59: Valuable & Applicable Lessons from Battle that Apply Directly to Your Life, w/ Brian Stann

Brian Stann, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3rd_Battalion,_2nd_Marines, awarded the Silver Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Star, the nation's third-highest award for valor in combat. Retired UFC Fighter. UFC Commentator. 0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:25 - Brian Stann Intro and Background 0:11:52 - Importance of Standards and Discipline 0:21:56 - The Leadership Factory: What makes a good leader vs bad leader. 0:38:45 - Brian Stann Enters the Marine Corps 0:48:10 - Brian Stann's Entry To Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) 0:54:00 - Combat Life 1:30:21 - The Burden of The Leader 1:44:34 - More Ops in Iraq 1:59:48 - Brian Stann Goes into Professional MMA & The UFC 2:18:55 - Hire Heroes USA - Jobs Program for Vets 2:21:27 - The Guardian Project - Martial Arts for At Risk Youth 2:26:52 - Closing Questions and Thoughts 2:27:57 - Support: Cool Onnit http://www.onnit.com/jocko, Amazon https://www.amazon.com/?&tag=jocko20-20&camp=216797&creative=498533&linkCode=ur1&adid=1DKYGWXQBV0KNEZ3MZZX&, JockoStore http://www.jockostore.com stuff, with Jocko White Tea http://www.jockotea.com and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes) https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/psychological-warfare/id1183222322. Extreme Ownership (book) http://amzn.to/2jonHTx and The Muster002 http://www.extremeownership.com 2:39:09 - Closing Gratitude Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast, number 59, with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:16Jocko Willink?

  Their screams are the worst.

• 0:20Jocko Willink?

  We're more than 100 meters away, on the other side of the river, but I can hear Marines dying.

• 0:29Jocko Willink?

  Their armored vehicle hit a landmine.

• 0:33Jocko Willink?

  It caught fire with 15 men aboard.

• 0:39Jocko Willink?

  They scream as they burn alive.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  The radio chatter is desperate, almost hysterical.

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  Nobody can get to them.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  There will be no salvation. Only a torturous death in the flames.

• 1:06Jocko Willink?

  From our position across the river, we hear every agonizing moment and can see their funeral pyre rising over the riverbank.

• 1:21Jocko Willink?

  I can do nothing.

• 1:25Jocko Willink?

  It is the most helpless, enraging feeling I've ever experienced.

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  I have no way to get across the water to those burning men.

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  It takes forever for the last screams to fade away.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  And that is an excerpt from a book called "Heart for the Fight."

• 2:03Jocko Willink?

  And it's written by a guy named Brian Stan. And if you don't know who Brian Stan is,

• 2:11Jocko Willink?

  you can Google him.

• 2:15Jocko Willink?

  He's a son, a father, a husband. He was the W E C light heavyweight champion of the world. He's a UFC veteran.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  Eleven fights in the UFC. With some wins and some losses against some of the best fighters in the world.

• 2:38Jocko Willink?

  He's also a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  With two tours to Iraq. As a platoon commander. And as a company XO.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  And I am honored.

• 2:55Jocko Willink?

  Tonight to actually have Brian with us here as a guest.

• 3:03Jocko Willink?

  Mr. Brian Stan. Welcome to the show.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  I gotta tell you, that's a, I have not been introduced like that before. That's an excerpt of that book that I could honestly say I haven't laid eyes on. I don't even know how many years. I forget the year. We released it. Some powerful writing by my ghostwriter, John Bruning, and that is a tough. Tough memory. It's one of those ones that we kind of bury deep down and think about just from time to time. But certainly when you, when you, at times where maybe you take things for granted in life, it's good to go back to that moment. You know, and realize that whatever I may be whining about, or whatever I think is difficult at the time is a heck of a lot easier than it once was. And I need to be grateful. Get off my butt and go finish.

• 3:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think that.

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  A lot of people, you know, you get, you see the explosions take place with IEDs and you know, the wars that we were involved in were, you know, the, the main weapon of the enemy was the IED. And even when we made thicker, heavier armored vehicles or like track vehicles. When they get hit with an IED, even though it might withstand some of the impact, this fire start and it's, it's a nightmare. And this is the nightmare you described right there. And.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, I want to get into that. I want to get into the combat that you experienced. But before we do that, first of all, like the people that listen to this show, not everyone even watches UFC. Not everyone knows about you. So just kind of give a little bit of a background on growing up. Let's take it back to Scranton, Pennsylvania.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So moved around a lot. I was actually, so I was born in Japan. And around that time, when, when my mom had come back to the States, my father had left. And so grew up in Northeast Pennsylvania. We moved around quite a bit. But got into sports in an early age and I had a phenomenal mom. And, and I think not having a dad really affected my sister a lot more than it affected me. But even from an early age, I, I knew that the military was going to be an option. From the days of being a young kid watching silly movies like Iron Eagle, you know, there was, there was something.

• 5:24Jocko Willink?

  You better not call Iron Eagle silly in front of Echo. That's like a classic to him.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  But, but for me, there, there was always something to it that that rang as special to me. And you know, what I found is growing up without a dad, you tend to want to impress every male influence you have in your life. So every time I went out for a team, I wanted to be the hardest worker on the team. I'd run through a wall for my coach and, and, and that continued all the way through high school. And then all of a sudden playing high school football, I started to get recruited by some good schools. And not many people in my family had gone to college. Certainly I had expected to go to college, but never expected to get recruited to go play somewhere. And so that was a different experience for me. I didn't always handle it the best.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  But when the Naval Academy came knocking, you know, I, I knew that's where I wanted to go. West Point started recruiting me early as a junior. I took my films, my tapes to the Naval Academy. There was just something about that place and, and I wanted to go there. So I decided before I make a decision, let me visit West Point, let me visit the Naval Academy in a four day time period. I'll visit both and make my decision. When I went to West Point. One of the football coaches was supposed to meet me there, never showed. So one of the players took me around campus, showed me some stuff, but it was still beautiful. I mean, greater than any, you know, Scranton's one of the poorest cities in America. It's not nice. So, you know, my uncles, my aunts and my mom, the thought of me going to the Naval

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Academy is a big deal. I remember my track coach in high school telling me, Brian, listen, this is a big deal. It's a great opportunity. There's a lot of things in your life that can change by, by going here. He said, yeah, but you know, I'm getting recruited by some of these Ivy League schools too. He says, ah, it's not the same. And I don't think you're going to fit in. I honest, I'm going to be honest with you, Brian. My track coach is a bright guy. So two days later, I go to the Naval Academy and I hand them my tape. Now they hadn't even started recruiting me yet, but those coaches were so nice to my mom. And by doing that, I was in. They recruited my mom. They were so respectful to her. The water was there. It was so pretty. Okay. You know, I'm, I'm in. And I had made that decision early that that's where I wanted to go and, and focused on, on that. You did

• 7:38Speaker 02

  some summer school to take some classes to boost my AP courses in high school, just to make sure they didn't have to go to the prep school first. I wanted to go right to the Naval Academy. And so that, that in, in a really quick nutshell, football was a vehicle. Um, along with my academics were good, but you know, having a three, five GPA and a 12, 10 on your SATs isn't normally going to get you into the Naval Academy. Football was, was the vehicle that got me there. And I could remember prom night, lifting weights in the weight room with my rented tux in the locker. I was there all by myself. I had the security code. I was, I, you know, one of the only guys who worked all summer long. I was the only white guy where I worked in this tomato plant. And I would work to help pay for the high school I went to, because my, my, my mom took me out of public schooling, put me

• 8:21Speaker 02

  in this good high school, because I had gotten suspended a couple of times in middle school. And it was one of the harder decisions, but one of the best decisions that, that she made and pushed me towards. Cause the teachers at that school, when they saw me having this opportunity, they helped. Hey, let's help Brian get to the Naval Academy, go there to play football, but you know, really getting himself on a great trajectory. And, uh, there, there's not a day I regret it. There were definitely days I couldn't stand being at the Naval Academy, like anybody, hated it. But the friends I made there, the opportunities and the pathway to the Marine Corps, which still to this day, I don't know if I'll ever be as good at any job as I was at being a Marine Infantry Officer. I just, I don't know that. And when you got there, you're.

• 9:08Jocko Willink?

  The type of football that they were playing didn't really match your, because you were a quarterback in high school, right?

• 9:13Speaker 02

  I was.

• 9:13Jocko Willink?

  And so in the book, you're saying that your, your type of football didn't really match what they wanted to do.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  No, it was a rude awakening for me. You know, I went there thinking, hey, I'm going to be the next Roger Staubach. And we all did. And then all of a sudden you start to see all these other kids from all over the country. Wow, they're good too. I had never really run the option before. And they've got guys from the prep school that already done a year in the system and did that system in high school that can run the option. So next thing you know, I'm getting moved to wide receiver, I'm getting moved to safety, then I'm getting moved to linebacker and I have to figure out how to play these positions. And it was one of the best lessons I ever learned as a young man. Where I had to make a decision, I'm going to contribute to this team. I'm not going to be a starter. I'm not going to be a star. Some of the best contributions I can make as a leader are to help mentally prepare the younger guys to play.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  So my senior year, I was competing for the starting outside linebacker position. And we had this young kid named Bobby McLaren, who was an animal. I mean, an animal, but he was uncontrollable. He could not understand the defense at all. He was just a wild man. Flying all around, knocking over anything he touched, but he was an idiot at football. Was an engineering major, really bright kid, but a moron in football. All right, so I'm a senior, I'm going to help this kid out. And we're in two days and I'm competing for the starting job and I'm helping this kid out who's third string. And he's getting frustrated and then all of a sudden he starts to get it. And he's starting to grasp on and slowly but surely I could see this kid taking not only my job, but the job of the guy who was ahead of me, who I was competing with.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  And you know, the bottom line was, is I had to find a way to contribute value to the team. Obviously I was a special teams contributor, but leadership was going to be the biggest thing I contributed. And, and that made me a very valuable member of the team that season. And it taught me great lessons moving forward, both in the Marine Corps and especially now in my job. If you aren't finding a way to add value to your organization, to your team every day. Then you're wasting time, you're wasting money and somebody's going to take that spot. Somebody will come along and take that spot. I don't care how successful you get. You can't take life for granted. Every day you gotta add value. I learned that lesson early and

• 11:25Speaker 02

  my football coach, my linebacker coach liked me the most. I was his favorite guy and he would admit that to me in our personal meetings. But at the end of the day, he told me, Brian, I get paid. I feed my family to put the best players on the field who are going to help us win games. I really wish that was you right now, but it's not. And those are hard conversations to listen to, but if you're going to be a leader, you got to be able to receive that information and find a way to get better.

• 11:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, speaking of that, so you, you actually, they fired the coach that you had your first three years, new coach came in and I'm going to go to the book here. It's your senior year. Two-a-days are brutal ordeals, detested by every player who has stepped foot on a, on a football field. That summer, our new coach, Paul Johnson, used two-a-days to make a statement. He made us start practicing before dawn every day at 04:45. We reported to the field and Johnson's new coaching staff beat us half to death with repeated fourth quarter drills. We ran, we hit. None of this no contact drilling. Johnson spared no one. By mid-morning, guys were puking where they

• 12:33Jocko Willink?

  stood. I love this right here. No wonder why you pussies went 0 and 11. He shouted more than once as we gasped and suffered. Coach Johnson showed no mercy. When he evaluated the team, he concluded that we lacked discipline and motivation. He made our two weeks in August a crucible designed to test our toughness and our commitment to the team. At one point, a wide receiver went down with a phantom injury. After the team doctor examined the wide out and found nothing wrong with him, Coach Johnson demoted him on the spot. So Coach Johnson came in and brought the heat, man.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  I still remember, you know, back then at the Naval Academy, we had what was called instant messenger. And so you could leave an away message, you know, on your instant messenger. And we did our fourth quarter drills. I remember our, our starting defensive end, Pete Butte Miller. He left in his away message. He said, today I met death and death kicked my, you know what? It was brutal and they screamed that at us repeatedly. No wonder you went 0 and 11. We were a naval academy football team and the previous coach had let discipline just run awry. You know, both on the field, in practice, in the weight room, in films, you could be hurt all week, still starting the game. The things that are essential for a military academy team to win. I mean, you, you've got to be in better shape than the other team and you've got to commit

• 13:53Speaker 02

  less mental errors because physically you're never really going to match up. Right. And we were making that error and, and from all that chaos, one of the, the real amazing things I learned from those coaches, who that staff is basically still there today. Coach Niamh Matulolo was the offensive coordinator. When Johnson left, he's now the head coach. But they taught me and as leaders to expect excellence. Every single drill, every film session, every weight room session, every conditioning, there was a standard. You either meet the standard or you don't meet the standard. And if you don't meet the standard, there are consequences. There's remediation. There's ways that you have to fix it because this is the only thing

• 14:35Speaker 02

  that's good enough. If we're going to move forward, you either get better, you get worse every day. Getting worse is unacceptable. And when, when you take that mentality as an officer to what you're doing in the field to train 160 Marines to go to combat, all of a sudden that gets a lot more serious than winning and losing football games. But that, that, that holds true in business. It holds true in anything. There is a standard and if you, if you accept below that standard just once. That sets a precedent that could lead to what happened before he got there.

• 15:07Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  And, and I've, I've gone back to the Naval Academy repeatedly and I've talked to the team. I actually talked to the junior class every single year. And one of the things I always tell those coaches, gentlemen, you guys are putting out a better product as officers because you're here. Your job is to put forth the great football team, but I promise you and the staff at the Naval Academy, the officers, they see it too. They are making better leaders because of what they're doing on the football field. Before they got there, that wasn't happening. What was happening on the football field is making, making us worse officers. And so I, I still hold true. He now coaches, Paul Johnson coaches at Georgia Tech now. He brought me down to speak to the team a couple of years ago and we had some great conversations. But I mean, he's still, he's still that same guy, still thinks he can beat me up.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Coach, I get it and I'm not asking you in front of your teammates. You always say you can whoop me. You have to realize now there's not a chance, but he is this, no, boy, I'm telling you, I still think I can whoop you. And he'll throw this awful, you know, right cross. It's geriatric at this point. He could barely even get his arm up, but he still throws it like he can beat me.

• 16:12Jocko Willink?

  He's game.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  He's game. He's game. The heart's there, the body ain't got it all.

• 16:18Jocko Willink?

  So you actually, you actually talk about this in the book. So here we go. All that effort, pain and misery made me a more disciplined human being. It prepared me for the trials ahead as a Marine infantry officer. In fact, many of the lessons I learned helped me better prepare my platoon and later my company for combat in Iraq. In football and in a rifle company, there is no substitute for discipline, hard work and commitment. If any of these elements are lacking, the team is going to lose. The company will get shot to pieces in combat and men will die. I learned there is no margin for error in both. And the only way to be perfect is to demand perfection and never brook excuses.

• 17:05Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  That's life. I mean, you know, at that point, especially then, that is, that is your world. That is your life. The military is so unique in that other jobs you can leave at 5:00 PM, 6:00 PM, whenever you go home from work, hey, I am no longer an accountant. Now I'm Jimmy. Now I'm Sarah. Now I'm whomever, right? But in the military, if you're bad at your job, you're a bad person. And that's kind of how you're looked at almost.

• 17:32Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's, it's true.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  It's true. If you, if you're an infantry officer and you're not good, if you're, if this isn't everything you eat, sleep and breathe, you're weak. I mean, that's just, that's just the kind of environment we have. And, and I always tell this story, when people look at me like I'm crazy. I tell them this story. I had a Marine named James Brown, no affiliation with, with the famous person. And, and James is a great Marine. He was a tough, tough kid. And he was in a machine gun post, uh, watching over a main avenue of approach. And his job was to make sure that it stayed clear. He had the best optics, keep it clear of IEDs, make sure nobody plants an IED there. And everything was bulletproof around him, except for the one slit where the 240 Gulf went through.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  And it was hot, 125 degrees. And, and people always ask me, why are the Marines so extreme? When you make statements like that, discipline, commitment, they're everything. Everything has to be perfect. I tell them this story. It got hot. James leaned against the rifle to get a little breeze through that slit. And that moment got shot in the head by a sniper and died. It was an amazing shot. When we went up there and looked at where, I mean, in Iraq, they had some very, very good snipers, as we know, right? But in that one split moment, I lost that Marine. And everything we do, everything you do to perfection, that's why. You demand perfection

• 18:58Speaker 02

  in everything you do because you are so afraid that they're not going to come home alive. And I had to tell my Marines this one time, they were lacking in some of their standards. This is in Iraq. I made them stand uniform inspections. Imagine their attitude as I made them stand three uniform inspections a day. And they were so mad. But in leadership, you can't do something like that without telling them the why. They're not going to buy it. They're just going to hate you now. And I told them, I said, listen, guys. We're not strapping down our ammo in the Humvees well enough. We're not cleaning our weapons right after a mission like we should be. Not wearing our uniforms when we get back to camp because you think you're so cool because you've been in a bunch of firefights. If we don't do the little things right, it's going to affect the big things. And ultimately, what's going to happen is we are going to die. We're going to lose, or the people we're here to protect are going to die.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Therefore, I'm going to do these uniform inspections until all of these things are fixed permanently. And I am totally fine with you hating me right now. If that means I will deliver you home alive with the mission accomplished. I'd rather you be alive and hate me than you guys love me because you think I'm super cool. But then have you guys die because of my poor leadership and my inability to keep you guys disciplined and keep you to the standard of perfection. And that is something, it's hard for people who haven't been in that circumstance. It's hard for them to understand. It really is. But even in my current job, running a nonprofit, I tell my staff, every single veteran they speak to, every conversation,

• 20:25Speaker 02

  whether it's the 10 time you talk to that vet and you're doing another practice interview. Our job is to help them find the American dream. To leave the military by their own choosing and now find not a job, but a great career where they can thrive. And if we take any conversation with them for granted, they may no longer want to take our advice. They may go at it alone. They may not choose the right thing. And we failed them. People give us money not to fail them. You're paid with other people's money that they gave us to help these vets get jobs. Period. If we're not doing that, then you don't work here anymore. I don't work here anymore. Period. We will find somebody else to do it because that's our job. And so you've got to set that standard.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  But if you don't tell them the why behind it, they'll never understand that. And it doesn't mean that we have this, this culture. It's not like my platoon had this culture where we were all so hardcore and there was no compassion. There was no personality. There was no smiles. As you could attest to, look, you can have an environment of discipline, hard work and commitment. But still have a lot of love, compassion, and good times.

