134: With Mike Sarraille. LIFE is a Gift But Not Free. Don't Waste It.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:09:06 - Navy Seal, Mike Sarraille 1:18:34 - The Op: Mikey Monsoor saves Mike's life. 2:35:15 - Support 3:08:17 - Closing Thoughts and Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 134 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  Maybe I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can see where someone could get that idea.

• 0:25Jocko Willink?

  But I actually don't think that.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  I don't think that at all. It's in fact quite the opposite.

• 0:37Jocko Willink?

  Now, looking back, of course, there were some,

• 0:46Jocko Willink?

  some tough times. There were some awful times.

• 0:55Jocko Willink?

  I'd even go so far as to say there were some wretched times.

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  There were nights filled with discomfort and stress and fear. And there was pressure.

• 1:17Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes that pressure was so great that I thought my mind just might fracture.

• 1:30Jocko Willink?

  And break apart.

• 1:34Jocko Willink?

  But fortunately, I could tell you that I didn't break.

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  There were times, there were times when I saw the cracks.

• 1:47Jocko Willink?

  I saw the cracks starting to split open and I had to work hard to keep it together.

• 1:56Jocko Willink?

  But that's the way it was in my old line of work.

• 2:04Jocko Willink?

  My old line of work had some definite downsides.

• 2:10Jocko Willink?

  Cause on top of all that pressure and stress and fear and discomfort,

• 2:18Jocko Willink?

  there was death.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  Even during peacetime.

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  Even during peacetime, I lost friends and I lost teammates.

• 2:36Jocko Willink?

  It goes with the personality profile, they would say, risk takers.

• 2:45Jocko Willink?

  So even peace provided little peace.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  And then, once the war started, it just escalated.

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  Not just for me, not by any stretch whatsoever. Every military member has dealt with death in some way over the past seventeen years of war.

• 3:16Jocko Willink?

  Some more than others.

• 3:20Jocko Willink?

  There've also been life-changing wounds,

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  of which I was spared.

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  I was lucky.

• 3:34Jocko Willink?

  But many others were not so lucky.

• 3:42Jocko Willink?

  Because the bombs and the bullets and the IEDs and the mortars and the rockets, they do not care who you are at all.

• 3:57Jocko Willink?

  But for whatever reason, I made it through.

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  I was lucky.

• 4:12Jocko Willink?

  And now, my life goes on.

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  And maybe I'm a little more paranoid than the next person and maybe I don't always sleep that well. And maybe there's times when some thought or some memory catches me off guard and I end up reliving a moment from the past, a moment from the past that I wish I could change.

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  And you might think, wouldn't I just want to change it all?

• 4:51Jocko Willink?

  Wouldn't I want to go back and erase all that pain and replace it with relief?

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  And replace it with ease and with comfort?

• 5:10Jocko Willink?

  And the answer to that question is no.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  In fact, it's not just no, it's hell no.

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  Because wrapped up in that pain and wrapped up in that discomfort and wrapped up in that stress and anxiety wrapped up in all that is the polar opposites of all those feelings.

• 5:37Jocko Willink?

  Inside all that turmoil,

• 5:42Jocko Willink?

  there was relief, there was certainty,

• 5:47Jocko Willink?

  there was happiness, there was focus and security and there was peace.

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  Peace of mind in knowing that no matter what,

• 6:04Jocko Willink?

  no matter what horrors befell me, things would be okay.

• 6:14Jocko Willink?

  And that is because I knew that my brothers would take care of me no matter what.

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  You see, my old job allowed me to work with some of the best guys in the world.

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  Not all of them. You've heard me talk about that before. There's substandard people in every organization in the world. There's a bell curve.

• 6:43Jocko Willink?

  And the bottom of the bell curve is filled with the same deficient people you'll find anywhere.

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  Lazy, scamming, irresponsible, self-centered, whatever.

• 7:04Jocko Willink?

  But at the high end of that bell curve,

• 7:09Jocko Willink?

  the guys I worked with were righteous and noble and hardworking, and it was humbling to be around them.

• 7:22Jocko Willink?

  Now, were they perfect? No.

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  None of us are. Did they have flaws? Yes, absolutely. All of us fall short.

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  But could I count on them?

• 7:38Jocko Willink?

  Could I count on them without question and without hesitation?

• 7:45Jocko Willink?

  100%.

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  Through all the horror and the fear and the pressure, there were always some guys that I knew without a shred of doubt would stand beside me and hold the line no matter what.

• 8:07Jocko Willink?

  They would never let me down.

• 8:12Jocko Willink?

  Ever.

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  And as fate would have it, I'm lucky enough to have one of those few men that I knew I could always count on, no matter what, here with me tonight.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  He's done more for me and for the teams and for our great nation than the world is ever going to know.

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  His name is Mike Sorelli. He's a former recon marine, a very recently retired SEAL officer, and he's someone that's never let me down.

• 8:59Jocko Willink?

  So Mike, welcome to the podcast and thanks for coming on, brother.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Hey Jaco, happy to be here and Echo, thank you for having me.

• 9:10Jocko Willink?

  So you retired how long ago?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  March 1st.

• 9:14Jocko Willink?

  March 1st. And so no one knows anything about you, which is the way it is. And so let's get to know a little bit about you, starting with the beginning. Let's start in NorCal.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  NorCal.

• 9:30Jocko Willink?

  That's where you were born, right?

• 9:31Speaker 01

  In NorCal, Palo Alto, California, just about 30 minutes south of San Francisco. Entire family born and raised in San Francisco. They're all still back there, except for my brother, Whitefish, Montana. But you know what? Nothing to really lack in terms of growing up. I had a great family. You know, sometimes I describe growing up in this Sorelli household as being in 1960s, 1950s Germany, Berlin, except I was on the wrong side of the wall. No, I grew up in a very Catholic family, loving parents, very, very strict, stern parents, but I got the benefit of being the last child. And by that, you know, that point, I have an older brother and sister.

• 10:15Jocko Willink?

  They'd worn down, they'd worn down your parents a little bit?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  They'd worn down my parents a little bit. And so I got away with bloody murder to a point. But you know, standard upbringing of a SEAL. I had my share of trouble that I caused and that's probably why I went the path that I went.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  At what point did you, at what point did you realize that you were going to go in the military?

• 10:42Speaker 01

  So you know, I, I, I can't, you know, pinpoint a, a specific moment, but everything was driving that, you know, driving me that way. I did have a grandfather that was first of the 501st.

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wow.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  In World War II. Actually, he trained with Patton out in, um.

• 11:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, in, uh, in, uh, yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  The lake.

• 11:04Jocko Willink?

  National Training Center.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yes. So they actually trained at the, uh, the lake.

• 11:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Um, near, uh, near Nile.

• 11:11Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. Oh, the Salton Sea.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Salton Sea. And so he'd actually hit, uh, the very early part of, uh, Africa and then, uh, came back to the, uh, the States, uh, when airborne and he was a quartermaster, uh, for the first of the 506, I'm sorry, first of the 501st. Nonetheless, he still went through airborne training and he would jump in with them. And so he was actually a, uh, third day of Normandy drop.

• 11:35Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  And then, uh, fought in the, uh, the battle, uh, of the bulge in the Black Forest. And so that humble confidence that he never spoke about. And so my mom would naturally tell me stories. And, um, it wasn't until I became a Marine that he actually, you know, really revealed a lot of the stories from, uh, from World War II. And then, you know, as he got older, it was, it was the same stories, but I would sit there and listen for the 15th time as if it was the first time I was, you know, hearing it out of, uh, out of respect.

• 12:07Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's interesting. I was talking to Dave Burke once again today.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Good deal, Dave.

• 12:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good deal, Dave. We were talking about reading about face. And, uh, I was saying, hey, you know, when you read about, the, the older I got, the more it meant to me. And there's a quote that, that from Musashi that I talked about on the podcast, which is, it's something like this, and I'm not going to get it perfectly right, but it's something like this. When you know the way, then you see the way in all things. So about face is not a leadership book at all. But when you read it and you are thinking about leadership, it's just all about leadership. It's a hundred percent about leadership. But it reminds me of what you're saying. Like when you're, when you're a kid and you don't know the way yet, and your grandfather could be telling you these stories and it

• 12:54Jocko Willink?

  sounds kind of cool or whatever, but compared to when you actually know and understand war and, and you, it, it's just a totally different story. And as a matter of fact, speaking of that. When you were running the JOTC course, I was, I came in and I was gonna do like the brief that I would do to the JOTC course. And you know, you were there, it was like the 10th time you were gonna watch it. And I was like, hey, are you gonna hang out and watch this, or are you just gonna leave and go do like workout or something? And you're like, no, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna stick around. And I was like, why you, for what? And you're like, I learn something new every time. I was like, dang. So, that's pretty, uh, definitely, when you get older, you can appreciate some of these things from, um, when you know the way.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Well, let's look at Extreme Ownership. I mean, this is why you hear people that are like, hey, I'm reading it for the seventh time.

• 13:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Because they, they will get 10 new things, or their perspective has changed.

• 13:46Jocko Willink?

  That's the big.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  And they learn it.

• 13:47Jocko Willink?

  That's the part that I didn't account for, and I don't know who told me this. Somebody told me this, like, it was someone that had come to multiple musters. And I said, well, you know, how'd you like this one? And all the musters are a little bit different, but the first three were not that different. The first three were the same, almost the same. And someone said, well, it's only been a year, but my perspective is totally different now because I've been promoted one time and I got different situations going on, so it's, I'm seeing it differently. So that's, that's another thing that happens as you get, again, older.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:17Jocko Willink?

  So, back to you, how did you pick the Marine Corps? Or did the Marine Corps pick you?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  So, a little bit of both, uh, out of options. No, hey, so you're standard, again, high school sports, um, loved running, loved wrestling. Uh, the grades, not so much. Wasn't for, for a lack of, uh, aptitude. It was a lack of complete effort.

• 14:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  And so, you know, loved to party.

• 14:46Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Uh, if it didn't have to do, uh, with parties or girls, uh, I wasn't involved.

• 14:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  And, um, so I actually was the only one in my high school class not to graduate. Yes.

• 14:59Jocko Willink?

  So you got that going for you.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  My mom is a little Italian woman. And she, you know, she really is the rock of the family. And you have to know how to play her. My dad is just the disciplinarian. You feared him. Yeah, you just feared him. Bottom line. But you're, you know, my mom was a nurturer and a disciplinarian. You just had to play both sides because once you put her on to the disciplinary side, you just had no safe, safe house whatsoever anywhere in the Sorely household. So they did, you know, my dad had served in Vietnam in the reserves. He did not have to go to Vietnam because he had a very unique skill. He was very good at football. And back in the day, he was stationed in Fort Pocle, Louisiana. He got assigned to the football team. And that's what he did in the army.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  But very different army. Wasn't a fan of the military. Just, you know, we were different in those regards, but we're, we're very much alike. So I went off to the University of Colorado, Colorado Boulder, the.

• 16:00Jocko Willink?

  Wait, how did you do this if you didn't graduate high school? Did you get your G D or something?

• 16:03Speaker 01

  No, no, so I went, went back for the summer school, summer session and finished the requirement. And I'd already been accepted into the University of Colorado Boulder. This, you know, the, the early stage of my life is not, you just, parents can't say there's a whole lot of pride there from the end of high school until about the first year of college. So I did not pick up a ROTC and Naval ROTC Scholarship at Boulder, but you can enroll as a volunteer in hopes of picking up a scholarship. So I joined the Naval ROTC at University of Colorado Boulder and shortly got kicked out just for getting in trouble.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  And I remember the battalion midshipman commander pulled me in for my counseling and said, you will never become a Navy SEAL. And.

• 16:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so at that time you wanted to be in the SEAL teams?

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was, I was going between the SEALs and Force Recon and, you know, lo and behold, we had this guy, Ben, I won't use his last name, who was a Force Recon Marine, Fifth Force at the University of Colorado Boulder as a MESET, Marine Enlisted Commission Education Program, a Marine. And was just impressive. Built like a little tank. Everything about him articulate, smart, confident, not the loudest guy in the room. And so he sort of took me under his wings like, hey, don't worry about it. College is not going to work out for you this go around. Why don't you do what you want to do? And, you know, walked me down to the recruiting office in Boulder, Colorado.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Signed up and when I signed up, I came back to Northern California for a few months while I was waiting for my, my boot camp date. Enjoyed myself and then when it was time to go, you know, I sort of dropped the last minute information on my parents. Mom, having a father that was in the military, she accepted it pretty well. And for my father, he was, he was not happy. Given his, you know, everything is about our perceptions in life and his perception, his experience with the army was not a favorable one. And so he was livid. And, um, yeah, we had a few words and he did not see me off to the airport. My brother and my mother did.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  And then fast forward to, to boot camp. Ben, again, had, had given me some good advice, like, hey, you can turn this around and the Marine Corps will give you every, every opportunity to do that. And so I crushed it in boot camp, graduated Honorman out of like, you know, 300 kids. And on graduation day or the day prior, you know, the parents can come out and see you and they line up the entire recruit battalion and lo and behold, who's in front carrying the guide on? Me. And that's the one time, you know, me and my father did not get along in high school because again, not his fault. You just see him doing this and shaking his head. And, you know, ever since that, that time, my, my father and I see each other in a different

• 19:04Speaker 01

  light. We still clash because we're so alike, but we, you know, we've got a common understanding and he, he's just a good man. My parents are good folks. I couldn't, you know, I was never want for love, for discipline. And the Suriel household was a great household.

• 19:22Jocko Willink?

  It's weird too, because as a parent, you're always thinking.

• 19:28Jocko Willink?

  If you try and impose too much on your kids, you're just gonna, you're just gonna push them in the other direction. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, for you, like for instance, your dad could have been like, no, you're not joining. And you would have been so rebellious, you probably would have joined anyways and done, you know, then you would have just not gotten along even more. But he had to just be like, okay, I'm not gonna see you off, but I'll be there at graduation.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Dude, I'll put it to you this way. I love the Marine Corps. Best run service, albeit they're the small service, best run service in the US military. You, you just can't debate that. And I think what he saw was he sent a boy off and like within three months, he saw the beginning of a man. And I mean, he loved it. He took it on wholesale. He loved it so much that he would pass by a recruiting office. He'd stop, get some donuts and bring him into the office and shake your hands. I mean, he, he loved the military at this point. He saw it from a different, I mean, we literally changed his experience in Vietnam to a favorable one.

• 20:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the Marine Corps has really just mastered that whole thing of taking a recruit and turning him into a Marine. They, they are really good at that. They are really good. It's awesome. The thing I always said about the, the Marine Corps is there's, you know, in the SEAL teams, you'll get these totally great guys at the high end of the spectrum and you'll get much worse guys at the lower end of the spectrum. The Marine Corps, it just keeps it all in a much tighter group. Like you know what you're getting. It's gonna be, it's gonna be a Marine and it's gonna be good to go.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  You're talking about like their minute of angle.

• 21:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 21:06Jocko Willink?

  It's a tight shock group. The SEAL teams, you know, we get some, we get some awesome guys for sure, but then you get a couple scattered rounds out there, a couple stray rounds that are off paper.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Don't, don't worry about that little guy.

• 21:20Jocko Willink?

  Check. So, so then what, what year was this now? Is this like 1998?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  It was, it was 98. 98. So, so glad I came in before nine 11 because I got to see the pre-war military. And then, you know, became what I call the, the GWAT babies that were absolutely spoiled. And this sounds, you know, contradictory, spoiled by war.

• 21:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

• 21:45Jocko Willink?

  What'd you do? What was your MOS?

• 21:48Speaker 01

  So, went in as a, uh, Jesus, I'm even forgetting it, uh, oh, three, eleven rifleman.

• 21:55Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  But, so, when I was at the School of Infantry, these recon Marines show up, and you can always tell the recon Marines, they have the dual cool, the, the, the jump wings, you have the double trouble. And the hair is a little longer, and they stand a little taller, and, uh, so unbeknownst to me, they, they literally had to try out that, uh, that day, and so that was my opportunity to get into recon early, and, uh, I did extremely well. Finished first within that class, and they're like, okay, do you want to go recon? I said, yes, absolutely. And so, out of the School of Infantry, when I graduated from there, it was straight to the basic reconnaissance course, right next to Bud's.

• 22:33Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  In Coronado, uh, for three months.

• 22:36Jocko Willink?

  How many guys get to go straight through that pipeline like that?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  So, you know, it ebbed and flowed. Usually, you had to do some infantry time before you tried out, but I think, uh, you know, similar to, to, to the demands of, uh, post nine eleven, when we started, or the Green Beret community started opening up the eighteen X program for guys straight off the street into the special forces, recon would occasionally do the same thing. And so, very few, and I, I just happened to hit, uh, at an opportune time, uh, pass the screening, and, and I'll tell you what, BRC was tough, and, and I have nothing but respect for those guys. It's, you know, it's not, they don't have a hell week, but it is, uh, it is man town, uh, in every respect.

• 23:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. No, I used to see those guys. Obviously, we'd see them all the time going through classes, and then, so, and then you show up. Where'd you go? Where'd you go after that?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  So, first recon battalion, uh, at Camp Pendleton.

• 23:27Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Um, and it was, it was quickly thrown into schools. It was awesome. So, uh, got dive school right off the bat, which is the Marine Combatant Dive Course in Panama City, Florida, which was, I'll, I'll tell you what, and, uh, most SEALs don't like to hear this. It was as tough as second phase, if not tougher, and even academically, uh, they, they dove in a lot deeper to the dive physics, the dive medicine, so you had guys getting dropped for, uh, for academics.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  And then after that, it was shortly after sniper school, which I was ill-prepared for. Uh, loved. I remember my mom, I went back to San Francisco, uh, cause I had a weekend off and I, and you had to build your own ghillie suits. And I built the worst ghillie suit that you probably have ever seen. Uh, I still have the thing in, uh, storage. It looks like Chewbacca lying on the ground. Um, but passed that school by the skin of my teeth. And I think we started with 40 and we graduated 12 and it literally came down to the last stock. And, uh, a guy named Brian from Idaho, who had been with a stay platoon, uh, in the Marine Corps, which is more or less a sniper platoon.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  And, uh, literally helped me get in my last position and sacrificed himself because he didn't need to score a perfect score on that run and, uh, and passed. But I made up for it in that, you know, the, the shooting, yeah, the shooting. The shooting was not a problem. It was just stalking, uh, since I had no real preparatory work going in and those guys had, it, it was tough. How was your patience level during stalking? Was it good? It was, uh, you know, it, it was decent. Uh, the problem was we, we went to sniper school in January in California, which is cold. And so we were out there all the time, sometimes rain. And so, you know, the patience was, was fine. It was just the pain of, of sitting there.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Which, which you had to contend with. And then, and then do you go on deployment? No. So did a, uh, entire workup, uh, and actually shifted over to another platoon because I, I was at first recon battalion. And it was a company at the time and we turned into a battalion when I was there. So I transferred from seventh platoon to a new platoon and continued a, a workup. And, uh, had a great officer, um, pulled me aside. He's like, hey man, uh, I want to put you in for the MESET program. Which again is the Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program. For the listeners, that's where they send an active duty Marine, usually a corporal sergeant or staff sergeant. To go back and get their college degree on the Marine Corps dime and then come back as an officer.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  It's because you've shown some promise. What I say is I'd only been in two alcohol-related incidents in the Marine Corps. And so they said, hey, you're officer material. I'm joking. But uh, so the officer put me in, I filled out the package and got selected as a corporal. Very early in my career. And so uh, when they asked me where I wanted to go, I wanted to go to the University of Texas. Did not get in because let's track back.

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  They looked at your high school records and they were like, ah, no.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  And so uh, believe it or not, I had been to a wedding in Austin, one of my recon buddies and loved the town. And uh, the same guy looked at me, he's like, hey man, why don't you try Texas A and M? He's like, it's like the next best thing. It's only about an hour and a half outside of Austin. I'm like, okay. All right. And of course I'm a corporal at the time. I don't have the money to go visit Texas A and M. Internet was not exactly booming at that time. And uh, so I just submitted an application. Actually, some Marines that were there called me and they made it sound like a great place. And so when I went out there, uh, drove out there with my three boxes of household goods. And it is just a country town with 50,000 college students.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  And uh, it was a great opportunity, but College Station was not for me and the war had kicked off. And so I finished school in three years and uh, got out of there.

• 27:35Jocko Willink?

  And then how did you go from, at what point did you tell them you wanted to join the Navy?

• 27:40Speaker 01

  So I, you know, going out there, I had about a 75%. Uh, I'd already made my decision that I wanted to switch over to the SEALs. Even if you looked at it from a time perspective, had I gone to TBS and then, you know, Officer Infantry Course, it would have taken me the same amount of time to get to a SEAL team. And so it just made common sense. I'd worked with a few SEALs during the workups, the new workups, uh, at First Recon Battalion.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  You know, they were older statistically, more highly educated, more physically fit in the biggest part. They were part of SOCOM and they had the money. I was still carrying an M16A2 as a recon Marine, a sniper. We just didn't have the money. We didn't have the gear. And so uh, you never see SEALs switch from the SEAL teams to recon. But you see a lot of recon Marines switch over to SOCOM units. They either go SEAL, Green Beret, and a lot of them went PJ. Which for the listeners is a Air Force pararescue jumper.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  So I did go to Marine OCS and I gotta tell you again, that was a challenge. I lost, I think I went in around probably 185 and lost about 20 pounds that I didn't need to, uh, to lose. And so that was a summer in Quantico and I was impressed. And you talk about maintaining that standard, that, that quality spread that the Marine Corps does so well, uh, especially within their officer ranks. That's the reason.

