527: From Ego to Execution, and The Path to Command. With Nate Fry

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Nathan Fry shares the hard lessons that shaped his journey from a frustrated young officer to a battalion commander in the Vermont National Guard. Through failures, second chances, elite mountain training, and combat leadership, he explains why mentorship matters, why ego gets leaders in trouble, and why preparing people — not just equipment — is what ultimately wins wars. 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 527 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  When I arrived at headquarters early that Friday morning, the closest parking lot was already crowded. By the time we held our first formation, every lot was full and trucks lined the sides of the road. As I made my rounds that weekend, I saw soldiers sleeping outside in the rain while they practiced field craft, repairing vehicles with scavenged parts and building logistics plans for our deployment. There were plumbers turned medics, electricians turned mortar men, financial advisors turned staff planners, all putting their life on hold for three days to train, to fight and win our nation's wars. All doing it without pay, all doing it without hot meals, all doing it without complaint

• 0:46Jocko Willink?

  or expectation of recognition, all doing it because it's their job. Because not doing it would let someone down, because letting someone down later might mean someone dies.

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from an article by Nathan Frye, who is a US Army Infantry Officer. He's a Ranger, a battalion commander currently of the 1372, or sorry, 3172 Infantry, which is mountain of the Vermont National Guard, which is a relative, I guess, of the 1172 Task Force Sabre, the amazing unit that we fought alongside in Ramadi, whose lessons that we learned from them kept many SEALs alive. And Nathan is a veteran of multiple combat deployments, mountain guide and an entrepreneur. And it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned. Nathan, thanks for joining us.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  What did I miss in that? How do you say the 3172? How do you say it?

• 1:54Speaker 02

  3172.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or we call it the Mountain Battalion, too.

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay, check. See, there you go. The Mountain Battalion.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Mountain Battalion.

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  Check. Right on. Well, we'll get into some of the Mountain Battalion in a little bit. Let's get a little bit of your background. Tell us about growing up. Where are you born?

• 2:08Speaker 02

  I was born in Alabama. So my dad was a Vietnam veteran. He'd come back and use his GI Bill to go to college and you know, like one of those classic sort of post-war success stories, right? Like his, his dad had been a Greyhound bus mechanic. His mom was a, um, his old school, right? Like ATT, AT&amp;T telephone operator, like the switchboard operator, like pop, pop, pop, you know, put the, the sw- the switches in. So he's the first person from his family to go to college. Um, he got a degree.

• 2:37Jocko Willink?

  Was he from Alabama?

• 2:38Speaker 02

  No, he's from Memphis, Tennessee.

• 2:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Um, he ended up, uh, working for the VA Medical Center down in Alabama. Um, and, um, well, I guess I gotta get my, get my times right. He ended up being in a VA Medical Center in Louisiana first. That's where I met my mom. Then they went to Alabama and then that's how I was born. Eventually I went back to Louisiana.

• 2:57Jocko Willink?

  And what did your dad do in Nam?

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Uh, he was a loadmaster on C-130s. So he got drafted in 68, it would have been. And so he was over in Vietnam, like 69, 70 timeframe. Um, uh, as he told me after I graduated airborne schoo- uh, I've graduated airborne school, kicking pukes like you out of the back of my airplane. So I was like, thanks, thanks dad. Appreciate that.

• 3:17Jocko Willink?

  Sounds like a good plan. And then what was it like growing up? You got, you got, uh, what? One brother?

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. I got a, a younger brother, Corey, um, five years younger than me. So we weren't super close. It's been really cool just in the last year or so. Um, we're starting to like have a, a common business endeavor and our lives intersecting ways that like really didn't before. So we're starting to get closer now, but you know, growing up, we're, um, not super close with each other.

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Five years is a pretty good gap.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a big gap and we're really different too. And I'm finding now like in very complimentary ways, but at the time, you know, when you're five years apart and you're 13 and eight, you don't appreciate that stuff, right? You're just like, oh, that kid's a nerd. Um, he's not a nerd. Um, but yeah, I, so I, I grew up super rural, um, ended up getting sort of a special pass to, to, uh, to go into this, the school in town. As we'd say, like, we gotta go in town to the Walmart or whatever. So, um, go to school in town. And so what I ended up doing is my dad would drive me in. And drop me off at school. I do school and then he picked me up in the evening. I go back to the house and um, you know, do the tours around the house and stuff. So I was kinda.

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  Where was this? Was this still in Alabama? Or is this?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  No, this is back in Louisiana at this point. Yeah, I was in Alabama only for like two or three years.

• 4:30Jocko Willink?

  Got it. So this is in Louisiana. You're living in the sticks.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  In the sticks.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  And your parents wanted you to go to a better school or something like that?

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:38Jocko Willink?

  And so you're driving thirty minutes.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Driving like thirty minutes into school because my dad worked in town too. And so it was, I was lucky to go to the school, um, but sort of limited in the extracurricular things. Um, and really what that ended up doing for me is is sort of like early on in in high school, pretty isolating. Um, I started getting with a really bad crowd. Um, got kicked out of school for a week and and I think.

• 5:03Jocko Willink?

  What'd you do to get kicked out of school for a week?

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Smoking on the railroad tracks after school. We're like, oh, it's, you know, you're at that age. You're like, yeah, it's fine. They're not going to get me. It's after school and you don't know the rules. And so we're smoking cigarettes on the railroad tracks and the assistant principal pops out and he's like, you, you, you, you, and you, principal's office. Great. Um, that's kind of like a low point. And my dad, at that point, I think to his credit, realized that I needed something in my life. And he, a guy he worked with, um, was, ran a Boy Scout troop. And he was like, you're gonna join Boy Scouts? And I was like, I don't want to join the nerd Boy Scouts. Um, but the two Scout Masters were super cool. Like, essentially became my first mentors. Like, one was a former collegiate wrestler, one was

• 5:44Speaker 02

  a marathoner, and they basically just like, they taught us about discipline and said, look, if you're gonna go on these trips, you gotta be able to run two miles. I never ran two miles before, right? But beginning every scout trip, uh, the scout scout meeting, like, go out and run two miles. And eventually we could. And then we ran three and then we ran four. Yeah. So it was, it was really formative for me.

• 6:05Jocko Willink?

  And so you're, you're launched into Boy Scouts and that's, it's funny, you said nerds, because in my mind, I always want to envision Boy Scouts as a paramilitary organization for youth. Like, that's, and I know it's not like that, especially anymore. Like, I don't even think it's Boy Scouts anymore.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Scouts.

• 6:22Jocko Willink?

  I think it's just scouts. So that's, that's different. And then, like, what are you into besides the Boy Scout thing? Because weren't you into like, music and that kind of thing too? So what's going on with that?

• 6:34Speaker 02

  That was the other thing. So, and this is all, it's like, sort of coincided with each other. I got in my head that I was gonna be like. Yeah, cuz I'd I'd lived in the sticks and, you know, country music and and and sort of, you know, that was that was just the culture I was in. And so I think after that sort of spiral and getting kicked out of school for a week, I was like, you know, I need to find something different. So I started, I I picked up the bass guitar. It's like air quotes. It was not very good, like, you know, four or five power chords would play any punk song you wanna. Yeah, it was good to go. So like, you know, playing bass guitar in a really terrible punk band in my friend's garage, and, you know, thinking about like, being countercultural and breaking the rules and such. But yeah, so we was doing that and doing scouts and.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  So you were like in a punk rock band and in the Boy Scouts at the same time?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:21Jocko Willink?

  What were your punk rock influences?

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Like the bands?

• 7:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  I love NoFX.

• 7:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, NoFX was like, I think, one of the first punk bands I listened to. And then I was never like Dead Kennedys guys, like two, I was like, not melodic enough, but then the, and we were talking about this earlier, right? Like, the mid to late 90s was like this debut of of like bubblegum pop punk. So you have like Blink 182, Dude Ranch comes out, Weezer's coming out, and like, that was, you know, that's we'd get together, we would just like play Offspring and Blink 182, cuz we could, cuz it was easy.

• 7:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:56Jocko Willink?

  And you're in the Boy Scouts at the same time?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Boy Scouts.

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  Check. And and this kind of gets you into just doing the outdoors type stuff? You're rocking, well, before it was rocking, when it was just called hiking.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I had this, I I remember like distinctly getting a Cabela's catalog in the mail one day, you know, cuz I hunted with my uncles.

• 8:17Jocko Willink?

  And it's like the coolest thing ever.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Oh, it was, it was, it was amazing, cuz like, it's got the pictures of the Rocky Mountains, and there's these goats. And and I'm like, wait, there's snow, and the ground actually goes up, and like, this is, there's places like this? And so I I got my driver's license, I was 16 years old, and I'm like, okay, what's the closest mountains? And I don't even know how I found it, cuz there's like no Google search at this point. Somehow I figured out like, oh, it's the Ozarks in Arkansas. So my parents, to their credit, were like, yeah, you and your your friend, it's my my buddy Dave Melikar, who later went to the army as well, and now he's a Diplomats Security Service guy. So we we still stay in touch, and probably because of this trip, so we load the car up, we drive

• 9:01Speaker 02

  all the way up to northwestern Arkansas and like unload. And I swear to you, like, we unload in in the in the parking lot, and someone's playing a banjo. Like deliverance and we both kind of look at each other and we're like, what have we done? Um, but then we spent like three or four days just out backpacking on these trails and it was just so liberating for me. It was like, wow, you can go out and sort of be on your own and, you know, cook and make your own decisions. And, and I think after that, that was just like, the mountains are my thing. And so I would drive, I don't know, it was 10, 12 hours at Big Bend National Park over in, in Texas. Uh, we started like learning how to climb about that. I mean, like rappelling off grain silos with like marine ropes. And I was like, I can't believe that I'm

• 9:45Speaker 02

  still alive because when I started to learn how to climb, I was like, we were totally hooking those ATCs up the wrong way. Uh, yeah, that was the beginning of it. That was high school, like grain silos and road trips and Boy Scouts and.

• 10:00Jocko Willink?

  And so what was your plan as you looked at your future? You're like, okay, I'm in high school. Obviously I'm going to graduate at some point. What am I going to do next? What was your plan?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Get out of Louisiana.

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  And how was the best way to do that?

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Uh, I didn't know, right? And my dad, um, again, to his credit was like, you're gonna go to college, right? Like this is, you know, this is something, you know, I've worked hard, you're gonna do it. Um, you know, but we didn't have the money to, to do anything out of Louisiana. Um, at the time, it was called the, uh, like STAR program or something. But if you had a certain GPA, you get free tuition to LSU. It was a good school, right? Um, and so everyone was doing that and I was like, I'm not staying in Louisiana. I'm not going to Baton Rouge. Like I gotta find something different. So I went to my guidance counselor and, uh, and she said, well, you know, there's this, this place called West Point, uh, and it's free. And I was like, oh, it's free? How does that work? And she's like, we have you on the army. I was like, okay, that's fine.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Um, so I get in my head. I'm like, I'm gonna go to West Point. So go through all the things and, and, um, and, and got accepted. And when, when people heard that I'd been accepted at West Point, they were like, you are going to West Point? And this is like, I think I wrote about this and like a little pre-brief thing. I mean, this is freshman year, I got. After, I guess it was sophomore year at this point, after I got kicked out for, um, for smoking and, you know, kind of reform myself, but now I'm like, I'm a reform punk. And so I had this, dyed my hair black and spiked it up. And, you know, the, the principal comes to me and is like, you can't have your hair black and spiked. It's distracting. And I was like, it's my constitutional right, you know, to, to wear my hair up. And so I write this treatise.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Like referencing, I researched it, like all this sort of like referencing why it was my constitutional right to freedom of expression, to wear my, wear my hair up. And my, my, the founding was, if I'm distracting with my black spiked hair, then every young woman in the school who's wearing tight pants is distracting too. So they need to wear skirts. And it didn't fly. Uh, and they were like, cool. Thanks for this. Take your hair down. Um, but like that sort of rebellion thing persisted. And, and so, yeah, when I was like, I'm going to West Point, they were like, there's no way you're going to make it. Right. It's not gonna happen.

• 12:09Jocko Willink?

  But you went.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  But I went. And I guess I didn't make it. I don't know.

• 12:12Jocko Willink?

  How, how, did you visit West Point before you went?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  No.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  Did you watch, did you watch any programs or anything about West Point?

• 12:19Speaker 02

  No, I mean, this was the, like, there was no, I guess the internet was super rudimentary at this point. I remember I had a catalog, you know, you would get like college catalogs and I had this thick sort of book that had pictures and the cadets are marching in uniform. Like, it was like totally different than anything I'd ever seen in Louisiana, right? Like, I mean, I, we eventually got a house, but I, first part of my life, I grew up in a trailer, right? Like, and so I'm looking at these gray stone buildings, looks like castles. Towering above the, the, you know, the, the Hudson. And of course they take in pictures when it's, you know, the, the leaves are orange. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like a storybook. Like this is gonna be amazing. There's mountains. So of course I'm like mountains.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  You know, I can go over there and like be on the climbing team. It's gonna be great. And, uh, yeah, so stoked. And then, um, I got there and like, some of it was really, really good. Like, I really liked the challenge of it. But the whole like punk rock Nate was just totally tweaked out. Like, wait, you're telling me I have to do this? I have to do that. Like, I can't study, I wanted to study foreign languages. I want to study Russian. I want to go to Russia. Again, don't ask me how it's like, it's just my fixation was like, what's the opposite of Louisiana? Oh, it's Russia. And you know, you get up there and they're like, no, you know, you can't really do that. There's no international relations at the time. Close thing was what they called Apple Arts, Philosophy and Literature. Like that's what you you're like, oh, you're an Apple major. And it was very derogatory.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  It sounds very derogatory.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Apple.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  So I, you know, I was like, I don't know what I do, but I can't do this. Like this is gonna, this is not what I expected out of college career. And, um, man, I wish I could find him, but to his, uh, to his credit, the, uh, my English professor was this guy named Colonel Schmidt. He was an A sixty four pilot. He'd been Gulf War, um, and he was an RTC graduate.

• 14:07Jocko Willink?

  What year is this?

• 14:08Speaker 02

  This is two thousand two, two thousand three.

• 14:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so the war's going on straight up.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, in March, yeah, in March of that year, right? And so like, we're all, we're all like, okay, this is for real. Like we, you know, we could graduate and end up going to war. And, you know, so at some point I went to Colonel Schmidt and I was like, I don't, I like, I don't know what this is. Maybe I'm gonna go enlist. I don't know. And he said, have you ever tried RTC? And I was like, what, what is that? And he just looks at me, he's like, oh, you poor dumb country bumpkin.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  So he tells me about RTC and I'm like, oh, wait, wait, I can go to a college where I can study what I want and do this at the same time. It's like, absolutely. So, um, I applied to Dickinson College. I kind of did search, I was like, you know, best Russian programs.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  And Dickinson, like stars align. It was like they have a great RTC program, a great Russian program. And I remember spring break, I went down, I met the RTC professor of military science and he was like, we'd love to have you. So I applied and, uh, at the time, thankfully, like scholarships are pretty plentiful. And so got a scholarship, uh, and transferred from West Point.

• 15:12Jocko Willink?

  And there was no stigma for you going down to the ROTC place? Like, yeah, I'm at West Point, but I don't like it. They weren't like, well, why would you like ROTC? Why would you like the Army if you don't like West Point, the pinnacle of Army?

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't remember that. I mean, maybe I just explained it really well. I mean, it's pretty clear because I was, I was also, I was also doing well there. And I think that was the weird thing. It's not like I was failing and like crying in my bunk. You know, and I remember my, my company first sergeant, you know, cadet first sergeant came to me and he's like, why are you doing this? You know, like, why are you throwing away this opportunity? And I was like, hmm, is that what I want? So I think going down there, you know, probably with the grades that I had and the performance evaluations that I had, like the, the freshman real estate agent who I still keep in touch with, Colonel Mazzarella, we call him the Maz. So, you know, the Maz looked at that and his, you know, he, he was like, yeah, seemed like a good cadet.

• 16:06Jocko Willink?

  Was he the West Point guy or the ROTC?

• 16:08Speaker 02

  No, this is ROTC guy. Yeah.

• 16:09Jocko Willink?

  And did any, did any West Point people, as you were like, hey, I'm going to go do ROTC, was everyone? I would imagine guys would be like grabbing you by the, by the scruff and saying like, dude, what are you doing? Why are you leaving? This doesn't make any sense.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's my company first sergeant. I wish I could remember his name. But he, I mean, he sat me down, had a long talk with me, but I, I mean, Nate Frye, one of my flaws is like, once I make up my mind, I kind of make up my mind. And I guess that's a, it's a, it's a blessing and a curse there. And so I'd sort of made up my mind at this point and was like, no, I'm going to do it. I think it was where I call in the end though.

• 16:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is very interesting that you can get commissioned by doing four years, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year at one of the service academies. Or you can go to ROTC, which is like four years where you're part, kind of part-time soldiering, or you can just do OCS, which is 13, that's what I did, 13 weeks, but I was a prime, this is a guy. And you get, you can get the same commission out of every one of those different, completely different scenarios. And I guess it makes sense that if you were not into it, but you were still performing well. So what'd you end up doing? One year at West Point?

