404: On The Path, Doing the Right Things For The Right Reasons. With Navy SEAL Officer, Sean Glass

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Sean Glass is a former U. S. Navy SEAL officer, combat leader, and now a leadership instructor with Echelon Front. Sean spent 13 years in the SEAL Teams with three combat deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Eastern Africa. He led five SEAL platoons in Iraq against Islamic State forces during some of the most dynamic and demanding environments where he saw first-hand the power of leadership on the battlefield. Sean returned from Iraq to serve as Officer-in-Charge of training for all West Coast SEAL Teams where he spearheaded the development of leadership training and personally instructed and mentored the next generation of SEAL leaders. Sean left active duty in 2019 and became the Chief Operating Officer of a successful venture capital backed construction technology startup, where he helped scale the company’s growth and established a highly successful decentralized, team-first culture. Sean then joined Echelon Front where he serves as a leadership instructor, bringing unique front-line perspective that blends tactical and executive leadership experience from the military and business environments to help build high performance, winning teams that thrive in ambiguous, adverse conditions. 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 404 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. We talk a lot about the path. And we do know what the path is, generally speaking. The path of discipline. The path is doing the right things for the right reasons. The path is long-term strategic thinking. And delayed gratification. Instead of short-term thinking and instant gratification.

• 0:35Jocko Willink?

  The path is taking care of other people. The path is being humble. The path is being balanced.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  And being on the path, capital T, capital P. Leads us down the path of our lives.

• 0:55Jocko Willink?

  And our decisions impact what we do, where we end up. And when we stray from the path. Our life is negatively impacted. But when we stay on the path. The positive results over time will come. Now, of course, there's no guarantees.

• 1:14Jocko Willink?

  Life gets a vote. Chance gets a vote.

• 1:19Jocko Willink?

  There is such a thing as bad luck. We cannot anticipate everything. There are some things that are actually beyond our control. And when those things occur, we take ownership of how we respond. And we learn.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  From the good, from the bad, from the ugly, we learn.

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  And tonight, we have with us a friend of mine who has learned a lot.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  His name is Sean Glass. He's a former SEAL officer, a combat veteran with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He taught leadership in the SEAL teams. He's also led in the business world, working in a startup and then starting his own startup. He's a husband, a father, a leadership instructor at Esalen Front. And he's here with us tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned about leadership and life. Sean.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Jocko.

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming down, man. Thanks for joining us.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Appreciate you having me.

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  What did I miss? Did I miss anything on your intro? Right? You were in the teams.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  About it, yeah.

• 2:27Jocko Willink?

  And then you were in business. Your dad, what, you got five kids?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Five kids as of now, time now.

• 2:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Jack, we're still working. Still time.

• 2:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  I'm young.

• 2:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I like it. My wife was tapped out at four. Yep. She told me no more.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're at five currently, which my wife's one at eight, so she's no.

• 2:48Jocko Willink?

  So she's down for the cause.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  She's down for the cause.

• 2:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51Jocko Willink?

  That's legit. Right on. All right, we'll keep our fingers crossed. All right, let's start at the beginning. Let's start where you came from. Let's see how you got here. Where did it all start? Where were you born?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  So I grew up in a small town in Texas. I tell people the town is called Corsicana because that's the only town that is big enough that people might actually recognize on a map if they're familiar with Texas. But I did not actually live in Corsicana. Corsicana was where we did school, sports, stuff like that. But I lived on a small ranch in a town called Blooming Grove. And I didn't really even live in Blooming Grove. We were literally just out in the middle of nowhere.

• 3:27Jocko Willink?

  What, there was no name for your?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  There was literally no name.

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  Uncharted territory.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  My road didn't even have a name. My road was called Farm Road 1390. Like, they just ran out of names, basically.

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  Started numbering them.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Just started, let's put a number on it because literally no one cares about this road out there. So the nearest town to me was a town called Berry. And it had like 73 people total population. So we had 60 acres, had a small little ranch operation out there. But we lived about 20 minutes outside of town, so very rural.

• 4:00Jocko Willink?

  And the town is the town with 73 people?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  The town is Corsicana is the town.

• 4:05Jocko Willink?

  And is that where you had to go get groceries and whatnot?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Groceries, school, sports, gasoline, all that stuff was Corsicana.

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  So you're in the middle of nowhere.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Literally in the middle of nowhere. Yeah.

• 4:18Jocko Willink?

  And what did your dad do?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  So my dad was a entrepreneur, uh, him and his brother started a company. They had a bunch of different stuff going on throughout their, their lives. But, uh, um, when I was young, their main thing was they had some barber shops that they opened up all throughout Texas, totally random. They always dabbled in real estate. They ran, or my dad ran horses on the ranch for a little bit, just kind of serial entrepreneur, trying all kinds of different stuff out. But probably the consistency was real estate, always kind of buying and selling real estate.

• 4:49Jocko Willink?

  You know, my dad was an entrepreneur, allegedly.

• 4:57Jocko Willink?

  My dad's success with business was horrible.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  Like he would start businesses and we would just lose money, like our family would lose money and go in the hole. And it was just terrible. I'm surprised I've ever tried any business at all. Cause I was kind of mentally scarred. I'd see my dad like start businesses and put money into them and re-mortgage stuff. And all of a sudden it'd all be gone. It'd all be gone.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  I'm sure there was some of that stuff going on. Uh, we had lots of horses and then one day we had not lots of horses. So I'm sure there was some of that stuff that happened, but, uh, I'm sure they were also trying to keep some of that stuff from us, but.

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  I mean, what about the barber shops?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, I think there's still one, maybe that's still up and running out of the seven, I think that they started. But we always had food on the table, you know, he always provided, super hard worker, you know, we always made sure that we were provided for, for sure. But some ventures more successful than others.

• 5:55Jocko Willink?

  You know, uh, Echo and I talk about like when you, when you get an idea and you're going to start a business, right? You go get a URL, right? Back in the day, you didn't get a URL because there was no internet. So my dad would have like, go get business cards made. So he'd get like these business cards made for like the new business thing. And like that's, you know, we'd have 10 years later, we just have like a box of business cards. His name and the business name and yeah, and like a big debt.

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  Luckily, luckily for me and my family, my dad was doing all this on the side. You know what I mean? Cause he had to use his school teacher. My mom was a school teacher, so he would take chances, I guess, with some of the, some of the, you know, money from his regular job, but just none of it ever panned out. So it was kind of a bummer. But he wasn't even trying any barber shops or anything like that.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  I think that's where the money is really is the barber shops.

• 6:50Jocko Willink?

  And what about your mom?

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Uh, she was a teacher. So, yeah. So she started off as a, uh, medical laboratory technologist, I think, or technician. So she was working in hospital, doing labs, all kinds of stuff. And then when we were born, she wanted to be home with us. So she took a step back from that and started teaching. So all throughout growing up, that's all I knew was that she was a teacher.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  What, what grades did she teach?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  So she taught when we went to our elementary school, she was working there at the elementary school, teaching high school science at first. And then we had a, a junior college in our town, Corsicana, called Navarro College, which shout out to Navarro College. If you've ever watched, which I'm sure you have not, the show about cheerleading on Netflix. That's Navarro, Navarro College was known for their nationally recognizable, uh, championship cheerleading squad.

• 7:40Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  So eventually she, uh, made the transit, well, eventually being our school shut down. And then she transferred over to the college and, uh, taught there for, I want to say like 20, 25 years and then just retired two years ago.

• 7:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay, right on. And you said we, meaning the kids, what'd you have for brothers, sisters?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Two sisters, one older sister, uh, two years and one younger sister by two years. Yeah.

• 8:03Jocko Willink?

  That's the same pattern as I am. I got one older sister, one younger sister. We're all about two years apart.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Were y'all close growing up?

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  I think we're probably, we, we, we, yeah, we were fine, you know, but we were all a lot different. You know what I mean? So there wasn't a lot of, you know, there wasn't a lot of hanging out, I guess.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, same here, very different. I think we're closer now than we ever were.

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  I would say, I would say we are too.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:35Jocko Willink?

  Plus, I think I was a real kind of an asshole.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  I was not the best brother, for sure. Yeah, if you talk to my little sister, there's definitely some emotional scarring and horror stories.

• 8:45Jocko Willink?

  I think my older sister hates me, hated me more than my younger sister. I was kind of like cooler to my younger sister. I was pretty, pretty much an asshole to my older sister sometimes. But then we all, we also hung out, we also had like a group of friends together. So, I don't know. I guess it was, I guess it would be about average. Sounds like it's about the same as yours, which means we're doing about the same thing. And then, so, so what are you doing, you're, what are you doing for like fun? How old are you, what are you doing?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  So, we had sixty acres, which when you're a kid, you know, I live on sixty acres now in Virginia. And it's a good piece of land for sure, but it's not, you know, a national forest or anything like that. But when you're five or six or 10 years old, I mean, sixty acres seems like a vast wilderness. So, I was outside, we, like I said, we lived in the middle of nowhere. So when, our day would basically be, you'd wake up, you'd take care of the animals, you'd go to school. If you had sports, you know, you'd do your sports. And then when it came time to come home, like that was it for the night. You weren't doing anything else. You're not going back into town because you forgot something. So, a lot of time just roaming around the property and our property was probably sixty, sixty-five percent woods. And then the rest was pasture.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  So I would just disappear into the woods and, you know, pretend like I was a cowboy or a soldier and just wreak havoc. And for a time, a very short time, my cousins lived next door, relative next door, right? Like they're, you know, a half mile down the road, basically, next piece of property. But we would link up and just run amok in the, in the wilderness, basically.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any water features?

• 10:17Speaker 01

  We did. So, we had some ponds for, for the livestock. And then we also had, when it would rain, we had a pretty good sized little creek that ran through the woods. And that to me was the coolest thing. My dad built a little bridge out of railroad ties across the, the water for us. And, I mean, we thought we were like in the jungle when we were back there.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Texas is weird though, because they count a dry creek as a creek.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's dry ninety percent of the time.

• 10:42Jocko Willink?

  Like, I look at real estate in Texas, it's like, oh creek, and I'll look at pictures, it's a freaking bunch of dirt.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  The key word you want to look for, for, for Texas water feature is live.

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  Live water.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, live water.

• 10:57Jocko Willink?

  So you're out there running around, did you have guns?

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I had BB guns at first. So like, my, my parents, dad did not grow up in the country, so he moved us all out there to give us that type of life, but he grew up in a city. His parents were both musicians, they played in orchestras all across the country. They played in the Dallas Orchestra when he was, uh, growing up. So like, you know, did not have the rural existence like we did, so not a lot of familiarity with guns, but we had the twenty twos and stuff like that, and he would take us out there shooting, and then we always had our BB guns. And then when I became a little bit older, you know, sixteen, seventeen, you got the shotgun running around the property and whatnot, but mostly BB guns and pellet guns and whatnot.

• 11:39Jocko Willink?

  And then you have to go to twenty minutes to get to school?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:42Jocko Willink?

  And what, you're going to public school?

• 11:44Speaker 01

  So we went to a small Christian school, uh, in Corsicana that was started by about the time that we started being school ages kids, a bunch of parents got together and started this as kind of an alternative basically to the, the public school. There's just not a lot of choice there. It's either the public school or you were going to this one private school.

• 12:03Jocko Willink?

  What's the population of Corsicana?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  When I was a kid, probably like twenty-one, twenty-two thousand. I think it's sitting around like thirty thousand right now or something like that, but it's a decent sized town. You had a Walmart at a time, it had a Kmart before Kmart ran a business, so when I was a kid, that was like big time, having a Kmart and a Walmart, so, yeah. About twenty thousand.

• 12:24Jocko Willink?

  Lots of Christmas shopping got done at Kmart.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, they got that blue light special.

• 12:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh, the blue light special, yo.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So we went to that small school and it was an interesting experience because it was kind of a blend of. Probably parents who were very like minded and wanting to teach their kids, you know, the things that faith aspect of life. And then because it was the only other school in town, if you got booted out of the public school, you were going to the, the small Christian school. So it was a blend of learning that happened at Corsica Christian Academy for sure.

• 13:00Jocko Willink?

  And are you playing sports?

• 13:02Speaker 01

  I was playing sports, but again, it was, it was pretty selective just based off of the population of that school. So we didn't have enough to fill the football team or anything like that. So it was basically soccer. We barely had enough to, to put together a soccer team. So soccer and basketball. Didn't have enough for baseball. Didn't have enough for like a track team, anything like that. So, uh, realized pretty quick basketball was not going to be my go-to for the future. So stuck with, with soccer. So played soccer basically all my life up until college timeframe.

• 13:32Jocko Willink?

  How come you couldn't play basketball?

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Uh, genetics probably had a piece of that. Work ethic probably had another piece of that. Uh, I just never really applied myself to the skill of basketball. I loved it. I liked being out there and like playing around with my buddies. I was just never going to go anywhere. Basketball, being a six foot tall guy with limited athletic, athletic abilities, it was not going to be my sport.

• 13:53Jocko Willink?

  But soccer, you were good?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  I was decent. I was not great, but again, it comes down more to my lack of actually applying myself to any sport whatsoever. Like if you contrast me to my sister, my younger sister who went to play, uh, D1 college at TCU for four years. I would argue exponentially more naturally gifted. I was very fast. I was athletic. Uh, did not apply myself whatsoever. Like didn't enjoy the experience of practice. I liked playing in the games, but you contrast that with her, she would be at home. If we were at home, she was playing soccer. She was kicking the ball off the side of the garage, which drove my parents crazy. She had nets set up and she was always practicing and surprise, surprise, hard work paid off

• 14:36Speaker 01

  and she got scholarships to go play at a D1 college. And I did not get the same opportunities post-high school to go play college anywhere.

• 14:45Jocko Willink?

  Cause you were a slacker.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  I was a very big slacker when it came to, to sports.

• 14:51Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so then you you get done with this school, you do you go to like a Christian high school as well?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  No, so the Christian school kinda tapped out about the time I was going into high school age. I think ninth grade was my last year at the Christian school and then I think it just kinda ran out of steam, ran out of funding. Parents weren't sending their kids there. So we went to the uh the public school for 10th, 11th and 12th grade. Graduated from there. Played soccer there, did everything.

• 15:15Jocko Willink?

  What position were you playing soccer?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  I was uh defense, usually right, right back on defense.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  Now, what else are you into at this time? You're going to high school.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:25Jocko Willink?

  Are you getting in trouble? What are your grades like?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Uh my grades were decent, but again, not really applying myself to it. But I was pretty naturally able to form good study habits and I would pick things up pretty quickly. So uh A's and B's, yeah, I don't think I had one C on my record. But again, that wasn't from opening books when I got home and and cracking. It was more just getting by on natural talent. And then part of that too was I had an ability to build good relationships with my teachers. And I think they kinda watched out for me every now and then.

• 15:59Jocko Willink?

  Did you, I didn't do homework.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:02Jocko Willink?

  We didn't, I didn't bring, and it's kinda crazy, you're gonna see this when your kids get a little older.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:06Jocko Willink?

  Like when they get to high school, like my kids, well, I should say this, my daughters did a lot of homework. My son somehow, I don't know why, he was somehow did not have.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Does he have a good smile, the skinny charm?

• 16:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he would, he would make good relationships with the teachers, I think too. And that would probably help him out a little bit.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  I did not have homework that often, uh and if I did, it was always last minute stuff. It was, I prided myself on my ability to procrastinate and then cram and get the job done when I was in high school. For the most part.

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of jobs, were you working?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  I was working all kinds of different stuff in high school. So uh when you're in Texas, you can get a, I forget what they call it, maybe it's a learner's permit when you're, or a worker's permit when you're 15 to get your license, if you have a job. So I was like, I can get a car and have some freedom a year earlier if I have a legit job, so. I had a bunch of different jobs that I was working. I was a ranch hand for a little bit for some of our neighbors, which if you've ever tried ranch handing in Texas in the summertime, highly recommend it. It's a very enjoyable experience. Very character building? Very character building. What are you doing as a ranch hand? You're fifteen years old. What do you have to do?

• 17:12Speaker 01

  So, a lot of it was mending fences, taking care of the property. Uh, this older couple, they were some characters, for sure. They were like some, some Texas characters, for sure. And we'd show up, me and, uh, another buddy who lived out in the middle of nowhere, we'd show up at like seven o'clock in the morning and they would just basically have a punch list of stuff for us to do. And the lady's name who was the, the wife, and they were probably in their, I'd say late fifties, but they were haggard. They were, they were looking a little bit older. She'd come to the door every single morning in a night shift with a Coors Light in her right hand and a cigarette in her left hand at seven o'clock.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  And she would give us the punch list of, uh, of stuff to do. And a lot of it was mending fences, cleaning out the barn. At the time, they had these metal fences and we had to go by and like scrape all of the rust off of the metal fences and then just repaint them all. One day, there wasn't a whole lot to do out on the ranch, so she wanted us to, to do some work around the property. She wanted us to go into her, like, kind of perimeter garden around the house, pull up a bunch of weeds and do some landscaping for us. And she gave us a tour to make sure that she knew, we knew what she wanted us to, to pull out, like what was a weed and what wasn't a weed. And we get to this one particular bush and it looks a whole lot like a marijuana plant.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  And she sees myself and my other high school age buddy just kind of staring at this marijuana plant. And she's like, oh, that's, uh, that's called the Texas cannabis. I know it looks like marijuana, but it's definitely not marijuana. It's one hundred percent marijuana. Uh, that she was growing out there for her little personal stash, her husband's little personal stash. But just whatever she needed basically done that morning. And she, again, lived out in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn't like anyone was flying a helicopter over trying to find her little, one little bush she had going on, but. Yeah, she was out there giving us stuff to do, uh, did that for part of the summer and then realized there's probably easier jobs out there than than ranch handing. So I was a waiter

• 19:17Speaker 01

  in our town at a restaurant called The Cotton Patch for a couple of years. And that was a uh, almost a pass down from my older sister who worked there for a while. So I was like, all right, I can go there. I can get some tips. I can make some good money. So I worked there for probably two, two and a half years. And then right across the street from The Cotton Patch, there was a, a record store called Music Man. And it was, you know, maybe twice the size of this studio right here. It was not a very big store. Um, so I went over there and, you know, interviewed for a job and the guy that managed the place was a character, a guy named Rick. He was Hispanic, but he was also, uh, I guess, traditional Jew, but he was Hispanic. So he didn't have like, it wasn't his background. He converted to Judaism.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  He walked everywhere. He had a big cane. He would wear like the yarmulke everywhere, kind of like the dude from Kung Fu, just kind of roaming about the town of Corsa Cana. But he was cool. He was super laid back. He liked music and, uh, you know, he offered me a job and I worked there probably all the way up until my senior year. And I ended up managing that place. Uh, interestingly enough, he pulled me aside one day and I think I was probably 18 years old, pulled me aside, took me outside and told me he had a alcohol problem, which was like, not a shock to me whatsoever. He came in like reeking of vodka, most of the days that we were there. And he asked me if I would drive him up to Dallas and check him into this rehab facility that he had been scoping out.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  So Rick was cool dude, was happy to help him out. So I, I drove him up there, dropped him off and, uh, he did not own The Music Man. He was the manager of The Music Man. And there was a guy up in Dallas, Texas, which was about an hour north of us, like big city. And he was the guy that owned The Music Man. And I don't even think I knew his name at the time, but in my mind, I'm thinking like this mogul that lives in Dallas, you know, owns all these businesses and The Music Man is one of his. So I find his contact information and some records at the store. And I just call him up to let him know what's going on because Rick is the only reason this business stays open. He's there from like eight o'clock in the morning until eight at night when they shut down.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  So without Rick, there is no music man because I'm still in high school. The other employee is a buddy of mine from high school. So it was the summertime, so I call this guy up. And in my mind, I'm like, I'm going to make a play to freaking run the music man. Like I'm taking over the music man, basically. Going big time. Going big time. So I call this guy up and I'm like, hey, here's the deal. I just take took Rick up to this facility up in Dallas, checked him into rehab. He's out of the picture. And there's a pause on the other end and this guy goes, well, I guess that means, you know, we gotta, we gotta shut it, shut stuff down. And I said, hey, maybe, but I've been working here now for two and a half years. I know how this entire business functions.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  You know, I can manage it for you if you want, if you want that to be the case. Cause it was summertime, so I had basically three months where I could manage this place and give him time to find someone else to step in when I went off to college. And there's like a long pause on the other end and he's like, so you, you're confident you can run it? I'm like, absolutely. It's not a big, I mean, it's, there's like 300 records in the store, maybe like it's not a complex operation. I was like, I can, I got this. So I talk him into it. And now I'm like, all right, poised to make my move because at the time I was making five 25 an hour as an employee there, minimum wage in Texas. So he, I convince him. He says, all right, let's, let's go. It's yours for the summer. And then, you know, I'll try to find someone else to come in and run it when you go off to college.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  And I said, hey, I think because I'm taking on all this extra responsibility. I've got to run inventory. I've got to run the, the books. I've got to do all the bank drop offs. All this stuff is on me now. I think I need a raise. There's a pause on the other end and he says, you're right. You're right. You do deserve a raise. So now I'm like, I just, this is like the art of the deal right here. Like I just took this place over. This place is now mine. I'm going to be making some good money. I can buy a new car. What I forgot was to actually talk about what that raise would look like. I didn't throw a number out. He purposely did not throw a number out as well. So I get my next paycheck and I got a whopping 25 cent bump.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  In the old paycheck. So I went from five twenty-five to five fifty for managing that place over the summer.

• 23:45Jocko Willink?

  Dude, who shops at Music Man with a city of like twenty or a town of twenty thousand people?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Characters.

• 23:51Jocko Willink?

  How many records are you selling?

• 23:53Speaker 01

  On an average day, maybe like four.

• 23:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, this is CDs by now, right?

• 23:57Speaker 01

  These are CDs, tapes. Uh, a lot of tapes still would come through. Of course it can. Like, there's, you know, there's a lot of vehicles still with with tape players in them. So we sold some tapes. We sold some CDs, uh, but it was not, we were not moving a whole lot of product.

• 24:12Jocko Willink?

  What was the biggest best-selling record?

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Underground rap was the best-selling record for us. So we were in between Dallas and Houston, and Houston had a big rap scene. So Underground Kings, a whole bunch of different bands, there are groups, I guess, that unless you grew up in the Texas area, uh, you'd have no idea probably who these people were, but they were a big deal for us. So someone came in, odds are they were walking out with some type of skrustin was the, uh, the kind of the genre that it fell on earth, skrustin rap. So that was our biggest seller.

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Every now and then, you know, a band would, you know,

• 24:49Speaker 01

  some metal band would release something new, Korn would come out with a new album and you'd sell ten, fifteen of those, but it was almost always kind of the Houston underground rap game.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And what were you into for music?

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Metal.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  So were you into music?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Oh, I loved it. Yeah.

• 25:05Jocko Willink?

  So music was a thing?

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Music was a thing. Yeah. I dabbled in guitar when I was younger. Uh, again, didn't really apply myself that much to it, but I enjoyed picking it up and playing around with it. Um, my dad was kind of old school, um, classic rock type guy, you know, blend of the Beatles, some Zeppelin, some Pink Floyd, uh, Beach Boys thrown in randomly. So we grew up kind of on a blend of that. And then my mom loved, uh, Like nineteen eighties Christian music. So

• 25:34Jocko Willink?

  dang

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Carmen friggin'. I'm trying to think of all the old school.

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  Carmen is.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, Carmen's a dude. He had some wild videos back in the day where he was like gunslinging against Satan. So it was a blend of either we hopped in the car. If it was, if it was my mom's suburban, it was gonna be Amy Grant or Carmen or something like that. And if we hopped with my dad, it was probably gonna be the classic rock station, you know, some Zeppelin, stuff like that. So.

• 25:59Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it crazy that like you can still get in the car today and just listen to Zeppelin?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:03Jocko Willink?

  Like, I mean, like, radio stations are playing it.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, as they probably will for the remainder of eternity, which is not something that you can say about a lot of the music that's getting made right now. For sure.

• 26:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:14Jocko Willink?

  I had a weird realization. So when I was in, I guess it was probably like eighth grade. And I don't know what it's like for you, but for me, every single like school dance that we went to. Yeah. Which started in seventh grade, eighth grade, and then we went to high school that had ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth grade. We had every dance I ever went to. Stairway to Heaven was the last song of the night, right? Every single dance I've ever been to in my life as a, as a human. Cause I've, you only, you know, you don't go to dances once you graduate high school.

• 26:46Jocko Willink?

  Every single one was Stairway to Heaven. And this, so this is like nineteen eighty-four, nineteen eighty-five through eighty-nine. So Led Zeppelin was around.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  In nineteen eighty, right? So this is like four or five years old. And I thought to myself, it seemed like when I was a kid, it seemed like those albums were like ancient. It was like, we called it classic rock.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:13Jocko Willink?

  It was called classic rock, even though, you know, this, what, what did Stairway to Heaven come out, nineteen seventy-two? Something like this? Maybe nineteen seventy-three? So it was only ten years old. It was only ten years old. So now like when my son was growing up, he was listening to Metallica. But Metallica was nineteen eighty-two.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:35Jocko Willink?

  So, and my son's growing up in twenty twenty.

• 27:40Jocko Willink?

  So like it's 40 years old, 40 years old. Of course Metallica is still touring.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:45Jocko Willink?

  God bless them, but it's just weird how that music for me when I was whatever 12 years old, 13 years old, it seemed like that music was classic and old, but it was only 10 years old.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:58Jocko Willink?

  So it's a totally different world.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a, and Zeppelin's always gonna be there. Metallica is always gonna be there. I think at least their old stuff is always gonna be there.

• 28:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Oh, got a little.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, there's a.

• 28:10Jocko Willink?

  A little shot.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  There's a, there, of course, again, there was not a lot of Led Zeppelin getting played at the school dances. It was a whole lot of Garth Brooks, Chorus Straight, that type of stuff. So.

• 28:21Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  I found metal in high school because some of my buddies were listening to it. And that was all I listened to from there on out until probably a platoon or two into the SEAL teams. When I opened up my horizons a little bit, but it was all old school Metallica. May, I say old school, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't that old for me either when I was going through high school. Megadeth, stuff like that. And my kids listen to the same thing. My kids listen to that stuff now. I'll catch my oldest son roaning up in the garage every now and then in our barn, our hangout barn, if you will, our family barn. We have our gym and stuff in there and he'll break one of my guitars out and he's just shredding.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Uh, Metallica and stuff. And to my wife's chagrin, that's what they want to listen to is Metallica and Megadeth. But I tried to convince her, look, if you, is the music loud? Yes, it's loud. Is it fast? Yes, it's fast. If you listen to the lyrics, there's nothing wrong.