• 29:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. How long is, how long is Marine Corps OCS?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Three months.

• 29:15Jocko Willink?

  And how did, if you, if you knew you wanted to go in the Navy, how come they sent you to Marine Corps OCS?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  So the MESET program, you actually go to OCS after the, or during the first summer, after your freshman year. You still come back as a sergeant, as a sergeant at that time, uh, continue, uh, towards your degree. And once you finish your degree,

• 29:33Jocko Willink?

  Then you get your commission.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  You get commission. One year prior, and here's, here's the funny thing. So one year prior to, uh, graduating, I said, hey, uh, went to my Marine officer instructor who's a major, who's a prior enlisted guy himself, great guy. Uh, I'm like, I think I want to go SEALs. He's like, okay, let's put a package in. It's like, hey, the military's gonna get their pound of flesh from me either way. Do what you want to do. Uh, the commanding officer was Marine Colonel. Did not see it that way. I was disloyal. So during the process.

• 30:02Jocko Willink?

  You betrayed the Marine Corps.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Pretty much. And, and.

• 30:05Jocko Willink?

  I literally hate you.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  The major prepped me again. He's like, hey, just listen to what he has to say. Nod your head and just step out of the room. I got you.

• 30:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  And, um, so the inter-service transfer was almost immediately approved. It was, it was that easy of a process. But then they told me I needed to, uh, attend something called, uh, mini-buds that summer of my junior year. Um, and so when I show up, you have about 35 midshipmen from Naval ROTC units, the Naval Academy. And then one sergeant in his Marine Charlie's and it is, you know, khakis, khaki top with a.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Uh, blue bottoms with the red stripe and uh, I'm amongst thirty-four guys in white and I just stuck out and it was gunny highway. So gunny highway is in our course. And um, yeah, I was still very much a sergeant. So they, they did love me towards the end because like they said, hey, we need this done. I would step up, yell, hey, fellas, let's get this done. And uh, the, the guys sort of rallied around me and uh, you know, lo and behold, at the end of that, I had a, a spot waiting for me when I uh, graduated. And it didn't hurt that uh, the, the CEO of BUDS was a former Marine himself.

• 31:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's awesome. It's a good way to get that in there. The prior Marines that come in the teams are always got a little extra squared awareness inside them in their brain. And BUDS, any factor of BUDS?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Does anyone go through BUDS and say it's a non-factor?

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  What was the biggest factor you had?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Patience. It was patience.

• 31:46Jocko Willink?

  So I asked you about patience in sniper school. What were you in face with?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  So you, in sniper school, I was still a new guy.

• 31:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  So you were stepping into a, a community that I highly admired that I wanted to be a part of was the Easy Party was some of the instructors had a very, they were, they were very artistic in getting under your skin.

• 32:09Jocko Willink?

  So what year is it now? Sub- now, when is it? Is it post? Oh, yeah. So it's, it's game time.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  In fact, I think you, you, you were deployed right around that time.

• 32:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, I was deployed in two thousand three, two thousand four, my first deployment to Iraq. Yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Cause your counterpart, your, your sister platoon commander visited me.

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  In BUDS. And it was right before you guys went.

• 32:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right on.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  And um, which I have a funny story about uh, JOTZI when you came to speak to us.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  So you know, the, it just, the, the patience of going through the process.

• 32:41Jocko Willink?

  I came to speak to you and you went through JOTZI?

• 32:43Speaker 01

  You did.

• 32:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. I, I did not remember that. That's weird.

• 32:50Jocko Willink?

  So you you had you were a little bit impatient of going through BUDs like basically you're saying oh man I'm ready to get in the game and they're like okay take this sweep this grinder and do all this dumb stuff that you have to do.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. A hundred percent.

• 33:04Jocko Willink?

  It's uh when people ask me because people ask me all the time hey I'm thirty three years old I want to go in the military do you think it's a good idea I'm always like here's the problem the problem is you're thirty four years old there's some real benefits that in that you're mature and you are smart and you have knowledge about the world here's the bad part you're mature you're smart you have knowledge about the world because when they're like hey we want you to do this completely ridiculous task that makes no sense whatsoever you're not gonna feel like doing it and you're gonna have to do it and that's gonna grate on you even more when I was eighteen years old and I joined the Navy it literally didn't matter what they made me do I would like well like what you just said when you when you join the Marine Corps and when when Ben said to you hey look

• 33:45Jocko Willink?

  you can you just just do what they tell you to do and and life's gonna be good you like I I didn't no one told me that but when I got to boot camp I was like oh I do what they tell me to do and life's gonna be good that's what's gonna happen so it's like oh you fold my underwear whatever clean the toilets hey let's do this and that's a lot easier when you're eighteen than it is when you're thirty four a lot easier.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  It is and and you know it's not so much what they tell you to do they they tell you what to do but they want to see if you perform it's not that we're trying to create robots and and you know a lot of people you have to demystify that uh about the military but BUDs is just a long process and then while we're going through it they're telling us stories about what you guys are doing overseas or you know we had one SEAL pass away in Afghanistan at that time someone received a Navy cross in in front of us and the whole time you want to be those guys not the medals or any of that but you want to be the gladiator in the arena and you know you have twelve more months of training before you can even show up to a SEAL team.

• 34:40Jocko Willink?

  The other the other big thing and you knew this because you'd been in the Marine the other big thing that people don't understand is the fear that we all had that this thing was gonna end and we weren't gonna do anything that was the biggest fear I had was this war's gonna happen it's gonna be over in in three months and I won't have deployed and I'll have to do the rest of my Navy career never have go never going into combat which was the the biggest nightmare I could imagine total nightmare.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  That would have been, it's the same for the guys that were in the Gulf War. You know, that certain platoons got to go over there.

• 35:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  And they sat behind thinking that they were gonna backfill them and the war was gonna be a long war. And then it's over in what, six days?

• 35:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had a Master Chief friend that was on the last plane to Viet, the last platoon going to Vietnam. And the, and the plane got shot down and they didn't go. It's like a total nightmare for them. But it's hard for people to understand that mentality of how bad you want to go. And it's just the way it is, man. I, I wish there was some nice thing to say about it or some psychological way to explain it away like, hey, it's just, no, it's like, I, I'm just gonna say the way it is. When you're young and you're in the military, you want to go to war. That's all there is to it. I'm, I'm sorry. I, that's the way it is.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  But you believe, you believe in what you are doing. There's a sense of purpose. And, and again, it is counterintuitive that anyone would want to go to combat.

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  I'm super stoked that you feel that way. I'm gonna, here to tell you and admit to you that like, I just wanted to go to war.

• 36:12Jocko Willink?

  I just wanted to go to war. I, actually, another old Vietnam guy, he, when he left SEAL Team One, he goes, he goes, I joined the Navy in 1970 so I could kill people for my country. And I was like, oh yeah. I know what he's talking about.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  In this, you know, the funny thing is, you start to love it. You start to love the war.

• 36:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  And, and that's not a bad thing. You know, funny enough, I, I took a job, went right when I retired at Texas A&M System. Was the Director of, uh, Veteran Services for all 12 campuses. But, uh, there was this sort of old hen that, uh, a mother hen that, that just didn't really like me, you know, she, she leans in, she's like, what is the worst part about war? And, uh, I look at her and say, that it has to end. And just walked right off. And you could hear the.

• 37:01Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's the classic line that they got right in Apocalypse Now is when Colonel Kilgore's like, he just, he's distraught. He's talking about napalm in the morning. And that smell, that gasoline smell, the whole hill smelled like victory. And someday this war's gonna end. And that's the worst thing he can think of. Cause, hey, man, he's a battalion commander of the cavalry unit in Vietnam. He's God.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  He's on top of the world.

• 37:28Jocko Willink?

  He's on top of the world. There's nothing more important in the world to him. Ever. He can't even imagine it. And he's depressed that someday the war's gonna end.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Fired up.

• 37:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so where were we? So you get done with BUDs. BUDs, the biggest thing you... People always ask about the physical part of BUDs. You're in good shape, no factor.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yes, is it physically exhausting? Of course.

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you get tired.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  But you know what it is also is it's an opportunity to actually start cementing your reputation.

• 37:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  And again, I was very much still a sergeant and the instructors loved me because I would rally the boys. Even, you know, what I like to call a healthy appetite or healthy disrespect for authority.

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Is to get the guys fired up against him a little bit.

• 38:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  And they get paid a little bit, you know, you see them smirking, be like, alright, it's really...

• 38:19Jocko Willink?

  It's worth the price.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  So, and again, you know, got the fire in the gut. The boys loved me.

• 38:23Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  They rallied around me.

• 38:25Jocko Willink?

  You're an officer, you got the fire in the gut?

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:27Jocko Willink?

  I haven't heard that too much. Have you heard that too much?

• 38:30Speaker 01

  You know, I don't know.

• 38:30Jocko Willink?

  I haven't heard that too much. I... A caveat, or what is it called? I don't forget what it's called, but I had one of my buddies text me the other day. "Oh, you're making it sound like BUDs is super easy." It's not easy. And I was like, "No, no, no, no. Let me, let me correct myself." I'm not saying BUDs is easy. Like you said, BUDs is hard. It's, it's physically hard. The hardest thing to me, I think physically, is that it goes on day after day after day after day after day. And so when you're doing a four mile time run, which should be pretty easy, because in first phase, you've got 32 minutes to do that. That's a long, that's a slow pace. Even for a grown man, that's a slow pace. Even for a big guy, that's a slow pace. But when you've done whatever, 8,000 eight-count bodybuilders the day before, and then you got up at 3:00 in the morning and you did 8 million flutter kicks,

• 39:13Jocko Willink?

  and then you go out and get on the beach and you do a timed run in soft sand with boots on, it, it's not easy. And that's what, that's what trips people up, I think. The grind.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  The one thing too for me that was, that was a driver is there was no way that I was gonna disrespect the Marine Reconnaissance Community. No way. There are some warriors. I mean, there's a lot of warriors within that community. And so that was always over my head. No way was I gonna ring that bell. That would just be a complete, you know, a complete utter lack of respect for the community I came from.

• 39:47Jocko Willink?

  The quitting in BUDs is really hard to understand. And I, I had like a, I had like a midlife crisis several months ago about, because some people that I knew about and that I talked to had quit.

• 40:03Jocko Willink?

  And and like I didn't get it and and there's been guys from the Marine Corps that have gone through that I've been like, oh, that's awesome. And then they quit and you're you're thinking to yourself, how does this even happen? So I'm 100% on board with the thought that no one knows who's gonna make it through. No one knows. Like, you can't say this guy's gonna make it. He's a stud, or this person's not gonna make it because they're weak. You you literally don't know. Now, could I bat 60%? Maybe 70%? Maybe. But there's no way you could make a sure thing. There's not one person in the world that you could say this guy is going to make it through BUDS 100%. There's no person in the world you can say that about, that I've that I know of.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  The most humbling lesson I learned in BUDS, and you're you're gonna find this funny, was I went through BUDS with a guy named Ryan Jobe. Sound familiar? And again, remember, I'm a I was a really fired up Marine Sergeant that's just pinned on bars. And

• 41:04Speaker 01

  from judging a book by its cover, you look at Ryan, you're like, you're not gonna make it. Everything was sloppy about him. And I even told him at one point, I'm like, hey, man, you're not gonna make it. You should quit now. And just to watch him and the instructors zeroed in on him. And the kid had no quit. And even at the end of Hell Week, having been beat more than anyone in that class, the instructors actually pulled him aside and they said, hey, you're good to go. Like, we've thrown everything at you in the kitchen sink, and you stood strong. You're gonna be a great SEAL. And I watched that and I'm like,

• 41:45Speaker 01

  oh, man.

• 41:46Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  I who who am I to judge who's gonna make it and who's not? And that was a that was a life lesson I still remember. And I it wasn't until Ramadi that I apologized to Ryan. He he sort of giggled. He's like, yeah, I know. He's like, you all thought I wasn't gonna make it.

• 42:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like you said, though, no, zero quit. Zero quit. And and doesn't matter what you do to me, I'm gonna be right here.

• 42:10Jocko Willink?

  So then you get done, you get done with BUDS. So I came and talked to your JOTC class. What did I talk to you guys about?

• 42:16Speaker 01

  You said you, uh, you and, um, your task unit commander.

• 42:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Came and talked about the deployment as a whole.

• 42:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay, awesome.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  But there's a, a narrow, it's on the second deck, the classroom for junior officer training course, uh, which I eventually took over for, for LEAF, uh, later on. Uh, there's a narrow passageway and, uh, this task unit commander, uh, for JACO and JACO coming off his platoon commander tour had this, uh, we're, we're standing like this and they created a little lane. And as each of us walked through, JACO would lean in and basically make you shimmy through. And you're like, what the hell is up with this guy? Right off the bat, we're like, this guy is an a-hole. Like, screw this guy. Now you want us to listen to you? And I mean, naturally, hey, he's a physically intimidating dude, but like, you, you really like, screw that guy, man.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  I don't remember that at all. I'm sorry, bro. I always have fun with new guys, though.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  It didn't, it didn't stop there and we'll, we'll, we'll get to the next encounter.

• 43:14Jocko Willink?

  And then you showed up, you went right to, you went, you go right to team three after that?

• 43:19Speaker 01

  I did. Showed up in, uh, November of 2004. And, um, there was three slots open for JOS immediately. And, uh, they went to, uh, all naval academy guys. And I got stuck in ops, uh, working with a great guy, um, that we both know. And I absolutely looked out for me and so sent me to, uh, free fall right away. And then when I finished that up, he's like, hey, do you want to go join the boys overseas? Cause team three was deployed at the time. I'm like,

• 43:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  So was, you know, shortly after, uh, December, found myself on a, a plane and arrived in Baghdad and balling. I, I was finally in the game. I was there. That's half the battle and I loved it.

• 44:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then what were you doing? Just tagging along with the boys?

• 44:07Speaker 01

  So, yes.

• 44:07Jocko Willink?

  Or did they give you some strange job description, but it just meant hang out and wait to go on all this?

• 44:13Speaker 01

  So working in the, uh, the JOC, uh, naturally as an assistant, uh, operations officer. But, uh, there was another SEAL team that, that was there. Remember they were dual, dual deployed alongside SEAL Team Three. And, um, fell in with the, uh, the platoon commander, uh, quickly. And he's like, hey, Jump on the Humvees, you're a 50 cal gunner.

• 44:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Uh, when we go out, just watch us do our thing, uh, you know, set up a cord on, uh, with, with the vehicles. And slowly learn. And so every time they would go out, I would jump in the, the, uh, the Humvee as a 50 cal gunner. And, uh, I was in heaven.

• 44:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  I was in absolute heaven.

• 44:48Jocko Willink?

  Get any better, you're just freaking stoked. Yeah. And then you came back. So you come home from that deployment and then you get put into, is that, is it, did you get a platoon the next time? Were you like, did you get stuck being ops again in that task unit?

• 45:01Speaker 01

  So I get, yeah, I got stuck. This is like good deals for good seals.

• 45:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Uh, I got stuck as TU Charlie, uh, OpsO.

• 45:11Jocko Willink?

  Oh, get some.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  And so again, the other slots were full. Uh, I'd have to wait for an AYC. It would mean I still get to deploy. I actually, it's a double benefit. When you look at it at the end of the day, I actually get two deployments. Those guys, after they're done with their assistant platoon commander tour, have to go elsewhere. And so it actually was a blessing in, uh, in disguise.

• 45:30Jocko Willink?

  And then, okay, so you're in that task unit and interestingly that task unit is in the book, Extreme Ownership. In a very short passage, and I was looking at it to think about what, what we said about it, but there was a task unit at SEAL Team Three at the time. And the task unit commander and one of the platoon commanders, they didn't get along. They had issues with each other and they couldn't, they couldn't get, they couldn't put it aside. They just couldn't put it aside. And even the commanding officer, again, this is in the book, and the commanding officer said, hey, look, I'll tell you what. I know you two have issues because they had both come to him separately and I'm probably screwing up the story, but it was something like this. They both came to him and said, hey, look, I can't work with this guy. And the other guy says, I can't work with this guy.

• 46:14Jocko Willink?

  And he brings them together and says, look, it's Friday, by Monday, come in here and tell me how you two are going to work together. Understand? And they're like, yeah, I got it, sir. They come in Monday and what do they say? I can't work with him. I can't work with him. And he goes, okay, you guys can't work together. Guess what? You're fired. And he fired both of them. Which was a, which was a great move, actually. I think it was a good move. You know, if you've got two people that can't figure out how to work together under the threat of being fired from your job, that's a real problem, especially if you can't substantiate it. I mean, if you can't go in there and say, "Listen, here's the reasons why I can't work with this guy. It's this, this, and this." Because obviously, they had the opportunity to do that, and there's situations where you say, "Look, I can't work with this guy. He's immoral, or he's unethical,

• 46:55Jocko Willink?

  or he treats everyone horribly, and I can't sit there and watch this happen." Like, there's reasonable arguments that you could make where you literally can't work with someone. But when you can't even substantiate an argument as to why you can't work with someone, and then you get told, "Okay, I get it, and I don't hear any real reasons, so you two go figure it out," and you come back and say, "No, it's not happening," seems to me like a good move. It's, "Okay, neither one of these guys I trust to go overseas and form relationships with other military units and foreign military units and do their job properly." And he fired them both. You, somehow, they said, "Okay, you know what? Collateral damage. We're gonna take Sorelli, and we're gonna move him into Task Unit Bruiser." That's what they did.

• 47:36Jocko Willink?

  And I was stoked, because I wanted more people, always, you know, because you get another 50-cal gunner, you get another officer, you get another shooter, you get, it's another person. It's awesome. And I was stoked to have you coming on board. And there was, there was like, a little bit of, I mean, there was, there was drama, because, you know, inside, inside Bruiser was like, no drama. Like, we don't, we don't play drama. Like, we solve problems, we keep our mouths shut, we do what we're supposed to do. We, if we got problems, we figure them out, we straighten them out, and we move on. And we could see all this drama unfolding in that other task unit, which is, is not cool. I mean, you don't like seeing that at a SEAL team. You want the whole SEAL team to be kick-ass. And so, you see a task unit that's in turmoil. It's like, not fun to watch, especially because I knew, I basically knew

• 48:18Jocko Willink?

  every player in there. I knew every one of those guys. And you watch them just falling apart, and eagles are flaring up, and it's just a nightmare, man. It was a nightmare. And anyways, you get basically out of that whole catastrophe, out comes Mike Sorelli in the Task Unit Bruiser. And the best worst deal I've ever been dealt. Best worst deal I've ever been dealt. So you check in and I remember I I was thinking to myself, okay, I didn't know you. Uh, I've looked at your record. I knew you were in the Marine Corps. I like, I knew that you were going to be squared away. That was my, that was my, as much as you can predict, you know, I was thinking, okay, this guy was in the Marine Corps. This guy's gonna be awesome. You seem like you were serious and you want to do a good job. And, and so I was, my assumption was you're gonna kick ass.

• 49:03Jocko Willink?

  However, I had to be a little bit, you know, I had to do a little precautionary precaution, take some precautionary measures to make sure that you understood where I was coming from. You know, I wanted to make sure you knew where I was coming from. While I having a little fun with it, just a little, just, just a smidge. Yeah. So that's why, that's why we're so introducing you into the task, bringing you in. I wanted to let you know, like, hey, this is where I'm at. You know, we don't have any trouble here. That's why. So that's why we did the whole, uh, the whole briefing. So in the mechanical, so in the mechanical room, so at SEAL Team Three at the time, there was no ceilings. And any, they were doing this big remodel and there was no ceilings in any of the platoon spaces or task unit spaces. There was all just,

• 49:46Jocko Willink?

  there was a wall with no ceiling. So you could hear everything that was being said. And so whenever I had something legitimate, like an issue to bring up with someone. And it was almost, it was, in fact, it wasn't even almost always, it was always my, my J O's. It was either Leif or Seth or one of the other J O's and I'd bring him in there and I'd be like, hey, here's what's going on. Cause in the mechanical room, there's like a loud noise and no one can hear you. And that's the only room that still had a ceiling. For privacy. For privacy. It was like the cone of silence. Yeah. The cone of silence. So whenever someone was doing something that I really need to tighten up, someone's getting out of line and I really needed to talk to him on, on the secret level. Yeah.

• 50:25Jocko Willink?

  And by secret, I mean, I didn't want anyone gossiping about what I was about to say. So I'd bring him in the mechanical room and, and tell him what was up. And so that's what I, that's how I welcomed Mike into the task unit. Go ahead.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  So having come out of an incident where I was wrapped up in a lot, a little bit of drama and being shifted.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  That incident though, you were just sort of like in that group or were you, you know?