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I finished the, finished my freshman year, plebe year, and then. Transferred after that down to down to Dickinson. Yeah, I think the commissioning sources are. They've all got their strengths and weaknesses. I like that. There's a lot of, there's a lot of diversity there and some people I think are really fit for, for the academies. Some for RTC and, and, and some for OCS. Like it just kind of depends on where you're at. So I, I think our commissioning program is awesome.

• 17:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I worked with just outstanding officers from West Point and from the Naval Academy. And I work with terrible officers from the West Point and the Naval Academy. And I work with great guys from OCS and terrible guys from OCS and great guys from RT. It's really about the human and not about the, the training that you went through or whatever the, the commissioning program that you got.

• 18:07Jocko Willink?

  So now did you, are you looking at your army career? What did you decide to do with your army career as you're getting ready to any of this? Before I get to that. So you go to college four years, three years now.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 18:16Jocko Willink?

  At, and you're studying Russian?

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I studied Russian. And, and it was, I say like, it was exactly what I wanted it to be because I got a chance to, to go to Russia. And this was sort of these crazy days after, you know, Putin had sort of just come into power. There was a lot of openness. I mean, there's talk about at this time, like Russia might join NATO. It was nuts. And so, you know, we go over there and, and I spent, I went twice almost for, for total of almost a year between the two times I was over there. And it was just eye opening for me, you know, to, again, this is like some progression of from Alabama to Louisiana to, to West Point to Pennsylvania. And now like to go and sort of be on your own in Russia.

• 18:59Jocko Willink?

  Where in Russia were you?

• 19:00Speaker 02

  In Moscow. I ran, so my house, my apartment, I was staying with a host family. And I would get up in the morning and go run, run through Red Square, right? Like past Lenin's tomb, past St. Basil's Cathedral, down, you know, through the gates of the, of the Kremlin and it was. It was crazy, right? It's like no nothing country kid running through the middle of Moscow. It was probably super dangerous. I just didn't even know, but, um, but yeah, I spent all this time there and really, I think for the first time, learned about other cultures and that people completely see different aspects of the world than you do, right? Like, like there was this pivotal

• 19:41Speaker 02

  experience I write about in my Substack post, but I got knocked out by a Russian kickboxer and I was so was teaching. My operations officer, Phil Born is cringing right now because I've told this story like a gajillion times. I'm like to the lieutenant, I'm like, all right, let me tell you about the time. But like the short, the short version of it is I was teaching at this Russian high school, like an internship and they, the kids sort of tricked me to go down and to, and to do like combatives with them and they paired me against this like two-time state champion kickboxer and he knocked me out, right? Like flat out knocked me out. And in the way it was sort of set up though, I, it's when I realized after that, I was like, I thought that these people were my friends. The reality is they see me as a competitor because I'm American. And I think that was the

• 20:25Speaker 02

  first time it was like really eye opening for me as a, as a cadet to understand that, that like the world is a competitive place and that me in that ring with that Russian kid was like a tactical proxy for the geopolitical strategic struggle between the United States and Russia. And yeah.

• 20:44Jocko Willink?

  Had you ever trained before?

• 20:45Speaker 02

  No. I mean, I mean, I did like plea boxing at West Point and I like wrestled club at West Point. So I was like, I knew some basic takedowns and I could like knew the difference between like a jab and a cross.

• 20:56Jocko Willink?

  MMA fight or was it a?

• 20:57Speaker 02

  It was Rukopaska like, like, so it was, so the way it was all set up, I thought we were just like rolling in the gym. I'm like, oh, we're gonna go, go, I'll go down here. And I get down to the gym and there's like a, yeah, like an MMA ring set up with one dude in it and I'm the other, I'm the other guy.

• 21:13Jocko Willink?

  Did you wear gloves?

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Uh, well, so that was, sorry. I go down in, in, in like shorts and a t-shirt and they give me a gi and I'm like, okay, cool. Like I'll put this gi on.

• 21:22Jocko Willink?

  A sambo scenario.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It was Russian called Rukopaska. It's like, like Russian kickboxing is.

• 21:27Jocko Willink?

  Did you wear pants?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. So pants and a, and a, and a, and a, and a top. And then they put me in a ring and put these gloves on. I'm thinking they're boxing gloves, but they're, they have their fingers. Yeah. They've got fingers in them. I've never seen this before. And then I tried to, tried to do a single leg takedown on this kid and he just kneed me in the head and knocked me out. Um, it was I had no chance, but ask me later about how that translates over to Russian invasion of Crimea and Ukraine. And like, it's all, it's all a thing.

• 21:55Jocko Willink?

  Because it's all a thing. So.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  It's, it's all like, Nate Fry's strategy, or Nate Fry's understanding of Russian strategy, right? Which I formulated in the years after getting knocked out by a Russian kickboxer. And then saw it play out in Crimea, like step number one is lull you into false sense of security, which is what those kids did to me like, oh, you know, we're all friends. We're going to go down and roll together, right? Russia did that to us basically from 2000 until 2014. So the next thing is back you into a position that you can't get out of without embarrassing yourself. Like that was the initial invasion into Crimea. And Russia's kind of like, what are you going to do? He's really going to attack us nuclear armed power? And the West is like, ah, I don't know. Right? So now we're backed into a corner. Fast forward, you know what? Eight years later, like there's invasion, uh, invasion in Ukraine because they had put us in the corner that we couldn't get out of.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  And the last thing is fight dirty, which is what they did. It was like, I think we're rolling and having fun. And the reality is like, they're putting me inexperienced little me against a, you know, two time Russian state champion. Right? So fight dirty. What? That's the little green men. That's all the disinformation, you know, the, the political, um, the political disinformation that's happened in countries throughout Europe and the United States. So like, that's the Russian playbook. Uh, and they did it to me as a, as a, as a kid there. And as it was unfolding over the course of years here, I was like, it's the same thing. It's the same thing.

• 23:13Jocko Willink?

  It's not a bad plan. I mean, it's an effective plan.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  It worked. Yeah, it worked.

• 23:18Jocko Willink?

  So as you're getting, you're going through, spend a year in Russia, you're, what'd you study in college?

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Russian.

• 23:23Jocko Willink?

  Just Russian?

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:24Jocko Willink?

  And then you, you graduate, what's your plan? What, what, what job did you want to have in the army?

• 23:29Speaker 02

  I wanted to be an infantry officer. So it's like, that's, that's the, that's the thing everybody wants to do. So yeah, I want to be an infantry officer. Um, got that, got my branch, went to officer basic course. And, um, then, you know, got a chance to go to range school.

• 23:44Jocko Willink?

  Any challenges in the, in the basic course?

• 23:47Speaker 02

  No, I think it was pretty straightforward at the time. At the, at the time. Officer Basic Course was more of a prep for Ranger School type things like pre Ranger School and Ranger was really the capstone event, I think for us at that time. This is 2006, 2007. So, no, I thought it was, it was really solid. And I think, you know, as we get later to talking more about what I'm trying to do now with training, I think that was in many ways, a big, a big influence on me is like I had really good, high quality training as a cadet, as an infantry lieutenant, you know, as, as a, you know, or bollock student, as a Ranger School student, and you just see like the power of training and how it can be transformative. And you know, you know that from all your SEAL training. It's like training matters.

• 24:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had a James Webb on the podcast and he was in class of what, 1968, whatever the big popular class from the Naval Academy. But he went from there, went to the basic school, went to infantry officer school and took whatever nine days of leave and then went to Vietnam. They brought him out in the field. They pointed at a ridge top and they're like, that your platoon is up there. The previous platoon commander had been killed or wounded or whatever was gone, walked up there, linked up with his guys, you know, met his platoon sergeant. And then that night he's doing like combined arms fire because they're in a massive gunfight. And I said, did you feel like you were ready? And he's

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  like, I was ready. Which is amazing. And it also shows you that at that point in the war, you know, you had enough experienced guys that were, that had been in combat to then be able to teach combat, which by the way, isn't necessarily a one to one transfer because there's some people that have been in a lot of combat, but they don't really, they might not be the best teachers of combat. It's kind of like there's some people that are really good at jiu jitsu, but they are not the best teachers. So you got to find someone that has done it, was good at it, and then has the ability to teach it. And clearly the Marine Corps at that time was able to get him trained up. And you must have had a bunch of combat experienced guys teaching you if it was 2006.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  2006, 2007.

• 25:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a, you know. I mean, I even look back to even to ROTC, right? So our senior military instructor was Master on Greg Kuhn, SF guy, you know, done multiple deployments with them. The professor of military science was a, had been a Kiowa pilot in the first Gulf War, right? So like, these guys knew what was up and they, they knew the value of training and they invested us in training us seriously. And they had the same thing going on off the basic course, like these, a lot of them had, you know, they had done the first wave of OEF or, you know, they had done some OAF and then they were coming back and, and, you know, taking a break and training us. And I mean, it was serious. Like, we felt the burden.

• 26:26Jocko Willink?

  And it's also crazy, and I've seen this, how fast all those combat experience guys are gone. You know, like, it doesn't take long before you're in a class where you're supposed to be learning combat techniques and there's no instructor that's been in combat. It doesn't take long for that to transpire either. So then you go Ranger School. Did you prep for Ranger School in any special way?

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Probably too much. I don't know, like, spoiler alert, fast forward, like, I, I think I thought about it nonstop for like, three years, you know? And I dated my wife through college and then we got married right after college. And so she kind of seen the whole journey. And she came to me at graduation and my oldest daughter was a couple of months old at the time, because I basically like had the kid and then went to Ranger School and was like, bye.

• 27:14Jocko Willink?

  Graduation from Ranger School?

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, graduation from Ranger School, right. So, so my wife shows up, you know, with my, with my daughter, my little tiny daughter, and she was like, how was it? And I was like, it's not as hard as I thought it was gonna be. So I think like, I prepped super hard for it, but it was-

• 27:28Jocko Willink?

  What did you do to prep? First, what advice would you give for somebody that's getting ready for Ranger School?

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Take the tactics seriously. Like, understand how to communicate an operations order. It's not, like, the physical we got, physical's- Well, it's relatively easy. I mean, you know, like some of us struggle with like, for the most part, like, people, they get the physical part down, right? Do what it is that works for you. I'm not a ruck guy like, I don't get a lot out of it. So I was swimming, I was running, I was lifting and that did it fine for me. The killer is the ability to, it's Boyd's Oodle Loop, right? John Boyd's Oodle Loop, right? Observe, orient, decide, act. Like, how quickly can you absorb information, orient yourself to that information, express it to your platoon, get them to observe and orient, right?

• 28:14Speaker 02

  So you've got to get them in the Oodle Loop as well and then make a decision and all of you act on it in concert. That's the hard part. And so, you know, it's the, you know, I fall asleep during class. Then I miss a critical part of the, you know, the classes out. Like, Ranger School teaches you everything you need to know. You just have to pay attention. And one of my pet peeves, even today, is like, if you're in a class with someone and you don't have a notebook out and you're writing that down, you're missing it, right? Cause you're probably, especially in Ranger School, you're sleepy as it is, right? So you're hearing it, you're probably not really remembering it because you're already sleepy. As opposed to if I'm writing this stuff down, right, I'm hearing it. I'm physiologically using my motor skills to write it. I'm seeing it as I write.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  So now I've reinforced that learning by three. And then later I can go back and read it again. And so, you know, that's what I saw is people were like, oh, I don't understand why I failed. It's like, let me see your Ranger handbook. And there's nothing in it. And you're like, you gotta write this stuff down, y'all. So, yeah, write it down and then study it.

• 29:13Jocko Willink?

  And so what did your wife say to you when she showed up to your graduation? She said, how bad was it? And you're like, it's not that bad.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like, it wasn't bad as I, I said, it wasn't bad as I thought it was, or as I thought it would be. It seemed like, um, like, like superhuman as a cadet. You're like, only superhumans graduate. I can never do this. And I think, and you've talked about this in your, in your podcast before. It's like, every time you do something hard, it raises your confidence level. So as a cadet, you're like, I can never do that. And then you do, you know, airborne school as a cadet. And you're like, oh, well, that, okay, I can do hard things. And and then you go to Officer Basic Course and you're like, oh, I can do hard things. Right. And then at that point, like you're fully prepared to go to range, which you have to believe in yourself that you're prepared to do it and realize it's like, it's not superhuman.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  It's it's you've done hard stuff before. You're just going to raise the bar one more notch. Check. Yeah. And then where'd you get stationed? Uh, Fort Lewis, uh, with with, uh, two ID, so second infantry division. And you what, roll in as a platoon commander? Yeah, right. And so this is, this is where, um, everything, everything in my sort of career at this point, I've been going like really, really well. Um, and at this point, uh, you know, I go in and I feel like, like I like a plan and I like to to follow the plan.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  I'd say like, when I envision something like, oh, this is the way it's going to happen. Right. And so things started to sort of get out of sync here. And I think that in many ways like bit me in in in in future times, right? Like I started to see that things weren't going according to the plan that Nate Frye had for himself. Right. So I roll in to fifth striker brigade, second infantry division. So fifth brigade, five two striker was brand new. Um, and I showed up, there was like a platoon and a half. Um, there we were riding to the range on on buses instead of strikers because we're like literally brand new unit. Um, so eventually, uh, my platoon. This is oh seven? This is, yeah, this is oh seven. Yeah. Brand new, uh, brand new unit.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Um, and so eventually the unit sort of gets formed up and and we, um, had an amazing mentor there. Um, again, I've sort of lost touch with him. Hopefully, like, catch him, reinvigorate and catch him again. But my company commander was the guy named Captain Eric Schwartz. Um, and uh, Captain Schwartz had been like original tenth not division in OEF, like, you know, two thousand one, two thousand two timeframe.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Amazing person, amazing tactician, amazing teacher. And so I was super lucky to have him like as my mentor, you know, growing up as a platoon leader.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  But so spent some time like sanding up that company and then eventually ended up being the assistant S3

• 32:01Speaker 02

  in the like in the battalion.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  But like, to be completely honest, like I got to the point there where I was, I felt like I was

• 32:12Speaker 02

  like mad, angry, frustrated because I felt like I was being underutilized and that that attitude ended up biting me pretty hard. Because when the, when the unit got, it's finally got its deployment orders, and this is a whole nother nut roll. People out there who in 52 remember this, but we were supposed to go to Iraq and we're heading to NTC and gosh, probably three weeks or so before NTC, they're like, actually, you guys are going to Afghanistan. So it was a complete, complete U-turn of tactics, techniques, mindset. So we all, you know, we all started prepping to go to Afghanistan, but at that time,

• 32:52Speaker 02

  the human resource command came down and was like, hey, you know, you guys, some of you have been here too long. You need to go and, and go fill out these embedded training teams.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  With, you know, that are standing up for Riley and

• 33:06Jocko Willink?

  And were those embedded training teams supposed to go to Iraq?

• 33:10Speaker 02

  I think it was both. Yeah, I think it was both. It was like depending on which one you got assigned to.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  And without going into too many details, I was like, I was being kind of a jerk at this point. I, I was

• 33:22Jocko Willink?

  How old were you at this point?

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh. 20, 25, I guess. Yeah, this was like three years. Like I just made captain. And like angry and bitter and felt like, wow, the unit doesn't like recognize me and my talents well enough. And so and they're like, I think they kind of gave it was like, well, you know, Fry's got some talents, but he's also a pain in the butt. So like, send him to the ETT. So I ended up not having a chance to deploy with those guys, which I look back on, I was like, yeah, I was dumb. You know, for, for being, basically just being a jerk.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  So, long story short, like the ETT.

• 34:00Jocko Willink?

  The world, it turns out the world did not revolve around you.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it took me another like eight years to figure it out. Yeah, this is like the nade fire right now is, is, is a product of the mistakes that nade fire made and all the, you know, and I talked to my lieutenants about this all the time. I was like, you should be open to making mistakes because, you know, in the long run, those of us that don't make mistakes, I think, maybe in the end, and this is a long, you know, time of like, after 15, 20 years, you know, you've missed out on all this learning. I think, you know, over time, it definitely made me better. Maybe I'm just not very smart.

• 34:35Jocko Willink?

  And what sucks is you're like angry and bitter about this thing, which is probably not huge. But then just the fact that you're angry and bitter about that thing that's not huge. Let's say you get to a, a unit that's not really stood up and you're like, dude, this is, what am I having to, so you're kind of angry about that. And then that escalates into like, people see that, you know, people smell when you're mad and people smell when you're frustrated. And, and that always smells like it's about you, you know? And so then you, then, then you get assigned to something where they go, hey, you know what? Actually, we're not going to take you to Afghanistan. You can go over here. And the reason they did that is because you were kind of mad and frustrated and showing it, which again seems selfish. So now they look at you and go, oh, you can go over here. Which, what

• 35:17Jocko Willink?

  does that do? Makes you even matter. And you get more frustrated. It's a, it's a little bit of a downward spiral that people can fall into.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Absolutely. For me, it was, and I look back and I'm like, I was so dumb. But, you know, every Ranger qualified infantry officer is like, I'm going to be the scout platoon leader, right? I'm going to be the battalion scout platoon leader. And I was like, I'm going to be the battalion scout platoon leader. Like, I'm fit, I'm smart, motivated. And the S3 at the time, um, then Major Jose Ocasio, uh, brilliant guy, right? And, and he was like, he saw talent in me and he's like, I want you to be my AS3. Nobody wants to go and be on staff. Nobody wants to go be on staff. Nobody's good.