• 29:17Jocko Willink?

  Good messages.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  With those lyrics. It's all kids dealing with stuff. It's all stuff about war. It's all people just working through problems.

• 29:26Jocko Willink?

  Spitting it into the best possible light.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah.

• 29:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got ACDC, Back in Black, 1980. So I'm nine years old and I was like, oh, but then I got Black Sabbath.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:37Jocko Willink?

  And then I was like, oh, okay. Now I understand the world.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the, uh, that's my oldest son's go-to on the guitar right now is Iron Man and old Black Sabbath. He's figuring it out.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  Can't go wrong.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  When you're, when you're that age. And you got stuff, I mean, probably every teenage boy is going through some stuff, but for for me, about the time when I found all that stuff, my parents had split up. They had split up a while before, but like the divorce was official right then. So I was angry, frustrated, all those things that, you know, a young kid with a very self centric worldview is probably uh going through and like that music just spoke to me. For the first time I was listening to stuff and I was like, oh, it's like, it's okay to be frustrated about stuff. It's okay to be angry about different stuff and you're listening to these guys just pour all of their personal experiences into and you're like, hey, I can relate. I can relate to that.

• 30:29Jocko Willink?

  It has to be also testosterone, right?

• 30:32Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 30:33Jocko Willink?

  Like you're fifteen years old, sixteen years old. You got testosterone coming out your freaking eyeballs and like when there's such a thing as roid rage, right? For a reason. Like people go on steroids and they get like angry. So when you're fifteen, of course, you're gonna be freaking some shit's gonna piss you off for sure, man. So, so, so that's luckily, I mean, if you look at Metallica, like, how old was Metallica? They were like that age when, when their first albums came out.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Eighteen, nineteen years old when their first albums come out? Insane. And they're dealing with all of, all of those things, all the same things. And that's why it will always be around because you'll always have young men going through those exact same things. And not only is the music insanely well orchestrated and put together, but the lyrics, young men, at least young American men are always gonna hear that and they're always gonna be able to resonate with that.

• 31:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It just, it just lands. I remember the first time I heard Black Sabbath, I was like, oh, this is what I thought. This is what I was thinking.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:40Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? Like, especially you compare it to some of the other junk that was out there in the world.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:46Jocko Willink?

  Like, there's just some junk music out there, popular music. I, I don't know, I was stuck on some radio station. It was just playing these ballads, like these sort of metal rock ballads. They're disgusting. They're literally disgusting.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:04Jocko Willink?

  All right, so you're now fifteen, sixteen, your parents are split up, you're freaking working in this record store for five

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Twenty-five an hour.

• 32:12Jocko Willink?

  Twenty-five an hour, but didn't you get a raise to five fifty?

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Five fifty.

• 32:15Jocko Willink?

  So now you're five fifteen hour?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Looking up, things are looking up.

• 32:17Jocko Willink?

  You have a car, did you buy a car?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  I did.

• 32:19Jocko Willink?

  What'd you buy?

• 32:19Speaker 01

  So, uh, I can't believe I ever sold this car, but my, well, my first car was the, the parents suburban. This big nineteen eighty-nine guacamole green suburban.

• 32:30Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  That, uh, my dad bought off a lot and he got a great deal on it because it was legitimately guacamole green. I think it was like the Forest Service tree vehicle cover color and to make it look better, he put a big gray stripe right down the middle of it, like somehow that was gonna improve it. So I drove that around as I was saving my cash up and then, uh, we went to a swap meet up at the ballpark in Arlington in Dallas. And this was back in the day before muscle cars were astronomically expensive, right? And I drove off the lot in a nineteen seventy Chevelle supersport for six grand.

• 33:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh, my God.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Midnight blue, white racing stripes. So now you're talking about testosterone fueled Metallica. And now I've got, you know, a four fifty-four sitting there and it was, uh, I was as a kid, always into cars, always into muscle cars. And I was just fortunate enough to live in a place in a time where a young man who was willing to do a little bit of work could afford something like that. It got probably eight miles to the gallon, but fuel in Texas was like ninety-seven cents back then. So, uh, that's what I had until college and then I will forever kick myself, but I sold it when I went to college because you're always tinkering with old, with old cars. There's always something that you gotta fix on them. And I was thinking I need a little bit more reliable transportation and I sold it and then I, I sold it for more than I paid for it.

• 33:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but what'd you get to replace it?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  I got a, uh, what the hell did I get? I think I had bought an old Land Rover, like a 1995. I guess it wasn't that old. I was old. It's only 2001. So it was probably like a six-year-old Land Rover. Yeah. Which, talking about things that need to be fixed all the time. Yeah. That I think need to be fixed all the time. So it wasn't necessarily the best, the best swap. But, you know, I was 16 years old, driving that sucker around, no, no air condition, didn't care. Loud exhaust, just, just crushing life at that point in time, basically. So when did you find out about the teams? Oh, so I was probably either 14 or 15 years old and I was an avid reader growing up.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  I read all the time, always had books in my hand. Uh, you name it, I was reading it. And we spent a ton of time at the library and part of that was probably my mom was a teacher. So, um, we were always at the library. Hey, my mom was a teacher. I didn't reach. You didn't read anything? No.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. My dad was a teacher too. I still didn't read anything. I, I loved it. I would get lost in all these different books and it could be, I lived out in the middle of nowhere too. And there just wasn't a whole lot of stuff to do besides play in the woods and read. So I was always reading these adventure novels and whatnot and pretending to be those. I'd read a book and then I'd go out in the woods and just basically pretend to be one of those, those characters when I was young. But we spent a bunch of time in the Corsica Cana Public Library. And I was, uh, in the military history section and this was before, you know, pre nine 11. This was like 1994 or five, maybe something like that, maybe 1996. There was not a lot of information out there about the SEAL teams. And I stumbled across this book called Hunters and Shooters. And it was this oral history of SEALs in Vietnam.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  And I read it and I was hooked, like instantaneously knew that's what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was like, I can get paid to do this. I can actually go and make a living out of jumping out of airplanes and running around in the jungle and diving and doing all these things that, you know, probably every young man dreams about when they're, when they're little. So it was a, a huge turning point in my life because up until then I was not very disciplined about a whole lot of things. And it was very evident that if that's something that I wanted to do, it was going to take. Every single thing that I had, I had to channel all my energy into that. So everything from there on out, every decision I made basically became, the decision was, is this

• 36:21Speaker 01

  gonna help me get into the SEAL teams? And if the answer was no, then I didn't do it. So got serious about working out, got serious about eating. I think my parents thought I was insane and full of it. Like, my parents grew up watching a very undisciplined, uh, young man, who like, you know, I wasn't horrible, like, I was a good kid, but I wasn't the hardest worker growing up. We lived on a farm. We had horses, we had emus, we had all kinds of random crap on the farm. Uh, I was always complaining about work, and then just, whatever it was about reading that book, it was just like a switch that went off. And like, I was very focused, and all of a sudden, I'm working out on my own. I'm studying because I want to get good grades so that I can get into the community, because I, I don't know if

• 37:04Speaker 01

  that mattered or not, but I'm like, it's gotta help, you know, if I've got straight A's, it looks good. So it was a, a big turning point for me.

• 37:12Jocko Willink?

  It's a weird realization when you are running around in the woods, playing army, and then you realize you can actually do that.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Like, that's, literally, my first thought was, I've been doing this my entire life, and now this is something that I can get paid to do, uh, go on these crazy, and this is self event Vietnam. I mean, this, this is insane stuff I was reading, and it just resonated. And I was like, I want to do this. I have to be a part of this community. I at least have to see if I can, if I can make it.

• 37:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. I was going to NOM.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:45Jocko Willink?

  That was, that was my plan. I was like, going to NOM. I figured there was still ops going on. Come on, man. There's M I W, P O Ws and M I As, like, I will be rescuing them. I just gotta make it through BUDs. That was kind of what I was thinking was going down.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  I've already got the plan built out.

• 37:59Jocko Willink?

  In nineteen ninety, let's roll. Uh, so you graduate high school, then, now you're, now you're focused on, like, I'm gonna be a Frogman, I'm gonna be a SEAL. And where you go to college?

• 38:08Speaker 01

  I went to Texas A&amp;M.

• 38:09Jocko Willink?

  Why, how come you just didn't enlist?

• 38:11Speaker 01

  So, went back and forth on whether to enlist or not, and my parents played a big role in me not enlisting. And uh what they told me was it was a shock to them that I wanted to do this. You know, my uh not necessarily a big military family. My mom's side had some service, but like my parents didn't serve anything like that. And I think they were again, having a hard time wrapping their mind around the fact that like I was actually capable of doing something like this. So I

• 38:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you mean they doubted you?

• 38:38Speaker 01

  I think so. There was literally nobody that I think that thought I was serious about it or thought that I was gonna make it through. Uh, and I can't blame them if you looked at, you know, my life up until then. It was kind of the antithesis of what you needed to do to actually make it through a program like that. So in their minds, I think it was more of a delay tactic. Like, how do we get him to realize? He's not meant to do this. How do we get him to realize that there's other things in life that he can do?

• 39:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Let's let him ruminate on this for a little bit. So they were talking to me about college and just said, look, if you still wanna, you can enlist after college too, but we want you to get your degree first.

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  That is a tactic for sure, by the way. Get your kid to go to college, they meet a girl, they do this, they get a job offer and you keep them out of the military. That's I've seen some people execute on that plan.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  I I'd be willing to bet, because I never actually asked him, but I'd be willing to bet that was their tactic was hey, get him into college. He's gonna figure some other stuff out, even if he doesn't and he still wants to do it. Now he's got a degree. If he doesn't make it or just doesn't like it, he's got something he can fall back on. Uh, so they were probably thinking, get him to college, he'll have a good time.

• 39:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Uh, he'll lose focus and he'll, you know, find some other path, find a girl, settle down. But unbeknownst to them, I was the lamest college student of all time.

• 39:58Jocko Willink?

  Is it hard to get into Texas? You went to Texas A and M? And is it hard to get in there?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think it's necessarily, I mean, it's not Harvard, let's be honest, but uh, you know, you still have to have good grades. You still have to um, you know, contribute that type of thing. So I think they, at the time, it's a state school, but they're still decently selective. I think you had to be more or less in the top 10% of your class at the time to make it through.

• 40:22Jocko Willink?

  So you were?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  I was, yeah, I was around, you know, probably like. The 10th percent. 10.4. Yeah, I was just slid right in underneath there, but I chose to go there because there was the Corps of Cadets is there. And there's a group inside the Corps of Cadets that were just focused on getting people prepared for selection, for butts, for the SEAL training pipeline. And to me, I was like, this is a great resource. I can go down there. I can work out with these guys. I can better myself. I'll prepare. It'll help me be more prepared, basically. So I went down there. I was not in the Corps of Cadets. I just worked out with these guys and I mean, they were, I thought I was in good shape.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  You know, I was running. I put in like three miles. I would do some calisthenics and stuff and I thought I was in good shape. And then day one, running with these guys, it was just like a nuclear bomb went off. It was the worst experience of my life. These guys were all just freaks. These guys were actually in shape is what it was. These were actual runners. You know, they were putting in like 18 minute, three mile times, which to me was like unattainable at the time, basically. So it was a very good thing for me to choose to go there because it reframed my perspective on my own personal training. So, you know, my day in college consisted of I would be up at 4:20, 4:25 at the latest.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  I'd get a cup of coffee and then I'd have to drive to campus because 4:45, we would be starting a PT. And then we would PT until about 6:30, then we'd hit the chow hall. And then my classes didn't start till eight, so I would go to our gym and I would get another workout in. Because when you're 19, 20 years old, you can do stuff like that. It's not going to break you down, basically. So we'd PT for about an hour and a half together. I'd eat, I'd go PT some more and then we would go to class. And then after class, I would go to my, uh, my job, which was I was working in the school system as a after school kind of counselor for a underprivileged school that was nearby Texas A&M.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  So I'd go do that until 5:30, 6 o'clock at night. I'd come home, eat dinner, study for a couple hours and then I'd be asleep by probably 8:30, 9 o'clock. I was the lamest college student of all time. I can, you know, I maybe three parties I ever went to because my roommates were going and I just didn't enjoy them because in the back of my mind, I was just very concerned about getting in trouble. If I get in trouble and I want to be an officer and get picked up for that program, if I get, you know, arrested or in a fight or something like that, everything that I've worked for is over with. So it was just, wake up, P T, school, sleep.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  Did you start to get in really good shape?

• 43:05Speaker 01

  I got in very, very good shape, very good shape.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Better than some of those guys at certain things. I was a little bit bigger than most of them. So when it came to like calisthenics, I was better at it than them. But when it came to running, I was always tail end. So we would have a three mile time run at the end of each semester, just to track our progress. And it was a three mile loop, but it wasn't, I'm sorry, one mile loop that you would run three times. But it wasn't a good actual test of your three mile time because half of the loop was uphill. So you, you know, run downhill, basically in the last half would be uphill. And I ran an eighteen twenty and I was the slowest guy by like forty five seconds.

• 43:42Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  We had guys that were putting in sixteen forty fives. They were just freaks and we were swimming all the time.

• 43:48Jocko Willink?

  And these guys were all trying to go to BUDs?

• 43:50Speaker 01

  All trying to go to BUDs, all trying to go to BUDs.

• 43:53Jocko Willink?

  What did you study in college?

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Speech communications for no other reason than I thought it would be easy and get me out of college quick. I also thought if I was going to be an officer, I probably needed the ability to actually speak in front of people. And I thought in the back of my mind, like this will probably help me hone my public speaking skills. What I didn't realize is you didn't speak at all. It was just all paper writing. It's like the worst major I possibly could have taken outside of maybe a dedicated like engineering course. Cause every semester, each course that I was taking had like a thirty page paper that was attached to that course.

• 44:27Jocko Willink?

  It's called speech communication?

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Communication. It's basically developed for people that wanted to go and be like P R reps and stuff, which I didn't know any of that. Like I'm picking this out of a catalog of what I thought would be the easiest major for me so that I could just focus on. PTing and being ready for the SEAL teams.

• 44:44Jocko Willink?

  So you start, at some point, you gotta put your package in, right?

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 44:47Jocko Willink?

  To become a SEAL. Did you go to the, did you go to the mini buds thing?

• 44:53Speaker 01

  I did not. So they actually stopped that right about the time when I should have been able to go. And I'm not sad that that happened because when I got there and then I started to actually later on in my career, when I was running one of the phases of, of selection, what I found out was mini buds never really helped anybody, but it definitely could hurt people. So if you came to mini buds and you did well, the message that I was told was, eh, it kinda helps, not really. But if you came to mini buds and you didn't do well, you didn't perform like you're done, you're over with. So I didn't have the opportunity to go. I didn't even have the opportunity to talk to a board or anything like that. I just put together a package. I sent it in and it got examined by some board somewhere,

• 45:38Speaker 01

  probably in Millington, Tennessee, or maybe in Coronado. I don't know where. And then they kinda decided your fate from there. So no even interviews.

• 45:46Jocko Willink?

  You didn't even interview? No letter of recommendation from anybody?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Letter of recommendation.

• 45:50Jocko Willink?

  From who?

• 45:50Speaker 01

  We had a couple of guys that were A and M alumni.

• 45:54Jocko Willink?

  Team guys?

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Team guys. Yeah. I can't even remember their names anymore.

• 45:58Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. But like, there was a network basically of A and M guys that had graduated that were willing to help out. So they just talked me on the phone for a few minutes and then wrote me a pretty nice rec letter, but that was really it. Like, I didn't spend time with those people or anything.

• 46:14Jocko Willink?

  And this is what, 2007, 2008?

• 46:18Speaker 01

  2005 timeframe was when I was starting to put the package together.

• 46:22Jocko Willink?

  So at this time, there's so many people applying to be officers.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Lots.

• 46:25Jocko Willink?

  I mean, there's like, probably, let's just say, I think the number would probably be around a thousand.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  I would imagine probably.

• 46:29Jocko Willink?

  Around a thousand people would be applying and it would be like. Thirty?

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:35Jocko Willink?

  Slots?

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 46:37Jocko Willink?

  Total? Is that probably thirty from the Naval Academy?

• 46:40Speaker 01

  It'd probably be a little bit more than thirty total, but for OCS, Officer Candidate School, which was the program I would have to go through because I didn't go to the Naval Academy. I wasn't in the Corps of Cadets. So, uh, I think the number was around like fifteen people got selected that year.

• 46:55Jocko Willink?

  From the whole country?

• 46:56Speaker 01

  From the whole country.

• 46:57Jocko Willink?

  And you were one of them?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  I was one of them.

• 46:59Jocko Willink?

  Did you have to write an essay?

• 47:00Speaker 01

  I did not have to write an essay. I had to write just a bit, little bio about why I wanted to be

• 47:05Jocko Willink?

  What did you say?

• 47:05Speaker 01

  In the program. Just, hey, I wanted to serve. I wanted to lead. I wanted to give back. Pretty much all the generic things that they probably wanted to hear.

• 47:14Jocko Willink?

  There was nothing that you think made you stand out?

• 47:16Speaker 01

  I think my PT scores probably made me stand out.

• 47:18Jocko Willink?

  How good were your PT scores?

• 47:20Speaker 01

  They were pretty good. They were pretty good.

• 47:21Jocko Willink?

  How many pull-ups did you do?

• 47:22Speaker 01

  I did like thirty-two pull-ups. I did a hundred and forty-seven push-ups.

• 47:27Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking good.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, I did.

• 47:31Jocko Willink?

  What was your run from mile and a half?

• 47:32Speaker 01

  My mile and a half run was not super impressive, but it was, you know, it was competitive. It was probably a, uh, right at around eight fifty, nine, I think. My swim was good. I was a good swi- not, I actually was a horrible swimmer, but I was good at side stroke. All I did was side stroke. So my swim time was phenomenal for not being someone who grew up swimming. So I think my PT scores, uh...

• 47:55Jocko Willink?

  Were your grades in college good?

• 47:56Speaker 01

  My grades were good. You know, again, I wasn't taking engineering classes.

• 48:00Jocko Willink?

  Didn't you have to take, I think I, I took like some kind of a test for OCS? To get into OCS?

• 48:05Speaker 01

  I don't think I took a test. I took the ASVAB.

• 48:07Jocko Willink?

  Officer Aptitude Test. Yes, I did. I took a test called the Officer Aptitude Test and I crushed that thing.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  What was on it?

• 48:14Jocko Willink?

  It was mechanical stuff.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:16Jocko Willink?

  It was planes coming at you and going away from you and where, where, is this plane coming towards you or going out for you? Uh, mechanical like gears, which way is this thing going? A bunch of math problems, a bunch of English stuff.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:26Jocko Willink?

  And I like crushed that thing.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  That does sound familiar. That does sound actually very familiar. I'm, actually, I remember sitting in the recruiter's office in College Station doing that exam. And I did well on it.

• 48:37Jocko Willink?

  So you get picked up by some, that's, it's hard to get picked up for that program.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  I was, uh, I was, I mean, it was like the, the best day of my life when I got that letter, when I got picked up. Yeah.

• 48:48Jocko Willink?

  So you get picked up for that, but didn't you have to wait like a year or something?

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:52Jocko Willink?

  Why was that?

• 48:52Speaker 01

  I had an injury. So I, I tore my shoulder when I was in early college years. And then I had, it was a labrum tear. So nothing, nothing too traumatic, but I had to have it repaired. And they took forever to clear that through a medical board. And you know, I'm super frustrated at the time because in my mind, I'm like, I have delayed. I didn't enlist. I delayed to go to college. I've been training. I'm ready to roll. I thought I was going to get picked up. And then like the day I graduated, frigging go. In my mind, that's what was going to happen. And I, it was about a year, almost a year and a half before they cleared me of all that stuff. And it was exceptionally frustrating for me for one, because they have all my PT scores.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Like it's clearly not a debilitating injury whatsoever. Like I crushed the PT portion of it. So I'm, I'm, you know, clearly physically able to do this job. So it was probably a blend of just how long it actually takes people to clear those medical boards. I doubt a doctor sat there and looked at my paperwork for a year and a half. It probably took him a year and a half to get to my paperwork in the giant stack of paperwork that he had to work through. So, uh, it was frustrating. I moved back to my hometown. I taught actually for a year in our school system, uh, as my job. And then just kind of typical Navy, you know, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And then all of a sudden a call comes that says, hey, you're leaving in

• 50:17Speaker 01

  two weeks, basically for, for OCS. So I was very frustrated that I had to wait that long. But in the grand scheme of things, uh, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me because you look at the trajectory of what it put me on as far as the deployments that I got to go on, the people I got to work for, uh, and with. I met my wife because of this timeline. All of those things played out because of this. So I wouldn't change one thing about it.

• 50:45Jocko Willink?

  All right. So you launched to OCS.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:49Jocko Willink?

  How'd you like OCS?

• 50:50Speaker 01

  It was freaking miserable. Uh, I was, I, I wanted to be the best I possibly could be. So I, I drove to OCS from Texas and it was up in Rhode Island. So that's like an 18 or 19 hour drive. And the whole drive, I was reviewing all the materials they told us to come prepared, you know, all of your, the sailor's creed, all of those things that you were going to have to recite. And I get there and at the time I've got this big, you know, Ford F-250, King Ranch diesel. I've got cowboy boots on, like I'm going to check into this place and I'm just getting the once over from all of these cadets that are there kind of running the initial days. So I get there, you know, they're being super cool. They go, yeah, man, you know, it's great, blah, blah, blah.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  And then they take me into this hallway and then that's when, you know, the jig is up. That's when, that's when you're theirs. Basically. So these guys come busting out, these upperclassmen, like they're yelling and screaming at me and stuff. And to me, I'm just like, this is a freaking joke, dude. Like this is crazy to me that this is stressing people out. But like, there was a couple of guys with me and a couple of girls with me and they were freaked out by this. But, you know, previous life experiences and whatnot, like I've been yelled at plenty of times. So it wasn't that big of a deal. The process of OCS, not a huge fan of it, but I wouldn't change anything because I, my drill instructor, a guy named Yakavoni, gunnery sergeant Yakavoni, like the classic Marine drill instructor.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  It's the freaking man. And I learned so much from that guy from a leadership perspective. But he also knew what I wanted to do and he took a special interest in me because I wanted to go and do this combat MOS, which is what all Marines care about, basically. So he gave me a lot of additional privileges that.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Other people going through did not get. Like what? I spent time in his office. I was the, you know, he made me the class president, basically. So at first I was really annoyed by that because I thought that meant that I would not have time to PT. Uh, but he was really putting me in that position so that he could have extra access with me and give me the things that I basically needed, like extra time. So did I pay the man for being the class president when the class screwed up? Yeah, all, all the time. But it also meant that we got to spend a lot of time together. So I'd go to his office and he would just talk to me about stuff. We sat down, we watched Band of Brothers together and he was walking me through like all these different leadership lessons learned from Band of Brothers. He was exceptionally hard on me, like he was not, you know, he held me to a very high standard.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  And if the class screwed up, I paid the man for it big time. But by the end of it, you know, I was, when I was the senior class on deck, if you will, I was the regimental commander. So I was the guy running basically all of OCS. Um, and you know, after the day was over, me, him and another couple of the Marine gunnies, like we'd go out in town and have a drink and get dinner. And you know, you got like Silver Star winners that are there, that are these gunnery sergeants and they're just teaching me, just teaching me. So from that perspective, I freaking loved it. But from the day to day perspective, God, I was miserable. You know, you're, you're using all these, they're teaching all these skills that in the SEAL teams, you're just never going to use.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Like your mobility boards, your navigation boards, stuff like that. Yeah, I'm not good at math, so that stuff to me was. Those MO boards must've kicked your ass. They kicked my butt. I, uh, the MO boards kicked my butt and then the, the, the test that you have to go through to get in, like the physical test, I'm not flexible. And there's this weird dynamic at OCS where some of the gunnery sergeants really like each other and they have like a crew. And then other gunnery sergeants don't like this crew and they look for the guys and gals that this crew likes. And they try to harass them and like kick them out. So I was not flexible. So we were doing this like toe touching test and I couldn't freaking touch my toes. And I was about to get booted out of the program because I couldn't touch my toes.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Damn. And Yak came over and basically saved me from that experience, so. Put his knee in your back. He literally got me down there. So mobility boards and physical mobility were my two biggest weaknesses in, in OCS, but.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Overall, the experience of getting to learn from him was awesome. And, you know, I met two of my best friends at OCS. There was two other guys that were, three other guys that were going to go through the same program. So we were all either in the same class or within one class of each other. So we all moved out to Coronado together and rented a place together as to go through BUDs. So from that perspective, it was great. From a day to day, how was OCS perspective, it was just 13 weeks of being miserable, not eating enough food, getting out of shape compared to the shape that I went into it.

• 55:45Jocko Willink?

  Folding underwear.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Folding, ironing underwear, all of the things that are going to make you very, I guess, a good sailor.

• 55:55Jocko Willink?

  All right. So you graduate and now you're out, you go with, roll with a few of your buddies to go out to BUDs?

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Roll with my buddies to go out to BUDs. One of them, my buddy Sam is a Coronado kid, water polo player, built like a refrigerator, just total stud. But he grew up in Coronado. So, you know, he knew all the lay of the land. So he basically picked a good place for us to live down there in, in the Kays.

• 56:19Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And had, we actually rented from an older team guy as a captain in the Navy, who his family was friends with. So we lived there.

• 56:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I think I know who you're talking about.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we lived there and went through training and it was just the best time it possibly could be. And one of my buddies who was going through training, James, his wife is a two-time Olympian. So she was like our den mother. Like she was there, living with us.

• 56:45Jocko Willink?

  Olympian in what?

• 56:46Speaker 01

  800 meter runner.

• 56:47Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Total, total animal. Just so fast. And I went on a couple of runs with her and it was just like the most embarrassing thing of all time because she'd be having a conversation with me and I can't even breathe. Like I can't, I'm like sucking wind and she's just conversational pace, basically. But she was there in the house with us. So she'd go up to like the training center during the days and prep for the freaking Olympics and then we'd all go to BUDs and just get our teeth kicked in, basically.

• 57:16Jocko Willink?

  Now, how was your, how was your intro to BUDs?

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Uh, it was awesome. So I, I was nervous at first because I've, I've put so much time and energy. Into preparing for this and I was nervous about how I was going to stack up against everybody else that was there because you know everyone in my mind did the exact same things to prepare. Everyone you know logged thousands of hours of running and swimming.