• 50:50Speaker 01

  So since I was close, the operations officer, which is basically the guy that handles the day to day affairs, the troop commander, I was naturally close to him. And if you want to step back to that task unit, because it was one of the, again, many great leadership lessons across the course of my career. For a new guy watching that in the SEAL teams, it was, you know, I was questioning, maybe this community is not for me. If this is the norm, because this is my first experience, so this means this is normal to me. It just seemed like backstabbing and egos. One of the platoons, they performed and they stayed out of the drama for the most part. But between this platoon commander and the task unit commander, it was from day one.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  It was just like watching a train derail. You just saw it coming. And the fact that the boss laid down the rule and they come back on Monday morning and paint him into a corner, I don't know what they expected.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  And they both got fired and it both affected their career. But it was, you know, I actually, I can say as a new guy, it was a great thing to see in retrospect, because you learn what not to do. But when I was told to report into Jaco, you know, I'm not in the best of spirits and knocking the door to task unit bruiser and say, hey, Mike Shirelli, Jaco, I'm here to report in. And he said, Roger, come with me. And he had a sheet of paper in his hand.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Principal's office.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, what's going on? And so I follow him into, everyone knows what the mechanical room is, but nobody goes in. And I mean, you just want to picture like cogs turning and just it's loud, there's steam coming out.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  Nightmare on Elm Street, that's where Freddy Krueger did most of his work.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  You actually told me to pop two. And so I popped two and you basically laid down the law of, hey, I heard what happens. You have clean slate here, but do not bring drama into my task unit. Here's your counseling sheet, you've been formally counseled and pretty much left the room. And I think I sat in the room for maybe like 30 seconds to a minute.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Bite yourself.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  And I'm just staring at the wall like, what the?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  My, my, my career in the SEAL teams is gonna be extremely short. I'm getting it from all directions. And, and what he did was you lay down the law. And, and I understood there was just one thing to do at that, that point. And that was just perform.

• 53:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  It was perform.

• 53:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the other backstory here is, is that the platoon that you're talking about that performed well inside that task unit, the platoon chief and that, because he was, he was one of my good friends from way back. And because there's all this stray voltage going around about whose fault this was. And he came up to me and he goes, hey, you're getting sorely. And I was like, yeah, and he goes, he's fucking good to go. And I was like, check. And that's like literally all I needed to hear. Cause when he told me that, I knew like he's, I respect his opinion. And so I actually knew you were gonna be good to go a little bit stronger than I, than I gave note to.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Now, he was, in terms of first people you meet in the SEAL teams, was absolutely welcoming to every new guy. No hazing whatsoever. You can perform as a new guy. You're a part of this platoon. You have a voice. And once he found out, cause he's a sniper, found out, uh, I was a sniper in the Marine Corps. He's like, go, hey, I'm, I'm making a call to the army right now. Go check out a suite of guns. And I was shocked. And, you know, I trained up as a sniper, as an officer for the, the entire workup. And it was because of that one guy who welcomed me with open arms. And, and you know, despite his, his long history in the teams, I mean, no ego whatsoever.

• 54:31Jocko Willink?

  He's humble, awesome guy.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  So you giving him that paper, the formal counseling? That's like, uh, isn't that something you normally do if you get in trouble from officially scolding you? Or reprimand? So you just did it to make a straight up impression? Like, hey, you're in trouble?

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, I probably wrote in my entire naval career, less than five. I might've written three, maybe.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  So he didn't even do anything?

• 54:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know, I, I know I had to give one to Leif one time, like my, my, uh, I, Leif, Leif, Leif did something and the XO.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Was like, you need to write him up.

• 55:10Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, oh, definitely, sir. And so I wrote him up and then I shredded it later or whatever. You know, it's like not, but there's a very few times that I actually did that. But again, we were getting you late. It was pretty late. We were going on deployment soon. And so I was like, okay, let's, let's get some. You gotta set the, you know, set the expectations out there in the front, you know? That we're not playing around. And then we go on deployment. We go to Ramadi. We, well, we guess before we did that, we did SRTX and all that kind of the last little bit of training. And then we went on deployment to Ramadi.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  No, I did not. I joined you after SRTX. I literally joined you three weeks before we deployed.

• 55:47Jocko Willink?

  Good God.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  So I was that fresh to tasking a bruiser. No relationships with a few guys that I'd gone to, uh, to Bud's with. Actually, so remember Mark Lee and I transferred over at the same time.

• 55:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That was after SRTX? Wow. Are you sure?

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Mark might've been before I was after.

• 56:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Yeah, I think Mark was before. Yeah, yeah. Cause oh, that's right. Cause everything fell apart in SRTX for you guys. But your SRTX was before ours.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  That's right. We, we, we'd come back from Panama. That's when the proverbial shit hit the fan within that tasking.

• 56:21Jocko Willink?

  So then, Jay, we're getting ready to go to Ramadi. And what, what'd you, you, you came, you became? What did you become? Like, like, cause I had a guy that was the, the tasking at Ops. Did I make you task unit assistant Ops?

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Constantly demoted. That was the beginning of my SEAL career. Uh, I was, so I was the A Ops, um, but quickly became.

• 56:43Jocko Willink?

  Let me, let me tell you something. This is a, this is a great, a great point. Cause all that, like, basically, you know what that is? Really? It's like a test. Like, hey, I'm gonna write you up. Let's see what your attitude is. Your attitude is, you know what his attitude was like? Roger, I'm no drama. Don't worry about it. Then it's like, okay, you're gonna work for this other guy. That's probably lower in rank than you that has been in the military for a year. And you're gonna work for him. How do you, how do you take that? And you know, Mike's attitude was like, Roger that, I'm here to work. Those things, like, when you, when those things happen, cause people ask me this, that kind of question all the time. Well, you know, someone else got promoted or someone else got this. It's like, what do you do? Oh, you work hard. That's, and that's exactly what you did. And. You know, it took a matter of days before I was thinking, okay, he's, oh, I'll give him a little bit more. I'll give him a little bit more. I'll give him a little bit more.

• 57:24Jocko Willink?

  And then very shortly thereafter, it's like, okay, guess what? You are ops now, which it's not like this huge, great job, but it's, it's, it's pretty significant. Once we're on the ground in Ramadi, there's a lot of responsibility there. I had to count on you for a lot of stuff. And because you were freaking squared away and we're like, okay, Roger that. No attitude. No, never did you like, I gave you, and then we got overseas. I remember I gave you the worst job, which was I sent you to the TG, right? So the TG, for those of you that don't know too much about the military, there's a, there's a headquarters above the task unit, which is called, it's the SEAL team, but when you're on deployment, it's called the task group and they have

• 58:04Jocko Willink?

  all kinds of administrative stuff that they gotta handle. And we, we, we had a great team with great support from our head shed, but they needed people to work. They need people to drive paperwork is basically what they needed. And so they needed an officer to go over there for 30 days, for 30 days and get, you know, work, do all this paperwork. And I had to submit an officer and I, I, I sent you. And there's two reasons why I did it. Well, number one, the number one reason why I did it was because I knew that you'd get there and figure things out and help us grease the skids for everything that we were doing. Whereas if, if I sent someone else, they might not be able to pull that off as well.

• 58:44Jocko Willink?

  And two, because I knew when I get you back, I could do something awesome with you, like get you in the field, which is what I did. So,

• 58:52Jocko Willink?

  yeah, if you're in those situations where you feel like you're, you deserve better. Yeah. Just be quiet, suck it up, do a good job. And if you're, the, the other part that people get paranoid about is they think, well, they won't notice me. Yeah. They, they think I, I should tell Jaco how awesome I am. I should tell Jaco that I was in the Marine Corps. I should tell Jaco that I, I'm a sniper. I should tell, like, hey, I got a better idea. How about you just be humble and just work? And if you do that, then Jaco says, oh, hey, man, this guy squared away. I wonder why he's so squared away. Let me look at his record. Oh, he's in the Marine Corps. Oh, let me look at his record. Oh, he's, he's a sniper. Oh, he was in recon. Okay, I've got a pipe hitter here. Cool. I can use him and he's humble on top of all that.

• 59:35Jocko Willink?

  As opposed to, hey, look at me. Cause believe me, there's plenty of people that come in and they want to bow up and act like they're the baddest guy on the planet. It's like, that's a real problem. That's a real problem. Cause they have a big ego.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  It was to the point where I knew I'd burned my personal capital. And so it was time to rebuild. And even before he sent me to the task group, you know, running ops quickly, it came apparent that the other guy that was ahead of me just wasn't going to cut the bill. But Leif had asked me if I wanted to go out. And I'm like, yeah, man, in everything in me wanted to go out on a mission with them. Cause these guys are already starting to kill, you know, a lot of combatants. But I had work to do in terms of ops that Jaco had passed down. And I knew if I had went out, it wouldn't have gotten done. And you would have let me made that call.

• 1:00:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  You would have let me go, but you know, I passed. And Leif, you know, we were talking about that yesterday. I was with Leif in Texas. And he's like, I remember that one thing. And we knew that was a sign that you were going to get your stuff done. And he actually made the right call. And he still brings that up today.

• 1:00:37Jocko Willink?

  You know what you were doing? You were looking out for the task unit instead of looking out for yourself. That's what that is. You were looking out for the task unit instead of looking out for yourself. You were taking care of what your actual job was instead of taking care of yourself. And that's again, for, for everyone that's wondering like how to act, that's how you act. You take care of the team before you take care of yourself. You stay humble. You don't think that you deserve more than you're going to get. When you get handed a shit sandwich, take a bite, chew it and put a smile on your face and ask for another one and make that one squirt away too. And that's how, that's how you're going to get where you want to go. Which for you eventually meant going to join Delta platoon.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Awesome. Best experience I've ever had. And again, with a, a platoon that is humble. And if there is a personification of that, that is JP to know. And those guys welcomed me with open arms and I was taken back by the, by the humility. They're, they're just, they're sort of, you know, the way I described Delta platoon is they were like the little guy. They were the little guy in Task Unit Bruiser. In the sense that they were just quiet with what they did. It's just different personalities between Charlie and Delta. And you love both platoons, but they had a very different style of leadership. And, you know, I can't name any of the names because most of them are still on active duty,

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  but it felt like home. And then being with Seth was educational, given the experience they had gotten within those like two months that I wasn't there, two and a half, three months. And, you know, there was a steep learning curve after three months gone after them and I'm stepping in because I had to like speed up to the, basically the speed of war because they were already there.

• 1:02:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and they had a ton of experience at that point. I mean, it was, it was an insane amount of experience. The, the, the first, at one point, they did 24 straight patrols into the Malab and got contacted every single time. And then one, they didn't get contacted. They were like way up in the northeast section and they didn't get contacted. And then the next time they went out, which was a day later, they were right back in it again. So the amount of experience that they had was just, was, was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. I remember so I was briefing the CG SOF and I've made that quote right there. And I was like, these guys have been in contact on their last 23, their last 23 operations. And the, the talk

• 1:03:01Jocko Willink?

  watch officer comes walking in and he's like, sir, I was like, yes. And he goes, I just want to let you know, uh, Det Kragador is in a, in a tick right now. And I was like, Roger that. And I looked at the colonel and I said, make that 24 in a row. Yeah. That was, uh, that was, that was pretty awesome. We used to, when those big, bigwigs would come to visit us in Ramadi, we would, we would, we would attempt to make it all nice. But what that looked like was so obviously wretched that like we would, we would say, hey, you know, if we've, we've got, we'd, we'd lay out the, uh, the MRE coffee for them. So like, hey, if you want a cup of coffee, here's the MRE coffee. We, and we'd make it like

• 1:03:45Jocko Willink?

  we were doing our best to give them like the best treatment, but like the treatment that you're going to get just sucks because we're out here in the middle of nowhere and the supply chain's not as good as it could be. And hey, if you want, hey, we, we really want you to have coffee if you have it. So here's some MRE coffee. You can mix it up here. Get some.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  And then when they left, we cleared out the supply closet and put the coffee machines back up. You, the, uh, the funny thing is, um, You talked about the task group and during my time there is for those big ones that come in is it was such a deviation from what SOF was doing in Iraq prior to that and you know, I like to, you know, use Colonel McFarlane, who you need to have on this show as soon as possible. He's retired now, Lieutenant General, former commander of the 1-1 Brigade Combat Team, is that he realized we weren't winning. We are not winning and to continue operations as we have been doing is the wrong call and things need to change. And even

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  at the task group, loved the commander over us because it was a deviation from what every other SEAL team had done. You could see him struggling with whether it was the right call. And I remember a few times he called me in to ask my opinion about what was going on, but he wasn't really looking for an answer. He was using me just as a springboard for his own thought process. And so I would talk very little and he would just sort of keep on talking and I mean, he had a very solid sort of thought process along the lines of how he justified it. And ultimately, you know, he looked out for you and the rest of the task units.

• 1:05:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and they allowed us to look out for all the conventional forces that we were working with, the 1-1 A.D. and the first, the 506 and the 137 and 38 Marines and all those guys that were on the ground with us there, who we were able to help out as much as possible, only because we got clearance to do those operations, which as you said, was a was outside the norm, outside the norm. Daytime operations, staying out in the city, supporting conventional forces, which freaks some people out. Like, why would you be supporting them? They should be supporting you. It's like, well, no, they've got whatever, a thousand soldiers and they're taking down a giant part of the city and we can help protect them. So we are a supporting element, but it's going to be, it's going to have big impact. So it was, it was awesome. So when you got, when you got out to Corregidor.

• 1:06:08Jocko Willink?

  With the first of the 506. How awesome is first of the 506?

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  The first of the 506 from the top down. Were hardcore warriors. Some of the strongest leadership. So now, Major General Ron, I'm sorry, Ron Clark was the battalion commander at the time, Lieutenant Colonel. Dave Womack, I mean, I've never seen in my 20 years, a stronger, soft, conventional force relationship. Other than Ramadi. I mean, it was a textbook case of unity of effort. Nobody worked for the other, but they all worked in unity towards the same end state.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  And it was beautiful and Ron Clark, of course, you know, Seth and all the boys had set that relationship up. They had done a wonderful job and the fact that, you know, I got out there before he bestowed the first of the 506 spade. On them and you know, I was there when it got bestowed upon us. It just, I mean.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  I need to qualify this, you know, getting the Trident was one of the biggest things, one of the biggest accomplishments in my life. But it was just like a different sense of pride that almost rates up there. That this badass Lieutenant Colonel that had been, you know, in the suck for so long. Bestowed a infamous, you know, symbol on our shoulders and said, hey, you wear this in combat. And that was, I mean, there's very few words to describe how that felt.

• 1:07:46Jocko Willink?

  That was, like you said, the relationship between, between everyone, between us, between everyone at the 111 AD. It was just freaking awesome and I don't know if we'll ever be able to capture that and describe it. But man, it was, it was awesome. And what they did for us, I mean, we did whatever we could for them and what they did for us, man, was just the sacrifices that they made. And the effort that they put forth to support what we were doing. It was, it was, it was awesome. It was just awesome. Talk about.

• 1:08:23Jocko Willink?

  Just give like, hey, this is what we were doing. So people can hear from your perspective. Like, again, you know, you don't need to get into tactics that, but just, hey, just a general. This is what we were doing.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  We, we were covering and moving with the first of the 506. That's how I put it. We were covering and moving. Again, all in this, in pursuit of the same goal is win Ramadi. And we could have stuck with the status quo with the nightly direct action raids, but it just had little impact compared to what the, the conventials were doing. And they were going to go out. So we really utilized the skill set that was unique to the SEAL teams, and that was the sniper overwatch. And, uh, you know, those positions, those sniper positions, because we would, again, we defied sort of traditional tactics of those two to four guys that went out, maybe six guys in a sniper hide, and we went out in force.

• 1:09:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, fighting positions.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Fighting positions because shortly, you know, uh, after the first few kills from our, our snipers, um, it quickly turned into a battle position because they, they can sort of triangulate where you're at based off the, the bodies lying on the ground. And they had become very good at it. But we would move out, uh, ahead of the frontline trace of the 506, set up a sniper overwatch, mutually supporting sniper overwatch, uh, to really, uh, protect the conventials doing major clearances throughout the lobby district. And it was highly successful. Yes, didn't mean we operated during the, the days. Sometimes it did. Uh, most often we would infiltrate at night prior to, uh, you know, use the advantage of night to your, to, to your unit.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Uh, set up prior to the, the conventials coming in the early morning and starting the, uh, the clearance operations. And then we'd either pull out during the day or stay until night.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Just to, uh, give ourselves, uh, you know, mitigate risk as best as possible. But, uh, you know, you cannot argue, the numbers don't lie. You cannot argue with the numbers that the SIGAX were going down. Enemy combatants were, you know, killed, were, were stacking up and slowly, you know, taking one bite at a time of that elephant, we, we moved further and further into central Ramadi, which was enemy held territory, uh, up until 2006.

• 1:10:35Jocko Willink?

  And then from the other side, Charlie Platoon was coming in from the, from the western side of Ramadi. And it was like, eventually we just all met in the middle and called it good. So when you got over to Corregidor, I mean, obviously you're working for Stoner when you first show up there.

• 1:10:54Jocko Willink?

  How was that?

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Stoner's great. Stoner's a very, uh, I don't know if the word eclectic i- is a good way to describe him. So for the audience, I mean, Seth Stone is a Naval Academy graduate, highly intelligent. You knew it. The guy almost had a photographic memory. Ended up, uh, you know, getting his, um, his masters from Princeton. So clearly the guy's intelligent.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  What are you saying about 6'2", 6'3"?

• 1:11:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  He was a, he was a big dude. He was overly aggressive. Sort of had some extra tissue above his, uh, his eyebrows that sort of made him look like a, uh, a caveman. But Stoner had a reputation of, of being, you know, just that aggressive. And, and that's what was needed in that position. But he wasn't reckless. And let me say that. He was, he was very methodical and diligent about most of the decisions he made. And, um, you know, for any leader, the, the burden of command is, is a lonely place. You're tasked with commander, you know, even though you're close with Leif and Jaco, uh, Leif and Seth. You, you're also alone.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  And for Seth out there, all by himself, cause you know, um, Andrew had taken off. He was by himself and really had nobody to, to commensurate. And so I think, uh, when I get out there, you know, he was relieved to have a, an officer that was a, a, you know, a little more aggressive, um, and confided in me. And so I went everywhere with Seth, every meeting for the first of the 506. Um, I think he was, in a sense, relieved. You know, one of my strengths, and it sucks to say this, was I was actually a very good planner. Very good planner. You know, I took a lot of pride in the fact that I was a sniper. And so I could do a lot of analysis, mission analysis, going in, mitigate risk. And then I was very good at knocking down the products, uh, almost to my own demise.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  And I'll get to that, the funny story. But Seth knew he could rely on me for the little things to get that done. To clear the way for him to focus on the more strategic picture when he had the Battle of Monty. And so, um, You know, because I respected him for what he had done up to that point. Like, very much in a sense, as a young SEAL, I was trying to earn his respect as well. And I think I did that towards the end, because he knew he could rely on me. And I think quickly, out in the field, I proved my worth. To remember, I'm an officer with a sniper rifle now, and so I'm finally in the game as well. But we grew extremely, extremely close, to the point where he started to bounce off,

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  you know, bounce matters off me, for my opinion, before he weighed in with some final decisions. And he became a brother, quite frankly. And, you know, when the deployment was over, you know, led the way in making sure that he was sent off out of Delta Platoon in a fine fashion, you know, we got him a... Forget the pistol, but it was a nice pistol, it was like a $2,000 pistol. The boys were happy to chip in, so we made sure that we sent Seth off with as much love as he showed the boys. Let me finish, you know, with Seth in that regard. He loved, loved the guys. He would hold them accountable. By all means, you know, he was close with the guys, but it did not get in the way of him

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  making a decision. A right decision. Not what was best for the guys, but what was right for the guys. And he would make those hard decisions. And he didn't mind being unpopular if he did.

• 1:14:40Jocko Willink?

  Well...

• 1:14:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I...

• 1:14:49Jocko Willink?

  At some point, I'll be talking a lot about him.

• 1:15:01Jocko Willink?

  Not now.

• 1:15:03Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:15:06Jocko Willink?

  Now we're almost done with deployment. And, uh.

• 1:15:15Jocko Willink?

  You guys had a matter of, I don't know what to call it. In terms of number of missions left, might be zero, might be one, might be two.

• 1:15:27Jocko Willink?

  But it was almost time for everyone to start packing up and, and heading home. And that didn't mean that. The first of five of six was going home because they weren't, didn't mean the one one A D was going home because they weren't, didn't mean that they were going to stop doing it. Operations because they weren't, it didn't mean that the enemy wasn't going to stop. Trying to kill Americans. And so that meant that we couldn't stop doing what we had to do until. The next SEAL team came in to relieve us and take our place. So there was no.

• 1:16:06Jocko Willink?

  There was no stopping. There was no stopping until it was time to go home. Um, close as we were and, and I remember consciously, I said to myself. I'm not gonna say, hey, this day will do our last mission. Cause I think that's like, uh, uh, call me superstitious, but that to me is like a bad luck thing. Like, hey, okay, guys, this is the last mission. And even in my own mind, I said, okay, well. We'll see how this one goes. And if another mission comes up. And so I, I never. Said to myself, okay, this day or this something we're going to stop. And I just knew. That at some point we'd have enough of the, of the new group over, the new team would be here and we could say, I could say, okay, you know what? We're good now and we're going home.