• 21:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, fun.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  A lot of fun.

• 21:33Jocko Willink?

  Straight up.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  You know what's great fun? When you go and you train and you're awesome. You know who has a lot of fun? The New England Patriots.

• 21:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  They have a hell of a lot of fun.

• 21:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  And you want to have discipline and commitment and hard work? That's why they're on the top. And they have a lot of fun smiling at the end of every season. Everybody hates on them and they're raising those trophies.

• 21:54Jocko Willink?

  So you got this section in the book that talks about what you're talking about right now. The leadership factory, right? So here, I'm going to go to the book. All the academic classes in the world will never teach anyone to be a leader. The academy recognized that long ago. And while we had to take courses on the subject, we learned by doing. The academy is structured to provide leadership opportunities in a wide variety of places and levels from the very first day you start as plebes.

• 22:24Jocko Willink?

  And this is emphasizing what you just said. And discipline is something that I talk about all the time. And I know what's great is, you know, as I was talking to you on the way over here. You know, I do, I do all these, I read these leadership or not leadership books. They're not books about leadership. They're about combat, right? But combat is about leadership. So all these books, all of them, every single one of them, whether it's an ancient Roman military leader or a marine in Vietnam or an army soldier in World War II. They all, there is one common thing that's discipline, discipline, discipline. It's always there.

• 23:05Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Discipline forms the cornerstone of any military team. And of course, punishment serves as one of the means to maintain discipline. During my junior year, I learned not to be afraid to meet out punishment. At the same time, doing so requires a balance of appropriateness and understanding. So that's the why you just talked about right there. And this again, goes to something that I talk about a lot, which is, which is the dichotomy of leadership, which is in leadership, there's, there's opposing forces that are pulling you in two different directions and both of them are right. They're both right. It's right to be hard on your guys and maintain strict discipline and it's right to love your guys and take care of them. You have to balance those two and that's what you're talking about right there.

• 23:50Jocko Willink?

  That's what you were talking about when you, when you were talking about, they need to understand why they're being punishment punished. Back to the book, bad officers try to be buddies with their Marines. There's a fine line between getting to know your, getting to know the men under your command and bonding with them as friends. It is all too easy to make that mistake. At the same time, here's the balance. At the same time, if a young second lieutenant doesn't make an effort to know his men, his aloofness becomes a drag and will hinder his ability to command in several ways. First, he won't understand the strengths and weaknesses of his squads. More important, he won't have the respect or the connection needed to motivate and lead in the worst of circumstances.

• 24:34Jocko Willink?

  Men will follow other men into the worst possible circumstances if they respect and believe in their leadership. Like all other aspects of command, it is a delicate balance. So you're, you're just, everything you just said, you say it in the book and that's why you're talking about the leadership factory, but it's interesting. This is stuff that I'm sure they touched on it in the classes, but that's the stuff that you learn. You learn it from senior enlisted people. You learn it from other officers. You learn it yourself. You work for people and you go, man, this guy's aloof. This guy's not talking to us. So it's stuff that we learn ourselves too. I'm going to finish this section up. I concluded the proper balance here depended on the officer's ability to listen and accept input while still making it clear that he was the ultimate decision maker.

• 25:20Jocko Willink?

  That was the key. A second lieutenant couldn't be afraid to engage in frank and productive dialogue with his key leaders.

• 25:32Jocko Willink?

  A platoon becomes the reflection of its commander. He sets the example, and this is from what you just said. If his uniform is jacked up, his men won't care about their own. This leads to disciplinary issues and becomes a very slippery slope. The only way a second lieutenant can have the moral authority to set a high standard is to set a high standard for conditioning and appearance is to be the example himself. Without conditioning, a platoon cannot achieve its potential in the field. Aggressiveness suffers. Appearance breeds pride and reinforces discipline and esprit de corps. So that's the leadership factory that you're talking about.

• 26:17Jocko Willink?

  And clearly, those things that you brought from the football field and from the academy, you applied them right directly into your folks in combat.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  They helped, and you know, the Marine Corps has a really unique circumstance where they have the basic school where every single officer goes there. And that's huge to set this huge standard. Then we go a step further where when we go to infantry officer course, that course was 13 weeks long, one of the very hardest, if not the hardest in the Marine Corps. Mentally, physically, everything. You don't know anything that's coming, everything's a surprise. But I felt that my instructors during our course were phenomenal. And they were getting all the real time intelligence from the battlefield. All the training was realistic. But in terms of how you relate to your Marines, from your junior enlisted to your middle

• 27:05Speaker 02

  rank to your senior enlisted, how you relate to the senior enlisted from the battalion who work directly for the battalion staff? How you manage those relationships to maximize the effectiveness of your platoon to make sure that you can get exactly what they need? They did such a good job of that. Then you take it one step further. When I reported to 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, I'd be remiss if I didn't give credit to a guy by the name of Gabe Diana, who is a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps now, I believe. But he taught me, he was a true student of leadership and military history. He would tell me all the time, his craft is his hobby. There's nothing else he cared about. It's what he was. He loved being a Marine, loved being an officer. And he taught me a lot about decentralized leadership.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  How to not micromanage, how to empower your junior leaders that they start to think like you and you could achieve tempo on the battlefield. And, and you could immediately see examples of Marines. I, I call it, and I see it all the time in the business world. I call it JV leadership, where I'm a great leader if my people love me. And, and they're the same leaders that will tell their people, all right, guys, today we've got to stay 30 minutes longer because headquarters said so. Look, I disagree with it. I think it's ridiculous, but we have to do it. So let's just sit here together. Now, none of their people are actually going to work motivated. There's going to be no discipline. There's going to be no standard that they're trying to achieve because of that horrible leadership. In fact, they're angry at headquarters. Absolutely.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  They're, they're, they're mad at the chain of command. Exactly. It's JV leadership and I'm constantly trying to talk to people about that. JV leadership, the first thing of it is you think you have to be loved to be an effective leader. If you are an effective leader, over the long term, you will be loved, but there's going to be intermittent parts where they can't stand you. They don't understand things all the time, but they're going to be mad at you and they're, because they're emotional. But over long-term, they're going to understand that what you did was best. The other, the second major part to JV leadership is thinking, hey, I'm in charge. Therefore I come up with all the great ideas and I'm going to make every single decision without your input. And I'm going to, I'm going to really try hard to make sure everybody knows I, I am in charge. That's ridiculous. It is not your job to come up with all the great ideas.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Some of the best ideas I received were from 19-year-olds, 21-year-olds who had already been to Iraq once, had a great, hey, sir, I got a great idea. Well, I want to hear all about it. It's, it's, it's our job as leaders to decide which are the best ideas to invest energy, time and resources in. And that's not just, I get all this stuff all the time when I talk to different groups and companies. Well, military leadership is different than corporate leadership. Why? What am I saying here that doesn't apply? Well, it's too extreme. It is not. You're taking us too literal with our warrior mentalities here. You know, you do not need to be insecure. The best leaders are not insecure. They're secure.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  They know that they're there and ultimately going to make the final decision. But it empowers your people and you could achieve tempo when you're decentralized enough that they feel good about coming up with ideas, sending them up to you to get backup for it and get resources behind it, but also knowing that they can make the appropriate decisions at their level because they know what your final intent is. Here's the outcome I want achieved. You get us there. You're the expert at it. That's why I hired you. I didn't tell my machine gunners how to work their T and E system and how to site in their machine guns, right? I just told them what I wanted them to hit. They're better than that at me. Taking the time to spend it with my Marines and their different functions and aspects and talk to them about how they're the expert and compliment them like that,

• 30:46Speaker 02

  it made them feel great. It does wonders for a leader to go to their level, see what they do every day and see that expert work. Cause they don't expect you to be an expert in all of that. They know that, right? Your job is different. Your responsibilities are different. You need to have greater perspective, but when you go to their level and respect what they do and show them respect for what they do and how they do it, man, it's a powerful thing that that could make a group of people so much better collectively than they ever would have been individually. And when it happens, right? When it finally, when you finally get there and can achieve that, it is, it is awesome. It's the most rewarding experience you could ever have. And it's hard for people to understand because most

• 31:31Speaker 02

  people think, well, the most rewarding experience you guys probably have is killing people. No, it's so much different than that. So much different. There's so much more to it than that.

• 31:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting too. That by the way, what you're saying right now is basically the entire book that my buddy Leif Babbel, there's a chapter there called decentralized command, everything you're saying. So, but and that's why, you know, you've come up in a completely different, you know, in the Marine Corps, I was in the, in the, in the Navy. And yet, you know, you and I have both, I can tell right now, basically completely aligned leadership principles. Isn't it interesting though, that some guys don't get it? And they don't get it. And you could explain it to them and you'd say, listen, man, hey, you don't need to make every decision. And in fact, when you get out in a firefight, you won't be able to make every decision. You're

• 32:22Jocko Willink?

  gonna have to let your leaders lead and you're gonna let, have to let, and, and they would listen to you and you could see it going right through their head.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  It's wild. You wonder what psychologically is going on in there that makes you want to rebel. And a lot of times it's, hey, they got a bad review from this officer. So this is their way of saying, you know, hey, uh, you know, go fly a kite, you know, this is their way of rebelling. I noticed that with some officers. Um, and, and some of the, you know, I had, I had to fire a lieutenant during my second deployment. And, and he had this problem, you know, he kept feeling he had to be best friends with his Marines. He spent way too much time with them talking about a lot of personal stuff. They'd be out on patrol and nobody would listen to him. I mean, it was almost straight mutiny. And then when I had to fire him, and, and here was the thing is, and to tell him, look, you're

• 33:09Speaker 02

  a really good person. And you are most likely going to be very successful in whatever you choose to do. So please, please remember that. It's hard to hear that now. This is a very unique job. And we are in a very dangerous scenario. We were already in Iraq and we were in a dangerous area at the time. And things were about to go south. And I had to remove this kid now before things got worse. And, and it was hard for me to understand that, but you can be a phenomenal human being, a great person, but just not meant to lead, especially in, in those circumstances. But it's, it's, some people, and I think obviously if they have so many years growing up in a household where it was so different from

• 33:54Speaker 02

  what they're being taught, that I think sometimes is the root for them to push back against this type of leadership. No, you know, I've been taught differently for years and years. It's kind of like, wow, did you just block it all out for the, you know, year and a half you've been in school before you got here?

• 34:08Jocko Willink?

  With guys with all this combat experience and not to mention Hundreds of years of history.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:14Jocko Willink?

  Of combat experience saying, look, this is the best way to do it.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:19Jocko Willink?

  And saying, no, I'm going to do it differently.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  It, I mean, the, the military is a business. It is a business. It's run like a business and the, the leadership there, it's about maximizing the potential of all the human beings that you have on your team. And how do you do that? Yes, it involves tactics and, and what we do is different, but the, the, the personal, the small unit down to the large unit leadership is all the same.

• 34:43Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  How to, it's all the same. And, and you go around and you talk to different executives who are having trouble. Well, you know, this, you know, it's the millennials and what they do and what they do and this do. And we were talking about it the ride here. People, the experts always want to blame some kind of process. I think your process and your information flow is wrong and the way that you have your workflow set up in the office space, that's causing this issue in communication. No, it's not. You're saying that because you are afraid to have the hard conversations with the leaders who are failing.

• 35:14Jocko Willink?

  Right. Of which, by the way, you're one of the leaders.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  So when you're failing as a business and you've got these issues, yeah, it's, you're going to be one of the problems and you might need help squaring that away. And that's okay. That's okay. Well, you know what? Another thing I noticed in business world is a, a lot of people in the business world, they have no leadership training. So they've figured it out. They've been lucky and successful and they've gotten by with good people. And then they get to a certain point where all of a sudden they're going, wait a second, I can't handle this anymore. That, you know, if you grow from six people that you know pretty well, that you trust, and all of a sudden you've got a staff of a hundred people, if you don't start learning how to lead, you're going to have significant problems and it's going to blow up. And that happens from a hundred people to 300 people and then from 300 people to a thousand people. It'll happen every time and you've got to train those leaders throughout the chain of

• 35:59Jocko Willink?

  command that all have the same understanding of the fundamental principles of combat leadership, which is leadership. I have to throw combat in there because that was my old job.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  You know, it, it's funny you bring that up. There's a great example. Dan Quinn is the current head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. He was a defensive coordinator at Seattle. hires the head coach in Atlanta and through his, he's a very good friend of Jay Glazer, who's obviously very involved in mixed martial arts and does a lot of the Fox broadcasts and I've worked with him and gotten close with him. And so Jay introduced me to Dan. Dan was looking to make the team tougher. And, and here's a guy who has achieved the highest level of leadership and coaching, just like you talked about. He was a great coordinator. Now he's a head coach and he had the humility to seek out experts from all, I mean, he went to different sports, talked to their head coaches. He went to the military. He went all over with humility to

• 36:53Speaker 02

  ask and get advice and glean experience from other people's time and leadership to include, I couldn't believe it, but here I am having breakfast with the man. Here I'm in his office or I'm in there and, and you know, their little cafeteria there. We're just talking leadership. And he's talking about some of his individual guys and he's actually listening to my opinion, wanted to hear what I went through, my opinion on this guy or that guy is he brought me in to do some martial arts drills to make the team tougher. But I gained so much respect for that. Here's a man who's achieved the highest level. He knows he's in charge. He's not out to prove anything. His guys know he's in charge. And when they don't meet the standard, there, there's a consequence. But at the same time, he shows them the same kind of humility as he seeks out

• 37:36Speaker 02

  advice to get better every day because he wants them, hey Julio Jones, I know you think you're the best wide receiver in football, but there's ways you can get better and you need to be humble enough to find them. And guess what? Julio goes first in every drill. The dudes, I mean, he, that, I've watched him, works as hard as any human being I've seen in the football field, always looking to get better. Matt Ryan, the same. And look at the position the team's in now. But he has continually done that. He turned to Navy SEALs last summer, brought SEALs in to work with his team, to work with him on leadership, on accountability and all this combat, but leadership and bring it into that locker room and create this cohesive unit that has had a tremendous turnaround from the 2015 season to now 2016.

• 38:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Now in the NFC Championship.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  Again, for you reciting my book, which is what you do, because we had a chapter there, it's called Check Your Ego. And you know, my point is the number one, the number one characteristic that a leader has to have is humility. And if you don't have that, all those things that you just talked about, you won't do any of them. You won't ever get better. You won't listen to anybody else. You won't take any advice. You can't, that's, it's a horrible thing.

• 38:44Jocko Willink?

  Let me, let me, let me get us back on track to your life a little bit here.

• 38:52Jocko Willink?

  Why did you pick the Marine Corps?

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Cause I couldn't swim. No, in all honesty, um, you know, I had thought for a while that I wanted to be a team guy. Playing football and trying to be a SEAL, it's extremely competitive. You know, some of the guys who, who, who went into the teams and I mean, physical specimens, discipline, they're incredible. They trained for four years to then go and, and do all these different screeners. Uh, and for me, not having spent four years in the pool was costly because when it came time for me to do this screener to go do mini buds, it was basically a mini hell week for four straight days of the academy. It was tough and we broke the ice in the Chesapeake, all of that.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  You know, I trained for, for two weeks, right? I still had a shoulder problem and a hamstring problem from the season. I mean, it was just not gonna, I was not going to compete with these guys for it. Um, but ultimately what attracted me was the war in Iraq had started. Lot of my buddies were, were in the march up that I had played with that were, you know, graduated before me. I had talked to some folks that were in special operations and SEALs and they talked about it and it's a smaller team. So it's a little bit different. Whereas in the Marine Corps, the leadership, you know, at very young age, you're going to have 40 some Marines. You'll go on to be a company commander at this level. You're going to get a legitimate opportunity to command large scale units and that was really appealing to me.

• 40:16Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  And I thought that that was probably the best opportunity for me because if I was going to try to then be a team guy, I was going to have to go into the Navy as a surface warfare officer. And then after two years, and then after two years,

• 40:29Jocko Willink?

  That's rough.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Try to get to buds and there's no guarantees. Being a SEAL is extraordinarily competitive. And the physical requirements as officers to, to get there are really, really high. And so for me, the, the Marine Corps had an amazing appeal and

• 40:45Jocko Willink?

  Did you know about the Marine Corps when you went to the Naval Academy though?

• 40:47Speaker 02

  I wasn't, I, I did this as I went to P'leve Summer because they run it. They run it and I'll tell you, a lot of the, a lot of the people at the Naval Academy when I was there hated the Marines.

• 40:56Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 40:57Speaker 02

  So many of them went there with a chip on their shoulder. Yeah, this is the Naval Academy. There's no Marine Corps stuff and it's when we get our opportunity, we're really going to be jerks. And we had this great lieutenant colonel when I was a senior and we had all been selected to be Marines who told us, look, guys, This is not the real Marine Corps. They're not representing us well. We've got a bad crop here right now that are that are trying to prove a point. When you get to the basic school, you're going to find that it's massively different. And I loved it. I loved everything about it. I loved the diversity of my Marines. I mean, we talk about race. Race is a big deal. Racism in our country. It's a big topic. I mean, there's constantly battles on all the Hollywood news sites going on about about race.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Didn't exist when I was in the Marine Corps.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Men from all over the world.

• 41:49Jocko Willink?