• 57:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because you basically spent four years at Texas A&M preparing to go to BUDS.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Every single morning doing that. Every single morning preparing for BUDS.

• 57:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's good preparation.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  It was outstanding and the whole time too, we're also doing different stuff for like water comfortabilities, things that you probably actually shouldn't do without supervision. But we were doing other things like drown proving and stuff that got you more comfortable in the water. So it was outstanding, outstanding prep. But in my mind, I was very nervous about how I was going to stack up with everybody else. And I was just fine. You know, I was up there at the top with a lot of things. I was never going to be the fastest runner. I never fell out of a run. Never. But I was never going to be the top of the pack. Like we do a four mile time run and I would be, by the time we would run back through the rock passage, I would just be getting passed left and right by people. Yeah.

• 58:34Jocko Willink?

  Just gassed out.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  I would start, this is another crazy thing about the guys at A&M is they didn't, their running style was how I learned to run was they would just take off top speed right from the very beginning. They would just, straight up, just go. And that would be the pace they would keep the entire time. So I would get a big lead taking off and I don't think I got gassed coming back. It was just that nobody else was actually trying that hard until the halfway mark. And then the guys that were really freak runners would just start to put on, you know, the five minute pace and they would just fly past.

• 59:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Was, when you were going through BUDS, are you looking, was there studs that you, you know, everyone talks about the stud that quit, right?

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:16Jocko Willink?

  Did you have some of those?

• 59:17Speaker 01

  For sure. There was a kind of the usual characters. And if you went through BUDS, you know what I mean by the usual characters of the guys that you think are just going to crush it. One, because they look like it and two, because they tell you they're just going to crush it. And then eventually those guys just go away. But you had, you know, D1 athletes that came through there and washed out. You had these guys that were second and third offenders trying to come through the program that knew everything there was to know about BUDS and they would wash out. So there was definitely, you know, people that you would line them up on day one and say, hey, come and pick who's going to make it. And probably most people would pick the guys that washed out would be my guess.

• 59:58Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty wild, isn't it?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. It's very wild. Now, there also was some legit athletes that did just fine.

• 1:00:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  You have some wrestlers, for whatever reason, crush it. And I think the reason is they're just used to being miserable all the time. Like, if you're a wrestler, your life is just miserable. Your practices are miserable. You're starving yourself all the time. You know, you're pushing yourself super hard. And BUDS is just a case study of can you be miserable for seven months? And some of those athletes, I think what it was is they're very used to doing everything right, getting everything right. And then when they fail, it messes with them. They're not used to it. And they get on this kind of downward spiral. So, a lot of guys washed out before Hell Week kicked off. And then during Hell Week, a lot of those other big strapping young lads were not there.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  And then some of the little guys who were just tough as nails and runners, just tenacious, just they're not going to freaking quit, were there.

• 1:00:55Jocko Willink?

  What was Hell Week like for you? Any big deal?

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  How do you say this without seeming like, you know, kind of a egomaniac? But it really, the thought of Hell Week was much worse to me than Hell Week. Once we started and we got going, it was tough. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. But I think an advantage I had was I was an officer. So, I'm not necessarily worried about my own individual performance. I'm worried about my boat's performance. And if I pass a run, but my team doesn't pass a run, I still get freaking beat for it. So, because I was more focused on the guys and I wasn't as focused on my own personal misery, I think it made it a little bit more bearable for me.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  The thing that I hated the most about BUDS was the cold. And Hell Week is just, you're just cold the entire time.

• 1:01:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. You're a Texas boy.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Hell, cold water, that doesn't exist. I would go to our lakes in Texas, the water temp would be like 91 degrees. So

• 1:01:55Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I was used to, I was used to the water of Maine.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:01:58Jocko Willink?

  I was surfing in Maine in the wintertime.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:02:00Jocko Willink?

  I got out to California, I was like, yo.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  This is easy.

• 1:02:04Jocko Willink?

  There was just no factor.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  No, it was, if you said you can do a log PT or you can sit in the ocean for surf torture, I would do the log PT every single time. Most people would not say that.

• 1:02:15Jocko Willink?

  I had like no opinion of things. I was, I was sort of just an automaton of like, hey, this is what we're doing. And I kind of was like, yo, let's go do it.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, I was kind of having a good time. And for me, Hell Week was the easiest part because I couldn't fail.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Jocko Willink?

  Cause everything was hard for, right? Yeah, there's no standard. It's just keep going. Is the standard is keep going, which I'm good at. I'm good at keep going. Like, I'm real good at that. But like, oh, the, the four mile time run, was it hard for me? Those time swims, they were hard for me. The obstacle course was hard for me. Everything else was like, I'm fighting the clock. And, but in Hell Week, I was like, oh, you, oh, I can't fail? This boat's on head, carried down to freaking IB and back?

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Cool. I can keep going.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Let's do this.

• 1:02:58Jocko Willink?

  Let's go.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, the obstacle course and all that stuff, I was good at all of those things. But the obstacle course, I ended up always just getting beat for. Even, I was like the second best in my class at the obstacle course. The, the, the guy that was the best, his name's Mike, he was a total stud. He was the guy that made buds look easy, basically. Total stud. But because we were number one and number two for that particular evolution, what did the instructors always want to do? Face off between Sean and Mike? Mike destroyed me every single time. Like, it, it, unless he lawn darted off of the slide for life and broke something, like, there was no chance I had in beating Mike. So, we'd finish and I would get beat because I lost to Mike, basically.

• 1:03:42Jocko Willink?

  That obstacle course is freaking awesome.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 1:03:44Jocko Willink?

  It is freaking awesome.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. It is like a giant adult playground.

• 1:03:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. His time going through there, I think the best I ever did was like 620. And he was consistently putting up like 530s.

• 1:03:56Jocko Willink?

  Dude, a guy in my class was getting like eight minute, eight minute, eight minute, whatever. If you're all through buds. We're doing like our last obstacle course and he breaks out like a five. And the instructors are like, fuck, they're going crazy. Do it again. They go, do it again. He's like, okay, he does again. He gets like a four forty or something like this. He was just sandbagging.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:19Jocko Willink?

  For six months of buds, just sandbagging.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know that I was sandbagging, but I had never put up a six thirty before. And then one of the instructors said, hey, to the whole class, if you don't get underneath eight minutes, you're getting wet and sandy before the next evolution. Like, we don't care that it's a passing grade. Like, you're, you're getting me, basically. So I always was around that eight minute mark. So I was like, well, I really got to freaking turn it on. And that's when I ran, you know, a six forty-five or something. And then from there on out, I was like, oh, I can, I can go faster, basically. But Mike was always just smoking me. And I pulled him aside one day and I asked him, I was like, yo, man, how are you? Like, what's your secret, man? Like, what are you doing differently? And he wasn't trying to be a prick about it or anything, but he just said, hey, I don't actually even try until I get to the slide for life.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  And then I really just conserve energy and then put it on. And I'm like, bro, what? I'm a hundred percent from the uneven bars, you know, the parallel bars. Like, that's, if I wasn't a hundred percent from there, I'd be back at like eight minutes. But his secret was, he was in such good shape, he would, not sandbag, but he would just jog the first piece and then save himself for the, the part where most guys gas out. And then he would just pour it on.

• 1:05:33Jocko Willink?

  I remember having to run it wet and sandy and then all, all of our classes running it wet and sandy. I was thinking, that's one of the times I was thinking to myself, this is not safe. You know what I mean? Everything's just saying he'd slip, read. I was like, this doesn't seem safe, but I guess that's what we're doing. So let's go.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  There was an evolution in Hell Week where we had to carry our boat to the obstacle course. Mike, you talk about not safe. Let's get that boat up to the slide for life.

• 1:05:57Jocko Willink?

  And track it down.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  Real quick, the slide for life, where in the obstacle course, where is that?

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Halfway. Yeah, halfway. And it's a tower that you have to climb. It's three levels. And by the time you get there, like, you're, you're tired. So this is where you really start to get people gas out.

• 1:06:14Jocko Willink?

  Forearms are tired. Your forearms are kind of smoked because it's all hanging on to stuff. It's all ropes and climbing. And so your, your forearms are kind of smoked when you get there.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  So Jeremy told me, and I, I get little bits and pieces of the, oh, course experience. Jeremy told me that the so Cake Nuts was going through and he kept jamming himself up failing or whatever and he was like yeah because his technique he kept like bending his arms like trying to like

• 1:06:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he needed to use more skeletal strength.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, he said Brad just keep your arms straight and you won't burn out your arms because you keep failing on that part. It's like I guess I don't know some rope. I don't know.

• 1:06:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so when you come down the slide, you climb up three stories and then it's just a long rope that you slide down. You know, starting it, it goes from three stories to zero stories. And so you're kind of hanging upside in the beginning. You hang upside down and go.

• 1:07:06Speaker 02

  Wait, and that's the slide for life?

• 1:07:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're sliding down a rope.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:07:10Jocko Willink?

  But the rope is kind of loose, so it's kind of like difficult to go down.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Jocko Willink?

  And your forearms can definitely get smoked and people used to fall off of it. Thirty feet, twenty five feet, twenty feet. I mean, falling twenty feet sucks.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  Wait, what do you hit the sand?

• 1:07:25Jocko Willink?

  You hit sand and now they have they put a net under it for a while and now they have like sand berm underneath it. So you're not falling. It used to be more legit.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  I think it's a motivator is really what it is. It's like when the gym, when all the gyms transition to the like soft kind of box jumps instead of the old school metal.

• 1:07:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, look, if people were starting to try things that they shouldn't have tried, right? Like, look, you don't have a thirty six inch box jump with a metal box. Like, you're not trying that. Because there's repercussions there if you fail. So it's a little extra motivator, but that old course, they had Olympians when I was running the third phase of training, we had Olympians come through. Because the Olympic Training Center is in San Diego and they couldn't make it and it was all the grip strength. They're so specialized that you just have to be.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  You can't be an Olympic swimmer and expect to go through that obstacle course and crush it.

• 1:08:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're too but a gymnast would fly through it. I had a gymnast. I had a gymnast Olympic alternate in my class and he would fly through it. He unfortunately for him wasn't good in the water and failed some water evolution and didn't make it. But Olympic alternate in gymnastics.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  It's insane.

• 1:08:35Jocko Willink?

  Like going through the old course was a joke.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Didn't even use his legs. Was he just?

• 1:08:39Jocko Willink?

  It was like literally nothing for him.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:42Jocko Willink?

  Any other, did you have any challenges and butts?

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:08:45Jocko Willink?

  Besides the cold?

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Cold was the big one. Drown proofing. I was I was. Doing very well, you know, past all the evolutions and whatnot until drown proofing. And I was very confident about drown proofing until I actually did drown proofing. And then it was just like absolute chaos underwater. It was the first time in my Bud's experience where I was like, this is, this is sketchy. Like this might be.

• 1:09:09Jocko Willink?

  Like you might not make it.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  I was also thinking like, yo, that was a vastly different experience than what I was expecting. Went through, you know, practice all the procedures. I was very comfortable in the water and then it was a like eye opener. So next day show up and I managed to get it done the second day. But as most nervous I've ever been was I was very concerned about failing again the second day. But.

• 1:09:32Jocko Willink?

  What about pool comp?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  Um, pool comp, sorry, did I say drown proofing?

• 1:09:37Jocko Willink?

  You said drown proofing.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Pool comp.

• 1:09:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, drown proofing, um, we practiced it so much that it wasn't really that big of a thing. Pool comp was the one where it was like, yo, man, this is a different experience, a very different experience than in my mind, what we had built it up to be.

• 1:09:52Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to a kid, trying to tell him that it was like, hey, you, you need to prep for pool comp. Like it's really hard. And he was kind of like, you know, I'm good in the water, like this is no factor. And then he didn't make it the first time, didn't make it the second time, third time. And I talked to him when he was done and he was like, uh, I go, I tried to tell you that was hard. And he said, nothing you could have told me would have, would have explained what it was like. I was like, check.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  There's not much of Bud's that I don't remember pretty vividly. I don't remember anything about the first pool comp, other than just, other than it just being like a frigging tornado, just mayhem, absolute mayhem. Uh, Andy Stumpf was the instructor.

• 1:10:31Jocko Willink?

  That's I should have asked, so, yeah. You know, you know, Andy passed, I want to, I think he said it's either three or in the three years he was an instructor, he passed four people on pool comp.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Well, I was not one of those.

• 1:10:42Jocko Willink?

  And he's like, and they earned it.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I was underwater for probably six minutes and I get to the top and I'm just, I don't even know where I am at that point. And he's like, you know, you failed. And I said, okay, well, I wanted to get some pointers. And I said, okay, well, you know, what's, you know, could you, you know, specifically I could do better. He goes, it was so short that I don't even remember what went wrong. And I'm like. Okay, thanks.

• 1:11:07Jocko Willink?

  I swear, I wish Andy could have been, just if they just could have had a camera and a microphone on Andy for the three years that he was a second phase instructor. It would be the best TV show of all time, especially from a comedic perspective.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  Hands down.

• 1:11:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It was one of those things where if you were in his line, you were trying to find a way to get out of his line.

• 1:11:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. He was talking to me about it. He's like, yeah, he goes, yeah, he says, you, he goes, you learn a lot. He was telling you about like the different hand positions that people would have. He's like, you know, the mur, I forget what it was, but it was something like, oh, when they started to curl, you'd be like, oh, he's about to bolt, like he's done and he could know how much pressure to put on him or take off of him. And yeah, so Andy Stumpf gets them.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was the worst five minutes of my life up until that point in time, for sure. So first phase, second phase, they liked our class. We had a lot of personality, you know, guys were hard workers. Guys that were funny, which Bud's instructors always like classes that can just kind of embrace it. And then we got to third phase and it was just, they did not like our class. So third, for whatever reason, third phase for us, where we're, you're really excited about third phase because you're like, now I get to shoot. I get to blow stuff up. I get to do all of these cool things. I get to learn land warfare. Third phase for us was just like first phase.

• 1:12:27Jocko Willink?

  Beat down.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  2.0, just beat down. And now you're on an island where there are no eyeballs watching you. So we spent more time getting beat than we did actually shooting. Like we would go to the range, we'd probably get five minutes of shooting in, someone would screw something up. And then we'd be down in the surf zone.

• 1:12:42Jocko Willink?

  Do you think you guys got cocky because they liked the instructors like you in first and second phase? And you guys were kind of like, hey, we got this and everyone loves us.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  It could be a part of it. The personalities that were in third phase at the time, I think were, had a lot to say with that. And there was one chief specifically who ended up being out there almost the entire time. Not supposed to be, but just, I think one time he had to cover for another cell, so we stayed out there. But, and then it just became the snowball thing. Like, once the, so for those that don't know, there's different cells in third phase, so they rotate out. So the marksmanship cell will come out for the first two weeks and run the class for two weeks on this island called San Clemente Island. Then they leave and the demo cell comes out. Well, the marksmanship shell cell is giving a turnover to the demo cell of how the class is doing.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  And if the, the turnover is these guys suck. Then the snowball starts happening. So it was in some ways worse than first phase because no one was around to rein anything in and you're almost over the mentality. As a third phase student, like their beatings are always still going to be there in BUDS, but you're like you were supposed to be learning things now. It was not necessarily the case for our third phase class. Just learn how to be hard again.

• 1:13:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there you go. Um. So you graduate graduate from BUDS, which is not really a graduation. They just give you a piece of paper now.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  Literally a piece of paper, shake your hand on the grinder and send you along.

• 1:14:10Jocko Willink?

  And then it's off to SQT?

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  SQT for officers at this point in time, we got the, what they call the officer role so that we could go to the junior officer training course, which I think we were. Maybe the second or third class to actually go through that because Leif stood that thing up, didn't he?

• 1:14:27Jocko Willink?

  No, he didn't stand it up. He took it over. But yeah, this was now, what, this is 2009?

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  2008?

• 1:14:34Jocko Willink?

  2008? Okay, yeah. So Leif had been in there for a while.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:37Jocko Willink?

  Because, um, but he didn't stand it up. Actually, who stood it up was Admiral Richards.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:14:45Jocko Willink?

  So this is like in way early.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:48Jocko Willink?

  This is like 2000. Uh, but it wasn't, what Leif did was take it and turn it from a, hey, this is how you write evals. This is how you write Navy messages. Cause you gotta remember, well, this is probably what it was like for you too. Like you didn't have any experience in the Navy. You didn't know how to write a Navy message. You didn't know how to write an evaluation. You didn't do a bunch of Navy stuff. So they needed to give some of that Navy stuff to guys and that's sort of what it started off with. And then they started like bringing in some guys that had been in combat. And then Leif actually was like, hey, we need to teach guys some leadership while they're going through this junior officer training course. So he did a great job of sort of pivoting that and setting up the FTXs and all that. Really good. Yeah.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  So he was there for, I think the first. Two weeks and then turned over with Mike Sorelli.

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Took over. So we went through that. It was awesome. Learned a whole bunch of things. What was not awesome was we had some time to kill in between when BUDS ended and when JOTZI started. And I think it was because there was a Christmas fell in between that transition. We did not have, the class before us only had, I think, three or four officers in it that made it through. So they wanted to combine our two classes. So they needed to find something to fill a gap between our class ending and then when the JOTZI was supposed to start on the calendar. And at the time, there was a Green Beret major who was kind of augmenting the JOTZI cell with Mike Sorelli, and he convinced the powers that be that it would be a really good idea to send us to

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  the Q course during that timeframe. So we shipped out to Camp McCall in February and went through three weeks of the Q course out there, which was.

• 1:16:30Jocko Willink?

  Which, how much of the Q course is that?

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  So it's right post-selection. It's now when they're doing the small unit tactics.

• 1:16:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Portion of it. So in some ways, awesome, because you're getting taught. But he kind of sold, this major kind of sold the chain of command on the fact that it was, this portion of the Q course was more of like a gentleman's course. You're going to be learning. It's their selection. It's literally their selection. So we're out there digging foxholes at night, Camp McCall in February. It's, you know, 20 degrees outside. You don't get to wear any cool, cool guy warm gear. You're in like your cotton friggin BDUs out there. Yeah, it was a unique experience. So we did that for, three weeks was supposed to be the timeframe. I actually jacked my knee up on a ruck one night, and they had to send me back to get treated in San Diego. So I was

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  only out there, I think, for a week and a half of that. But during that timeframe, we learned about ambushes. We learned about layups. We learned some good stuff. It was a crappy experience, for sure. From a, from a standpoint of a guy who just graduated BUDS, and you're like, cool, that's now behind me. And now it's time to start learning how to actually be an operator and then get thrown right back into selection. And not only selection, but. Green beret selection where all the instructors are like, let's see what these,

• 1:17:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  See what these Navy guys can offer us type thing.

• 1:17:51Jocko Willink?

  Um, let's see what we can offer them.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  It's a hundred percent. Let's see what they're all about. But the, the flip side of that was we did learn, we did learn. If you wanted to, if you took the time and actually wanted to learn what they were telling us, then it was very valuable, very valuable.

• 1:18:08Jocko Willink?

  All right. So now you get done with SQT and you roll into team seven.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Team seven.

• 1:18:14Jocko Willink?

  Broke straight into a platoon?

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Right into a platoon. So they had just got back from their deployment, uh, like literally just got back. So we rolled in and I ended up in a Charlie platoon SEAL Team Seven. And the platoon chief and the OIC in there were awesome, awesome. Two people that actually genuinely cared about mentoring, actually cared about developing myself and the other squad commander. And the other squad commander had a big leg up on me because he was prior enlisted. So he had a lot of good experience. He was a team three guy, guy named Rob, um, just a freak athlete too. Guy that's real easy to like, real easy for guys to want to follow. Good personality, good at everything he does. Um, but we had people there that actually cared about investing in us.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  My first troop commander was Jack Carr, who sometimes troop commanders care about their squad commanders and sometimes they don't. And Jack absolutely cared about us and we were on training trips. You know, he'd pull us aside, talk to us. And then also just watching how he conducted himself as a troop commander, being very aggressive in a good way, uh, going throughout training aggressively maneuvering for us to get opportunities overseas was really set our platoon off for success.

• 1:19:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. I, I remember putting, Jack is, uh, unfortunately for him, or fortunately, depending how you look at it, I put him through as a, a platoon commander and then as a troop commander.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:40Jocko Willink?

  So he was stoked.

• 1:19:43Jocko Willink?

  We joke about that a lot.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  I, when we went through the, uh, our first block of training was land warfare, which is the best place on the planet, basically now in California. But I, I was 25, I might've just turned 26. So I'm kinda in my prime on this, in my own mind, this young stud. And we got through with land warfare and my knees weren't right for like a solid two weeks. Like I remember very distinctly going to church and like you put the kneeler down post land warfare and I kneeled down and I, I would legitimately didn't think I could get back up afterwards. So I'm thinking like, I'm looking at guys that have now done this, this is their eighth land warfare block. I'm like, how the hell are these guys still walking? Uh, yeah, but that was, that was it.

• 1:20:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that training was freaking awesome. Um, so what were you learning?

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:20:34Jocko Willink?

  What were the big like, so you do, you do land warfare, mar ops, you know, urban? What, what, what big, what big lessons learned do you have from a leadership perspective?

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. One of the things was just letting the guys, letting the guys go. So I was the class OIC for my SQT class, about halfway through the class, they fired the OIC that was there and put me in charge. So I got the opportunity to run like a, you know, a platoon quote unquote throughout SQT land warfare, but we're all students, we're all learning stuff. So it's not like anybody has an advantage over anybody else. So I was a little bit more hands on and very quickly into a platoon, you realize that's not a solution for success. So we say, one, your guys are going to tell you, back off and just let me do my thing. But, um, just being comfortable, making an initial call

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  and then just letting them do what they do was huge. And I was very fortunate, I was in the squad with the platoon chief and I was very fortunate that he, I was making calls that he very easily could have just said, that's not your job, that's my job, stop doing that. But he didn't do that. He let me make calls, he let me learn, he didn't let his ego get in the way. He was very interested in, in teaching me and mentoring me. Um, so a big piece was just. Giving guys direction and then letting them go and do that. And then

• 1:21:57Jocko Willink?

  You mean decentralized command?

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  Decentralized command would be a huge thing. Yeah. Decentralized command would be a huge thing. And another piece was just the level of detail that goes into our planning was very impressive for me. I always liked that aspect of things. I like kind of nerding out on the planning style of the planning phase of the operation. But again, my only experience was SQT, which your plans aren't super robust. So seeing the point man disappear into his room and build routes where like every single thing was taken into account. Seeing your snipers, you know, picking the best places to be on the battlefield based off the weapon systems they're going to carry. Seeing your breachers prep the charges they need for that specific door and all those things.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  It was like, oh, the SEAL teams are everything that I was hoping that they would be. So the level of detail that goes into the planning was awesome to see. And again, it wasn't one person doing that. It was everybody had their role. Everybody was contributing. And then at the end of the day, you put all those pieces together.

• 1:23:01Jocko Willink?

  I bet that coming into the SEAL teams in like 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, like coming into, if you're showing up in the SEAL teams during that timeframe, it was probably for all you guys that showed up at that time, it was probably like, yep, this is what I signed up for. I came in in 1991 and I joined the Navy in 1990. I got to SEAL Team One in 1991. It was not what I thought it was going to be, you know? Like, A, I thought I was going to Vietnam, but even, even just thinking that we would have like, you know, areas to train, thinking that guys would be like, hey, this is what we're doing, that there would be this extreme like mission.

• 1:23:46Jocko Willink?

  Like there wasn't, we weren't going to war. I mean, we're going to do exercises, you know, like it just wasn't, wasn't what. You weren't sitting in a room with like, like occasionally a Vietnam guy would come in and talk to you. Occasionally like Roger Hayden would show up and be like, you know, you do some eye ads and he'd debrief you. And you'd be like, oh, you know, that was awesome. But most of the time it's some guy that never done anything, not, not to their, not their fault, but they just, there's no war going on in 1984, no war going on in 1987. Oh yeah, sure. A few guys went to Grenada, a few guys went to Panama, but not any large numbers. And, and so if you had someone like that, it was like luck. Most of the guys never done anything. And again, no offense, and they did their best to pass down, but there just wasn't that attitude either.

• 1:24:31Jocko Willink?

  Cause you knew you weren't going. You're going to go on deployment and go do exercises.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:36Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, that I can't, I can't imagine like for you, you know, Jack Carr's your, your, your, uh, troop chief or your troop commander. I know who your platoon chief was. I mean, like you can't ask for a better platoon chief.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:52Jocko Willink?

  Like these guys are focused. Yeah, that had to be freaking legit rolling in in 2010 at the like, the war is on.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was amazing. That, that environment is was prep for us. Since we went through BUDs because every single instructor that was at BUDs had multiple tours underneath their belt. Some of them, you know, were dealing with injuries that they had just come off the battlefield and they had put him at BUDs. So for us, like the, the realization of the second that you get to a SEAL team, odds are you're going overseas into a combat zone. Now, there's a couple of platoons that don't, you know, there's a couple of platoons that go to the Philippines and, you know, man that mission, but the odds were you were going overseas. So when you get into the training aspect now of going through our, our unit level training blocks and prepping, it's utmost focus. Every, cause it's real. Everybody knows that the second that training's over with and you load the bird up,

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  you're going to someplace where you're going to get after it.

• 1:25:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I remember like I, I would be teaching.

• 1:25:53Jocko Willink?

  Urban and I'd see like a guy in the street like standing in the middle of the street like a new guy like just walking across the street or standing in the middle and I would get like a knot in my stomach I'd feel sick because I'd be thinking like this guy's gonna get shot like that's and that's just me right and you had a whole I had a whole staff of guys that were thinking that way so yeah this was this was like a kind of a really good time to be for you to be a young junior officer and plus you're older you know you're mature you're you're what'd you say you were 25 almost 26 years old

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  At this point in time I was probably 26

• 1:26:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah so you're just you're just in the perfect spot man

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  It was amazing and I think probably the biggest lesson learned for me going through that initial training training blocks was having high standard and then our platoon commander and our platoon chief they had exceptionally high standards and if we didn't get something right we weren't going to bed like we were staying out there and getting it done and you know one night in specifically just to kind of give an example of that is you were back on San Clemente Island going through the urban training and we had just wrapped up the urban training and now we're transitioning to the maritime operation so boats in the water coming in doing your OTB over the beach type preparation that type of stuff and big waves out there at the time of year that we were out there and we had a couple of guys who just didn't prep

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  their rucksacks properly and they couldn't get through the surf zone and our platoon chief lost his mind and we spent the entire night doing nothing but swimming out past the surf coming back in and swimming out past the surf and at the time it was a miserable experience but the next day you're like there's a reason why we did that we failed he has a higher standard and by the way he was there with us swimming through it wasn't like he was on the beach you know giving us pointers with a bullhorn he was leading us through the surf zone again and again and again so that mentality of you're gonna do it until it's right layered on with the fact of now we truly understand why we're doing it until it's right because overseas you only get one chance to get it right so probably the biggest lessons learned was when you hold

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  a high standard which our leadership absolutely held high standards

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  Guys don't complain about it. Guys like it. Guys love it. Guys enjoy being a part of a platoon like that.

