353: If You Have The Wherewithal To Do Things, Then You Should Do Things. Congressman Candidate (WI) Derrick Van Orden

Derrick Van Orden. Navy SEAL (ret.) 26 years of service. husband, father, and Wisconsin 3rd District Congressman candidate 2022. 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 353 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. My brave fellows.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  You have done all I asked you to do and more than can be reasonably expected. But your country is at stake. Your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear.

• 0:25Jocko Willink?

  You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships.

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  But we know not how to spare you.

• 0:35Jocko Willink?

  If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty and to your country, which you probably can never do under any other circumstances.

• 0:50Jocko Willink?

  And that right there was a quote from George Washington. Encouraging his men to re-enlist in the army and he made that speech on Tuesday, December 31st, 1776. This was less than a week after the successful attack at Trenton. And great victory for Washington's army, the one that everybody knows about crossing the Delaware River. And able to achieve this victory, but the men had suffered greatly. Prior to that, they had lost the Battle of White Plains in October, the Battle at Forts of Washington in November. Their uniforms, when you read about what condition they were

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  in, they were just in tatters and rags at this point. Some of them didn't have shoes. By the way, December in the Northeast.

• 1:44Jocko Willink?

  So this is the last day of the year, December 31st. And interestingly, most of the soldiers enlistments, they'd enlisted for a year or two years. And so a lot of the soldiers, their enlistments were up.

• 1:58Jocko Willink?

  At the end of the year.

• 2:00Jocko Willink?

  And this was a potential disaster for the army.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  But through this personal appeal, Washington convinced about half the men to stay and carry on. And they were able to defeat the British at Princeton and kind of revived the morale of the Continental Army.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  But that just put that question into my mind is when is enough enough? And we call on our servicemen and women to do so much. And it's amazing when they decide to continue to serve. And it's an honor here to have one of those men with us tonight. Retired SEAL, 26 years of service, husband, father, teammate, friend of mine, who deployed to Iraq, deployed to Afghanistan, Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, Central America. And he's looking to continue his service now. His name is Derek Van Orden. We used to call him Van-O.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 3:08Jocko Willink?

  Van-O, Derek, thanks for coming down, man.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  Good to see you.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  It's good to see you too. They now call me DVO.

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  DVO?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  I don't know why. I mean, I do.

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because you gotta have the three letters.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  You know what?

• 3:22Jocko Willink?

  That's a little too close to deviant. I don't know if I like that.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Speaking of that, man, so I've never been to your place here. It's marvelous. And I went to the head, that's the bathroom for folks who are in the Navy. And like 30 guys, I was talking to Echo about this, they're all looking at me like, what are you doing? I look like, you know, the hill and came rolling in, but this is a wonderful facility here, man.

• 3:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, well, it's a mixed martial arts, so I guess your point is a mixed martial arts gym. It's literally the middle of our professional pro MMA practice is going on out in the gym. So it's the Alliance team, which trains here out of victory.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:05Jocko Willink?

  With some incredible fighters, some champs in there, Dominic Cruz, just saw Dom. And so, yes, they're athletes in peak physique, in the, in the prime of their athletic careers.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Well, I'm certainly in my prime. Sort of like Doc Holliday.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  You are in your prime, just like Doc Holliday, apparently, at this point. Uh, no, awesome to see you, man. So let's, let's start at the beginning. Let's start at where you came from. Let's figure out how you got here today.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:31Jocko Willink?

  And let's, let's talk about that story. So when, where were you born?

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Well, to begin in the beginning, as they say, I was raised in abject rural poverty by a single mom. My dad was not honorable, no other way to describe that. He abandoned us when I was an infant. And I dropped out of high school when I was 16 years old.

• 4:50Jocko Willink?

  Hold on a second. You got really quick through a lot of years. So.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  So I was.

• 4:54Jocko Willink?

  So you're born.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  So I was born, I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My father abandoned us. We had to move in with my grandmother in Laverne, Minnesota.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  What's Laverne, Minnesota? For some reason, I haven't heard of this metropolitan city.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Because Ken Burns did one of his documentaries called The War. And it featured the Palace Theater, which is on Main Street in Laverne. And we lived in the apartment above the Palace Theater once we got enough together because we had to live with my grandmother. We were that poor.

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  So what's the, what's the population of Laverne?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Gosh, I don't know now.

• 5:25Jocko Willink?

  But it's a small town.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  It's a small town.

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  What was your mom doing to make ends meet?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Uh, she was one of the first female sports reporters in the country. And she's always been a stats head. And she died nine years ago, eight years ago now. My ma, just wonderful, Carol Anne Mulligan. She's like, you know, this tall, five foot nothing and hard as woodpecker lips. She's tough, man. And then she got a job with a company called INA, which became Cigna Insurance. And that's how we wound up in Wisconsin. So we, I grew up in Wisconsin, southeastern Wisconsin, because my mother got promoted.

• 6:03Jocko Willink?

  Wait, so when did she leave sports reporting?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, that would have been.

• 6:07Jocko Willink?

  That was prior to the insurance thing? I don't need the years, but so she was doing that sort of.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Right. It was kind of on again, off again, sort of stuff. Right. Cause it was just weird to have a woman reporting sports. You know, it's just now it's.

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  Now it's common.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's normative.

• 6:19Jocko Willink?

  So she didn't, so she couldn't quite pull off a career in sports reporting?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  No, that wouldn't happen.

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  But then she went to the insurance business?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Right. She started as a secretary.

• 6:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  And then she got promoted. She's very, she was very bright and she wound up retiring, running the west coast for Cigna. She ran this whole office and it was interesting. She, um. She's sitting around, hearing these stories, it's fascinating because it helped me later on in my career as a SEAL, that she was like, wait a minute, if we have this phone and we, anyone has a phone, they can call this number. And if they have the ability to understand what's going on with this phone, they can get everybody's insurance information. So she was one of the first people to get into cybersecurity. Because you had the modem, you know what I mean? It didn't matter, there was no encryption there. It was if you could have a modem, you know, that sort of stuff. So she started doing, remember that?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  You guys are, you don't, how old are you? Forty-four. All right, you remember, you're old. You remember dial-up? Yeah, well, yeah. Look at that. I'm down for the dial-up. AOL. You got mail, son. Yeah, you do. So, uh, she did that and, and, um, you know, I, not having a father figure as a dad, my Uncle Bob, which is her oldest brother, she's one of ten Irish Catholics. And, uh, Bob left, uh, Worthington, which is outside of Laverne, when he was sixteen years old and joined the Navy, um, in World War II. There's this great picture of him, he's sitting like this with his hands over the rail of an ammunition oiler right off of Iwo Jima. No shirt on, you know, just hanging, being a sailor. It's just so fun, you know?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  But, um, yeah, so Gunny went to, um, he was in the Navy and then, uh, you know, they demobilized everybody after World War II, so he goes back to, to Minnesota, can't find a job. And he's like, man, I need a job. This is Uncle Bob we're talking about? This is Robert Francis Mulligan. The oldest brother of your, of your mom? Of my mom. Got it. So he was one of ten. And, uh, so he winds up going back to Minnesota, this is so fun, because we're in San Diego. And, uh, he goes to the Marine Corps and he's like, you know, can I join the Marines? He goes, yeah, there's some staff sergeant there. He goes, okay, here's your, you know, bus ticket to San Diego. And just, you'll go to the bus station, take a cab to MCRD, which is right down the road from here.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, then you're there and, you know, Bob's looking at his feet. It's museum feet, you know, you don't want to be in a museum anymore. You kind of shuffle your feet. And the staff started looking at him. He goes, you don't have enough money for a cab, do you? And he's like, nope. So he gives him money for a cab. So Bob takes the bus, cab, M C R D Marine Corps. You know, fast forward 20 years or whatever it is. He sees this warrant officer and in that Marine Corps, they call him gunners. And he's like, hey, man, I think I know you. And he goes, were you a recruiter in Minnesota? He goes, and I go, I'm the guy that you gave the money for the cab. And the gunner looks at him and goes, do you know how many people had to give money for a cab? So we think that things are difficult now and we're getting, trust me, man.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  The economy's going, we're getting in the tank, it's bad. But the, the level of, um, affluence that we have in the United States of America now is unprecedented in the history of the world. And that goes across all spectrums. I mean, that was like, you didn't have anything. So Bob does, uh, 20 years. He goes to Korea, uh, grievously injured by a Chinese communist soldier throwing a ChiCom grenade into his foxhole. And then he winds up, uh, going to Laos in 1962. Retired, becomes a police officer in a small village in Wisconsin called Shenigua and retired as the chief of police, the fire chief and the village administrator.

