.

• 3:09:04Jocko Willink?

  About face by Hackworth. Extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership.

• 3:09:09Jocko Willink?

  That actually helped your marriage, that attitude.

• 3:09:13Jocko Willink?

  Taking ownership of things.

• 3:09:14Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 3:09:14Speaker 01

  I went back and read the book again, but in a different way. Cause the first time I read it, I was like, okay, I want to be a better leader in combat. So that's kind of like the vision I had when I was reading it. And then the second time I'm like, wait a minute, I'm going to read it for my life, my personal life.

• 3:09:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:09:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:09:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good switch. It's such a useful switch where like, cause that's a big thing, right? Where it's like, oh yeah, these big bad Navy SEALs, they're going to tell me how to run my daycare center. Like, bruh, no way. In real life, no way. But it's like, yes, exactly right. Where it's like the Navy SEAL, like all the combat stuff, that's just the example, essentially. It's just an example of these principles, like being used in these like situations or whatever. But, and since they, they are useful in everything. If you look at it in the, in the sense of where this is, they're talking to me for my specific situation and using the battlefield as a metaphor for sure. But they're talking to me for me, for my specific situation. It's like, oh shoot, everything checks out.

• 3:10:10Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And as you read things from different perspectives, like, yeah, you can read it from a professional perspective, like you did the first time, Carlos. Then you read it from a personal perspective the next time. But then guess what happens? You get promoted. Read it again. You see it from another perspective again. Then you have a problem where you get moved to a new team and everything's, the dynamics are different. Read it again. It's a, you will have a different perspective and you will pick up more things from those books. Also, we have a leadership consultancy. We were just talking about Echelon Front, echelonfront.com. If you want to do any of the things that we talk about on this podcast, if you want to learn the information, go to echelonfront.com. It's what we do. We do, look, we do the FTX, that's one part of it.

• 3:10:52Jocko Willink?

  We also do leadership training that's not experiential. So you're going to sit down, learn with us, but we'll still make it dynamic through role playing and other, other methodologies that we have. So. If you want to check some of that out, go to ashlonfront.com. You having fun there, Carlos?

• 3:11:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It's awesome. I mean, the people that you meet are just amazing as well because I mean, people that call for Extreme Ownership are not lazy people. They're people who just want to take it to the next level. So I honestly haven't met a client yet that I just didn't really like. And it's awesome because you keep in touch with them. Like they hit you up every now and then and they kind of become your friends.

• 3:11:30Jocko Willink?

  For sure. For sure. I get texts all the times. I get texts from that are like, hey, we just did this. It's awesome. I'll also get texts like, hey, can I talk to you? And they'll have some situation going on. It's like, all right, what do you got? What do you got? Let's work through this. Hey, we also have an online training academy. And there's a bunch of reasons why we started that. The biggest reason why we started is because, like I was saying earlier about jujitsu and actually having a skill and getting good at this thing called leadership. Well, just like jujitsu, you can't go to one class and be like, okay, cool. I'm good now. I know it. No, it takes repetition. It takes understanding the various angles. It takes

• 3:12:11Jocko Willink?

  expanded knowledge. It takes confronting different scenarios multiple times. So you understand how to understand them. You learn to understand how to understand them. Imagine that. You're looking at a situation. You don't know what to do. You can actually understand how to understand that. So this doesn't happen overnight. That's why we that's the why we made extremeownership.com and the online training academy. We're on there all the time. There's courses that you can take. You can go live sessions. I'm on there two or three times a week answering questions face to face like on a Zoom call. It's a Zoom call. You want

• 3:12:53Jocko Willink?

  to ask me a question? Come on there. Extremeownership.com if you want to check that out. If you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization, does a ton of incredible stuff for our veterans.

• 3:13:14Jocko Willink?

  If you want to donate, or you want to get involved, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org. Actually, I just heard Joe Rogan talking about hyperbaric chambers. So, that's one of the big things that Mama Lee does is she takes service members and gets them hyperbaric chamber treatments for like thirty straight days. So good for you. So helpful. So, check that out if you want.

• 3:13:39Jocko Willink?

  And if you want more of my just continued droning, talking, or you need more of Echo's

• 3:13:52Jocko Willink?

  just, just unknown randomness. Um, yeah, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook. I'm at Echo Charles, Ech, and I am at Jocko Willink. Echo's at Echo Charles. Carlos was, was, is now on the gram.

• 3:14:09Speaker 01

  I am.

• 3:14:10Jocko Willink?

  Carlos underscore Mendez underscore two forty-six.

• 3:14:15Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 3:14:16Jocko Willink?

  That was your entry into the social media world, right?

• 3:14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't have one in the teams and uh, when I came on to Echelon Front, JP told me open one up.

• 3:14:25Speaker 01

  And uh, I could watch so many jujitsu videos.

• 3:14:31Jocko Willink?

  It's funny how they know what you like. It's like, how am I already getting this? The whole algorithm thing, like, the algorithm thing, I wrote the other day, fight the algorithm. But the problem is when the jujitsu videos start rolling in, it's hard to fight that algorithm. Wait a second, let me watch that again.