• 1:28:09Jocko Willink?

  Yep, and that's a perfect example of taking care of your people and not misconstruing taking care of your people to be, "Oh, I'm gonna let my guys get off easy. Oh, hey, you know, it's no big deal if a couple guys can't get through the surf zone. It's no big deal. We still need to get some sleep tonight." It's like, no, actually, what's most important is you know how to do your job and you're ready. So where'd you guys end up going on deployment?

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  It was all over the place for a while because we were supposed to go to Iraq. And then we were gonna go to this new place called the Crisis Response Element. And then we were gonna go back to Iraq. And then about a month before we actually deployed, we found out we were going to Afghanistan, which, of course, everybody was super fired up about because at that point in time, Iraq was more or less shutting down and Afghanistan was still rocking and rolling. So the unique thing about this deployment is, in order to get, they just switched the concept up of how they wanted to deploy the SEAL platoons into this. They went away from a regionalized perspective, where platoons were gonna only deploy to certain regions. But what that meant was the cycle of deploying platoons was now gonna be off.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  And in order to get all the platoons, all the SEAL teams, I should say, back into a cycle where it's predictable deployments, SEAL Team 7 and whatever our counterpart on the East Coast was, which I think was SEAL Team 10, had to do an 11-month deployment in order to synchronize the schedule for the rest of the, for the rest of the community. Awesome. So we get to go to Afghanistan and we get to spend almost twice the time in Afghanistan. And a unique thing about this was we were doing a new mission set over there that was called Village Stability Operations. And the theory behind Village Stability Operations was Afghanistan is a, is a wild place. There's tribes all over the place. There's different villages

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  that don't even know that a central government exists. There's just all this tribal influence that goes on and they wanted to be able to link all of these tribes together, basically into one kind of cohesive central government. And how they wanted to do this was by embedding special operations units inside these villages.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Training up local police forces that would eventually be able to provide their own security once US forces pulled out so that Taliban and insurgents wouldn't just flood back into the region the second that America pulled out basically. So our job was going to be to embed in this village that no Americans had been in and step one was clear white space and that's kind of military terminology for there's bad guys in this area. The first thing you need to do is get rid of them. Get them out of this area because if you don't, you're not going to be able to actually dedicate time to training locals to be policemen because you're just going to be fighting all the time. So step one was clear all the bad guys out. Step two was build this localized police force, train them and then

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  step three was basically transition over to giving them tie them tying all these villages into a provincial government and the provincial government is now tied into the centralized government. So our platoon and I think there was two platoons from Team Seven that were doing that mission. Our platoons and the SEAL platoons from SEAL Team Ten were the first SEAL platoons to do this mission. There was different varying levels of excitement about doing this mission because what do SEALs normally do? At least what do we think we do when we go overseas? Direct action. We're just gonna find a bad guy, we're gonna kick the door down and we're gonna grab him or do something else to him basically. This

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  was not this mission on its face. This mission was a by with and through mission. So there was the opportunity for guys to not be very excited about doing this mission but because we had good leaders and they really understood all the opportunity that was layered inside of that mission and all the freedom that was layered inside of that mission. They did a very good job of giving us the why behind things. Hey, we're going to Afghanistan. Here's the mission that we're tasked with. Here's why that's a good thing. Here's what this affords us the ability to do as a platoon. So there were platoons that did that mission that were not excited about that because you're training people. But our leadership

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  was very creative. They really understood the mission which went a long way and they did a really good job of not lying to us about stuff but being honest and just painting a picture of all of the things that we could accomplish if we played our cards right on that mission and it was phenomenal. I mean, we, within two weeks of being in country, In Afghanistan, we loaded up a convoy. We drove 300 miles away from the nearest big American base, which was Mazar-i Sharif up in northern Afghanistan. And we embedded in a village in the middle of nowhere. Like, literally, night one was circle the wagons, like, park your vehicles in a circle, stand watch, and you're just living, basically, out of your vehicles as you're building up

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  this little fob in the middle of nowhere. And then we spent the next 11 months just trying to build relationships with different tribes, different locals, and then clearing white space out. And definitely, some, probably the biggest stark contrast for me was the perception of what we were trying to accomplish versus the reality on the ground over there. So, the mission is, you want to build this infrastructure where you can tie these villages into the central government. And like, that's gonna be a really good thing for them, right? Well, guess what? None of those villages wanted. They wanted, half of them didn't even know there was a central government. They didn't know this guy Karzai, who was the president, existed.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  They're living, basically, almost like in biblical times out there, where it's them, their family, in this village. They're never gonna leave that village. They're hurting, they're growing crops, they're gonna live, they're gonna die there, and everything is run internally to that village. So, part of this mission was, we had to conduct all of these key leader engagements, which means, you know, let's say, Ekho is a tribal leader. We're gonna go and do a patrol into that person's village, and we're going to arrange a meeting where we sit down with this tribal leader, and we explain to them why we're here as Americans, all the good things that we want to do for you as Americans.

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  So, we would sit down in these KLEs, and, you know, sometimes it was my platoon commander doing them, sometimes it was my platoon chief, and sometimes it was me, just depending upon who was available that day. And my initial take was, well, I'm just gonna tell them all the great reasons about why we're here, you know, we're gonna tie you guys into the central government, and it's gonna bring peace and stability and all these things. And they didn't want any part of that. And they would basically just turn a blind eye or just boot us out of the village. So, I had to change my tactic. So we would have these KLEs and you know, the new tactic that I chose was you know, just tell them why we're really there and see how that goes. We're really here because

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  people that your country was harboring flew planes into buildings in my country and killed a lot of my countrymen and we're here to find them. And guess what? That resonated with every single one of those tribal elders because that sense of honor and revenge is built into a part of their culture. And we finally started to get some traction. The central government piece, the only people that cared about that were people who realized they could line their pockets by being involved with that. All the other villages, they were down to support when they understood that we were there for basically revenge sake.

• 1:35:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's wild. And one of the big lessons learned, I think, from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan is you can't, we can't try and impose our way of life, our values, our and our ideas on what they're on the normal people there. And and their own government can't do that either, by the way, like they're they're the people are going to be who the people are. And if you're going to try and do it, it takes generations to do. It takes literal generations to to change the way people think. And if you want to take that kind of effort, then okay, you can do that. But it's going to it's going to be an occupation where you're going to have to set things up and

• 1:36:27Jocko Willink?

  run things with a pretty stern hand. But you know, you can't just present these ideas and people go, oh, okay, cool. Your way of life looks better than ours. They did this doesn't work. So don't try that. How was like, what was the enemy contact like when you were on this long deployment?

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. At first, outstanding from our perspective, right?

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  So we, when you go and you embed in one of these villages, it's just a matter of time. Like any VSO site that we went and talked to before, or we were in contact with them before we started to do this mission, all said the same thing. You're gonna embed out there, you're gonna build up your little FOB, and then they're gonna come. They're gonna come and they're gonna try to push you out of this FOB. They're gonna try to kill all of you and basically take that, that terrain back. So within about two weeks of us embedding, it might've been three weeks of us embedding, we had a big coordinated base attack that went down on our tiny little FOB. When you say base, like most people are thinking a base. Now, we're talking, I don't even know if we were a hundred, hundred square meters of terrain that we possessed,

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  that our ba-, our camp was, but we had these two terrain features right to our right and our left. And we had built these OPs up there where they were constantly manned 24/7, heavy weapons, standoff weapon systems, all that good stuff. So, middle of the day, all of a sudden rounds start coming in inside of the camp. Mortars start coming in, rockets start coming in, and our camp was on the far side of a wadi, which a wadi, for those that don't know, is basically a dry riverbed. And on the backside of the wadi was all this high ground, because it's Afghanistan. It was basically the beginning foothills of a, of a mountain range. And they were launching this attack from the backside of those mountains, and it was probably 700, 800 meters.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  So they were just lobbing stuff in. And as soon as it happened, it was very clear that, that my platoon chief had thought through this exact scenario, because there was zero hesitation on the call. It was load up, we're going, and we're gonna take the high ground away from those guys right now. Unfortunately for me, I got stuck back on the FOB, manning the radio, because timing wise, my platoon commander was at one of these big KLEs somewhere else. So my chief pulls me aside as rounds are coming in, and he's like, hey man, I'm sorry, but you have to stay here, and you have to keep that radio contact going with higher headquarters, so they know what's going on. So my job during that was basically communicate and then coordinate our standoff weapon systems while they maneuvered.

• 1:39:02Speaker 01

  Out through this wadi and then basically popped up on the high ground where the Taliban was not expecting them to do. They were expecting us to just sit inside of this base and try to slug it out with them. And it was very evident that they were not prepared to get outflanked like that. Cause they, our guys pushed them right off the high ground. They got them on the, on the back slope of this mountain range. There was a vineyard and they all hunkered down in this vineyard and then there was a, a B1 flying overhead and we just rained thousand pounders and 500 pounders, 2000 pounders and 500 pounders right on top of them as our guys were, were pinning them down. And the whole thing was over in probably

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  an hour, hour and a half. Uh, and that kind of set the initial tone for deployment. And then it was an 11 month deployment. You're going through seasons. You're going through summer. You're going through fall. You're going through winter. The, the fighting season in Afghanistan is real. You know, April starts the fighting season because all the snow melts, people can move around. And then by about November, when the first snow comes, the fighting season is basically over. So eight months of that 11 months was very kinetic, was an awesome time. And then the last couple of months were basically, uh, dedicated to training more or less because no one was out, no one was, and there really just wasn't that much of them left in our area because we had done our job and cleared them all

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  out and built up the police force to where now they had presences inside of all these different villages and they were denying terrain to the, uh, to the insurgents.

• 1:40:35Jocko Willink?

  What were your big, uh, lessons learned off that deployment?

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  Big lesson learned, one was, and I didn't really probably fully take advantage of this or appreciate this, but my platoon commander gave me so much freedom on that deployment. And We butted heads a little bit during, during ULT, but he always looked out for me. He always had my back and on that deployment, he gave me a whole lot of freedom to make some mistakes too. And I made some mistakes that could have cost the platoon, uh, some ability to maneuver with higher headquarters. And he took care of it for me and he didn't, you know, beat me over the head for it. He just pulled me aside and kind of talked to me about, hey, think about this, don't think about that.

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  You know, this is what you need to be looking at from a perspective. Uh, cause it's not just the fun of running around and trying to chase down the enemy. Like we have higher headquarters that you have to appease and you have to have relationships with them as well. So one was just, when I was a platoon commander, trying to mimic that freedom to the guys that, that I was leading. So from a professional standpoint, just giving your guys that freedom. A personal one for me was just how quickly complacency can creep in over an 11 month deployment especially. So for us, IEDs was a huge worry, uh, in this area. And it was a very effective weapon system for the enemy, very low cost.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  And within three weeks of embedding, we were doing a convoy and it was nothing crazy. It was just a resupply convoy, uh, to go pick up some more supplies. Cause again, we were living in the middle of freaking nowhere and we were driving down a road that we've driven down a dozen times. My vehicle was the third vehicle in that convoy and we hit a pressure plate and it blew our vehicle, uh, off the road. Blew the rear part of it out. Uh, it was a matte V is what they call it. So it's a mine resistant vehicle. It was designed to basically be able to take a blast.

• 1:42:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, thankfully.

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  Better than a Humvee, right? Humvee, flat bottom blast hits it. All that energy gets dispersed right to everybody that's inside of it. Really bad day. The matte V has a, a V shaped hole. So when the blast goes off, it kind of redirects a lot of that blast energy. And we were in one of those and luckily for us, we hit it with a back wheel. So most of the energy was directed towards the back end of the vehicle. It blew the back axle off. It pushed us off of the road, but more or less everybody on the inside was, was just fine. Wasn't an ambush or anything like that. I think they just laid it there and left. So within three weeks of being in country, I'd experienced an ID and I'm like paranoid

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  of IDs. I'm dialed in. Like I don't want that experience again. We're there for 11 months. You're doing patrols every single day. Complacency starts to creep back in. You start to pay a little bit less attention on your patrols to where you're where you're stepping, when you're dismounting from your vehicle, doing, you know, your looks to make sure things are going on. You're starting to get a little complacent. About halfway through the deployment, we had basically done all we could do from our little camp. We had cleared all the white space out of there and there was one village left in our area that was like the Taliban stronghold. So what we decided to do was embed in that village. We were going to do a big clearance operation, clear them out of that village

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  and then embed in that village and make their stronghold our next VSO site. And if we did that, it was basically checkmate for the region. Like we now control all of the region. So it was a big movement to get everything we needed to do another embed down there and also a clearance operation at the exact same time. And the area that we chose to make our HQ, you know, you're picking it off of a of a map basically of satellite imagery. And there was a schoolhouse that America had built. It's like the only concrete building in the area and we had built it, I think in 2004. Well, the second that we left that area, the Taliban just made it their HQ building. No more school. And right before

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  we went and did the clearance operation, we dropped a couple of JDAMs on that building to clear everybody out of there. So we're like, this is the place we're going to embed. So my portion of this operation was I was leading the embed team. So the clearance was going to go ahead and then I was going to follow right behind and we were going to seize that ground and basically try to fortify it as quickly as we possibly could and get ready to repel enemy attacks. So. It's about month six. We get there and when we get there, the, there's a big kind of open area, not necessarily a field, but just kind of a, probably an old playground, I would imagine, right in front of the school. And we were told that it had already been cleared of IEDs.

• 1:45:30Speaker 01

  So we get there, I'm in charge, I'm not thinking too much about the IED threat because Army had come through with our guys and their EOD had cleared that entire area. So my thing at this point was speed. We have to get the weapon system set up. We have to get some of our barriers set up to protect us that night when we know they're gonna do a counterattack. So, hey, it's cleared of IEDs, let's get rocking and rolling. Guys are starting to come in through the side of the building and I'm trying to make communications with my platoon chief and my platoon commander and let them know, we've reached the schoolhouse and we're starting the embed, but I don't have satcom, it's just not working. So I break out my sat phone, which almost always works, and I'm

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  trying to get signal and I'm just doing basically railroad tracks in this front open space in front of the school, trying to get a place that gets signal. And I finally get the signal and I can't sit still for more than three seconds anyway. So like as I'm talking, I'm walking around this area that's out front and I finally let them know what's up, hey, we're here. And then we start the big movement. I bring all the logistical trucks in and we start actually offloading the weapon systems and all the things we're gonna need. About 10 minutes into that, and it was one of our local partner forces, it was his country, stepped on a daisy chained IED, it was two 82 millimeter mortars, blew both of his legs off. Our two EOD guys, my Navy

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  EOD guys, were right on his right side, right on his left side, and they were miraculously uninjured. But our medic goes over there, our SEAL medic, and starts patching this guy up, gets the tourniquets on, you know, gets the fentanyl in him, and then we start to come up with a plan to call in the HLZ. My EOD guys, because now there's an active IED threat, they clear a path to the HLZ, which is only 100 meters away from this building. In that 100 meters, they found six more IEDs. Over the next 24 hour period, they found a total of 16 IEDs right in that area that I was

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  walking around in, not paying attention to whatsoever. So, the reality of it was complacency had creeped back in at that point in deployment. And even though I had been told it had been cleared before, the right call would have been to get my guys back in there and clear it. But I wasn't worried about that. I was worried about other things. So complacency is a real thing and you gotta keep, keep watch on it at all times.

• 1:48:04Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so you come back from that deployment and now you're rolling in. You, you, did you go into another like squad commander? Did you go right to platoon commander?

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  I went right to platoon commander. So I was very fortunate in myself and two other guys that were squad commanders at the team asked to stay at the team and go right into our platoon commander's spot. And we were given the opportunity to do it. So very, very rare. I mean, it's unheard of nowadays because of the, the officer pipeline that we have. But back then, a couple of guys would get the opportunity to stay back. And I was one of the fortunate three that got to, to stay back and do another platoon.

• 1:48:41Jocko Willink?

  And how'd you feel in this workup and everything?

• 1:48:44Speaker 01

  Uh, I, my expectations were very high. You know, we did really well going through our, our first workup. And things just kind of made sense to me. And I think a lot of that was the mentorship that I received from my platoon commander, my platoon chief. There wasn't one area where I felt like I really had some significant struggles. Like land warfare made sense to me. Assaults made sense to me. The MAROPs piece made sense to me. So I was expecting to go into ULT, our, our training cycle and just, you know, completely blow it out of the water, do phenomenal. And part of the reason is I've been very fortunate throughout my career to be teamed up with very solid senior enlisted. And that was the case in this one, my platoon commander tour as well. My

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  platoon chief, a guy named Brian, phenomenal. He's still in, like awesome tactician, um, super humble guy, kind of guy that when he speaks, everyone stops and listens to what he has to say, tons of experience. My LPO, who's the second highest ranking enlisted person inside of the platoon, was the, the WarCom Sailor of the Year, just squared away at everything he did. And my fire team leaders were good to go. I had a bunch of new guys. So this was a 21 person, 21 man platoon, and of that 13 of my guys were new guys. So there's some challenges there, but also there's opportunity there. It means that we can raise them the right way. We can show them the things that are important. So I'm thinking we're just going to go through

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  this training and just completely destroy it. And our first block again is land warfare, which I love starting with land warfare because it shows you exactly what you're working with from a platoon standpoint. Shows you who you can go to, who's going to be there, who's willing to, you know, put in the work, all that stuff. So we get there. I feel very confident at land warfare. So I'm thinking we're just going to run through this training and it's not what was happening. And it was very frustrating. We were not doing very well during the land warfare block. And after about the end of week two, I'm kind of at my wits end here and I can't really figure out what the heck is going on. And very fortunately for me, my first platoon

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  chief is now running that land warfare block. So he senses the frustration. And again, you know, he is very involved in mentoring me throughout my entire career. And he pulls me aside after one of our, our afternoons of doing these immediate action drills out in the desert where things are just not going well. And he's like, hey, so what's the deal? And I didn't have an answer. I was just so frustrated. I could not figure it out. I was like, I don't know. Like, I feel like I'm making good calls. I just can't, like, we're just not clicking. And he's like, well, you're, you're trying to control too much. And I was taken back. I'm like, well, what do you mean? I'm trying to control too much. And he's like, you're not letting your fire team leaders, you know, make mistakes. You're not letting

• 1:51:36Speaker 01

  them take charge of stuff. Like you're, you see a mistake, what could potentially be a mistake, and you're jumping in and fixing it. And I'm like, well, of course. Of course I'm jumping in and fixing it like I'm the I'm the platoon commander. I'm responsible for everything that's going on in this platoon and you know i- in my mind, I didn't tell him this, but in my mind, I'm like, well, if I if we make mistakes, the platoon looks bad. And if the platoon looks bad, I look bad. So I'm trying to fix all these mistakes and really what I'm doing is I'm just hamstringing our entire platoon and

• 1:52:08Jocko Willink?

  Centralized command.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  Very centralized, even though I told you my last platoon, I learned all about the value of decentralized command.

• 1:52:15Jocko Willink?

  But then you have to counter that with the ego that's like, I want to look good.

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  Yes, and I hundred percent did like I wanted to our platoon to be the best platoon. I wanted to be the best platoon commander. Like I had, you know, my my personal goals here too, but really I wanted the platoon to succeed and we weren't succeeding and I was the reason. And he said, well, hey, and this was probably not evident to me at this point in time either, because again, I only been in the community for two and a half years at this point and I'm in a leadership position now. And he said, well, why do you think we come out here and train? And I honestly didn't know the answer to that. I was like, well, to to prepare for deployment. He's like, and what else? I'm like, uh, to learn. And I'm like, and he's like,

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  yeah. And he's like, well, how do you learn? He's like, you make mistakes, man. Like, your guys are here. No one in your platoon has ever been in the position they're in right now. You've never been a platoon commander. Your platoon chief, as awesome as he is, has never been a platoon chief. Your fire team leaders have never been fire team leaders. You're all here to learn and part of that is, guys are going to make mistakes. And we make mistakes here so that we don't make mistakes overseas. And by you stepping in, every time you are about to see a mistake or think you were about to witness a mistake, you're cutting off all this learning and they're basically being trained, my guys are basically being trained to not do anything because LT will make the calls.

• 1:53:42Jocko Willink?

  And you can't see everything.

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  Zero percent.

• 1:53:44Jocko Willink?

  You can't you can't control everybody. And so even though and the more they think you're going to control them and then you can't or they're waiting and it just is a disaster.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Disaster and that was textbook what was going on inside of this unit level training block. But fortunately for me, it was our first block. So I was able to course correct and use decentralized command and start giving the guys the room to make decisions. And guess what? When they made decisions, 90% of the time, they made awesome decisions. 10% of the time, just like I would do, 10% of the time, if not more, I made bad decisions. And then we would debrief, the instructors would tell us the things that went right, the things that went wrong, we'd fix them and they wouldn't happen again. So by the time we were out of unit level training, we were doing a phenomenal, phenomenal job, totally prepared for deployment and fire team leaders were rocking and rolling.

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  LPO in chief were never the, the thing that any of us were worried about. We knew they were going to be awesome. But fire team leaders are rocking and rolling and my new guys, because we had so many of them, they were like the backbone of the platoon. You know, they were running stuff, they were learning and we were totally prepped for deployment.

• 1:54:54Jocko Willink?

  And then where'd you guys go on deployment?

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, we did not go back to Afghanistan and we did not go back to Iraq. I think actually Iraq shut down the tail end of our very, my first deployment. So we went to a place called the crisis response element or the CRE for short. And that's a place in the Middle East that they stood up to basically be a break glass in case of emergency type scenario. We'll have two platoons with all this different capability. There was a boat team that was there. There was TF160th was there. So they were basically putting all these assets in this central location in the Middle East in case another Benghazi happened, which had happened the year prior to our deployment.

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  So what everybody told you about the CRE was it's a great opportunity. Like you're going to go there and you're going to be like the force of choice if any contingencies happen. But the reality is nothing ever happened. So guys would go over there and they would spend six months on this little base and they would have to try to find a way to make themselves relevant. And they really couldn't because there was guys in Afghanistan that were doing their thing and there was just not a lot to do besides train. And every now and then you would go on, maybe if you're lucky, one of these what they call joint combined exchange for trainings or JSET. And that basically means we would go to, let's say Lebanon and we would work with the Lebanese SEALs. And it wasn't

• 1:56:21Speaker 01

  War, but at least you were getting to go someplace cool and do some training. That was like the highlight of the Cree tour. So, nobody was really excited about going to the Cree and not going to Afghanistan, but we had a great platoon with great dynamics and very similar to the lessons I learned from my platoon leadership in Afghanistan, just be honest with the guys. Odds are, we're not gonna do anything, but we're all gonna be together for six months. We're gonna train hard, we're gonna improve our skills while we're here, we're gonna be ready in case something does happen. And at the end of the day, we'll have a good time because we're with each other. And that's really all that matters is, we're all here hanging out, getting better together. So that's kind of the environment that we rolled into.

• 1:57:02Jocko Willink?

  But you guys actually ended up doing a pretty significant support for another operation that was going down.

• 1:57:09Speaker 01

  We did, we did. And that was definitely the highlight of that tour. And the way that we were able to support that was through a relationship. So our troop commander had augmented this other command a couple of times in his career. And when we got into theater, he reached out to him. And at the time, that particular command, which was a tier one unit, kind of a deploy-for-purpose unit, they were using Army Rangers as their response force, if you will. So they would go and conduct an operation. And during the planning cycle, if they needed to call somebody for help, it was the Army Rangers basically that they would call. And they were building them into their plan. So he just called them up and said, hey, I've got two platoons of SEALs sitting right here

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  in this place. What do you think about using them as your support instead of the Army Rangers? And they were all about it. No knock on the Army Rangers whatsoever, but we all went through the same initial selection pipeline. We speak a common language, so they were very comfortable with that. So because the troop commander reached out, made a phone call, and leveraged that relationship he had, all of a sudden, we had an opportunity to potentially go and get some work. So, the unfortunate thing was, not everybody got to go down there and support. And even maybe...

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  Not unfortunate, but a little what was weird was they didn't want to send just a platoon down there either because they didn't need 21 people. So they wanted to send about 12 people down there and they chose guys from both platoons. So it wasn't like, hey Jocko, take your platoon down there. It was, hey, we're just gonna pick 12 people and we're gonna send them down there. The initial idea was rotate those 12 people through, but if you put yourself into the mindset of the people that you're supporting, you don't want that. You want the same 12 people the entire time so that you're getting to know each other and know how you operate. So we ended up being down in Africa for about four and a half months of that deployment. And there was lots of different operations

• 1:59:09Speaker 01

  that they were trying to tee up. And the one that got approved was actually the one that probably had hands down like the highest risk attached to it, which blew my mind. Like the other ones kind of seemed relatively easy to go and accomplished. And for some reason, this is the one that got approved. So we were what they call the I R F or Immediate Response Force. And you know, there's different lingo for response forces. And I don't know that this is doctrine, but basically the way that they described it was Q R F means you're like 15 minutes out type thing. I R F is you're literally right there. Like you're staged, ready to go on the X with them. And if something goes wrong, you're there to support. So we were their I R F. And it was a over the beach operation, which

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  was phenomenal for us because because we were deploying to the Cree, a big portion of our training was focused on maritime operations and over the beach operations. So we had prepared extensively for over the beach operations. And now we were getting the opportunity to go and actually support, which most people would probably think, well, SEALs do OTBs all the time. But the reality is, we have not because we've been engaged in conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. So this was one of only two over the beach operations that had happened. I think in like the last 15 years and we were gonna get to be part of it.

• 2:00:33Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot that can go wrong. I, I, I did three shipboard deployments when I was an enlisted SEAL. Or no, two as an enlisted SEAL, one as an officer. So I've done like the, so many OTB ops. It's totally ridiculous. When you're doing an ARG platoon, we, every op we would do would be an OTB. Like we'd just go OTB all the time. It was, and we got really good. I had a core group of guys. We just did back to back ARG platoons. And so we were really good at it. And it is something that you really do legitimately have to like practice and rehearse. Like if you don't practice a foot patrol, you know, worst case scenario, you, you, you, you know, you get a half an hour lost and you've got to walk back or you don't practice.