• 10:05Jocko Willink?

  And he ends up being your, you say your father figure?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 10:09Jocko Willink?

  What, what'd you have for brothers and sisters?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  I have one brother.

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  Older, younger?

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Uh, older.

• 10:14Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:15Jocko Willink?

  Now, what, you're now going to school? You used to live in above this theater in Laverne?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Right till I was in second grade. And then we moved, mom got promoted and we moved to Heartland, Wisconsin.

• 10:28Jocko Willink?

  Heartland?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Heartland.

• 10:29Jocko Willink?

  Heart, just straight up Heartland, Wisconsin?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. So we grew up there, we're still very poor and the apartments we live in now, I think, are section eight housing. That we lived in then are now, I believe, section eight housing.

• 10:44Jocko Willink?

  And now this is where you go to middle school? Is this where you go to high school and stuff?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  No, so I, we, mom got promoted again and then we moved to Oregon.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Right, and that's where I was in high school for a year and two weeks of my sophomore year.

• 11:02Jocko Willink?

  Were you playing sports growing up?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  I wrestled for my freshman year, but I never was into those types of things. I just, I never was. My brother's super big in professional sports, clearly, my mother was because she was a sports reporter. But, um, but just never, never did much for me.

• 11:21Jocko Willink?

  Were you, what were you focused on? Were you focused on academics?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  No, you know what? I wasn't. I mean, I read, I've always been a huge reader. Like, from when I was a little kid, I was always reading. And I was kind of more, um, I don't know how to put that. I just, I was, I was into exploring the world from a different perspective because, so we were so poor, I mean, like dirt poor. And I knew I could never collect material objects because of that. And so from when I was just a little kid, I started collecting relationships with people. And I have the same friends that I've had since I was 14. Because I understand the value of human beings and I understand the value of the intrinsic nature of somebody's intellect. Vice, you know, their physical being.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  And, and they're, they're clearly intertwined, one is part of another. But, um, so for me, that's always been my thing. So I've always really focused on humans. And the, the additive value of people, you know, the synergistic effect of getting together. You, that's how you create. And um, so I've always done that, you know, I've done some art stuff and whatever, but um.

• 12:36Jocko Willink?

  What's art stuff or whatever?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Well, sketch, I write poetry and you know, believe it or not.

• 12:42Jocko Willink?

  So, so when you're in, in school, are you like hanging out with the, the?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:48Jocko Willink?

  The freaking poetry club? Is that what we got going on?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  No, I was.

• 12:52Jocko Willink?

  Wait, were you wearing all black and like?

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh.

• 12:54Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I, dying near black?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Hey, who's wearing all black here? Let's just, you guys, is this camera working? So. No, man, I was kind of an outsider because again, you know, children can be very cruel. And when I say we're a poor, I mean, we were poor. So I was ostracized because of my poverty. And then when we moved to Oregon, it was a very affluent community and you know, I wasn't just on the other side of the tracks. I was on the other side of the, you know? So that can be very, um, you can take that one or two directions, you know? You, you can consciously choose your path. And you can choose to, to ride that into the dirt and get into this uh destructive cycle.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  And we've seen this happen over and over again, you know, intergenerational poverty and all these things. And people feel like they have no way out. I mean, I was the, did you ever see someone walk around with their head down?

• 13:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  And they walk like that all the time. Somebody, I ran into him, where did I see him? They're like, oh, you're, so I had dropped out of high school. I was working, you know, I've been supporting myself since I was 16. And someone's like, oh, I remember you from high school. You're the guy that always walked with your head down. And I was like, wait a minute, you're right. So I started walking with my head up and just that simple.

• 14:14Jocko Willink?

  Wait, when was that?

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Um, I would have been 17 or 18.

• 14:17Jocko Willink?

  So when you're 17 or 18, someone, someone said, oh, you used to walk around with your head down?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  You're the guy, they recognized me, you're the guy that would walk around with your head down. Because I was so, I wasn't self-absorbed, but it was like, I felt like. Because we were so poor in being, you know, just the other.

• 14:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  That, you know, I shouldn't be interacting with the world around me. So I started, I put my head up and I was like that one physical gesture. Of going, you know, I am here and I'm part of the equation. And then that slowly opens up your aperture. And you start looking around like, oh, what's going on here? Can I do something here? Can I do something there? Um, you know, the, the visual feedback that you get from another person actually enhances your ability to have a relationship with them, which I think is very important.

• 14:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that, that posture thing is huge. I had JP Denell on this podcast.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:03Jocko Willink?

  And I work with him still, but you know, um, I talked about, and this was a long time ago. I talked about the fact I was watching him like I'm in a, like sitting in a door well or something on a street in Ramadi and I'm watching JP like maneuver. And he's like walking with his chest out, his head up like.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Like I'm here.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  Just like, I'm here, I'm gonna get it. And you know, a lot of people, your instinct is to, especially in combat, is to.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Get small.

• 15:28Jocko Willink?

  Get small.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:29Jocko Willink?

  And he's like, no, chest up, head out. And that became a thing, you know, this whole posture thing. I mean, Jordan Peterson talked about, uh, uh, you know, stand up straight with your shoulders back. I was like, oh yeah, that's, that was JP Denell. And it sounds like you made that transition at 17 years old when someone said, dude, you were walking around with your head down. Yeah, that makes a, makes a difference.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does. And I, I think that, uh, I don't think, I know that people now, you know, they can go, oh, this is a brash, you know, person and,

• 15:57Speaker 01

  but when I sit down with them, talk to them, they understand that that's not posturing, it's posture. So then there's a difference between the two. One isn't, is something that's internalized and the other one is a projection. So if you have posture, that's, that's, you've internalized that you're posturing, you're pretending. I don't pretend about really anything.

• 16:19Jocko Willink?

  So you're going to high school, you're ostracized. And at some point you say you decide to drop out of high school.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  The institution no longer had anything to offer me. That is a direct quote from Animal House, I think, yeah.

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  It's a direct quote from what?

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Animal House, I believe.

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you decide, what, what did your mom say about this?

• 16:39Speaker 01

  She was not happy.

• 16:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, there's no mom that's like, oh, cool, you're dropping out of high school.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:43Jocko Willink?

  We're stoked.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  She was not happy at all.

• 16:45Jocko Willink?

  What was your plan?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  I didn't have one.

• 16:48Jocko Willink?

  Just I'm not going to school anymore?

• 16:49Speaker 01

  I'm out.

• 16:50Jocko Willink?

  Had you already been working?

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I started working, I think, when I was fourteen.

• 16:55Jocko Willink?

  And so what are you doing?

• 16:57Speaker 01

  I worked at a movie theater.

• 16:58Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  And then I worked at a gas station.

• 17:00Jocko Willink?

  Roger.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, Chevron gas station. Pumping gas, fixing cars.

• 17:04Jocko Willink?

  And, and now you must, uh, what's your reasoning behind dropping out of school? How you coming to this conclusion as a sixteen year old?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  I just, uh, it was, I don't think the environment was oppressive. I just, I just didn't fit.

• 17:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  And I just didn't want to be part of that.

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  So you tell your mom, what, what was it in the school year? Was it in the summertime?

• 17:24Speaker 01

  It was two weeks into my sophomore year.

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  I'm out.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did, I'm out. And then I moved out and, um.

• 17:33Jocko Willink?

  So what'd you get for a job?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  I was working at the gas station.

• 17:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so the gas station job, you move into what, an apartment or something?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  That was it. I mean, so.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  You know, do I recommend this life path? I mean, I, I did that. I got an undergraduate degree at forty-four. I got accepted to law school at fifty and all that sort of stuff. Would I recommend this path?

• 17:57Speaker 01

  That's a very complicated answer because in some ways I would say yes. In other ways I would not. And I was thinking about this because I know I was gonna come talk to you. If you look at what's taking place in the world right now. I think if more people had more adversity. Growing up. That they would be able to thrive more. I mean, I'm gonna get elected to Congress next year. That's happening. Actually, this year, November, I'll take office next year. And I started from the meanest circumstances you possibly can. I mean, abject rural poverty, broken home, single mom, enlisted guy in the Navy. And, you know, I'm gonna be in the highest levels of power in the most powerful country in the world within a single generation.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  I, I tell people this all this ti- all the time, man. You know, what's that called? It's the American dream, right? I'm, I'm the embodiment of the American dream. I lived on five of the seven continents as a frogman. Africa, I lived in villages in Afghanistan. I lived in Cosmopolitan, European cities, Iraq, you know, all in Asia, everywhere. And it's the American dream, man. It's not the Argentinian dream or the, it, it's not. It's not the English dream, Irish, it's not. It's the American dream because this is the only place that, that my story can happen every day, like all the time. Like it wins some series.