• 35:51Jocko Willink?

  So there's another thing that made you angry?

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was like, oh, the AS3, like that's a coffee maker. And so like, I spent my time up there instead of learning from him and I did learn from him eventually, but like, instead of really investing time and learning from him being like, I'm, I'm here because he sees talent in me. Like, and he's grew me for something bigger. I just like walked around all sulky and was like, I'm the AS3. I should have been the scalpel to leader, right? It's like, you know, and like I said, people pick up on that. They know that, like they, even if you don't say it, like you.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  No, they smell it.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Exude it. Yeah.

• 36:18Jocko Willink?

  I always say, uh, people can smell your intent.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:21Jocko Willink?

  And this is case in point, you know, and really good, really great. Just lesson learned for, for everyone that's out there because the opposite side is, you know, I was telling you when I, when I showed up SEAL Team 1, get done with SEAL training and here I am, you know, made it through the toughest military training in the world and all this stuff. And I show up there and they're literally, hey, go clean the, go clean the heads, you know, and there's where the cleaning supplies are, go clean them. And like, okay, cool. That's what we're doing. I've cleaned those things like it was, you know, the most important thing in the world. And that is the thing where someone goes, oh, that guy's kind of a hard worker. Let's, hey, we can send him to this school. Okay. Let's send him to that school. And it just takes a different term from that, that initial reaction that you give something. So that's a great heads up

• 37:05Jocko Willink?

  to, to the young troopers out there, you know, when something comes your way, man, just grab onto it. Do the best you, you possibly can.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Take it. I, I mean, the context for me is looking back, I was like, I was the honor graduate from my ROTC class. I was the honor graduate from my IOBC class. I was, did the, what is it called? Like the, the Ralph Colonel Puckett Board, you know, to be in the running, to be the graduate from Ranger School. Like, I think I'm hot stuff, right? And I was, I was good, right? I was, but I wasn't the only one that was good. But when you go into this and you're like, look, I'm an honor grad, you'd be like, you better bow down and for me and like, recognize how awesome I am. Like, dude, you're second lieutenant. Chill out. Right? Like, you know, however many, however many other honor grads are there out there, right? But yeah, you get stuck in the cycle of like, Like, I'm awesome. You better treat me like that.

• 37:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's also from a leadership perspective, you know, because we'd always have like the young cocky guys coming into the SEAL teams and being able to take them and go, hey, bro. Like, we know you made it through SEAL training, so did everyone else.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:04Jocko Willink?

  And it doesn't really mean anything. And, you know, how good you do this job that you're being assigned right now, however small you think it is, people are going to watch you, people are going to judge you. And if you, if you can kind of convince guys of that, you can see them turn around. Sometimes, sometimes, of course, people, you, you, they're just, life is, they're going to be the thing that's going to have to humble them.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  So, so you get this assignment to do one of these, uh, internal embedded training teams?

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And then so this is where, you know, the, the plot continues to thicken. Nate Fry gets even more angry. Um, so I had.

• 38:33Jocko Willink?

  It's weird because you seem like such a nice guy in here, you know, like.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  I'm, yeah, I'm super chilled out now.

• 38:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  I'm a skier now.

• 38:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  You know, it's like.

• 38:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Angry Nate Fry.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  And this was Angry Punk Nate Fry. And I'm just like, skier Nate. So, good. Um, but, so I'd gone to SFAS, uh, Special Forces Assessment Selection.

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  And wait, how did you get that billet?

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Um, so you do that. I did that as lieutenant, right? So you just go temporary duty to.

• 38:57Jocko Willink?

  Got it. To do the selection, which is not that long, right? That's like a few weeks.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Twenty-one days. Yeah. So it was twenty-one days at this time. And so I got gone to SFAS, um, thinking I was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to eventually go to, to, um, to Special Forces training. Got selected. And so I've sort of had like this in the background. It's like, okay, you can go to SF training whenever, you know, you get back from deployment. Well, the, the, um, the orders for the ETTs get canceled, right? So at this time, and this is two thousand nine by this point, um, they shifted, the army decided to shift the, the burden for the ETTs, uh, the MTTs to all the, the combat brigades. So if a brigade was deploying, they would deploy their, you know, the normal formation. And then they would also have to carve out a slice and those would become ETTs, right?

• 39:43Speaker 02

  So the brigades had to staff both. So they shut down the ETT MTT program. And I was like, all right, what do I do now? And they go, well, you know, you've been in selection and you got selected. So go to SF course. Okay. Well, go to the SF course then. Fine. Um, so further feeding into the ego, right? So now here I'm, I'm a twenty-four or twenty-five, maybe twenty-six at this point, like twenty-six year old. You know, captain, like, I'm awesome. I get, I get selected and I'm going to go to selection now. Fast tracking to SF. Okay. Well, mindset matters. And my mindset was not. Mature. So ended up going to to the SF course. And again, things are going super well there for me, like performing well.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  No recycles, you know, going through the whole thing like no problem. But internally, like a lot of frustration and anger building up still, like I think from the previous, from the previous like assignment. Going through the SF at the same time, and it was like, just to put it frankly, like not what I thought it was going to be.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  In terms of like the mission and the mindset in many ways. And so near the end of it, a kind of a series of things pop up that, you know, you know, further called me to just like get mad and angry and.

• 41:01Jocko Willink?

  Like what kind of things popping up? Just like stupid, like chicken shit type evolutions or?

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Trying to like how to how to put it like in a in a tackle manner. I I think at the time, this is my analysis, somebody can yell at me about it afterwards, but like I think at the time. You know, most of the really strong players were deploying, right? And so if you were at the actual, you know, cadre course at this time, it's like, it wasn't always their their best people. And so I had, I wasn't super impressed with like the quality of like the instructor that we were that we're working with. And so and again, here's Nate Frye, like thinking he knows everything.

• 41:40Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is rough.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:43Jocko Willink?

  This is not a good recipe.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  No, no, it's like, and I can look back now and be like, okay, well, yeah, you were, you know, walking like thought you walked on water. So I'm getting like angry and angry the whole time. Cause I'm like, this is wasting my time or whatever. And so near the end of it, we go to to Robin Sage. Like the final, like the final culminating exercise, everything's going well, right? But two things happened that like. That that like really like set me off. So the first is um my wife is pregnant with my son at the time and I was like, I'll be back, you know, in time for for Robin Sage, like, I'll be able to see the birth. Um, but she came early and so I missed my son's birth.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  And so I'm like, I get a cell phone call from the cadre one day and they're like, hey, you know, you know, special call from your wife. Like she went to labor and she had the kid. So I'm like devastated. Like, I feel like at this point, I have put my career in front of my family, which is something I like resolved never to do. And I did. Um, and then the second thing is, is, is a guy on our team lost his knots, his night vision devices. And when they lose the light, they lose these night vision devices, they shut the lane down. They're like, hey, look, you guys all have to go and find these night vision devices. And we can't find them. Right. They're gone. You lost them on the side of the road. Some guy from central North Carolina picked them up. These things dudes got them as mantelpiece right now. Right. Like, they're gone. Uh, so they recycle the entire team. Everybody.

• 43:15Jocko Willink?

  Back to how far?

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Back to the beginning of Robin Sage, right? Which is a six week, a six week setback. Um, but at this point, like, the Nate Fry anger and frustration, right, is like, is so built up. Plus, missing my son's birth, you know, plus this, um, you know, like being recycled back to the beginning. And I'm like, nobody recycles Nate Fry. I don't recycle anything. I'm first time go through Ranger School, right? Like, like, how, how do you, how do you, do you have, like, the, the, the gall to recycle me? So I get super mad. And I'm just like, I resign. I'm leaving. I'm leaving SF. I'm leaving that, like, the pipeline. All I had to do was go back and all I had to do is go back and go back to SF, uh, go, go back to Robin Sage. Another six weeks. Yeah.

• 44:00Jocko Willink?

  How deep, how long is that up until that?

• 44:02Speaker 02

  Eighteen months. Eighteen months. Eighteen.

• 44:05Jocko Willink?

  What did they say to you?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Nothing. Because, like, I mean, when you have somebody come in and it's like, hey, I'm gonna quit. They're like, okay, it's ringing the bell, right? I ring the bell. Like, like, got angry and it's like, you know what? I'm too good for this. Ring the bell, like, walked on. Walked away.

• 44:21Jocko Willink?

  Damn, dude.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:22Jocko Willink?

  I'm glad I'm interviewing you and not that guy. That guy's rough, man. That's rough.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  I was, I was, I was super angry. And I, I, yeah, I, I can't tell you exactly why. Um, but. It it it caused me and it's like for listeners listening out, you know, for people listening, right? It's because I've I've sort of made it my life goal to be as transparent as I can about like my mistakes because I'm super lucky in the sense I recovered. And we'll talk about this in a second. But like, you know, Jason Pelletier, right? Like,

• 44:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Jason Pelletier recovered me. And in that same way, I've had two resets, like two hard resets. That was the the Boy Scouts and kind of got me back on my path and got me on track and I was successful there and then started spiraling again and then met Jason Pelletier and he put me back on track. But yeah, I was probably not a fun person to be around.

• 45:15Jocko Willink?

  So what happens after you quit SF?

• 45:19Speaker 02

  You go back to the force. And so at this point, they were like, well, you're an infantry officer, but you just did all this SF training and and like, what do you want to do now? And and I'm so angry at this point that I'm just like, I don't, I don't care. And they were like, well, there's this unit deploying from Fort Bliss, Texas. They need an S2 battalion, an intelligence officer. Do you want to deploy as a battalion S2? I was like, yes, fine. It's fine. Let's let's go. So here's an infantry officer. I've never been to intel training other than like what I got in SF. And so I go to Fort Bliss, deploy as as a battalion intel officer, technically military intelligence, but I'm not because I don't

• 46:04Speaker 02

  know anything about military intelligence. But like, put it together and like, did well. But then and but after that, I was like, I'm done.

• 46:10Jocko Willink?

  And where'd you guys deploy to?

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Afghanistan.

• 46:11Jocko Willink?

  And what was that deployment like?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  So it was the drawdown. Like, so at this point, President, this is 2012, 2013. Obama had already had already announced that the US was leaving. And so the Taliban at this point was like, well, we're not doing anything.

• 46:28Jocko Willink?

  Stand by until they leave.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Why are we going to stick our neck out? And so, like, yeah, like relatively. It was not like your Ramadi experience at all. And I was an S2, so.

• 46:40Jocko Willink?

  This is, you know, I get asked a lot of questions and I get asked so many questions. This is such a good conversation because I get so many questions about, you know, things that happen to people in whatever career they're in, whether in a military career, police, corporate America, whatever team they're part of. And there's like things that go slightly wrong. And I'm always saying, hey, listen, you gotta take the high ground, you know, you know, absorb as much of the problem as you can. And you don't want to lash out. Don't let your ego get in the way. And a lot of times it's like, hey, you gotta play the game. Like, hey, there's, it's a game. You gotta play the game. And this is like a classic example of, I'm glad because I give people that advice all the time. And sometimes I'm like, well, you know, but occasionally,

• 47:24Jocko Willink?

  shouldn't you just stand up for yourself? And I'm always like, you know, you want me to say like, hey, you know, if someone talks to you that way, you gotta stand up for yourself. It's like, no, actually, when someone above, below, or across the chain of command to you, treats you disrespectful, the answer is not to then be more disrespectful back to them. That's not the answer. I don't care where they are on the chain of command. Look, can you, can we carve out some scenario where, you know, someone is truly being deeply disrespectful in front of the street? Sure, you could come up with something like that. It is so rare that I will barely even mention it. These are classic, these are classic stories that you're telling of not being able to absorb something, play the game, deal with it, because ultimately, you're going to win in the

• 48:08Jocko Willink?

  long run. You've got to think more strategic. And it's hard to think strategic when you're 20, 23, 25 years old. It's really hard to go, okay, I can see where this is going to go in the long run. I need, I need to play the game. So this is just great reinforcement for people to really think about how they're going to respond. And 99.9% of the time, when you take the high road.

• 48:31Jocko Willink?

  In the situation, you will end up in a better spot.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:35Jocko Willink?

  Just like in combat, 99% of the time, if you get the high ground, you're going to be in a better situation. Occasionally, rarely yet, okay, we're going to get in this little ravine, we're going to maneuver around, I get it. But 99% of the time, taking the high ground is the way to go. And, and that's the way it works. So these are great. Stories for people to hear, because everyone, just about every single day. You deal, we deal, people deal with some scenario like this. Their boss disrespects them, they didn't get the job they want, whatever the thing is, it happens all the time. And to be able to go, okay, cool, I'll make the best of this right now.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:11Jocko Willink?

  Is a skill that you must learn. Otherwise, you're going to have to get multiple resets in your life, and they're generally speaking, not very fun.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and you're lucky if you get them, like sometimes you don't get them, right? Like, I'm amazingly lucky that I've gotten the resets that I've twice, right? Like, like, I, I don't plan on doing my third strike, right? Like, this is too annoying, good, but another thing I would say to the listener is like, it, the fallacy of falling on your sword, like the, the nobility of falling on your sword. So, you know, a couple of times I've done that, where I'm like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna stand for this, I'm gonna fall on my sword for this. And like, you know, all my peers are gonna see how awesome I am, and that, that I, you know, took the bullet for everyone else. And like, they do, and they're like, wow, yeah, like Nate's gutsy to do that, he's also stupid. Right? He's, he's dumb, so.

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  And oftentimes, and this is a problem that I've talked about, uh, with, not a problem, but one of the, one of the sort of mysteries with David Hackworth, and it's not much of a mystery with me, but David Hackworth, you know, he was, he would have been a brigade commander next, and division commander, he could have really shaped how they fought the war. But he did this interview, and he spoke his mind, and he was, you know, he get, literally gets asked during that interview, don't you think you're a little emotional about what's happening here? And he's like, yeah, you're damn right emotional, I'm watching these kids get killed every day. So he reached a point where he could not do it anymore. That being said, if you want to play like the, the, what if, what if he?

• 50:42Jocko Willink?

  Sucked it up one more time and and he became a brigade commander, division commander. Could he have helped more individual soldiers? Maybe, maybe not.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:53Jocko Willink?

  But and we see this, you know, this happens in politics when um when General Mattis was working for Trump. And it was like he resigned his position. And he was in the news for a short period of time. And by a short period of time, you know, today's news cycle is 24 hours, maybe 48. And then no more influence.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Nobody cares.

• 51:13Jocko Willink?

  And not in that position to make a difference anymore. So it's to your point, look, are there times where we can go back through history? We can say, oh, yeah, this leader, this this platoon commander or this battalion commander stood his ground and actually was able to make a massive change? That has happened historically, but doesn't happen very often.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:35Jocko Willink?

  Most of the time, like, I fire you, cool, I got Echo right here. He's gonna do exactly, oh, you want to resist me? Cool, you're fired. Echo steps in and Echo's gonna be no resistance whatsoever. And he's gonna do exactly what I say and I'm gonna win.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:46Jocko Willink?

  And you just get fired.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  I I coined this term at some, I don't know if I said it or some other people, but we we talk about like high maintenance all-stars. Right? And and it's like a high maintenance also, it's like, okay, cool, like you're an all-star, but you suck up so many of my resources, my time, you know, because I've I've got to pour all these, you know, all this time and and and resourcing you that I can't give to other people. I would rather have some times, there's a time for the high maintenance all-star, I guess. But like sometimes like I would rather have a bunch of slightly above average performers than this one high maintenance all-star who like, yeah, kills it, but is a pain in the butt to have around. Like, that was me, right? I was like objectively, I was objectively good. I was objectively a pain.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  In the butt, right? Like, and those two things cancel each other out.

• 52:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they do. And they actually, they kind of end up a little bit on the negative side rather than just cancel each other out. There it's actually that disruption to the morale and the disruption to the culture is so problematic because then you end up. You know, if if you work for me and you're a high maintenance, what'd you say, high maintenance?

• 52:56Speaker 02

  High maintenance all star.

• 52:56Jocko Willink?

  If you're a high maintenance all star and you work for me and you're causing all these issues, I mean, Echo's over here looking at me like, dude, you really put up with this guy? And and so I lose leadership capital because of your behavior. So it's just not good. So you do this deployment and during this deployment, I'm sure you're like, hey, I'm getting out of the army. This is a done deal for me.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was at this point, it was like everything, you know, everything that I thought I was going to accomplish. I was like, I haven't done any of it. And like the SF thing was not without its like emotional toll. You know, like walking away from that, I was like, felt like a a complete failure. And my attitude just got even worse, right? So I get out of the army at seven, seven, seven years and some change. And I'm like angry, done. I, you know, I'm done with this army thing. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go do something else. So I I'm gonna go to Vermont. I'm gonna study forestry and I'm gonna go work with trees. That's what Nate was gonna do.

• 53:52Jocko Willink?

  Kind of sounds like a good deal.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Work with trees. Trees don't yell at you. If you get angry at them, you can cut them down. It's all good.

• 53:59Jocko Willink?

  I was building a retaining wall in my backyard when I was probably at like the 16 year mark or something like that of the Navy. And I'm out there and I'm all day. It's hot and and just sweating, but I'm building this nice looking retaining wall. And my wife comes out and she's like, oh, how's it going? I'm like, I think I'm gonna become a mason when I retire. And I was like completely serious. I was completely like you get, because a lot of times in the military, you're. Well, you're you have nothing to show for your work at the end of the day or the end of the week or the end of the month like

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 54:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you as an officer, oh, you built another PowerPoint brief. You did this thing. Of course, being on deployment is nothing more gratifying than that. But the day to day life is not you. You don't see much for it. And here you go. You work a hard day, fourteen hours, and I have a little wall.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:47Jocko Willink?