  Dark green Marines.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it didn't matter. It did. It did not matter. We didn't care. Everybody, hey, this is so and so. So we didn't care. We had a mission every day. We trained together. We bled together and it was phenomenal. None of that stuff existed because we won together, we suffered together, and we looked beyond all of it. It just doesn't matter in the military and it's so frustrating to see it matters so much here in the regular world. Where people have all kinds of preconceived things and some people are out there acting like they're fighting on for the for the better of of race relations in our country and they're making it worse because they've got their own personal agenda as they do it. It's just really frustrating.

• 42:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I definitely in the in the military, like you said, everyone's wearing the same uniform and the I'm sure in the 50s and 60s and even into the 70s, it was a big deal. They stamped it out because it does. It doesn't matter. There's it's no factor. One way or the other, it's no factor. It's pretty awesome.

• 42:54Jocko Willink?

  Went to the basic school. You you got stalled in the basic school for a little bit of time. And, you know, going through some legal stuff.

• 43:05Jocko Willink?

  And while you're stalled at the basic school, your friends start going on deployment.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:10Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 43:12Jocko Willink?

  All of a sudden, you got your classmates, your friends, your brothers are getting killed. And you know, I that feeling of being on sidelines. Um, I think it's really hard to explain to people and you do a good job in the book that I'll highlight a couple of times, but uh, I, I heard this quote one time and I'm not, I'm gonna throw it out there as best I can, but for, for women, like they have an intrinsic biological desire to have children, not all women, but a lot of women, let's say.

• 43:54Jocko Willink?

  And a lot of men have an intrinsic desire to go to war. I don't know why that is. I know I had it since I can remember having human emotions. I wanted to go to war. You know, I mean, when you're a kid, the first thing you do when you pick up a stick is you shape it into a gun and start pointing it at your friends and trying to kill them. Right? So here you were on the sidelines, sitting back and, and your friends are starting to get killed. Wow. What did that do to your psychology?

• 44:30Speaker 02

  It was, it was dark. It was psychologically, that was the most challenging time period of my life. You've got someone challenging your character and your honor, trying to say that you were something that you weren't. And I wouldn't allow it. There were, there were easier ways to speed up the process and I refused. No way. I know what happened and, and during that delay, it was a very, very dark period. And, and it was difficult, but you, you have to, you have to slow life down sometimes, gain perspective and realize, hey, look, this is going to take some time. Eventually I am going to get there, but what, what really it turned into.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  When the opportunity finally came to progress, using my time wisely, the war wasn't going to go away tomorrow. You know, sometimes you get this feeling in your mind like, oh man, my friends are out there dying, they're leading, I need to be with them right now, realizing whoa, it's not going to be gone tomorrow. So don't be so anxious, don't waste the time you have now to get better. What can I do? I'm not going to let this stupid instance hold me back from improving from when I eventually do go on to lead Marines. And so I found a way to contribute value. I found a way to get better. It didn't happen right away. You know, there was a couple of weeks where, where it was dark, where I was angry.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  But I snapped out of it because there's times in life where life in your psychology, they want, you want to be the victim, right? You want to feel like you've been wronged. And the problem is, is a lot of times when you go into that mode and you start playing the victim, you never crawl out of it. You get stuck in that world of the victim. You get stuck in this world that you think is all bad luck and everything's always going against you. And you stop driving, you know, your own life. You gotta crawl out of that. When, when, when your, when your mind is telling you to play the victim and to feel bad for yourself, nothing positive comes from that. Nothing.

• 46:34Jocko Willink?

  Did something specific snap you out of that mindset? Did your, your mom tell you something or?

• 46:40Speaker 02

  You must, I talked about that?

• 46:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. That's right.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. She did. I mean, my, my, my mom is the sweetest woman in the world too. But there are specific times in my life where she was extremely hard on me.

• 46:52Jocko Willink?

  Don't mess with mama's stance.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  They were, they were at the right times. You would, you'd meet her, not even, she's such a pushover. But there were times where she, hey, you're going to fight this. You understand me? You're going to fight this. You're right. That's it. And, and you move forward and, and you owe, just like we all owe. The, the friends that you lose, there are many different ways that we could remember them, that we can memorialize them. Some people choose the wrong way, in my opinion. Substance, alcohol, depression, you know, they, they choose more of a victim mindset way of, of remembering them. Others choose, hey, they're no longer here. I can't bring them back.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  What would they want me to be doing? What would make them proud? I take their life for granted if I use them as an excuse to be idle and fail. Right? But I memorialize them if I remember them, speak their name and talk about them as I move on and I succeed. And, and I still think about that. I think about Ronnie Winchester, who I played football with, who died in Al Qaeda, Iraq. I think about Brett Harmon, who was killed at an NC State football tailgater before he could even lead his platoon to battle.

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  And those incidents happen again while you're on the sidelines. And the other thing you start doing right now at that time period is, what is that saying? When the, when the student is ready and instructor will appear? Well, you ended up at the Marine Corps, the Martial Arts Center for Excellence and you started training.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  I did. I, I ran into, to a Colonel named Joe Shusko, who is just this phenomenal guy, all about character. I mean, in his sixties could outrun all of us. I mean, the epitome of discipline, discipline, discipline. And he brought me in, I started working there and I, I got further introduced into martial arts and I loved it. I found, hey, this is what I should be doing in my free time. I should be hitting heavy bags. I should be training. I should be watching tape. I need to be, if I'm not reading military history and learning about my enemy, I'm doing this stuff. This, this is the type of stuff that's going to keep my mind sharp. And then I got intrigued. I wondered, okay, I'm going to lead Marines in combat.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  And a lot of these books that they were making us read on killing and some of these books that, that in my opinion are a little off on the psychology of battle.

• 49:21Jocko Willink?

  Agree.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  I mean, just brutal. Guy, you're going to pee yourself before you get shot at.

• 49:25Jocko Willink?

  Actually negative. I'm not going to pee myself at all.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  So. I wondered, all right, well, what can get me ready for that anxiety? I'm gonna sign up for a fight. I had this master gunnery sergeant who was a really good kickboxer who worked at this martial arts center of excellence. Said, hey, master guns, will you train me for a fight? Can you get me like one of these, these martial arts fights out in town? Yeah, sir, I can get you one. Are you gonna show up? Yeah, of course I'm gonna show up. I don't know, sir, I get a lot of you officers that don't. So anyways, I convinced him to train me every morning at five in the morning, we're training. And I had six weeks this fight and I don't know much, right? I've got, got a black belt in the Marine Corps martial arts program. All right, that's an arm bar from the guard, an arm bar from the mount, a sweep on how to escape the mount.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  And I don't, I've never shrimped before. All right, I don't know what butterfly guard is. I have no clue what half guard is. All right, I've got a jab, a cross and a leg kick.

• 50:24Jocko Willink?

  You're ready for your first MMA.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  And that was a black belt, you said?

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Huh?

• 50:27Speaker 01

  That was a black belt.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  That was black belt. I've got a jab, a cross and a leg kick.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Understand, understand.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  All right. So I get it, it was my first amateur fight. We weigh in and the guy's older than me and he's got the same haircut as Chuck Liddell and he's pretty ripped. And so you'd weigh in the same day as the fight. So we all leave now it's time to eat and then you, you come back. And so I come back and I'm, I'm warming up and he hasn't shown up yet. Now there's only a little sheet that they hung off a bar in between us. And our fights come up in two fights. I'm like, man, this guy may not show up. So this is the perfect scenario for me. He doesn't show, he was scared. I go out with all my Marine buddies in the crowd. I mean, there's 50 people at this fight and 15 of them are there to watch me. And that makes it worse, right? And so, uh, he shows up. And he's warming up, he's stretching. I'm like looking through the sheet like, oh, maybe I need to do some of that too, you know?

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Anyways, we walk down this tarp, the fight starts and this dude, he hits me with the worst spinning backfist you've ever seen. I mean, slow motion, off balance. My head's so big, anything you throw it, it hits any damn way. But hits me with the spinning backfist and I'm starting to get embarrassed. He's coming at me aggressive and, and now is that decision point. Okay, I, I can mentally break now and kind of cover up and get out of here if this is a little uncomfortable for me. And at that point, I kind of snapped and I got mad. And so I go to try and take him down, which I have no rest. Football. He wrapped, I try to football. He wraps up a guillotine on me, full on wraps the legs around my waist and he is hammered. Everything he's got, you hear, he's, and it's tight.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  I mean, I can feel the lights going out. I'm like, oh my goodness, no. And I could hear his corner man yelling to him. It's his wife.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  So now not only am I going to get tapped out in the first round, I'm going to get tapped out to a fake Chuck Liddell being cornered by his wife. Finish him, Jerry. Finish him. Do this. I'm not, can't let this happen. I find a way out of the choke. I kick him in the leg and realize, oh, I kick hard. He didn't like that. And then I crack him in the forehead and I split his head open. The doctor comes in, he doesn't know what month it is and the fight's over. And, and I had, there was a bunch of Vietnam vets in the crowd and they're hammered. And as soon as I get out, these dudes, these guys, these crusty fellows throw their arms, I mean, spilling beer all over me. They're, they're feeding me that, you know, they're putting the beard out my throat from their cup with they got dips in there. I mean, this stuff is probably disgusting, right? But it tasted so good.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Ever from that moment on, I was hooked. You know, this is, this is what I should be doing. I had six weeks of a fight on my mind. If I can get used to that, how, how will I deal with the anxiety of, of unprepared for battle? Hey, we're on patrol, you know, we get contact, what's our immediate action? Or we're going to have a major operation coming up in six days. I have to be able to think clearly on the battlefield. Direct, lead, play chess. And so I thought, man, this fighting thing could be a key. It could be a help. And it certainly did not end up being that, but it ended up being my sanctuary through it all. It was, it was kind of what centered me. I brought tie pads to Iraq the first time.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  You know, I had one of, one of my sergeants with a pretty good martial arts. We would train in between missions. I would train my guys.

• 53:43Jocko Willink?

  See, that's the difference between the SEAL teams and the, and the Marine Corps. You brought tie pads? I brought mats.

• 53:49Jocko Willink?

  Like I had mat rooms.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  That's ridiculous. The budget, the budget is much, much.

• 53:53Jocko Willink?

  I know. It's like almost embarrassing for me to admit, you know? You also did a lot of wrestling drills with, with Travis Mannion, who's one of your, one of your buddies. And so he helped you out and there's, there's an interesting part in, in the book where you talk about. You and Travis are going to Brett, who you just talked about, you're going to his funeral. This is the guy was shot at some little scuffle.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  NC State tailgater.

• 54:19Jocko Willink?

  There you go, shot in the chest and killed. You guys are going to his funeral and the wrestling coach tells you guys to write your own eulogies for yourselves, for yourselves. Interesting drill. That's, that's an interesting drill.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Joel Sharret, he is the head coach at the Naval Academy Wrestling Team right now. And it was wild, you know, so Brett Harmon was a Marine infantry officer. He was in 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, which would be my eventual battalion. Went to an NC State football tailgater, there were some guys there drinking and driving and they almost hit a kid. And so they, him and his buddy from Chicago, civilian, ran out in front of the car and stopped them and they got in an argument. What are you guys doing? You know, you guys are drunk, shouldn't be driving. The guys get out, they started to scuffle Brett and his buddy won. Came back a couple hours later and shot them both point blank. Shot Brett's buddy in the face and Brett went to get and take the gun from him. He got shot in the chest and they died. And so it was interesting because as we were writing this eulogy, you know,

• 55:22Speaker 02

  me and Travis, we were so close and he was, he was a fantastic wrestler and one of the toughest human beings I've, I've ever known. I mean, what we used to do to each other was ridiculous training. I mean, if, as long as it was standing, I would, I would just destroy him. As soon as he got sick of that and wanted to tackle me on the ground, I wasn't getting up anymore and he was destroying me. But it would just go back and forth for hours. And instead of playing video games, drinking beer, going out and hitting on girls. That's what me and Travis would do on a Friday and Saturday night. And it was really tough when you really start to think, what do you want to be said? When it's all over for you? How do you want to be remembered? And, and I remember Travis, he really struggled with this.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Struggled, I mean, it was, I mean, he was so loud talking about that, everybody else in the plane, it was weird. And part of it was because we were just struggling with the fact that, you know, our friend is dead.

• 56:12Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  You know, for such a weird circumstance. Yet we could understand if it was an ID or a sniper or something like that, not this. And.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  You know, several years later, it was wild, but uh, you know, Joel Sharrett, when he would give Travis's eulogy, he brought that story up. Travis would get killed in Fallujah. And I remember driving up to Travis's funeral and, ah, you know, Travis is one of those guys that you just, you just never, he can't die. He's, he's just too bad. He's too tough. He's too smart, too good. So I remember driving up to the funeral and I had my, my wife there with me and she was actually trying to make plans with her twin sister. Hey, we're gonna be in town. We live in North Carolina. Let's get together this weekend. But her twin sister's husband didn't want to get together. There was a part of me that didn't, Travis isn't dead. Like I'm gonna get there and we're all gonna, we're gonna hang out tonight. And I

• 57:05Speaker 02

  remember when I walked into that wake and I actually saw him, I mean, it, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was brutal. I, I, I loved, loved that guy so much. And we carried him the next day, but uh, you know, it's just, it's so crazy how connected it was because Ronnie Winchester died in Al Qa'im, Iraq. And three days later, Brett Harmon died at that NC State football game. We would go to Brett Harmon's funeral, write our own eulogies with Joel Sharrett, who would then end up giving Travis Mannion his, his actual eulogy, and I would carry Travis to his grave. I went to Al Qa'im, Iraq and actually replaced Ronnie's

• 57:50Speaker 02

  platoon and turned over with the replacement platoon commander who took over for him when he passed. While I was in infantry officer course, JP Blacksmith was killed in Fallujah. And I got this a little out of order, but when, when JP died, I found out right before I had my last amateur fight, I was in infantry officer course, and I'm getting ready to fight in two hours for, for a title. Travis Mannion was my corner man. And we're in the hotel room and he got a call and then he looked like he had seen a ghost. Like Trav, what's wrong? He goes, nothing dude, I'll tell you after the fight.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  And we had, you know, we had gotten bad. I was like, no, I know something's up. What the hell happened? And Travis told me, dude, JP Blacksmith got killed in Fallujah. So Travis tells me about JP's death. I turned over with JP's company, my second tour. Cause I met all of his old Marines, all of his own platoon commanders. I mean, it's just, it's such a small world that we lived and breathed in, you know? And so in my little platoon commander's notebook, I had pictures of all of them. And before every mission, I would flip through. And you just think, how do I make them proud? Before every fight, I would look at their pictures and look at the pictures of my Marines. How do I make them proud? How do I make them proud? And I still think about it to this day.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  And I, I, I end a lot of my speeches on this. They no longer have the chance to live. Who am I to take this life for granted? Because they would give anything to have one more day. Their families would give anything to have one more day. And I try to remind myself of that all the time. And you don't have to have served in the military to think like that. People will look at me, well, that's extreme. Well, who have you lost in your life? What would make them proud? How do you truly memorialize them? It's certainly not through failure. It's not through being idle in life. Live a life of substance, not just existence. And that, you know, as you do that and you remember them, that makes them proud. That, that makes it, that makes it worth it. You know,

• 59:43Speaker 02

  it's very similar to that, that final scene in Saving Private Ryan, where he's like, did I earn it? You know, and for those of us who served and were in those great circumstances, or for those people, there's people that were in tragedies, where they were in car accidents, they lost people. They think the same way. They think a lot the way they do, that we do. And when we look at life and taking things for granted, and achieving every day, adding value.

• 1:00:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's darkness in the world regardless of, regardless of where you are.

• 1:00:13Jocko Willink?

  You, um, you know, speaking of your combat tours, I want, I want to kind of dive into those a little bit. And let's take you, you take over your platoon, you're a platoon commander now. Back to the book here. During our first platoon meeting, my introductory speech lasted less than two minutes. "We're going to be aggressive," I told my new command. "We're going to train our asses off and we're going to be, and we're going to work harder than anyone else in the battalion." That was it. Short, to the point, all business. What's more, they found out quickly. I wasn't kidding.

• 1:00:52Jocko Willink?

  So you, you guys work hard, you get prepared, you deploy to Al-Qa'im, which you just talked about, that's where you ended up going. And I'm jumping ahead a little bit, people are gonna have to read this whole book themselves. But you're, you're basically now setting up a position on a bridge. You're kind of a blocking force in this bridge to prevent enemy from consolidating on another area where there's another operation going on. And I'm going to the book. Mortars began to fall on our position. As we fought back, I made sure that our vehicles moved from one spot to another. So the mortar crews would not zero in on us.

• 1:01:30Jocko Willink?

  From a wadi that ran perpendicular to Route Emerald, several insurgents began lobbing rocket propelled grenades at us. The rockets exploded all around us. Then another heavy machine gun let loose. This one sighted on the north bank as well. We were caught in 180 degree crossfire. From my window, I could see Corporal Delatorre and Bravo One. They were taking the brunt of the fire and Delatorre briefly dipped out of the turret as bullets bounced off the Humvees armored skin. Then I saw his hand pop up above the blast shield, holding a video camera. It takes a rare kind of cool to do something like that. In combat, an infantry platoon's first task is to achieve fire superiority over the enemy.

• 1:02:13Jocko Willink?

  To do this requires pouring it on the insurgents until they are forced to either disengage or go to ground. Once they're either driven off, either driven off or pinned in place, you've gained command of the fight and can dictate what happens next. Even with the tanks, because I failed to mention, you had some tanks, some army tanks with you and, you, throughout the book, have the same deep love for tanks that I have for army tanks, marine tanks. But I, I love tanks. Even with the tanks, in this case, we didn't have the firepower to gain control of this battle. There were too many insurgents shooting at us from too many different places. We needed some help. I reached for the radio's headset, began calling airstrikes.

• 1:02:56Jocko Willink?

  Within minutes, Huey Cobra gunships thundered in on scene to deliver deadly accurate hellfire missiles into targets we identified. So was this situation here, was that like your first big combat scenario?

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  It was, it was. And the thing that made it so difficult was there was another platoon assigned for that mission.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  And they got stuck in the mud.