• 19:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, amazing.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Immigrant to the United States, she's the lieutenant governor of Virginia. So tha- that's what I think is, is important about these. Growing up where things aren't handed to you as much because I fought for everything I've had, everything my entire life. And I know what that means and then I can assign value to that.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  So I'm guessing you didn't quite see this trajectory when you were putting some premium gas into some guy's Chevy for $4.75 an hour because I worked at Wendy's.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Did you really?

• 19:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I worked at Wendy's.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  What did you do there?

• 19:46Jocko Willink?

  I was the burger cook guy.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  Which I would make burgers and it's interesting. You go to Wendy's, the burgers are fresh, which means when eight people walk in, they make a rough guess.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 19:58Jocko Willink?

  You know, and they'll go, put on 10. So you put on 10.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:00Jocko Willink?

  And if two of them don't sell, they go into a bucket and that bucket gets turned into chili. But you know.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  I did not know that.

• 20:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So I'm working at Wendy's. I, you know, and I knew I wanted to go in the military. At some point, at what point did the military seem like the, actually, let me hear the worst day of this of the 17 year old Vano working at the gas station.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Not eating.

• 20:25Jocko Willink?

  Just no food.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Just not eating.

• 20:28Jocko Willink?

  Not enough money.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  You gotta make rent. And I gotta pay for gas for a car. I bought a, I'd say a 1969 Toyota Corona.

• 20:39Jocko Willink?

  Corona?

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Corona, not a corona, Corona. It was built in September 69, same month and year that I was born. It was red with a white racing stripe, man. 500 bucks. Boom. Cash on the barrel, on the barrel head, right? You gotta pay for gas because you gotta go to work. You gotta make rent and sometimes you don't have money for food and what's, what's tragic, Jaco, is that people are getting there again in America. They're, they're having to make those decisions and it's shocking. So yeah, not eating was, you know, I mean, right now, clearly that may be a good thing, dude. I tell people like, you know, we're nine meals.

• 21:11Jocko Willink?

  Some more of that right now.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  We're like, we're nine meals away from anarchy at any point, right? And I'm like, I'm like 15 to 20 meals away from anarchy. Let's be honest. Like I, I could be a castaway for a while. That may be a good thing.

• 21:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, so sometimes you're not eating. You're 16, you're 17, you're still working at the gas station. At what point do you go, hey, this ain't, this ain't working?

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Check. I went out with a buddy of mine, his name is Kurt and.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  You know, we're drinking beer and we're in Oregon and, and I'm like, let's join the Marine Corps. And he's like, yeah, let's join the Marine Corps.

• 21:44Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  So we go out and, you know, we get all tuned up and we were like the best Marines for six hours. And I wake up and I call him, I'm like, I do not want to join the Marine Corps. And he's like, I do not want to join the Marine Corps. I go, let's join the Navy. He goes, okay. I picked him up, we went to the recruiting office.

• 22:00Jocko Willink?

  What?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  No, that was it. That was exactly as much thought that went into it. Now, remember, now Gunny was, he was a Marine. My, you know, the guy that I aspired to be.

• 22:11Jocko Willink?

  What made you say like, you're fired up to go to the Marine Corps? Six hours later, I don't think so. What was?

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Sobriety.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  That's, that's what happened.

• 22:21Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you understand anything about the military? And we're just like, hey, Navy, you know, Marine Corps? That seems cool. They got cool uniforms. They carry machine guns.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, and you know what? It's interesting. If you want to, I mean, not to over spiritualize things or get too philosophical about stuff.

• 22:38Jocko Willink?

  Sounds like we're about to.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Sure. There's, there's been several inflection points in my life where it's just kind of like, you know, throw your chips to the wind and see what happens. Because at that point I was going nowhere and I realized that, you know, I guess alcoholics call it an epiphany. You know, that you have this moment. And I kind of had that moment where I realized this is just not, I don't want to live this way the rest of my life.

• 23:04Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  And so there had to be a change and it, you know, how do you change like that? I'm a high school dropout. I couldn't get accepted to call, you know, any of that stuff, right? And it just really, it was an epiphany. So I joined the Navy.

• 23:17Jocko Willink?

  Did you have to get your GED? How'd that work?

• 23:19Speaker 01

  I got, they gave me six months to get a GED. I was offered three different programs. Seaman apprenticeship, fireman apprenticeship and airmen apprenticeship.

• 23:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  That's it. There was no other options. And

• 23:29Jocko Willink?

  So just so everyone knows what that means, that means

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Menial labor.

• 23:33Jocko Willink?

  The, the, the lowest jobs, the most menial jobs that you can get in the Navy.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 23:37Jocko Willink?

  Those three jobs in the three different broad departments in the Navy.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, straight up menial labor. And, um, so I just like, okay, you know, I signed on. I got stationed at Naval Weapons Station Concord.

• 23:50Jocko Willink?

  Hold on.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:51Jocko Willink?

  So you said it took you six months to get, to get your GED?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  They gave me six months. They're like, so I went into DAB, the delayed entry program.

• 23:59Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  They said, once you're active duty, you have six months to get a GED. So I went to my first duty station, Naval Weapons Station Concord.

• 24:05Jocko Willink?

  When was this?

• 24:06Speaker 01

  1988.

• 24:07Jocko Willink?

  1988. Man, they were hurting for some people then.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Listen, dude, Reagan wanted the 600 ship Navy.

• 24:13Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  You could like, where's, here, give me this trench knife. So you could like wipe the blood off a knife you just stabbed somebody with. And they're like, don't do that again. And they'll let you in the Navy.

• 24:22Jocko Willink?

  Come on in.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Right. But, and now, you know, that's something I was alluding to earlier is that, you know, our standards now, people have not faced this adversity. And so we're taking, we, we set all these prerequisites for guys to go to different programs, especially specialized programs that, you know, they're kind of unrealistic. But yeah, so, um, I would drive up over the Benicia Bridge. I can't remember the name of that, uh, Mare Island. And I would take classes and I took my GED and, you know, got that within the six months.

• 24:48Jocko Willink?

  So you're 18 when you actually get in the Navy?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  I was 18. I turned 19 in boot camp.

• 24:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay. You're, so you turned 19 in boot, how was boot camp?

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, I mean, it was just boot camp.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  Was it a shock to your system? Were you like?

• 25:01Speaker 01

  No, I was not one of those guys.

• 25:02Jocko Willink?

  Were you totally happy to be there?

• 25:05Speaker 01

  It's three hots and a cot, man, you know?

• 25:07Jocko Willink?

  You like food.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, yeah, apparently. Uh, oh, everyone understands what you're saying.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I mean, it was just what you're doing and, um, That's kind of how I live my life. I approach it like this is what we're doing. And so let's just do it. Let's crack on and let's do it the best that we can. And that really paid off in BUDS. And I'll tell you a story though. So in order to get to BUDS, right? I joined the Navy. I'm working on it.

• 25:36Jocko Willink?

  Do you know about the SEALs at this point?

• 25:38Speaker 01

  No, I had no idea. They like, they wasn't like, hey Derek, check this out. By the way, you can never do this. You're gonna work at Tugboat because you're a scrub, you know, that's essentially what they said. So I cleaned toilets and painted.

• 25:47Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with boot camp?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Get done with-

• 25:50Jocko Willink?

  Where do you get stationed?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Naval Weapons Station Concord. Concord, California. It's closed now.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  There's an ammunition station.

• 25:55Jocko Willink?

  You show up there, you're an E1. Maybe an E2?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  I made E, did I make E2? I can't remember. E1, 2 doesn't matter.

• 26:01Jocko Willink?

  But you're a very low ranking individual.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Right. But I still had this sort of, um, you know, I was a smart aleck, you know, to put it mildly.

• 26:11Jocko Willink?

  You're a smart aleck at 50. How old are you?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  53.

• 26:14Jocko Willink?

  You're a smart aleck at 53. When we worked together, you were a smart aleck at 40 something. So I can only imagine it was even worse when you were-

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Here's the difference, Jaco. I have now earned it. I've earned it. When I was a young man, I didn't, I was a brash young man and I didn't have humility. And so I decide to go to corps school because I had a friend who worked at the clinic. And, um, I wanted to go do that. So I had to work for six months, eight months or whatever, after hours. I struck for a rate, um, for all your civilians that's, um, applying for a job.

• 26:51Jocko Willink?

  Did you apply for the job as corpsman?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  I was a, right. So I made BM3, bosun's mate, third class, deck rating.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  And then I went and became a corpsman. But so here, here was the turn. A quarter inch shackle turned my life around. And that's a shack. I don't know how to describe that.