  And it's going to be there forever.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  Immediate gratification.

• 54:50Jocko Willink?

  Immediate gratification feels great. And like you said, the blocks don't talk back.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:53Jocko Willink?

  The concrete, you know, goes where you want it to go. All good. So you had that idea with trees.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's that's what I want to do. Like, just go be a forester. So we moved to Vermont.

• 55:05Jocko Willink?

  What did your wife say to this?

• 55:07Speaker 02

  Ah, she's so tired of me at this point, I think. Like, you know, I've drug her around, you know, she had my oldest daughter. And I left like a week later for Ranger School and was gone for sixty days straight. And she's like, single parenting, twenty three years old, you know, miles away for a hundred miles away from her family like. She's she's a saint, right? That she's still with me. I think at this point, she's just like, wants me to do something to be stable and not stalk around the house like a, you know, angry.

• 55:37Jocko Willink?

  So she's kind of down with this.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, she's she's like.

• 55:39Jocko Willink?

  Then like, where are you going to get a paycheck from?

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, there's that part. But she I just like, she's she's like.

• 55:46Jocko Willink?

  We'll figure it out.

• 55:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's figured out. She's like, super fiscally responsible. And it's like, oh, beans and ramen will be fine. So, okay.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  So we get out and I'm like, I'm gonna go to to grad school to to study trees. And University of Vermont had a great program and her family's from Pennsylvania. So we're like, okay, Vermont works. It's like within a day's drive of the of the grandparents.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  So we're coming up to Vermont and pretty clearly or quickly, I'm like, yeah, I need some money and I need probably some life insurance and health insurance. And you know, this time, like the whole time, I'm still skiing, I'm still climbing, I'm ice climbing, I'm pursuing certification as an IFMGA mountain guide. And so I'm like, Vermont's great, right? I can ski, I can climb, I can do my guide certifications, I can go to school, right? All these things kind of wrap together.

• 56:36Jocko Willink?

  And what year is this that you get out of the army?

• 56:39Speaker 02

  Two thousand thirteen.

• 56:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, two thousand thirteen.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  And

• 56:44Jocko Willink?

  And so you're gonna, you, you have to go to college for these qualifications?

• 56:47Speaker 02

  Well, so this is the, the AMGA is the American Mountain Guide Association.

• 56:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  And American Mountain Guide Association, it's, it's essentially like a professional licensing. But in order to progress through it, it's like this series of courses that you have to do to like, you know, certified as a rock guide, certified as an alpine guide, certified as an ice climbing guide, certified as a ski guide, and it, it takes a long time. I mean, it's a long, arduous route. And there's, there's a ton of, um, every time you do a course, you gotta build a resume for it, right? So it's like, oh, if you want to go to the advanced rock guide course, you know, you've got to put up like, something like 30 different climbs, like super high level, you know, difficult, remote. So it takes time and it takes money to do it. It's not easy to do it.

• 57:30Jocko Willink?

  And then your hope is that the end of all that, you can become a guide?

• 57:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, for like a fully certified. Anybody can guide, but like to be a certified guide and work internationally, you have to go through this whole, you know, this whole like.

• 57:41Jocko Willink?

  And that's your plan?

• 57:43Speaker 02

  That's my plan. I'm gonna study trees and that's gonna give me enough time to go to the Forest Service.

• 57:48Jocko Willink?

  So you're going to college basically for forestry?

• 57:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, for forestry.

• 57:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay, going to college for forestry, then you're doing all this extracurricular, trying to become a guide?

• 57:56Speaker 02

  A mountain guide, yeah.

• 57:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 57:57Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 57:58Jocko Willink?

  And you realize you need money?

• 57:59Speaker 02

  And I, that would probably be good. And, and because guiding is, I don't know, like kinda dangerous. Health insurance, life insurance is probably a good idea too. And so I kinda like, oh, National Guard, like what can the National Guard do for me? And find out that there's this mountain battalion, the mountain battalion, right? So I look and it was like, there's a mountain warfare unit in Vermont? Like, how sick is that? So I called these guys up and I'm like, hey, this is who I am, like active duty guy, you know, former active duty guy. And, uh, you know, I'm from Vermont, like what do you guys have available? And I was like, you gotta be kidding me. So I, I, I come off as, you know, working as a battalion S2 off of active duty. And, and they go, well, we got this battalion S2 slot open. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Okay, so here we go again.

• 58:45Speaker 02

  But at this point, I mellowed out a little bit and, um, and, uh, I, I sign up for the Vermont Guard. And, and this is, this is the, you know, this is the next reset, right? Like this, this changed the, the course of my career, uh, in my life. So I show up at, uh, at, um, the mountain battalion headquarters for my first drill. And, you know, I, I walk out and there's soldiers standing in formation. I remember like the mortar platoon sergeant is like, knife handing one of his guys and just like chewing them out. I'm like, okay, well, that's not what I expected to see. I thought the guard was like about barbecues and stuff. You know, and there's people doing maintenance over on Humvee. It's kind of like the, you know, the narrative that you read at the beginning. And I walk in and, uh, meet the, the recruiting officer and he goes, I, you know, this battalion commander wants to meet you. Okay, cool.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  So I go up and, and he goes, look, he's former active duty guy too. Like just do the thing for him. Okay, fine. So I walk in, salute and report and Lieutenant Colonel Jason Pelletier. And, and he, he sits me down and he, he just starts to have a conversation with me. Where are you from? What do you do? Oh, you were in one 17? I was in four 17, you know, infantry battalion. And so we kind of got this bond. And, you know, we start talking and, and I think he senses it and he's like, look, um, I know that people have bad experiences and good experiences on active duty. And I'd encourage you to do this. Take all the good that you ever saw. And bring it here and find all the good that we have here and put it together and just throw the bad stuff out. And I was like,

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  okay, I, I can do that.

• 1:00:11Jocko Willink?

  Seems like a really good option, man.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it was like, it was great. It was, it was, it was like transformative, transformational in terms of the mindset. It was like, okay, just take all the good stuff and just put it together and, and be a good team player. And I think he probably was like, hey, we're stoked to have you on as a, as, as the S2, um, and, uh, and I mean, that was it. All right. Salute and walk out. And like, that was the beginning of the changeover.

• 1:00:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and like I said in the beginning, you know, Jason Pelletier, who is just, just outstanding soldier and super humble guy, you know, very, very nice, very approachable, probably, you know, as a, as a combat leader, has an incredible amount of combat experience from his time in Ramadi, where they were faced against a, a brutal enemy. And yet, and, and as I mentioned in the beginning, I can't say it strongly enough, the amount of information that they passed on to me and my guys. You know, it was, it absolutely kept our guys' lives. It's a hundred percent kept our guys' lives.

• 1:01:16Jocko Willink?

  There was, there was operations where they would, you know, there's, there's one operation I'm thinking of right now that, you know, Jason told Leif, like, do not do that. And, you know, like Leif was like, hey, what do you think of this? And he's like, well, that's not, I wouldn't do it. And I'm not going to go through all the details, but you know, Leif was like, yeah, but you know, we could probably make something happen and, you know, and finally Jason just like, I, I think, I think the quote was, if I wanted to get one of my guys killed, I would do this. And Leif's like, oh, okay. So that right there, and there's plenty of examples like that to go through, but just a, a super nice guy, humble guy, very effective combat leader.

• 1:01:56Jocko Willink?

  And it's just awesome that he stayed in and now he gets someone like you and is able to kind of assess where your, where your mind is at and talk to you in a way that changes your entire perspective very radically in a, a conversation.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's real leadership right there.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and he had, he had a team under him and I think this just speaks to the power of team and organizational culture. His XO and his S3, um, both former active duty guys, um, you know, had come to the guard and, and their mindset was the same. They were like, look, take the good, you know, put it all together, like there's a unique culture here. Feed into that culture and that culture was one of, of, of like standards, discipline, integrity and, and effectiveness. And I think that for me was, was maybe the more transformative aspect of it. Cause I was like, okay, these guys don't, I mean, grooming standards important, fitness standards important. All this stuff is important, but it's also not at the expense of being effective. And that I think was the thing that I was like, okay, I can get along with these guys because so much of,

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  a lot of my frustration had been like, why are we doing this? Like this doesn't make any sense. All right. Like there's no functional reason for us to be doing this. And yet, well, you know, big army says do it, do it. And here's this common sense group of people who are like, if it doesn't work, we're not going to do it. I'm like, I can get onto this. Like, you know, this is, this is really good. They also like little by little, uh, sort of harnessed like,

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  The anger and the energy that I think I had. And so I was just talking to Colonel Paul Judge, who was Pelletier's XO at the time. And he's like, yeah, I just remember when our first like field exercise, it was like this brigade exercise and I was still the S2. And I got on the phone and like yelled at somebody because they weren't giving us ISR support. And, and he said, yeah, you, you, you said, I hope your mother is happy and proud of you. And like hung up the phone. And he said, I laughed and I was like, I like this guy's fire. He's going to fit in just right. But then they also was like, okay, Nate, like, how can we approach this like a different way next time? Like, I love it that you're sticking up for us, but can we soften this a little bit?

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  And so there was this, you know, it's funny, Colonel Pelletier was the battalion commander. And then Colonel Judge was later the battalion commander. I was a company commander under him. And I think there was this sort of process of like, like, let's shape Nate to be a little bit more relaxed about this stuff. So it was, it was a multiple, it was like a multi-step sort of intervention from these guys who are like, you got a lot of potential, buddy, but like, there's some other things that are distracting, detracting from it. Can we mellow that out? Can we refocus that? You know, it's like a nuclear explosion could do one of two things, right? It can destroy things with all of its energy or it can be harnessed to create like endless clean power. Right? And I was like destroying a lot of stuff. And I felt like those guys were like, I love the energy.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  Let's, let's put it in a nuclear power plant and get it to do something constructive. And I owe those guys my, my life, you know, where I'm at right now because of the way they approached that.

• 1:05:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's also awesome because if you, if someone pushes hard against, you know, someone that has a lot of what we're calling right now, energy. You know, if, if, if you come into my office and shoot me and go, sounds like you, sounds like you really think you know what you're doing. Boom. It's going to be, it's going to be a nuclear reaction, right? It's going to be bad, the bad kind of nuclear reaction. Whereas for someone to sit down and go, well, tell me what's going on. And all of a sudden recognize it and then try and figure out how we can capture this and do something good with it. Just the leadership is just so important along the way. So, so that's it. You're now with, you, you joined the unit. And then what's that like? Are you, did you go active duty immediately with the, with the National Guard?

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  No, I went and played with Therese for a little bit. So I, I, I was a traditional National Guard guy, one week in a month, two weeks a year thing.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  And and I ended up working with the US Forest Service over in New Hampshire and run around the woods with trees. Um, little too low energy for me though, right? Like at a certain point, I was like, trees are not growing super fast. Like, could we go faster, trees? And trees are like, no, bro. Like, I'm not going any faster. Um, and so, you know, continuing to do the mountain thing. And this is where I think like, I've really started to get in my stride. Um,

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  got a call one day from now retired General Nate Lord, who was a old mountain battalion guy. And he said, hey, look, we need a full time training officer at the Army Mountain Warfare School. Would you come on AGR duty to do this?

• 1:06:27Jocko Willink?

  Did he know your background?

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. So another guy that I owe so much to because he was like, we need Nate here. You know, the school started at an inflection point and he pulled some strings to to like to get me to the school. Um, and that was that was the beginning of sort of like, okay, I finally feel like I'm doing my thing.

• 1:06:44Jocko Willink?

  And so did you go active duty then?

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I went

• 1:06:47Jocko Willink?

  To do that?

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  AGR to go work at mountain schools. I worked there for three years.

• 1:06:53Jocko Willink?

  So what's what's going on at the mountain school? Who you who shows up there to train?

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. So any of your listeners out there who have been to mountain school will will back me up on this probably and say it is one of the best kept secrets in in the army. Um, the here's what's different about it, right? Airborne School, Ranger School, like all these other schools that, you know, that the army has, you go there, you're in struck for two or three years and you're gone. Right? With the Mountain Warfare School, because of the unique, the way it's uniquely set up, um, some of those instructors have been there for 10 or 15 years. Now, that comes with some negatives, right? Like the whole homesteading mentality. It also makes them amazing masters of their craft. And it makes them, they've also had time to hone, and you

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  were talking about this earlier, like hone themselves as instructors, not just I know the stuff, but I can teach the stuff. And so the level of professionalism there is just, it's it's through the roof. They're all practitioners, right? They can ski, they can climb, they can teach how to ski and climb.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  And so at this time, you know, the, the, the mountain school is really looking at, okay, what, what is coming next? And the army's talking more about Arctic. It's more talking about specialized warfare. 10th Mountain Division is sort of standing up again as an actual mountain unit. And we get to sort of be at the middle of all of that as the Mountain Warfare School, writing doctrine, advising people on, um, you know, on how to, to integrate mountain operations into their, into their formations. And also like tons of like foreign partner assistance stuff. I mean, these guys, if we're not teaching a course, there's typically an instructor team gone somewhere in the world, teaching mountaineering to someone. Like, it was so busy.

• 1:08:37Jocko Willink?

  What does your training ground look like? Do you have good training in, where is it? Vermont?

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  It's in Vermont.

• 1:08:43Jocko Willink?

  And do you have good training there? Do you have like massive amounts of acreage to train in?

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Ethan Allen Training Site, um, is, is, uh, like just east of Burlington, 12,000 acres that backs right up to the spine of the Green Mountains. Like, so the eastern boundary is the long trail. So you can do, I mean, if you get really creative, like as a training guy, right? You can like do long distance movements through the mountains where you go up, you hit the long trail. You know, we would, you could do these huge traverses. We'd come down, there's a, um, I'd say a higher elevation, uh, H L Z up there, you know, so like seize the H L Z, set up a defense around it, get tagged. I mean, it's just, it was amazing what we could do, um, in that training area.

• 1:09:27Jocko Willink?

  And do you guys, do they ever go out west, western America to train?

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, we'd send people out all the, so every spring and try to get people out and, and do, um, you know, extended training trips in, in the Sierra, out in Colorado, training with, with mountain guides. And a lot of those guys are on the similar track as I am. Like they're going through the, the American Mountain Guide Association instructor track at the same time.

• 1:09:47Jocko Willink?

  Is the school run by National Guard and reserves? Or is there active duty guys up there? Is it like, is it an active duty place to get stationed as well for an army dude?

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  So this is the, the interesting thing about it is that it, it started as a pure National Guard school, but because they were so effective and, oh gosh, I'm in. Can't quote take that 2001, 2002, early 2000s, the Army co-opted the school and it's like you're no longer National Guard school, you're going to be the Army school. So it's staffed by National Guard, Vermont National Guard people, funded by big Army, answers tactically to the Maneuver Center of Excellence down at Fort Banning, Georgia, but administratively controlled by the Vermont National Guard. So it's mom and mom and dad, we had like two Christmases and both parents were divorced.

• 1:10:33Jocko Willink?

  How many people are, how many people are stationed there? How big is the instructor staff?

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  It's like 30 to 35 instructors at any given time. Some of them are full time, some of them are part time, some of them come on like temporary contracts. And then there's just a couple of officers, like there's the commander, the ops officer, and then the training officer. So the rest are all NCOs and they're for the most part like pretty amazing NCOs.

• 1:10:55Jocko Willink?

  So that's the best case you've created in the Army. I think it sounds awesome. And do you ever interact with the Marine Corps Bridgeport Mountain Warfare?

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  We try. There, I went out there once on a, like a, like orientation mission, I guess. Like they invited us out and we're talking, talking at the end of the conversation. It's like, hey, if there's anything we can do for you, like just let us know. And they're like, right. Because their program is amazing. Like they've got an amazing setup there. And I think they were just like, yeah, little brother, if we need you, we'll call you. So we had some interaction with them, but I, they're, I'm jealous. They have a great program.

• 1:11:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, I mean, it's great location. Good Lord. All right. So you do that for how long? How long are you in that role for?

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  Three years. Yeah.

• 1:11:40Jocko Willink?

  And then did you decide you're going to stay on active duty after that?

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  So that's when General, General Knight through one of his, one of his, his staff officers basically directed me, he was like, you're going to go to North Macedonia and, and you know, be the liaison at the embassy in North Macedonia. So.

• 1:11:59Jocko Willink?

  General Knight is the, for those of you don't know, he's the, he's the adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard. He was on this podcast 505. He was with us in Ramadi. He was one of the guys getting, getting it done in the Tactical Operations Center in Ramadi. Great guy. And he provides us with honey, syrup, maple syrup. Yeah. What am I thinking? Honey? It's like Vermont.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  He probably does honey too.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Pickles as well and salsa. Don't forget that.

• 1:12:25Jocko Willink?

  Which you said the best pickles and the best salsa you've ever had.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:12:29Jocko Willink?

  The best salsa you've ever had is from a dude from Vermont.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Jocko Willink?

  A general from Vermont.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  And I have salsa experience too.

• 1:12:36Jocko Willink?