• 1:03:21Jocko Willink?

  Stuck in the mud, literally, right?

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  Stuck in the mud and so we didn't get the opportunity to aerial reconnaissance. We didn't have the opportunity to look at overhead imagery of this terrain. We had nothing. I had 15 minutes. Hey, if they're not there in 15 minutes, you're a go. So in that 15 minutes, I'm briefing my guys. We're getting ready. We're now we're meeting this, this tank crew is from Boise, Idaho. We'd never even met them. I met them the day before. My guys had never worked with them before. So there was a lot of confusion that took place just in the, in the route up. And as we got settled and started to identify targets, and as you know, in that scenario, the acoustics and in the movement, the amount of people, we are the most precise military in the history of this planet.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  So we not only have to identify where is the gunfire coming from? What caliber do I believe they're firing back or at us with? Cause that dictates what caliber I'm allowed to return fire with depending on where they're shooting at me from. Are they in a dug in position north of the river? Are they shooting at me from a building where there's civilians around? Are they shooting at me from a wadi where now I can drop hell fires on them? I can hit them with tanks. That's a lot going through your head when you've got four vehicles, two tanks and aircraft you're trying to control as a 24 year old kid and everybody's waiting on you to say what's coming next. Just like in every vehicle, there's another kid in there directing everything they're doing.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  And, and, and that is, that is all part of it. But that, that was our first, our first time when Dela Torre, I don't put in the book, but what I said to him over the radio, I mean, I, I verbally almost killed him through the radio for doing it, that wild son of a bitch.

• 1:05:06Jocko Willink?

  I've told this story on the podcast, but this, I had a similar story and I'll tell it again right now. Cause Mikey Monsor, who ended up getting killed in, in Ramadi Medal of Honor.

• 1:05:16Jocko Willink?

  I went to go to his little station where he was and the guys were like, hey, did you see Mikey's video? And I was like, no, you know, and they go, go take a look at Mikey's video. So Mikey was a heavy weapons gunner and carried the mark 48. And so I go back into his little where in Camp Corregidor in Ramadi, I go back into his little hoochie I built for himself. I'm like, Mikey, let me see your, let me see your video. And he goes, oh, Roger, that's so he pulls out his little camera and he shows the video and there's a massive firefight going on in the Mulab district of of Ramadi. And he's got the camera up and you can see it ducked out to go up. He's filming everything and he gets done showing me and at one point in the, in the video, he turns the camera at himself and he goes, it's the Mulab, which was just classic Mikey. And so he gets done and

• 1:05:59Jocko Willink?

  of course I'm all hardcore. And I go, hey, Mikey, bro, what are you doing out there? You know, you're in a firefight, you need to be on your pig gun, getting rounds down and killing bad guys. He's like, sir, I'm sorry, I was, I was Winchester. He had no more. He already dumped a thousand rounds. And I was like, all right, Mikey, you're good. You know, you're fine. You can video all you want if you go Winchester. But yeah, I was, I read that. I was like, you probably weren't too at all. I was about that.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  I was so mad, so mad.

• 1:06:32Jocko Willink?

  Another thing, let me just give you this prompt and you're going to hear this too. When, when you, when you get off this podcast and people are going to hit you up on social media, you're going to hear from young, so you're going to hear from soldiers and Marines that are going to ask you questions because they listen to this and they get knowledge from it. Is there anything that you didn't expect that you wish somebody would have told you going into that first firefight for someone that's in basic training right now or, or at the basic school right now? Anything that you, piece of advice you'd give them?

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, a few things, you know, one.

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  Don't go in there guns a blazing right away because in that circumstance, the sound is actually one of your better indicators of where the gunfire is coming from because when that heat is blazing, you're not going to see a muzzle flash.

• 1:07:22Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  It just doesn't exist, right? The other thing is when you're, when you are keeping your vehicles mobile, that doesn't allow you to lock in on a T and E system with a heavy machine gun. So you've got to be smart in the increments that you move in and the formations you move in and make sure that your, your machine gunners have drilled that.

• 1:07:41Jocko Willink?

  That's what I was gonna say.

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  We would do drill, we would do T and E drills till my guys' hands bled and not just the, the primary machine gunner, everybody in that truck. So if one goes down, the other comes up. So that when we moved them, they can quickly get back on that same target. Cause basically what that became a game of is you suppress that position with a two forty gulf or a medium machine gun until I can talk the tanks on and then the tanks, they don't miss. It's all computer. It's like a video game.

• 1:08:03Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  And we dug in positions, just aim a little bit lower and watch the shit fly. Excuse my language. But that, that was one of the problems. When, when we went in and we started receiving some gunfire, everybody started shooting fire where we could identify with, but then also we're getting shot at from other positions. We can't really tell because of the acoustics until somebody actually hits. Wait a minute, we're getting hit from back here too. And then some of the increments my, my drivers would move in, they moved so much that it was no longer a small adjustment on the T and E for that machine gunner. Now they've got to get out of the turret, exposing themselves to work that thing in. And because of collateral damage, you can't just work it in, send some rounds down range. Oops, I hit the building 10 feet away. You're not allowed to do that. You've got to get that sucker into where you see it on the site and then you can start sending rounds down.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Well, that guy gets to shoot at you because you're so concerned with collateral damage.

• 1:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  And so drill, drill, drill. Because a mortar dropping on the top of a, of a Humvee is not a good thing and they are more accurate than you realize. These, the enemy out there has been launching mortars and indirect fire for decades, where you get a little bit of ammo to do it on range 400 out, you know, out, out, out in the, out in the palms for Marines, that is. These guys get to do it every day for real.

• 1:09:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you know what? They don't even have to be good. They get lucky one time and, and human life doesn't mean anything to them, but it means everything to us. So they get lucky one time. And there's, there's, that's the way it goes. And that's the way combat is.

• 1:09:39Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with that and, and tank hits an IED.

• 1:09:48Jocko Willink?

  You need to find out what's going on and basically there's a, there's a burning Abrams here going on. Um, suddenly a huge explosion drowned out all other battle sounds. The ground rolled and shook as if the fault line had suddenly collapsed beneath us. Ahead, a maelstrom of sand, dirt, smoke and flames boiled skyward. Before I could even ask Sergeant Peterson's voice came over the radio. Mortar hit one of the tanks. My column break to a stop. The explosion morphed into a dry, into a small, dirty brown mushroom cloud over Staff Sergeant Plumkey's M1. No way a mortar did that. That had to have been a massive IED. Luke Miller called over to me. I have no comms with them. So now you radio for a medevac. You're trying to find out what's going on.

• 1:10:34Jocko Willink?

  The tank's on fire and here we go back to the book. I took a deep breath and ran for the burning Abrams. I took only a few steps before I saw Robertson frantically waving back at me. Wait, sorry, waving me back. Just then a line of bullets stitched across the sand about 10 feet ahead of me. I executed my best football shuttle run and dashed back for cover. Bravo three laid down suppressing fire, which allowed me to get across the open space on my second attempt. So that's cover move and another thing, chapter in the book, something I talk about all the time. This is the fundamental, this fundamental tactic. That's, that's what it is, cover and move. Then you guys are doing it right here. When I reached Robertson, he shouted, we still got two wounded in there. We had to get the men out quickly.

• 1:11:18Jocko Willink?

  I climbed onto the tank, Miller following a short time later. The incoming fire was heavy and more than once we had to duck behind the turret.

• 1:11:27Jocko Willink?

  So getting your, getting your game on, Brian Stan.

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  The funniest thing about it was I was trying to maintain a low profile when I got in the tank. There's things, there's little micro things you can hide behind and the driver's the, the person deepest in that thing and, and we couldn't get him out. He was the last one and, and he was a bigger guy and I'm, I'm trying to lift him. I'm a strong dude and I lifted way toes in Iraq and that was a strong, bigger guy than I am right now. Couldn't get him out and I couldn't, I couldn't understand why. And he's looking at me. He's, he's got blood over me. He's like, why is this taking so long? And, and he doesn't say it that clear. I mean, he's, he's out of it. I didn't know at the time he was paralyzed from the chest down. And so I realized the only way I'm getting him out is if I get my legs underneath me and that's going to create a target.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  And so we think, sometimes we think some silly things in combat and I just thought, look, if I'm going to get shot by these guys, what's the last thing I want them to see before they hit me? And that's my rear end. So when I hopped up, I, I faced that right towards him, but I honestly think, I think it would save me. You know, you, you'll talk to, to people that hunt and they talk about when they get that perfect buck in their sights, huge rack. And it's such an easy shot, but they're so excited that they pulled a shot and they miss. Well, when I've got a Kevlar helmet on, I look, who's seen Spaceballs? I mean, you can see me right now with just his headset. When I've got a Kevlar on, I mean,

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  if someone's trying to snipe me or they're trying to shoot at me with a mini machine gun and they see, they're like, oh man, I got this dude. They missed and I squatted, I was able to pull them up and we literally, you know, we, we almost collapsed off the tank and, and landed on top of another guy and got them down. But the only thing I could think of, I mean, obviously grateful when we landed, hey, I don't think I got shot. Did you get hit? He didn't get hit and we were able to get him out, but that was, that was the thing happened is sometimes you just get lucky. And I think I presented such a big target. Whoever was behind that trigger just straight blew it.

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a nightmare too. I'll tell you when, when this enemy sees a downed vehicle, it is like a bullet magnet. The fact that you survived that is ridiculous. And yeah, it must've. It's a miracle and luck and everything else because when when the enemy sees a target like that, man, they just pour fire onto it because they know they're creating a total catastrophic situation for us.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  And they almost always have a camera on it, too.

• 1:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  I mean, they are there.

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  Did that ever pop up on there?

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  It it didn't. I couldn't find it, but they study film like NFL teams study film. And sometimes you find their footage where they didn't even attack you. They're just watching what your response was to see what they're going to do next.

• 1:14:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  People underestimate the evil and the detail that they go through.

• 1:14:13Jocko Willink?

  Maybe Ahmed, the sniper, decided to delete that video because he was going to get in so much trouble for missing the big American.

• 1:14:23Jocko Willink?

  He's like, how did you miss this guy? Look at the size of that head.

• 1:14:30Jocko Willink?

  So you call in, actually, you call in helicopters, they come in

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  under fire, don't take any hits somehow miraculously.

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  I still have been, I have not been able to find who was flying that Huey. I never was able to find out. And I mean, I wish I could. That guy who landed because a whole squad was taken out a few clicks to our east and there was no medevac birds. And this guy, I mean, we laid down the butterfly trigger so that he could land, but man, he showed some guts. He would have been fired had they got hit and had that halo going down, but he didn't care. He knew there was a marine there that needed to get out and need to get out now or else he was done. And and he landed, got him and lifted off and I never saw him again. I'm telling you that that's that's a real hero.

• 1:15:15Jocko Willink?

  That was a Marine Corps helicopter.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  Pilot in a Huey of all things, a Huey. That took some stones and I wish, I wish I could find that person.

• 1:15:25Jocko Willink?

  Well, he might hear this podcast and reach out.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  So I hope so.

• 1:15:30Jocko Willink?

  Now, you you get that back to base, hellacious run and you guys get back, yeah, great, we survived. And then you get re tasked. You got to go bring ammo, weapons, or sorry, ammo, water, fuel back up there.

• 1:15:49Jocko Willink?

  And this was interesting. I got this and I kind of brought it up earlier, but back to the book, just before we rolled out, my Alpha section arrived back at Al Qa'im after a very dull day covering the jump off point for the assault force tasked with crossing the Afraidis. They'd encountered no opposition and my Bravo section Marines quickly busted out the stories of our busy day, much to the jealousy of the rest of the platoon. This is what I was trying to explain earlier. So these guys, you know, these guys were in a crazy firefight, almost get killed. They got guys getting wounded. They come back, the other, other squad had no action. And what are they? They're jealous and mad. Alpha

• 1:16:33Jocko Willink?

  section was so full of aggressive angry Marines who wanted nothing more to get into the fight. They lobbied to go out on this run, but I vetoed the idea. Sergeant Pete's men knew the terrain now, and we needed that experience to shepherd the two trucks to the bridge. I told my Alpha section they'd have plenty of opportunities in the days to come, but I knew as we left the wire, they remained on the base frustrated and anxious. That's just tells you what the Marine Corps is all about.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  They hated me that night. Hated me.

• 1:17:03Jocko Willink?

  And then, okay, so you do that's another hell run. And again, I'm not going to read your entire book. People can buy this book and read it. But when you get back again, another just crazy run. When you get back, guess what? You got to go back to the bridge again. That's good times. So here you go. Back to the book. We're going back to the bridge tonight. I started. Alpha had sat out the last couple of fights. They were fresh and eager and ready to go in the fray. Right now, Bravo section had all the bragging rights, and that was driving Francis's men nuts. When I broke the news, I like this part. When I broke the news, I saw no fear in anyone's eyes, just anticipation and excitement. Be careful what you wish for, I thought.

• 1:17:49Jocko Willink?

  So again, Marines are fired up to go and you go out again. And this one again goes sideways. You're using up all your nine lives.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  Oh, man, this, this one got ugly quick and you know, we expected it to, but there's, there was things working against us a little bit in that. We had to go up there, the tank that, that, that had the catastrophic kill days earlier, we had to go up there and recover. You can't leave that in the battlefield. And so I had never even, I had never known what a MiG 88 recovery vehicle was.

• 1:18:25Jocko Willink?

  I learned that in Ramadi as well.

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's, it's a tank with no guns and it's basically, it's, it's a mechanic vehicle. They go fix the other tank or they tow it. And so we were going to meet a tank section. So two regular Abrams tanks plus this MiG 88 tank recovery vehicle in the middle of the desert. Here's, here's your grid. We'll meet there. I'm going to kick my order there. I've never even met these Marines before. Hey, by the way, here's your introduction to my Alpha section, by the way, too. We're going to head straight north and try and catch them by surprise and, and get right up to the bridge. But I told them, look, this area has been heavily guarded, so be prepared. Well, this Master Sergeant who's driving

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  the MiG 88 lets me know, hey, sir, just so you know, once we get on that asphalt, this thing only going to go about 10 miles an hour at best. What? Wait, what? We're good on sand, but we don't go very fast on, on asphalt. Like, well, you don't want to go on sand. You know what they bury in sand for us and what they have waiting for us there. So man, we hit the line of departure, we head north and, and they opened up on us and that MiG 88 just crawling, crawling. And my section leader, Staff Sergeant France, his vehicle gets hit with an RPG. Just missed by an IED, but the back of the vehicle's on fire.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  And, and when we're getting hit, the tanks start returning fire. And here's another really good lesson for, for young officers and, and just young service members in general. When you're fighting at night and you've got night vision goggles on and, and tanks are returning fire into these buildings, right? They were shooting down on us in these buildings, shooting at us through windows. The tanks are identi- we're identifying targets and they're taking them out. The debris, it's heavy. The, the material that these buildings are made of, it's very heavy and it blinded us. Couldn't see now because all the damage the tanks did. And my lead vehicle blew the turn. Back of the vehicle's on fire, they blow the turn. So we all blow the turn and link back up. And now as I look down the block ahead, I could see these lights blinking, which typically tells us it's signaling an ambush.

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  They're expecting us to go that route. It's now decision time and you gotta be quick. So at that time, we're about to, we're gonna, hey, let's turn the convoy around. Let's hit the turn where we know we're gonna get right to the people that need us, right to that down tank. Let's fight our way through this kill zone. Let me call in some airstrikes. That time is when they let loose those suicide vehicles and one got through our perimeter. And man, I've, I've, one of the Marines actually filmed that explosion. And, ah, man, just a horrible, I mean, I, I heard that explosion and just the first thing went through my head, I just got five kids killed immediately. It's the first thing that went through my head. Radio silence and, and everybody's waiting for, there's no crying, there's no mourning,

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  there's no timeout, there's no, hey, Staff Sergeant Robertson, you take over. No, I mean, after that thought, my next, my next thing needs to be me giving orders out of my mouth and moving people forward because we don't have time to mourn right now. And, and so immediately I set a perimeter with the tanks. I, I established which vehicle is gonna be the tow vehicle for our down vehicle, where the casualty is gonna go, where's the corpsman? And I get out of my vehicle and I push. That's what leaders do. We go to the point of friction. Where's the point of friction? And that was my vehicle that was just hit with a suicide vehicle. Man, I get there and on top of it is this 22-year-old kid, Jeff Lamson, who's built like a number two pencil, right?

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  He was just in this vehicle. I mean, this vehicle is destroyed. How he's conscious, I don't know, but he's on top of it, pulling our gunner out of the turret who's got a piece of shrapnel in his head, bigger than that book. Everybody in the vehicles, everybody's wounded, but Staff Sergeant Francis comes out and the whole side of his face is melted. He's like, "Sir, we're gonna be good. We're gonna be, I was never more relieved in my life." They're still getting shot at. Francis is basically walking, but he's not totally conscious yet. There's like bullets hitting on the guard. Like, I gotta grab him, put him behind the vehicle for a second, because he's out of it, of course. But man, to see Lamson, this kid who actually, you know, had a little bit of an attitude at the time with one of the guys I had to correct an awful lot.

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  Hair's a little too long. He tried to grow a mustache, you know, for the peach fuzz. I mean, he's a kid. You look at the, I mean, you would never imagine that this is a warrior, but in this time of need, I'm telling you, man, he was saving lives. And it was so humbling and so motivating to see that. And we were able to, we got everybody in that MiK-88, eventually got the tow, got out of there, and I mean, we called in a massive airstrike and, and, and we won, but we didn't pitch a shutout. That's for sure. And, and the hardest part of that was when all my casualties were loaded on, you have, we're not doctors. We have no idea. When you see a guy with shrapnel out of his brain like that, you think they're done. So my Marines, they think we may have lost two or three

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  of these folks, and they're down. And as far as I know, we're out there to fight for the three, four, five, six days.

• 1:23:29Jocko Willink?