• 1:16:50Jocko Willink?

  And I didn't want to make that a con, I didn't want to make that like a set date, you know? Or a set time or a set number of missions. I just said, when, when we're ready to be relieved, we'll stop. And we'll just stop and we'll, we'll, we'll pack up because. I don't want guys out in the field thinking, hey, if I can just make it through this because that's bad. Or I don't want guys in the field thinking this is the last one I gotta do. And I, I don't want that on anyone's mind, not even mine. And so I even tricked myself and just said, okay, we're going to keep going until we've got enough strength from the other team. Then we'll just stop that when, when that day comes.

• 1:17:28Jocko Willink?

  So you guys kept operating and everyone did, kept operating, kept going and

• 1:17:39Jocko Willink?

  it was still despite the significant impact there had been on the enemy, the enemy was still bringing it. And they were starting to get a little bit more desperate.

• 1:17:50Jocko Willink?

  And because we had really shut down a lot of their movements and they were starting to really try and strike back significantly when they could. Uh, so basically almost every time that

• 1:18:07Jocko Willink?

  we went out into into Ramadi, it was on at this point.

• 1:18:20Jocko Willink?

  So

• 1:18:24Jocko Willink?

  September 29th, 2006.

• 1:18:29Jocko Willink?

  You guys were doing another, another operation in support of the first of 506.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  Operation Kentucky Jumper in the heart of the Malaub district, right by the stadium. And, um, we had inserted the, the night before. Again, in an area we had operated multiple times before. We, we knew it like the back of our hand. We had taken multiple positions in that area. And on this specific one, we had taken a very dominant building. And when I say dominant in terms of height of eyes, we, we had the height over any other building. And we were as diligent and methodical as we were with any other mission.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  And shortly after sunrise, we were engaged with the enemy. First of the 506 had come in to clear several sectors of the Malaub district. And I think by noon, myself and another SEAL sniper had eliminated four guys. And, um,

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  You two had uh, had sort of laid down to get some rest because we'd been up for close to 24 hours and Mikey and I were holding the security and Mikey actually jumped on my sniper rifle to get some gun time and there was a SEAL to his left, three feet and I was three feet to his right. And of course, one of the things as a young guy and I realize now is I just always pushed to the edge and sometimes to take care of the guys, you have to take care of yourself and I just didn't learn that early on. So I'd always try to stay awake and I'd try to sleep as little as possible because I thought I had to be there, you know, in case they needed me to make a decision. In reality, they didn't need me there to make a decision. They had it and I was very replaceable. But

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  when you're young, you don't always realize that. And so I was in and out of sleep, you know, bobby, sitting on the ground, Mikey was sitting in a chair and Mikey and I were in conversation basically about going home because we knew that was one of the last missions and Mikey was excited because he was going to sniper school. I don't know if you remember that. You guys had lined that up. He'd been a machine gunner, um, most of the, well, all the deployment, located right next to JP, who was the point man. And so that was Mikey's job was to overwatch, like Saint Michael, overwatch JP in case they ran into enemy contact. They would be the first ones and Mikey would lay it down

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  and Mikey had laid it down on multiple, multiple occasions before. Um, and then the other thing we were talking about, uh, is he was dating a girl and we were talking about that. He knew I was excited because my daughter at the time was two years old and, uh, you know, I don't think I had talked to my family much on that deployment because we were just so busy. And that's sort of my style too, is once I'm deployed, is, uh, it was easier for me not to talk to my family because it was actually a distraction because it would, it would mess with my mind. So you knew the mission was to get home to your family as quickly as possible and, and the best way for me to do that, I'm not saying it was the right way, um, was to focus on what I needed to do and it had 100% of my attention

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  because I would not, you know, for the life of me, I would not allow one of my guys to get killed. But unfortunately, that's out of our control. It's war and war's not clean.

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  But midday, you know, contact had died down. There was still movement out there. But during the conversation, a grenade had come over the roof. And again, I was in and out of sleep, but what really sort of snapped me to, and my heart was racing right away, was Mikey snapped up. Remember, he was in a seat. The grenade had come over the roof and hit him in the chest and bounced on the ground right in front of him. And now, there's a lot of accounts out there that are wrong. I saw some other SEAL speaking to a crowd about this, you know, that there was an entrance to the rooftop,

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  you know, stairwell that would go down in the main building. And that wasn't true. We were actually like 15 meters from that stairwell at the very edge of the roof, closest to the street. When Mikey, I say, Mikey had the greatest chance of getting away, is that all he had to do was dive in the other direction. And he'd most likely take a little shrapnel to the bottom of the feet into the calves, but he would have gone home. And the thing that amazes me is, you know, I'm not the dolest tool in the shed, nor am I the sharpest, but the cognitive ability to assess what just had happened and the

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  potential outcomes, that if he chose self-preservation, which is not a wrong call, that the SEAL to his left and myself would have just eaten the grenade in the face completely, just done. And the other SEAL to his left had kids as well. And, you know, you play this over in your head, and trust me, I play it every day. And the first thing I think about when I wake up is Mikey and my kids. And the last thing I think about when I go to sleep is Mikey and my kids. And the reason I say that is there's a picture of Mikey on my wall. And you know, it's that iconic picture of Mikey with Seth and another SEAL

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  in the background with the yellow smoke. And he's carrying the machine gun. And...

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  He yelled grenade.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  And then um.

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  He dove down on it.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  And um.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Not to add humor to the situation, but it's almost like that scene from uh. Snatch. Where you know, the guys are frozen as uh. As the shotgun's going off and they say, you sit there with a stupid look on your face. Yeah, yeah. I probably sat there with a stupid look on my face. Cause one, we you know, we're in the heat midday. We've been up for 24 hours. We're exhausted. And um. It just happened so fast and Mikey just took action. In a matter of. Millisecond. I mean, he assessed the situation. He knew the outcomes. And he made the most selfless decision. That anyone can ever make. There's no walking away from that. And I know there's there's some people that have.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  Walked away from jumping on a grenade, but those are those are statistical anomalies. And um. It went off and uh. By him smothering it. It funnelized. The grenade blast to the sides towards uh. The SEAL two is left to myself. And we almost had mere wounds like through and throes in in both legs. And you know. I'd never been that close to an explosive. We we. We are, we work with explosives all all the time within the SEAL teams, but we are very. Uh diligent about mitigating risk and the parameters that you have to be so far from the uh the explosives.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  The thing actually picked me up. And flipped me over. And um. I just, I could feel the pain. You know, people talk about. Uh if you're shot or you're wounded, like you don't feel it, the adrenaline takes over. That ain't the case. It was immediate hot metal burning inside my legs or through and through wounds, just bleeding. So at the time, I didn't know if I had legs. I couldn't even, I didn't even want to look. So I put my head, sort of forehead, on the dusty rooftop and just took that big sort of bite,

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  ate the pain, and a third or a fourth SEAL was already moving towards that direction. He'd been affected by the blast as well. Didn't take any shrapnel, but it rattled all of us. And looked at Mikey, whose head was turned towards me, and I yelled, "Mikey, Mikey", and it was just lifeless. And so the next decision, the next thing that happened is we start to get lit up by enemy machine gunfire. All chaos is breaking out. It's pure chaos, pure hell. The Iraqi soldiers on the roof with us, except for one who was close to us, but he was actually

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  stricken and fair in the fetal position, they all ran off the roof and left us. So you've got one critically mortally wounded, two, someone out of the fight that can't stand up, and then the third is dealing with Mikey. And so we were left, pretty much, you could say left to die by the Iraqi soldiers. And so I immediately went to my embitter to call for Seth, who was in a mutually supporting overwatch position about 500 meters away. And the blast had knocked out my embitter. And so I'm calling, finally, you know, I pulled the embitter out and it's just clear screen and I turned it back on, reset it.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  But the embitter has to go through a, it loads the program and it takes a minute, let's say tops. I didn't have a minute. And so, still having looked at my legs, I'm looking around and I see the Iraqi soldier, and you remember, his name is Mohammed, actually spoke English, and he's in the field position. I mean, he's just stricken by fear. And so I get up to run over to him, and as I stand up to run, I just go right down, literally on my face. The legs just wouldn't work. And again, sort of eat the pain.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Which glad to do, given what Mikey's going through right now and what he did for us. And I crawl over there and the Iraqi soldiers used Motorola's. And Seth had Iraqis with him as well. And so I actually called out to Seth. Seth eventually got on that Motorola. And then I said, hey, we're hit bad. Mikey's down hard. We need you now. And they knew something was going on because the fire's just, you know, hitting our building. But you, as a commander, you have to wait. You know, you let the situation develop, find out. Let your assistant platoon commander call back and give you a sit rep of what's going on. He's probably on the radio trying to find out.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  But I got back to him probably within a minute after the whole grenade blasted had gone off. And Seth said, hold on, we're coming. And so I crawl back to where Mikey's at. The four SEALs dragging him away from the wall. And then he's trying to work on him. And I told that guy, I'm like, hey, get on the machine gun. Because remember, Mikey carries the machine gun. It was right there. And he starts to lay down, return fire. And it seemed like ages before Seth got there. But finally, some Iraqi soldiers had come up and they're starting to return fire. But, you know, it probably only took Seth five minutes. But you got to remember Seth and all those guys were set up within their position. They weren't ready to move.

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  So they had to leave a lot of stuff behind. They, you know, sometimes you're not wearing your kit because it's so hot. And you're there for, it was what, a 48-hour operation? You just, you're not always wearing your kit. So they have to throw on their kit probably and get to us. And then when they move into the street, what happens? The enemy shifts fire. They're under fire. And.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  You know, um, we didn't have our morphine kits. And this was a problem with sort of the process of how that worked. If you remember, we had sent home the guy who was signed for him about a week earlier. And so I remember I finally had the courage to look at my legs and I didn't expect to see anything there. And there was two, two legs, very bloody, uh, ACU pants, but they were there. And that was sort of a, a, a relief in a, in a sense. Okay. Hey, my legs are there. They're just not working right now. And I went to grab for my morphine and it was gone. And so the other SEAL and I are, are, you know, we're in pain, but okay, no morphine, moving on. Um, Seth eventually gets there and, uh, they start working on Mikey.

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  They didn't know the building we were in, uh, and apparently, again, God love the, I think you actually activated the, uh, the Bradleys that met us on the backside of the building, a completely different street. Yeah. Again.

• 1:31:21Jocko Willink?

  There was, there was some confusion about where to go and I did my best to clear that up from what I remember, which I don't remember very well.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Well, the, two of the guys from Seth's element grabbed me and I led them through the, the stairwell down. There was an adjacent, uh, door to a building behind them i- in the backyard. So we went through that building to the road that was on the other side, a parallel road from the, the road we were, uh, operating on. It was a, it was a main road. And, um, they throw the other wooded SEAL and myself in there. And then the guy who was carrying Mikey, uh, brings Mikey into the, uh, Bradley finding vehicle and, um, we take off and that guy, the look on his face was pure exhaustion. Now, within the military, we always, you know, we, we, we trained at the buddy carry and we do it as part of like physical training.

• 1:32:18Speaker 01

  But you're also rigid when you're carrying your buddy and he's got his hand in your back. And Mikey was not a small boy, you know, easily probably two ten, he's about six two, six three. And this guy, uh, who carried him was, I mean, he's a physical stud and he was exhausted. And, uh, we talked about it years later because he, he sort of put Mikey down in the Bradley vehi- vehicle. And he sat down and just sort of was exhausted and sat there and I yelled at him like, hey, what are you doing? You know, start CPR and he sort of snapped too and, uh, started CPR and, you know, he actually came to me years late. Um, he's like, man, I'm really sorry about that. I'm like, brother, you don't have to apologize.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  You had just carried him, you know, probably a hundred meters with combat equipment on and, and you just, you know, y- you weren't with it. You took a second to recover that. It's not your fault. But everyone finds fault in that day and everyone feels bad. JP, who should have been there, uh, but had cut his finger, if you remember. Yeah. Um, wasn't there and, um, yeah, it was, uh, you know, you talk about the relationship with the five oh six. Again, it seemed like ages from the Bradley to get from our position in central Ramadi Malab to, uh, the, uh, Cricketer Aid Station. And I do remember, uh, when I got there, the, uh, the medic gave me a little shot of morphine.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  And, uh, like three minutes go by and talk about losing your composure. I'm like, hey man, I'm in freaking pain and I, I regret saying this. It was just like the stupid things you say when things are going wrong. And I grabbed him by the collar. I'm like, I'm a Navy SEAL. You've got to ramp that shit up. And, you know, I could tell the look of sort of frustration as I comes back and sticks me and finally like the morphine hits and, and the pain subsided, but.

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  What I remember vividly is, one, they had very little capability for surgery. In fact, none at all. And they had a preppus. And two forty, forty-sixes were inbound to get us. And who shows up? Dave Womack, Colonel McFarlane, I'm sorry, Colonel Ron Clark, and the senior leadership from the first of the five oh six. In fact, there was probably a hundred soldiers out there. And so they bring us out in the stretchers, we're strapped down. And Dave Womack has some Oakleys, because remember, it's still midday. And he puts them on me, laying on the stretcher. And I flew off with those Oakleys. And if you know the Army, they don't get good gear, especially in the infantry.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  That guy just gave me his, like, eye protection that I flew off with. But they saw us off. And next thing I know, I end up in Al, Altecateam, TQ. TQ, yeah. For surgery. And again, who's waiting for me? Rob, your counterpart, and all the boys. And so the, you know, before they rush us into surgery and put us under, Rob was there. But they, they thought, and in retrospect, you know, I, I still struggle with this. Because I was almost upset with it at the time. It was almost like rubbing a dog's face in its own feces for taking a crap on the carpet.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  Is they thought we would want to see Mikey. And so they laid both of us right by Mikey, who was declared deceased by this point. And it was just almost like a point of shame. A point of utter shame. And I just couldn't even look. You know, the other SEALs in tears, I'm in tears. But I just couldn't look. And I know they, they had nothing but the best intent. But at the time, it was just.

• 1:36:04Speaker 01

  It was like, I don't want to see this. I know what I did. I know what happened.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  So they did that. They gave us about five minutes and then rushed us into surgery and you know, next thing I know, I wake up in Baghdad and go through another procedure and then prep to get the medevac to Germany to go through another procedure. And the great thing is, you know, that other SEAL and I were together the entire time. They gave us two SEALs to escort us and you know, Germany, we were there for, I think, three days and just people kept visiting and visiting. And at the time, it's just, I didn't want to talk to anyone. I did want to talk to you and Seth.

• 1:36:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  And

• 1:36:52Jocko Willink?

  That's where I talked to you for the first time is when you got to Germany.

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  And

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  it's because I had, I had my sit rep to pass and I don't know how, I'm sure because the other SEAL, the fourth SEAL on that rooftop stayed with Seth, he, Seth was aware of what had happened. But I needed to talk to you guys to be like, hey, he jumped on that thing. And in the military, when somebody jumps on a grenade, grenade, you know what that means. It is the most selfless act of valor that there is. And it needs to be reported because usually if the medical records check out, the due diligence is done and it shows that it is truth, it is a medal of honor. And I think that's where I started the citation

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  to get to you. And then, yeah, after the three days there, we we headed back to San Diego.

• 1:37:50Jocko Willink?

  Just FYI, the only thing you told me, which I asked you, I was trying to ask you questions about, hey, man, are you doing okay? How's the other SEAL that's wounded? And you just were like, that's all you were telling me was about Mikey. It's all you were telling me.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Morphine is a hell of a drug.

• 1:38:07Jocko Willink?

  No, man, it's because you you wanted to make sure I knew what was going on. You wanted to make sure that what happened. You want to make sure that I knew that you didn't care about anything else. That you were just like, he, this is what he did. This is what he did. I'm telling you, this is what he did. I'm like, I know, man, I got it. I'm like, are you OK? He's like, you're like, don't care. This is what he did. He saved me. He saved this guy. He saved all three of us up there. That was the only thing you cared about.

• 1:38:39Jocko Willink?

  And so. Then you got home. And.

• 1:38:51Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 1:38:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I remember, you know, people ask me about. Like, you know, the the funerals of my guys, but I wasn't ever there. Uh, because I was, you know, we were still deployed, but I know at this point you were.

• 1:39:18Jocko Willink?

  And I know that's a. I can't even imagine for you what that process was like.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  It was shame. You you the. The way Mikey passed, it's one of the most intimate ways. Like, brothers can pass. With one another. It's, you know, while we're out there in the conduct of a fight. A guy gets shot laying down fire. It's selfless. But when somebody makes a sacrifice by jumping on a grenade, that that is that is a message of hey.

• 1:40:07Speaker 01

  This is my gift to you. Keep my memory alive and live well. But to the guy that is saved, all you feel is shame. And I know you, you felt these same sort of feelings as, you know, ultimately you're responsible for these guys. And I think we all conducted our career with, God help me, if there isn't anything I could have done in the planning and risk mitigation and preparation for this mission or during the conduct of the mission that brings my guys home, then I am wrong and that is on me. And so to come home, even though everyone was, was so welcoming and gracious and caring,

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  it's just you feel this, this like just blanket of shame. And funny enough, when they had these buses waiting for us at some San Diego airport, because remember it was, it was some private jet that took us from Bethesda to San Diego. And so they loaded us up on a bus and then straight to Balboa. And my ex-wife and my daughter were waiting there. And, you know, my daughter's two at the time, but she would not come to me. Maybe they had a little sign, welcome home daddy. And, you know, my ex-wife tried, kept trying to, because I'm still on a stretcher, tried, tried to keep giving my daughter to me and she just wouldn't, she was clinging on to my ex, would not come to me.

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  And it was just, even that, like I remember that so vividly and I think in a subtle way, like I held that against my daughter for a short while. Is like, it was just like, it was almost like a shunning, like she knew what happened. She was like shunning me. Bottom line, she was scared.

• 1:41:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Bottom line, she's a two-year-old. And she's like, hey, I'm used to being with mom.

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  But just, just being at the funeral and everything and just looking at all, you know, watching all the seals there to, you know, to celebrate Mikey's life, it just, it felt like the eyes were on me too. And that's, that's a selfish feeling, hey, this isn't about you whatsoever, but it was just this like, how could, how could, how could I let that happen? And why didn't you jump on the grenade? Like, how could you not get there in time? Are you slow? Could you not assess? Were you stupid? And I still don't have a good answer for that, you know.

• 1:42:32Speaker 01

  But what really just, you know, we talked about this is like, somebody needs to hold me accountable. That's how I felt. I'm like, somebody needs to hold me accountable.

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  And, you know, the boys picked me up for the funeral and of course, me and the other guy, pack up the wheelchairs, throw them in the back of the suburban. And when we get to the, the mass prior to the funeral. Uh, Ms. Montsor is waiting. And, you know, I'm ready to, to own what had happened. And before, you know, I could even get the words out, she wraps her arms around the other seal and I. And says, I'm so happy you are home. Thank you for being with my son. And at that point, you're like, okay. I have no idea what to say. You just totally threw me off my game.

• 1:43:26Speaker 01

  Like you should be upset. You just lost your son and you are thanking me for being with your son and you're telling me you are so happy that I'm home. I talk about, like, it felt like the ultimate mind, mind game. But that is just a testament of the family that Mikey came from. And for the audience, um. Mikey was a Southern California kid, again, pretty big kid, about six, two, probably about two, 10, dry sense of humor. And was a devout Catholic. And the family's still fun. I don't want you to think of this like strict religious family. They are a fun family. But they're resolute in their beliefs and they're from Southern California and, um.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  They're the most selfless family I've ever met. And when you meet them and you spend time with them, you quickly realize where Mikey got it. And he went to every mass at Criggador. And when I say mass, it's in a bombed out building with some military priest. Uh, and about five people, one of which is Mikey, uh, passing out communion. And he had faith.

• 1:44:35Speaker 01

  And getting to know the family was actually very easy after that. But with time, as time went on, you know, you begin to feel like you're a reminder of their son in not the best light. And so I think over time, I pulled away from the family to give them their rest because at some point they have to put it down and move on with their lives. And I don't know if that's the right call and I still struggle with that today. But I mean, I love the family. Even there was a sense of guilt for my parents when they met their parents, just how good of people they are. And you feel like why their son and not ours. My parents are thankful. Don't get me wrong, they are extremely grateful.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  But there was a sense of guilt throughout our entire family that we get to move on and their family lives with this burden, much like we do for the rest of their lives.

• 1:45:29Jocko Willink?

  Well, I can tell you that when you said it's a reminder, not in a good way, I would actually dispute that with you. And I promise you that it's a, man, they love, they love hearing from you and talking to you and anyone. Same with Mark, same with Ryan, same with, same with all of our friends that have fallen. If you can go, go and tell a story that they haven't heard before, or tell a story that they've heard 100 times before. It's, it's, it's worth it. It's worth it. At what point did you realize that you were going to heal quick enough to go back into another platoon?