  No, very experienced, very highly experienced salsa.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  He was gonna send some back, but he said he's out for the season.

• 1:12:41Jocko Willink?

  Does he have a name for the salsa? Is there like some kind of name on it?

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  I don't know. I didn't catch it.

• 1:12:46Jocko Willink?

  Or anything like that?

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  No, he just makes it.

• 1:12:48Jocko Willink?

  He just makes it?

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  But it has like a label on it.

• 1:12:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay. But you don't remember what it says?

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  I didn't catch it. You know, I was too busy eating it, but it is what it is. It was good though.

• 1:12:58Jocko Willink?

  Jack, so he tells you, hey, you gotta get a real job in the army.

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's like, you're gonna go to the embassy and do this embassy thing. And this is a super exciting time too, because North Macedonia is like on the verge of joining NATO. And so my friend Gene, Gene Enriquez, who was also in Ramadi with you guys, but I called him before this. I was like, can you tell me any stories about Ramadi? He was like, dude, I was in E3. Like, I know, I don't know. I can't tell you anything. But anyway. So Gene was there with you all in Ramadi, but and now he's at this point, he's an officer, he's a major. He gets North Macedonia across the NATO finish line and then I show up like three months later and, and you know, it's just like, okay, what do you do now there in NATO? Like what's next for a new NATO member?

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  And you know, this is the best mission command I've ever gotten was from a Department of State ambassador. So Ambassador Burns, who's the ambassador to North Macedonia, calls me in her office and she's like, hey, great to have you. Here's what I need you to do. Solidify North Macedonia into NATO. Silence. And I'm like, okay. Any guidance, ma'am? She's like, don't do anything illegal or moral unethical, but get them solidified into NATO.

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  Jack.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  And I'm like, okay, Roger that. I'm like, that's it. That was the conversation. And so we spend the next two years like basically Wild Westing that place. And it's like, you know, carrier strike groups in the Med, get F-18 Hornets to fly in and like drop bombs in there. They've got this amazing training area there. Like get the F-18s in. You know, call 10th Special Forces Group up in Germany. Hey, we got F-18s coming in. Can you guys come down on this date? You know, like, and they're like, yeah, absolutely. So they come down, we're driving live, dropping live ordnance in the middle of North Macedonia, like planning these, I mean, we did a huge airborne operation. The UK, Italy, US, I forget, it's like 4,000 people. They did like a mass tag jump in. Like it is nuts and we're going 110 miles an hour.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  Um, and then it all starts to make sense because Russia invades Ukraine. And we're like, okay.

• 1:15:00Jocko Willink?

  And you're, you're, that's where you are when Russia invaded Ukraine?

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. We like, so we've been, you know, we've kind of been tracking and watching it in the news and looking at the buildup. And then, uh, yeah, one day I wake up and look at my phone and it's like, you know, Russian frontline elements. I got a text from the, uh, the ODC chief, Office of Defense Cooperation. It's like, hey, you know, briefing at the MC at nine o'clock, like get in here. And so we go in and, you know, to the classified area and they kind of fill us in.

• 1:15:24Jocko Willink?

  Were you surprised?

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  We were not, we had sort of been seeing things and been filled in. It was, it was, it wasn't a question of like, if it was more a question of like, when is it going to happen? So it was like, okay, it happened there. There it is. And so from then it was like, how do we help, um, North Macedonia, tiny, tiny little country? The ambassador always said that they punched above their weight. You know, they immediately started emptying out their storehouses to get anything that they can. Old, old like Warsaw Pact, uh, Warsaw Pact ammunition and, and, and equipment over to Ukraine and try to hook them up. So that was, that was like the effort for the next few months was like, get anything we can to Ukraine and to help them out. So it's an interesting time.

• 1:16:07Jocko Willink?

  What is your, you know, when you look at the way that war has gone since then, what, what is your assessment right now?

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  Okay. I don't think I'm paid to do this. Um, I, I, I mean, I think that the, the bottom line assessment is Russia can't win. Like if, if we allow them to win in Ukraine, it's going to empower them to do anything they want in the Balkans as well. In the Baltic region. Uh, I mean, there's all sorts of. There's also issues with disinformation that they're doing in the Balkans, you know, trying to turn Serbia in their favor. Serbia is a proxy state, you know, causing issues on Europe's doorstep in Kosovo. And then I don't even want to talk about the Baltics up north. It's like, okay, what if they decide to take a little enclave in Latvia, Lithuania,

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  Estonia of native Russian speakers? It's like the appeasement situation from the 3839 all over again, right? Like if you allow Russia to take this little bit, then they're just gonna be emboldened to take more. This goes back to the Russian kickbox story, right? Like, we're in a difficult situation, but in order to win, we've got to make some risky decisions, I think.

• 1:17:20Jocko Willink?

  You said the phrase, Russia can't win. And what you meant by that, now that you've completed this statement is like, Russia can't be allowed to win?

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so sorry. Yeah, no, they could certainly win.

• 1:17:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, they can. It's, you know, they just have the war of attrition. They can continue to go and Ukraine has a limited number of people. And that's a real problem. You know, and I always, you know, unfortunately, it's just a war, it's just the cliche thing of like, war is a test of wills. Well, it is. And it's like, it's like a test where you really think you can win, and I really think I can win. And because if you really don't think you can win, you'll probably be like, you know what? I'm good. But if you think you can win, you're gonna keep going. And if I think I'm gonna win, I'm gonna keep going. And that's kind of, it seems like that's where they're at.

• 1:18:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what's happening.

• 1:18:15Jocko Willink?

  Because, and in my opinion, like, the Ukrainians, they can't, there's no, this is, this is an existential war. Like, if they lose, that's it for Ukraine. So, every man in Ukraine will fight to the death. And that's just bloodbath. And how much of that can Russia take? And what does that look like on the world stage? So...

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Well, but then there's also the issue that, that every man in Russia is not fighting.

• 1:18:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:42Speaker 02

  Right? Like, that's part of the problem is that the national commitment to it, it's not there. I mean, like, I, you know, my travels, you know, running to Ukrainian, as Ukrainian person, you know, the United States, or, you know, over in Central Europe or something like that. You're like, oh, you're here? Yeah, I left. Okay, well, that's like one less person who's over there like actually trying to fight.

• 1:19:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and and the fact that you will you see the the videos of like guys being forcibly recruited? And well, why are they having to do that? Because, yeah, everyone says, oh, that's so terrible. Well, yeah, it is. And at the same time, why, why, why do they have to do that? So, yeah, I guess I I should have re rephrased that.

• 1:19:24Jocko Willink?

  Certainly, the politicians are willing to expend every willing Ukrainian's life to maintain what they can.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  I mean, I think what Ukraine has done so far is amazing.

• 1:19:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 1:19:36Speaker 02

  Like what they have done against is Russia is is is mind blowing. But they don't have the personnel, they don't have the equipment, and I'm talking way above. I mean, you might be very good at this point, but I I guess I'm speaking now as Nate Frye, adjunct professor, who teaches international relations at University of Vermont, right? And so this is not me as a battalion commander, but me as like a sort of international relations walk, talking about this, and it's it's it's this idea that like they're going to run out of resources unless someone NATO, EU, United States decides to back them on it because we see that the return on our investment is is greater than us not being involved. I think that's where we stand right now. Like, there's been a sort of this trickle of like, oh, we'll give you this, we'll give you this, we'll give you this.

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  And a lot of people much smarter than me, more informed have said like, what had what would happen if we had just given them the full weight of everything in the first six months? Might be done right now, but we just trickled it, so.

• 1:20:32Jocko Willink?

  All right, um, so you get done with that job. What came next?

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  So then I went back, I spent a year as the XO at Mount Battalion. And then at that point, I was like, there's nothing really left for me to do on active duty. And and that's where I said, look, I've got this idea that I've been nursing in my head. I mean, I say a decade, probably more than that, because it's all about like making mistakes and getting better. I've been making mistakes for a long time right now. So I said, look, I'm gonna, the tree thing didn't work out. I'm gonna go get an MBA, learn about business and how to do spreadsheets and investments and stuff like that. And I'm gonna launch this, you know, be a traditional guard guy, you know, one week, about two weeks a year, and I'm gonna launch this this startup.

• 1:21:15Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you go to business school?

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  University of Vermont, right there, easy, convenient.

• 1:21:20Jocko Willink?

  And then how long is business school?

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  This was a compressed program, it was a year long. So it's just like.

• 1:21:26Jocko Willink?

  And did you, what'd you learn?

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  Um, I learned math, which is good. Like being able to speak, being able to speak the language of investors, I think has been the biggest thing for me. Um, you know, when they come in the room and start talking about like equity and cap tables and you know, like, you know, what do you, you know, what are we going to do? And you know, in terms of like seed, seed rounds and pre-seed and series A and all this stuff. And it's like, I wouldn't have known how to do that before business school. So the hard skills are really great. Um, I think the, what I would call like the soft skills, right? Of like leadership and organizational management, uh, at least at my program were, were pretty lacking. Um, and, and honestly, that again, was part of the, the inspiration for the, like for the startup and what we're

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  trying to do. Cause I think it's, and you guys know this, right? It's, it's incredibly hard to teach people how to lead and make decisions through a book and, and through lectures. And I think that's a big flaw in my program and other programs of, um, one of my lieutenants is down at, gosh, I'm going to mess this up. Texas A and M or UT, I think it's at University of Texas. Um, and he's doing business school down there and it's military guy with a deployment and he's like, yeah, same thing. Like hard skills are great. All the soft skills about leadership. He's like, this is not right. Like professors, well-meaning and, and well researched and studied, talking in class about, hey, this is how you do this stuff. And he's like, that's not actually how it plays out. So, um, I think

• 1:22:57Speaker 02

  business school is great for teaching like business, but leadership side of things. Um, it's challenging.

• 1:23:03Jocko Willink?

  So your idea is, what's the, what's the idea that you had in the back of your mind?

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Jocko Willink?

  For all this time?

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  The idea in the back of my head is that, to put it like very simply, the, the US military, um, probably in general, I can speak in particular about the US Army. The US Army is over indexing, continually over indexing on equipment and hardware and far under investing on training people and skills.

• 1:23:32Jocko Willink?

  One thing that, sorry, I have a company called Echelon Front. We do leadership training, we do leadership consulting. And one of the things that we do is we have something called the FTX, Field Training Exercise. And we have these really high-end laser tag systems. And we teach people like the most rudimentary tactics, but then we start giving them missions and we send them out on missions to detain, capture, kill, set up overwatch positions, do hostage rescues. They do all this super high-speed stuff. Not that they're gonna be proficient at hostage rescue, but they get put in these scenarios where they have to make decisions, they have to lead. And the reason that we did that is because when I was in the SEAL Teams, the last few years I was in,

• 1:24:17Jocko Willink?

  I ran the training for the West Coast SEAL Teams. And so we were running these big giant FTXs. And that's where you'd see leaders actually get punched in the face with reality and have to go through real-time making decisions. You know, there's some things in life, it's the same thing with jujitsu, by the way. You know, you can tell someone for three days how to stand up on a surfboard. You can tell them for a month. You could use graphics and have the best lectures in the world explaining to someone how to stand up on a surfboard. And they still have to go out and stand up a surfboard. And it's gonna take them 12 tries, 20 tries, 40 tries before they do it one time.

• 1:25:02Jocko Willink?

  And once they do it one time, they go, okay. And they're gonna be able to go okay with it. Or they're gonna be able to, they have a leg to stand on, they're gonna start being able to get up. So the thing with leadership is, like, I can tell you how cover and move works over and over and over again. I can put slides up here. And all that will put some of the context into your head. But you still have to be put in that situation where you have to see it for yourself. And the reason I said it's like jujitsu, I've been explaining to people lately, there's a lot of different methodologies for training jujitsu. And some of them are, hey, like, drill, just drill. You drill this move over and over and over again.

• 1:25:46Jocko Willink?

  You learn the move, then you drill the move. And the other end of the spectrum is, you don't even learn the move, you just get put in positions and then you try and figure out what to do. And The correct way, what I will say is the correct way is the way I explain to people is there are, let's say 10 things that you have to do in jujitsu to make a move work. And I can teach you five of them. And the other five, you have to figure out by doing them. And some people, if it's a really good instructor, that's got a really special move that they are really good at, maybe that guy can teach you seven. And you gotta figure out three on your own. There's always an element that you have to figure out for yourself. That's why you can't just drill the move.

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  You have to live engage with people. You have to go through that. And so it's the same exact thing with leadership. I can tell you five things about what's gonna make this work. But until you're in the field, until, you know, someone is yelling at you and you start feeling your emotions flare up and you go, oh, wait a second. Oh, this is, this is detachment. I remember Jocko talking about detachment. He said, take a step back, take a breath. Okay, look around, nod your head and listen. Okay, that's what I'm gonna do. But until you get put in that situation, you don't know how to do it. You have to get put in there and see what it feels like. So the idea of not just learning from a book, which look, I've written a bunch of books and I've had plenty of people say, oh, your book really helped me.

• 1:27:13Jocko Willink?

  But they always follow it up with like, your book really helped me and I got put in the situation and I remembered it and I did it. And then they become proficient at it. So that's, that's what you're talking about.

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So I think that the best way to think about this, you know, really comes down to an idea of, of like, you know, that I love John Boyd, right? John Boyd and the OODA loop, right? And so the OODA loop is observe, orient, decide, act, right? So the first two aspects of the OODA loop are, are mental cognitive, right? Like I, I read a book, I understand the book, but then I have to make this jump from like the understanding to actually putting it into practice, right? Is exactly what you're saying. And so what we see across the army unfortunately, is, is it's easier to put, it's easier to put money into something tangible, right? It's very straightforward for me to make a knife, to make a missile, to make, you know, an unmanned aerial system.

• 1:28:06Speaker 02

  Um, so we're making these things and at the same time, we're cutting funding to the opportunities that are so pivotal for people, Ranger School. We are watering down the, you know, the standards for You know, like NCO education system, basic leader course, right? Advanced leader course, right? So we're eroding standards. We're taking away these training opportunities. And then are we surprised when we, when like people in the military can't achieve the training outcomes? We want them to. Whereas like, well, we gave you the knife. Well, sure. You gave me the knife and you gave me a book, how to use the knife, but didn't you actually give me a, put me in a position where I had to learn how to use it? Well, no, there was enough budget for that. Yeah, that's a problem. That's a problem. And so when you talk about like making these FTXs,

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  yeah, absolutely. Like I, I am a product of a well-funded GWOT era army. When I was a platoon leader with 52 striker, I think I probably did 10 live fires. I mean, like, like constant in an 18 months time, like so many live fires. So I got really good at fire and maneuver, right? That was, it was great.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  Did you say 10 live fires?

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, like platoon level, like so platoon level live fires, we were doing, um, we got Yakima Training Center in central Washington. I'm not sure like, like static ranges, but like go out into Yakima Training Center and like, oh, here's your striker. Here's, you know, here's the scenario, like drive on, dismount, you know, run in, shoot the buildings up for like an 18 month's time. It was, it was nuts. Yeah. Yeah. Harry, Colonel Harry Tenell was the brigade commander at the time, come from 173rd. And that guy was like, we will use every drop of ammunition we have to just live fire all the time.

• 1:29:46Jocko Willink?

  In the SEAL teams, we are so blessed because we would do live fire. I like, I wouldn't, couldn't put a number. It's, it's literally like hundreds of evolutions in a platoon workup. It's crazy.

• 1:29:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, we don't get that.

• 1:29:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know. It's just one of those things where I go, gosh, you know, like I forget how totally lucky we were. And that was like mid GWOT for you. You know what I mean? That's when you're going to get the, you know, when you said strikers, I was like, okay, cause that's, it's next, a little next level. If you're out there doing live fire with the strikers and they're putting down 25 millimeter chain gun and stuff like that. That's, that's, I could see a little bit of a smaller number. Um, but yeah, we, we do live fire like, yeah, it's our job.

• 1:30:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think an infantry platoon leader, if they get a couple of platoon live fires, Cool.

• 1:30:29Jocko Willink?

  Are you serious?

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, kind of train. It was like the overall training progression. You know, let's say you're a platoon leader for 18 months and you're gonna go, you know, like your training progression, you're gonna end up doing buddy team live fire, team live fire, squad live fire, do that a couple of times. And you get a platoon and you go to company live fire and then, you know, you reset and go back to it. So, yeah, I mean, that's, and the National Guard is even worse, right? Like, if I get a platoon leader, one live fire in the National Guard, I'm, I'm stoked.

• 1:30:54Jocko Willink?

  That, that's, um, that's not good.

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:57Jocko Willink?

  That's not good at all.

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  So, so, but to, to the point of like what we're trying to do here, right? Like, the Army has said, look, these FTXs, live fires, um, really resource intensive, take a lot of time, take a lot of money, and a lot of times, they're only training like one echelon of people in a certain way. And so, you know, they, you know, we, we don't get enough live fires, you know, from the standpoint of what we need to do to, to achieve training proficiency. So, the Army has identified that and they're like, look, we need to do more in this, what they call like synthetic training, right? So, simulators and things like that. But all the simulators that the Army is making right now, it's all like shooter, you know, like kinesthetic type things,

• 1:31:40Speaker 02

  right? Like, you know, an engagement skills trainer to make me a better shot, uh, you know, a, a tank gunnery trainer. And I look at this and go, okay, where are we, where are we getting reps and sets on difficult leadership decisions, moral ethical decisions, tactical dilemmas? When I go left, I'm screwed. If I go right, I'm screwed too. Like, which, like, where, like, like, where do we, you know, where do we pull that off? And then even one level deeper than that is the data, right? So, like, if I get on an engagement skills trainer, you know, like a really, you know, good marksmanship trainer, it's gonna tell me like, oh, look, you know, you're losing your sight picture, you're jerking the, you know, you're jerking the finger on the trigger, like, you know, breathing at the wrong time, right? We've got data analytics behind that.