• 2:01:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, dives, you also need to practice, but even diving is like, you're kind of contained. Like you have your rig, you have your swim buddy, you go, you know, miss the target. Worst case scenario, you miss the target, you swim back to the extract point. Man, if you screw up OTB, like it's a disaster. Like boats are sinking, weapons are getting lost. People are getting stranded. It's just, it's a total disaster. So you have to be good at it. It takes some time to get proficient.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  And which, running the training command, you see it even in training, like guys are losing weapons in training. Guys are, you know, crashing boats in training, even in a very controlled environment. So now you're talking about a very complex operation, just in what they were looking to accomplish in grabbing this one particular individual off of a beach in Somalia. And now you're layering on the most complex thing on the planet, which is the ocean and all the different things that can possibly go wrong with that. And surprise, surprise, if it could have gone wrong, it went wrong on this operation. And I, I can't get into too much of the detail of it, but the, there was phases to the operation.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  So you can't bring in a big Navy ship really close to shore because people know you're there now. So you keep the big ship way off the shore and then you launch in our smaller fast boats. You can't bring those fast boats in too close because they're big and loud and people can hear them. So you have to stop the fast boats at a certain level. And that's when you launch the small boats, the Zodiacs. And then you bring the Zodiacs into a certain level, to a certain distance. And then typically guys are swimming in because it's dead quiet. So the plan was launch the fast boats. To a certain point, then launch the small boats to a certain point, and then the assault force would swim in. We would stay about 100 meters off the beach in our little Zodiacs

• 2:03:07Speaker 01

  and be prepared to support the operation. Everything goes great. All we're doing is we're staying right there and we're picking them up as they come back out through the surf zone in a perfect world. So, we launch the fast boats and one of them hits a crab pot out in the middle of freaking nowhere in whatever sea we're, you know, we're driving around in right now. And it just happens to be the command and control boat. So, the ground force commander is inside and the ground force commander was the squadron commander of this unit is in this boat that goes down. So, obviously, initial wrench in the, in the, in the operation right there. One of the boat guys, the guys that's driving around,

• 2:03:51Speaker 01

  the SWIC operator, has to jump in, in the water at nighttime and literally pull the prop off and put a new prop on to get this boat back up and running. While that's happening, the assault force is swimming in and by the time that boat got back up and running, they were already embroiled in a massive firefight on that target. So, before guys even got to the shore, there was already things that were going wrong. So, the intelligence leading up to this was that it was supposed to be a pretty permissive target, that this person was an Al Shabab operations facilitator. He was now retired, which I don't know what Al Shabab's retirement package looks like, but they gave this dude allegedly a little

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  chateau on the beach to live in. And he was definitely not retired. He was definitely still fully in the game. So, the assault force tries to get him out and they're just receiving massive contact from all over the place. They're exchanging fire. They're trying to find different ways to get inside this building and they just can't do it. Because we're not at war with Somalia, we can't actually bring a whole lot of firepower to bear. So, there's no overhead air support, which is very rare for US forces to go into an area where they can't drop bombs to mitigate risk. So, the way that you typically, from a risk mitigation standpoint, get to be able to send 20 guys deep behind enemy lines

• 2:05:16Speaker 01

  is you've got a lot of assets overhead that can keep bad guys at bay. Well, there was none of that. So it was kinda like the Black Hawk Down scenario where when the word goes out in Somalia that people are here that they don't like, like they rally the freaking troops. And there was multiple different groups of armed males making their way towards this target. While that's going on, we get the call to go lock down the beach and make sure that the beach is secure so that when the assault force comes off, they don't have to swim, they can just load up and we can get out of there because things are getting sporty pretty quick. So on the way in, more issues start to have to happen.

• 2:05:57Speaker 01

  Boats, we have four boats with us, the small Zodiac boats, the rubber boats, and they're all just dying in the surf zone on the way in. And come to find out, the engines that they had in theater at the time that we were using were these new electronic, what do you call it, electronic, not carburetors, but electronic ignition engines. So they had this safety feature on it where if it sucked in sand into the engine, it would kill the engine, so you weren't cycling that sand through the engine and burning it out. Well, you're doing an over the beach operation in Somalia. You're gonna hit sand. You're gonna hit some sand. So all the boats are dying. Guys are jumping out to try to keep the boats from tipping over in the surf zone because

• 2:06:40Speaker 01

  the worst thing that can happen is your boat turns sideways and it takes a 10 inch wave to put that boat over completely. So guys are jumping in, trying to keep the boats in the right direction. We're trying to get the boats to the beach and at this time, the assault force is, you know, coming off of that target and we're starting to receive some pretty significant, you know, machine gun fire. I'm not convinced they knew exactly where we were, but I'm convinced that they knew we were coming from the beach somewhere. So they were basically just trying to spray the beach down. So guys are coming off, we're trying to load guys up, we're trying to get through the surf zone, the boat keeps dying. Some boats have 15, 16 people in them, which they're not meant to have 16 people in them. Some boats have three people in them. You've got jet skis that are coming in trying to pick guys up.

• 2:07:25Speaker 01

  It was just pandemonium. But the professionalism of the guys that were on the target was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. With all that chaos, with all the contingencies going on, they were talking as calmly as you and I are talking right now. And even though they didn't accomplish the objective. Everyone came back, which was a miracle, and there was a lot of really good lessons learned from that operation, but it was a very unique opportunity and the big lesson learned was when you throw the water in there, if it can go wrong, it's going to go wrong.

• 2:07:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was, I was kind of give water the credit for SEALs being good.

• 2:08:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:08:04Jocko Willink?

  Because a lot of times we don't have to work with the water and we don't have to work with the water, everything seems easy, you know, and for anyone else that tries to get in the water and do their, do this job, it's very, very difficult. So you wrap up that deployment and then, then you go to BUDs, right? You become a BUDs instructor.

• 2:08:21Speaker 01

  Yep, I went right from there. I actually asked, I said, hey, I want to stay at the team and do a troop commander tour. And my XO, who was awesome, was like, hey, you're way too junior to do a troop commander tour, so you have to go somewhere else. So I wanted to go to BUDs because I knew historically, if you're an officer at BUDs and there's a need at the team, let's say someone gets fired, let's say someone gets injured, you can very quickly raise your hand at BUDs and say, I'll go fill that gap. So my whole plan was to go over there. It's not that I necessarily had this overarching desire to be a BUDs instructor, it was, I know for a fact, if someone gets fired or someone gets injured and they need a replacement, they'll pull from, from BUDs pretty quick and I could get back to a team quickly.

• 2:09:05Speaker 01

  So I went over there and I ran the third phase of BUDs, which is the last phase, which is the, the portion where you're still selecting people, it's still very physically hard, but now you're actually teaching as well. You're teaching marksmanship, you're teaching demolitions, you're teaching very basic land warfare tactics, and it was a phenomenal tour. I did not know that I was going to enjoy it as much as I did, and a big portion of that was my crew that I had were just a bunch of savages. They were just awesome, like the epitome of what you want of a BUDs instructor. They were all studs, they were all, you know, very physically imposing, they were all very good at the skill, they were all completely bought in to teaching these students, and

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  it was just an absolute great time. And you just, you know, selfishly too, you can actually spend some time mentoring these young men. First phase, not a lot of mentoring goes on in first phase because you don't know how many of those people are going to be there at the end of that seven weeks. By the time they get to third phase, odds are. Guys are gonna graduate. Couple of guys might get rolled for land navigation, for safety, but odds are the officers coming through that program are gonna end up in a SEAL team. So you can start really working with them and investing in them.

• 2:10:20Jocko Willink?

  Did you work any hell weeks while you were there?

• 2:10:22Speaker 01

  Yes, every opportunity.

• 2:10:24Jocko Willink?

  What was that like on the, looking at that from the outside?

• 2:10:27Speaker 01

  The thing that stuck out to me the most was as a student going through it, it just seems like absolute chaos. Like there's no rhyme or reason for anything that goes on. Like it's just a free for all. It's the Wild West, basically. And then you get to see it from the backside and everything is organized and controlled down to the smallest possible detail. It's meant to seem like chaos, but there's times and tables for everything that goes on. So from an instructor point, you know, the stress level is exceptionally high, but it's also a very controlled environment for safety's sake, because you're asking people to do some pretty ridiculous things. And you see some gnarly things when you're going through, uh,

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  watching people go through hell week as well. Like one student in particular was dragging a little bit, so we brought him over and we put the pole socks on him. And my medic pulls me over and he's like, hey, man, take a look at this. And I looked at his pole socks and he was at forty-six percent. And I said, there's zero percent chance he's at four, he'd be dead if he was at forty-six percent. So throw that one out, grab another one and bring it back over here. Do it again, forty-eight percent. If you told that to a doctor, clinically, that person is dead. You can't survive. But somehow this dude was rocking and rolling with forty-eight percent oxygen going throughout his body. And, you know, we very calmly escorted him to medical to get examined. And then within a few minutes, he was back out getting after

• 2:11:54Speaker 01

  it again. So the, the, the amount of things that people can push themselves through is just awe inspiring. When you're a student, you're going through, you're just, you don't have that perspective, I don't think, of really what you're going through. You know, you're just getting after it. When you're an instructor and you see what these guys are going through, it's, it's impressive. It's awesome to see.

• 2:12:15Jocko Willink?

  Did you get any better at figuring out who's gonna make it?

• 2:12:19Speaker 01

  Hmm. If it was a wrestler, I'd put my money on the wrestler.

• 2:12:24Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:12:24Speaker 01

  If it was a guy that played water polo, I'd put my money on the guy that played water polo. Uh, I don't know that I got any better at anybody else, but those two demographics, for some reason, if you saw a guy coming through and he had cauliflower ear, I don't know that, I don't know that I saw one that didn't make it through.

• 2:12:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:41Speaker 01

  Um, lots of different theories behind why that is, but I don't know that I got better at picking. I'll say this, I got better at identifying people that wouldn't be there because the instructors wouldn't allow them to be there for much longer. And that usually had to do with their ego and their attitude towards, uh, other people. Very quickly, you could pick out like, this dude is not going to last because his people are going to turn on him. And then the instructors are going to make sure that they don't make it through the program.

• 2:13:07Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:13:08Speaker 01

  Which is a very good thing.

• 2:13:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because these are people that are concerned about themselves and not about the team.

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 2:13:13Jocko Willink?

  And we don't want them.

• 2:13:14Speaker 01

  Nope, nope.

• 2:13:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, what'd you get, what'd you do when you got done with that? So being a BUDS instructor?

• 2:13:19Speaker 01

  So I was not quite through with my tour yet, but my master plan for going to BUDS paid, paid out. So at the time, there was a need for another troop commander at SEAL Team Five. And I was only about sixteen months, maybe into a two-year tour at BUDS. And my executive officer was a guy named Jimmy May. And I asked him, I said, hey, I think there's a need at SEAL Team Five for a troop commander. Can I jump ship early and go? And he was like, I will never tell someone who wants to go back to a platoon, no. So yes, you can, you just have to convince the skipper and CMC over there that they, that they want you on the team.

• 2:14:01Speaker 01

  And, uh, one of the people I had the opportunity to work with at SEAL Team Seven before, Jason Gardner. Now he's Team Echelon Front. Um, he was the CMC over there, so it was a pretty easy sell for me to slide over there. So I left BUDS early and went over there as a, uh, troop commander. And it was just a phenomenal tour, phenomenal tour. The entire team, I think it was the first tour that I had where it seemed like the entire team. Was focused on the team and not individual performances and you know you go to a SEAL team usually there's three troops and usually what happens is one troop is competing against two troop which is competing against three troop which is good you want some competition

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  but it can get unhealthy you know one troop might not share lessons learned from training to two troop because they want to go to Afghanistan so they want all the the attention basically so even inside of your troop sometime you can have two or three platoons that maybe not really supporting each other as much as they should there's too much competition I did not feel like team fight was like that at all I think that the commanding officer in the CMC Jason set a real good tone out off the bat of what we expect is the entire team to act and function as a team so it was the first team I was ever at that the troop commanders spent time frequently together that the platoon commander spent time frequently

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  together and it really made a huge difference in just the entire culture of that team and that team my experience was everybody was just fired up to be there everybody was fired up to train and everybody just wanted to go on deployment.

• 2:15:40Jocko Willink?

  How was the workup?

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  Phenomenal um so going through again I was blessed with a phenomenal senior enlisted advisor he actually just retired after you know 20 plus years of service and you know I felt again very confident that we were going to go and just crush this training my platoon commanders were all phenomenal my platoon chiefs were all phenomenal they had all been multiple combat situations I think you know just about all of my platoon chiefs just solid solid and we got into unit level training and first block of training was again land warfare which is awesome and at this time we were transitioning as a

• 2:16:22Speaker 01

  community away from training scenarios that were more focused on fighting insurgents and shifting into training scenarios that were more focused on what they would call great powers competition so people that have enemy that have similar capabilities to us think Russia think China they have jets they have night vision goggles they have radios they can jam they can do all these things so because

• 2:16:48Speaker 01

  They were pretty confident, the community was pretty confident that our troop was, was a good troop. They wanted us to go through these FTXs first and experience them as kind of a test before they rolled them out to the rest of the troop. And then we were fired up. We're like, heck yeah, man. They think that, you know, we're the go-to troop for this. Like, let's show them what's up. So again, I'm, I'm ready to just- Such a bad setup. He's such a bad setup, right? So we're ready to just run through this thing. And I was the determining factor in the fact that we were not successful on the first FTX. And I came up with this plan that was just, it was too complex. It was, it was too complex. And I was nerding out over this particular operation. And I had, you know, three platoons.

• 2:17:32Speaker 01

  I had three platoons that I could bring to bear on this battlefield. And I wanted to get a lot of them out in the field. And what that meant was, I just had too many positions. I had two positions in the high ground, and then a third position that was kind of in an adjacent piece of high ground. And in my mind, that all made perfect sense. The reality of the situation was, when you go on a land warfare FTX, for those of you who haven't been yet, things rarely go as planned. And you're going to receive contact. And there's going to be a lot of problems that get thrown your way. So the platoon that went in to do the actual clearance and try to grab the bad guy that we were after, all of a sudden, they're embroiled in this massive firefight. You know, situational awareness

• 2:18:15Speaker 01

  is lost of what, of where who is. And they come out of this, this village, and they're trying to extract with their prisoner that they have now. And they just see muzzle flashes in multiple positions in the mountains, to include bad guy positions that are up there too. And they engage one of the positions that I had put out there that should not have been out there. Hey, onliner L is the tactic, and I violated that. And we paid the man for it that night. And it was 100% my plan. 100. I was convinced, like, I'm like, we got everything locked down. Man, like, there's no way anyone's getting in here. And it was just too much complexity for when stuff hit the fan on target. And we went back.

• 2:19:00Speaker 01

  Guy that I really respect was running training. He just finished up his CO tour, I believe, at SEAL Team 7, phenomenal guy. And, you know, got a good, honest debrief. The Master Chief there that was running training at the time, again, phenomenal guy, damn that guy. Solid professional, and we got a good, hard, honest debrief. And the overarching factor was my plan was just too complex. And if you guys can't understand what you want them to do, they are not going to be able to get it done.

• 2:19:31Jocko Willink?

  Especially once that mayhem hits. Once that mayhem hits, man, it's just, everything's out the window.

• 2:19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's exactly what happened. Everyone knew where those positions were, until the mayhem hit. And until guys are now sucked into a firefight, and there's multiple bad guys in the hills that are maneuvering as well, and they can't see us from the ground, they just see muzzle flashes. And they ended up engaging a position that I put out to support, and that mayhem, that plan did not survive first contact, for sure. So, we, we being me, course corrected, on the next two FTXs, we came up with good, simple plans, and we knocked the next two FTXs out of the park. And again, I can't take credit for that. I had really solid platoon commanders, really solid platoon chiefs, and all I had to do

• 2:20:21Speaker 01

  was give them a good plan that was not too complex, and just let them execute on those plans. And I say, give them, because these were troop-size FTXs, these weren't platoon-size FTXs. So, every FTX was a troop-size.

• 2:20:34Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of cheating. Yeah, like, when I was a troop commander, when I was a platoon commander, it felt like I was kind of cheating, because people would see, like, why aren't you gonna put this, you know, integrate your fire teams and mix them up? And I'd be like, no, we're just staying with our normal fire teams. And, don't you want to put someone over here? And they'll say, nope, we're not doing that. And it was, so we'd get out there, and mayhem would happen, but we'd just be all in our standard operating procedures, we wouldn't have to change anything. And it was like... Kinda easy. I remember when I first started, when I wrote down like the laws of combat, right? And I didn't reference those off of anything. I didn't refer to any manuals. I just was like, I know, you know, you've heard the story, but I was out there at our land warfare training. I was watching this platoon fall apart. And I was like, okay, I can see what they need to do. They don't know how to lead. Here's what they need to do. I didn't

• 2:21:19Jocko Willink?

  go back and cross-reference like any of the warfighting manual from the Marine Corps or FM seven tac eight from the, from the army. I didn't do any of that. I just took what I had, what I knew. And then you fast forward like six months. And I'm like, hey, you know, I need to like, make sure that what I'm putting out is solid, right? And one of the first ones, I felt like I kept telling everyone like, hey, you need to keep it simple. You need to keep it simple. You need to keep it simple. And it turns out that's literally the oldest maximum of, the oldest maxim of military leadership is keep it simple. That's like number one. You can look at any, you know, canon of military leadership and how to conduct operations. It's like, you better keep it simple. And

• 2:22:03Jocko Willink?

  it's literally like cheating. You go out on these crazy operations, but everyone's just doing what they've been doing for the last three months or the last three weeks. And everyone knows their fire team and they know what the objective is and they go do it. No factor. Keep it simple.

• 2:22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. The next two FDXs were simple. Online, L, clear. And surprise, surprise, things went well.

• 2:22:24Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Anything else on that workup?

• 2:22:27Speaker 01

  Um, the big thing that stuck out to me was, we knew that there was going to be the potential that we could be clearing ISIS out of Mosul on that deployment. So the battlefield had changed tremendously from the, I guess technically the second Iraq war that you guys weren't involved in. Uh, we were now not necessarily, it wasn't our fight. It was the Iraqis' fight. We were going to be enabling them with capabilities. We were going to be right there beside them, you know, with them inside some of that fighting, but it was going to be their job to clear those people out. It was also exceptionally

• 2:23:06Speaker 01

  Micromanaged the campaign was. So we knew that we were going to be working with Army Personnel, uh, Marine Personnel, and we knew that we were only going to get basically one chance to impress upon them our level of professionalism. So a big thing that was important to my SCA, my Senior Enlisted Leader and I, was making sure everyone in our platoon understood why we needed them to look professional and act professional. Why we needed them to be clean shaven when they get overseas. Why we needed them to be in a proper uniform. Maybe even more importantly than that, why we needed them to be able to understand what operational terms and graphics were, which for people not in the SEAL community, nobody cares

• 2:23:49Speaker 01

  about those in the SEAL community. Luckily, because I had such good leaders at the platoon level, we only had to say it once, and then they took it upon themselves and carried that message. And the overarching why we gave them was, we're not guaranteed. There's other units in theater. There's Marines in theater. A MarSoc's in theater, you know, Army's in theater. And there's, you know, just because you have a trident on your chest doesn't mean that you're going to be the force of choice to go into Mosul. Like, the opportunity is there, but we have to be able to take advantage of that opportunity. So not only were we focused on training, but guys really had to be focused on the professionalism aspect of it. And it was easy. It was easy. And I think the reason it was easy is because

• 2:24:32Speaker 01

  I had such good leaders at the troop level, and they really understood and owned that message. And guys want to go fight. And if the, if the price they have to pay to go fight is a clean shave and a squared way uniform and, and looking at the, you know, small unit tactics manual every now and then, then that's what they were going to do.

• 2:24:51Jocko Willink?

  FM 101 Tac 5 Tac 1.

• 2:24:54Speaker 01

  No big.

• 2:24:54Jocko Willink?

  Operational terms and gra- terms and graphics. We, it was crazy that we would brief senior leadership in the Army and the Marine Corps utilizing what symbols we thought made sense to us. Just like arrows.

• 2:25:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:10Jocko Willink?

  Like explosions.

• 2:25:12Speaker 01

  A box that says SEAL in it.

• 2:25:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like just, just like random, whatever we thought worked. And man, when I figured out like, oh. The Army and the Marine Corps actually and actually all NATO forces follow this manual right here. Okay, cool. I got it. That was a huge step forward in life.

• 2:25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:31Jocko Willink?

  It was like learning to speak their language in a, in a split second because you only have to pull up that book and you can figure out what you're supposed to be saying. Um, and then how'd that deployment go?

• 2:25:40Speaker 01

  Oh, it was phenomenal, phenomenal. I'll just start off by saying I didn't do anything on that deployment. My role as a troop commander was going to be back, uh, in the rear basically with the command structure, you know, supporting and enabling my guys. There just wasn't a role for the troop commander to be in the field at that point in the, in the war. And you know, that was fun. You know, I had two great deployments where I got to have some fun and now it was my turn to watch my guys go out there and watch all their hard work pay off. Uh, I think our job was done, our heavy lifting for my, my troop chief and I was done during ULT. It was making sure that they were trained up as well as they could

• 2:26:21Speaker 01

  possibly be because we knew that we weren't going to be out in the field with them. Are there opportunities to get out for an operation or two and go see your guys and have a good time? Yeah. But I'm not going to be the ground force commander for these operations. My platoon commanders were going to be, uh, the guys leading the fight. And because of the level of professionalism that our whole team had, and because our commanding officer and our command master chief had this vision of how they were going to make themselves the force of choice for the Mosul clearance, our guys became the force of choice for the Mosul clearance, which should not have happened. The Marines were actually controlling. So for those that don't know Mosul is in northern Iraq. It's a big city. Half of the city is

• 2:27:06Speaker 01

  very metropolitan, very, very, well, it was very new. And the other half of the city is what they call old Mosul. It kind of looks like, uh, it was built probably in the 1800s type thing, mud huts, that type of thing. So the Marines were given ownership of the battle space up north. So Mosul is in the north. So the, the clear choice, when you look at it, should have been the Marines should have been leading the charge into Mosul. Our commanding officer did a phenomenal job of training us and preparing us and selling our capability. And because he did that and put in all the work, building relationships with his, his commanding, the command structure inside of Iraq, before deployment even, he was able to convince them

• 2:27:51Speaker 01

  that actually the capabilities that we bring to bear are more suited for that campaign than the Marines were. Look, nothing against the Marines. We just had a commanding officer that was very good at selling our capabilities and building that relationship. And because he could do that, our guys were the ones that went inside Mosul. So I gained two more platoons for deployment because there was so much work to be done inside of Iraq. I went through workup with three platoons and then at the end of our unit level training cycle, our big training block, I was given two extra platoons to go and deploy with. So I was going into Iraq with five platoons. Those five platoons, we split up into seven different outstations. So spread them all across the country and each of their jobs

• 2:28:36Speaker 01

  was basically clear ISIS out of your space that you're in. And a big piece of that ended up being Mosul. So most of the time, energy and effort got spent in clearing Mosul. And again, I wasn't up there, you know, I let my guys run the show. They were well trained, you know, they knew what the mission was. I got to go out a couple of times and have some good times with them. But it was them leading the fight and they did a phenomenal job, an absolutely phenomenal job. And by the time our deployment was over, our guys had completely cleared all of eastern Mosul. So, or sorry, yeah, eastern Mosul, the, the big city. Crazy urban combat, you know, ISIS, that was their caliphate at that stage in

• 2:29:20Speaker 01

  the game. They had put all of their fighters inside that city. And they plus them up when they knew that the clearance was coming. They would send fighters from Syria to plus this up. So now, you know, imagine you're clearing through this city with skyscrapers and it's completely controlled by three to four thousand ISIS fighters that are inside of there. And because they had the whole city controlled before we pushed in, they were doing things like staging these giant suicide vehicles in all these different garages. So you would be Clearing and then all of a sudden, two blocks ahead, this, something that looks like something out of, you know, Mad Max, you know, Fury Road would come out and it would just barrel towards you and you would have 15 seconds to get a rocket or a bomb on that thing.

• 2:30:05Speaker 01

  And if you didn't, it was going to level a city block. And that was every single day for about the last four months of that deployment is the environment that those guys were out there and operating in. And every single one of the platoons that we deployed with had the opportunity to get in a lot of good kinetic operations on that deployment, which that was unheard of in 2015 and 2016. We had gone through three or four years where guys just weren't getting to actually do the job overseas and we were very fortunate. And I think we were able to take advantage of the position that we were put in to actually go overseas and do some good work.

• 2:30:45Jocko Willink?

  And you guys lost one of your EOD guys, right?

• 2:30:50Speaker 01

  We did, yeah. Only guy that didn't come back. So, JJ Finan, he was our EOD chief, phenomenal dude. He was embedded with one of my platoons that was on the outskirts of Mosul. So, they were up at this place, the Mosul, we call it Mosul Dam House, there's a giant dam up there and one of Saddam's old palaces was up there and we took it over and we were running operations out of there. And they were running into IEDs left and right up there and they were also running into like chemically laced IEDs. So, our EOD capability needed to be at this one particular site. And the, the, the day that we started the push for Mosul, and I say the push for Mosul

• 2:31:35Speaker 01

  because we actually had to get to Mosul to start the clearance. So, we were probably, you imagine almost a World War II scenario where there's no joke a forward line of troops, what we would call a flop. And good guys on this side, bad guys on this side, and you would go to that flop and you would just exchange fire all day long and try to get to a position where you could push the flop forward at the end of the day and then just do that day after day until you actually get to Mosul to start the clearance. So the very first day that the clearance kicks off, our guys are embroiled in, you know, massive firefight at one of these forward line of troops. And they realize that they're getting maneuvered on and they can't really stay in the position that they're in.

• 2:32:19Speaker 01

  So they make a call to get in their, their up armored vehicles and go to a more tactically advantageous position to continue the fight. They realize as they started to do that, my EOD guy, JJ, the chief, was in the front seat of the front vehicle, uh, cause it's his job to try to spot things, right? And he realizes pretty quickly that the route they chose took them right into a minefield, basically. So he calls an all halt and now they're trying to figure out how they're going to get out of this minefield. So, hey, safe in, safe out, right? And what that means for people not in the military is if you walked in a way, it's probably pretty safe to assume you can walk back out that way.