• 27:12Jocko Willink?

  It's a fastener.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  It's a fastener. It's like a nautical metal thing, right? And so I was standing on the fantail of the YTB. That's a yard tugboat, 828 Caraja Casa. All yard tugboats in the Navy are named after American Indian chiefs, in case you're wondering. So I'm on the fantail. That's the back of the boat. And, uh, I get beaned in the back of the head with a quarter inch shackle. And I turn around and there's nobody there. And I'm like, if I don't change my ways, these people will kill me.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  And that really opened. That was a reality check. And I don't encourage, you know, changing people's, you know, behavior modification through violence, but I'm just telling you my story. And I was like, wow, I need to, you know, change my ways now. And I did. And then I got to Corps School.

• 28:07Jocko Willink?

  So you apply, do you have to apply to go to Corps School?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. So I worked at the clinic on base after hours and it was like six or eight months.

• 28:14Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  And I had to take a series of tests. I did all these, um, the general military trainings. I did a whole bunch of correspondence courses, like the NATO Handbook on Surgery and all these things I did, which is a course for physicians. I ordered it, used to be able to order all these books through the Navy. And I just have a knack for it. You know, I'm, I know I seem like a goofball to them, but I'm actually.

• 28:36Jocko Willink?

  A knack for nerding out and studying on something?

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:39Jocko Willink?

  And passing tests?

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Because I had been reading since a kid. You know what I mean? It wasn't, it wasn't strange to me to garner knowledge from the written word. And so being able to read things, absorb information and then take things from disparate sources, combine them together to understand the best way to do things is just something I'm, I'm just good at. It's intuitive to me. I don't have to work at that.

• 29:02Jocko Willink?

  So you apply to go to Corps School?

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Right. And then I got accepted and I put everything I owned in the entire world on the back of my motorcycle and drove like everything, drove from Cochran, California to San Diego and checked into Corps School here.

• 29:17Jocko Willink?

  How long is Corps School?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Eleven weeks, I think. I mean, that was a while ago, dude. They don't even have Corps School here anymore.

• 29:25Jocko Willink?

  And you still haven't heard about the SEAL teams yet?

• 29:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 29:27Jocko Willink?

  So that revelation must be coming.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Okay. So there was, uh, three guys that joined the Navy to be SEALs. One's name is Rodney. Unfortunately, he was killed working for the CIA after he got out of the teams. He graduated. Another one's name is Andy. He did, I don't know, X money years got out. And the other one's name is Jeff and Jeff didn't make it to BUDS. In a way they're like, hey, you know, I'm going to be a SEAL.

• 29:52Jocko Willink?

  This is at Corps School?

• 29:53Speaker 01

  This is at Corps School. And they're all like, you know, and I'm me. And, uh, I'm like, what's this SEAL stuff? Like, well, you have guns and planes and boats and, you know, fast cars. I'm like, well, I'll go do that. And they're like. You can't just say, I'll go do that. And I go, well, why not? Why can't you just say, I'll go do that? So I was kind of mocked a bit. And then you had at that point, three chances to take this screening test. Did you do the same thing? What class were you?

• 30:24Jocko Willink?

  One seventy seven.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Okay, so I was one eighty four. And so remember you had three chances. Oh, no, you're, yeah, you're an E, weren't you?

• 30:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, but just did it in boot camp.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Oh, because they they let you do that?

• 30:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:36Jocko Willink?

  I did it in boot camp, passed.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I failed this twice. And back then, like you failed this three times, you're out. We don't want to see you again. You're dead to the world, right? Get out of here.

• 30:46Jocko Willink?

  This is while you were a corpsman?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  This is while I was in corps school.

• 30:49Jocko Willink?

  To get billet to buds.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  To get a billet to buds.

• 30:51Jocko Willink?

  Got it. And fail once. What'd you fail?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Swim.

• 30:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  I didn't know how to do the side stroke.

• 30:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  I've been swimming since I was, you know, a kid. I just don't know how to do a formal stroke, right? So I failed this thing twice. And they started renovating the barracks, which is the, not the oldest, but the second oldest building in San Diego at the Naval Hospital. That was our barracks. So they move us to Thirty Second Street, the Navy base down there. And by now, this is, this is a personal thing at this point. Because of the pushups, situps, run, I don't know if you did dips, anyway, crush all those. Pull ups, right, crush all of them. Can't do the swim. So I go to the pool. There's a nine year old kid in the pool. And he's doing the side stroke. And I'm like, hey, dude, can you show me? Because there was no mentoring then. Remember that? It was like, go do this.

• 31:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  No mentoring. I go, hey, man, can you show me how to do that? A nine year old kid. He's like, yeah, just grab an apple, pull the apple down, get it with your hand, throw the apple away, grab another apple.

• 31:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang, look at that. This kid was good.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Right, that's a side stroke. So, you know, I did it, passed the test. That quarter inch shackle gave me the humility, which was the thing that I was missing as a young man, to be able to ask a nine year old kid how to do the side stroke.

• 32:07Jocko Willink?

  And then what, somebody hucked that thing at you, this shackle?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:11Jocko Willink?

  And they just didn't give a shit?

• 32:13Speaker 01

  No. Listen, man.

• 32:15Jocko Willink?

  He just beamed you in the head.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Right in the back of the head. And then, so, you know, the, the, it's actually beautiful boats. This big wide fantail in the back, and then there's a, the O one level, which is where the, um, the Coxons flat is, you know, the wheelhouse.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  You know, clearly they were up there.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  So I've had the ability Jaco, and I think you have also an echo. Unfortunately, I don't know you well enough. Hopefully I will.

• 32:42Jocko Willink?

  I don't, whatever you're gonna say, I doubt he has.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  So there's, there's people in the world that have the ability to understand when they're taking part in history or where things are significant to the point where you should modify your behavior.

• 32:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's what I think. One of the key points about this is a lot of times when you get hit in the head with a shackle, you look at everyone else and say, "I can't believe they're doing this to me." I can't believe that someone, you get mad. You get mad at the Navy, you get mad at the people on your tugboat. You get mad at everybody else.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:15Jocko Willink?

  When what you actually need to do is say, "Well, there's only one person I can control, and that's me. I'm the one that got myself on the back of this tugboat. I'm the one that got myself around these bunch of people. I need to do something to get out of here. I need to take ownership of my life and move forward." And that's a huge difference. And it's a huge difference in mentality that can be the difference between staying where you're at. I mean, you obviously did the same thing at the gas station. At some point, you're like, you know, being hungry sucks. And I could be mad at my paycheck at the gas station. I could be mad at my car for using gas. Or I could say, "Hey, I put myself in this situation. I need to get myself out of it. Where's the recruiter?" So that's a, that's the thing that you're talking about when you explain that to me. I think, yeah, well, that's gonna have,

• 33:59Jocko Willink?

  that's the difference between moving forward, moving up, improving your, your station in life, or staying where you're at.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if you have the, the wherewithal to do things, you should do things. I mean, some things are just that simple. You can sit around and hang out, or you can, you can continuously try to improve yourself.

• 34:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  And so I've got friends like that. One of them, I gotta give a shout out to him, is Mike Emmer. This dude up in our village in Butternut is just always doing things. And he just got into sailing with his family now. So he sails in. This is a farmer who now has this big boat, sailboat, that he runs his kids around Lake Superior on. Because he is always, him and Liz, she's just wonderful, have always kept their eyes open. And when people have their head down, we talked about that earlier with your posture, you just don't see the world around you. And I made a conscious decision to not do that. I made a conscious decision to be part of the equation. And I think more people...