• 1:32:23Speaker 02

  So, you know, here's the, the dream that we're thinking about, like with, with my company, Spire. Like, can you, can you pattern like the complexity of mental decision making and help under someone understand, look, you know, Jocko, you are firmly into like, Quick decision, you know, amygdala, like rapid gut instinct decision making? Or, you know, are you more in the sort of prefrontal cortex reasoning? You know, like where do you sit in that? And then having the ability to say like, look, we know where you're at now. How do we coach you to get to be a more well-rounded person? So you can switch, sort of toggle back and forth between amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Right? Can I go back and forth relatively easy? Like, that's a skill you have to practice.

• 1:33:09Speaker 02

  And I'm like, that's Nate Frye from experience, right? Because I was all amygdala for the first 10 years of my career. Like, everything was just like, you know, rapid fire and then had to train to get to the point where it's like, I'm gonna take a deep breath, I'm gonna slow my emotions. What word do you use it for? You used a word earlier, like a deliberate.

• 1:33:27Jocko Willink?

  Relax, look around and make a call. Detach.

• 1:33:29Speaker 02

  Detach. Yeah, so like detached from your situation. Like, that's a, that's a muscle. And so can we put people in situations, high rep and high set? So it doesn't take a ton of time, ton of money, ton of ammunition, like all this other stuff? So that on a, let's call it a daily basis, on a daily basis, Nate Frye can run through a scenario to help me move from being a back of the brain lizard brain thinker to a prefrontal cortex, more reasoning thinker, and know when to distinguish between the two.

• 1:33:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. There was, I had a conversation with a young military crew, talking to a group of guys, and they were talking about how, well, the training isn't reflecting exactly what's happening on the battlefield right now. You know, and so, and I get it, right? We always tried to make the training reflect what was happening on the battlefield right now. But now you've got, you know, drones coming in and all these sensors are coming in and all these different things are coming in. And so, well, how do we, you know, the training doesn't reflect it? And the battlefield is changing quickly. But what I tried to explain from a leadership perspective is that, it's the same thing that you're saying, which is, if you take someone and you put them in a challenging situation

• 1:34:42Jocko Willink?

  with dilemmas and problems and pressure, it doesn't really matter what's causing those things. You can learn to make decisions, whether, you know, you and I are getting mortared and we're sitting there getting mortared and we gotta figure out what we're gonna do. That's, there's pressure, there's danger, there's time constraints, and we gotta make a decision on what we're gonna do. Cool. It doesn't matter if we're getting mortared or if there's a VBID, you know, in a vehicle driving towards us, we still got it. We're in a situation, we gotta make a call. Or if there's a drone overhead, or you know, we have people that are, we got wounded guys. Like, it doesn't really matter. What we have to learn how to do is take a step back, detach, look around, make a call, make an iterative call that will move us somewhere in the right

• 1:35:23Jocko Willink?

  direction and make a, get the feedback. So you learn how to use the skill regardless of what the variables are. And I think people lose track of that very quickly that, oh, you don't, you don't need, you know, we, we run drills with corporations where, you know, we give them some kind of a problem, like some kind of a rudimentary problem. Like, oh, take three different Lego sets, put them in one box, mix them all together, and then give them the pictures and like, hey, build this stuff. If someone doesn't lead that, if someone doesn't step up, if they don't cover for each other, if they don't keep things simple, if, if they don't do that, like, things will just fall apart. And even, even putting together Legos, like, people will start yelling and screaming at each other, you, that's the, that's the wrong part. Like, you see that? These are with grown

• 1:36:07Jocko Willink?

  adult business people yelling. And you think, okay, so they haven't learned how to detach, they haven't learned how to take a step back, they're letting their emotions drive their decision-making process. So these things are very problematic, and you are 100% correct that if you can put people iteratively in these situations, and that's exactly what we do now at Echelon Front with the FTX, it's also exactly what I used to do, was just put a platoon and the platoon leadership in high-stress scenarios with a lot of problems, and they've got to sort them out. And they can sort them out a different way each time. But they learn, what they learn is they learn how to sort things out, under pressure,

• 1:36:48Jocko Willink?

  under time constraints, they learn how to make things happen. And it is a skill. And I think that's one of the biggest. Problems with leadership is people don't understand that just like any sport, the vast majority of the sport is skill. It's not natural gift like rock climbing is a great example, right? You know, the amount of skill, people underestimate the amount of skill in rock climbing. You ever gone rock climbing at which else? At a gym. At a gym? Yeah. Did you, were you good at it? No. Yeah. You see, are you a weak person? No, not really. Well, check, you see what I'm saying? Like you can have someone that has the skill of rock climbing can completely outclimb

• 1:37:32Jocko Willink?

  someone that's strong, even so, even someone that specializes in like pull ups. If someone's a good rock climber, I've climbed with, I suck at rock climbing, but I've, I've gone rock climbing with people that I could probably do, let's call it 10 times more pull ups than them.

• 1:37:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  And they can outclimb me without, without breaking a sweat.

• 1:37:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:53Jocko Willink?

  Because they have the technique, they have the skill of rock climbing. So there is skill involved in leadership and if, yes, there are natural gifts that you may have for leadership. Some people are, you know, a little bit more articulate. Some people are a little bit calmer. Those things are really beneficial, but just like someone might have a naturally strong grip. Right. And that's going to give them a little bit of tendency to be a little bit better as a rock climber. Well, guess what? That pales in comparison to actually learning the skill of rock climbing. So I think you're on to something.

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  Well, in the, the thing that, that frustrates me too, as we look at the advent of, like justifiably amazing technologies like AI. The, the, the one that really gets me is that talk about like brain, uh, brain implants. You know, it's like, oh, I'm going to put a, you know, a chip in your brain and like, that's going to help you perform better. We're, we're, we're skipping a step. We're skipping a lot of steps actually, and, and that step is, is some sort of structured, mental cognitive training. Like you hear this all the time, like we, we, we use a fraction of our brain. It's not because we're not capable of doing it. I think it's because like we don't have the training, we don't have the resource, we don't have the mentorship. And so before we jump, and it's like the idea of medicine, right? Like, we're not going to go from,

• 1:39:07Speaker 02

  "Okay, you have an infection in your arm," to like, "Let's just cut the arm off," right? Somewhere in there, I have various interventions that I can, I can use to try to help me not cut my arm off, right? And so before we jump to, "Well, I'm going to put a Neuralink in your brain to help you, you know, perform better." What about all the other things we're not doing right now?

• 1:39:30Speaker 02

  You know, so when you, when you talk about like what you're doing with Epsilon Front and the FTXs, you know, my question is, you're talking about like next step. How do you make sure that over the course of months after that intervention, that they actually learned, right? They read your book, and then they said, "Oh, I, I learned something about it." Cool. Where were they before they read your book? Where were they right after? And where were they right after they actually got to implement it, right? Can you imagine being able to chart that? With the technology we have right now, some sort of machine learning technology, running through, you know, digital simulations where you can go, you know, "I see where Echo is at before we talked. Now I see where he's at after he's read my book and talked, and then I can

• 1:40:14Speaker 02

  check him again in six months and be like, "Wow, you really have grown." Like, "We know you're growing," as opposed to, "Well, we thought you were grown, but like, you haven't actually moved." So now we can re-enter, you know, we can, we can do another intervention and say, "Okay, where do you think the hangup is?" Right? So it, it, it enhances the dialogue that I should be having between me and a company commander, between me and a platoon leader, between a CEO and, you know, one of their mid-level managers. And we don't have that right now.

• 1:40:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because, because we don't have this tool yet, the diagnostics are, come from my instructor staff at Epsilon Front, because we can, we can see and we can do diagnostics of what the issue is, but that takes us interacting, right? And observing. So that's, you know, it's expensive for the clients. And, you know, clearly if we had a way where we could say, "Oh, here's, you know, let's see how you're doing now," or, and go through this protocol and you're getting tracked, that would be great, very beneficial, because right now, people, you know, just like anything else with technology. It's manually performed by us human beings, the instructors at Echelon Front, and we're good at it, but there's a limited supply of instructors at Echelon Front.

• 1:41:29Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:41:29Jocko Willink?

  So this is where it would be very beneficial.

• 1:41:31Speaker 02

  It's data points, right? And I was just talking to someone about this the other day because they were asking me about avalanche training and they were like, uh, because I do avalanche ed on the side and they were like, well, what's the thing with like that pit where you dig in the snow and you tap it? And I'm like, yeah, that's the worst thing that has ever happened avalanche training, right? Because like everyone thinks, oh, I'm going to take an avalanche course. I'm going to learn how to dig a pit in the snow and I would tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap on it. And it's going to tell me everything I need to know, right? And it's like looking for weak layers in the snow. Guess what you did after you spent 45 minutes or an hour digging your pit in the snow and like tap, tap, tap it around it? You got one data point for one spot at one given time. Do we make decisions like from a scientific standpoint, based on a single data point? No, we want multiple data points, right? And

• 1:42:12Speaker 02

  so when I'm teaching avalanche ed, it's like, okay, how can we get as many data points as possible and many different aspects and elevations as we possibly can? So instead of doing one big intervention, like a 45 minute snow pit, uh, you know, I'm going around, I'm like, all right, I'm doing a hand shear, I'm doing a shovel shear, all technical terms, right? But I'm like doing stuff that allows me to get a lot of data really, really quickly. So that by the time I'm ready to drop into that backcountry line, I've got a much better idea of where the avalanche danger exists and whether it exists in my spot. And I've made that call like, okay, like this is safe or this is not safe. So I would, I would see that what the army is doing right now in many ways is like, we're digging a big snow pit. It takes a lot of time, we'll research a lot of energy and we get one data point

• 1:42:53Speaker 02

  on that platoon leader. If we're, if we're lucky, right? One, maybe two, right? In my case, I got 10, you know, but like not as much as you did, right? As opposed to what if we had a tool that allowed us to get a data point every day? Like, and it didn't take that long. The same way as like digging a hand shear only takes me 90 seconds. If I had a way, you know, 10 minutes a day, right? I could get a data point on where you're at as a leader. 30 data points over the course of, of, over the course of a month, 90 over a quarter? Holy smokes. Like what does that allow me to do as a mentor, as a company commander now in regards to looking at a lieutenant and saying, like, here's where your strengths, here's where your weaknesses are. Like that's, we can make decisions off that data.

• 1:43:38Jocko Willink?

  So that's the idea.

• 1:43:40Speaker 02

  That's the idea.

• 1:43:41Jocko Willink?

  That's the idea that you rolled in with and you went to business school with that idea already in your head?

• 1:43:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:46Jocko Willink?

  And then you get done with with that. Was there any any other major points from a business school? Besides Excel spreadsheets and whatnot?

• 1:43:55Speaker 02

  Excellent. No, I mean, it networks, networks, networks. I mean, like, I think starting a company, especially like a startup is is like pulling the string on a sweater like you don't have the grand picture in front of you. Like you start with asking one person, one thing, and they lead you to a person and that person leads you to two people. And so like what started in business school as a, you know, me asking a professor, hey, can you get me a contact with somebody? You know, who runs a business accelerator, right? And I might talk to that person and then, you know, they next, next, next. And I'm like, I think business school, and that's for anybody who's listening to this, who's like, oh, I'm getting out of the army. You know, what, what, or I'm getting out of the military. What, what do I want to do? I may want to go to business school.

• 1:44:37Speaker 02

  Choose a business school that has the networks into the industry that you want to be in because they've all got their own thing, right? Stanford is going to put you in tech, you know, UPenn is going to put you in medicine. So I think that's the biggest advice I've got for people. And they're like, I'm thinking of going to business school. Like, great. What industry do you think you want to be in? Go find a school that does that because really what you're paying for some hard skills. Paying a lot for like the network that is going to help you launch whatever you want to do. So that's what it did for me.

• 1:45:10Jocko Willink?

  And then when did you, when did you take over as battalion commander?

• 1:45:13Speaker 02

  At the beginning of this business school. So it was like coinciding. I started this school in August. Change of command was in August.

• 1:45:21Jocko Willink?

  And you took over for Colonel Pelletier, right?

• 1:45:24Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no, he was.

• 1:45:25Jocko Willink?

  He was long gone.

• 1:45:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was long gone at this point. No, I took over for my friend Stefan Asper. And yeah, that was August 2024. So we're coming up on 18 months at this point. And then took over to awkward, like knowing that we were also deploying this summer. And then I was going to have to build a business at the same time. And it just had to make a call and I was like, well, I'm just gonna get started and I'll figure it out once I get there. So yeah, now I'm kind of looking at the down the barrel of, you know, deploying this summer.

• 1:45:57Jocko Willink?

  How long is the deployment for?

• 1:45:58Speaker 02

  It's door to door gonna be about 11 months. When you think about like the pre-training away from home, nine to 10 months in country and then the pre- then the demobilization would come back.

• 1:46:08Jocko Willink?

  How often does a National Guard unit like deploy currently?

• 1:46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it depends on, it depends on the unit. So this is one of the, you know, the the great things about the Vermont Guard, the Mountain Battalion, if you look back at the the op tempo of the, you know, the deployment cycle of the Vermont Guard. So Ramadi was 2005, 2006, right? And then third battalion, the Mountain Battalion deployed to Afghanistan 2010. 2015, we were on the patch chart to go to deployment. So we went to NT or excuse me, went to JRTC, but the deployment ended up getting canceled. So but still went through the whole cycle. 2020, they deployed to CENTCOM and now 2025 as well. So it's like

• 1:46:48Jocko Willink?

  It's like a five year cycle.

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  It's been, it's been a consistent five year cycle for this battalion, which is not something, I mean, every National Guard unit is on a five year cycle. Very few of them are like, yeah, every five years you're gonna deploy.

• 1:47:01Jocko Willink?

  Actually deploying.

• 1:47:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think that's, that's a testament. And you saw it in Ramadi. It's a testament to the type of unit that, you know, that the National Vermont Guard produces 1172 and 3172.

• 1:47:13Jocko Willink?

  And that's where you're at right now.

• 1:47:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:15Jocko Willink?

  So what's the status of the business? So the company's called Spire?

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:47:19Jocko Willink?

  And then, and the, the product that you're working on is called Mentor?

• 1:47:22Speaker 02

  Mentor is the software program.

• 1:47:24Jocko Willink?

  And what's, where's it at right now? What's the current status of it?

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  Testing with ROTC programs. So University of Vermont, Dickens College, Utah Valley University and University of Texas, El Paso are all, are all working with us right now. You know unpaid pilot, beta feedback, you know, the cadets are using it, telling us what they like, what they don't like, and we just fix it as fast as we can and get it right back out to the field.

• 1:47:45Jocko Willink?

  Is it, is it augmented reality right now?

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:47:49Jocko Willink?

  So what is it, what does it consist of right now?

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  Now, it's just, it's a, it's a desktop web app, right? So you use either tablet or a laptop to access the simulator. So you work through the simulator, which are all built on cadet specific situations like learning battle drills or going through troop leading procedures. And it puts you in a story, right? Like you're the third platoon leader.

• 1:48:08Jocko Willink?

  So it's like a video game?

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I, I try not to say like gamified because I think people automatically think like, oh, it's supposed to be fun. It's like, I don't know, maybe it's fun.

• 1:48:17Jocko Willink?

  But I'm saying it's graphically and whatnot, like it's set up like a video game.

• 1:48:22Speaker 02

  It's built in Unity game engine and my designers, the, the work on the team are, are game designers. So kind of what we're trying to do with it is make it, um, and meet the audience where they're at, right? Like a lot of these, a lot of these RTC cadets, like they're very used to Call of Duty, um, you know, Baldur's Gate, all these like super, um, you know, super popular video games. And so if you can just make this a degree away, um, much more likely to adopt it.

• 1:48:49Jocko Willink?

  I'm impressed with video game, like

• 1:48:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:52Jocko Willink?

  Video games, I've never really played them, but when I see them, they're, they're, they're freaking impressive. So if you start throwing really good combat leadership dilemmas in there for people, I think it's kind of awesome, actually.

• 1:49:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I mean, and that's, that the simulation is the means, it's the, it's the vehicle, um, that we use to gather the data on how you, on how Echo thinks, reacts. Um, and, and then eventually where we're going with it, and we've talked about this earlier, right? Is that there's a dialogue, a two-way dialogue, right? There's a dialogue between the decision analytics engine and the simulator so that as I change, grow and develop, right? The simulations are changing with me. I'm not waiting to, you know, manually select, I want to go to the hard level in Super Mario Kart, right? Like it's, it's automatically giving me the harder level as I get better. And then there's, and this is crucial, right? There's also the dialogue between the simulator, or excuse me, between the decision analytics,

• 1:49:51Speaker 02

  the cadet and their instructor, right? Because we are not taking the human out of the loop here, right? Like. Like interpersonal mentorship is, is the most important part of all this. What we're trying to do is make it so that instead of you showing up cold and not understanding like what Cadet Fry needs from you, you know, you can go into this data analytics dashboard and go like, ah, I see exactly where he's struggling. And when I come into your office, instead of spending 30 minutes trying to figure it out, like we go right to the chase, right? We're right to it. Like, hey, I see you're struggling with this. Like, what have you been doing? How like, how can we help you with that? Right. So the dialogue between instructor, student and the digital interface, and then between the student, the digital interface and the simulator is sort of like the, the value of what we think we're adding here.