• 2:33:01Speaker 01

  Much less risk than continuing to go forward or try to go left and right because you've already trod that path once. So he's in the vehicle, he makes the call to, you know, all back, so to back everybody up. And the platoon chief is in the back of the vehicle and he's got his door to the mat V open and he's trying to make sure that they're following the exact same tire track that they were in before. And JJ's kind of directing the entire thing and he sees, uh, the platoon chief with his door open and he says, hey, man, close your door, like, that's my job. So platoon chief closes his door, JJ opens his, he's looking down, trying to spot, and

• 2:33:41Speaker 01

  I don't know if they had just barely missed it the first time, or if it was a crush plate. And a crush plate is a tactic the enemy will deploy where they will build a, a charge and they'll attach a pressure plate to it that has to have basically so much poundage, um, before it detonates. So like you've got these two different connectors and, you know, someone steps on it and it pushes it down a little bit more. Someone else steps on it and it pushes it down a little bit more. And the reason that's a great tactic is if I hit the first guy in the platoon, everybody else can stop and pull back. If I hit the seventh guy in a platoon, now everybody's in a really bad scenario. So a crush plate. Is probably what it was and as they were driving back over that they detonated it and JJ

• 2:34:26Speaker 01

  was looking right down at the charge and you know it did him in and our guys tried to keep him alive they were working on him um after all of this went down after the bomb goes off uh all the guys in the vehicle are clearly you know their bells are rung but like they're going to work they're trying to save them they are able to keep him alive for a pretty decent period of time but there's no hope man he's he's gone and by the time they get him to the uh the the HLZ to get him out of the medevac bird he's not responding he's he's he's gone um I was was one of the days that I was actually fortunate enough to be able to go out with one

• 2:35:08Speaker 01

  of my platoons I was my another platoon Charlie platoon and I were out at another point in the Florida line of troops and I was having the best day that I'd had on deployment so far because I was finally out of the office with my guys in the field we were exchanging it a little bit with the ISIS guys on the other side of the flat and we were having a good time and I was just loving being back with the guys and then I get the phone call and you know as a leader whenever you get we always have our satellite phone with us so that you have multiple layers of communication right you've got your satellite radio your personal radio the vehicles have radios all of this is meant to be sure that you can reach people no matter what's going on when

• 2:35:49Speaker 01

  the satellite phone goes off usually what that means is they're purposely choosing not to communicate over the net that everybody in theater can listen to so I feel the vibration in my pocket and I'm already got like the pit the pit feeling and took the phone call it was actually one of your one of your guys that told me and went from best day to worst day

• 2:36:23Jocko Willink?

  How long was that, um, how long were you guys, you know, actively fighting in Mosul?

• 2:36:31Speaker 01

  The last four months of the deployment was every single day inside of Mosul, every single day.

• 2:36:38Jocko Willink?

  And then what was the turnover like? When you were turning over, were you turning over for, hey, you guys are gonna go and do what we were doing?

• 2:36:44Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. And just fortunately, the turnover happened at the best possible point in the clearance it could, which is, we had just finished the eastern part of the clearance. We'd reached the river, and now SEAL Team 7 came in behind us, and it was their job to finish the clearance. So we had reached this perfect landmark to do that turnover. So they were there for a couple of the days, uh, prior to that. So they got some good experience in, they got to see what our guys were going through. And then we turned over to them, and they got to take care of the western part of Mosul and clear that up. And they finished that clearance on their deployment. And once that was done, ISIS was crushed. I mean, they

• 2:37:26Speaker 01

  were more or less crushed by the time we had rolled out, not because we, you know, I'm not saying we crushed them, but I'm just saying, their foothold in Mosul was gone, they weren't getting it back. So SEAL Team 7 came in, awesome to hold for them too, and, and finished, uh, finished it up. The thing that was crazy to me about that deployment was, at times, the level of micromanagement that was going on. My platoon commander that was in Mosul every day, had to have a, I shouldn't say had to, we chose to put it in there. He had a phone line in his mat-v, in his command vehicle, that went directly to the one-star commanding general of the theater. That's the level of intrusiveness that was happening on the battlefield.

• 2:38:09Speaker 01

  Because we had such good leadership in our commanding officer and our, our command master chief, uh, we embraced it. We embraced it. And they said, look, guys, this is going to be the reality. And you can do what other platoons have done and what other units have done, which is push back against it. And guess how far that's going to get you? Or you can embrace it and you can give them everything they want before they need it. And that's the best chance you have at getting a little bit of freedom. So we went into the one stars, uh, JOC, they're basically a tactical operations center. And we gave them every piece of equipment we had to allow them to battle track us. And then we put the phone line inside, which, you know, bane of that GFC's existence, but it was in there and

• 2:38:53Speaker 01

  it was his job to monitor that phone line. And if there was questions directly from the one star, he was going to be the one that needed to field that question and put that one star back in their comfort zone so that we could continue, uh, the clearance. And the choice was pretty clear. You can either push back against it and you can see how that works out for you, or you can just embrace it. And because we chose to embrace it, we had more freedom to maneuver than, uh, anybody else did. Now, eventually what happened is the, I believe it was the two star commanding general, the entire campaign came and visited my guys in the field in Mosul, and he saw the process. And he said,

• 2:39:33Speaker 01

  this is ridiculous. And almost overnight, the authority to release munitions from aircraft went from the one star to the guy on the ground. So overnight change. And that was based on the fact that you had a leader, a two star, who wanted to see what the reality was in the field and was not happy with what he saw. And he changed it up. And that was the real game changer for Mosul. The first month of Mosul, the Iraqi special operations forces were getting a trited so fast that we thought the campaign was over. We thought that we were going to lose. Uh, part of that was they were not necessarily employing the best tactics. And part of that was it took so long to get a strike off. And when you're dealing with multiple suicide vehicles bearing down

• 2:40:19Speaker 01

  Down on you at any given time, you can't hesitate with that stuff. You don't have time to call and paint a crystal clear picture. So A big piece of it was the Iraqi started listening to tactics that our guys were telling them to employ. And equally big piece of that was finally our guys on the ground had the ability to conduct business the way that it needed to be conducted and they took full advantage of it.

• 2:40:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you gotta, when you're in a leadership position, you gotta go out and see what's happening on the ground. That's all there is to it. And if you're not doing that and you're looking at it from a distance, man, things just look different from a distance and they might even seem like they're squared away. Yeah. You know, the process that when you look at a flow chart that someone's presenting you on PowerPoint of how the fires are getting approved, you're like, oh, okay, this probably takes five minutes, you know, this probably takes three minutes. That's no problem. First of all, you don't realize how long three minutes really is and you also don't realize that three minutes is really 30 minutes. So, and this applies to anywhere. It applies to business, it applies to everything that's going on from your, from your leadership perspective. You have to get out and actually go down and see what's happening. And if you don't do that, it's gonna be problems. You have no idea what's going on. No idea.

• 2:41:23Jocko Willink?

  Um, you get done with that deployment. Now you, you come back and what you step up to Ops at SEAL Team Five?

• 2:41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did. I did not want to leave the, the SEAL Team. I loved everything about SEAL Team Five. I asked another troop commander, cause I was still pretty junior for a troop commander and they said, no. So I said, okay, cool, Ops. And they said, sure, you can stay around at Ops. And I mean, you know, Ops is not usually a job that people are super excited to do in the SEAL Teams. There's a lot of maybe bad stigma that comes with the Ops jobs and just the fact of how many hours you're gonna work and you're not with the guys and you're gonna be doing some admin type stuff and the reward, the rewarding feeling is maybe not as high as, as other tours. I loved it. I loved it for a couple of different reasons. I had a phenomenal

• 2:42:11Speaker 01

  commanding officer and a phenomenal command master chief and that commanding officer gave me a whole lot of room to

• 2:42:20Speaker 01

  Run the day to day of that command. And, you know, he led by commander's intent, hey, here's what I want to have happen. And I would go and I'd build out some, some courses of action for him. And then I would brief him, I'd tell him which one I thought was the best one. And 99.9% of the time, he would say, cool, go execute. I also had very good senior enlisted was my counterpart. My ops master chief was another phenomenal guy who, you know, knew a lot more about the operations role than I did. Cause I'd never been in it before. So he, you know, helped me out, keep me in line, kept me pulling in the right direction. And then again, we were blessed with really good troop commanders who made my life very easy. And really good platoon commanders who made my life very easy.

• 2:43:03Speaker 01

  And unfortunately I did not get to deploy with them because I got pulled to go to the, the training command, which was awesome. But always a bummer to miss out on deployment, especially when you have a team that you just love. And in the operations job, when you're in the training cycle, it's not super rewarding. You know, you're putting training together, you're running the command on behalf of the, of the CO day to day. You're piecing all those things together, you're prepping for deployment, then you get on deployment. And as an operations officer, that's where you can potentially have a little bit more fun. If there's a strike cell in theater, you'll probably have a hand in running a whole lot of those strikes. So I was very much looking forward to deploying and getting the opportunity to, to run the strike cell.

• 2:43:47Speaker 01

  And also just, I loved everybody at the command and I didn't want to, to leave that command. But I was called up to go to the training command, which was awesome. I just wanted to do it six months later. I didn't want to do it right then and right there.

• 2:44:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I want to make a quick note. You, you're talking, you've been talking about your career and most, the vast majority of your career. You've had a lot of autonomy and been able to do a lot of things. And that was very similar to my career. But I would say, cause I was kind of, you know, tracking your career. You know, first of all, when I was putting you through training and, and then, you know, through just guys that I would talk to and what, what team they're at, what platoon, how they doing. You were squared away. And when you're squared away, things are a lot easier. When you're squared away, you get a lot more leeway.

• 2:44:37Jocko Willink?

  When you're squared away, when you do a good job, when you're professional, when people can trust you, when you, when your boss trusts you, when the ops master chief, when the ops officer, when the XO, when the CO, when people trust you. You can do, you can do a lot more and it's all those little things that you mentioned. It's, you know, making sure that everyone's professional, but it's also like, hey, doing a good job during operations. And when you screw things up saying, hey, this is my fault. Here's what we do to fix it. Like all these things are what lead to freedom and, and having this autonomy. There's, I always say, if you talk to most of the people that ever worked for me, they'd be like, oh, freaking Jocko's like, he'll let me do whatever I want. Like he was just, he let me do anything, anything I wanted to do, he let me do it. There's a few people that were not squared away.

• 2:45:22Jocko Willink?

  And if you said, oh, how is it working for Jocko? They'd be like, oh, he's a complete micromanager. There's a reason I'm micromanaging. If I'm micromanaging you, there's a reason why I'm micromanaging you. And I just wanted to point that out. You know, you had a great reputation of being squared away, of being professional, of getting the job done, of making good decisions. And that gives you a ton of leeway. And look, can you get a micromanager that's like, doesn't matter what you do, they're going to micromanage you? Yep. Can you be in a situation where like you were talking about the beginning of that deployment, the first month where, look, even the, you know, we talked about a platoon commander never being a platoon commander before and, uh, and a platoon chief never being a platoon chief. Well, whoever's in charge during the initial assault of Mosul,

• 2:46:03Jocko Willink?

  they probably never been in that, hey, we're going to go assault, uh, do a siege assault on a city. They probably never been in that position either. So they're doing the best they can. They didn't quite figure it out. So the only thing they know to do is just like control, kind of like when you were at, at land warfare as a troop commander and you're like, or as a platoon commander, I think you said, and you're going to control everything. There was probably a leader there thinking, I'm going to control everything. I gotta make sure that we don't do, make any mistakes. I don't want to have any of this. I don't want to have any of that. So they get very in the micromanagement mode and something happens to happen where they can readjust their mindset. In this case, two star flies out, looks at what's going on the ground and says, this is not right. And then put some trust back in the troops on the ground, but I just wanted to point that

• 2:46:44Jocko Willink?

  out. If you as a person listening to this are feel like you're getting like, man, oh, I heard Sean Glass, he got to do whatever he want. I'm going to tell you, Sean Glass earned the right to do whatever he want. He earned that freedom. And if you're feeling like you're micro getting micromanaged, it's not the responsibility of your boss to figure out that you need more freedom. It's your job to prove to your boss that you're going to make good decisions, that you're going to be professional, that you're gonna, when something goes wrong, you're going to take ownership. Like, all these are important lessons. And you've kind of, you've kind of spelled out almost like a fantasy career of, I got to do what I want. I got a lot of leeway. I got this, I got that. I mean, getting, you had, you already got three platoons as a troop commander, then they gave you five platoons

• 2:47:29Jocko Willink?

  as a troop commander. That's not normal. They had a huge amount of trust in you as a leader to step up and be able to do that. So, I just wanted to point that out. If people, if you're listening to this, and you're thinking, man, that guy had great bosses, he didn't get micromanaged. I'm going to tell you, Sean earned that right to not be micromanaged. And I think that's an important thing to point out. Um, you get done at Team Five, now you go to Trade At. You're in the best, what I believe, is the best leadership lab in the world.

• 2:47:57Speaker 01

  Hands down.

• 2:47:58Jocko Willink?

  I don't think there's anything better than Trade At for seeing and watching and learning and understanding leadership. I don't think there's anything close to it. And you are in a position where you get to see leadership in action on an almost nightly basis. You get to see leaders get put in through a scenario, and the next night you get to see other leaders get scenario through that same scenario. And the next week, you get to get, see other leaders get put through that same scenario. So, you're seeing like iterations of leadership, and you start to learn what works and what doesn't. And it's a, uh, it's a very powerful, I think it's the best leadership lab in the world.

• 2:48:39Speaker 01

  I, I think you are 100% right. And I, something that's a testament to that is, When you are the officer in charge of that training command, there are professional sports teams that want to come and talk with you and your staff about how you organize training. You get authors that are writing books about leadership that want to come and see what's going on. The Red Bull training team came out there to see what was going on. Like, it is, hands down, the most unique leadership lab on the planet. And we spend so much time and money as a community training. And the scenarios that we develop, like it's testing

• 2:49:20Speaker 01

  every single piece of that platoon. From the troop commander, who maybe has four deployments, to the platoon chief, who maybe has six, all the way down to that brand-new machine gunner. Every single FTX is testing every single skillset for one of those individuals.

• 2:49:40Speaker 01

  When you, what was the biggest, or, you know, what was, what'd you take away from it? Two biggest takeaways from a leadership perspective. One is, if you came in there with a big ego from a leadership perspective, you, your people were going to suffer. Your people were going to suffer for six months if you couldn't freaking change that. And that, I'm not saying, I'm also not, not saying this, but I'm not saying that was because my guys would hone in on you and crush you. I'm saying that because you would fail to take on the lessons learned. And if you're a platoon commander or a platoon chief that's not accepting those lessons learned, you're making the same mistakes, which means every night is a rough night for your platoon. And we saw plenty of platoons, you feel bad

• 2:50:25Speaker 01

  for these guys, where every night is a rough night for that platoon. And it's 100% on that, on that leader. And one of my favorite experiments to run, and I'm sure you did something similar, was sometime in a scenario, I would eventually, not every night, but every platoon commander that came through got this at least once. When I was there, I'd kill them in a scenario. We'd be doing these big FTXs, and I'd put them down, and I wanted to see what was going to happen. And typically, one of three things would happen. One, Everything would just grind to a halt. Everything would grind to a halt. No one would make a call. No one would wanna make the next decision. Everybody would just kinda freeze.

• 2:51:09Speaker 01

  And what that tells me that I need to talk to that platoon commander about is just, he's micromanaging. The same thing I was doing as a platoon commander. He's micromanaging. His people are afraid to make that call. The second thing that happened is, hey, everything went great. Guys picked up the slack. They covered, they, you know, they covered and moved for each other. They got the job done and what that told me was, the guy did a great job of decentralized command, that his people knew what was up. And they were not afraid to make decisions. The one that was always my favorite to watch is, we would remove the platoon commander and everything would just get so much better. Just so much better. Uh, and that tells me that person was just a frickin' egomaniac, just a hurdle.

• 2:51:52Speaker 01

  Just get that person out of the way and let the platoon do what they know is right.

• 2:51:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy to watch. And you could do the same thing, like, uh, you might have a super strong platoon chief. And it'd be the same thing. You kill him and everything grinds to a halt. Or you kill him and people, people start stepping up. You know, it's just, you gotta do those things. And you definitely learn. And the ego thing,

• 2:52:16Jocko Willink?

  most, vast majority of the time, guys would, they would get, they would take the lessons on board. They'd be like, yeah, we sucked last night. God, that was horrible. I'm embarrassed. You know, I can't believe we did that. And over, you know, five FTXs, by the fifth one, the land warfare cadre can't beat the ta- the task unit anymore. They can't beat the troop anymore. They're too good. They maneuver too quick. They're covering for each other. They're keeping things simple. They prioritize. Like, they're just executing and you can't, there's nothing you can do about it. Uh, which is great. That's what we always wanted to see. Some, it was weird sometimes, you'd get a platoon or a troop that would think you wanted them to fail, which is the craziest thing in the world. You're like, bro, you're my friend. Like, I grew up with you. I want you to win, dude.

• 2:53:01Jocko Willink?

  But you can't do this dumb shit. You can't do that. You gotta stop doing that. Um, but vast majority of the time, they were learning and it was great. I, one thing that I'll never forget is seeing guys, like, have an enlightenment, right? Seeing like a troop commander or a platoon commander or a platoon chief or just seeing them have like an enlightenment. And they would go from literally being a bad leader. And they'd figure it out and then they'd become a good leader like almost instantaneously. That was always awesome to see, but man, the experience that you get from a leadership perspective at that, in that trade at position, I was so lucky because when I was in E5, I was at SEAL Team One and I was in training cell and I was teaching, this is before there was SQT. So I was teaching like new guy officers.

• 2:53:46Jocko Willink?

  We're taking them out with the new guy enlisted guys and we'd go out and I would be doing I-ads with them and like, I'd be detached and I would see what it looked like and I would see what worked and what didn't work. So by the time I was an officer, like I had already done like what, well, the equivalent of a trade at tour.

• 2:54:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:01Jocko Willink?

  Freaking so lucky.

• 2:54:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:03Jocko Willink?

  So lucky.

• 2:54:04Speaker 01

  The, the word that you just used, the detachment piece was the second big lesson learned, which is the second, usually that's the light bulb moment for most people.

• 2:54:11Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 2:54:11Speaker 01

  Is when they realize, hey, I, I have to detach from what's going on right here from a leadership perspective. I can't be the person that's patching up the wounded people. Uh, all of a sudden things would get a lot better for that entire, entire platoon, entire troop. And usually it would take a pretty rough night before you could convince them like, you gotta step back. Some people are harder than others and they wouldn't learn quite as quick, but.

• 2:54:37Jocko Willink?

  Hey, when you kill them.

• 2:54:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:38Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden they're alive and they're just sitting there listening to what's happening. They're watching and the, all of a sudden the answers become very clear, but they're not allowed to do anything about it. And I remember so many guys, they'd be like, this is what you should be doing. You see how, you know what's going on? You see how you're monitoring this? You see, you see how, you see what they should be doing, right? And he's like, yep, you didn't know that three minutes ago.

• 2:54:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:56Jocko Willink?

  Because you were freaking clearing rooms like an idiot. You shouldn't be clearing rooms. You shouldn't be working on that wounded guy. You shouldn't be handling these prisoners. All that stuff that you're doing, like how many rounds do you have? How many mags do you have left? I have two mags left out of nine.

• 2:55:08Speaker 01

  Wrong.

• 2:55:08Jocko Willink?

  Dude, what are you doing, bro?

• 2:55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:55:11Jocko Willink?

  Stop.

• 2:55:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:55:12Jocko Willink?

  You're a leader.

• 2:55:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was fortunate enough to learn that lesson, uh, early on, the ability to detach. And that was one of the things that I would always try to impart on leaders, people in leadership positions as quickly as I could. So when I was running third phase and we were exposing these young officers to tactics for the first time, we'd run these immediate action drills and they would just be nightmares. I mean, one, because they're just learning, but two, because they would shoot. Seven out of nine mags. And then the next round that we would go, I would talk to them in between runs and I would just say, hey, look, man, your job is not to do that. Your job is to maneuver the platoon. You have a platoon. That's your weapon system. Your weapon system as a SEAL platoon commander is your platoon. It's not your rifle.

• 2:55:55Speaker 01

  And get comfortable with that. And then we'd let them go again. Some guys got it. Some guys didn't. And if they didn't, the next run, I would take their gun.

• 2:56:03Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:56:03Speaker 01

  And guess, guess what would happen? The second I would take their gun, all of a sudden, they're making good calls. Because they're not worried about seeing the world through a rifle scope anymore. And it was the same thing at TradeNet. As soon as you can get people to understand, they had to remove themselves from those scenarios, the better off that it was going to be for every single person that was inside of that troop or inside of that platoon.

• 2:56:28Jocko Willink?

  So 2019, you decide you're going to get out.

• 2:56:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:56:34Jocko Willink?

  You have a freaking awesome career. You're living the dream. You've had incredible deployments. You've had all kinds of autonomy. You've got a great reputation. You're running training. What's going on? Why you decided to get out?

• 2:56:47Speaker 01

  Um, family. So at the time, five kids. Um, and it was kind of a combination of things. So that's all I've ever wanted to do was be a SEAL. And I was having the best time of my life. Like every single deployment, every single tour was my favorite tour. I was just genuinely loved being a part of that community. I love putting on the uniform. I loved being around the people that you have the opportunity to be around when you're in that community. It's unlike anywhere else in the world. And, uh, as I started to realize the impact that some of those things were going to have on my family, it shifted my perspective from being,

• 2:57:28Speaker 01

  I don't even know if I would call it selfish, because my wife never complained about it. My wife is the best human being on the planet. And you know, she's, she's one to eight, which kind of helps probably in understanding that everything's not about you. So she was fully supportive of the career. She, to hear her tell it, she knew that a Sean inside the SEAL platoon or inside the SEAL community was going to be a very fulfilled and happy Sean, which would translate to. A very good and fulfilled husband and a very good and fulfilled father. Even if that time that I was home was minimal, the time that I was gonna be home, I was gonna be fully invested because I was just on cloud nine the entire time.

• 2:58:09Speaker 01

  You get through with the trade at tour, I was very young, maybe not age wise, but uh, time wise, I finished that tour and I was at like 11 and a half years in the military. So I start to look at the next portion of my career and again, I would love to do the next nine years, even though I'm not gonna be with the guys, even though I'm gonna be in some staff positions, hopefully a commanding officer tour thrown in there towards the tail end, I would just still love to be in the community. But when I looked at where my family was gonna be during those tours, it changed my math up a bit and if you remember I said my commanding officer when I was a troop commander was phenomenal, he was phenomenal at everything, including just being a mentor on life too.

• 2:58:54Speaker 01

  He was the first guy that sat me down and walked me through the rest of my career where I wanted to be and not just from a career standpoint. He made me sit down with a sheet of paper like this and put where I wanted my next five tours to be. And then he made me write down beneath every single one of those tours, the ages my kids would be when I did that. That hurt, that hurt a lot. I mean, sorry commanding officer, but that might be the reason I'm not in the community anymore, but thank you for prioritizing me. But uh, when I looked at the fact that my oldest son, Ronan, was gonna be 18 years old when I hit 20, that hurt.

• 2:59:36Speaker 01

  Because what that means is now that I could finally be there every day, involved in his life, he's gone, he's out the door to college, doing great things, hopefully enlisting or going into the community. No pressure, son.

• 2:59:53Speaker 01

  But that was a start, that was kind of like a slap in the face of, oh shoot, man. Like, I've got one chance at this, at this father thing. And like you said, I had a great career. I had a lot of fun. I had some really unique opportunities. And it just became apparent to me that I needed to spend the rest of this portion of my life focused on my family and not necessarily on myself. That being said, it's not like I came to this decision overnight. I wrestled with this thing for a very, very long time because I didn't necessarily know what I was gonna do on the outside. I knew I loved the job. I also knew that people in the community had been looking out for me.

• 3:00:36Speaker 01

  And they had been giving me these very unique opportunities because they wanted me to be in the community long term. And that means a lot to me. When I look at your troop commander, when you were a platoon commander, was my boss multiple times, including when I was running the training command, and he was phenomenal. So I had to tell this person, who hand-selected me, to go and run this training command, I had to tell him that I was not gonna be in the community anymore. And I know for a fact that he invested a lot of his personal time in me. And that, that carries a lot of weight. You know, the, the fact that people poured their time and their effort and their mentorship into me, I didn't, I didn't take that lightly, but it basically just came down to, hey, it's either the community

• 3:01:20Speaker 01

  or it's spend time with the family. And, uh, family's always gonna win out on that one. And I will say this, when I did have that conversation, he was awesome about it. He was fully supportive. He busted my chops a little bit at first, of course, but he was fully supportive of it. And the community was fully supportive of that decision, which made it easier for me going out of the community, knowing that I didn't burn bridges, knowing that I had a lot of people, you know, still rooting for me.

• 3:01:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a tough one.

• 3:01:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's not a day go that goes by that I don't wish I was still in there. But then I'm at home with my kids. I get to, you know, coach boxing in the town that I live in and my son comes to it. I get to drop them off every day. I get to pick them up most every day. I get to go to all their games. I get to go to all their events and none of that stuff would be possible if I was still in.

• 3:02:12Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And then so what'd you do once you got out? This is when you went to Agora's?

• 3:02:17Speaker 01

  It is. And I, you know, you and I had already had the conversation about Echelon Front. And I was going to do that. And then so rewind back to Officer Candidate School. I told you too, my, my best buddies, I met at Officer Candidate School and then we went through the, the selection together, had some tours together. Well, one of these guys got out a little bit earlier than I did. And him and another SEAL who was a lifelong buddy of his started a, it's construction technology, which is not two things that typically go together, but it's a construction technology company. And he wanted me to come on board with him and be, basically help him start it up and run it.

• 3:03:01Speaker 01

  And I was already in conversation with you and, you know, Echelon Front's awesome. And I was like, this job is, sounds amazing in the team. Like just look at who's on the team. It's, it's basically like being in a SEAL platoon again. So I was all on board and then I, I called you. And I said, hey, I've got this other opportunity to do this. And I don't even think I'm paraphrasing. I think this is literally what you said, which is you would be stupid to not do that. You said, go do that. And I had told you, I was only going to give them probably two years in that position because we didn't want to be in California and we wanted to move out. And you said, go do that for two years, learn, get some experience in the civilian sector. We're here when you want to come onto the team. So I did that for two years.