• 35:03Speaker 01

  They should understand that. Like, I mean, not to get overly political here, but I talk to people, I'm like, hey, you know, you can go outside and you can stare at a hill. It doesn't matter how long you look at that, the cavalry's not coming over the hill. They're not coming. You know, it's you. You are the cavalry. So when you care enough about something, you got to understand you are the person that can affect positive change. And so I empower people and I go talk to them. I go, look, man, we always talk about the guys jumped into San Maria Glees, or one of the beaches in Normandy, or the Marines in Khe Sanh in Vietnam, or in the Argonne Forest in World War I. We think about them as these people that at this singular point in time, when their, when their country, our country needed them, they stood up.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  And they, they bodily entered into something, knowing that they may not come back alive.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  In the same vein, that's who the people that care about the United States are now. Now, I hope to God they never have to get involved in physical combat. We've both been there and it's, it's a horrible thing. And war should be horrible, so people don't want to get engaged in it. But they're doing that now. And they have to show courage. Because courage is contagious. We've seen this. A lot of people out in the civilian world have not, and I'll give them an example that people can understand, because it's kind of funny. During the lockdown,

• 36:26Speaker 01

  there's, it's, I think it's 323.10 is this statute in the Wisconsin state law that says that the governor has the ability to exercise emergency powers. And it's like a 30 day window. So I'm like, okay, check. I don't know what's going on. It's like, your dudes in combat, you're like, go do this. It's like, well, sir, I think we should have a, you know, no. Emergency situation. Boom, got it, right. But then when that emergency

• 36:49Speaker 01

  ends, or the legal authority ends, then it's time to challenge authority. The same person that is a law-abiding citizen, right? That's your duty to follow the law when you're in a crisis situation. It's the same person that says, no. When that expires, that is, that is your duty as a citizen, is to stand up for what's, anyway, so this lockdown's going on. And I'm like, I'm, I'm no longer complying with this. The, the legal authority has expired. I will not do this. I'm not. So I go to Walmart, because I'm a smelly, you know, dirty Walmart shopper. I am. And I don't have a mask on. And someone recognizes me. They have a face shield and a mask on.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  And dude looks at me and he's like, what are you doing? I go, I'm not complying. And he said, well, I'm not either. And he takes his stuff and throws it into his cart in Walmart. And courage is contagious.

• 37:42Jocko Willink?

  Wait, he didn't die immediately?

• 37:43Speaker 01

  No, but listen, don't get me wrong. You know, I had COVID twice and it was horrible. And a lot of people died from it. And if you want to wear a mask right now, wear it. I mean, a hundred percent, if you want to wear a mask and a face shield, you want to wear gloves, you want to hand sanitize and all that stuff. That's your ability as an American citizen to choose the way you want to live your life. And now everybody's coming around, the CDC just said that people should be able to choose. So they should have been able to choose back then. I wrote an op ed in like April of 2020 called Freedom Over Fear. And it laid it out like you got to pick because you can't have both. What's your book?

• 38:19Jocko Willink?

  Extreme Ownership?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Well, there's a bunch of them.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  Dichotomy of Leadership?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  But you talk about fear and stuff, right?

• 38:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, Mikey and the Dragons, their kid's book.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Okay, Mind Killer, right? You can't function if you're terrified. So I think it's just a different way of of thinking about how we should interact as citizens. And so you want to do that stuff, go ahead. I'm just not going to. I will not join you, but I won't mock you either. Because it's your choice.

• 38:46Jocko Willink?

  All right, speaking of choices, you choose to figure out how to swim from this nine year old kid. Now you pass your test.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  I passed my test.

• 38:52Jocko Willink?

  And you're going to BUDs.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  I go to BUDs. I

• 38:56Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you have any clue about BUDs at this point?

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely nothing. And again, that's why I succeeded. So

• 39:05Speaker 01

  184 and graduated with 184. Neil Roberts?

• 39:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  First guy killed in Afghanistan. We have got our

• 39:10Jocko Willink?

  I was a team two with him, yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Okay, so we had our arms over each other's shoulders graduating from BUDs. I mean, he's a great man. They called him Fifi, man. Yeah, super guy. But so I got there and I'm like, I don't know what to do here. And I show up at like, you go to A B Brights. Is that still there, that dirty cleaner?

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's still there.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  So you got your pants, you know, that you can stand up by themselves.

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  Because they're starched.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Like seriously, that's not a joke. You can stand them up. And so it's like, I pay all this money to have these things done and I go down. I'm not gonna, I don't know what his first name is. I'll just call him C. That's the first letter of his last name. I don't want to embarrass the guy, you know? And it's like four in the morning. I'm wearing this uniform and I'm walking like, what is that? Pillsbury Doughboy, anyway, or Gingerbread Man or whatever. And this guy comes up to me and looks at me up and down. This is an instructor? No, this is a fellow student. Okay. He looks at me up and down and he goes, "You're not gonna make it." Like whispers to me. And I'm like, "Well, what do I do now? I spent all this money for these

• 40:15Speaker 01

  uniforms. Like, do I get a refund or, you know, do I leave?" And so I'm like, "All right, well, I guess I'm not gonna make it." And so I go to class. And you know, one thing leads to another. And it's very difficult, SEAL training, in case you haven't read a book or anything. And then it occurred to me, I mean, I actually have a, again, another one of these epiphanies, when I understand exactly what the deal is. We're sitting on the beach, we're PTing, we're looking in towards the compound. So the ocean's at our back. And the instructor, he's looking out to sea and we're exercising. And it starts to rain, which is bad, you know, but you'll

• 40:59Speaker 01

  get through it. And then it starts to lightning and hail. It's like a storm. It's a rare, rare occurrence for San Diego. Exactly. So, working on that tugboat, moving ammunition, when it's their hero, I can't remember, it's- Oh yeah, Hero Condition 9 or something. Right. That's when there's- Need to stop. Stuff in there, you gotta stop, things will blow up. And so I'm thinking, "Wow, this is bad. We're standing on the beach, you know? The only thing we don't have is a golf club holding up there." And the instructor, he goes, "And halt," you know, in Bud's, "That's not like smoking me if you got him. You're standing at rigid attention." He runs into the compound. I'm like, "Well, good, they're gonna get us off this beach. We gotta get out of here. It's a lightning storm." And he comes running back out and he has a dive mask on.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  And I'm like, oh, I get it. Th- this is the contract. So my part of the contract was, I'm gonna show up here every single day and do everything I possibly can to meet your standard. My instructor's, not my standard, your standard. And his part of the contract was, he's gonna show up every single day and make sure that I adhere to his standard. And it was like a light bulb appeared above my head.

• 42:12Jocko Willink?

  So it's just raining so hard that he needed a dive mask?

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Cause he couldn't see if we were performing the functions to his standard.

• 42:18Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  So that was, that was it. I'm like, I get BUDs at this point.

• 42:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, how deep were you in the BUDs? Couple of weeks?

• 42:26Speaker 01

  That was PTRR.

• 42:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  It was fourth, fourth phase, didn't even class up yet. So when I started, there was guys who were like sandbag. So they're like, you have to do the O course, and I'm just making up these numbers now, in 10 minutes, and then it had to be 9:30, and you know, you had this progression, right? So they would do it just passing, on purpose, cause I knew there were better athletes than me. And I took the opposite approach. I was like, I'm gonna get up every single day and try as hard as I can, for everything I do. Like, every single thing I do, and then I'm gonna get better. I'm not gonna stay the same, you know, or decrease. I will get better, and I know I can do this because there's somebody wearing a trident making me do it, so it's possible.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  And so I did that. That's how I got through BUDs. And I swear, man, third phase out at the island, we're flying back, and I was certain that plane was gonna crash, because there's no way I could be graduating from BUDs, you know what I mean?

• 43:26Jocko Willink?

  What was the, what do you remember about like Hell Week? Was Hell Week a challenge for you?

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Um, it was, but I was a booker leader, cause I was an E4.

• 43:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you were an E4.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  I was an E4, wheels and meat, dude. And, um, I've found, yeah. I have found personally that when you are in a leadership position and you have people that you need to be concerned about, then you're putting their care above your own, which I've done my whole life, so that was just, you know, something that you do, that it actually makes the time go by. Better because you're not worried about yourself. You're not, you're not focusing internally. You know, this is hard. I'm freezing and you know, I'm chafed and whatever. You're looking out for your men. And you're like, you get this, but you're like, this person is having a bad time. And what can I do from my position to make this better for them so that we can accomplish the mission?

• 44:20Speaker 01

  And you know, if someone couldn't make it in BUDs, people are like, oh, you should help them and carry them along. I'm like, I took again, the opposite approach. If this person can't get through BUDs and we're going to carry him through BUDs, what are they going to be like when they get to SEAL Teams? So there's, you can take that to an extreme. If somebody was having a bad day, you help them out. But if someone was consistently performing below par, I don't want them around. So for me, Hell Week was, I mean, very challenging. But at the same time, I think it was easier for me than any of the guys in my boat crew. Because they, they were more focused, they were more focused on them getting through this. And I was more focused on getting us through it.

• 45:04Jocko Willink?

  I liked Hell Week because there was nothing I could fail. Like everything else. Cause I wasn't good at anything. I wasn't, I wasn't good at running. I wasn't good at swimming. I wasn't good at the O course.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  I was going to tell everybody that.

• 45:13Jocko Willink?

  You're always, I was always like, if you know, this could, I could fail this swim. I could fail this run. I had to just put out so hard. But Hell Week was like, oh, we just got to finish, bro. I could do that. Just not quit. That's, that's my game. You want to play that game? That's my game. No sleep and no quitting. That's my game. If there was a pro sport, I'd be doing good in that sport. So Hell Week for me was fun. What, what about the water? Was the water all good for you? Pool comp and all that stuff?