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  Actually, they told me to take, take a knee. And they wanted to give me orders out of Team Three and to take a easy tour and relax, which is the strangest thing I would ever think to hear from a bunch of SEALs, SEAL leaders. It was actually, okay, man, you need to heal and you need to get back in the game as quickly as possible because that's what's best for you. So, talked him out of the fact that you're not sending me away from SEAL Team Three. So what did they do in response to that? They aligned me. Into another platoon that is heading to PACOM for the listeners. PACOM means Pacific Command. That means we're going over to the Philippines to work with the Philippine SEALs. And you will not be in combat.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  Uh, and you are doing, uh, host nation building. And funny enough, when they align the platoons, there's these little placards with your face and, um, and your name. And in the Master Chief's.

• 1:47:06Jocko Willink?

  It's a big magnet.

• 1:47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, big magnet.

• 1:47:08Jocko Willink?

  We call it the Ouija board. Cause that's how they stack up who's going where.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  And so the Master Chief's office, this is a no kidding story, was open and they've got the three task units. With each of the platoons underneath them, the two platoons. And all the pictures of who's in what platoon. And I'm in this platoon going to PACOM. So what I do is take my magnet, take some junior officer, that's an AIC in a CENTCOM platoon going back to Iraq. Put my picture there. Put his picture in the PACOM platoon. Literally go up to the platoon space and get one of the guys' names, say, hey, so and so. You've just been resigned to this platoon. Go report in. And I'm not kidding you, that is how that happened. And no one ever said a thing.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  Either one, they didn't, uh, they didn't recognize that it had happened or two, they're just like, okay. We're not talking about this one. And I screwed over a kid. Uh, by sending him to PACOM first, first platoon. I don't feel all that bad about it.

• 1:48:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you knew. How long did it take you to heal up?

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  So it was about, uh, four months of debridement. So, you know, when I had some holes that were as deep as half a golf ball. And if you don't pick the scab off, then it'll heal in a concave manner. So this little doctor, female doctor, I had to go in every day and she would pick at the scab to keep the wound fresh so that it heals out. Called her Dr. Payne, but did that for about four months. Um, then I had to get the legs working and actually start to walk and then run. Uh, but over all four months, cause remember when, when, when a team comes back from a deployment to go into a six month individual training cycle. So guys can go to sniper school. And so I had time to heal, but, uh,

• 1:48:54Speaker 01

  there was still a lot of shrap metal in my, uh, in my legs. Uh, we form up with the platoon. Um, I had put on some bad weight.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  And then, you know, throughout that entire two, uh, two-year training, training cycle, in fact, a guy named Derek Benson, we both know, and Derek was killed on extortion seventeen, would, uh, cut into my legs, the, the shrapnel that was pushing towards the skin, he would remove it. So I had a little jar of, of shrapnel, uh, throughout that two-year period that he would, he would take out and he loved it. He loved the medicine side. So.

• 1:49:30Jocko Willink?

  And then you roll back, back to Iraq.

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:34Jocko Willink?

  Do you, do you remember anything in workup? Any spectacular, you give me that look?

• 1:49:42Jocko Willink?

  Most people that I put through workup give me that look.

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  So, hey, having working for Jaco, you, you know, eyes were gonna be on me. Naturally, I put it on myself. One, one of those, uh, self-inflicted pressures that he's gonna expect, expect me to, uh, to perform at a higher level, given the amount of combat experience I'd had. And you had, by that point, drastically changed how the West Coast SEAL teams prepare for war. And it was, um, you know, it, it was good pressure. I like pressure. I, I like when somebody holds me accountable. And, and, you know, I think Echo and I were talking about this, you have a very uncanny way of having a conversation without saying a word. And you sort of, you know, the eyebrows come down lower and you, you just stare and, and

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  what I've said is like, you would, you would do that and look at me during the training and be like, hey, here's the standard for everyone else. Here's your standard. Get it done. Good talk. And so I, you know, there were probably runs where I was harder on myself than you were, but, um, I, I do remember, uh, MOUT.

• 1:50:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  Military operations are in terrain, specifically in Kentucky. Um, and that was some of the best training. We'd uh, we'd gone through and again, that was drastically different than the, the prior workout prior to Ramadi. And uh, for the guys that had not seen combat, um, given what happened on the, the next deployment, that, that absolutely prepared us for uh, for what happened.

• 1:51:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, coming back, that was so ideal for me to go back and run training. I mean, there's no better job I could, and that's, you know, I was really lucky that I had a good, good relationship with the Admiral and he said like, where do you want to go? And I said, I want to go run trade at because I need to get these guys ready. Cause when we got back, Ramadi wasn't done yet. It, it ended up finishing up pretty quickly thereafter, but I was just thinking, hey, everyone's gonna be going back and doing the same thing for another, the average counter insurgency lasts seven years. This started six months ago. We got like many years worth of fighting and these guys need to be ready for that specific thing that I know how to do. And so I need to go run that training and, and that, and that's what I did. And I was definitely, it's funny cause like when you're talking about like, but like I, there was a lot of buddy carrying going on

• 1:51:56Jocko Willink?

  when I was running training. A- a- and the reason is because I, I, I got the debrief, you know, like it's, I knew. It's like this is gonna be, if you get in this situation, it's not, it's not what you think it is. It's gonna be hell. And how do you prepare for it? You prepare for it. You do as close, you make this as close to combat as you can possibly make it. Then that was my goal and it was freaking hard training and I, I, you know, I had so many guys come back over the years after that when I was running training that were like, hey, you know, I just got back from Afghanistan. Thank you. And the firefights were literally easier than going through a block of land warfare. They would be so stoked and, and it was awesome. That's like the best compliments I've ever gotten in my life was having those guys come back and, and also I was just talking to,

• 1:52:41Jocko Willink?

  as a matter of fact, I was talking to the guy that told me that you were good to go the other day and he's, he's like, oh, we would have had so many blue on blues if we didn't go through that workup. We were so much better. We were so prepared. And they had a, they had a freaking hardcore uh, deployment to Afghanistan and they kicked ass. And he's like, yeah, we were totally good to go because that training set us up. And so that was uh, that was a real honor for me to be able to get to do that. But yeah, I was a little bit, I was also a little bit still, like I, I remember. I remember, and I've talked about this before on the podcast, but like I'd be in Mount, like watching urban training going on, and I'd see like a new guy or something like standing in the middle of the street, and I would literally feel like a sickness in my stomach, like a pit, like, just like when I was in Ramadi, if you'd see someone in the street,

• 1:53:24Jocko Willink?

  you'd be like, dude, get out of the street. I would have that feeling. And so when I'd go over and talk to him, it would generally be like, like, pretty hostile, like, bro, what the hell are you doing? You're in the middle of the street? Get out of here. You're gonna get freaking killed. And so, yeah, it was good. And it was good that we put you guys through that, because you guys went right back into the fire, right back into the fire, on that next deployment.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  And, you know, leading into that, the last month, I had my son, who I named after Mikey. So, his name is Michael Anthony Sorelli. It was Michael Anthony Monsor. He knows he's not named after me. So I get to see him born, less than two weeks after that, we all end up in DC, to see Mikey posthumously recognized with the Medal of Honor. And then, from Washington, DC, I fly directly to the Middle East and then into Iraq. I mean, it literally butted up when we were deploying again. And so, we end up back in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  I end up specifically in Ramadi, which is completely different, completely pacified. And part of you just can't even believe it. You're just like, no, no, it's, wait, just wait, it's coming. They're gonna attack. And no, it's not that way. Well, at the same time we were arriving in Iraq, the Sadr militia backed by Iran, Iranian special groups, they're what we call the Quds forces, they're special forces, had kicked off a major spring offensive, and this is spring of 2008. And so, the army is getting hammered inside of Sadr City. Soldiers are dying. And they request sniper support from the US Special Operations Command, specifically Siege Sotov AP. And...

• 1:55:19Speaker 01

  That CJ Sodaf, knowing that SEAL Team Three had run that similar mission in support of the 1-1 Ready Combat Brigade, the deployment prior, said, "Hey, can you guys run this mission?" So our commander at the time and Master Chief were faced with a decision. We had commitments in Al Anbar Province. You just couldn't shut down a location and send that entire unit to Sodder City. That wasn't going to work. So he had to make a decision of taking SEALs from all the particular outstations in Al Anbar and throwing them into sort of this hodgepodge unit. So you had SEALs from two different SEAL teams thrown together.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  And we loaded up a bunch of RGs, I think eight in all, and 40 of us drove out to the Baghdad International Airport and set up a new unit called Debt Defender, Naval Special Warfare Detachment Baghdad. And we named it Defender, St. Michael, the Archangel, the Defender, after Mikey. And we created this badass patch that had the Archangel on there, and we all knew. And some of Mikey's boys that had gone through BUDs were in this new unit, good, good friends of mine that weren't in Iraq at that time. They had deployed

• 1:56:38Speaker 01

  to the Philippines. And so, we are located in Baghdad, but Sodder City is like an hour and 15 minutes away from Baghdad International Airport. And so, you know, they are screaming for us to get in. And again, this unit has never worked together. Some of them had, like these three guys came from this platoon, they had worked together, but they hadn't worked with these guys from the SEAL teams. And both the Conventials and CJ Sodaf were screaming for us to get in there. And so we did the best we could, rehearsals, the planning. We had never operated in the area. Maybe some people had, but those were the very senior SEALs. And we get thrust into Sodder City primarily around this route called Route Gold. And they were trying to, at that point, the strategy was to...

• 1:57:24Speaker 01

  Cordoned off or enclosed Sotter City with these large T barriers so that we can control the entry points into the city and hence cut off supplies or enemy troops coming into the city. And ultimately, the strategy worked, but the first night in, all forty of us go in. And again, remember, we had this like young intel officer who had just come from, first time in Iraq, had come from Al Anbar, where you're dealing with now the remnants of a Sunni enemy. And we're now operating in Shia territory and in Shia enemy, completely. Two different styles of fighting, two different purposes.

• 1:58:07Speaker 01

  One will get their jihad on to the point where they die. Others are not necessarily going to give their lives, they're going to fight and then pull back and then fight another day. And he didn't understand really the difference. And so the intel wasn't exactly aligning. Again, we hadn't been in the area. We go in the first night and all hell breaks loose. Remember, Chris Kyle's with us, he's our lead sniper, and we're trying to get into a position. And I mean, we had EFPs detonated on our patrol. For the listeners, an EFP is an explosive forming projectile. Again, if you remember, these were Iranian made. And what it is, is a concave plate of copper with a lot of explosives behind it.

• 1:58:48Speaker 01

  When you detonate it, it turns it into a molten projectile. Molten. A concave bullet. Yes. And this thing could cut through Bradley, an RG, an Abrams tank, cut right through like a hot knife through a butter. These things were nasty and they were killing troops. We had that detonated on us and then they owned the rooftops. And they had what we were trying to do to them. And so we are just like fish in a fishbowl and they are shooting. Chris took one round in the helmet, bounced off, and...

• 1:59:27Speaker 01

  You know Seth had now taken your position as the, and it really is, the band got back together, Task Unit Bruiser. And so Seth is back with the Striker company that inserted us, doing his job of de-confliction, making sure we had the support we needed. And shortly after, we called for hot extract. I mean, guys were getting low on ammo, the enemy's maneuvering, RPGs, PKM fire on the rooftops down into us. How we did not lose a guy, I will never know. And what I like to say is that Mark, Ryan, and Mikey were looking after us. Hey, you got this one. We're gonna give this one to you. And reset. But we called Seth in, and lo and behold, I do remember this about Seth, is as the Strikers come in, Strikers are, it's like

• 2:00:12Speaker 01

  an armored version of a Humvee with wheels that can carry more troops than a Humvee. Larger. And they have some pretty good armament and weapon systems. And the ramp lowers, and Seth runs off and starts firing into a building. And of course, Seth's like, "Let's go! Get on the Strikers!" And the guys start loading up, and the Strikers are getting after it, to the point where they went Winchester to getting us out of there. And one of the Striker operators says, "Hey, give me your gun." And I hand him my SR-25, and he just starts going at it. And I hand him my last mag, he reloads, and he's just getting after

• 2:00:55Speaker 01

  it. Well, I'll tell you what, humbling experience. Put us back into the same position, like a new guy in Ramadi. Okay, hey, we've got some great experience. We gotta reset. And we said, "Hey, give us like 36 hours. We need you to do some serious planning. We need you to do some serious rehearsals." We did that. And then we inserted shortly after that. But you know, the funny thing is, the only time, like, I really felt...

• 2:01:21Speaker 01

  Vulnerable. And I remember I called my brother before we inserted the, the next time and said, "Hey, I don't think, uh, things are gonna work out here. Um, let my kids know I love them." "A, and make sure, you know, my daughter grows up to be a person of character and make sure my grand, my, my son grows up to be a man." And, and me and my brother don't talk all that much, but for me to make that call was probably a bad choice and for him to hear that probably put a lot more concern on his plate. But we inserted and we got into position and the guy started knocking out of the park. And then mission after mission, they just kept eliminating, uh, combatants. SIGAX started to, uh, dive. We had one 72-hour operation where the guys

• 2:02:04Speaker 01

  eliminated 50 fighters. And within three weeks, uh, I think they wanted to eliminate, and I don't wanna hyperbole here, or, or plus up numbers, I think it was like 125 to 150. Within three weeks, the guys eliminated and SIGAX went to almost zero. And then there was not much to do for the rest of the deployment.

• 2:02:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, ultimately, significant activities, enemy attacks, basically. But what's also interesting is that at the tail end of that, the sheiks inside Sodder City came out and said, "Hey, look, we're good. Look, we're here to make friends now. We're, we're done with this." And what was really awesome was it, Sodder City had been a complete nightmare for five straight years. I mean, Sodder City was completely uncontrollable. And then in a six-week period, give or take, that, that those operations took place, it was like done. It was like they, the, the sheiks came out and said, "Yep, we'll, we'll keep this under control. W- we wanna make peace." And, and that's what happened. That was, that was a, that was an unbelievable, uh, set of circumstances.

• 2:03:05Speaker 01

  Dude, I, you know, the one thing on that deployment I remember in, in, you know, it, it showed I'd earned Seth's trust because of the distance between the Baghdad International Airport and Sodder City. The conventional unit that was supporting us when we go into Sodder was in, outside of Sodder City. So he's like, "Hey, Mike," and, and I think, I think I spent all three weeks there. He's like, "Hey, um, stay there. Plan the missions. Uh, if you need to do a recce of the site, go out with the conventionals." And so for three weeks, like I wasn't with the boys. They would move to me and then we would execute the mission. But, uh, you know, learning what we had about unity of effort and, and putting your ego aside and, and building, uh, personal capital through relationships, we built a great relationship with the, uh, the 10th Mountain.

• 2:03:49Speaker 01

  And they gave us anything we needed. And there was a lot of lessons learned from Ramadi that we, you know, we took and that we actually stepped up in terms of the mission planning and preparation with some of the assets that the 10th Mountain had. But I was going out with the conventionals by myself. If I needed to get to another outstation or a cop, they would have a convoy of Bradleys waiting for me, just for me. And I loved it. But Seth realized I was probably getting a little off the reservation. At one point, we conducted a mission. We got back to that, that larger base and he said, hey, go get your stuff, we're coming back. And I'm like, I actually think I barked a little at him and he's like, go get your stuff, we're coming back. And I was pissed because I was loving, I was Colonel Kurtz in a sense, loving it. He, you know, he made the right call. So.

• 2:04:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know. You guys did an outstanding job there. And again, it wasn't, obviously it wasn't just you guys. The 10th Mountain did freaking unbelievable job. The, some of the images that were coming back at that time of those guys putting that T-barrier up right in the middle or right at the, what side of Solder City was it? The eastern side of Solder City? Them, you could see those guys out there putting that barrier, putting those barriers up, the conventional army guys was freaking awesome, man. What, what, what? Awesome, awesome guys. Then you come back from that deployment, you'd think you maybe you had enough yet? Not really.

• 2:05:04Speaker 01

  You know, on that, in that vein, I sat down with that commanding officer of Team Three at the time. And, you know, I had gotten orders to an East Coast team. And, you know, he was doing my final fit rep and sending me off. We had a pretty, pretty good relationship. And he said, Mike, the last thing I want to leave you with is at some point, it becomes about family. And I'm looking at him and I paused for about 10 seconds. I say, Roger that, sir. But within the hamster wheel turning in my head was, are you freaking kidding me? I'm going to deploy as much and as often as I can. Because this thing is not going

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

  to last forever. And I'm going to, to another command with a bunch of warriors and I want to get right in stride and deploy as much as possible. But in retrospect, towards the end, I realized what he was trying to tell me. At some point, you got to pull back.

• 2:06:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So it only took you another, what?

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  Seven years.

• 2:06:03Jocko Willink?

  10 years, seven years to figure that out? So you get out to the East Coast and now you're doing just more deployments?

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  First one was to Afghanistan with a great group of guys, man. You know, I loved, loved these guys. Different feel to them, but my first mission out was probably one of the toughest missions I've ever been on in terms of just like terrain. Cause we're in Konar Province now and then how I would describe Konar Province is man town. Take, you know, some of the worst areas of the Colorado Rockies and then maybe multiply it by two. And the enemy, I mean, they were, this was their territory. They had prepared positions. It was a dangerous area and to put it into perspective a little more for, for the listeners.

• 2:06:50Speaker 01

  You know, of all the medals of honor within Afghanistan, I think the majority, all of them were in that Konar Nuristan area to include Dakota Myers.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  And on the first mission, yeah, it just was like an eight hour, hour.

• 2:07:11Speaker 01

  Suck fest and actually so Adam Brown was, was killed on that operation and that was my sort of baptism to fire to that new unit. And I remember I looked at a good friend, Jonas was killed on extortion seventeen and I said, hey, bro, are all the missions like that? He's like, no, that was, that was the toughest one I've ever been on. I'm like, okay, good. So I just want to make sure I, I need to get my head right.

• 2:07:40Jocko Willink?

  A little sanity check. You're like, oh no, what did I get myself into?

• 2:07:44Speaker 01

  But it was good to, to work with that, that team and get that experience and then I got a lot of time with, with the maritime side as well, the boats.

• 2:07:55Speaker 01

  But did in all with them, what was that? Seven more deployments.

• 2:08:03Speaker 01

  With great guys and you know, lost some more brothers, namely extortion seventeen, which was the largest loss of life in Afghanistan. Just, you know, it, it's a travesty when we lose one.

• 2:08:18Speaker 01

  Soldier, Marine, sailor, or airman, but when you lose thirty-one, um, that is just, you know, that that hits the military. To to to the listeners, they may say, well, thirty-one, you know, soldiers, you know, you guys can easily recover from that. You can't. All the the man-hours that go into to training those guys, the level of proficiency they had accrued over years, like, that is like, that is a catastrophic, um, failure or, uh, you know, detriment to the military. That is a loss of a lot of capability. Uh, yet alone, the pain for those thirty-one families, uh, the children, the or- not the orphans,

• 2:09:00Speaker 01

  but the the kids that were left behind, the wives that were left behind, I mean, that will never have any solace, um, other than that their loved ones were were doing what they believed in, uh, for them defending them. Um, but overall, I mean, great seven years, um, and just nothing but lessons learned and leadership lessons, uh, in in terms of being a troop commander. Um, and and quite frankly, you know, my last experience, I learned a lot, which was not my best, uh, leadership experience. Um, you know, uh, you you look at extreme ownership, and, uh, there's ways I I could have handled certain

• 2:09:40Speaker 01

  situations better, and I I think I I reflect on my entire military career, uh, just on, man, I could have done that better.

• 2:09:47Jocko Willink?

  That's what we all do. Sit back and think, man, we could have done that better. It's goes back to what I was saying earlier about like, if you know the way, then the way appears everywhere. But when you don't know it, you're seeing like little, like, even I remember when I was young, man, young, and I'd do something that was like partially right, but then I'd do something that wasn't, and I'd think to myself, if I would have known. If I would have gotten some reinforcement, if I would have figured it out better, you know, like figured it out better and you just don't. And that's one of the hardest things about, one of the hardest things about, it's not just the SEAL teams, it's the military. When you complete a job, you don't get to do it anymore. You, you, you get done with your assistant platoon commander and you're like, okay, I got this figured out. I'm ready to do it again. They're like, no, now you're going to be a platoon commander.

• 2:10:31Jocko Willink?