  That was gas, right, that had shrapnel in his head? Was he, was he walking wounded? Was he?

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  So he would, he would come to, he got shot. As Lamson was pulling him out of the turret, he got shot again in the elbow as we were pulling him out. And we got him to the medevac and, and he was just, he was, I remember he was, he was cursing, "I can't believe I let them get us. I can't believe I let them get us," blaming himself for the suicide vehicle, getting to the vehicle. And I told him, "It's not, it's my fault. It's not your fault." And, uh, but at least he was talking.

• 1:23:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:59Speaker 02

  But, I mean, this, I, you know, this is, this is pretty freaky when you see a piece of metal in someone's head just like this. And I don't, he couldn't see himself and I, nobody wanted to tell him. Nobody wanted to say, "Hey, reach up and touch what's in your brain right now."

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  But he was gone. I mean, once he left that day, we didn't see him the rest of the deployment. I didn't see him until, till I had gotten back. And the craziest thing is...

• 1:24:26Jocko Willink?

  We reunited for an episode of Ultimate Insider with the UFC and I didn't really know what they were after. And this, this producer, you know, asked me if I could get this guy there. He was going to do a story. It was really going to be honorable to him, this and that. And, and it was, right? But at the same time, he's sitting next to each other and he's asking this Marine, hey, do you blame Brian Stan for this happening? Do you blame this for that? I mean, it was, it was, it was dark and it was difficult. It was, it was hard for both of us, man, because, you know, for gas, it, he lived, right? And, and he's got a family now, but the, the amount of headaches, the piercing headaches this man struggles with, you know, in and out of comms, trying to text him, I don't know, you know, where, where his number's at. Um, he's a great warrior, great

• 1:25:11Jocko Willink?

  dude. But the pain he lives with every day, I mean, that's never going away. He had, I think, four brain surgeries after that. Four brain surgeries. Unbelievable. And he was blaming himself. Crazy. Warriors. And you know, you, you kind of wrap up that here. Going back to the book, our unit, 32 Marines is known as the Batio Bastards. In 1943, the battalion took part in Operation Galvanic, the invasion of Tarawa. Batio Island was the main target of the landing force and the Marines faced an entrenched enemy with pre-registered fields of fire on the beaches. For those of you that don't know what that

• 1:25:56Jocko Willink?

  is, that's an actual nightmare when the enemy already knows where their rounds are going to land when they fire them. It's a worst case scenario. The first assault waves were nearly wiped out by machine gun and mortar fire as they waded through the lagoon onto the narrow beach. It took 76 hours to clear the island, which was barely 2,000 yards long and a few score wide. Over 3,000 Marines and sailors died or fell wounded during what became the most ferocious close quarter battle ever fought by the United States Marine Corps. That was the legacy of my unit, a legacy of determination, heroism, and stoic

• 1:26:36Jocko Willink?

  resolve in the face of unimaginable adversity. On May 10th, 2008, my Marines proved they were cut from the same cloth.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  Indeed. It's so humbling when you watch these young men from all different walks of life. You know, some of them only citizens in the United States for a couple of years at that point. Really diverse backgrounds. I mean, it's not a gang full of white people. I mean, it's very diverse. I mean, they don't care. And man, when they're getting shot at, there is nobody ducking for cover. Nobody. They are getting after. Their, their love and care for one another, for the mission, for people trying to destroy their way of life. It's awe inspiring to, to watch their selfless acts.

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  I mean, what they'll do. And, and this was more obviously direct engagement against an enemy. Right. But, but there's, I've seen them, you know, just like Lamson was willing to sacrifice himself to save Robert Gass, right? I've seen Marines do the same to save innocent Iraqi kids. The same care that they had for one another, they had for the people that they were there to protect. And that gets lost a lot when people talk about these wars. It's, it's become cool to paint our military like we're, we're this brutal force that's wiped out, you know, all these people in these different countries. I mean, these, these, these were men, these were men who were such great professionals,

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  but under the most extreme circumstances, understood that they could lose their life. And that was a hundred percent acceptable to them if that meant saving the guy next to them. And, and that, it's hard for me to meet somebody like Michael Strahan or a football player, famous person, right? They're all impressive people, but it's hard for me to meet someone like that and be like, oh my God, can I get a picture for Instagram? When, when you've been around 19, 21, 20 year old kids and, and these kids don't come from rich backgrounds, right? They didn't have a whole lot. There was a reason when the, when our nation was in two wars, they decided to sign up

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  and be infantry in the Marine Corps. It was, they, they will forever be the, the greatest people I've ever been surrounded with.

• 1:29:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, uh, I talk about that all the time. The fact that when we were in Ramadi specifically, you know, here we were, the special operations guys, the Navy SEALs, whatever. We, all of us, all of us guys, we just had such admiration and love for the Marine Corps and for the Army soldiers that we work with. Those guys, like you said, and, and for us, we're sitting there, we're going, man, we've got, we've got infinitely more training, infinitely more training than a grunt has. That's just the way it is.

• 1:29:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:29:46Jocko Willink?

  Like you talk about the budget, we used to shoot more rounds in a week than a Marine Corps company would shoot in their workup. No kidding. Like we, I saw the numbers. So we get infinitely more training. We get better gear. And yet you go down to the government center in Ramadi, or you go down to Cop Falcon and you look at those soldiers and Marines that are getting after it every day. And that's why we just had nothing but the utmost, highest respect for those guys. And they knew it.

• 1:30:18Speaker 02

  And that was some nasty fighting down there, too. Nasty fighting in Ramadi.

• 1:30:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:27Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to take us back to the book here. An Amtrak, a lightly armored amphibious vehicle, first platoon 325 struck a landmine only a few hundred meters from our position. So this is another operation that you're out on. And this is where we started this, uh, day off. We heard the explosion, saw the smoke and flames rising behind us, and then heard the cries for help over the radio. We couldn't go to their aid. The bridge had not yet been cleared and we were almost certain it had been mined by the enemy. Besides, we couldn't leave our blocking position without exposing, exposing the left flank. The track burned as 325's fellow Marines and my friend and mentor Lieutenant Deanna

• 1:31:12Jocko Willink?

  from our weapons company frantically tried to free the men trapped inside.

• 1:31:18Jocko Willink?

  Inside Alpha 3, I could see this color drain from my men's faces. They looked absolutely stricken. Then the track's ready ammunition began cooking off. With each detonation, I could see my men flinch. I ordered everyone to face south. I didn't want my men to see what was unfolding. Hearing it over the radio was bad enough.

• 1:31:48Jocko Willink?

  Five Marines died inside the track. Everyone else inside suffered wounds of varying degrees. The driver was pulled from the wreckage, his face bloody and missing teeth. The explosion had slammed his head against the vehicle's front console. Another Marine emerged with his uniform on fire. Quick-thinking men nearby got him on the ground and put the flames out with a fire extinguisher.

• 1:32:11Jocko Willink?

  Of all my experiences in combat, this is the one that haunts me the most: the feeling of complete impotence. In the face of such a profound tragedy scarred us all that day.

• 1:32:26Speaker 02

  Gabe Diana had actually served in Lima 325. It's a reserve unit out of Columbus, Ohio. Before he became active duty and then became an officer, he was enlisted with 325. And I remember when we were starting this operation and 325 came to our base, him bringing some of these guys. Hey, man, he grew up with them. I mean, these were his brothers. And now they were firefighters, they were police officers, all brought together for this mission. Man, it was brutal. Absolutely brutal. And I remember hearing a story about this woman from Columbus who they had lost, I think it was over 20, it was around 22 Marines

• 1:33:11Speaker 02

  from Lima 325 during that deployment. And she decided to paint these beautiful murals, murals of each one. And they were so nice. At the Marine Corps Museum for a while, put them right in their foyer. Right as soon as you walk into the museum, there they were. And they were big. And I, I, I remember hearing the story and then I was doing a shoot with the UFC and the Marine Corps. When the Marine Corps was advertising with the UFC and, and part of the shoot was going to be us as fighters. And then with the Marines going to the Marine Corps Museum and I was kind of, you know, both sides of the fence in that. And we walked in and they were there and I didn't know, I didn't expect it. And it was really tough because here I am, you know, I'm, I'm around these Marines and I'm around, you know, some of my buddies.

• 1:33:53Speaker 02

  Rashad Evans, Forrest Griffin were there. And I mean, as soon as I walked in, man, my eyes filled up with tears. You know, being, getting the opportunity to, to meet some of these men very briefly, then we set off and go. And because of my relationship with Gabe Diana, who was my mentor at the time and knowing what he went through that day. Childhood brothers of his and, and, and him also being helpless. Ah, and, and nothing's fair in combat. We know that. Nothing's fair. And, and you don't have the choice. Again, you don't have the choice. That gets cleared on, that force continues to push west so that we can finish the mission of this operation. We got to continue providing our blocking position and that's it. If you lose focus, more of that's going to happen.

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's a difficult thing to deal with, but that's what we signed up to do. That, that's why we have an all volunteer force and it's the greatest military force this world has ever seen. And it's unfortunate, but part of it is dying. We die in battle so that the innocent people here that live in America don't. And it sucks and it's painful, but at the end of the day, we all, we know, when we sign up, we know that that is a possibility.

• 1:35:04Jocko Willink?

  It is indeed. Now, you had nine guys wounded from your platoon? Is that right?

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  From that, from that whole deployment?

• 1:35:15Jocko Willink?

  From, from that couple of days.

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  Okay, yes.

• 1:35:20Jocko Willink?

  Here we go, nine men in a week. Here, I'll go to the book.

• 1:35:22Speaker 02

  But some of them were the reservist tankers that weren't technically mine.

• 1:35:25Jocko Willink?

  Yes. The loss of so many Marines under my command had eaten away at me, almost to the point where I suffered a crisis in confidence. Nine men in a week of combat. What had I done wrong? What had I done wrong? What lessons could I learn? My mind obsessed over those questions. Inside the COC, I braced for the shitstorm. Captain Ford Phillips, my company commander, spotted me as I came through the door. He swiftly took me aside. Here it comes, I thought. "Brian, excellent job. You did everything right out there." "Thank you." My jaw almost fell open. Those were the last words I had expected to hear.

• 1:36:07Jocko Willink?

  I greatly admired Captain Phillips and had long since learned he always meant what he said. His words were never designed to make someone feel better. They were always designed to make a man a better officer and a better Marine, always.

• 1:36:24Jocko Willink?

  His words eased the pain of the last seven days but did not erase the guilt that I felt. To this day, I question the decisions I made that night. That is the onus of command. You always bear the responsibility for those under you. When they suffer wounds or are killed by the enemy, it is impossible for an officer not to second guess himself and own part of their suffering or deaths.

• 1:36:46Jocko Willink?

  As leaders, we understand control. That is where we operate. Having it is comfort, but combat and the enemy strips that away at times. Once the bullets fly and the violent chaos of a firefight reigns, control becomes an illusion. A platoon commander cannot determine which enemy bullets will strike what vehicles. He cannot select the moment when an insurgent triggers an IED. He cannot dictate who survives and who doesn't.

• 1:37:16Jocko Willink?

  All he can do is try and fight back to try and demolish the chaos with enough firepower that the enemy dies or runs away. Almost everything else is beyond a leader's control.

• 1:37:28Jocko Willink?

  Those limits of leadership were never drilled into us at the academy. When I experienced it for the first time during Operation Matador, I came gradually to understand on an intellectual level. But in my heart, I still wonder if I could have done something else that might have saved my Marines from harm.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  I still spend sleepless nights replaying every moment in my head hoping men like Robert Gass and Jonathan Low can forgive me.

• 1:38:02Speaker 02

  All part of it, man. And it's funny, you read that passage. I was up last night, same thing. 2:45 in the morning and replaying it. And it's not something I would say.

• 1:38:17Speaker 02

  There's a negative aspect. People will hear me say that and be like, oh, man, that's bad. You know, post-traumatic stress or something. No. It's me being a human being who cares and wonders. And it's hard. It's never going to go away. And I'll always wonder that, you know, would it have been a better decision to take a left turn and abort the mission at that point? Should I have tried to get back to the bridge? Or if I'd have gone three blocks up, maybe there would have been a path we could have found and put our headlights on. There are so many what ifs, so many what ifs that you go through as leaders. And if you try to ignore those times where you spend those sleepless

• 1:38:59Speaker 02

  nights and not think through it, I think it makes it worse. I think the fact that I'll go through the drill like last night, which is the first time in a long time that I did. I think part of it is I knew we'd probably be talking about it.

• 1:39:13Speaker 02

  I think it's healthy to do that. For me, at least it has been. You know, it's healthy for me to replay that and to understand. And, you know, you talked about that moment with my company commander Ford Phillips. I remember that conversation. And I remember kind of going back at him a little bit and saying, you know, I just think if I would have done this or done that. And he stopped me. Brian, listen, you did everything right. You did everything that you could do out there. And it was, you know, it was definitely what I needed to hear because we still had a long way to go in that deployment. And I still had to go do another one. It was, it was great leadership on his part because it gave me, there was no more second guessing at that point. You know, because that was

• 1:39:54Speaker 02

  not the time to sit there and start to question my decision and my instincts in battle that had served me well up until that point.

• 1:40:02Jocko Willink?

  I had a similar conversation as a matter of fact with Leif. So, you know, when, when Mark Lee got killed, it was Ryan Jobe who ended up dying as well, but he had been severely wounded. And Leif was down at a combat outpost with his platoon. And we got, Ryan Jobe had been evacuated out and now the guys are down at this combat outpost. And the army who, the 137 Bulldogs, Bravo Company, who we had an amazing relationship with, Captain Mike Bahama, Main Gun Mike. They, they were out trying to, trying to get after it. And they got to a point where they said, hey, we think we know where these guys are.

• 1:40:48Jocko Willink?

  That shot Ryan. Do you, can you guys help us? I mean, it was like the worst day of fighting. And Leif called me up on the, on the radio and says, hey,

• 1:41:00Jocko Willink?

  I want to go back out. They think they know where these guys are. I want to go back out. And I was like, go, go get some. And he went out and, you know, they were under heavy fire and, and that's when Mark got killed. And, you know, Leif was, you know, he, he was, you know, the mission gets done and all that. But next day, Leif comes to me and he says, um, you know, hey, hey Jocko, I'm, you know, he was tore up, you know, he was tore up. His, his, his friend, his brother was, was dead. His other friend was severely wounded, but what really got to him was Mark because, you know, he'd made this decision to go back out. And he said to me, you know, I, I just don't know if I, you know, I don't know if I made the right decision.

• 1:41:45Jocko Willink?

  And I said to, I said to him, Leif,

• 1:41:49Jocko Willink?

  there was no decision to make. There was Americans out there fighting in the streets, trying to get after these guys that had wounded one of your guys, one of our guys. And they thought they knew where he was and they thought you could go and get them?

• 1:42:08Jocko Willink?

  There's no decision to make. You don't even have a choice in that situation. You do what you do as an American, as a SEAL, as a Frogman. There was no decision. You did what we do.

• 1:42:38Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's something that any leader, when you get your young leaders out there, you know, obviously, if they screw something up, obviously, that's a different story. But, you know, you don't have the luxury of knowing what's going to happen in a combat situation. There's no crystal ball. There's no, you don't know, like what you just said, guys would say that stuff to me sometimes, like, you could have gone left or right. Oh, really? Because if you could have gone left, like you just talked about, and hit a giant ID and now everyone's dead. You could have gone straight and you could have gotten clear. You don't know. You don't have that luxury in combat. You're making decisions based on the information that you have at that time. You don't know all this other shit yet. If you knew it, obviously, looking back, hindsight's 2020. We wouldn't have even gone there in the first place.

• 1:43:24Jocko Willink?

  But we don't know that. The only way to avoid any risk is not to go, is not to do your job, is to just go ahead and stand up, raise your hand and say, I'm a coward. That's how you can avoid these situations.

• 1:43:38Jocko Willink?

  But guys in the Marine Corps, guys in SEAL Teams, they don't raise their hand and say that. They raise their hand and say, where's the bad guys? We're going to get them.

• 1:43:48Speaker 02

  And one of the mistakes you can make too is sometimes you want to stop, you want to think about it. Sometimes there is no right answer, right? There's a bunch of things you can do. There's a bunch of options. And whatever one you take and maintain tempo and achieve tempo and stay a step ahead of the enemy is the right one. It's how you execute it. Either way, you could be going into, into a bad day, but you better do it your way and on your terms.

• 1:44:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. One thing that's guaranteed to turn into a bad day is sitting there and not doing nothing. Because I'll tell you what, if you're not maneuvering, the enemy is maneuvering. If you're not maneuvering, the enemy is absolutely maneuvering. They're getting, they're flanking you. They're getting a high ground. They're doing something. So you better just be in action, taking action, make a decision and go.

• 1:44:30Speaker 02

  Especially on their turf. Their turf, their cities, their neighborhoods, they know every corner. We're guessing.

• 1:44:40Jocko Willink?

  So now you come back, you, you, I'm, I'm fast forwarding to where you're now

• 1:44:48Jocko Willink?

  becoming a company XO. I'm going to the book. Just after we deployed again in 2006, I was pulled from Weapons Company to become Executive Officer for India Company 32 Marines. It happened so fast, I didn't have time to get to know my new Marines. Before we ended up in country again, we deployed to Al Onbar Province to a Fobner Habania. And this was cool because you were in Habania and I was 20 miles away in Ramadi in, in that summer of 2006.

• 1:45:13Jocko Willink?

  Next, my company lost four Marines killed. Lance Corporal Don Champ, Champlin was our first. He was killed by a roadside bomb on the main road running through our area. That was the end of August of 2006. A month later, on the 24th, our company commander sent a platoon out after an insurgent who'd fired a rocket into one of our patrol bases. They'd gone out without a special device that blocked incoming cellphone signals and prevented insurgents from remotely detonating IEDs. Sure enough, the platoon got hit with a bomb. Blew Lance Corporal Rene Martinez 70 meters into the air. He died instantly. That one really hurt. I'd been on the base at the time. I took great pride in going out on patrols,

• 1:45:57Jocko Willink?

  not to ride herd on the platoon commanders, but to be there as an additional asset and to share the risks with my Marines.