• 3:14:44Speaker 02

  Bro, kinda embrace the algorithm, in a way, in a way.

• 3:14:51Jocko Willink?

  And LinkedIn, you're on LinkedIn.

• 3:14:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I am on LinkedIn, yeah.

• 3:14:54Jocko Willink?

  Is that, do you, do you like participate in LinkedIn? Cause you mentioned it a few times today.

• 3:14:59Speaker 01

  Uh, so I had it when I, when I was uh, getting ready to transition out of the Navy. Cause that's how I started reaching out to people. So yeah, I have one of those too.

• 3:15:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I have liked it too.

• 3:15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too.

• 3:15:09Jocko Willink?

  So, we're on there. Uh, Echo, you got any final questions?

• 3:15:13Speaker 02

  That's it. Oh, actually, um, so do you think, and I, I think this may seem like an obvious answer, but more, so, okay, so when you were growing up, you know, you had so many chores, like it was like hard, right? Like, so you got used to hard work really quickly and thoroughly, essentially?

• 3:15:30Speaker 02

  Could you feel that like as you know, you go through like, you know, hard things in combat buds? Like all these hard things or whatever in the because you said you said something kind of interesting where you're like, okay, on the third time after you got rolled or whatever, the third time you passed with no, no issues, you said.

• 3:15:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:44Speaker 02

  A lot of people like buds is like real hard for them. Did you feel that your work ethic that was established?

• 3:15:52Speaker 02

  Like was the factor that made it like a non-issue like, could you feel that at the time?

• 3:15:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, it was crazy is I thought about my, my stepdad a lot during Hell Week. Cause I thought about how hard he worked. I mean, I mean, the man worked non-stop, seven days a week, two jobs. And I was going through Hell Week, I thought about him. I was like, you know what? If he can do that, I can do this.

• 3:16:14Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah.

• 3:16:15Jocko Willink?

  This is how I'm going to provide for my, myself and my family, like, yeah.

• 3:16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I was thinking when you're saying that. Also, it kind of makes you reflect like, you reflect on like someone like your childhood, then I think, man, I should give my kids more chores.

• 3:16:29Jocko Willink?

  You know what's so weird about buds is you just never know who's going to make it through. You really don't. And there's some silver spoon people that go through there and crush it. And there's some silver spoon people that wash out day two. And there's some freaking kids that grew up wherever in a shitty situation, working their ass off and they quit.

• 3:16:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:16:48Jocko Willink?

  And there's some kids like that that are awesome. It's so bizarre.

• 3:16:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's weird.

• 3:16:52Jocko Willink?

  It's very bizarre. It's very hard to predict. There is some, like some, oh, if the guy like they say, if someone wrestled, it's a really good thing. Cause you have to work really hard in wrestling. That's a, that's like an indicator, but it's by no means, oh, he wrestled, he's going to make it. Not at all. Not at all. Not even close.

• 3:17:11Speaker 02

  Yes. One of the many factors.

• 3:17:13Jocko Willink?

  One of the many factors. It might be a little nudge in the direction of, but it's no guarantee.

• 3:17:19Speaker 02

  That's it. No, good to, good to see you again.

• 3:17:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, likewise. Thank you for having me. Any closing thoughts, Carlos?

• 3:17:27Speaker 01

  No, not really. Just, uh, super grateful to be here. Grateful to be part of the EF team. It's awesome being around team guys again.

• 3:17:36Jocko Willink?

  Always good, man.

• 3:17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:17:37Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Alright, well, hey, man. Thanks for, thanks for coming out today. Obviously, thanks for your service in the teams. And thanks for what you're doing right now to continue to share the lessons that we learned, uh, to help people. Which is what we're doing, just doing our best to help people. I've, I've, you have a great way of imparting the messages. Obviously, it's great that you can open up us to, open up the, the tactics and the strategies and the principles to a whole new audience because you're a fluent Spanish speaker, which is awesome. It's been awesome to, I love watching those videos. I'm like, because I, I can understand a little bit of Spanish, you know? And because I took three semesters of it when I was at University of San Diego. And so I can understand it. I kind of get the vibe, you know?

• 3:18:21Jocko Willink?

  But man, it's freaking cool to watch, so. Yeah, man, it's great. I appreciate it and thanks for holding down the tradition of the teams and thanks to all the other frogmen out there still in the teams, still keeping the machine rolling on. And upholding the standard set by our forefathers.

• 3:18:42Jocko Willink?

  And thanks to all the military personnel out there in every service for protecting freedom around the world. And to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all of their first responders, including your wife, Carlos. Thanks for protecting us here at home.

• 3:19:03Jocko Willink?

  And everybody else out there. The machine will roll on. The world's going to carry on without us. That's the reality. It would be arrogant to think otherwise.

• 3:19:16Jocko Willink?

  But at the same time,

• 3:19:19Jocko Willink?

  we can make a difference.

• 3:19:22Jocko Willink?

  You can help someone. You can teach someone. You can inspire someone. You can make your part of the world a little bit better. And you do that by going out there every day.

• 3:19:36Jocko Willink?

  And getting after it.

• 3:19:39Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Carlos and Echo and Jaco. Out.