  And then you get done with your platoon commander, you go, okay, I got this figured out. I'm ready to do it again. They go, no, you're going to be a task duty commander. And then you, as soon as you get, you figure something out, you're done with that job and you can't go back and do, very seldom do you get to go back and do it again. So we all sit around and look back and, and, and there's another weird thing about this whole deal. This whole deal is that it, it's so hard to, someone's got to have a real open mind to be able to teach it to people, you know? Someone's got to be, when, when someone's just got to have an open mind, like I would say,

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  when I was running trade at, I would say, like 30 or 40% of the people would be like, listening and absorbing and, and which is, which is pretty good. It's actually pretty good, but there was like 30% of the people that, you know, I would try and explain something to them and it just wouldn't, they just wouldn't, like you're putting the way in front of them, but, but they don't recognize it. They can't, they can't see it. And so it's easy now that you know the way. When you look back at your own experiences, you go, the, the way appears everywhere, but you didn't see it back. I didn't see it back then. I'm just looking at it going, why didn't I, why didn't I figure that out? It's one of those things and I think that's one of the things that, that makes what I'm doing now,

• 2:11:52Jocko Willink?

  what you're doing, what we're doing now as a team is to be able to, to try and pass these lessons on to leaders everywhere. And, you know, leaders in the military, leaders in police, leaders in fire, leaders in business, everyone. To be able to say, look, hey, this is it over here. I know this is hard to see, but look at this. And, and it's awesome to be doing what we're doing now and say, oh, and have people again, a certain percentage of people that go, I got. Got it. I got it. I can take that. And what's interesting about our business now is when people are raising their hand and they're asking for it, that means their mind is open to, they're open to it. They want it. Whereas with, and this does happen occasionally when we work with companies that we're getting imposed on,

• 2:12:37Jocko Willink?

  you know, like the board of directors saying, hey, go fix this company. This company screwed up. You gotta go fix them. Those people don't have open minds. So they're, they're looking, when you're talking to them, they're looking for reasons that what you're saying is wrong. That's their goal. Is to say, no, that doesn't apply to me. It doesn't apply to this market. It doesn't. It's no, we actually work with eight companies in your exact industry, your competitors. And they have the same problem. This is how they fix it. But no, it's different for us. Okay, it's different for you. It's different for you. Leadership is different. In your specific company, leadership is different than it is everywhere else. No, that's actually not true. Not true at all. So it's unfortunate. You know, it's, I've been thinking about this too, cause you know, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta son, you know, I got three daughters and a son.

• 2:13:20Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and the fact of the matter is, you don't see yourself as much in your daughters as you do in your son, right? Your son is a, he's, he's, he's a boy, a small man. And man, what I wouldn't give to be able to just like, put the knowledge in there, you know? Cause you see him doing stuff and you go, and you could, you know, this is my own flesh and blood, by the way, that I say, hey, that's not a good way to handle that. Here's a good way to handle it. And he looks at me like I'm an idiot, right? Like, how would you ever know what it's like to deal with a school teacher? You know, or to deal with a coach? How would you know what that's like to deal with another person?

• 2:14:00Jocko Willink?

  You know what? You're right. I'm sure you have this, you're 15 now. So I'm sure you got it all figured out.

• 2:14:07Speaker 01

  This is the one thing I leave kids with. And I gotta tell you, my, my old man was probably right 95% of the time, but did I listen?

• 2:14:13Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  Oh, no. No.

• 2:14:16Jocko Willink?

  Dork.

• 2:14:18Speaker 01

  Your fathers will come up to me and be like, hey, can you talk to my son? He loves, he wants to be a SEAL. Uh, what can you leave him with? Listen to your old man. He may not know what the right decision is or right path is on certain things, but he will tell you what the wrong path is. And sometimes knowing what not to do is as valuable as knowing what to do.

• 2:14:39Jocko Willink?

  You know what else I tell when, when fathers ask me to talk to their sons? I tell the sons, I say, listen, your dad actually cares about you more than you do. He, he wants an outcome for you, a good outcome for you more than you do. I know that doesn't seem possible, but for him to come and ask me to like, talk to you means that what he wants more than anything in the world is for you to be in a good place in the future. That's what he wants. He doesn't want to screw you over. This isn't a plot to get you to fail in life. He actually wants you to win more than anything. So you may want to listen to him.

• 2:15:16Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:15:19Jocko Willink?

  So it's at this point, you do, you do, so what are you at? You did nine deployments overseas total? 10? Nine?

• 2:15:26Speaker 01

  10.

• 2:15:26Jocko Willink?

  10 deployments overseas. And, and finally, the little voice in your head says, you know what? I need to, uh, look at something else.

• 2:15:36Speaker 01

  Probably, uh, probably the toughest decision, uh, I had to make. I mean, a lot of guys like, a lot of guys thought you were a 30 year vet. Easy. He's, he's going to do 30, probably more. And they usually said the same about me. Um, and, and Echo and I were talking about this. It just came over me like a, uh, like a wave just crushed me. It was just like, yep, it's it. Like, um, I'm, I'm tapping out in a sense. At the end of the day, you always ring the bell at the end. To the community, they're like, oh, you're quitting.

• 2:16:04Jocko Willink?

  Quitter.

• 2:16:05Speaker 01

  Um, and, uh, you know, I, I'd had one last good deployment with a different group. And it was awesome to work with these guys. And, um, you know, there was a lot of things going on. One, I finally felt the, uh, the fatigue. Um, and, and the hardest thing to do for any SEAL is to tap out. But it, it's. Because you know that you're no longer like the best guy to push that unit forward. And I also was going through divorce at the time and um things were just, you know, things were out of balance. And even though I wanted to take the XO of a squadron, um, I knew I was not the best option for the guys. And even though I could probably maintain

• 2:16:47Speaker 01

  the job, that's not the right answer. If I could not keep them uncomfortable in moving forward, then then I wasn't the right guy. And so, you know, we talk about brutal self-assessments. That was the most brutal self-assessment because I had to admit that all, you know, however good I thought I was at what we did, what we did, it just, I'd come to a point where things were degrading. And so, uh, you know, overseas, I actually called back to, uh, you know, my CO at the time, I said, I'm done. I'm done. And uh, they said, okay, we understand that that's a mature decision. Uh, you know, he wanted me to stay. He's

• 2:17:27Speaker 01

  like, I want you to be my XO, man. He actually referred or referred me to the, uh, the captain from the, uh, the raid in the Philippines, the Ranger, the one that did all the planning. I'm forgetting the name now, but he used to call me that. Um, and he said, I understand. What do you want to do? It's like, do you want to go to, uh, uh, uh, Memphis and like work in the detail shop? I said, no. Hey, get me orders to Texas. My, my ex is probably moving back to Texas. That's where she's from. And I want to be close to my kids. I, I need to repair that relationship. Um, and you've talked about it, you know, families come second. The bottom line, when you're at war, you have so many responsibilities

• 2:18:09Speaker 01

  on you. One, bringing your guys home, the, the families come second. And so that, that was my new priority. And so, you know, testament to the SEAL community, they, they made things happen. They realigned things and they got me a billet at the University of Texas Naval ROTC, um, where one Admiral William McRaven was sitting as the, the UT chancellor. Boom. Yeah. And then, so, so did you go to school, so you got down there and was it to get your degree? It, no, it was to be an ROTC instructor. Oh, okay. And, um, they'd also prep the battlefield, say, hey, the guy wants to get a, a master's degree. Okay. Good for his career. So that was the collateral thing, was to get your degree?

• 2:18:51Speaker 01

  And so, uh, literally I had one late week to apply for the, uh, the full-time MBA program at UT. Uh, took the, uh, instead of the GMAT, I took the, uh, the AC, no, wait, I'm trying to think of the... ACT? ACT, um, and, um, or GRE, the GRE, thank you. And the scores were, were not so hot, uh, and I paid some phone calls and I got in. And, um, you know, that was a humbling experience as well to start, you know, we, we, in a sense, I don't want to say mastered, but we'd become very good at becoming, at being SEALs, at the art of war, which takes years and years to hone.

• 2:19:32Speaker 01

  And even then, you, you're never as good as you think you are, but you've put it, put time in, you've built some level of mastery. And then to step into accounting and finance with a bunch of 27-year-olds and you're the 39-year-old in the, uh, course, and you have this puzzled look on your face, because one, you've been blown up a couple of times, and actually I went to some training where they're like, hey, you've suffered cognitive degradation to the amount of 50%. What?

• 2:19:57Speaker 01

  Can you make that Excel spreadsheet move slower then? So I was grabbing these younger kids, like, hey, uh, show me how to do that, man, I have no clue what you guys are talking about. And he's like, okay, and, and they all loved me, they, they knew there was something different about me. And I remember it came time for the, uh, the first test and one of the younger kids, who was actually one of the youngers in the class, he was 26, he's like, sir, when's the last time you took a test? I'm like, 14 years ago, so shut up.

• 2:20:25Speaker 01

  But, uh, it, so it was, it was hard stepping back into an academic, uh, environment. People are like, well, dude, you've been in the combat, this is gonna be easy for you. It's like a different type of stress, brother. Yeah. And like, you know, one, we, we all drive ourselves to do well. And, uh, the first few tests did not come back, uh, favorable, and Mike Sorely's, uh, uh, calling. And so I buckled down and, um, actually did quite well. Um, but after the first semester, the, the basics of business...

• 2:20:55Speaker 01

  It gave me a good grounding and I'm like, hey, I think I can do something. I actually think I can do something good, pay back to the community. They hooked me up to be here where there's no military base. I'm supposed to go back to the community and I know there's a problem with vets getting out, especially SEALs. They're not getting jobs commensurate with their abilities and companies should be swallowing these guys up. Leaders, I mean, the one thing you can't deny is the military is the preeminent leadership training platform in the nation. No debating it. It might be the world. I'm not saying there's not great leaders out there that have not been in the military. Actually, there are more than people

• 2:21:38Speaker 01

  would like to think. There's a lot of great leaders that never had military training. But as a whole, and as you said about the Marine Corps, they tend to turn out this standard product, which is a cut above and the same thing with the military in general. And so, you know, talking to Admiral McRaven and a great guy named, who was his vice chancellor, Major General Tony Cuculo, and this guy's become a real big matter to me. Love him. We talked about this and basically walked myself into a project, which we got approved by the MacCombs Business School, 20 vets. We did a analysis into the systemic challenges facing veterans when they get out in terms of employment. And it was a 60-page paper,

• 2:22:20Speaker 01

  which was met with quite a bit of reception. And then, again, walking myself into more work, everyone's like, hey dude, we think you guys have a business concept of this or out of this paper. You need to take it one step further. We'll approve another project the next semester. And hence, something called Vetted was formed. And to give a quick brief on Vetted. So Vetted, having done all the gap analysis of current programs out there and all the research we did, we feel we found a solution. And actually Huffington Post hailed Vetted as revolutionizing the way that veterans exit the military. So it is bar none the most comprehensive program out there and it's still building itself up. So, a partnership

• 2:23:02Speaker 01

  between Wharton, University of Texas, MacCombs MBA program and the Texas A&M Business Program, MBA program, we developed something called the Veteran Accelerated Management Program. It's optional five months of online education through the Wharton Business Foundations Course as a preparatory to a two-month in-house residence program that basically gives them a very strong business acumen over the, you know, within that two months, over the course of those seven months, they receive more career development, which is almost as important as acquiring the business skills than an MBA student gets in two years. And that's

• 2:23:42Speaker 01

  how to interview, how to, you know, refine your resume, optimize your resume, LinkedIn, mock interviews. But they, they hit all the, the basic verticals of business. Even entrepreneurs, if they have a business idea, they came in, they have a executable business plan on the back end. And for those that want to go into industry, actually, every Thursday, Friday, they're working on a industry capstone embedded in a company. So during that eight weeks, every Thursday, Friday, working a project inside a company, which means industry experience that can go in their resume. And then two organizations offer their placement services

• 2:24:21Speaker 01

  free of charge at the end. Echelon Front Overwatch and Bradley Morris, Inc., which the two happen to be strategic partners, which I'm sure we'll get into. But of the first pilot program at the University of Texas McCombs, of the 25 veterans, all are placed except for one.

• 2:24:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that, so you just kind of start talking about the next thing, obviously, we need to talk about is, you know, at some point, while you were doing this, and here Leif and I were with Echelon Front, and we work with companies all the time, and every company we work with, guess what they need? They need people, they need good people, they need, they need leaders. That's what they need. And, you know, as you and I discussed this and talked about it, and I, I don't know if, I don't know who made the connection mentally. I think it was you who made the connection mentally. You're like, oh, wait, you, you need people and we're making people? Let's figure that out. And that's sort of where we got into this idea of Echelon Front Overwatch.

• 2:25:25Speaker 01

  We did. It was, it was combining chocolate, peanut butter. Pieces, uh, it, it, it was magical. Magical. It was a moment that was magical. Sorry, Liv. Um, so, no, no, there was a lot of lessons learned from that. And, and you know, when I started that, there was a lot of, uh, businessmeners of mine, very successful businessmeners that are like, dude, you need to capitalize this thing. And at the time I couldn't see it, like my altruism sort of drove like, no, it needs to be nonprofit. We're not going to charge people for this. And now I recognize that in a capitalistic market, you can do more good on the for-profit side than you can the nonprofit side. We, we live in a, a free, uh, society of free enterprise. And I remember sitting down in, in Austin with you guys.

• 2:26:08Speaker 01

  I'm like, hey, I remember you telling me that every company you talked to is like, where can I get like five of you? And that just wasn't your game at the time. Yeah. But at the end of the day, you know, talent is all about leadership. Becoming a talent magnet or having a talent mindset within your organization is about leadership. And so, you know, knowing our communities, the special operations community and combat aviators, Dave Burke, you know, our, our resident fighter pilot, the badass. Good deal. Um, good deal, Dave. We, we knew we could start something. And so we created Echelon Front Overwatch, what we call EF Overwatch. Overwatch being the term that the mission we ran in Ramadi. And I think like it has a little appeal in the sense that now we're over watching our brothers,

• 2:26:51Speaker 01

  Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Air Force PJs, CCTs, MARSOC guys getting out and the direct support com, uh, personnel, um, we're over watching them and helping with their transition. We're over watching the companies that are in a war for talent. And that's the thing that people don't understand. Even the SEALs are always hunting for the best talent. Somebody asked me, you know, funny enough, what, what, what the most important job in the SEAL teams is. And they, they thought I was going to say a troop commander on the front lines. And that, that is important. At the end of the day, that's what we do. But I said, no, it's actually being a Bud's instructor. That is like being a hiring manager. You are the filter of the talent coming through, which ultimately will end up in that troop commander and that, that, uh, troop chief's, uh, hands. And there has to be a standard. We need to put some of our best guys at Bud's to make sure that only the best are passing through.

• 2:27:37Speaker 01

  Well, the same thing applies to business. You are constantly in this war for talent.

• 2:27:43Speaker 01

  And we couldn't think of a better talent pool than combat aviators, Cobra pilots, fighter pilots, again, all the special operations guys and the direct support personnel that come out of SOCOM that have the soft skills, the leadership skills that you want. They may lack the hard skills. You look at their resume and it may not scream right fit.

• 2:28:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:02Speaker 01

  But once you get these guys in an interview and you see that one, they're leaders, that they're humble, that they're willing to roll their sleeves up and get after it, and actually listen and learn, that is the perfect employee.

• 2:28:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:16Speaker 01

  And if you can get more of these guys into your business, I guarantee you, you will create your own army that will dominate your battlefield in whatever industry that you're in.

• 2:28:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's awesome because people, every, every single time I go talk to a company, they'll, they'll say, "Man, it seems like you just, it seems like you know, did you do a bunch of research to figure out? Have you been working with us and we didn't know about it?" And I'd be like, "No." "Well, how do you know what problems we have?" It's like, "Oh, because you're a company. Because you're a group of, your group of human beings are trying to make something happen." And guess what? There's dynamics there that happen with all different organizations that get together. And guess what? If you take these leaders, because they're amazed that I can understand their business. It's like, "No, I don't understand your business. I understand leadership." That's what, that's what Echelon Front, we understand leadership. So we can go in and look at what's going on and say, "Oh, you've got a leadership problem here, and here's how we fix it."

• 2:29:08Jocko Willink?

  And so to take that and say, "You know what? We can actually give you people that understand leadership and they can help you solve these problems." That is, like you said, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, peanut butter and chocolate. That's what it is. So it's been, and speaking of bringing on talent, like when this whole thing was going down, I was like, "How about we get a little Mike Sorelli at Echelon Front?" Because guess what? That's what we did. Yeah. Bring, bring the band back together. And you know, that's why, that's just been, it's been awesome. And if anyone that's come to the muster, you know, Mike's, Mike's- Putting putting on a great talk about leadership inside the muster, freaking everyone loved it.

• 2:29:52Jocko Willink?

  I myself included and going out, working with companies again. Now we just have someone else on the team that can get out there that understands leadership. That sees solutions. We're bringing, we've been bringing you out on a bunch of stuff now. So you see other companies and you see you're starting to take even what you learned in school. Put that on top of the practical applications that we see now. You know the way. So you see it everywhere you look. So that's a, that's, that's another benefit. So that's where you're at now.

• 2:30:22Speaker 01

  Talk about getting out. I mean, you talk about what gets you out of the bed in the morning. And every company is like, do you love what you do? I'm like, the fact that Jaco, Leif, myself, JP, Dave, Flynn are on a phone call talking about leadership. I'm like, there's nothing that gets us out of the bed more than that. Like we actually like, we love to solve these problems because we've seen them before. And, and you know, people, people often say like, well, how are, how are the seals like synonymous with business? I'm like, you just said it. You're a unit. You're a company. You're dealing with people. We deal with the same issues and it has been great. I mean, how long have I been on now? Three months?

• 2:30:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:58Speaker 01

  And I just love it. And you know what? My fiance sees a different person because for, for the listeners, I, I took a, you know, a high level job in higher education, executive director of veteran services for the tech A and M system. And it just, you know, even though the work was rewarding, it just wasn't the same as being part of the echelon front. And like Jordan has seen, she's like, you're, you're actually like happy to get out of bed in the morning now. I'm like, yeah, but I'm with the boys.

• 2:31:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. That, that makes a big difference. And like you said, you can't even shut us up. Like we will have like a, we, we got this thing called the tank where we'll get together and talk about like a leader, like for working with three companies and there'll be leadership issues at each one of the companies. And so we'll talk about the leadership issue and then how that problem should be approached. And these calls that are scheduled for an hour will end up on the phone for you two and a half hours. Or we'll end up in the, in the tank for three hours sitting there going by and because we're learning from it. We're also learning how we can apply what we're talking about. It's just, it's just, it's just an awesome. It's awesome to be a part of the organization and, and like you said, to be with people that are just into it. Into it.

• 2:32:07Speaker 01

  And you know, the funny thing is having gotten my MBA. Um, the one thing that is not addressed in any MBA program is leadership.

• 2:32:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:15Speaker 01

  And they know it. And right now, you're seeing a lot of MBA programs set up, uh, or stand up, uh, centers of leadership within their, their MBA programs.

• 2:32:24Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:32:24Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, I've had some great discussions. I mean, great professors there and so, I mean, strong leaders because they, they were private sector leaders before they came back and, and spoke, but I mean, you can, and they turn out highly successful business practitioners, but at the end of the day, like it's not a, a recipe for, for leadership training whatsoever.

• 2:32:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's, it's, it's been awesome. That's, that's why the business has gone so great because there's no one that's offering what we're doing. There's, there's, there's, people say, well, who's your competition? I'm like, we don't, we don't, I don't mean this in a negative way, but, because I'm sure there's companies out there that are trying to do something, but there's no one that's saying, hey, this is, this is what you do. This is how you lead. This, this is the way this will apply to your business. These are the principles that you can use and you can make happen. So yeah, that's been, we, we've been pretty lucky in the fact that we, we saw the correlations between these two things and saw them pretty clearly. So it's been good.

• 2:33:15Speaker 01

  And I gotta say, so the muster in DC zero zero five was my first muster. And naturally, you, you, you guys know me, I'm, I'm filled with hate. It's just sort of what drives me.

• 2:33:28Speaker 01

  One of my nicknames is grumpy.

• 2:33:31Speaker 01

  But you know, I, I was definitely on board because it's you guys, you guys are my brothers. I'm like, yeah, dude, I, I want in, in, I love discussing leadership. But naturally, you know, I always have a, you, you, you hold back a little. I'm like, okay, let me see what this muster is about. And, um, the fact that you guys are changing lives and people are coming up to me off of one speech and I'm just like, dude, what is going on? Like I gave one speech and like, people were like, dude, that actually your perspective has already changed my life. I'm like, well, I'm glad to hear that. I'm, I'm excited. I didn't realize the, the impact

• 2:34:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:07Speaker 01

  that it has.

• 2:34:07Jocko Willink?

  No, it's, it's, it's a, it's an awesome thing to be a part of. And when I say a thing to be a part of, it's awesome to be at the muster with the people that are at the muster, not just like, oh, we're a part of it and you're not. No, it's like everyone that's there is a part of it and everyone that there is there is contributing to the knowledge that, that's being distributed and increased. So yeah, it's, uh, it's awesome.

• 2:34:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:34:34Jocko Willink?

  It's a good time.

• 2:34:35Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:34:37Jocko Willink?

  And that's where you're at now. It's probably a pretty good place to, yeah, probably we're touching three hours almost right now, or two and a half or something like that.

• 2:34:47Jocko Willink?

  Probably a good place to call it, and I'm sure we'll do this multiple times again in the future. Of course, obviously, thanks for coming on. Thanks for your service in the Marine Corps, in the teams, and now at Echelon Front, at Echelon Front Overwatch.

• 2:35:09Jocko Willink?

  Clearly, Mike is out here doing his job. He's done his job, and now maybe we could get Echo to do his job.

• 2:35:16Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:35:17Jocko Willink?

  And talk about how we can all do our job better in some way, somehow.

• 2:35:23Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:35:24Jocko Willink?

  Could you help us with that, one?

• 2:35:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Be happy to. We're on the path, right?

• 2:35:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:30Speaker 02

  I'm on the path. You on the path?