• 1:46:06Jocko Willink?

  This time I'd been tied up and couldn't get out there with the men. When I heard what was happening, I grabbed a Humvee and raced to the scene. We carried Rene back to the morgue. Inside, I stood next to him, held his hand and said my goodbyes.

• 1:46:23Jocko Willink?

  I will carry the guilt of that day for the rest of my life.

• 1:46:28Jocko Willink?

  I should have been out there with that platoon.

• 1:46:37Jocko Willink?

  We kept taking casualties that fall. Even units just passing through our area got hit. One EOD rig got hit with a roadside bomb. Though the blast didn't destroy the armored Humvee, it set off a couple phosphorus-based incendiary grenades the EOD team had left on the floor of their rig. Before we could even get to them, the white hot chemical fired melted them where they sat. The site was indescribable. After that scene, morale in the company plummeted. The men questioned the mission. What was the point? We were getting shot at almost every day. Going into Habania to patrol was a daily nightmare of snipers, bombs, and ambushes.

• 1:47:22Jocko Willink?

  Half the time, we couldn't even fire back. The rules of engagement were so strict that if civilians were in the area, we could not engage the enemy. Since there were almost always civilians in the area, our Marines had to show incredible restraint even as they watched their brothers die. So you guys were wrapped. That ROE was tight.

• 1:47:42Speaker 02

  It was tough. I mean, it was... Habania had never been patrolled before. They had set up patrol bases, but they'd never gone out and walked around. And they had, you know, the outgoing units said, "You don't want to do that. You don't want to do that." But you had to. The only way, the only way to defeat that enemy was to suffocate the area. And what mattered most were the people. If the people trusted us, they would feed us the information so we could capture the enemy. If the people trusted them, because we wouldn't patrol and we were scared, then they would trust them. And we would end up, we would end up not accomplishing our mission. And it was, it was so hard. You know, people have this idea that because you were a certain rank, everybody's going to listen.

• 1:48:26Speaker 02

  Or it's hardcore leadership and they're not going to ask questions. You know, when I would go patrol base to patrol base and speak to my men and they would ask, why? Why should I walk out there tomorrow? You know, we don't have CNN and this general or the president talking to us, giving us this big, huge, hey, here's the ultimate game plan. We don't get any of that. I mean, my guys were showering once every 17, 18 days. That's it. We were living amongst the populace, amongst the enemy that was traveling all around the country coming in and attacking us. And so it got really difficult, but the one thing that that stuck with them, that they could understand that at their perspective, they got was, hey, look,

• 1:49:10Speaker 02

  if you quit on me, that's one less guy to man the post on top of this patrol base to keep this roadway clear. That's one less guy guarding Mikey's flank when you go on patrol and you've got three patrols tomorrow. We were already so thin at that time. Our battle space was way too big for us to truly suffocate it to make sure the enemy couldn't, couldn't come in and influence. Way too big. But as we got better, as we secured the area and we focused really on the main supply route and the economic parts of that, the shops, if we could secure the shops and secure the schools, because the kids couldn't go to school and the kids tried to go to school,

• 1:49:54Speaker 02

  Al Qaeda killed the teachers. So now we secured the area enough that the two schools could open. When we were able to do that, then the shops opened up and the people could start living their lives again. That was one of the proudest days of my Marines' lives, when those kids could walk to school again. These schools were corners blown up from IEDs, bullet holes in them. There were no roofs. I mean, they were, by our standards in America, you wouldn't be able to fathom what these looked like. They were basically concrete squares with really bad desks in them. The school supplies they had were given to them from us.

• 1:50:30Speaker 02

  And so that was a huge win for us. And at that time, it was right around the same time of the surge. And when the surge took place, what happened was two Iraqi companies pushed west and were able to take up a quarter of our battle space, which then greatly allowed us now. Now we've got enough people. Now we can really influence. And what happened with the Iraqi people, we would sit down and have dinner with them and bring them gifts and talk to them. I'd have meetings with them at 2:00 in the morning when they felt comfortable to speak to me. Now they're telling me who, where, what time, where can we get them? And when you've got Marines question the mission, then all of a sudden you deliver them some intel and say, hey, at 3:00 AM,

• 1:51:12Speaker 02

  you're going to go find this person at this spot. This is what they look like. This is what they're called. Get them. Then they get excited. And I don't mean get them is in terms of, hey, they're going to go and they're going to go kill that person. They're going to go capture them. And we had a whole process, that whole very frustrating. You had to literally now, now my Marines are no longer infantrymen. Now they're also detectives. All right. So this is the intel package that led to this detention. Here's the paperwork for the detention. We deliver them to the detention center. If you don't hit every wicket right, that person's back on the streets in three days. So that was also detailed discipline and doing all the right things, but they did it.

• 1:51:50Speaker 02

  And I tell you, Ramadi, Habenia, they were some of the worst areas in Iraq that fall. By Christmas time, it was amazing to turn around. It was incredible. They were quiet. They were quiet. It was, it was, you know,

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  I left, I left October 21st, 2006. There was 30 to 50 enemy attacks a day while I was in deployment about six months. By January, there was like one or two enemy attacks a day, down from 30 to 50. It was boom. It was incredible. Incredible.

• 1:52:24Speaker 02

  We left in February, February 2007.

• 1:52:29Jocko Willink?

  And, and

• 1:52:32Jocko Willink?

  speaking of coming home, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines came home in 2007 after suffering 15 killed in action. Could have been far worse for all of us if we hadn't seen any progress in Habenia. That's what you're talking about. Then all those questions we had over the mission and its value would have returned home to torment us for years to come. In fact, we did see progress. And that made it a little easier to accept things.

• 1:52:59Jocko Willink?

  And um, yeah, that's, that's basically what you just said. And, and that's why, you know, you and I were talking about this on the way over. As, as nice as it was that we got to see that happen, there was nothing more sickening to me than to have eight years later, have the, the black flag of ISIS flying over the city of Ramadi at the government center that, that it was just absolutely heinous to see that. It didn't need to happen. And,

• 1:53:31Jocko Willink?

  you know, they actually took Ramadi back again through massive airstrike. And I was talking to one of my buddies that that was a JTAC that's actually coming on the podcast, Marine Corps JTAC that I was talking to you about earlier. But he's, I was like, how many bombs did we drop in Ramadi while we were there? Because it was a populous city. There was normal Iraqis that wanted to live their lives. We weren't dropping bombs. He was like, I don't know, maybe a dozen, 15? In the second push into Ramadi that the Iraqis just did behind the strength of American firepower, you know how many air missions they did? They did 600 strike missions. Have you seen pictures of Ramadi right now? It's rubble. Now they're

• 1:54:12Jocko Willink?

  rebuilding it now, but it was just, just, just rubble. And, um, yeah, just.

• 1:54:18Speaker 02

  It's so disheartening.

• 1:54:23Jocko Willink?

  So you come home from that deployment and it's pretty quickly after you got, you got home that Travis got killed.

• 1:54:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:31Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, I wanted to give a little credit here to the MIT teams because Travis was a MIT team, uh, which is military transition team, which was, okay, so I, I talk about this sometimes, right? So the SEALs and the special operations guys, a lot of times we live in relative comfort.

• 1:54:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so we live like, okay, we're pretty comfortable. You know, like I said, I had mats on deployment. I brought a GP medium tent to put mats in because I got to train some jiu jitsu. We have a nice weight room, you know, we and SEALs are super aggressive and crafty and figuring out like, okay, what can we do? How can we get this? Contractors and ordering stuff. And so we just make, we do a good job of building our infrastructure. And when I say infrastructure, I mean, some comforts come with that, right? Now you go to the conventionals, take a step down because they're not getting as much leeway. They don't have as much, they can't get away with as much. So they're living maybe a little bit harder, maybe even a lot harder than, and of course, hey, by the way, there's special operations guys that are living out in the sticks in Afghanistan with

• 1:55:33Jocko Willink?

  two of them with, you know, 280 tribesmen. So I'm saying, I'm talking about my particular situation, which my particular situation was in Iraq, when I deployed there, we always lived good, always lived good. Conventionals, we'd go out to their outstations, we'd stop on the way to a mission, we'd stop by someone, you know, stop by wherever, some cop somewhere or some fob somewhere. Those guys are living rough. And I had SEALs, my SEALs that lived in Corregidor, they were living rough. But my point is you go one step further and now you get to what's called a MIT team. Yeah. And the MIT teams are embedded with Iraqi troops. And so they are living with Iraqi troops. There might be two, three, maybe four of them.

• 1:56:14Jocko Willink?

  And they're out there living with their Iraqi troops, counting on the security of the Iraqi forces to protect them. And I mean, it was horrible. When we first got to Ramadi, there was a, there was a VBID attack that killed the oncoming MIT team commander and the outgoing MIT team commander. They were doing a turnover at a station and VBID came, killed them both, wounded a bunch, but.

• 1:56:42Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting because I didn't know Travis was a supply officer in the Marine Corps. And so, so the Marine Corps has this way of selecting where you, where you get, what you get to be in the Marine Corps as an officer. They take the class and chunk it up into thirds and then the, the each top third you get a pick and it goes down the list. So that way they don't have every single guy, all the best guys, quote unquote, going to be Marine Corps infantry or going to be a pilot. You, you might be, you might be the bottom, the top of the bottom third in the class and you get your pick. So you don't, it doesn't matter how you perform. I mean, it matters, but.

• 1:57:16Speaker 02

  Out of a class of over 200, Travis was 17 in his class at the basic school, which is a very prestigious. To graduate in the top 25 is incredible. And he got his third choice. His third, he's a logistics officer. He was furious.

• 1:57:31Jocko Willink?

  So he's angry and then, and the Marine Corps did this very, very well. They understood the importance of the MIT team. So they really took great guys and sent them to the MIT teams. And he, so they, they put up volunteers, hey, who wants, who wants to raise your hand? And go live amongst the Iraqis, counting on them for security, training them, working with them, eating their crappy food, living without air conditioning. It just sucks. It just sucks. It's awful. Of course, what does Travis do? Well, I'm game. Let's do this. So he went and uh, obviously he was, he was, he was killed in action. He was killed in action during a firefight.

• 1:58:13Jocko Willink?

  Trying to, like you just talked about, wasn't trying to save other Marines. He was trying to save his fellow Iraqi soldiers. And just like you just said, there's so many people that don't understand how closely we worked with Iraqi soldiers. And how committed we were with helping them. So that's a classic example. And by the way, that, that eulogy that he wrote for himself

• 1:58:44Jocko Willink?

  was this, Travis Mannion was a man unafraid to stand for what was right.

• 1:58:57Jocko Willink?

  I think that's something that anybody could aspire towards.

• 1:59:04Jocko Willink?

  And, and actually another.

• 1:59:07Jocko Willink?

  You know, you talked about the connections earlier. Well.

• 1:59:12Jocko Willink?

  There's a connection here that. Travis's roommate in the Naval Academy was a guy by the name of Brendan Looney, who did what you talked about, the painful way of getting to the SEAL teams. He went to the surface warfare community, then he got picked up for the SEAL teams, went through SEAL training, and he was also killed in Afghanistan in 21 September, 2010.

• 1:59:37Jocko Willink?

  But you come home from that deployment and now you've got, you're married. You got one daughter, you're expecting another daughter. And by the way, this whole time, like we talked about earlier, you've been fighting MMA training. You fought, your first pro fight was between deployments.

• 1:59:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:56Jocko Willink?

  And your, your amateur fights we already talked about was before your first deployment. And you make a decision that, all right, you're going to get out of the Marine Corps. And obviously this is probably the hardest decision you ever had to make at that point.

• 2:00:07Speaker 02

  Brutal, brutal.

• 2:00:11Jocko Willink?

  But.

• 2:00:13Jocko Willink?

  It's 2007. How much are you, were you thinking at that time, like, hey, I'm going to go for this MMA thing and it's gonna, it's gonna be, I got a shot at the, at that making it.

• 2:00:22Speaker 02

  You know, it was, it was, I knew I had a shot at.

• 2:00:25Jocko Willink?

  You must have thought you had a shot because your ass was undefeated at this point.

• 2:00:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:00:29Jocko Willink?

  Knocking people out.

• 2:00:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:00:31Jocko Willink?

  You were the man.

• 2:00:31Speaker 02

  The worst thing that could have happened, right? I mean, the worst thing. I'm training with, so I would basically go around the base and I found this corpsman with cauliflower ear. Hey, how'd you get that cauliflower? I, uh, state champion at Oklahoma wrestling in high school.

• 2:00:45Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 2:00:45Speaker 02

  Be here 1800 every night. Got it? I'll bring you gear. Cool. He was in. And he then started training with this, started fighting, but I got a wrestler dude now, right? Another cue to wrestle. Hey, you dude, you're a blue belt in jiu jitsu? You're my instructor.

• 2:01:00Jocko Willink?

  Master.

• 2:01:01Speaker 02

  He was my master. I had no striking coach. We had no pad work, no nothing. It was me and, and, and a couple of Marines plus a corpsman. And we would get after it every day. And then. Every time we fought, we won. So we thought we really knew what we were doing. And I would take leave every once in a while. I'd take leave and I would go to Extreme Couture for a couple of days and get destroyed. I went out to Temecula, to Dan Henderson's place. I'd go get destroyed. And I'd just try and learn two moves, right? Give me two moves. So here I am in the WEC. Again, arm bar from the mount, arm bar from the guard, got those. I know what half guard is now. Can't sweep a soul from it though. But Mola Wall showed

• 2:01:46Speaker 02

  me how to defend a single leg and a double leg when I was out of Temecula. So now I got that down pat. And I still got a mean jab cross hook. Away we go, baby. And I'm winning fights with these things. And, you know, I would end up losing the first time at WEC. And that would prompt me to, to leave Georgia, go find somewhere to train. And I'll never forget my first training session at Jackson Winkle John Academy. And I'm there training and Greg Jackson comes walking up to me after my first practice. And, and this is as polite as he could try to compliment me at the time. Brian, I'm so amazed at how far you've gone with how little information you've been getting. Code word. Wow, you suck.

• 2:02:31Speaker 02

  How the hell did you win all these fights?

• 2:02:36Speaker 02

  One of the things I explained, I said, look, when you only know so much, you can fight 150 miles an hour. Because you're not thinking. Then all of a sudden, I'm learning all these new techniques. Then I started thinking. I had an up and down period there where win some, lose some. And I got to a point where after the Phil Davis fight, hey, you may be out of here. You know, the UFC wasn't a huge fan of me. They didn't really care. They didn't, you know, Joseph wasn't a huge fan of these WEC guys that were forced upon him. That wasn't a talent. He went and found it. And I told him I'd fought three times inside of six months. And I said, look, I need a break. And, and I literally looked at my MMA training like you would look at the training of a marine company. Where am I weak? How much time do I have?

• 2:03:21Speaker 02

  What am I going to schedule? What am I going to do? Who, who are the experts I can go to, to get better in all these areas? And I approached it. I, I, I knew at that point, hey, look, I still had a full-time job. I never fought without one. Transitioned out of the Marine Corps, started working at a company called Med Assets. Med Assets had this, this project, this thing, hey, hire heroes who want to help vets get jobs. Well, maybe you could lead that. Took that over. So I'm working every day, but at the same time, you know, I started this thing in MMA and I can't go out like this. Too many people said I was going to wash out, that I was going to be exposed. Couldn't do it. No way. There were too many Marines at the time taking pride in my performances in there. And although I was older, I'm 20, probably 29 at that time.

• 2:04:06Speaker 02

  So in terms of MMA age, I'm already, I'm green and I'm already kind of getting a little old, but I started to find a way, started to figure it out and, and, and not cutting any corners like other fighters were at the time, but starting to figure it out. And it all just came down to discipline where a lot of martial artists don't want to spend time. They don't want to spend 30 minutes drilling one move and understanding how they could use that move from various positions and why it works and how it plays into my style of fighting, why it will be effective. They want to drill that one move. They want to do it five times and then they want to go live. Let's go live. Let's go live. And, and I, I had to learn at that point, if I'm going to catch up with these fighters

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  who are younger in many cases, but much more experienced than me, I have got, I've got to take an analytical approach and an honest approach to my skillset and start to shore up some holes or else I'm going to continue to lose.

• 2:05:03Jocko Willink?

  Did you just practice just wrestling like crazy and then submission avoidance?

• 2:05:08Speaker 02

  It was, it was, I actually went and put a gi on for the first time ever. It was, is working some basics because everybody wanted to hold me down. If I could get out from underneath somebody with a gi on, it's going to be a heck of a lot easier, no gi.

• 2:05:19Jocko Willink?

  Truth.

• 2:05:19Speaker 02

  I was bringing in wrestlers that were way above my, my level. A guy named Harry Lester, who was, you know, an Olympian. Was coming in and throwing me all over the place. And so I was training wrestling non-stop. And then I would go and I'd go to Albuquerque. I didn't have a fight coming up, but I would go live in Albuquerque for two weeks at a time away from my family and help other guys in their training camps and get exposed and drill. And without, here was the other big part was guys like Rashad Evans, Keith Jardine, Joey Viasenior, Nate Marquardt. Without those guys, it would have never happened because after they would beat me, after they would pass my guard, take me down, hit me with this combination, they would stop afterwards and tell me how and why. And so I learned at a much faster rate than

• 2:06:04Speaker 02

  your typical fighter would because not only am I, I'm drilling with some of the best in the world, taking the time to drill and taking analytical approach. Hey, I know we're going to work this today, Coach, but my butterfly guard is completely ineffective. And I'd love to work it specifically, not just on sweeping, because I don't think I'm going to get there yet against my level of competition. Just get up. I'd love to use it to get up or even just get to the fence where now I've got a third leg that I could utilize to get back up. And so we would drill specifics like that. And I've got these guys who have 30-plus fights, who are champions, now taking the time to help me, which meant a lot to me. I'll never forget it. I mean, they were as much coaches to me as Mike Winklejohn and Greg Jackson were. You know, and then, you

• 2:06:49Speaker 02

  know, obviously on top, you could do all of that. The other piece of it was when I would do my camps there, when I really got where I was at my best, you know, when I beat Chris Leibinger or Santiago, when I was beating those guys, mentally, I was in the best place. My family was in it, was in a great spot. They were, my wife and kids were very supportive of me leaving and doing my camps in Albuquerque and my time away from them. It made me nasty. They'd come visit, but man, I would literally look at my opponent like, you're the one who kept me away from my family this long. You're going to pay for it.