• 1:50:35Jocko Willink?

  But we're still going to need to go in the field sometimes.

• 1:50:38Speaker 02

  All the time.

• 1:50:39Jocko Willink?

  And speaking of going in the field, just give us a quick brief on that. The, was it a device, a device ski race?

• 1:50:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, advice raid.

• 1:50:46Jocko Willink?

  Give us a quick brief on that because I read the article, but just for people to hear about what it is and what takes place there.

• 1:50:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, um, the, the advice raid is, uh, well, I say is was it's been discontinued. Hopefully they'll start it back up again, but it's the Austria build it as the, um, the world champion, world championship for military ski mountaineering, um, hosted by Austria.

• 1:51:07Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of an awesome.

• 1:51:08Speaker 02

  It's pretty sick, isn't it? It's pretty sick. Yeah. Yeah. It's hosted by Austria and they're owned, have this like mountain training site south of Innsbruck, Austria. And this place is like nuts, you know, you drive up in this stone building surrounded by this, you know, these towering peaks and they've got their own little ski lift there. And then all of it is, is all the rest of it is like human powered, human powered, like uphill, downhill. Um, so we, I was at mountain school, 2017, 2018, whatever to Austria. And, um, this Austrian Colonel who ran it and this guy named Colonel Leonard, and he comes up to me one day and, and he's very blunt. And he's like, well, I haven't ever seen America in the advice raid. I'm like, I don't know, sir, because I don't know what it is. And, and he goes, well, let me explain it to you. So he explains like this, you know, military ski mountaineering.

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  So I'm like, this sounds amazing. We're, we're going to make this happen.

• 1:51:58Speaker 02

  So we're driving back. We got to fly out of Frankfurt. So we're driving up to Wiesbaden, the US Army Europe headquarters. And, um, I'm like making PowerPoint slides on this thing in the car. I'm like, I'm going to sell this to somebody before I leave Austria. We walk into US Army Europe headquarters. Long story short, found the right guy, put these slides on his desk and we're like, we want to do this. And he's like, how much did it cost? We're like $50,000. He's like, oh, easy, pocket change. Okay, cool. So, um, so we train up our first team.

• 1:52:24Jocko Willink?

  $80,000.

• 1:52:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Did I say, did I say 50? Um, so we trained our first team up in 2019, total bad news bears, right? Like scrapping people from all over the place. There's not a lot of people in the army that can actually ski. And this is, um, you know, for the leader, or for the listeners that haven't, like, ski toured before, like, what we're talking about here is going uphill on skis, right? And so like, your, your heel is free in your ski and you put this fuzzy carpet thing on the bottom called a skin. And, and then that allows you to climb uphill, um, on a pretty steep slope. And then this is a 48 hour race. And so we've got a pack with, you know, gear sustainment. Uh, you've got your M4 on the

• 1:53:06Speaker 02

  side of the pack, right? So the pack weighs like 40 pounds and they make you carry the sled with you and that adds some more weight to it. So it's like, it's not like recreational skiing. You're like, you got a 40 pound pack and I'm going uphill. Um, and it's awesome and miserable at the same time. Um, so we went in 2019, do a good job. Uh, 2021, it was canceled because of COVID. And so 2023, we're like, ready to go on this thing. We put together, uh, two teams and, and went over and, and competed. And, um, you know, it's just the biggest thing for us is, um, you know, in the end, the Austrians gave us this amazing compliment, you know, because this is a competition, but it's also it's training. Um, and at the end, when you know, these guys came up to us and said like, like,

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  we're really proud to have you guys, you know, Americans here with us because you clearly understand the purpose of the race. And it's not just about, it's not just about training and winning. It's also about functioning as a team in the mountains and being able to actually do mountain warfare. Um, so, yeah.

• 1:54:03Jocko Willink?

  How far do you transit during the thing?

• 1:54:05Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh. It's like.

• 1:54:08Speaker 02

  It's like eighteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen miles a day. And then in total, I want to see it's like twelve thousand feet of gain and loss over, over two days. So it's like the first day, you know, you do like fifteen miles, like six thousand feet of gain and loss. You spend the night in a tent, like a bivouac site, and the next day you do the other leg of the course. Which is, yeah, the other like twelve, thirteen, fourteen miles, and then another six thousand foot gain and loss. And then along the way, you're also doing tactical task, right? So there's like repelling, medical evacuation.

• 1:54:41Jocko Willink?

  There's pictures of you guys shooting.

• 1:54:42Speaker 02

  Shooting, yeah, there's like high angle course, you have to shoot and pop balloons, grenade throwing. It's like, you know, it's a, it's a tactical tasks interspersed. And, you know, they expect you have a designated leader, you have to stay together, you know, as a team the entire time. So it really is about like, can you, as a squad size element, do actual mountain warfare? Right? It's not a, like, go as fast as you can. I mean, it is a race, but like, if there's a strategy to it, right? Because if you're just as fast as you can, but you fail all the tactical tasks, you still don't necessarily win.

• 1:55:15Jocko Willink?

  Right, right. And do you do skimo now too?

• 1:55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:20Jocko Willink?

  And are you like competitive on that? Is there a recreational world out there that's doing skimo?

• 1:55:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's in the Olympics for the first time, actually. So Olympic.

• 1:55:29Jocko Willink?

  You know what this is, Echo Charles?

• 1:55:30Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:55:31Jocko Willink?

  Bro, so it's like ski mountaineering. Is that what it is?

• 1:55:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:37Jocko Willink?

  And you're wearing your, you're wearing your, like your skinning skis, right? So the skis that have the free heel bindings and you go up the hill. And when I have like gone ski touring, doing this right here, I'm like basically at maybe a brisk walk. Maybe it's like equivalent of me being like a brisk walk. It's like a hike, you know, just going uphill with skis on. But the skimo guys are like running. It's freaking crazy. And sometimes you get to points where you can't ski uphill anymore because it's too steep. And then you have to take your skis off, put them in your pack and just hike up, like run up a freaking hill. And then you get to the top of the hill and you ski down, then you do it over and over again. It's gotta

• 1:56:20Jocko Willink?

  be some sick endurance. Like is that maxing out your endurance?

• 1:56:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, those guys are the guys that are doing it like those style races are insanely fast. I mean, they're, yeah, they're probably ultra marathoners in the summer and the winter. They just like turn to this. The interesting thing is a lot of them can't actually ski. They're just, they're really, yeah, they're just like, they're really, really good uphillers. And then they survive the downhill. It's also hard because the skis are like as wide as this.

• 1:56:44Jocko Willink?

  Cause you want to do the skis to be as light as possible. So they're super skinny. The bindings are like super light.

• 1:56:50Speaker 02

  You're not, you're not ripping on those things.

• 1:56:51Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, I was, I was up at a big sky Montana and there was a skimo competition in those guys. You know, I, I'd never seen it before with my own eyes. And so the first time I see these guys, I'm expecting in my mind that they're going to be kind of hiking up and they are freaking running. And I'm like, yo, and then they at the, at big sky Montana, like they come down the big cooar and like they come down all the, the toughest trails on those little skinny skis and stuff. Yeah, it's, uh, it's kind of epic to be honest with you.

• 1:57:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a amazing sport. Um, I think the fact that it's in the Olympics is a testament, like it's, it's growing in popularity. Um, I don't do really like the, the like real instance, like I'm wearing Lycra and running up the hills fast as I can. I like the, like the burger backcountry reverses. So there's one called the grand traverse in Colorado. It goes from Crested Butte to Aspen. And so it's like, it's like 40 miles. I don't remember 40, 40 kilometers. There's a difference. I don't remember. It's, it's a long race that traverses from one to the other. And so there's like, you know, avalanche considerations. Some people are doing it on skinny skis. A lot of people are doing it on fatter skis because you're actually in backcountry terrain. I, I really like those. Um, and then, yeah, we're

• 1:58:02Speaker 02

  holding a, a skimo race in Vermont on the first of March. Um, and it's like a 10th Mountain Division Memorial Ski Race. So it's in Stowe. Um, if you're not a super like 10th Mountain Division nerd, you know, a lot of people don't realize, but Stowe is sort of the epicenter for a lot of ski culture in the U S. Like not only from a lift standpoint, but, um, this guy named Mini Dole. He was the inspiration for the National Ski Patrol because he broke his leg on the mountain. He was like, it'd be really nice if someone would come get me out. And so he came out and organized the National Ski Patrol. And then he was also so stoked on mountains that he was like, this is World War II timeframe. He was like, we really need some mountain troops like Europe does. And so he lobbied to Congress and the president until they they finally relented.

• 1:58:47Speaker 02

  And we're like, oh, we'll make these mountain troops. So 10th Mountain Division came from Andy Dole, who was a Stowe skier. So we're we're doing what we call like the Stowe Mountain Heritage Race. And it's like really celebrating like 10th Mountain, Mountain Troops, like our, like our battalion, National Ski Patrol. And so it's more like a backcountry race we're gonna do. There's there'll be some Lycra people there, but a lot of it too is just.

• 1:59:06Jocko Willink?

  How far is it gonna be?

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  It's 11 miles and 4,000 feet of gain and loss.

• 1:59:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's fun. I was reading something about the the mountain patch.

• 1:59:17Speaker 02

  Oh, the new, the ram's head?

• 1:59:18Jocko Willink?

  No, like it's some kind of unauthorized but authorized patch?

• 1:59:21Speaker 02

  That's the ram's head. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:23Jocko Willink?

  So what's the deal with that? That's pretty cool history.

• 1:59:25Speaker 02

  That's, that's, yeah, that's something generations of mountain school people have been fighting with. So the guard, when it was first, when the mountain school was first introduced in like the 80s, they made this, you know, like a distinctive qualification patch of it was like a goat, a ram's head. So if you're mountain qualified, you got to wear the ram's head. So it was a National Guard thing. But people who went to the school were like so stoked on this, this, this ram's head that, you know, they started wearing it. And the army, of course, was like, that's not an authorized patch. You can't wear that. And those people would like secretly wear it.

• 1:59:59Jocko Willink?

  Angry Nate just came back out.

• 2:00:02Speaker 02

  It's like, don't mess with my ram's head. But so, so the, yeah, so the army was like, you know, no way you can't wear this thing. And so over decades, like generations of mountain school commanders have been working with the army to try to get it like formalized. So it finally got formalized earlier this year. And my friends who are working at mountain school, and it's just a testament to branding, right? He's like, dude, our waitlist went from like 15 people to class to like 50 people a class because now you can wear this, you know, you can wear your bling bling. And people are like, I want that bling. So like, yeah, so everyone's stoked on mountain school now because.

• 2:00:37Jocko Willink?

  How long is the school, the actual school?

• 2:00:39Speaker 02

  The basic course is two weeks. And then there's an advanced course that you do, you can do after that, which is a two week summer and two week winter. So the basic course is either summer or winter. And then the advanced course is, is you got to do two weeks in the summer and two weeks in the winter if you learn how to ice climb and.

• 2:00:56Jocko Willink?

  Do you get the ram's head for?

• 2:00:58Speaker 02

  For basic, for the basic.

• 2:00:59Jocko Willink?

  For the basic one, huh?

• 2:00:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, the basic course.

• 2:01:00Jocko Willink?

  A two week course, you get that bling.

• 2:01:02Speaker 02

  Get the bling.

• 2:01:04Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome, man. Does that, does that get us up to speed? We talked about, well, we talked about your current position. You talked about Spire, we got Mentor coming on. Does that get us up to speed?

• 2:01:14Speaker 02

  I think, I think so.

• 2:01:15Jocko Willink?

  Do we cover all the bases?

• 2:01:16Speaker 02

  Story of my life.

• 2:01:17Jocko Willink?

  Uh, where can people find you? So I, I, I know you got spire TG.com. What does the TG stand for?

• 2:01:23Speaker 02

  Training group.

• 2:01:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you got spire TG.com. It's a relatively barren website right now, but people will be listening to this five years from now. So hopefully by then it's a lot more. You're on LinkedIn, Nathan Frye, Vermont National Guard. Where else can people find you? Anyone else?

• 2:01:38Speaker 02

  Check out the Mountain Battalion Insta. So we're at Mountain Battalion. It's pretty easy to, pretty easy to find. Yeah, we try to post in there as much as we can.

• 2:01:48Jocko Willink?

  Check out the gram, right on, right on.

• 2:01:51Speaker 02

  I got a bunch of young kids in the battalion and they do the gram for me, so.

• 2:01:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, get the word out. I mean, it's like, like you said, it's a hidden secret, but it's such a important part of the military. And, you know, I, I, before we hit record today, I started telling you a little bit about like the, uh, the SEAL Team and the SEAL Team Two back in the day.

• 2:02:09Jocko Willink?

  They had like a huge focus on mountain warfare and they were like awesome. I showed up there kind of too late for that because I was at SEAL Team One when I got out there, but there were still the remnants of, of the, uh, UCOM platoons that were skiing. And it was pretty, pretty awesome heritage. And I think they're, they're kind of bringing it back now, which is awesome because you know, that's where we could be possibly be fighting in the future. So I'm glad that you guys are getting the word out about what we have to offer here in America. That's awesome. Echo Charles, you got any questions?

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  I do, one easy one. You actually will have some somewhat of an expertise on the, okay. So playing the bass guitar back in the day. You mentioned power chords.

• 2:02:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  Learn a few power chords. I, I don't think I've ever heard that before. What's a power chord?

• 2:02:54Speaker 02

  It's like basically a sequence of super easy chords that you go through. It's like any, like basically any punk rock and or Nickelback song. It's just like, you know, a progression of like, you know,

• 2:03:06Speaker 02

  and it's like, yeah, I just.

• 2:03:07Jocko Willink?

  Put them together and let them rip.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  They can make all kinds of songs with it.

• 2:03:10Jocko Willink?

  You can make any, basically any song.

• 2:03:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:13Jocko Willink?

  The, the, the, the structure of any song you can play with just power chords and power chords essentially is two notes at a time. On a guitar, it's two notes at a time. Really, on a bass. Bass, it's one. It's just one note. It's just you're playing one note unless you're Lemmy from Motorhead and then you're playing two. He kind of plays power chords or Harley Flanagan. He plays some power chords on the, on the bass, but most people it's a one note. That's why a brother like Nate, who has no musical experience, or Jocko, when I was in high school, no musical experience. Guess what you're gonna be? Bass slash singer. And so, yeah, cause they can literally go, hey, put your finger here. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. You just do that over and over again. You're a bass player.

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:03:53Jocko Willink?

  And I caught some, I got into trouble. Probably the most controversial thing I've ever said on Twitter was I said, if you can play guitar, you can play bass. It doesn't go backwards, but if you can play guitar, you can definitely play bass. But then there's people like, they attacked me because, because being able to play bass isn't being able to necessarily play bass. You know, you're not gonna be a Slap bass. Less Claypool or Flea or Harley Flanagan or Lemmy. Like you're not gonna be there. Cliff Burton, you're not gonna be there, but you could make the noise and you could get, you could be a bass player.

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:33Jocko Willink?

  If you can play guitar. That's all I was saying. I'm not trying to take anything away from my people. I'm not taking, taking anything away from Nate. Maybe you were a really good bassist. Nate was not a good bassist. No, no. But yeah. That's why I played Blink 182 and Offspring. Yeah, there you go. You could just, you could just make it happen. Yeah.

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  Okay, cool. So can, can you, can you like tell me what's a, what's a cool power chord that I can bring back home and, and kind of rip on?

• 2:04:56Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's literally on a bass, it's one note.

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 2:05:00Jocko Willink?

  That's it. It's like E A D G.

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  E A D G.

• 2:05:03Jocko Willink?

  Something like that. Well, that's a, that's a chord progression.

• 2:05:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's a power chord, right?

• 2:05:08Jocko Willink?

  No, a power chord is one.

• 2:05:09Speaker 02

  Just one of them like E like.

• 2:05:11Speaker 01

  E is a power chord.

• 2:05:12Speaker 02

  Bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam.

• 2:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, as a matter of fact, if you pick up a bass guitar right now and the big fat string on top and you just go boom.

• 2:05:20Speaker 01

  Power chord.

• 2:05:21Jocko Willink?

  That's an E.

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  All day.

• 2:05:22Jocko Willink?

  All day.

• 2:05:23Speaker 02

  We're not talking like sharps and flats, right? So like, like this is like it's it's a plain old note like in the chord in the chord scale progression without any sharps and flats on it. Like there's no, there's no nuance to it. It's just like.

• 2:05:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:05:35Speaker 02

  It's just power. It's power.

• 2:05:36Speaker 01

  Power. Okay. Okay. So you said E A D G. What's that chord progression?

• 2:05:43Jocko Willink?

  Progression.

• 2:05:43Speaker 01

  Okay. So are there different combos of or chord progressions?