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, so I failed pool comp the first time.

• 45:42Jocko Willink?

  Me too.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  What, do you know why I failed pool comp the first time? Because I forgot the end of the brief.

• 45:47Jocko Willink?

  What was the end of the brief?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Kiss the regulator and ascend.

• 45:51Jocko Willink?

  What'd you do just?

• 45:51Speaker 01

  I sat there. So I did the whole everything. And I just forgot the end of the brief. Kiss the regulator and ascend. And McCarthy was my instructor. Yeah. And he pulls me out of the pool, you know? And he's like, what is wrong with you? And I go, what do you mean, Senator J. McCarthy? He goes, dude, if you had just kissed the regulator and ascended, you'd be fine. And I was like, oh, check, Raj. That's the end of the brief. So no, the waterworks fine. I did struggle swims. But.

• 46:21Jocko Willink?

  Like passing swims? You're a slow swimmer?

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Dude, a nine year old taught me how to do the side stroke like two weeks before I went to BUDS. So in fact, yes, I was a slow swimmer.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  It was actually about three months before I went to BUDS because I there then that interim period from corps school to go into BUDS, I worked at the naval hospital and I collected dirty linen. Awesome. But I also, so the the linen collection shop at Balboa Naval Hospital, I don't know if it's still there, was down in the basement, right next to the morgue. And I was like, I'm gonna go to BUDS training and I should understand more about human physiology because I'm going there. And so I would go do, it was like Wednesday morning, this guy named Braswell. He was the autopsy instructor. So I'd go do these autopsies, you know, I would stand there. I finally worked my way up to weighing organs. But just to really truly understand physiology because you read that in a book and

• 47:18Speaker 01

  you can do a cadaver lab and that sort of stuff. But when you have

• 47:22Speaker 01

  you have someone that is newly deceased, you have a much better understanding of how things truly work in your body. It was a fascinating experience, actually.

• 47:30Jocko Willink?

  Still some interesting little off ramp we just took into the morgue.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, so I was a corpsman, right? And then I went to the 300 F1 program down in San Antonio, Texas after I graduated from BUDS. And then I went finally after two platoons at Team Four in South and Central America and then Bosnia, Herzegovina. I finished the 18 Delta course of which I was the distinguished honor graduate of my class. You know why? Because I didn't want to go. Because I was frogman. I don't want to take six months off to go work with the army, go to school anywhere. I want to stay in a platoon, right? That was my thing. If you're a SEAL, you should be in a platoon.

• 48:07Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  And if you're in a platoon, you should be at war. That's it. You know, the and God bless them, the guys that do 27 years at trade at MAROops instructors, you know, thanks. That's so no one else has to do that, but you get the deal. The SEAL's natural environment is combat. Cut, dry, period, over. But yeah, so I didn't want to go and I'm like, Army, Special Forces guys, I have so many SF friends, you know, they're good dudes. I'm like, how do I beat them? Ah, academically, right? So that's they're very serious about academics. That course was really hard.

• 48:41Jocko Willink?

  That was a hard course. I didn't go through it, but I remember he would kick guys asses.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Right. So.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  When I graduated, the commander had to give me their commander's excellence coin.

• 48:50Jocko Willink?

  You love that.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Was just like their hand is shaking, you know, so and it was just very, very interesting. And if you're gonna do your job, do it the best you can. And that's just, I mean, everyone should take that approach to life. If you're gonna, have you ever seen this, um, it's a documentary called Hero Love Sushi?

• 49:08Jocko Willink?

  I have not seen it, but I, I know about it. I just, I started watching it, bro. And honestly, it didn't, it didn't really grab me and I don't, I don't have a bunch of time to be watching movies that aren't getting me out of the gate. And it just didn't do it. I'll, I'll get to it at some point. I think when I'm older, like maybe sixty-five, seventy, I'm gonna roll into that because I've heard it's great. And I saw what I, the guy's totally focused and he has the most popular sushi place in the world. And there's a, the hard to get to, and it's this little shack on the side of the road or whatever, a really small thing. And he's the best in the world.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  What I got out of all of that is that you have the attention span of a gnat.

• 49:41Jocko Willink?

  I, I may, I may.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  No, so this guy's talking about, um, you don't, you don't have to be proud of your job, but you have to be proud of your work.

• 49:51Jocko Willink?

  Interesting.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  That's the whole crux of that movie. That's why it's so fascinating and you gotta get to that. You know what I mean? So you can be doing anything, just do it the best you can.

• 49:59Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's a hundred percent. And by the way, that's the way, if you don't like your job, the way out of your job is to do the job to the absolute best of your ability. That's how, the, the way to stay in your shitty job that you don't like is to not perform well at it. And it's not gonna work out well for you to stay in that job or you're gonna get an even worse job.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so you're flying back from San Clemente Island, which means you're graduating from BUDs.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:21Jocko Willink?

  And you get stationed, where do you, what do you get?

• 50:23Speaker 01

  SEAL Team Four.

• 50:23Jocko Willink?

  Did you pick East Coast?

• 50:25Speaker 01

  I picked SEAL Team Four and this is why, because SEAL Team Four was the only SEAL team I was aware of that had been in combat since the Vietnam War. And just like we just talked about, man, a SEAL's natural environment is combat. So I, I put that as my first choice because I thought that was the team that has the highest probability of entering into combat.

• 50:47Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And so that was in, in Panama, this is, that was Panama was nineteen eighty-nine. And so now it's nineteen ninety-one.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  October twenty-third, nineteen ninety-two, I graduated from BUDs. So it would've been ninety-three-ish or whatever.

• 51:01Jocko Willink?

  So the, uh, At the time, that was it, man.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  That was the show.

• 51:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and at the time.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Operations and all that stuff.

• 51:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, at the time, the SEAL teams were geographically oriented.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 51:14Jocko Willink?

  And so that meant that different teams had different geography that they covered. And SEAL Team Four, at the time, covered Central and South America.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 51:23Jocko Willink?

  Which means every Spanish-speaking person in the SEAL teams went there immediately.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 51:28Jocko Willink?

  And there was, there was things going on down there. There was the counter-drug stuff. There was revolutions going on, so there was.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:36Jocko Willink?

  That sounded like a good place for you. The way you looked at it, that's where you wanted to go.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I tell you what.

• 51:42Jocko Willink?

  You were smarter than me, you know, I wanted to go to SEAL Team One because I thought we were going to NOM.

• 51:47Jocko Willink?

  I was like, bro, Team One, Vietnam, there's gotta be stuff going on.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  You know, I went to Vietnam in 1998.

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's awesome. On the recovery missions.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  During Task Force Full Count, yeah. Yeah, man, so I went to Team Four, I did two platoons there.

• 52:02Jocko Willink?

  How was it when you showed up at Team Four? Because that's the other thing, at Team Four, and that was a guy, I had a bunch of friends that went to Team Four, and Team Four was like an awesome team at that time.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, Team Four was, is the East Coast, or was the East Coast equivalent of Team Five. Much more relaxed and, but super, super professional, like, so we would, you would do, I think, six weeks of land warfare at Pickett. And then you'd go down to Panama and you spent your first month and a half living in the jungle, doing.

• 52:29Jocko Willink?

  I actually did that trip from Team One.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Did you really?

• 52:31Jocko Willink?

  Yep, we went down there and did thirty-four days or something out in the J.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Right, so you seriously knew what you're doing.

• 52:37Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  And I really, I really appreciated that a lot, and that's why I, I volunteered to go to Trade Ed. Because I was not satisfied with our land warfare training. I thought it was completely inadequate. Coming from that background at Team Four, so I did those two platoons and then.

• 52:55Jocko Willink?

  What was your job?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Corpsman and intelligence.

• 52:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right, you were a medic.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Medic and intel. So I did eight platoons as a corpsman and a medic, and you, I mean, you don't really do that anymore once you become a chief. It was still my specialties, my forte.

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  And how were those deployments?

• 53:11Speaker 01

  They were very interesting. I mean, um, I got my first.

• 53:15Jocko Willink?

  So this is like 94, you're going on your first deployment?

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Ninety, ninety-four, ninety-five.

• 53:19Jocko Willink?