• 2:07:23Speaker 02

  And, and it was, it was a strong motivator. And, and that if you're in a place as a fighter where you're not hungry, getting new information, being able to mentally be in the right place for you to perform. It's not about who the better fighter is. It has nothing to do with it. It's about who fights best that night. And if you can't mentally be in the state where you're going to fight best that night, you got a problem and you're in the wrong place. And that, that, that phase of my career, that's when I was, I was there, I was able to do that. And that was, that was when I was at my best for sure.

• 2:07:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, you had some stunning fights. I know. I always tell, you know, sometimes my fighters will say, oh, you know, I'm not, I'm not feeling it tonight. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. You have, like, this is in training. I'll say, look, it doesn't matter how you feel tonight. Cause fight night comes, you might be feeling good, bad, doesn't matter. What you have to do is perform right now. That's what you gotta do. So, train yourself to perform right now. But yeah, you had some, uh, you had some great fights. Um, and Chris Leibin, who I know trained with, Chris is a great guy. And that, and he's such a tough bastard. And you guys threw down.

• 2:08:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. We knew, we knew neither one of us were gonna be that hard to hit. Um,

• 2:08:36Speaker 02

  but, uh, no, tons of respect for that guy. And that was a fight he didn't have to take.

• 2:08:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:40Speaker 02

  You know, I, I, I saw an opening there where there was a window and, and he may just take me as a, as a fight to, okay, let me go get a win, get some money and, and go on. Cause he had just come off two huge wins in like a week.

• 2:08:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:52Speaker 02

  Or in 10 days notice.

• 2:08:53Jocko Willink?

  He's a psycho.

• 2:08:53Speaker 02

  And so,

• 2:08:54Jocko Willink?

  I love him.

• 2:08:55Speaker 02

  Phenomenal guy in this sport. And yeah, you know, it was a wild ride. I, I, and when I look back on it, there's, there's definitely some regrets like anybody. There, there's some things you wish, you wish you could have done. Um, some things that happened family wise that certainly stalled and, and, and helped aid the decision to stop. You know, my, my wife losing, losing her little brother to suicide was a really tough thing. Her mom was living with us at the time. So, you know, us going through that tragedy together, it's, it's hard. We were human beings and a lot of fighters have to deal with tragedy and compete. This is what we do for a living. We've got to fight through it. It's a hard thing. When I look back on it, where I I know I was as an athlete and as a mixed martial arts, how green I was to have come that

• 2:09:38Speaker 02

  far and been a legitimate top 10 middleweight at that time. I'm proud of that, especially in the era, especially in the era when I fought where there were some extra activities going on as

• 2:09:50Jocko Willink?

  Well, you're fighting against guys that were, a lot of guys were on, were on steroids. There was no testing or there was really limited testing.

• 2:09:56Speaker 02

  It was an IQ test, right? If you failed that, you know, you were just, you're just straight up dumb.

• 2:10:02Speaker 02

  But it was fun.

• 2:10:02Jocko Willink?

  And I mean, the guys you like, you lost to Chael Sonnen, right? Who was two minutes from being the, the, the middleweight champion in the world against Anderson Silva. Uh, you know, you, you lost to him, you beat Sakara, then you lost to Bizbing, who actually is the current middleweight champion. So the guys that beat you were badasses.

• 2:10:23Speaker 02

  Yep, absolutely.

• 2:10:24Jocko Willink?

  And you were a guy that like started fighting three weeks ago, you know, that's just awesome, man. It's a testament.

• 2:10:31Speaker 02

  The, the coolest part about it was, was during that time, you know, and it kind of happened subtly beneath that, you know, at least to the fight fans was, was taking that, that little higher heroes USA project that that company MetAs assets asked me to watch over, right? Step one was, was starting to build some programs. Step two was getting one of my best friends in the world who served with me, who was right next to that track as it burned, Nate Smith to come in, be my chief operating officer and build this amazing team and leveraging some of the media attention I got for fighting, leveraging it for our cause and building it. And, and not just building a company where, hey, we went out, we fundraised for a mission. No, that's bogus. We were out there accomplishing the mission,

• 2:11:16Speaker 02

  helping veterans get legitimate jobs, careers so that they can succeed and lead again back here, home and in their communities and watching it grow from a team of five to a team of 10 to a team of 20 to where now we've got 96 full-time employees and we're, we're bringing in over 300 veterans and spouses a week into the program. That, that was all built with this amazing team of people while I was still fighting. That, that was my full-time job doing that and, and having a board of directors that had the foresight and, and the perspective to say, hey, you know what? Yes, you're going to be a little limited during some of these training camps,

• 2:12:00Speaker 02

  but what you're able to bring to our brand is helpful right now in the phase that this company is. And, and it's been a wild and really amazing ride. And, and some of the things we talked about earlier where you have these things, these questions that will always haunt you about the loss of your friends, the loss of your Marines, the loss of your SEALs. When you can lead an initiative like that, it helps you feel like, hey, you know what I am? I am taking advantage of every day. Every day we're moving forward, we're achieving, we're helping other warriors now find success post military service. And, and that's me earning it, my earning my day where they don't, they no longer have it.

• 2:12:41Speaker 02

  You know, Travis Manning doesn't live anymore and his family would give anything to see him one more time. I can't bring him back. But I'll tell you what, if I sat here crying about it, feeling sorry for myself that my friend Travis was gone, he'd be the first to slap the hell out of me when I die for it.

• 2:12:58Jocko Willink?

  Or at least do a double leg on your ass.

• 2:13:01Speaker 02

  He was, I'm telling you, man, and that, that was, he planned on fighting. When he got done with that deployment, he, he'd still be fighting to this day. He was a bad, bad dude.

• 2:13:10Jocko Willink?

  And that was your, your last fight in the UFC and you retired after you fought Vandalay Silva, which, did you plan?

• 2:13:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:13:20Jocko Willink?

  To do that? So those of you that don't know that aren't in MMA, there's a guy, a legendary mixed martial artist named Vandalay Silva. I saw him fight a few times in Japan back in the, back in the day. And he's, he's a brawler and he's incredible punching power. And his nickname is the Axe Murderer because he looks like a psycho. And anyways, Brian had a fight with him and these two guys went in there. It was like Russian roulette.

• 2:13:49Speaker 02

  It was a street fight.

• 2:13:52Jocko Willink?

  It was a street fight and eventually you got caught, you know, got caught by one of the best strikers that, that have ever been in the game. And, um, and that, and by the way, you dropped him a couple of times. You, you had that, I mean, you didn't have it won, but you definitely, you dropped him two or three times in the first round or twice in the first round.

• 2:14:11Speaker 02

  He came back from the dead.

• 2:14:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:12Speaker 02

  A minimum of two times.

• 2:14:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:14Speaker 02

  The eyes were in the back of his head and then he just, he looked at me again with bloodshot eyes. It was, it was unbelievable, unbelievable. But no, that was not the plan and.

• 2:14:26Jocko Willink?

  You were with Greg Jackson in Wink, right?

• 2:14:29Speaker 02

  Uh, I wasn't. I, so for the, the Sakara, Bizbing and Vanderlei fight, I trained myself. And the reason being was, uh, right after I had fought Chael Sonnen, two days before Christmas, me and my wife land in baggage claim and I get a call. And, and her little brother who had struggled with bipolar, uh, disorder and, and depression. And we didn't know that then, right? He had taken his own life, went up to a cabin in the woods and taken his own life and had to tell my wife they're in baggage claim and, and her mom at the time was living with us. It was, personal life was a mess. Still gotta pay bills though, right? You still, still got a company to run. Still gotta fight career that I've gotta push through and, and I can't just, hey, look, I'm gonna take seven months off here to get through this because I got bills to pay.

• 2:15:13Speaker 02

  Anyways, it, it, it caused me to start my own camp. So the, the game plan going in was, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna take Vanderlei down a little bit in this fight and disrupt him. Really, really confuse him because nobody's, nobody's used to me doing that. And so I fly to Japan. We get off the plane after that long flight, after a long training camp where I absolutely overtrained. And we get to the hotel and, and, and me and one of my striking coaches, Manu Nata, we go start hitting pads. We're hitting pads. And pad work's done and oh man, all of a sudden I start to cool down. I can't lift my knee up on my left leg. Tear something in my hip. And it happens, right? I mean, Vanderlei could have walked in there with how many miles? He could have walked a couple injuries. So anyways, now,

• 2:15:57Speaker 02

  this gets into my head a little bit. And so I asked to see the UFC doctor. And so, and he, as soon as he landed, he was told, hey, you, you gotta go see Brian Stanis. Hey, look, I've looked at all the stuff. Novocain is legal. I just wanted to get Novocain for fight nights. I won't feel it. And I'm walking around the hotel and I'm trying not to show anybody that I'm limping at the press conference because I have a legitimate limp and. Anyways, he's like, okay, we should, we're in Japan. We're not in a second or third world country. We're in Tokyo, right? I could have walked across the street and probably gotten light of cane. Anyways, supposed to get it, supposed to get it, I'm gonna get it, I'm gonna get it, I'm gonna get it. Doesn't get it. When, when you fight in Japan, the fights so that they could cater the American TV audience, you leave like 7 a.m. So he's sitting

• 2:16:38Speaker 02

  there, sorry. So I let that affect me too much mentally. And, and we're trying to warm up backstage and I'm trying to shoot some double legs and I'm not feeling it. And in my own head, right before I walk in, I'm like, you know what? This dude's got some miles on him. I hit like a truck. Let's get in there. Let's knock this dude out and let's get this fight over with. So, ready to go. Walk out there and he tags me first. Hits me behind the ear and, and you know, most of Vanderlei's fights, he's, he's a little bit more of an accumulation guy. He's not considered a one punch knockout guy. This one right hand he hits me with, I had never been rocked in the octagon before in my life. And he dropped me. So I was like, alright, it's on. Let's go. And so then I rock him.

• 2:17:21Speaker 02

  And once I rocked him, I thought, okay, one more good shot on the chin and he's done. And I, I landed it and he'd go down and then he'd come back. And I'm like, wait a minute here. And so I'm just caught up. And so the second round, I start to get a little bit more technical and move around a little bit. Like, alright, he's obviously not going away. I've got to take a different approach. I don't know what this guy's made of. And, and then he, I didn't even, I don't remember it, you know? I get caught with that huge punch. Don't remember any of it. And it's crazy, but I realized I lost. I came to, as John Anick, who's one of my closest friends now, comes up to me with a microphone. And I realized, well, I don't remember winning. So I must have lost this fight. And it was

• 2:18:06Speaker 02

  a horrible flight home. I'm sitting there, flying home, and I had a Jack and Coke in my hand. Couldn't sleep at all. Didn't sleep. And I am miserable. I lost to a guy I was supposed to beat, who was supposed to be washed up. You know, I had pretty much made the decision then, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm out. It's over. If you're not going to get busy being the champion, then there's other areas where that need my attention more from my family to the company I'm trying to run. And it was a hard decision. And, and part of me, when I made the decision, thought for sure, I'm definitely going to come back. Right. I'm, I'm going to come back. And for like two years I held on to that and had to fight against it. Like, no, it is not in your best interest to come back anymore. It's in your, you, you do a better job talking on the microphone than you're going to do strapping

• 2:18:51Speaker 02

  the gloves on anymore, pal. You're 35, now I'm 36. It's over.

• 2:18:55Jocko Willink?

  That makes me feel real good over here.

• 2:18:59Jocko Willink?

  So, hey, you know, we've been going for a while. Tell us about like specifically with, with Hire Heroes, what, how can people support that? Where do we look for it? All that stuff. So that way people have information on it.

• 2:19:12Speaker 02

  Yes, we've got a website, hireheroesusa.org. And, and if you are a service member or spouse who needs help finding a career, if you're unemployed or underemployed, you go on there, you register and we'll get you your personal veteran transition specialist. Fancy term for a job coach. And we'll take you through the whole thing from revising your resume, to teach you how to effectively do a job search, how to interview for a job. We will help you if not build your LinkedIn site for you, teach you how to use that to impact and expand your network. Do social media audits. Hey, what pictures and posts did you not have up on Facebook right now? You know, take a look. Hey, no, bigpapapump@yahoo is not your email anymore. It's going to be [email protected]. All right.

• 2:19:55Speaker 02

  All the do's and the don'ts, but then we have a job board. A lot of corporate partners will match you to all those companies, but we do.

• 2:20:01Jocko Willink?

  So people, if people want to hire a veteran, they can go through you as well. Cause we, that's the one thing I get hit with a lot is, you know, people say, how can we help veterans? And I say, hire veterans. And they say, where do we find them? So now we got a good place to find them.

• 2:20:13Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I mean, we're bringing in over 300 people a week into the program, who are all going to get one-on-one assistance and, and different from any other nonprofit. Everything we do is tracked, logged and analyzed in Salesforce. So that we can hold ourselves accountable. I can hold every one of my employees accountable for the workload they have. They all have weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual metrics that they have to hit. They don't hit them, they no longer work here. We run this nonprofit like a business because people donate money to us to help veterans find careers, period. And if we're not doing that, then we go away. And I take that very serious and it's what's allowed us to grow from a team of four to now a team of 96. And we'll continue to do so. And my main mission

• 2:20:56Speaker 02

  now is to make sure Higher Heroes USA is there for the next generation of combat veterans as well, when they return home to a society that doesn't understand them as much. And the real help, the real need is for the veteran to learn how to communicate their skillset, how to deliver their value proposition. It's a hard thing to do. Think about your SEALs when they got out, if they went to a job or tried to write a resume. What the hell do I put? My first resume looked like I was trying to get a job as a mercenary. It was awful. And I was a Naval Academy grad. Imagine these young sailors, you know? And with over 80% of the people we help at Higher Heroes are your young enlisted service members, the ones who need us the most.

• 2:21:34Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Awesome. And then you got the Guardian Project going on.

• 2:21:39Speaker 02

  Incredible project. And I'd love to get these guys down. Ben Kovacs, who's our executive director, come down and be on your show someday. It's so in line with some of your beliefs on martial arts and jujitsu. Ben has a vision that every kid should have the opportunity to train martial arts. Every child.

• 2:21:56Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:21:57Speaker 02

  And so, he went out, networked, and found a man by the name of Joel Lundenfeld, who's on my board at Higher Heroes, who's an executive at Twitter. And they bought a property in Oakland, where there are a lot of young men and women who don't have much going on after school. And they don't, the chips are stacked against them. There's not a whole lot that they have. You know, their families have a hard time making money and there's a lot of trouble they can get into. And they go find them and they bring them in and they come, they train martial arts, they train jujitsu, they train boxing, they do their homework. Then they've networked with local restaurants and they get a healthy meal afterwards for free. In many cases, this is the only healthy meal that that young man or woman's going to get that day.

• 2:22:38Speaker 02

  They have regular members to the gym, but those members pay a membership fee that also then pays for those young kids so that they can come for free. People buy a gi for themselves, then they get a free gi for one of the kids. I've gone there and taught and ran some classes and it is just, it's incredible to meet these young men and women who, who haven't been given much in life. Their parents are grateful because now they're not paying for after school care. They can't afford it anyways and their kids not wandering the streets.

• 2:23:04Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:23:04Speaker 02

  But now they've got this place to go to where there's like-minded people pushing them to do better. Don't allow your circumstances to direct and direct your life and tell you who you're gonna be. Nothing should hold you back. So the discipline that they're learning now, the camaraderie, the character they're learning at Guardian is starting to spill into the other aspects of their life.

• 2:23:27Jocko Willink?

  No doubt.

• 2:23:28Speaker 02

  The grades are going up. They're being more nutritious. They're focused on their future. They're, hey, wait a minute. College? I can go, I can go to college? They've got these great positive inspirations around them and the goal is to take Guardian from Oakland and start to, to, to brand it and get it in gyms across the country. Where now we don't need a physical facility to do it and other gyms can take on the program. Where now we've got a system where they can adopt it and people can pay their membership as part of a way of paying the membership for these underprivileged kids to go there and train after school as well so that they can have a chance. Just because they're poor doesn't mean they shouldn't get the opportunity to train jujitsu, to train boxing, to get all the character development that goes along with martial arts.

• 2:24:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's all I got. I actually, I got another book coming out and the book is called The Way of the Warrior Kid and it's a kid's book. And it's basically about a young kid who's getting picked on at school. He can't do any pull-ups. He, he doesn't know his times tables and is basically miserable, right? And anyways, school ends and his Uncle Jake comes out to stay with him for the summer. Uncle Jake is a team guy. So Uncle Jake says, oh, you got some issues? What are the issues? I can't do pull-ups. He goes, all right, we can fix all those things. So one of the, you know, obviously gets them working out. Oh, you're getting bullied because he's getting bullied badly. Well, guess what he's gonna learn? He's gonna learn jujitsu. So I honestly think there's gonna be a little bit of a surge of jujitsu in America.

• 2:24:54Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 2:24:55Jocko Willink?

  And it sounds like this is right up, right up that alley.

• 2:24:57Speaker 02

  It is. I mean, you know, when, when that comes out, we're gonna grab a bunch and make it mandatory for these kids. Things like that inspire them. I mean, they make a difference. When you look at this, just the social and economic impact. Young man or woman who has a high likelihood of probably getting arrested, especially when you look at some of the, the, the problems we have with our criminal justice system, right? Now instead they have a positive environment, never get, they go into college and they go get a great job and they're contributing. They're winning now. Huge impact for our country, for our communities to do that. And, and to get more jujitsu, more martial arts in some of these, these poor, super rural areas in our country where there's extreme poverty.