• 2:05:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 2:05:48Speaker 01

  That's called the song, bro. Yeah, but okay, I guess.

• 2:05:52Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, and then there's like happy ones.

• 2:05:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:05:54Jocko Willink?

  You know, like a D is kind of like a happy sounding noise.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  So you know, you're talking. Okay.

• 2:06:00Jocko Willink?

  And like a E.

• 2:06:01Speaker 01

  What's E A D G? Is that happy? Is that sad or that mad? Or is there a mad one?

• 2:06:06Jocko Willink?

  That's good. That's kind of a nice one. That's kind of, yeah.

• 2:06:08Speaker 02

  That's Blink one eight two. If you like Blink one eight two, you're there.

• 2:06:10Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah. I like one eight two. Okay. All right. Good day. This is a good start.

• 2:06:14Jocko Willink?

  You gotta get back on that ukulele or what?

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  Maybe. I got into digital. That's all.

• 2:06:19Jocko Willink?

  Ah, okay, got it.

• 2:06:21Speaker 01

  And the stuff kind of starts to apply the roots. See what I'm saying?

• 2:06:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:24Speaker 01

  Okay. All right. I'm gonna look into it. Thanks for that. Good to meet you.

• 2:06:27Jocko Willink?

  Any other, any, uh, any other questions? That's it?

• 2:06:30Speaker 01

  No, that's it.

• 2:06:31Jocko Willink?

  Right on, Nate. Any, uh, any closing thoughts, bro?

• 2:06:34Speaker 02

  I just stoked you guys had me out and talked a little bit about where we're trying to go with with like the future army training. I think it's just, uh, like maybe two takeaways for the, they're listing all this. Number one is like mistakes are okay. Right? Like I, I'm evidence of like, you can make enough mistakes at a certain point, you're actually bludgeon your way through and realize like, oh, I, you know, I, I can reform and change and recover and, and, um, really comes down to mentorship. Um, you know, having somebody who sees you, invest in you and willing to say like, okay, let's brush this dust off and, you know, turn the lump of coal into a diamond. And then, you know, that, you know, from that moving into like. What do I think the Army needs? What do I think the military, the society needs right now?

• 2:07:18Speaker 02

  More people invest in other people, right? Like, all the hardware in the world, ships, unmanned aerial systems, drones, data analytics, you know, from companies like Palantir, all good stuff. Like, we need all of it. Rebuild the arsenal of American democracy, absolutely. We also need to build, like, the, the complexity of the American leadership mind, right? Like, and that doesn't come overnight. It comes through mistakes, it comes through reps, it comes through sets, it comes through vulnerability, all the stuff you talk about on this show. You know, like, it's, it's not hype, it's, it's the real thing, so.

• 2:07:50Jocko Willink?

  Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield, and there's no doubt about it. So, awesome, man. Well, thanks for joining us. Thanks for sharing these experiences. I know it was like, what'd you say? You wanted to be a very brutally transparent, so I appreciate you doing that. So many people, hopefully, they'll, they'll keep that thought in their mind, you know, the lessons that you learned and that you shared with us today is awesome, so thanks for those. Thanks for your service, and salute to the National Guard with a solemn gratitude to the brave soldiers of the 1172, the Vermont National Guard. Those guys were just, they fought so valiantly in Ramadi, and like I said, they, they kept our guys alive with the turnover that, we were only on the ground with them for like, around a month, but the turnover they gave us was just great, so

• 2:08:32Jocko Willink?

  we'll never forget those guys, and thanks to the National Guard, and thanks, Nate, for coming out, man. Appreciate it.

• 2:08:38Speaker 02

  My pleasure. Thank you.

• 2:08:40Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Nathan Frye has left the building. He's got to go back to his job as battalion commander, getting after it. Also, it sounds like he's doing that ski-mo up in Vermont. That's pretty awesome. I'm telling you, if you watch this stuff, I'm gonna go watch it on the Olympics. It is hardcore endurance activities, hardcore. These guys are running up hills on skis with a pack on. It's-

• 2:09:06Speaker 01

  How far is the hill? The whole?

• 2:09:08Jocko Willink?

  The whole hill, yeah. The whole, thousands of feet of vertical climb. So, it's cool, you know, it's, especially if you've climbed hills. Like, when you're in the military and you have to walk up hills, you, you, you hump up, up hills, it totally changes you. The way that you visual visually understand a hill.

• 2:09:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:26Jocko Willink?

  Like even when I'm driving through the mountains, I'm not kidding. Every mountain that I look at, I go, looks like that one looks rough. That's a rough one right there. Hate to like, that's gonna take it out. You hate to walk up that thing. That's a tough one. Get that thing done. I'm not kidding. When I drive through the Sierra Mountains, every single mountain that I see, I look, I assess it and I go, damn. Cause going uphill is really hard. So Schemo is going uphill on skis. And you get to come down, have a little bit of fun.

• 2:09:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:55Jocko Willink?

  But it's no joke. I kinda wanna get into it. So we're living down here. It's a little bit tricky. And like I said, I, I'll go out and do like just the back country where you're kinda just walking.

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:09Jocko Willink?

  Maybe an elevated walk, like a little bit, little bit of speed. But like as far as, hey, I'm gonna race. I'm not there yet.

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:10:16Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, that will require a lot of training.

• 2:10:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:10:21Jocko Willink?

  Lot of training and training is what we're doing. And listen, when you're training, you're gonna need fuel. We strongly recommend, we strongly recommend Jocko Fuel. All kinds of things that you need, whether you need protein, whether you need hydration, whether you need energy, whether you need joint supplementation, whether you need greens, whatever you need, we got you. We even have a new pro series out. That is just next level. The kind where, look, it's more expensive because it's a lot more expensive for us to produce it. But like the protein has beef protein isolate. Like it's very high end, as high end as we could possibly make it. There's a, there's something called muscle drive.

• 2:11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:06Jocko Willink?

  Which again, these are the kind of things where that, that one is a kind of made very not, we didn't make it specifically for this, but listen, we got people cutting weight, right? In our game, whether it's wrestling, jujitsu, fighting and being able to preserve your muscle when you're on a calorie deficit.

• 2:11:27Jocko Willink?

  is something that's very important, but also just what about the the times of the day where you don't you don't have the ability to eat for whatever reason, this stuff's awesome. So that's muscle driving. Then we got, we made a pre-workout that is like, kinda psychotic. You know, it's like a full pre-workout, the full pre-workout, you know, for someone that needs a full pre-workout to go crazy and psychotic. So we got the anyways, check that out. That's the the pro series at Jocko Fuel. And then we've got like the standard issue, which by the way, the standard issue is way above the standard.

• 2:12:04Jocko Willink?

  But that's what we got going on. If you need anything, check out Jocko Fuel dot com or go to whatever store you go to, whether you go to Walmart, HEB, Wegmans, no matter where you go, Myers, we're just everywhere, Hy-Vee, we got so many retail places now, you can generally find it where you go. Jocko Fuel, get it there or Jocko Fuel dot com. Also, we're training and we're from New England, like the 10th Mountain, or like the like the 1172 or the 3172. Uh, yeah, these are New England people. And guess what else we do in New England? We make clothing. OriginUSA.com. Not just New England, by the way, we got factories down in North Carolina as well. But these are, these are, this is clothing that's made

• 2:12:45Jocko Willink?

  100% America, 100% American made clothing, jeans, boots, hoodies, jiu-jitsu. You and I are about to go train, apparently. Do you have a rash guard with you?

• 2:12:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:12:55Jocko Willink?

  I do too. And guess what? My rash guard is 100% made in America.

• 2:12:57Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:12:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I like to hear. So we wanna train. We wanna train in American made goods. We wanna work. We wanna work in American made goods. We wanna relax. We wanna relax in 100% American made goods. Made from American materials. Check it out. OriginUSA.com. Get some.

• 2:13:16Speaker 01

  It's true. Also, JacoStore.com. We're representing, we're on the path. Well, because as far as the clothing that we wear, we wanna uh. Exude our identity into the world, which is discipline. Anyway, discipline equals freedom shirts, hats, got some hoodies on there. Got some rash guards, new rash guard coming out, by the way. Death core to the core.

• 2:13:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:13:41Speaker 01

  Discipline equals freedom.

• 2:13:42Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you are wearing a Sog support shirt.

• 2:13:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:13:46Jocko Willink?

  Expand on that for me. Cause that is a black on black shirt, which I must say is about as legit as it gets.

• 2:13:51Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:13:52Jocko Willink?

  I ordered one.

• 2:13:53Speaker 01

  Yes. So, okay, yeah, Sog support. So there's two little parts to this whole thing. So Sog support. I can't be just busting out a Sog shirt. You know, you know this about me. I was not in Sog.

• 2:14:03Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:14:04Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying?

• 2:14:04Jocko Willink?

  Nor was I.

• 2:14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:06Jocko Willink?

  And therefore I will not wear Sog material.

• 2:14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:12Jocko Willink?

  As if I was in Sog.

• 2:14:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:14:13Jocko Willink?

  I look, look, I was in the SEAL teams.

• 2:14:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:16Jocko Willink?

  I had a guy one time ask me on Twitter like, hey, uh, you know, I wasn't in the SEAL teams, but I, you know, really respect what you guys do. Is it okay to wear a trident?

• 2:14:30Jocko Willink?

  And I responded, I was in the SEAL teams for 20 years and I don't wear a trident out in public.

• 2:14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:37Jocko Willink?

  So that's like, you know, stolen valor activity, right?

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  It's what I feel.

• 2:14:45Jocko Willink?

  And, and so the Sog, like we, we want to spread the message of Sog.

• 2:14:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:14:53Jocko Willink?

  That's why we support the Sog cast.

• 2:14:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:14:56Jocko Willink?

  With tilt John Stryker Meyer. And he's had freaking unbelievable interviews with so many people. So many Sog guys, the Sog air guys, I mean, he's just, it's getting, it's capturing one of the most profound eras of heroism in the history of the United States of America. That's what Sog is. Now, am I gonna put on the Sog symbol and just walk around in the clear? Hell no, not doing it.

• 2:15:26Speaker 01

  I kinda wanted to.

• 2:15:27Jocko Willink?

  You did want to.

• 2:15:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:29Jocko Willink?

  I had to veto it.

• 2:15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, I had to, I had to make an addendum.

• 2:15:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:15:32Jocko Willink?

  And the addendum was support, right? And this is something like, there's various.

• 2:15:40Jocko Willink?

  Organizations in America where if you were to wear their symbol on its own, you would have it removed. You're not allowed to wear it. But if you, if you have their symbol and you clarify that you are just support, you're good. It's all good. We get it. You support it. So we have the Sog Support Shirt.

• 2:16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:02Jocko Willink?

  No stolen valor. We weren't in Sog, but we damn sure support Sog.

• 2:16:07Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. And we want to represent, you know, the whole thing. Plus we love tilt. Let's face it, you know?

• 2:16:13Jocko Willink?

  All of them. Who else? Dick Thompson, the Frenchman. We go down the list. Down the list, every one of these guys.

• 2:16:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:16:19Jocko Willink?

  So Sog Sports. Where do we get the Sog Support Clothing?

• 2:16:24Speaker 01

  SogLegacy.com.

• 2:16:26Jocko Willink?

  SogLegacy.com.

• 2:16:28Speaker 01

  Dot com. You can get just a few of them, but yes, the black on black, very symbolic because this is a secret war.

• 2:16:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's black ops, bro. OG.

• 2:16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. You see what I'm saying? So yeah, that one, that one came out good. We have a regular one though, for guys representing in the clear, which is cool, you know, of course, all day. And then there's like a basic, we might call a standard issue one.

• 2:16:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:47Speaker 01

  It's pretty cool. But oh yeah.

• 2:16:49Jocko Willink?

  In the clear.

• 2:16:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:16:50Jocko Willink?

  You like that phrase?

• 2:16:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:16:52Jocko Willink?

  I forget when, when I said that for the first time, you were like, okay, you latched right on. It was actually one of my, one of my platoon chiefs when I was a platoon commander. And he was the first person that really used that well.

• 2:17:04Speaker 01

  So good.

• 2:17:05Jocko Willink?

  You know, it was like, just, you know, I forget what was happening, but like the commanding officer was there or something and he comes up to me, he goes, yeah, one of the guys is in the clear to the commanding officer, just in the clear. I'm like, okay.

• 2:17:17Speaker 01

  Bro, it's the best. I say it at home with my kids and they, you know, they, they'll pick up on what it means. So now it's just going to be part of their vocabulary.

• 2:17:25Jocko Willink?

  You know where it comes from actually?

• 2:17:27Speaker 01

  In the clear.

• 2:17:28Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you. So when you're on the, talking on the radio, your radio, the military radio goes through an encryption device. And the encryption device changes your voice into goo, gobbledygook. And then when it gets received on the other side, it gets unencrypted and you hear it in English. But sometimes there's something wrong with the crypto device.

• 2:17:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so it's just coming through.

• 2:17:50Jocko Willink?

  And so you gotta go, hey, pass in the clear, which is, it's kind of a risky thing because you're giving away some piece of information, right?

• 2:17:58Speaker 01

  Everybody can hear.

• 2:17:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, everybody can hear in the clear. So that's where in the clear comes from. But the way it lands in kind of normal interaction, it lands very well. So that's good. Good stuff.

• 2:18:09Speaker 01

  So yeah, uh, yeah, sloglegacy.com. That's where you can get the Sog representation shirt support, Sog support column. Um, but Jocko's story, that's discipline equals freedom. That's good. You know, we saw the Super Bowl.

• 2:18:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:18:22Speaker 01

  You know, head coach, you know, sort of kind of shouting it out. See what I'm saying?

• 2:18:27Jocko Willink?

  Straight up.

• 2:18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good.

• 2:18:29Speaker 01

  Good.

• 2:18:29Jocko Willink?

  Player got injured in practice. Good.

• 2:18:31Speaker 01

  Very useful. Yeah, very, uh, good mindset, good attitude. So yeah, you can represent that as well. There's get after it. We have a new get after it shirt, by the way.

• 2:18:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:18:40Speaker 01

  It's, there's a little history behind that.

• 2:18:41Jocko Willink?

  Was that the tape one?

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know why, right?

• 2:18:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:18:45Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah. But yeah, it's a good one. Brand new, brand new. Um, the also to the shirt locker underway, subscription scenario, new design every, every month. Some new designs on that one. Um, just came out. Pretty solid. This one, actually, I'm gonna tell you what it is. Tell me what you think. So you know how like, you know, ransom note, the traditional, the one you cut out from a newspaper, a magazine and stuff like that. But it's called like a ransom, a ransom note. It's like that.

• 2:19:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What does it say?

• 2:19:15Speaker 01

  Discipline equals freedom.

• 2:19:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:16Speaker 01

  Just to let you know, see what I'm saying? Doesn't matter who sent it. Factual.

• 2:19:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:19:22Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Anyway, it's all on jocko's story.com.

• 2:19:25Jocko Willink?

  So check that out. Also, we got a bunch of books. We got Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. We got Dave Burke Need to Lead. We got a bunch of books that I've written. We got Things My Brother Used to Say by Ryan Mannion. So check out the books, wherever you buy books. Also, Ashlam Front, we have Leadership Consultancy. You heard me talking about today. It's what we do. Extremeownership.com, some of the skills that I talked about of leadership, you can improve them online. Training, asking questions, going through courses. You can continually put this stuff into your brain and you will pick up on it over time. That's what we're doing.

• 2:19:56Jocko Willink?

  Also, if you have, or you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee's, she's got a charity organization. It's absolutely incredible. If you want to donate, or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, check out HeroesAndHorses.org. And then finally, Jimmy Mays organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. If you want to check out Nathan Fry, you can go to his LinkedIn, it's @NathanFry with the National Guard, and then also SpireTG.com. And finally, he also, the Vermont National Guard, the one, no, it's the,

• 2:20:40Jocko Willink?

  it's the 3172 Mountain. You can find their Instagram as well, and follow that. And thanks once again to Nathan Fry for joining us. Man, we got some good lessons to learn from him, you know? And as usual, you don't get the great lesson learned when you do the perfect thing. You do it, you get the great lesson learned when you, when you make a mistake, you learn from it. And he definitely shared a lot of those with those, with us today. So, appreciate that a lot. And thanks again to the soldiers of the Vermont National Guard, and the National Guard around the whole country. We appreciate everything that you have done, and that you continue to do for America.

• 2:21:18Jocko Willink?

  Also, thanks to our entire military staged around the globe right now, to protect freedom and our way of life. We thank you all for your service. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for your service here on the home front, and to everyone else out there. There's a creed of the 172nd, it's known as the Mountain Creed, and it breaks a bunch of stuff down, but I'm just going to give one little section of it. It says, quote, "Always will I keep my equipment and myself ready for whatever tasks I may be given. The sheer nature of my unit's mission

• 2:22:02Jocko Willink?

  requires that I maintain my equipment and master its capabilities and employment. My brother soldiers and countrymen count on my ability to shoot better, climb higher, ski farther, and fight with more cunning and aggression than enemy, any enemy I may face." End quote.

• 2:22:23Jocko Willink?

  So, whatever task you may be given, be ready. And that means you have to get up every day and get after it.

• 2:22:36Jocko Willink?

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

• 2:24:32Jocko Willink?

  The.

• 2:26:42Jocko Willink?

  The.

• 2:28:52Jocko Willink?

  The.