  Ninety-four, ninety-five.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  I got, um, I got my first Navy Achievement Medal when I was in STT at the time, which was interesting. There's, you know, I told you that because I got my second one down in my, my first deployment. The, the first one was because some guy got shot at a basketball court outside of a grocery store in Virginia and it went and saved his life. It's, you know, as you do. And then, um, there was another horrific accident. So I was a new guy, but I'm like, I stick to my guns. Right. And I paid the man for it several times, but I would insist on bringing my medical gear back to. We were staying in like four different condos in Salinas, Ecuador. And I would insist of packing up all of my medical gear and taking them back to my room every night after training.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  And like, new guy, we want to, I'm like, I don't care, you know? Tune me up if you want, but I'm going to have my stuff. Like two o'clock in the morning, big thing, this, this car was driving. And, uh, they lost control and hit a cement telephone pole. It split the car in half and shot bodies all over the street. So I was like, holy bean bags. And, um, I had all my stuff and made the naval base. This is written in this little Navy Achievement Medal and, um, made the Navy base reopen their clinic. And I had all my stuff and all the guys, my God, but I just, I miss sometimes being around SEALs because they just perform. You're like, bam, they can be sitting around doing something and they're on it.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  So everybody has that, you know, nascent medical training and they all just performed. I'm like this, this, this got checked. We saved everybody's lives.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  So that was part of the reason that this, um, you know, deployment was so terribly interesting. Uh, and then ninety-six rolls around, ninety-five, ninety-six rolls around. And, um, they, the, the war was going on in Bosnia, Herzegovina.

• 55:15Jocko Willink?

  So is this now your second platoon?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  This would be my, this wasn't even a platoon. I had done two platoons. And this was like kind of an augment thing. It was really weird. So they're, they're. They're trying to figure out a way to implement the Dayton Accords that were signed in 1995 after Storm 95, which is a Croatian offensive that kept the Serbs back. So they signed this Dayton Accords and they're trying to figure out how to implement them. Prior to that, there was a program called the Joint Commission Observers and those were tier one guys that were going in and, you know, doing JTAC stuff and whatever. And so this transitions to how are we going to maintain this presence on the ground? So they transitioned from the tier one guys to the theater SOF and SF

• 55:56Speaker 01

  had this mission. And they wouldn't let us do it. Were you around for, what were you doing?

• 56:02Jocko Willink?

  So 199, what year is this?

• 56:04Speaker 01

  96.

• 56:05Jocko Willink?

  96, I was in training cell at SEAL Team One.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Okay. So you remember the JCO stuff where guys got to go to Bosnia? Alright, so they come back on the grinder at Team Four and which it was just part of a compound, you know, I'm in the East Coast. And they're like, okay, SF can't man this mission. We're gonna let SEALs do it. So everyone was like, you know, yeah, we're going to war. All excited, right? And they go, we're taking E7 and above. And I'm like, I'm in E5. So I'm like, come on, man. So everybody goes to the language lab, signs up. This is something that I learned. And I think, I'm not sure, I hope that I'm wrong, but I see the military going back to the way it was in the 90s. Politically and all this stuff, right? I mean, I do believe we are auguring in. The Department of Defense is broken

• 56:52Speaker 01

  right now. So everybody goes and signs up on, you know, like this legal pad. And then they call them in, rank, you know, one, the next, and next, next, next. And everyone's like, well, actually, I gotta mow my lawn. Well, my daughter's in soccer. Well, you know, and they work their way down. They get down to E5 Derek.

• 57:11Jocko Willink?

  So some of the guys that signed up weren't really wanting to go.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  You understand this concept when you're standing in a group and you need to be like, oh, going to war? Yeah, I'm a SEAL. That's great. And they get really excited about it. But then when you get them on, one on one, they don't want to be there. You know what I mean? They join the canoe club. They want to work out and all that stuff. That transcends all spectrum, you know, that's not unique to SEALs. So they get down to me. And

• 57:38Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking crazy, dude.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Right. And so I go in to see my CMC. His name's Perry. Total redneck, awesome guy. And he goes, old Van Arden, what you doing? I go, Mass Chief.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  General Patton had to petition General Pershing as a second lieutenant to be included on his expedition during the Mexican-American war. And he goes, "You trying to tell me you some kind of GD, General Patton?" He did not abbreviate that. And I said, "No, Master Chief, but I'm telling you, my bags are packed right now and I can leave in 10 minutes." He's like, "Beat it."

• 58:17Jocko Willink?

  Now, at this point, are you married?

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:20Jocko Willink?

  You're married. When did you meet your wife?

• 58:22Speaker 01

  In San Diego. Right before, uh, right after I, no, right before I went to Bud's. We got married right after Bud's.

• 58:29Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  So I spent, I was a SEAL for just under 22 years and I spent 16 years away from home. So I took every single training trip. I went to every single school I could because again, you have to find, if you're doing something, do it. Don't, and that's a biblical principle. You know, be either hot or cold. If you're lukewarm, I will spit you out. That's in the Bible, man. So if you're doing something, do it. And so I got every single qualification I possibly could. So in case something came up, I would be the one selected to do it to go defend my country. I mean, I'd live my life that way, right?

• 59:07Jocko Willink?

  How fast did you have kids? Do you have kids? Did you have kids?

• 59:11Speaker 01

  We had.

• 59:11Jocko Willink?

  When you got to Team Four?

• 59:12Speaker 01

  By the time we got to Team Four, we had two kids.

• 59:15Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we have four now. I have eight grandchildren.

• 59:19Jocko Willink?

  Impressive.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Gosh, they're so awesome. All, everything you hear about being a granddad, you're not even close to how cool it is. Seriously, they're just wonderful. But yeah, so, um, I went on that deployment. It was very interesting. I remember, so we had these different houses. I didn't live in a base. My house was Whiskey 40. So I was multinational division southwest. I worked for a guy named John Cass, was a British Colonel. Reported to Special Operations Command and Control Element, SOX C. That was in Bonja Luka. Guy named Repass, Mike Repass was a major at the time. I wound up working for him again when he was a two-star in Germany. It was really cool. But, uh, we went into Sarajevo, fly-in.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  We went to another Joint Commission Observer House, the SF guys, and kind of like slowly get you in. There's two SEALs there in my house and we moved out to Bugano, was the name of the town we lived in. And then like seven to nine SF guys. I get up every morning, I drive out and I talk to all the military and local political figures and police figures. It was, the mission was to provide a ground truth about what's going on. And I had so much responsibility as an E5. Like to plan these missions and go out and I had like a pistol and a butt pack with one other SEAL with a pistol and a butt pack. And you're going out and you know, talking to these people that just want to kill you.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  And the level of, I guess the Yiddish term would be chutzpah. You know, you gotta get out there and I'll give you this example, man. So we go up to Banja Luka to the 117th VRS. That is a Serbian military unit. I wanted to go check in with these cats and it's kind of on, started on a little hill, but back then you, for Satcom, you had to have the right look angle and azimuth. Remember like you had to point at a satellite.

• 1:01:13Jocko Willink?

  I was a com guy, so yeah.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, right. You know, you get it. Other people that, you know, where's my phone? You know, I can talk to.

• 1:01:19Jocko Willink?

  Anyone.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Anywhere. Right. So back then you had to like, boom, I had to get the satellite. So I had, I do the, the math problem. I look at where I'm going. I realize that I'll have to point this, this antenna into a mountain and I'm not getting comms. And there were no cell phones, right? So I, I understand that, you know, it's just me and my buddy Mick. So we go up there and I'm late, or excuse me, we're on time. This guy's not there. His name was Chulic, Colonel Chulic. We walk in and there's this dude standing right there who has got rosy cheeks like mine, huge white beard, fatter belly than me. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this guy looks like Santa Claus.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  And I start chuckling. So this is a Serbian base, remember NATO had been bombing the Serbs and they are.

• 1:02:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, what was it? 64 days or something?

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Right. They want no part of us and so they are not happy. And they're like, what are you talking about? And my Terp name, his name is Zoran Azuminevic. They called him Zorka because he was fat and like Zorka, like orca.

• 1:02:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay, got it.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Right. So Zoran, they're like, um, he's starting to worry and, and.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  They're like, what are you laughing at? I go, all right, well, it's look like this is going down right now, you know? And there's like 400 Serbs there and two of us, we have 31 rounds of nine millimeter with us. Like that's it. So I go, okay, hey, in the United States, we have a guy, his name is Santa Claus and you look just like him. That's what we're laughing at and they start laughing and they go, oh, they're Serbian Orthodox. They have Saint Nicholas. They're like, that's what we call him too. I was like, okay, you know? And then, so we sit down at this table. Chulit, yeah, that really happened.

• 1:03:04Jocko Willink?

  You almost had an international incident because you were laughing at, at Saint Nicholas.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Right, it gets more bananas. So we're sitting at this huge table and Chulit is supposed to show up at the head of the table. And whenever you use an interpreter, you put him in between you and whoever you're talking to, right? So they should just be a conduit for language. So he's sitting there, this guy's just late, late, late, late. We're sitting there drinking Shlievica, just a plum brandy. It's excellent, actually in France, they call it O D V, water of life. Maybe it's a Mirabell plum, in case you're wondering. But, um, so this guy finally shows up and my, my radio is in this rucksack. And this dude, he's dressed like a Russian Mothe guy.