• 2:25:37Speaker 02

  And our super urban areas where there's extreme poverty, where these young men and women don't get that opportunity because their parents can't pay a hundred fifty dollars a month for them to go. And they don't have any positive influences in their life. Man, that, if that, that can fix a lot of problems that we have going on in our country.

• 2:25:52Jocko Willink?

  There's no doubt. Does, is there a way to help the Guardian Project right now?

• 2:25:57Speaker 02

  Go to, go to guardianproject.org. There's a website right there. You could become a monthly sponsor. I mean, that organization is, is, is in startup phase. If someone could give five to ten dollars a month to them, that is a huge portion of a young man or woman's monthly membership for them to go to that gym. Get a free meal, have someone looking at their report card, tutoring them in math, teaching them jujitsu. Confidence, I mean, we got young ladies in there and, and they're in there, their confidence, when they start dating and who they choose and how that, I mean, the, the way they're gonna approach life, these young men and understanding how to respect and train with a young lady. Hey, I'm gonna grapple with you this round and how to respect you. All, I mean,

• 2:26:40Speaker 02

  it's, it's amazing to watch what's happening at a young age and how quickly they're developing. It's awesome.

• 2:26:44Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. So, Hire Heroes, the Guardian Project, organizations to support.

• 2:26:53Jocko Willink?

  And I guess that kind of wraps it with us. If anybody wanted to support this podcast, Echo Charles.

• 2:27:02Speaker 01

  I have a question.

• 2:27:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, Echo comes with a deep question.

• 2:27:05Speaker 02

  Got a question.

• 2:27:06Speaker 01

  Kind of deep. So when you watch A Few Good Men, are you like on the side of the Marines, like the whole movie?

• 2:27:14Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying?

• 2:27:15Speaker 02

  Don't group me with them just because I wear the same uniform.

• 2:27:18Speaker 01

  You know, A Few Good Men, he's going against the Navy. Tom Cruise is a Navy guy. He's not a SEAL, but you know.

• 2:27:24Speaker 02

  So I, I am, when I watch A Few Good Men, I am with the Marines all the way up until they break their integrity. All right. Which is a movie, right?

• 2:27:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:27:33Speaker 02

  But, but under no circumstances should we break our integrity. And, and that, that's a problem. You know, that's, it's so false. No Colonel would tell someone one thing, then tell this junior guy over here, no, you go do this and then lie about it and try and cover it up.

• 2:27:45Speaker 01

  The big cover up.

• 2:27:47Jocko Willink?

  Big cover up.

• 2:27:48Speaker 02

  But when they break their integrity, that's, I don't, I don't care what uniform you're wearing, that, that's a problem.

• 2:27:52Jocko Willink?

  Or if you're not wearing a uniform at all. We just talked about that on the last podcast. Maintain the integrity.

• 2:27:59Speaker 01

  It's true. Oh, follow up question. Is there such thing as a code red?

• 2:28:03Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:28:03Jocko Willink?

  There's no such thing.

• 2:28:05Speaker 01

  Anyway, so support. Right? We can talk about that if you guys like. Cool?

• 2:28:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 2:28:13Speaker 01

  All right. Well, uh.

• 2:28:15Jocko Willink?

  And let's do it fast.

• 2:28:17Speaker 01

  All right. We'll speed it up here. Let's talk about Onnit Supplements. I worked out today. As you probably can tell.

• 2:28:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, you look like.

• 2:28:22Speaker 01

  The pump is on. So on. Um, the name of the pre-workout is Total Strength and Performance. I left out the strength in there.

• 2:28:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:28:33Speaker 01

  So you perform good and you're strong. Anyway, if you want 10% off Onnit stuff, Shroom Tech, Alpha Brain, Total Strength and Performance, go to Onnit.com slash Jaco.

• 2:28:43Jocko Willink?

  You threatened me with a krill oil rage today.

• 2:28:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:46Jocko Willink?

  That's cool.

• 2:28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Cause yeah. So that's another story right there. Anyway, Onnit.com slash Jocko, that's for 10% off. Best supplements in the world. Approved?

• 2:28:56Speaker 02

  Approved. Approved.

• 2:28:58Speaker 01

  Boom. Um, also, if you shop at Amazon.

• 2:29:04Speaker 01

  By duct tape, whatever, um, or the books that we talk about.

• 2:29:10Jocko Willink?

  Hard for the fight. You better order this one quick because I don't think it's in print right now and.

• 2:29:16Speaker 02

  My mom bought all five copies. My mother bought, I can't believe you got one. She must have resold that on eBay and didn't realize she sent it to you.

• 2:29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so yeah.

• 2:29:27Jocko Willink?

  It is on Amazon though and you can buy it and you should.

• 2:29:30Speaker 01

  And in the event of you doing that or buying anything else, um, and you want to support the podcast, by the way, click through the jocko podcast.com website. Or jocko store website. So click on the little Amazon banner, boom, then do your shopping, then get the book. Or whatever else you get, um, and you can support that way. That's a good way. That's like small action, big result. Like sodium in a, in a fish tank is what we say, you know?

• 2:29:57Jocko Willink?

  That's what you say. We.

• 2:29:58Speaker 01

  Come on, bro. We say it. It's all good. Anyway, um, and then, you know, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and Stitcher and Google Play if you haven't already. Seems obvious, but you know, do that if you haven't and then, you know, write a review if you're in the mood. And you're in the mood to support the podcast. Also YouTube, we're putting out more videos now.

• 2:30:16Jocko Willink?

  I noticed that.

• 2:30:17Speaker 01

  Shorter videos. Jocko good. That's one of the, the OG videos. That was a good one though, by the way. Um, I thought, I thought it was good. Uh, subscribe. Yeah. YouTube. If you like those videos, if you like little Jocko McNuggets rather than the whole podcast all at once, shareable, right? I say, Brian Stan, watch this video real quick. It's two hours long. You're not watching it real quick. Three minutes long, you might watch that one real quick. Same thing. Exactly. Right. The same thing. So that's what we're doing now. If you didn't know. So yeah, subscribe to that if you want, um, you know, you want to be updated on that. Also. Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko's store.

• 2:30:58Speaker 01

  jockostore.com.

• 2:30:59Jocko Willink?

  We think of original names like that.

• 2:31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, simple, but you know.

• 2:31:02Speaker 02

  When you've got a cool name like Jocko, why change it up?

• 2:31:04Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah. Yeah, it's perfect. And you know, there's some shirts on there, you know, if you want to kind of get after it that way, get yourself a shirt that's kind of, you know, you're wearing shirts anyway, I figure, right?

• 2:31:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, why not wear a Jocko shirt?

• 2:31:17Speaker 01

  Right, in some capacity.

• 2:31:18Speaker 02

  You gotta wear one anyways, right?

• 2:31:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:31:20Jocko Willink?

  I agree with you. I agree with you.

• 2:31:21Speaker 01

  Exactly, right? And they're good. We, I kind of went out my.

• 2:31:24Speaker 02

  Is this has to be one, the discipline equals freedom?

• 2:31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, discipline equals freedom.

• 2:31:27Speaker 02

  See, that's an awesome shirt.

• 2:31:28Speaker 01

  There you go. See.

• 2:31:29Speaker 02

  That is an awesome shirt.

• 2:31:30Speaker 01

  Brain Stan approved.

• 2:31:32Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot of people wearing those shirts, pretty legit.

• 2:31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's an, I'll show you some.

• 2:31:36Jocko Willink?

  And you know what? You just don't want to wear the shirt.

• 2:31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:38Jocko Willink?

  You want to go ahead and live the life.

• 2:31:40Speaker 02

  You better represent, yeah. If you're gonna do that, don't wake up at 10:30 in the morning and roll out of bed and say, no, no, no. Better go accomplish something.

• 2:31:48Jocko Willink?

  Get in the game.

• 2:31:49Speaker 01

  Yep. Very well put, yes. So yeah, check out those shirts. I'm not saying buy a shirt. I'm saying, I'm not sitting here and saying, buy a shirt. I'm saying, go on the, go on the website, jockostore.com. Look at the shirts. If you like the shirts and you want to support the podcast, get a shirt. It's on you. Um, there's some rash guards in there, so you can, you know, some, some physical activity, grappling, surfing, anything that, you know, anything that you do a lot of physical activity, you need range of motion. Rash guard's good, hoodies, good. Patches, good. Regulation size or not regulations, good, all good. Anyway.

• 2:32:26Speaker 02

  What about these mugs? These mugs better be on there.

• 2:32:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:32:29Jocko Willink?

  The mugs, unfortunately, uh, I got a bunch of them made and we sold them on Amazon and we had a bunch in stock and then Joe Rogan posted a picture of his and then they were all gone.

• 2:32:40Speaker 01

  And they're out of stock.

• 2:32:41Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, it had to be, yeah.

• 2:32:42Jocko Willink?

  I got more coming and, uh, yeah.

• 2:32:45Speaker 02

  The map black.

• 2:32:46Speaker 01

  Early March, I think.

• 2:32:47Speaker 02

  I, I had tweeted out before we started the show, just, just showed the desk with all the weapons on it. The amount of testosterone and jawline in here is maximum capacity. Tweeting on it. There's 30 feet of jawline running through this office right now.

• 2:33:03Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah.

• 2:33:05Speaker 01

  But yeah, those, I think what March, right? Too. It was like, I think early March, I think they'll be available.

• 2:33:09Jocko Willink?

  Something like that.

• 2:33:10Speaker 01

  And still working on the international for the mugs, right?

• 2:33:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, probably.

• 2:33:14Speaker 01

  So, hey, we're gonna make that happen. So, um, stand by for that. Uh, also, okay, psychological warfare. I, I like to feel sometimes I don't need this anymore. I'm over it. But if you do need psychological warfare, okay, here's what it is. You ever have those days where you're like, you're about to work out or you plan to work out? And you're like, you know, maybe I'll just work out tomorrow.

• 2:33:37Speaker 02

  Everybody has, absolutely.

• 2:33:39Speaker 01

  Right? Yes. So what you do is you get this album that we, we put together. Well, it's Jocko talking. I just kind of recorded it, but.

• 2:33:48Jocko Willink?

  Like I said, Echo presses record, better than anybody.

• 2:33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, better than, it's true. It's absolutely true. Put it on iTunes. You can get like a track. Like if your thing is like, I eat donuts way too much. And you're like, I'm gonna fight the donuts or whatever. You can just get that track. It's called what? Sugar coated lies, for example.

• 2:34:05Speaker 02

  Is it just Jocko's voice yelling at you?

• 2:34:07Speaker 01

  Telling you why not to eat the donut. Yeah.

• 2:34:09Speaker 02

  I love this.

• 2:34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, essentially.

• 2:34:10Jocko Willink?

  I don't actually yell.

• 2:34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:34:12Speaker 02

  You don't need to. Your voice is so stern and intense. It doesn't matter.

• 2:34:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely right. Yeah.

• 2:34:18Speaker 02

  It's, it's like Batman, right? Christian Bale Batman. Christian Bale, don't eat the donut.

• 2:34:23Speaker 01

  That's more Leif. Leif is Batman. You're kind of like, um.

• 2:34:26Jocko Willink?

  I don't know who I'm like.

• 2:34:27Speaker 01

  I don't know. Joker or something. I don't know. Either way, there's a bunch of them though. It's cool. Like to, to wake up in the morning. Well, anyway, it's good, man. It helps. Helps a lot.

• 2:34:37Jocko Willink?

  It's been very well received, surprisingly.

• 2:34:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:40Jocko Willink?

  I was kind of surprised.

• 2:34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:41Jocko Willink?

  So Echo thought it was a good idea. No, man. People need this. I'm like, people need two minutes of me talking about donuts?

• 2:34:47Speaker 01

  I need it. I need to go work out.

• 2:34:50Jocko Willink?

  But what's crazy is people post and send me like, there's no way I can sleep through. Cause one of them, the first track is called, Wake Up and Get After It. Because I, I think that really one of the easiest ways to start developing discipline in your life is to wake up early in the morning. So the first track is Wake Up and Get After It. And I actually do a count to ten. Give you the opportunity, ten seconds.

• 2:35:11Speaker 01

  Fair enough.

• 2:35:11Jocko Willink?

  Get out of bed. If not out of bed by then, we got issues.

• 2:35:17Jocko Willink?

  Crazy. It's, it's, it's, it's fun.

• 2:35:23Jocko Willink?

  Anything else? Along with that, if you want to get some Jocka White Tea, yeah, it's available. It's available in in stock on Amazon. And you know, before I was hesitant, because that one time I said, hey, we'll never sell out of it again. And everybody that listens to this podcast bought it that day. We sold out in 15 minutes. Cause we sold out the first time and I said, no, I'm just gonna get a ton. I said, don't worry guys, we'll never sell it again. Yeah, we sold out again. Now I'm feeling pretty confident that we won't sell out again. That means I went kind of Richter. I over engineered the whole thing. So we shouldn't sell out of Jocka White Tea again. You can get it on amazon.com. International orders, check eBay. When you're clicking on Amazon, get this book right here by Brian Stan.

• 2:36:07Jocko Willink?

  Heart for the Fight. You heard him talking about it tonight. I covered a tiny portion of the book. Great information about combat, about leadership and about life. Definitely check it out.

• 2:36:18Speaker 02

  I'll put it on the website.

• 2:36:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it'll be on the website.

• 2:36:21Speaker 02

  Easy access, you know, boom.

• 2:36:23Jocko Willink?

  It'll be on the website. And also, we were just talking about this, got that kid's book coming out. Uncle Jake, Teaching Young Mark. How to be a warrior kid instead of a wimpy kid. Jiu Jitsu? Yeah, pull ups. Yeah, studying. Yes, being disciplined. Yes, basically getting after it. Affirmative. Age 10. Pre-order it now. Why not?

• 2:36:48Jocko Willink?

  If you like this podcast, 100% you will like this book. I don't care if you're 49 years old, you will dig this book. I dig this book. I wrote it and I like it. I like to read it.

• 2:37:00Speaker 02

  My nine year old daughter's reading it.

• 2:37:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's good. I'll put, I'll, I'll leave it at that. And I'm not a person to sit there and say like, oh, what I did is really good. I don't do that. I like this book a lot.

• 2:37:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, you did is really good.

• 2:37:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Also, Leif and I wrote that book right there, the book called Extreme Ownership. You can get it. We talk about war. And we talk about leadership and we talk about war, you know, what else would we talk about?

• 2:37:28Speaker 02

  Get the right one, not one of the spin offs.

• 2:37:32Jocko Willink?

  Lastly, Extreme Ownership muster, May 4th and 5th at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. Extreme Ownership muster number two, by the way, number one already happened in San Diego. It was awesome. This one's gonna be awesome. By the way, I haven't said this yet about Extreme Ownership muster two. We will be there. I will be there. Echo Charles will be there. We will not be backstage. We will be, there is no backstage. We will be up front. I will be sitting at your table. We will be talking about things. JP Danelle is gonna be there as well. He's gonna come and get some. So come on out to that May 4th and 5th.

• 2:38:10Jocko Willink?

  There's a video coming out about it soon. I warn you that when the video comes out, it's gonna sell out because Echo Charles makes these videos so persuasive. That everyone's gonna come. And while you're waiting for the muster, you can still carry on this conversation with us on the interwebs. On Twitter, on Instagram, and when you're gonna look at that Facebook, we gonna be on that one too. So Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink and Brian Stan is at Brian Stan.

• 2:38:46Speaker 02

  I keep it simple.

• 2:38:47Jocko Willink?

  I like how you do it. Two N's on Stan, by the way. Echo Charles, you got any closing thoughts?

• 2:38:53Speaker 01

  That's it, man. My man. Good to meet you and have you, for sure.

• 2:38:57Jocko Willink?

  Mr. Brian Stan.

• 2:38:59Speaker 02

  Pleasure, guys. A pleasure and honor. Thank you so much for having me on. We, I know we've been trying to do this for probably over a year now. Well worth it and you've got a new subscriber. I'm gonna listen to more of this. I mean, we talk about a lot of things that we think we already know. But man, it's motivating though, when you continue to hear it, you continue to hear it and you hear like-minded people out there achieving. Awesome.

• 2:39:19Jocko Willink?

  Thanks. Thanks for coming on. And I would like to thank everyone for listening. And we appreciate the support and the fact, more so the fact that you are out there with us trying to get better. And for those of you with a uniform on, especially those overseas right now. Taking the fight to the enemy. Thank you all for keeping us free. To law enforcement and firefighters, thanks to you for keeping us safe. For those of you that are just out there on the grind, working hard and doing good work.

• 2:40:00Jocko Willink?

  Go ahead and keep doing that good work.

• 2:40:05Jocko Willink?

  And Brian,

• 2:40:08Jocko Willink?

  thanks for coming on. Thanks for your career in the octagon. Thanks for what you're doing now with the charity and helping vets. But most of all, thanks for your service to this great nation.

• 2:40:25Jocko Willink?

  And to your fellow Marines, who I was always humbled to serve alongside. Thanks to you, you proud leathernecks, for your service and sacrifice and forever upholding your motto, Semper Fidelis. Always faithful.

• 2:40:55Jocko Willink?

  And when we go forward, each of us,

• 2:41:02Jocko Willink?

  all of us, when we go forward in our lives,

• 2:41:08Jocko Willink?

  let us do so

• 2:41:12Jocko Willink?

  with the intention of honoring those brave souls, those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who stood

• 2:41:25Jocko Willink?

  and held the line

• 2:41:29Jocko Willink?

  and gave their last full measure

• 2:41:36Jocko Willink?

  for us.

• 2:41:42Jocko Willink?

  So until next time, this is Brian and Echo and Jocko.

• 2:41:52Jocko Willink?

  Out.