• 2:35:31Jocko Willink?

  I'm on the path.

• 2:35:32Speaker 02

  Alright, Jaco, Jaco is the path.

• 2:35:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that doesn't bother me.

• 2:35:35Speaker 02

  You're all, at the very least, you're all up on the path.

• 2:35:39Jocko Willink?

  I am trying to be on the path is where I'm at. You don't need to get crazy.

• 2:35:44Speaker 02

  Alright, so that being said, we're all trying to stay on the path the best we can. So, here are the ways to do this.

• 2:35:53Jocko Willink?

  Some ways.

• 2:35:54Speaker 02

  Some ways, yeah.

• 2:35:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:56Speaker 02

  Some suggestions.

• 2:35:57Jocko Willink?

  You're over here like you're the authority.

• 2:35:58Speaker 02

  Like, this is the way, yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right.

• 2:36:01Jocko Willink?

  Some ideas.

• 2:36:02Speaker 02

  Some good ideas.

• 2:36:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:03Speaker 02

  Proven, proven, most of these are all proven.

• 2:36:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:06Speaker 02

  Through experience.

• 2:36:07Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 2:36:08Speaker 02

  You know, etc.

• 2:36:09Jocko Willink?

  Affirmative.

• 2:36:10Speaker 02

  Origin, originmaine.com, it's called Origin, our company, Origin. American-made stuff. Geez, rash guard for jiu-jitsu.

• 2:36:21Speaker 02

  Other stuff as well, apparel.

• 2:36:24Jocko Willink?

  Why does apparel get like a, like a tone?

• 2:36:27Speaker 02

  You know, because, you know.

• 2:36:29Jocko Willink?

  Apparel!

• 2:36:29Speaker 02

  Because you know how you get, you know, with the whole like apparel, like you're not a fashion person. Well, then again, apparel and fashion is different.

• 2:36:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah, because apparel is what you wear as a human.

• 2:36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:36:39Jocko Willink?

  And fashion is something else.

• 2:36:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:41Jocko Willink?

  That you're trying to look a certain way.

• 2:36:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:36:43Jocko Willink?

  Or give a certain flavor to your vibe.

• 2:36:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:36:47Jocko Willink?

  Which I'm not a fan of.

• 2:36:48Speaker 02

  You're not a fan of flavor to your vibe, yes.

• 2:36:50Jocko Willink?

  You just, your goal, I went to, when I went to college, there was this woman. Who was a Buddhist monk.

• 2:36:59Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:37:00Jocko Willink?

  And as I was learning about Buddhists.

• 2:37:03Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:37:04Jocko Willink?

  They, one of the things that they said was like, you're not supposed to stand out, like just, just don't stand out. Yeah. Just, just fit in, right? That's part of the program.

• 2:37:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, technically it's not fit in, it's just don't stand out, don't like.

• 2:37:16Jocko Willink?

  Maybe one of those two, and if you're a practicing Buddhist, you can come on and brief, brief me on this. I'm sure I need help. This is how I read it. Don't, you know, just don't stand out. You're just trying to be, it's, it's like an ego thing, right? It's like, don't look at me, don't look at me.

• 2:37:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:37:31Jocko Willink?

  Because I'm just, I just wear a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Don't look at me. I'm just a normal dude over here.

• 2:37:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:37:37Jocko Willink?

  Nothing special. I'm not wearing bling, as they call it.

• 2:37:41Speaker 02

  Sure. Nope.

• 2:37:42Jocko Willink?

  So, but there was a, there was a, a person there that was a Buddhist monk. And the Buddhist monk wore all the Buddhist garb. Like the robe and the stuff. Which I don't care. Hey, I was, I, when I was in Thailand, it's awesome. It's actually awesome seeing the Buddhist monks walk around and they come and gather rice for me in the morning. And it's, it's, it's like awesome. It's seems to be the most, uh, really chill and religion out there, right? And so I'm down with the Buddhists.

• 2:38:14Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 2:38:15Jocko Willink?

  But if you're not in Thailand with other Buddhist monks.

• 2:38:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:38:22Jocko Willink?

  Where it's normal.

• 2:38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38:23Jocko Willink?

  Well, then you, well, guess what happens when you put on the robe?

• 2:38:26Speaker 02

  You stand out.

• 2:38:27Jocko Willink?

  And you're saying, look at me. And that's what I gathered from. And I was like, hey, don't look at me. In fact, my goal is like, don't look at me. That's the goal.

• 2:38:37Speaker 02

  That's the goal.

• 2:38:38Jocko Willink?

  Look at me. Yeah.

• 2:38:39Speaker 02

  Oh, so, okay, so I think, and not to go too far deep into this whole concept.

• 2:38:44Jocko Willink?

  Apparently we're just.

• 2:38:45Speaker 02

  But, but we will, we will, we're here. Hey, you brought it up.

• 2:38:48Jocko Willink?

  True, true.

• 2:38:49Speaker 02

  So i- it's less about, because when the Buddhist puts on his garb, regardless of where he or she is. When they put on the garb, that's just how, that's just the garb kinda thing.

• 2:38:58Jocko Willink?

  No, it's not regardless of where we're here, where he or she is. Because check it out. If you're in Thailand and you put on the normal monk outfit.

• 2:39:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:39:09Jocko Willink?

  You look normal.

• 2:39:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:39:11Jocko Willink?

  If you're in a university where everyone's dressed in western clothing, shorts, t-shirts, and you put on the garb, then guess what? You don't look normal.

• 2:39:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:39:23Jocko Willink?

  You stand out.

• 2:39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:24Jocko Willink?

  And it almost says, "Look at me."

• 2:39:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:28Jocko Willink?

  Because the true, in my opinion, like, like if you really wanted to, to attain that level of ego, less.

• 2:39:37Speaker 02

  Enlightenment.

• 2:39:38Jocko Willink?

  Enlightenment, then you'd just be dressing like the normal people dress, nothing more, nothing less, just right down the middle.

• 2:39:44Speaker 02

  Right, but doesn't it.

• 2:39:45Jocko Willink?

  Don't look at me.

• 2:39:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:39:46Jocko Willink?

  I'm just over here doing what I'm doing.

• 2:39:47Speaker 02

  But I think, and I don't know, but I think it's possible that it's less about the result of them standing out and more about the effort or lack of effort or no effort made to stand out. Cause that's what it is. Buddhist is like, you can't be attached to like your personal thing. It's like.

• 2:40:06Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying though.

• 2:40:07Speaker 02

  So if you, if you're used to putting on this, the garb every day, that's just how.

• 2:40:13Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I see what you're saying.

• 2:40:14Speaker 02

  Then I'm like, hey, I put this on, you guys, I can stand out or not stand out. I'm, I'm focused on my way. Yeah.

• 2:40:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay. Well, that's cool. I'll change my attitude towards the monk that I went to college with.

• 2:40:25Speaker 02

  See, that's why, that's why he's the, the, what do you call it? The leader, seemingly. Cause he just opened my mind, man. See that? Anyway, how can Origin Maine help us stand on the path?

• 2:40:35Jocko Willink?

  That's why, if you order something from Origin Maine, you could order something that is neon green that Pete Roberts designed.

• 2:40:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, those fats are neon, have neon.

• 2:40:46Jocko Willink?

  Or you could order something that's just black or black and gray, which is very, uh, low pro, low profile.

• 2:40:54Speaker 02

  Low profile. The joggers are low profile looking as far as the colors and whatnot, but. They're joggers. It's it's kinda hip. That's the thing right now. Joggers. I've got a few of them. Most comfortable joggers in the world, by the way, proven, proven by experts. Expert. Anyway, how can you keep us on the path? Okay, you do jujitsu. You wanna stick with jujitsu? You need a new gi. Boom. Best gi. Made in America, by the way.

• 2:41:16Jocko Willink?

  See, same thing. This is another question that comes up all the time is, should I wear the white gi, the black gi, or the blue gi? In my Buddhist mind, it was always, look, the white gi is just the plain gi. That's it. You just wear the plain white gi. That's the way it is. I always only wore the white gi. Guess what I got now?

• 2:41:35Speaker 02

  Black gi.

• 2:41:35Jocko Willink?

  I got a black gi. Guess what? It doesn't matter anymore because everybody wears all kinds of different colored gees. Well, they wear white, blue, or black, right? There's no, it no longer is a thing to wear. It used to be like if you wore a black gi.

• 2:41:46Speaker 02

  You're like, hey, look at me.

• 2:41:47Jocko Willink?

  Everyone was, look at me. Right now, no one cares what color because there's a lot of those different colors in circulation. So whereas a year ago, I'm saying only a year ago, I would have been like, hey, listen, you need to just stick with the white gi. That's just how.

• 2:42:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:42:01Jocko Willink?

  Now, the mind has been opened. If you wanna get a black gi, if that's the one that is, is, you know, what you're into, get a black one.

• 2:42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, or the blue one.

• 2:42:11Jocko Willink?

  Or the blue one.

• 2:42:11Speaker 02

  Or the green, or the, not bright, not neon green. Neon green, just for clarification purposes. Neon green was one of the colors that are in the spats, which are compression pants.

• 2:42:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:22Speaker 02

  For, stop. Anyway, stay on the path. Get a new gi, continue or start jujitsu. Boom, path. That's right on the path, right in the middle of the path, too, by the way. It's not, you're not, you're not, jujitsu is part of the path. Also, when I say jogger, sure, yes, they're comfortable. I get it. There's no growth in the comfort zone, whatever. But when you're jogging, getting after it, running, doing these things, you wanna put on sweatpants, right? So to speak, and you put on some comfortable, made in America, origin joggers? Bro, you're still on the path big time. Huge time, actually.

• 2:42:58Jocko Willink?

  Fair enough.

• 2:42:58Speaker 02

  There you go. There you go. Boom. So there is growth in the comfort zone in a certain small, exceptional capacity.

• 2:43:04Jocko Willink?

  If we talk anymore about clothing, I will be like entering.

• 2:43:08Speaker 02

  He's outside of his comfort zone.

• 2:43:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'll be entering the fashion area. Like, I'll have to be like, okay, wait. If we talk about clothing, see, even by me saying like, wear this and don't wear that, that's me getting in the zone that I shouldn't be in. Which is, I'm not gonna go there. I'm done. Talk about supplements.

• 2:43:23Speaker 02

  I agree. Cool. Supplements. Okay. So, Mike. Remember supplements, right? When you're young.

• 2:43:30Speaker 01

  Take them all.

• 2:43:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 2:43:32Speaker 01

  Whoever's gonna throw on the muscle.

• 2:43:33Speaker 02

  Exactly, you're right. See, I'm glad Mike's here. We can talk about this stuff and get, we can talk about it even more. So, me too. Bruh, what? Give me the, give me the what? The protein powder?

• 2:43:43Speaker 01

  Faster, stronger.

• 2:43:45Speaker 02

  Better in every single way. Lift more weights, be more big.

• 2:43:48Speaker 01

  More supplements, less working out.

• 2:43:52Speaker 01

  And then smaller t-shirts.

• 2:43:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, see, yeah, see, you understand. Exactly. So, but we, and we never thought about, hey, what about joint supplements? You know, like, you know, when you're young, you're like, eh, oh, cool. Maybe for like older folks or something like this, and I get it. But nah, man, give me the protein powder. Give me the BCAAs, right?

• 2:44:11Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 2:44:12Speaker 02

  So, current, you know, things always evolving, new information, better information, accurate information. Joint supplements are more important than protein powder supplements.

• 2:44:23Speaker 01

  I would agree. I would agree.

• 2:44:24Speaker 02

  Because, look, if your joints aren't working well in lifting heavy,

• 2:44:31Speaker 02

  you don't need protein supplements because you can't lift the weights to get, to need the recovery for the protein and for growth and gains. See what I'm saying?

• 2:44:38Speaker 01

  That is a valid point. Before you know it, you end up, you're 40 and you can barely get out of your car after driving for one hour.

• 2:44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and here's the thing, that, that is funny, but it's not funny, bro.

• 2:44:47Speaker 01

  No, it's not.

• 2:44:47Speaker 02

  It's real. And which brings me to my other, my other point, which actually all joking aside, is a big deal. This is the biggest deal that I've actually found. When you, when you get more healthy joints, your everyday activity is like way different, almost to the point where you didn't realize that you had jammed up joints. See what I'm saying? You're like, dang, all this freedom was waiting for me on the other side of healthy joints? Decision making? Anyway, point is, Jocko has some supplements.

• 2:45:16Speaker 01

  That was a long point.

• 2:45:18Speaker 02

  Well, Mike's here. I figured we'd talk about it.

• 2:45:20Speaker 01

  He's gotta educate me.

• 2:45:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, and, and get educated as well. Anyway, joint warfare, krill oil, super krill oil, these are things that go directly to joints. Other benefits, by the way, we can talk about if you want.

• 2:45:33Speaker 01

  Somebody asked on Twitter, I have my knees hurt. How does joint warfare know which knee to go to?

• 2:45:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:41Speaker 02

  Here's how it knows. Yeah, I have the answer to that. Joint, joint warfare knows. That it goes to both knees.

• 2:45:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:45:50Speaker 02

  So it's like, hey.

• 2:45:51Jocko Willink?

  Cover and move.

• 2:45:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like, hey, we got a bunch of guys, right? We got a bunch of guys, they're all like, they've been working out.

• 2:45:57Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, I was gonna say like, no, it knows.

• 2:46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46:00Jocko Willink?

  You just tell it before you eat it, before you take it, joint warfare, say, hey, left knee.

• 2:46:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46:05Jocko Willink?

  Healed up.

• 2:46:05Speaker 02

  Well, you, it feels like that, but this is what it really is. The joint warfare doesn't know, the knees know. So it's like, hey, look, we're all working out, we're all doing, you know, various, uh, we're, we're moving. We're cleaning the yard, that's what we're doing.

• 2:46:17Jocko Willink?

  Are we moving, are we moving our bodies through space?

• 2:46:22Speaker 02

  Anyway, we're doing yard work, right? Me, Mike, Jaco, some other folks that we know, right?

• 2:46:28Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:46:28Speaker 02

  After all, it's hot outside.

• 2:46:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:30Speaker 02

  And then boom, one of our, my wife comes outside with a big, uh, bucket of ice with waters in it, right?

• 2:46:40Speaker 02

  Jaco's a little bit bigger, he may have worked a little bit harder than us.

• 2:46:43Jocko Willink?

  Most likely.

• 2:46:43Speaker 02

  He might, he might need some more water. Mike worked a little bit, he might need a certain amount of water, but we all need varying amounts of water.

• 2:46:50Jocko Willink?

  Who needs the least water?

• 2:46:51Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, I've been, I've been kind of.

• 2:46:53Jocko Willink?

  Call it what it is.

• 2:46:54Speaker 02

  Let's say I've been in the shade, maybe not working that much. I may need a half bottle of water, see what I'm saying?

• 2:46:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're assessing.

• 2:47:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so my wife is the joint warfare with all the omega threes and all the, all the stuff.

• 2:47:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:47:07Speaker 02

  The nutrients, you guys are the knee, Jaco's the bad knee. Obviously, I'm the good knee, I need less of that stuff, so we are, the knees choose how much water we need.

• 2:47:16Jocko Willink?

  This is, and this is, what's cool about this is, this is also, this is all scientifically proven, a hundred percent, that the knee will draw in the joint warfare.

• 2:47:24Speaker 02

  The joint warfare doesn't know, the knee knows, see what I'm saying?

• 2:47:27Jocko Willink?

  Check. Dr. Echo.

• 2:47:29Speaker 02

  That's literally how, how it works.

• 2:47:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:31Speaker 02

  Also, yeah, but yeah, very important supplement, you'll know, just take it, you'll know.

• 2:47:35Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, yeah, discipline, you can take that. You might have seen the video that Echo Charles made about discipline. That I was taking three scoops of discipline and that it put me into, uh, let's just call it the zone.

• 2:47:48Speaker 02

  The zone. Jiu Jitsu excellence.

• 2:47:50Jocko Willink?

  The juju- the zone of Jiu Jitsu excellence.

• 2:47:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:52Jocko Willink?

  And you spliced up that video. You spliced it up. I gotta say thank you. You spliced it up to make me look pretty good. I was all grinding on Dean. And I was all had Andy's arm and I was like dang, I look good.

• 2:48:03Speaker 02

  I think that was Eric's arm.

• 2:48:04Jocko Willink?

  Just so everyone knows, yeah, the rolls don't always look like that. You got some good little clips.

• 2:48:08Speaker 02

  You wanna hear something actually really funny about that? The funny you bring that up. Okay, so all that foot, remember when I came and just filmed or whatever, right? And you're rolling with Dean for a lot of that time. And, you know, when you roll with Dean, it's like you're not just dominating. Dean is good. So he was kinda getting you for a little bit. So Dean, Eric, like literally that night, he's texting me, hey, send me that footage. Hey, send me that footage. I wanna see the footage. I wanna see the footage. I wanna, you know, this and that. And I was like, ah, you know, I don't know, you know, I'm kinda... And he's like, hey, I won't post on the internet. Just send me the footage. And I was like, okay. Didn't send it to him. I forgot I wanted to. But then I was like, shoot, should I send him this footage? You know, what like, what if he posts on the internet or whatever?

• 2:48:42Jocko Willink?

  Man.

• 2:48:42Speaker 02

  That's what I'm thinking, but I'm like, okay.

• 2:48:44Jocko Willink?

  Here's the thing. Andy said something like that, like you were filming and Andy's all, "Oh, hey, do you wanna roll?" Even though he's here filming. I was like, dude, I don't care.

• 2:48:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:48:53Jocko Willink?

  People should, oh, oh, Jiu Jitsu doesn't work on Jocko. He's not gonna tap out. No, no, actually Jiu Jitsu works on Jocko. And Jocko taps out when freaking Jocko gets caught in a damn arm lock.

• 2:49:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So Dean wants this, this footage.

• 2:49:04Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:49:05Speaker 02

  So I go kinda look through the footage and there's one of him. He takes you down. It was like funny. He's sitting on his butt. He takes you down while he's sitting down, by the way. And then he like mounts you and he's like grinding his elbow in you. I was like, dang. Let me not put that part in it. So yeah, so I made you look good.

• 2:49:21Jocko Willink?

  And what sucks is like, I was doing good, cause I was kinda getting after it.

• 2:49:26Speaker 02

  Yep, that's the part I put in.

• 2:49:27Jocko Willink?

  And then, yeah, yeah, exactly. He made me look good. So everyone, me, I thank you. Dean Lister does not thank you. Sorry, Dean.

• 2:49:33Speaker 02

  No, he's like, yeah.

• 2:49:34Jocko Willink?

  Hey, also, you know, you talked about protein not being important and I actually think you're wrong.

• 2:49:39Speaker 02

  Well.

• 2:49:40Jocko Willink?

  You need protein. And you might as well get your protein from the, what's commonly known as the only real source of protein that's good, which is Molk.

• 2:49:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:49:52Jocko Willink?

  Mulk is mulk.

• 2:49:53Speaker 02

  Do you know what mulk is?

• 2:49:55Jocko Willink?

  I've seen it.

• 2:49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, he heard, he heard.

• 2:49:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you haven't tried it yet?

• 2:49:58Speaker 02

  I have not tried it.

• 2:49:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man, sorry, dude. We'll give you some mulk immediately.

• 2:50:01Speaker 02

  We'll get spoon up here.

• 2:50:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, you're, you're, you're, you don't even know what you're missing.

• 2:50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:06Jocko Willink?

  It's a bummer. So, yeah, you get mulk. Peanut butter mulk will be out. Peanut butter, peanut butter chocolate mulk will be out. We'll call it, we'll call it very soon, within a week. I'm gonna call it.

• 2:50:18Speaker 02

  Dang.

• 2:50:19Jocko Willink?

  Within a week, peanut butter. I've had it and it's.

• 2:50:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, see, which kinda goes, you'd think, it's counterintuitive to his whole thing. You know, it's like, hey, let's make something that's like, you know, healthy, good protein, clean, all this stuff, but you know what? It has to taste delicious. You see what I'm saying? It kinda goes against his whole hardcore toughness thing, right? Just like the discipline. You made sure it tasted good. See what I'm saying? Isn't that kinda funny? It's funny, bro, you think it's funny? Anyway, yeah, mulk, good, good one. Replace your dessert with mulk and boom, no sugar, protein.

• 2:50:54Jocko Willink?

  It's weird that there's a substance on earth that you can replace your steak and your dessert with one item. And I'm not necessar- but I'm not saying you gotta do that, but take, sometimes, you know, cooking a steak is a pain sometimes. It takes eight minutes.

• 2:51:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:51:08Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 2:51:09Speaker 02

  We don't have eight minutes.

• 2:51:10Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes, boom.

• 2:51:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:51:11Jocko Willink?

  Mix up the mulk. You're good. Come to the immersion camp, we'll have mulk at the immersion camp. In Maine, August 26th through September 2nd.

• 2:51:20Speaker 02

  Jiu Jitsu immersion camp.

• 2:51:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:21Speaker 02

  By the way.

• 2:51:22Jocko Willink?

  Jiu Jitsu immersion camp, not Italian immersion camp, because we won't be sp- speaking Italian there.

• 2:51:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:51:27Jocko Willink?