• 3:03:47Speaker 01

  Was the COO for about the last year of that. You know, there was no need for a COO at first. It was like four of us trying to get stuff done. But that was a big learning experience. And also, just an awesome time, an awesome time to see a lot of the things that we had learned in the community translate directly to civilian life, which there's always questions about it, right? There's always questions about, does this stuff that we learn in this very unique niche, is it going to fit with the civilian sector? And the answer is, yeah, because the common thread is people. And people are the same in the military as they are in construction, as they are in the tech sphere, they're the same.

• 3:04:29Jocko Willink?

  So you end up doing that for two years, great company, by the way, and what they do is they build houses in a factory. They design everything, they, they, then they build the houses in the factory in pieces and they ship them out and you have like a house in like two weeks.

• 3:04:46Speaker 01

  It's insane.

• 3:04:47Jocko Willink?

  It's done.

• 3:04:47Speaker 01

  It's insane.

• 3:04:47Jocko Willink?

  So Agoras, check it out if you need to build a house.

• 3:04:51Speaker 01

  The, the balls of these two dudes to, so how they came up with this was they both built houses in Coronado and one of them did the traditional, let me bring in a contractor, design team, and one of them said, hey, it'll be quicker if I do modular. And they were miserable experiences. Both of them just freaking hated it. And out of that experience, they both said, well, let's just start this company with our focus being to literally change how the United States builds homes. It's a pretty lofty goal. And I'm trying to put myself in that mindset of what I would have done if I had just built a house and in Coronado, and it was a painful process. I don't think I would have set out to start a company to change the way that America

• 3:05:33Speaker 01

  builds. I think I would have just said, well, that sucked. And now I've got a cool house in Coronado that I'm, I'm, I'm happy with. But they started this company, uh, it's killing it. These guys are phenomenal and they're going to continue to do amazing things. And I was thrilled to be a part of the team.

• 3:05:50Jocko Willink?

  And it's interesting, you said, you know, technology and construction, which normally don't go together. You're right. And, you know, these guys point out that construction hasn't changed. It hasn't changed in America in like probably. 50, 60 years. Sure, there's some, there's some advancements with like

• 3:06:07Speaker 01

  Material.

• 3:06:08Jocko Willink?

  Your, your material, but also the way that, you know, you can go, you can have an iPad and you can see what the drawings are and you can kind of see some different angles, but still the same thing. You're still like got a guy out there swinging a hammer. You're building the whole thing on site. That's it. That's what you're doing. And these guys have got it. No, we're going to build this thing in a factory. It's going to be squared away. We're going to ship it out there. We're going to get this thing put up. I mean, it's, it's, it's changing the way that we do construction in the country. So I'm sure those guys are going to continue to dominate. Um, you do that for a couple of years and then you move out to Virginia. How'd you land in Virginia?

• 3:06:41Speaker 01

  So again, my wife's one of eight. So she's originally from New Hampshire. Her, her dad was a undercover agent for customs for a long time. So he was doing a lot of stuff in Boston against the Irish mob, stuff like that. So they, they chose to live in New Hampshire because it's basically right across the border and he could commute in. So, uh, one by one, they all started kind of matriculating down to this town. I don't know if I even want to say the name of the town because I don't know how many more people I want coming to live there, but it's an awesome town in Virginia. And they all started to come down there and, and move into that town and it just became kind of the, the mecca of our family. So it was an easy decision for us. My wife would probably say it wasn't an easy decision because I'd rugged my feet for a long time.

• 3:07:27Speaker 01

  But when we finally made the decision, uh, grandparents are there. Uncles and aunts are there. Cousins are there. The family is there. So we moved out there. We've got, uh, 60 acres out there, run a small farm. Kids get to go to school with their cousins. They get to see their family every single day of the year. And it's all the things that advantages of San Diego. Yeah, there's awesome things that happen in San Diego. Things that weren't in San Diego for us was we're never having 60 acres and, uh, we had no family. Aside from my, my sister who's a trainer for NSW, she's the only family that we had here. So it was an easy decision to move out there.

• 3:08:08Jocko Willink?

  And so then we transitioned you into, into Echelon Front as this was happening.

• 3:08:13Speaker 01

  Like literally I stepped out of Agoras one day and was on board with Echelon Front the next day.

• 3:08:19Jocko Willink?

  How you like Echelon Front?

• 3:08:20Speaker 01

  What's not to like about it? You know, it's awesome. Everything about it. The team is phenomenal. The work, getting to go around and meet awesome Americans and talk to them about some of the issues that they're facing, talking to them about how to be more effective leaders in their work life, in their personal life is ridiculously rewarding, ridiculously rewarding. And you see the difference that it makes in someone's life when they decide to stop pointing fingers, when they decide to stop blaming other people for problems, and they decide to actually do something about those problems. It's huge. And you go and work with these companies in all kinds of different sectors of the economy,

• 3:09:05Speaker 01

  right? Everything you could possibly imagine. And a lot of times when we get brought in, it's because there's a change in leadership. And new leaders came in and they realized that maybe things weren't done very effectively from a leadership perspective before, and they want a fresh start. And they'll bring us in to kind of, you know, do some training and talk about leadership. And we'll go and we'll see these, these people who are working hard jobs, hard jobs, factory jobs, oil field, construction out there, and man, they're just trying to provide for their family. And now you layer on the heat, and you layer on hard manual labor, and you layer on things that are inherently not the safest occupations. And now on top of that, you've got to add the fact that they've got to deal with the

• 3:09:50Speaker 01

  frickin' crappy boss. Like, that's a tough thing to see. And, you know, we'll come in and you see new leadership comes in and they realize that there's a problem, and they want to give a better environment for their people. And that's awesome. You can come in and you can actually make people's lives better. And that really is what leadership is all about, is empowering your people in every single area of their life. And it's cool to be able to be a part of that for so many different folks. And also, I get to learn from, from you, from Echo, from everyone on the team. Like, I'm not done learning about leading just because I'm at Echelon Front now. I get to work with awesome people, and every time I go onsite with someone, I'm just listening, and I'm learning too.

• 3:10:35Speaker 01

  And it's making me better in my personal life and in my professional life.

• 3:10:39Jocko Willink?

  When I first started like actually teaching leadership in the teams like this is what I'm teaching when I started teaching the laws of combat when I started teaching these things and I started bringing that up the chain of command we need to be teaching this stuff. One of the arguments that I would use, I remember saying this to my Commodore at the time, I said, hey, sir, have you ever heard of hamburger university? He's like, no, what's that? It's where it's in Schaumburg, Illinois, and it's where if you're going to be the manager of a McDonald's, you're going to go to a six month school to learn about leadership. And we, I said, sir, we have guys that are in a platoon that they're not getting any leadership training. They're they're a platoon commander, they're a LPO, they're a platoon chief, and they've never had any leadership training. Why is that? We need to train these

• 3:11:23Jocko Willink?

  guys. And this just goes so perfectly with what happens in the civilian sector. You're you're a guy on a construction site, you pour concrete, and eventually someone goes, hey, you're good at pouring concrete. Now you're in charge of a team. And now you've led that team for a while. Now you're in charge of your alignment. Oh, you're good at doing your job as a lineman. Now you're going to be in charge of this team. You're a salesperson. Oh, you're our best salesperson. Okay, now you're in charge of a sales team. No one gets trained in leadership and everyone thinks, oh, well, you are good at this job as a plumber. Now you can lead a team that's putting in, you know, a massive plumbing job. No, it doesn't work that way. You actually have to learn how to lead, just like you have to learn to be a plumber, just like you have to learn sales, you have to learn how to lead. And

• 3:12:05Jocko Willink?

  that's really essentially one of the most important reasons why Echelon Front exists because there's people that get to CEO positions. They've never had a leadership training in their life. They've never done any leader. There's people that got went got, how many people have we taught leadership that have their MBA from an Ivy League school or some of it's like they don't learn anything about leadership and they are so grateful when they realize, oh, this is a skill that I can actually learn. And then we they can put it into action almost immediately. And then when they get their whole team and they start going, oh, I can educate all the people that are in leadership positions, the SVPs, the VPs, right on down the line to the frontline leaders, right on down down the line to the frontline troops, the individual contributors, they're learning how to lead. And then we

• 3:12:47Jocko Willink?

  get these synergistic leadership situations unfolding. And it's just, it's just so rewarding to see these companies just just step up their game across the board. So that's awesome.

• 3:12:59Jocko Willink?

  It's all you've been a great addition to the team. I know it's been nothing but outstanding feedback, which is basically what I always thought we were going to get from you anyway. So I remember one time I was like, Leif didn't really know you that well.

• 3:13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:13:12Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, I said, Hey, you know, this guy Sean Glass and I was like describe was like, Hey, man, this guy like, he's just a stud. He's very articulate. He's like, he looks like, you know, just like a Superman type character that's going to be up there representing that front. He's like, Leif's like, you never say that about me. I'm like, I'm sorry, bro. I was just trying to sell you, uh, trying to sell, trying to sell Sean. But, um, yeah, so that's been awesome. And then the latest venture you've gotten into, which you dragged me into, which I appreciate is primal beef. How'd that, how'd that start?

• 3:13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that all started with the move out to Virginia. So we moved out to this area. It's right in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley. I mean, it's kind of paradise. We're, we've got the Blue Ridge Mountains on the right side, the Blue Ridge Mountains on the left side, the Shenandoah River runs right through the middle of our town and it is, I don't even know if it's arguable that it's the, probably the most lush region in America. And when we got there, again, five kids, got a lot of need to feed those five kids. We bought a cow from a farmer that lived in that town and I had the first bite of steak from that cow and I looked at my wife, who always sits to my left at the dinner table.

• 3:14:30Speaker 01

  And I said, this is hands down the best egg I've ever had in my entire life. And because we have five kids and we eat a lot of beef, we went through that cow pretty quickly. And then we ordered another cow and it was from the same farmer and it was phenomenal, the exact same. And it really got my, my wheels turning because I'm like, well, people don't have access to this. Most Americans cannot do what I'm doing. Most Americans do not live next to this farmer who is one blessed enough to live in the Shenandoah Valley, where those cattle are grazing the greenest pastures of all time. Uh, and two, they don't have. Access to get that thing and put it on their plate every single night. And to me, that

• 3:15:15Speaker 01

  just seemed kind of almost like un-American. And I reached out to my brother who lives in that hometown, my buddy Paul, who's a rancher. And then I reached out to you and just said, hey, here's, here's what I'm thinking. What do you think about this? And, you know, gratefully, you were, you were on board. And then we started, started the mechanisms of building everything out that we needed. And we officially went live early August with primal beef. And all the feedback so far has just been incredible. And there's, when people think of beef, they don't typically think of Virginia. They think of places like

• 3:15:57Speaker 01

  Montana, Colorado, Texas. There's so much beef that's produced in Virginia. The reason people don't typically associate it with that is it's processing. So all of the processing that goes on for American beef is in the Midwest. So cattle are getting raised in Virginia historically, and they're getting shipped out to these processing facilities and holding yards historically, right, in the Midwest. And then they're just getting mixed in the shuffle with all this other beef. But the fact is, there's so many advantages to beef that's raised in the Shenandoah Valley that other places in the country just don't have.

• 3:16:36Speaker 01

  The Chesapeake watershed is right there, and it runs way inland. And it creates this insane amount of ability for things to just grow and thrive inside of the Shenandoah Valley region. And you, you pair that with this little microclimate that happens because you've got the Blue Ridge Mountains on both sides and the river running right through, and those pastures will grow everything. All these native grasses are growing right there, and that's what these cows are eating on a day-to-day basis. And they're not having to work for it. They're not having to move three miles to go find the next bite of grass. It's literally right in front of their faces. And, you know, you listen to, you read accounts

• 3:17:19Speaker 01

  of these explorers when they first, these Western explorers, when they first made their way down into the Shenandoah Valley. And they're talking about riding on horseback through fields of grass where the grass is so tall that it's touching their shoulders as they're going through there. That doesn't happen other parts of the country. That's only right there in this area. And when you talk about What makes quality beef? It really kind of comes down to three things. How they're raised, what they're finished on, and we'll talk about finishing, what that means, and then how they're processed, the final cuts, what does that look like? So, the advantages for where we are is they're grazing the greenest pastures in the United States of America, hands down.

• 3:18:04Speaker 01

  All these different native grasses that are just adding nutrient density to the meat, tenderness to the meat, and again, they're not having to work for it. And because they're not having to work for it, they're not moving three acres, four acres, three miles a day to go find the next shrub to chew on. That translates directly to the quality of the beef. And all of our cattle come from one farm. All of our cattle come from one farm. And that is not something that you're going to find most any other place that you're trying to find beef in America. You walk into a grocery store, zero percent chance you know where that beef came from. There's a chance that beef's not even American. There's a chance that, there's a large chance that beef came in from overseas.

• 3:18:49Speaker 01

  There's also a very large chance that that cow is not even a beef cow. It's probably a dairy cow. And it's probably a dairy cow that is now no longer productive for dairy operations, and they're going to process it, and they're going to sell it as steak. That's not what you get with primal beef. You get American black Angus beef that's raised on one farm, right inside the Shenandoah Valley. And what that translates to is quality and consistency. So if you look at even some of these other operations, and I'm not bashing them, look, man, the more Americans that are eating beef that comes from a farm, the better for the United States of America. So you look at a Good Ranchers or a ButcherBox or something like that, they're helping farmers out. They're putting...

• 3:19:34Speaker 01

  Beef from American farms on people's plates, that's great. But what they can't offer is they can't offer consistency because they're coming from different farms. So you might have a steak you really like, one box and the next box, it's not going to be the same steak. We didn't want that. We wanted every single person to know when they place an order with primal beef, exactly what they're getting. And that is the fact that their first bite is going to taste just like their thousand's bite. Because all the cattle are raised the exact same way on the exact same farm. So the how they're raised, that's the unique thing about where where they're raised on this farm in the Shenandoah Valley. The next piece is how they're finished. And there's different methods of, we're nerding out on cattle here, but.

• 3:20:17Jocko Willink?

  Let's go.

• 3:20:19Jocko Willink?

  I'm a freaking steak connoisseur, as you know.

• 3:20:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:20:22Jocko Willink?

  And when you sent me the first one, I was like, okay, cool, ribeye, let me see what's up. I'm like, oh, I'm in. Let's go. You want to close a deal with Jocko, send him a freaking Shenandoah Valley ribeye. And let me go to town on that thing. I was like, yo, this is, this is special.

• 3:20:37Speaker 01

  Awesome. Awesome. And that's exactly what we want every single person's experience to be. And hey, every decision that we make as a company is based on two factors. What's best for the animal and what's best for the customer, every single decision that we make. And the finishing process for a cattle is typically, there's two ways that they're finished. They're going to be either grass fed and grass finished. Or they're going to be grass fed and then finished on a, some type of grain, something like that. Corn, barley, something like that. How you finish it adds different flavor profiles to the beef, right?

• 3:21:18Speaker 01

  Grass fed, grass finished is going to taste very different than a grass fed and then grain finished animal. And that makes sense, right? They're eating different, different food sources. So for us, the, the farm that we work with, that we partner with, where all of our steak, all of our beef, all of our cattle come from. They, he has a very unique finishing process that I really think translates directly to why this beef is so good and so different than any other beef that I have. One, again, they're grazing these pastures that other cattle in America just don't have access to. That's the biggest differentiator, right there in the Shenandoah Valley. Then the finishing piece is they continue to graze, they continue to have access to grass,

• 3:21:59Speaker 01

  but now he supplements it with distillers grain that he grows on his farm. And he upcycles, which is a trendy word, he upcycles produce from these local markets that are around our hometown. So he gets produce off of, you know, the shelves from different markets when they have to make room for new produce. And he gets all of these fruits, all of these vegetables with the grain that's grown on his property and he mixes all that up into a mash. And that's what the cattle are finished on for about the last 180 to 200 days. And again, they have access to plenty of grass. They're still eating grass that entire time, but it's that that really lends that unique flavor to it, that, you know, extra

• 3:22:44Speaker 01

  marbling, that rich beef flavor to it. So there's the first two factors, right? How the cattle are raised and how the cattle are finished. The third factor, which is just as important, is how the cattle are processed. And we partnered with a processing facility out of Lynchburg, Virginia, which is a couple hours from us called Seven Hills Abattoir. And the reason that we partnered with them is they are the best in the business, in my opinion. They're definitely the best on the eastern seaboard. They're doing things that no other place is doing. And one of the things that they do is the, the welfare of the animal again is always our main concern.

• 3:23:25Speaker 01

  So they put a lot of effort into maintaining the welfare of the animal all the way up until it's time for, for processing. And that translates directly to the quality of the beef. And you know, as a hunter, right? If I put a bad shot on an elk and that elk is stressed out and that elk runs 700 meters and now all of that adrenaline is coursing through that elk's vein, the stress level of that animal, it makes the meat profile different. It toughens that meat up. It's the same thing with cows, you know, a cow that's lived a very stress-free life in the Shenandoah Valley grazing pastures and has a very stress-free process of processing.

• 3:24:04Speaker 01

  It's going to translate directly into the flavor and the texture of that beef. The really unique thing that they do, which again is not normal in the processing industry, is they dry age everything whole carcass. So the entire carcass is dry aged for a minimum of 14 days. Now, we don't go overboard and do like the 28 extreme, 28 day extreme dry aging. I don't personally like that profile in beef, the flavor profile. So 14 days, whole carcass is what's happening during that 14 days is everything is breaking down. The meat is getting tenderized, all these enzymes are breaking down. The flavor is getting more bold, the beef flavor is getting more bold, the marbling is settling in.

• 3:24:49Speaker 01

  All these great things are happening. That's not normal. Most processing plants do not do that. And the reason they don't do that is space. It takes a lot of space to dry age a carcass. And it takes a lot of space to dry age a carcass for 14 days. And every day they're adding to the number of carcasses that they need to dry age because more beef is coming in. And most of these massive processing plants that are out Midwest and other places, they're dealing with such large volume that they can't do that. So what they do is it's a process called wet aging. And wet aging typically what that means is the animal is processed and then they start cutting into the animal right away, the carcass right away.

• 3:25:33Speaker 01

  And then they take those individual cuts, they vacu seal them or cryo seal them, and then they put them on shelving units where they can organize everything, save a lot of space. And then the individual cuts of meat continue to break down because they're sitting in their own blood, basically. And the blood acts as a enzyme, basically, that breaks everything down. You know, wet aging, there's not a saying that there's, that's necessarily anything wrong with that, but I don't think it's anywhere near as good as dry aging. And the reason people don't dry age is you have to have space for it. Seven Hills is not trying to be the world's largest processing plant. They're trying to be the world's best processing plant, which is exactly why we partnered with them. Because everything they do is designed to give the customer the best finished product that they possibly can.

• 3:26:18Speaker 01

  So they're dry aging the whole carcass and then all these cuts are hand cut by butchers that work at Seven Hills. And this is, it's an intangible thing, but it's something that we really love about these guys is they're investing in that local community. That processing plant was shut down for like 30 years and they brought it back to life and they're providing jobs for people that have been down on their luck in Lynchburg, you know, for the past 10, 15 years when the economy is suffering, they're giving them good paying jobs. They're teaching them a skill and something that I really love that they do is they also hire from a work release program. So people who are just getting out of prison, who made some bad decisions in their life,

• 3:27:02Speaker 01

  who no one else is willing to give these people a second chance. Seven Hills is willing to give them a second chance and they bring these men in. And to, to hear them talk about it, it's like on day one, they won't even look at you. They've just been kind of so beat down by the system that they've been in that they, it's hard for them to even make eye contact. And then they start to work with them. They start to give them a skill. They start to teach them how to be a butcher, which is a craft that is very quickly going away. And they're giving them value through work and through employment. And they see this huge turnaround where now all of a sudden they can hold conversations. They're fitting back into society and they have a purpose.

• 3:27:44Speaker 01

  And, you know, we just went and sponsored the lumberjack games down in, uh, near Lynchburg. And I got a chance to, to meet some of these guys, some of these work release guys. And the pride that they take in their work, we were serving burgers during this event. And one of the guys that was there had just been out of prison for two weeks. And he was the guy that was doing all the grind for us, all of the burger meat. And this guy could not stop talking to me about how much pride he took in that meat. Hey, I wouldn't put anything on your plate that I wouldn't put on my family's plate. And he could, he was so proud of the opportunity that these guys have given him. So, you know, they're.

• 3:28:28Speaker 01

  Producing the best finished cuts on the eastern seaboard and outside from that, they're doing something that nobody else is willing to do, which is give people a second chance and it is a game changer for those people. So that's the three big factors that really go into beef are how's that beef raised, where are they raised, what are they eating, how are they finished and how's that beef processed? And every single thing that we did, every decision that we made was based on giving the customer the best possible experience that they could possibly get. And that's what Primal Beef is all about, is about giving Americans who don't have access to farm-raised beef, who've never had the opportunity to really experience the difference in farm-raised beef in putting that on their plates. Because

• 3:29:13Speaker 01

  let's be honest, I sit down to dinner every single night with my family, no matter what's going on. Some people do that, some people don't do that. Some people got much busier lives than I'm living right now. If there's chicken on the plate, whole family might not be sitting down together. You put a steak on that plate, the whole family is sitting down together. And anytime that Primal Beef can play a hand in families coming together at the dinner table and breaking bread and serving some farm-raised beef, that's a victory for us. And that's what we're trying to achieve with Primal Beef.

• 3:29:50Jocko Willink?

  Word. And the deal is, the way it's set up is you pretty much order like a box full of

• 3:29:59Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 3:30:00Jocko Willink?

  Various cuts.

• 3:30:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 3:30:02Jocko Willink?

  Whether it's ground, whether it's, I just had hot dogs yesterday, freaking legit. So those are awesome. And then you get, you know, whatever, get some New York, get some ribeyes in there. It's just, that's just outstanding. And there's a couple of different like sizes of boxes you can get.

• 3:30:20Speaker 01

  Yes. And the reason that we went with the The structure of that, the box method is just to give people the best value that we can possibly give them. And also, again, it goes back to the wanting to pay respect to that animal. We don't want anything to go to waste on this animal. So we designed our boxes to where one cow basically breaks down into a certain number of boxes that we can then deliver. We're not worried about cuts getting wasted. We're not worried about cuts getting lost. We want every single cut of beef that comes off of these animals to go into the hands of Americans and their families. So we've got different box options and we try to put some variety in there, but we also know people like different stuff, right? So you're a ribeye guy. So guess what we got? We got a box that features

• 3:31:06Speaker 01

  the main cut in there is ribeyes. And that box is also going to have some other good cuts, but the staple of that box is going to be ribeyes. And then there's some ground beef, some burger patties, some all beef franks. You like New York strips? There's a box that features very predominantly New York strips. You like filets? That's your go-to. There's a box for you. You want just ground beef? Maybe you're a crossfeed athlete that crushes two pounds of ground beef a day, which buddies of mine that compete in crossfeed crush two pounds of ground beef a day. We got a box that's just ground beef that you can crush two pounds of every single day and we'll be there for you.

• 3:31:40Jocko Willink?

  I'm kind of getting fired up.

• 3:31:43Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I'll tell you what, too. I had the patties. Bro, that makes a burger.

• 3:31:48Speaker 01

  Game changer, right? And it's so easy. You just take them out and you throw them right on the grill, right on the tray or whatever, and you've got the best burger you've ever had a couple minutes later.

• 3:31:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I'm a steak connoisseur now, but when I was a kid, so like my mom and dad both worked. They were school teachers. My mom used to go to the butcher shop and get shop and get these boxes full of hamburger patties. I think there was 40 in there.

• 3:32:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:32:10Jocko Willink?

  So for breakfast, I would have a hamburger on a English muffin. For lunch, I'd have a hamburger on a piece of bread. And for dinner, I'd have a hamburger on a bun. There you go. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. I, to this day, I don't really like breakfast foods, but I'll have a hamburger 24/7. But yeah, the patties coming out of that primal beef box were legit. Yeah, I was gonna give some to Echo, but then I ate them.

• 3:32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense to me completely.

• 3:32:35Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, primalbeef.com is where you can get in the game. You can get, I mean, I don't, there's nothing else to say. Go to primalbeef.com, put your order in and join the club.

• 3:32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, the last two things I would say is, look, are we gonna be a little bit more expensive than if you go to the store and buy something off your shelf? Yes, we are. And we're not trying to hide that fact. But what you're getting in return is you're getting, you're supporting American farmers. You're getting traceability where you know that every single steak, every single burger, every single cut that comes out of that box was raised on the exact same farm in the exact same way. And that's going to translate to the exact same experience every single time you are serving primal beef. You're supporting American processing facilities that are doing good stuff. And the last thing that you're supporting, and this is, uh, something that we're really proud of, is we partnered with

• 3:33:32Speaker 01

  the C4 Foundation. So Charlie Keating, teammate of ours, he was killed on the deployment before me in Iraq. So we turned over with SEAL Team One right after he was killed. Uh, his dad is a phenomenal human being. And when we started this company, it was very important to all of us to be able to give back to the community that we were involved in, the military community. And there's different ways you can do that. You know, some companies give a percentage. Uh, there's nothing wrong with that. But we wanted, what we did to be a little bit more tangible and a little bit more, uh, I don't know if meaningful is the right word, but impactful, directly impactful.

• 3:34:13Jocko Willink?

  Did you say tangible already?

• 3:34:14Speaker 01

  I did.

• 3:34:15Jocko Willink?

  Quantifiable.

• 3:34:16Speaker 01

  Quantifiable.

• 3:34:16Jocko Willink?

  It's like quantifiable. I think it's quantifiable is the word you're searching for.

• 3:34:20Speaker 01

  We wanted to make a direct impact on service members' lives. So I called up Mr. Keating III. And I told him what we had going on and I said, hey, would you be interested in partnering with us because what I would like to do is every time we sell a box, I would like to donate a cut of beef directly to a special operations force member and their families. And he was all about it. He was all about it. And what I want to point out with that is we're not playing games. We're not hiding that cost in a box. That cost of that cut is coming out of your pocket, Jocko. It's coming out of my pocket. It's coming out of Declan's pocket and it's coming out of Paul's pocket, the four of us that started

• 3:35:04Speaker 01

  our partners in Primal Beef. And every time you order a box, we donate a cut directly to a special operations force member and their families. So not only are you supporting American farms, not only are you supporting American business, not only supporting your family with farm-raised beef, but you're also supporting SEALs and their families every single time you place an order.