  Or any other languages, most likely. Maybe a couple.

• 2:51:30Speaker 02

  No, there'll be Portuguese there.

• 2:51:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there'll be some Portuguese.

• 2:51:33Speaker 02

  Maybe some Espanol.

• 2:51:34Jocko Willink?

  Maybe some Espanol.

• 2:51:35Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah.

• 2:51:36Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, any other, anyone else that wants to come and speak other languages. All the stuff that Echo just talked about, originmaine.com, you can get it there.

• 2:51:43Speaker 02

  Yep, it's true. Also, good way to support yourself and this podcast, if you want, is the fact or knowing that Jaco's a store and it's called Jaco's Store. Okay? How do you support yourself with Jaco's Store? If you wanna represent, if you're on the path, you wanna represent. You can get a shirt. It says, "Discipline equals freedom." Two now. New designs on there if you care about that sort of thing.

• 2:52:07Jocko Willink?

  Are you still offering the old one?

• 2:52:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:52:09Jocko Willink?

  That's an interesting decision.

• 2:52:11Speaker 02

  Why?

• 2:52:11Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, because they're different. They're slightly different.

• 2:52:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're just, you know, hey, okay, so I have "Discipline equals freedom" shirts. I have the green one, the, you know, the regular, what do you call the heather gray?

• 2:52:25Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:52:25Speaker 02

  Right? And what's the other one? Like a charcoal.

• 2:52:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:29Speaker 02

  All same design. So I'm like, hey, you know, if you care about this kind of thing, hey, I'm gonna go, I don't know, wherever. The post office. Guy at the post office is like, hey, that's a cool shirt. You know, your charcoal, discipline equals freedom, cool. I go to the post office and the next day I'm wearing the heather one there. He's like, bro, like, what up? You just like that same design so much? You get it in all colors? I say, yes, but it's, I'm still left with the thought like, man, maybe I should get a different design. But I like "Discipline equals freedom." See what I'm saying?

• 2:52:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:52:57Speaker 02

  Boom, I get the, I get the new design. I come back to the post office, the guy's like, hey, I like "Discipline equals freedom" too, that's dope. But I'm still, he still has the sense like, okay, he has more than just that one design. See what I'm saying? See what I'm saying though, right?

• 2:53:12Jocko Willink?

  I do.

• 2:53:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I know I'm kind of overstating it, but it's still, it's a thing. It's not nothing.

• 2:53:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so on Jaco's store, you can get rash cards, t-shirts, trucker hats. You can get other hats.

• 2:53:24Speaker 02

  Hoodies.

• 2:53:24Jocko Willink?

  You can get hoodies. You can get legit hoodies and Hawaiian hoodies.

• 2:53:29Speaker 02

  Hawaiian hoodies. If you don't know what Hawaiian hoodies means, which we don't, because Jaco made that up, it's just a lightweight hoodie. You know, it could be called Southern California hoodie too.

• 2:53:41Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:53:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it could.

• 2:53:42Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:53:42Speaker 02

  Sure could.

• 2:53:43Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes it gets to be thirty-eight degrees in Southern California. The Hawaiian hoodie ain't gonna cut it.

• 2:53:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're right about that.

• 2:53:49Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:53:50Speaker 02

  All right, nonetheless, lightweight, they look nice.

• 2:53:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:53Speaker 02

  And anyway, if you want to represent jacostore.com, if you like something, get something.

• 2:53:57Jocko Willink?

  Also, also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't. You can subscribe to it. iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher. If you leave reviews, I read them. Sometimes they make me laugh.

• 2:54:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:54:08Jocko Willink?

  That is good.

• 2:54:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:54:10Jocko Willink?

  Cause they can be rough, but then you read a good review, that's makes you laugh, that's positive.

• 2:54:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:54:15Jocko Willink?

  So make that happen.

• 2:54:16Speaker 02

  It works. Also YouTube, by the way, if you like the video, video version of this podcast.

• 2:54:21Jocko Willink?

  And the Warrior Kid Podcast. If you haven't been listening to Warrior Kid Podcast, check it out. Sure, it's for kids. Ask Uncle Jake questions. There's some good questions in there. If you've got kids, definitely check it out. YouTube, you can see Echo's legit, supposedly legit videos.

• 2:54:40Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, the excerpts. Yeah.

• 2:54:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:54:42Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 2:54:43Jocko Willink?

  But also the ones you do your little fancy stuff to.

• 2:54:47Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, yeah, man. Uh, again.

• 2:54:50Jocko Willink?

  You're super sensitive about video making. Everyone should know that.

• 2:54:54Speaker 02

  No, I'm not.

• 2:54:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:54:55Speaker 02

  No, I'm not.

• 2:54:56Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 2:54:57Speaker 02

  Anyway, um, yeah.

• 2:54:59Jocko Willink?

  Someone, you made it, you made the muster video?

• 2:55:01Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:55:02Jocko Willink?

  And someone, this is an interesting point. Someone put, someone, I posted it to my Facebook. I posted it there and there's, you know, people commenting and then someone wrote, no credit to Echo?

• 2:55:17Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 2:55:18Jocko Willink?

  How about Echo just, he's doing his job and he's proud of it.

• 2:55:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it.

• 2:55:22Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't want that kind of credit.

• 2:55:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, no credit. Um, I actually, I think.

• 2:55:26Jocko Willink?

  Echo made the video. Yay.

• 2:55:30Jocko Willink?

  You did your job.

• 2:55:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. You did what you're supposed to do. Good. Congratulations. Well, I think technically too, in, I mean, in the spirit of just accuracy, I think most people kind of know that I made the video.

• 2:55:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:42Speaker 02

  Like, cause I just make the video. That's like the routine, right?

• 2:55:46Jocko Willink?

  That's what you do.

• 2:55:46Speaker 02

  It's what it seems like anyway. Anyway.

• 2:55:48Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:55:48Speaker 02

  All right, yeah. Warrior Kid Podcast is dope. That's on YouTube as well, by the way. Also, if you want to vary up your workout, which I think is an important thing, but you know, hey, people are people. So, and people are different, but if you want to vary up your workout, try some new stuff. Go to onit.com slash Jaco, you get some new gear. Gear in all capacities, by the way. All the way down to socks. Uh, we have the club. It's a club. It's heavy club, huh?

• 2:56:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna have to check this out.

• 2:56:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:17Jocko Willink?

  No, no, the club that you picked up earlier.

• 2:56:19Speaker 02

  You're like, hey, are you gonna do some juggling?

• 2:56:20Jocko Willink?

  This is for juggling? And you're like, oh, no, that's not for juggling. You'll kill somebody, probably yourself.

• 2:56:26Speaker 02

  But he, see, that backs up a point that I said before about those. Those are like, oh, yeah, you know, like, cool, it's a club. It looks like one of those clubs that they juggle. You have the little pins or whatever.

• 2:56:35Jocko Willink?

  You'll literally die.

• 2:56:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you pick it up, you're like, bro, I can't juggle that. That's like something you work out with. And here's the thing. Yeah, there's full workouts with that club and there's varying weights or whatever. Anyway. You go to the website, you can see, um, you know, what workouts to do. A lot of good info on there, you know? Switch up your workout, man.

• 2:56:52Jocko Willink?

  iTunes, Google Play, MP3. You can get Psychological Warfare. It's an album. And yes, it has tracks. And it's just me telling Echo, and you, if you're listening, not to be weak at that moment in time. Nope.

• 2:57:08Speaker 02

  It helps. It helps you not be weak.

• 2:57:12Jocko Willink?

  We're working on the second album. Well, I should say, I'm compiling the thoughts for the second album, which seems like we've determined the working title at this point is, All Your Excuses Are Lies.

• 2:57:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:23Jocko Willink?

  Cause that one seems to be, uh, hit home with me, with everyone. Jocka White Tea, you can get it on Amazon in Canada and in America. You can get dry tea, little tea bags that you brew, or you can get the can, which we're gonna put all the big

• 2:57:41Jocko Willink?

  unhealthy energy drinks, we're gonna put them out of business.

• 2:57:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:44Jocko Willink?

  Yep, that's the, that's the prediction.

• 2:57:46Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:57:46Jocko Willink?

  Cause why would you not drink Jocka White Tea? Why would you drink something that's gonna kill you? When you can drink something that's gonna make you more healthy?

• 2:57:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:54Jocko Willink?

  And it tastes better? And it makes you feel better? Is there, do you have any answer to that?

• 2:57:57Speaker 02

  I don't have an answer.

• 2:57:58Jocko Willink?

  That's right, cause I'm right. And your, your attitude is wrong.

• 2:58:04Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, books, if you're on Amazon anyways, Way of the Warrior Kid and Mark's Mission and This Me Equals Freedom Field Manual. If you want that on audio, it's not an audible book. It's...

• 2:58:18Jocko Willink?

  MP3, iTunes, Google Play, all that other stuff. Extreme Ownership, which was written by me and my brother Leif Babin. It's about leadership. And we have a follow on book to that called The Dichotomy of Leadership, which is coming out September 25th. And we're getting some feedback on it right now and people are really stoked. Leif and I are definitely stoked on it. It's a cool, cool, cool book to write. It's a little problem, that little area, it's the area that people have the most problems with. How do you balance between being too much of a micromanager and being too loose? How do you, how do you manage the being, communicating too much with the group and too little?

• 2:58:59Jocko Willink?

  With how do you, how do you manage being too close to your people or too, too distant from your people? So all those little things, all those little balances that you have to figure out as a leader, they're in that book. Check it out. You can preorder it anywhere. If you preorder it, it's helpful because that way our publisher, who is, you know, just not aware, they're not in the game, they're not listening, actually some of them aren't listening. If they're listening to this podcast, they should be thinking, you know what, we need to print a bunch of these books. Don't miss out on the first edition. You don't want the second edition. You might end up with it if you don't order it, but. And speaking of which, for leadership training, if you've read the book, you need a little bit more inside your organization.

• 2:59:44Jocko Willink?

  Echelon Front, We Solve Problems Through Leadership, it's me, Leif Babin, JP Denell, Dave Burke, Flynn Cochrane, and now, as you've heard, my brother Mike Sorelli. muster006, muster006 in San Francisco, October 17th and 18th.

• 3:00:04Jocko Willink?

  Mike, you kind of talked about this, but you're feeling like the muster had, will have good impact on people.

• 3:00:10Speaker 01

  It's, it most definitely is going to have impact on people. It's been shown. And just the two days I attended, I walked away, I came right back to Jordan, I'm like.

• 3:00:20Speaker 01

  I call her, I'm like, dude, she's like, don't call me dude.

• 3:00:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I'm blown away. In, in fact, the funny thing is you remember there was a Green Beret that came.

• 3:00:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:30Speaker 01

  And, you know, for the listeners, hey, you know, there's, there's strife in a rivalry between the, the communities. All, all for fun.

• 3:00:38Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:00:38Speaker 01

  But even he looked at me and he's like, dude, this is amazing. These guys are having an impact and we are going to a very unique place, Silicon Valley.

• 3:00:48Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:00:48Speaker 01

  That is without a doubt, one of the most innovative places. Sometimes lacks leadership.

• 3:00:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep.

• 3:00:55Speaker 01

  Has innovative products, but lacks leadership. So this is going to be magical.

• 3:01:00Speaker 02

  Well, it will be magical.

• 3:01:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, that's one of the things, one of the reasons is because the companies we work with up in Silicon Valley, a lot of times they have the technical capacity, they're smart. They, they even have the business understanding, but the only thing that they need, especially once they start to grow is they need, they need better leadership. And so that's why we're, the companies we work up with, that we work with up there. We know that they need this. And so that's why we're doing this one in San Francisco. October 17th and 18th, um, come on out. You can register at extremeownership.com.

• 3:01:36Speaker 02

  You'll see that on this one, you'll see like a lot of people from the last one. Cause they'll like, keep coming, you know what I mean? Because not only the updates or whatever, but just like how you were saying earlier where the more, okay, you learn something, then you go to the field, you know, you practice, you, you know, practice, you, you perform, then you're like, oh, wait. Okay. Now it, other problems arise.

• 3:01:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. I solved this problem. Now this other problem popped up.

• 3:02:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because I see it differently now. I see more fast. So boom, I'm going back to the muster.

• 3:02:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:05Speaker 02

  See what I'm saying? And then boom, back to the field. So you'll see people there every time. Boom, getting updated, updated.

• 3:02:10Speaker 01

  And I'm going to tell you this, so out of, uh, 005, this, this police officer came up to me, or I should say, Mountie from Nova Scotia. He's like, hey, I want, I want you to come talk to my department. And then, uh, when he saw that I spoke with the Louisville, Kentucky, uh, which are my boys, police department, mayor of police department. He's like, hey, you need to come out. So we're coordinating. I get to go out to Nova Scotia because of 005.

• 3:02:33Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. Hey, you know, speaking of law enforcement is we, because of the.

• 3:02:41Jocko Willink?

  Because of the popularity of the muster and because there's usually law enforcement, military, border patrol, firefighters, paramedics, all first responders, basically people in uniform, they've, they've been coming to all the musters, but we wanted to do one that's a little bit cheaper, focused on those types of jobs. So we're doing something in Dallas, Texas, September 21st. It's called the roll call. If you want it, it's the same registered, registered extremeownership.com. You gotta be one of those, you gotta be in one of those jobs to come to that, but that's going to be focused on that sort of dynamic leadership that you get into in those situations. So that's the roll call, 001, September 21st.

• 3:03:20Jocko Willink?

  Of course, now, one more thing to talk about, Echelon Front Overwatch, EF Overwatch. So check it out. Real simple to put this out. If you're a veteran and you're either in the military and you're getting ready to transition out of the military, soft, soft support, combat pilots, if you're in that situation, go to EFOverwatch.com. Or if you're a business that wants to bring this type of leadership into your team, then go to EF Overwatch and you see there's real simple instruction to follow and will proceed to move down the

• 3:04:01Jocko Willink?

  path of putting the best people in the best positions. And on top of that, if you want to hang out with us a little bit more virtually, until we see you in San Francisco at the muster or until we see you at the roll call or until we see you at the immersion camp in Maine, then we're on the interwebs, fully on the interwebs on Twitter, Instagram and Dash, I face that book. Mike is MJ Sarelli. It's M J S A R R A I L L E. That's him on Twitter. He's Mike Sarelli on Instagram.

• 3:04:40Jocko Willink?

  And he's Michael Sorelli on that JFAS bookie. And of course Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. Echo, anything else?

• 3:04:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:04:52Jocko Willink?

  Here we go.

• 3:04:52Speaker 02

  Just kidding. Actually, so going back, you did mention, you said mini buds. Did you say mini buds? That's what you went through? Not buds, mini buds?

• 3:05:03Speaker 01

  Mini buds. So I, I, I think it's called something different now.

• 3:05:05Jocko Willink?

  It's called something else now.

• 3:05:06Speaker 01

  And I can't recall. So basically there, there is a vast pool of kids in college and at the Naval Academy that want to try out to be officers in the SEAL teams.

• 3:05:15Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:05:16Speaker 01

  Because the competition is so fierce, the summer before they graduate and actually become commissioned as officers in the Navy, they actually have to compete for the few billets that exist for buds officers. And so you've got, I think anywhere from a hundred, two hundred, actually probably more than that, trying to get into mini buds. And there's only so many, I think like there's thirty per class. They run too many buds e- every summer of about thirty candidates each. So sixty total. And there's probably like five hundred kids competing for those slots. And then amongst those sixty, they're only going to select, I think like fifty percent, thirty, uh, that actually can step into buds as Navy ensigns and try to become Navy SEAL officers. So, you know, it goes back to that talent.

• 3:06:00Speaker 01

  Everyone is always in a war for talent, looking for the best candidates.

• 3:06:05Speaker 02

  So you go to mini buds, you pass, then you go to buds?

• 3:06:09Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:06:10Speaker 02

  Typically?

• 3:06:10Jocko Willink?

  If you're lucky, if they select you.

• 3:06:12Speaker 02

  Got you. Okay.

• 3:06:12Jocko Willink?

  If you perform well at mini buds.

• 3:06:14Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:06:15Jocko Willink?

  And again, this is just for the officer pipeline. If you're enlisted guy, you enlist in the Navy and you, you go to buds, there's no mini buds for you.

• 3:06:20Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 3:06:21Jocko Willink?

  They do have a prep course now up in, uh, Chicago, uh, after boot camp. You, you stay and you try, they try and get you ready for buds.

• 3:06:29Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 3:06:29Jocko Willink?

  But.

• 3:06:30Speaker 02

  But that's different, obviously.

• 3:06:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, it's different.

• 3:06:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:06:32Jocko Willink?

  I don't think that's even a selection. It's not a selection, is it?

• 3:06:34Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:06:35Jocko Willink?

  It's just, uh, I'm sure they could deselect you, but the purpose isn't de-selection.

• 3:06:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the purpose was to, to, to, to see if we could statistically increase the number of people that make it through buds.

• 3:06:44Speaker 02

  Get people ready for it.

• 3:06:45Speaker 01

  And actually I think it's, it, it hasn't proven effective. At the end of the day, it's, it's one thing.

• 3:06:49Jocko Willink?

  For whatever reason, it's an eighty percent attrition rate, like almost all the time, or seventy to eighty percent. So.

• 3:06:55Speaker 02

  One of my friends said this. About buds, about passing buds, that this is a factor, it's not the telltale, but this is a factor. Where if you're in a group that, and this is gonna go back to leadership, I kind of, interestingly. If you're in a group where people are real negative, and then, you know, when you're negative, you wanna blame other people, right? This, if you're a negative person, whatever, you don't wanna take on shit. So, if, if a guy is seemingly getting ganged up on, you know, like if everyone's like, "Hey, you're not pulling your weight", you know, everyone's getting frustrated, and then they, everyone's like, harping on one guy, that makes them quit way quicker than if, like, everyone's like, "Yeah, it's okay, we can do this."

• 3:07:37Speaker 02

  You know how like, like if you have a leader who's like, "Hey, it's all good, guys, come on, we got this, we got this", kinda cheering everybody on and saying like, "Hey, we're all, we're all a team here", kinda thing? But if you're like, "Hey, you're holding us back", and everyone's ganging up on that guy, he'll quit way quicker. That's what he's saying.

• 3:07:51Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 3:07:52Speaker 01

  There's only one exception, I, I think that's probably accurate. To, for the most part, there's only one person that I think, that I've seen, uh, sort of defy that, and that was Ryan Joe.

• 3:08:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:08:03Speaker 01

  You would not get in that guy's head, man.

• 3:08:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:08:06Speaker 01

  And, uh, yeah, tough as nails.

• 3:08:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, seems like that would be a factor, but yeah, you get, bro, there's just guys like that, who are like, "Nope, I'm, I'll die before I quit", you know, where it's just simply not an option, no matter how deep you go. It's crazy, but yeah.

• 3:08:21Jocko Willink?

  Don't quit. People ask me what, what to do, how to get through buds. Don't quit. That's it.

• 3:08:27Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 3:08:28Jocko Willink?

  Mike, any, uh, closing thoughts?

• 3:08:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, yeah, a few, just people to thank. Um, one, you know, to you and all the boys that I served with, uh, across all the commands I served in, man, it, it was, it is a brotherhood. Uh, while I might not have gotten along with all of you, uh, definitely learned something from everyone. And, uh, it, it is a brotherhood that you will never replace, and, and that was an honor to serve alongside those guys. And then, um, I think the last two is one of my kids, uh, Cameron and, uh, and Kaden. Uh, I mean, that is any man's legacy, is how you raise your kids, and, uh, they mean the world to, to, to me. And then, uh, the last person who's changed my life is, uh, my fiance, which I hope you guys are reserving the date. Uh, Jordan, um, who's changed my perspective on a lot of things and you helped me through a, uh,

• 3:09:16Speaker 01

  what is not easy for any veteran and that is transitioning out of the military. And, uh, I'll tell you what, her positivity is, uh, infectious and she calls me out on my, you know what, all the damn time. She's younger than me and, uh, it's, it's a hit to the ego. So thanks to, uh, to, to that entire group and, uh, love you guys.

• 3:09:38Jocko Willink?

  Awesome, man. Well, like I said, of course, thanks for coming on and also like I already said, which I can never say enough, thanks for your service in the defense of our freedom. You're talking about all those deployments over and over and over again, man. Keep going back into the fray. It's freaking awesome and thank you for doing it and congrats on your retirement. I don't know if I ever even said that to you when you retired, but it's, uh, I'm glad that you got to be able to retire and it's awesome to be freaking working with you again. So thanks, Mike. I'm looking forward to, uh, many more years.

• 3:10:16Speaker 01

  Thanks, brother.

• 3:10:17Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else in the military that's still out there holding the line, doing those deployments over and over again, thank you. And to the police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and border patrol and the rest of you that are holding the line here at home. Thanks for what you're doing and to your families as well. Thank you for supporting those that support us and to the rest of you, I know life isn't perfect and I know life can be hard, but it is still life and it's your life and there are those that have given their lives

• 3:11:01Jocko Willink?

  so that we can have ours. So for them, for those heroes, live a good life. Live the best life you can by going out there every single day.

• 3:11:26Jocko Willink?

  And getting after it.

• 3:11:30Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Mike and Echo and Jaco.

• 3:11:36Jocko Willink?

  Out.