• 3:35:28Jocko Willink?

  Outstanding. Primalbeef.com. Does that get us up to speed? Are we up to speed? We good?

• 3:35:37Speaker 01

  I mean, I hit the heavy bag this morning and I think now we are up to speed.

• 3:35:42Jocko Willink?

  You're not on social media, are you?

• 3:35:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:35:45Jocko Willink?

  Well, Primal Beef is. But Primal Beef is.

• 3:35:47Speaker 01

  Primal Beef is.

• 3:35:48Jocko Willink?

  So for Primal Beef, primalbeef.com. Instagram and Twitter, primal underscore beef underscore co. I don't know if you know this, but Primal Beef Twitter is suspended right now.

• 3:36:01Speaker 01

  I will look into that.

• 3:36:02Jocko Willink?

  I have no idea why. I don't know.

• 3:36:03Speaker 01

  I'll call up Elon and find out what's going on.

• 3:36:06Jocko Willink?

  So I don't know what's up with that, but it's suspended.

• 3:36:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:36:10Jocko Willink?

  So we'll figure that out. But Instagram, primal underscore beef underscore co. That's where we're at. Echo Charles, any questions?

• 3:36:18Speaker 01

  Did you use the word matriculating?

• 3:36:21Jocko Willink?

  I did.

• 3:36:22Speaker 01

  Really? What does that mean? It'd be basically coming down, if you will. Okay. Cool. I'll echo.

• 3:36:29Speaker 02

  precipitating a little bit.

• 3:36:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. I would almost say they could be brother and sister words. Precipitating would kind of be up here and what you would say is the precipitation eventually matriculated down.

• 3:36:39Speaker 02

  Okay, alright, yeah, so that was you guys. Okay, alright, I got it. That's good. Uh, I want to rewind a little bit to drown proofing.

• 3:36:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:36:48Speaker 02

  So, when I was in fourth grade.

• 3:36:50Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:36:50Speaker 02

  Colo- elementary school, by the way. Uh, we did drown proofing. And it was a very specific process. What is drown proofing in BUDs or in the SEAL teams? What is drown proofing?

• 3:37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's an evolution you go through in first phase where it's meant to to get people to be, or actually really to test people's comfortability in the water. So what they do is you stand on the pool deck. They tie your feet together. You have to put your hands behind your back. They tie your hands together. And then you have to jump into the pool and you have to complete a series of different events.

• 3:37:24Speaker 02

  Wait, hands and feet?

• 3:37:25Speaker 01

  Hands and feet, tied behind your back.

• 3:37:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:37:27Speaker 01

  The first thing, if I remember correctly, that you have to complete is a five-minute float. Where you have to float at the top of the water for five minutes with your hands and your feet uh tied together. Sounds easy, some people don't float. People that go through BUDs tend to not float very well. So, there's different things that you have to do to maintain your calm and to be able to float. The next thing that you have to do is you have to swim underwater a certain number of laps back and forth in this 25-meter pool with your hands and arms tied together.

• 3:37:59Jocko Willink?

  When you say underwater, no, you can take breaths.

• 3:38:01Speaker 01

  You can take breaths, correct, but you're mainly

• 3:38:03Jocko Willink?

  You're mainly underwater.

• 3:38:04Speaker 01

  like submarining and then coming up when you need to take a breath. Uh, and then the last thing that you have to do, and this is like a 20 or 30-minute evolution by now.

• 3:38:13Speaker 02

  Wait, so the swim, your hands and feet?

• 3:38:15Speaker 01

  Hands and feet, everything's tied together.

• 3:38:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:38:18Jocko Willink?

  Don't you, you, you miss bobbing, right?

• 3:38:19Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, the bob, it's the first thing.

• 3:38:20Jocko Willink?

  The first thing, you're nine foot of water and you go down to the bottom, kickoff. And take a breath, go back down to the bottom and you do that for like 10 minutes.

• 3:38:28Speaker 01

  Yes, 10 minutes.

• 3:38:29Jocko Willink?

  And then you float for five minutes and then you swim 50 yards. And then you have to go down, you there's your mask, your dive mask is on the bottom of the pool, nine feet, you gotta go down and get your mask. So you get it in your teeth, you bring it up and then you gotta sit there and tread water until the instructor tells you can go to the side.

• 3:38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:38:48Jocko Willink?

  And you gotta carry your mask to the side in your mouth.

• 3:38:50Speaker 01

  And that's the process.

• 3:38:51Jocko Willink?

  That's the process, drown proofing.

• 3:38:52Speaker 01

  That's the process. I will tell you this, I practiced that in college. I practiced that in BUDs before we did it, but never with my hands and feet actually tied together.

• 3:39:03Jocko Willink?

  You just held them there?

• 3:39:04Speaker 01

  Hold them together, you know? So when it came time, I was like, no big deal. The sensation of actually having your feet and hands tied together, vastly different experience. Vastly different experience.

• 3:39:17Speaker 02

  Well, which one is the, what, what, uh, what event or whatever, which, what's the hardest one? The swimming?

• 3:39:23Jocko Willink?

  Uh, well, it depends on who you're talking to. Like, well, for me, for me, uh, I was a decent swimmer, so I wasn't too concerned about that, but what was frustrating was one of my buddies was a butterfly swimmer in college at Arizona State, I believe. So as I'm trying to just survive and swim across the pool, I'm literally watching him like a porpoise fluttering through the water.

• 3:39:44Speaker 01

  Like a mermaid?

• 3:39:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like it's no big deal.

• 3:39:46Speaker 01

  Gracefully.

• 3:39:47Jocko Willink?

  Merman, merman, merman. The hardest part for me for that was floating. I don't float and it's all about giant breath in and then just try to hold it as long as you can. Quick exhale, another giant breath in. The secret to floating is you gotta have air in your lungs as much as you can get in there.

• 3:40:02Speaker 02

  What was your hardest one for drown?

• 3:40:04Jocko Willink?

  Out of those?

• 3:40:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:40:05Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, probably just the floating, the floating. Cause you're same thing, like huge breath, hold it for as long as you can. And then you gotta like, kinda kick to the surface, grab another breath and.

• 3:40:16Speaker 02

  Bro, what about like Remy, like Adelake when you're for, what do you call it? Negative, negative buoyant, whatever, when you sink? You gotta, you gotta maneuver, like you gotta almost tread.

• 3:40:24Jocko Willink?

  He was probably like a little bit closer to treading and probably a little bit more out of oxygen and probably just, it was probably a little bit harder for Remy. Remy Adelake was not loving the drown proofing. I can just about guarantee you that.

• 3:40:34Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. I understand. Okay. Round on. So a little bit different than my fourth grade drown proofing, but, but yeah, interesting nonetheless.

• 3:40:42Jocko Willink?

  Good evolution.

• 3:40:43Speaker 02

  Cool. Good to see you again, bro.

• 3:40:44Jocko Willink?

  You as well, man. Always a pleasure. Sean, any closing thoughts from you?

• 3:40:51Speaker 02

  I think we just about covered everything. Just thankful to be here. Thankful to be on the team.

• 3:40:57Jocko Willink?

  Right on, man. Awesome. Uh, well, thanks for coming out, man, and thanks for sharing your lessons learned, obviously. Thanks for what you did in the teams in for the Navy, for the nation, and thanks for what you're continuing to do. Raising your family, Echelon Front, spreading the word, and now Primal Beef, getting after it, helping America

• 3:41:20Jocko Willink?

  eat and live better. Thanks, bro. Much appreciated.

• 3:41:28Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Sean Glass has left the building.

• 3:41:34Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Yeah, a little bit of getting after it. Get that, get some of that steak protein. However, sometimes you always don't have that steak available. You know what I mean? Sometimes you're going around the door. Yes. You know what I mean?

• 3:41:50Speaker 02

  Bro, you need protein. Literally, that was me today. So I did squats today. You're welcome. And but I was running.

• 3:42:00Speaker 02

  You know what do you call press for time? I was press for time. You see what I'm saying? And I had some leftover steak that was, what do you call when?

• 3:42:06Jocko Willink?

  Pre-cut.

• 3:42:07Speaker 02

  Stripped. Like I cut them last night. They're from last night, leftover. But I cut them in strips. Boom, right? Had them in the fridge or whatever. So I was like freaking press for time. Just throw them in the microwave real quick. So I'm like trying to eat them or whatever after they came out of the microwave. And I'm like, bro, I'm not going to finish this whole thing right now. Like I gotta go. See what I'm saying? So I ate a few, which was in my estimate about 10 to 15 grams of protein worth of steak. Which is not that much for steak, because steak is.

• 3:42:33Jocko Willink?

  Especially post squats.

• 3:42:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:42:36Jocko Willink?

  To go to the mall.

• 3:42:38Speaker 02

  Bro, I just grabbed the milk. Easy money. Literally on the way out. Boom fridge out. Like didn't even like stop like the walking.

• 3:42:47Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 3:42:47Jocko Willink?

  I like how you're just amazed by that.

• 3:42:49Speaker 02

  Well, if you put yourself in the situation.

• 3:42:52Jocko Willink?

  I'd be amazed too.

• 3:42:53Speaker 02

  Just you'd be amazed how little time it was taken. See what I'm saying? I didn't even stop. I didn't even stop. Didn't even, bro, I'm telling you, didn't even stop. It took more time for me to throw the other one in the microwave. See what I'm saying?

• 3:43:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. For sure.

• 3:43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, no steak, no worries.

• 3:43:09Jocko Willink?

  Hey, go energy drink of which I've had two because I didn't know that was going to be a four hour podcast.

• 3:43:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:43:15Jocko Willink?

  But it was because Sean Glass was talking about some good stuff. You know what I mean? Uh, I'm too deep right now. The thing is, what should we be calling Jocko Go? A clean energy drink, a healthy energy drink, a good for you energy drink. Well, what should we be calling it? Cause it's not a freaking normal energy drink.

• 3:43:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yep. I li- I've always liked clean, the word clean energy drink. I like that for whatever reason.

• 3:43:43Jocko Willink?

  Here's the, here's the question. Clean, I think a lot of people throw out there, right? A lot of people be throwing that out there. Clean this, clean that, but it doesn't actually have meaning. Also, the problem with healthy is people hear healthy and they think, oh, it's going to taste like crap, basically.

• 3:43:58Speaker 02

  That's literally like what the feeling it gives you.

• 3:44:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:44:01Speaker 02

  It gives you that feeling.

• 3:44:02Jocko Willink?

  But I guess clean is the what we're gonna do?

• 3:44:04Speaker 02

  I like it. I like clean.

• 3:44:06Jocko Willink?

  Do people recognize what that means though? Do they, do they recognize that that means healthy? Cause let's face it, some other energy drinks have claimed to be clean. They're not clean.

• 3:44:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 3:44:17Jocko Willink?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 3:44:18Speaker 02

  I do see what you're saying. I know this though, if, if you or if someone's saying, hey, like, man, this, this month I'm eating clean. It, it gives me, and this is just the feeling, right? Where it's like, they're not, I don't get the same feeling as if they say, I'm on a diet. Like when they say that, that, that's the same as healthy, right? The feeling of, uh, sure, you're probably eating healthy, but it's probably not tasty. It's not that enjoyable. But when they say I'm eating clean, I'm thinking, ooh, you're, you're eating the good stuff, you know, like the steak, the freaking chicken with the perfect recipe. You see what I'm saying? You're just not eating BS. See what I'm saying? You're not eating fast food. You're not eating a bunch of like cookies and ice cream and stuff like this. You see what I'm saying? That's, that's the impression I get.

• 3:44:55Jocko Willink?

  So maybe we'll go with clean. Get a clean energy drink.

• 3:44:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:44:59Jocko Willink?

  Get a go. Get that, get it all. JacoFuel.com. Get a hydrate, get greens, get m- milk, what we just talked about, the protein shake, krill, super krill, joint warfarin. Just get it. Just go get it. JacoFuel.com. By the way, Afees, you can get it if you're in the military, you can get it at Afees. You can get it at Hanaford, you can get it at Vitamin Shoppe. GNC's got the drinks in there. Go to GNC and grab some goes. That's a good plan, actually.

• 3:45:24Speaker 02

  Did you hear me sniffling a little bit?

• 3:45:26Jocko Willink?

  Yes, what was that?

• 3:45:27Speaker 02

  Okay, so I felt myself-

• 3:45:29Jocko Willink?

  I thought you were crying.

• 3:45:30Speaker 02

  No, I wasn't crying. Not this time, but so I've been like a cold or something-

• 3:45:36Jocko Willink?

  Bro, it's been a while since you cried on the podcast.

• 3:45:37Speaker 02

  Thank you for, you know, pointing that out and everything, but nonetheless, a sickness, like a cold, has been kind of starting to develop-

• 3:45:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:45:47Speaker 02

  -in my body.

• 3:45:49Speaker 02

  So I'm like, alright, boom, Cold War, three a day.

• 3:45:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:45:53Speaker 02

  Cold War, Cold War, Cold War. Bruh, this cold like kind of emerged. It wasn't even a cold. It didn't even develop into a cold. It developed into ju- just what you heard, just the sniffle. That's it. And I don't even have sniffle right now. It was just like a, like a momentary sniffle. Like a temporary sniffle, you see what I'm saying?

• 3:46:09Jocko Willink?

  Bro, that time you broke down.

• 3:46:11Speaker 02

  Bro, we're not, we're not talking about that right now.

• 3:46:15Jocko Willink?

  Bro, that was good.

• 3:46:17Jocko Willink?

  Then I realized I had to give you like a heads up, like in the future, right?

• 3:46:21Speaker 02

  Kind of your fault, yeah.

• 3:46:22Jocko Willink?

  So, we'll watch that.

• 3:46:24Speaker 02

  Thank you. Nonetheless, Cold War freaking did the job again, super reliably, by the way.

• 3:46:29Jocko Willink?

  Yep. It's powerful. It's powerful.

• 3:46:31Speaker 02

  The thing is, this is how you know when, when a sickness was successful. If you gotta miss a workout or miss school or miss work. That's how you know, like, that was a successful sickness, yeah. This one not even close. Didn't, I didn't even consider, shit, should I work out today? I never considered that. It wasn't even a thing enough for me to, for considerations, you see what I'm saying? Cold War all day.

• 3:46:52Jocko Willink?

  Vitamin Shoppe, Hanaford's, Dash Stores, Wake Fern, ShopRite, HEB, down in Texas. Thank you. Meyer in the Midwest, thank you. Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields. And by the way, small gyms, you got a CrossFit gym, you've got a Jiu Jitsu Academy, you wanna sell Jocko Fuel? Email [email protected]. That's what we're doing. Or go to jockofuel.com, get the stuff that you need. Just had the pre-workout come out today. It's a little bit psycho.

• 3:47:22Speaker 02

  A little bit.

• 3:47:23Jocko Willink?

  It's a lot of it psycho.

• 3:47:24Speaker 02

  It's a lot of it psycho, but so.

• 3:47:25Jocko Willink?

  It's psycho.

• 3:47:26Speaker 02

  I told you I quit pre-workout like maybe three, realistically like two, three years ago.

• 3:47:31Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:47:31Speaker 02

  Because I was like, you know, pre-workout, like before this pre-workout, pre-workout is the kind of like, hey, man, let's face it. I just need to get freaking amped up. I don't care the cost right now. I just gotta get amped up and I need the pump. And which I get it, man, because I was there. But if you remember the work, the pre-workout back when they first exploded onto the scene. One was called an NO dash explode. One was called jacked with the E was a backwards three or three or I don't know, whatever. Right. So it was like.

• 3:47:57Jocko Willink?

  They had their things.

• 3:47:58Speaker 02

  Their thing, but bro, no, I was like, but you don't even know what's in that thing. Like, oh, it's probably some nefarious things in that thing. So I was like, bro, after a while, I'm like, bro, I'm literally going to kill myself. Because you know, your tolerance goes up and then you're taking two scoops and like all this stuff. So I stopped, stopped the pre-workout. And then for two years, so I was like, all right, cool. Jocko has a pre-workout, you know, he's not putting no freaking weirdo stuff in there. So at least I'm going to be healthy. So let's get back on the train. Hell yeah. Get that pump. Bro, I took like half a scoop.

• 3:48:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:48:28Speaker 02

  Put it in while we're filming that video, by the way. Half a scoop, I put it in, brought two sips. I was like, bro, I feel the tingling, the itch already, bro. I was all sensitive to it. Plus it was like, bro, it's kind of heavy, you know?

• 3:48:40Jocko Willink?

  It's psycho. It's psycho. Yeah, I was even, while we were filming, like there's edits of me, like I'm going psycho in there.

• 3:48:47Speaker 02

  Yes, you are.

• 3:48:47Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, like, yeah, we filmed, we captured it. I guess I needed it for like the moment, right? I had to get in a character. But I was in character. I was going psycho.

• 3:48:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:48:56Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 3:48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, the real deal.

• 3:48:58Jocko Willink?

  There you go. JacoFruit.com, go check it out.

• 3:49:00Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 3:49:00Jocko Willink?

  Also.

• 3:49:02Speaker 02

  Origin USA. Boom. This is where we're getting our gis. Uh, so we ju- I just, uh, so Carlos Mendez. Our boy.

• 3:49:11Jocko Willink?

  Los.

• 3:49:11Speaker 02

  Los, yeah, hell yeah. He sends me a picture of two Origin gis, Nano Pearl. Weave is that what it's called right Nano?

• 3:49:19Jocko Willink?

  Nano Pearl. Wait, why did he send you pictures of two gees?

• 3:49:22Speaker 02

  Because he just got two gees in the mail. One black, one white. No big deal. He's like, bro.

• 3:49:30Speaker 02

  I'm telling you.

• 3:49:31Jocko Willink?

  Loz got his brown belt, right?

• 3:49:32Speaker 02

  Uh, I'm, I don't know. Right on. See, freaking is on that path, man. I'm telling you. And appropriately has origin gees. Because bro, if you have a gi and you don't have the origin one, you're kind of like, hey, look, maybe ignorance is bliss. I don't know. Maybe.

• 3:49:45Jocko Willink?

  No, it's not bliss. Honestly, if you've had an origin gi on, it's not bliss.

• 3:49:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you wouldn't be ignorant anymore.

• 3:49:51Jocko Willink?

  But it's still not bliss because you still, never in my life that I go, oh, this feels good to put on. And it was like one of those crappy old cotton gees.

• 3:49:58Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 3:49:58Jocko Willink?

  Come on, dude. You, that was never bliss.

• 3:50:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no. It was just like tolerable. You see what I'm saying? But now it's like, it's bliss. Let's face it.

• 3:50:07Jocko Willink?

  Let's do that. Go to Origin USA. Get jeans, by the way. Winter's coming. Get a hoodie. You need a hoodie for winter.

• 3:50:14Speaker 02

  With the black wash jeans out. The Delta succeeds, the black one. Yeah, yeah, the black.

• 3:50:19Jocko Willink?

  Black, yeah, they're out. Yep.

• 3:50:20Speaker 02

  That's not what they call it. Black wash?

• 3:50:22Jocko Willink?

  I think it's called black.

• 3:50:23Speaker 02

  It's just black coloring, the color. See, I don't know the terms, but the black ones are out and I got one. So boom.

• 3:50:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wait, you got them? I don't have any.

• 3:50:30Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, bro.

• 3:50:31Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of jacked up, isn't it?

• 3:50:32Speaker 02

  Some people got it, some people don't.

• 3:50:33Jocko Willink?

  All right. So there you go. Origin US. Get all your American made stuff. Speaking of American made, get some Primal Beef, primalbeef.com. You heard the deal. I don't think anyone's ever convinced me more to even eat more steak.

• 3:50:43Speaker 02

  I know, bro. You're talking, getting me all hungry.

• 3:50:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And plus, did you eat today?

• 3:50:49Speaker 02

  I just ate those, those little strips of steak that I was rushing out the door.

• 3:50:53Jocko Willink?

  I just had a milk, but other than that, it was a lean morning. Oh, no, wait. I take it back. I did also have a milk when I rushed out the door this morning.

• 3:50:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:51:00Jocko Willink?

  I had a chocolate.

• 3:51:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:51:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:51:02Speaker 02

  But the thing about milk is like, I, well, I don't know. Maybe everybody's different, but, oh, I had a banana too, by the way, but it, after I drink it, like, literally 30 minutes later, like, it's not like I'm still full. Maybe like 45 minutes. I'm still full. Some people different, but um, maybe right after workout too. Maybe that had something to do with it. So I'm still hungry. And then Sean Glass talking about all this grass fed, fruit, finished and like all this stuff and the quality and the development of the flavor, like all this stuff, steak, ribeyes, all this stuff.

• 3:51:30Jocko Willink?

  I was seeing like, I was like seeing steaks in my bed. I'm gonna go home and have one by the way. Uh, so there you go. Primalbeef.com. Check that out. JacoStore.com.

• 3:51:41Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. But some, um, some good stuff with JacoStore, by the way. So Shirt Locker, boom, we're rolling. Got a new design. I got one. I was gonna, I was gonna, um, send it to you, but I don't know. I didn't. It's like, um.

• 3:51:56Jocko Willink?

  Is there a point to that story?

• 3:51:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:51:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, sometimes you'll like, I think, oh, he'll probably like this one. Then I'll send it.

• 3:52:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay, what is it?

• 3:52:04Speaker 02

  It's like, yeah, but after a while, I'm like, maybe I'll like it, maybe I don't. Okay, so it's like, uh, you know, the TNC surf, the yin yang, right? It's that. But one of them has you facing this way and then one of them has the eagle facing the other way, right?

• 3:52:16Jocko Willink?

  The what?

• 3:52:17Speaker 02

  An eagle. Baldy American, bald eagle. See what I'm saying?

• 3:52:22Speaker 02

  So do you know what that is for?

• 3:52:23Jocko Willink?

  No, I have no idea.

• 3:52:24Speaker 02

  Bro, discipline and freedom. See what I'm saying? Discipline is this way, going this way. And then the other one is freedom, because the eagle is like freedom. Anyway, see, I'm glad I didn't send it to you.

• 3:52:33Jocko Willink?

  What is it, like a cartoon thing? A drawing? Art?

• 3:52:36Speaker 02

  It's art. We'll call it art. Yeah, yeah. Graphic, graphic design.

• 3:52:39Jocko Willink?

  Does it look like it could be a Harley Davidson shirt? Because if you have like an eagle and it's a photo and...

• 3:52:44Speaker 02

  Does not.

• 3:52:45Jocko Willink?

  TNC.

• 3:52:46Speaker 02

  It's like that yin yang thing. You know, the symbol. Anyway, you're gonna have to see it to appreciate it. And guess what? A bunch of people, they're gonna see it. And I believe they're gonna appreciate it.

• 3:52:56Jocko Willink?

  Alright, man. There you go.

• 3:52:58Speaker 02

  Shirt Locker, it's called the Shirt Locker, if you don't know. Shirt Locker, it's on JacoStore. It's one of the things on JacoStore. JacoStore is where you can get other shirts. Discipline equals freedom. Good. Stand by to get some. That's a good one. People like that one. Um, and also we have the Shirt Locker, which is a new shirt every month, different designs. One of them in which is the yin yang, discipline equals freedom shirt. There's a bunch of other ones. Anyway, check it out. JacoStore.com.

• 3:53:20Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe to this podcast. Subscribe to the Jocko Underground. Subscribe to your YouTube channel. Get Psychological Warfare. Go to flipsidecanvas.com. Get something cool to hang on your wall. Get the books that we have. I've written a bunch of books. Get them. Especially the kids' books. I should have talked about that with Sean Glass. Like, he's all about that. He's got five kids. They're warrior kids to the, to the bone, right? Uh, so she's, she also like... He, we were talking about jujitsu. I was like, oh, there's jujitsu, you know, somewhere around here. And he's like, no, there's not. And I was like, dude, check it out. And he found one. And now he's got his kids. It's just good. Go train. Get your kids a Warrior Kid books. Mike and the Dragon, it's about Face by Hackworth. Just get these books. Extreme Echelon Front. We have a leadership consultant. You heard the kind of caliber of people that we have at Echelon Front. Sean Glass is one of those people.

• 3:54:06Jocko Willink?

  We will help your company get through their leadership issues and turn them into leaders. You probably haven't gotten your leadership team trained to be leaders. Probably just thought they could figure it out. They can't. You have to learn it. Oh, I guess you can figure it out. Like you can figure out how to play basketball. You can figure out how to play guitar, but think of how much, you can figure out how to do jujitsu, but think about how much extra time it takes. If so, if you have to learn it yourself, as opposed to someone coming in and saying, hey, let me just show you how to do it. Let me show you where to put your foot over there on that, on that arm lock. That's true. So learn. Echelonfront.com. We also have online training academy, extremeownership.com. Come on there and learn these skills. These are skills. We want you to learn these skills.

• 3:54:51Jocko Willink?

  That's my goal. Is to teach as many people these leadership skills as we possibly can. Check it out, please. Extremeownership.com. That's the online academy. Also, we have, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help Gold Star families.

• 3:55:14Jocko Willink?

  Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. It's unbelievable what they do to help out. Also, you heard Sean mention the C4 Foundation. You can check that out as well. Outstanding organization. And of course, heroesandhorses.org. Where Micah Fink is taking our veterans into the wilderness so they can reconnect with their soul.

• 3:55:40Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to connect with us, Sean can be found only through Primal Beef. No social media for Sean. Legit credit, but now he's got to have Primal Beef. Primalbeef.com and Instagram and Twitter. I don't know why his Twitter was on freaking shutdown. Interesting.

• 3:55:58Jocko Willink?

  Primal underscore beef underscore co. Echo, is that Echo Charles? I'm at Jocko. Just watch out for the algorithm. Just, just, it's a monster. It'll just grab you and you'll just waste your life. That's what will happen. Thanks once again to Sean Glass for everything you have done for the nation, for the Navy, for the teams. Thanks for what you're doing right now at Echelon Front with your family and of course, Primal Beef. Getting people fed with the good stuff. Thank you. And thanks to all our armed forces out there on the front lines, protecting us and our way of life from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And thanks to our police and law enforcement,

• 3:56:41Jocko Willink?

  firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders. Thank you for protecting us and our families here on the home front. And to everyone else out there, listen, you get to decide.

• 3:56:56Jocko Willink?

  You get to decide what you do. You get to decide who you are. You get to decide to stay on the path and you get to decide if you fall off it. You get to decide when and where you go. And when things are truly beyond your control, you get to decide how you will respond to those things. It's on you. So don't fall off the path. Don't fall for short-term gratification. Think strategic. Stay on the path and you do that every day by going out there and getting after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.