• 1:03:47Jocko Willink?

  This is the dude that just showed up?

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  The Colonel who should have been there like three hours before. He was in Banyulka goofing off. Anyway, black leather jacket, hair slicked back and he's like, you know, uh, Serbians are great warriors. I'm like, yeah, they are. He goes, uh, Serbians kept Europe safe from the Ottomans for 300 years. I'm like, yeah. Serbians could kick NATO out of here anytime we want. I look at him, I go, you see that radio right there? You keep that up, I'm going to rain fire from the sky on you in 10 minutes. Is that clear? And Zoran, remember I'm an E5 dude, talking to this Serbian Colonel. So Zoran's there, he's just like, like instant sweat, like he just ate a ghost pepper.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  And he's like, uh, I go, Zoran, you tell him exactly what I said right now or you're out of here. And he's like, okay.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  You keep that up, he's gonna rain fire from the sky on you in 10 minutes. And Chulich was like, what I meant to say was, the Serbians and NATO can have an effective working relationship to make sure that we secure Pizhnyi Bosnian, like, check. So, we get done with the meeting, it went really well after that. We get back in the car and Sarn's like, Derek, you know where you're at? And I go, yeah, I'm in Kula Camp. And he goes, do you know what happened to Kula Camp? I'm like, no. So, what I failed to notice is that like, all these buildings were freshly painted and everything was nice.

• 1:05:14Jocko Willink?

  They'd been destroyed.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Destroyed by NATO. So when I told that guy, I'll be raining fire from the sky on you in 10 minutes. He understood what that meant.

• 1:05:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  Isn't that terribly interesting?

• 1:05:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  That's when I was E5, dude.

• 1:05:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's crazy, the amount of responsibility you can get.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Jocko Willink?

  In the military.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  I was one of the guys that ran the six platoons. The mission was declassified in like, 2009, so we protected the top six Iraqi officials. And during the election cycle, I had this guy named Ibrahim Al-Jaffary, so I was a platoon chief at this time.

• 1:05:52Jocko Willink?

  So this is Team 1?

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  No, this would be Team 5. So I was at Team 4, and then I went to 18 Delta, I went to Team 1, I get one pay com platoon there.

• 1:06:04Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so hold on, slow down a little bit.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  No, sorry.

• 1:06:06Jocko Willink?

  So, you're, you're at Team 4, you get done at Team 4.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:06:10Jocko Willink?

  And you get done with this Bosnian deployment, which is an awesome deployment for back then, it's like you were...

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  It was the only war we had.

• 1:06:15Jocko Willink?

  The, the, the most stoked you could possibly be at that time.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:20Jocko Willink?

  And then you get forced to go to 18 Delta, against your will.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:25Jocko Willink?

  But you go down there and kick ass.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:06:27Jocko Willink?

  Graduate number one guy in the class.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  That is correct.

• 1:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Now you, now, what happens?

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Okay. So, I was supposed to go to Danek. You know how you have C daddies and they lay out your whole plan for you?

• 1:06:38Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  And the corpsman detailers, first name's Tom, he's a very good guy, I don't know where he's at now. So, the plan was for me to finish 18 Delta, and at that point, they were only taking 8491s, that's the senior level, just for your audience. So there's 8492s, that's the basic, you know, special forces medic, and then the, the full graduate of the Army Special Forces Medical Sergeant's course. At that time, the Danek was only taking these guys. So that's why I had to go to 18 Delta. Tom sets all this up. But then I'm sitting there, this, remember this is 98, 99 ish? And I had been gone for the five and plus years I was at Team Four. And Sarah and I had three kids at the time. She's a San Diego native. And I really felt horrible. You know what I mean?

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Cause I'm a husband and a dad and all this stuff and her family's still here, they're wonderful.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna ask to get assigned to the west coast. So that I can continue to work as a frogman, as I should. But she'll have more support network around me. Or around her, sorry. So, um, we're sitting in this meeting, you know, Tom pulls all the corps in, where do you want to go? Where do you want to go? And he's asking him, you know, bum, bum, bum, east coast, west coast, whatever. And he looks at me and he's like, you know, just skipping over me. And I said, west coast? And he was like, what? I go, yeah, west coast, man. He's like, check. Goes around everybody. I put in five. Cause that was the SEAL Team Four. Then I put in three, then I put in one. Now, this is the person that decides where you are going. Like it is up to him. Where did I go?

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  Team one.

• 1:08:16Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  He was so mad. And at me personally. And I mean, it was a great experience there, but it was just so different. Like I got yelled at, I would say 40 times in the first two months I was there, cause I had like the wrong parent at Team One.

• 1:08:33Jocko Willink?

  When did you get there?

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  Gosh, he was, he was 98, late 98? So FAC was there and you know, the whole machine.

• 1:08:39Jocko Willink?

  So I left in 98.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  Okay, so that's.

• 1:08:42Jocko Willink?

  So you had just, we just missed, I left, I left in the spring of 98. So if you didn't get there until?

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  I can't remember, man.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  I deployed in, um, 2000, so whatever that cycle would be.

• 1:08:57Jocko Willink?

  Yep. So yeah, I left in the spring of 98, but yeah, at that time, just, uh, we called Team One, stalag Team One, because it was like strict and it was traditional and it was uniform inspections and haircut inspections and all these kinds of things were going on and I loved it.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Well, that's why you wrote a book called like discipline equals freedom. And I didn't. Let's just be really clear about that. You know what I mean?

• 1:09:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's one of those things where, you know, that's where I was kind of raised, you know, from a young kid to, you know, that's where I've got all my first experience. And, you know, like you talk about faculty, faculty was like my.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  It's a legend.

• 1:09:35Jocko Willink?

  And like a legit friend who looked out for me and my group of friends. We were all kind of his boys and

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:09:44Jocko Willink?

  You know, we worked, we fricking busted our ass and that's what

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what?

• 1:09:48Jocko Willink?

  That's what happened.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  I remember you checking out because you were there with Chris.

• 1:09:51Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  That's when I was checking.

• 1:09:54Jocko Willink?

  And I was, I was, I was sailor of the year at SEAL Team One.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:09:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was, but the, I was the, the only E5 in history.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  You made E5?

• 1:10:04Jocko Willink?

  Or a sailor of the year as an E5? SEAL Team One as an E5, which was crazy. But part of that was because of FAC.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:10:10Jocko Willink?

  FAC, like, you know, I was worked hard for FAC, I worked right for him, um, in training shell and stuff. But yeah, it was this very strict environment of much more militaristic than the other teams. And I, I went from there to team two and team two was similar.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Right. That was, it was, no, we called it Stalin.

• 1:10:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was, it was pretty Stalin-ish as well.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  They're the same.

• 1:10:30Jocko Willink?

  They were, they were the same. SEAL Team One and SEAL Team Two were definitely on the spectrum of way more militaristic.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Way.

• 1:10:37Jocko Willink?

  So that's, and you know what happened at team one? A lot of guys from team one would hated it and would go to team five. They would go down the street, team five and just be like, oh, now we can like act like humans.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:50Jocko Willink?

  And be chill. And so, and that would be cool. That's a, that's a nice transition. Your transition in the opposite direction is not a nice transition.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Like I'd had the wrong pair of, there's like a matrix. So Dean Cummings, who was, he's a great dude. I mean, he was the CMC there. And, uh, it was always like Van Arden, you know, this hat and the socks and this shoes and whatever. I'm like, so finally I go, hey, Master Chief, now remember I've done two platoons, one combat deployment to Bosnia. I was the, I, I got the Defense Military Service Medal as E5 was the most highly decorated guy from my rotation because of some other stuff that I did there, right?

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Honorable graduate of my Army Special Forces Medical Sardines Course. I'm not some new guy that just fell off, you know, the BUDS train, right? I am experienced. At that point, I was a journeyman SEAL.

• 1:11:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Not a master. I was a journeyman. And finally, I'm like, hey, Master Chief, can I get like a matrix of what I can wear with what? Because I'm not doing this on purpose. I just don't know what you expect me to wear every day. So PT is this, and then you change it. And he was like, and I go, I'm not joking. And then he realized I was sincere.

• 1:11:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Cause

• 1:11:58Jocko Willink?

  Dude, the guy you're talking about, Chris, who's like one of the biggest studs in human history. But we, we were in BUDS together. And then we get to Team One, and we're going on a run, like we're new guys. And he walks out for the run. He's wearing a visor, like a, like a visor, like, you know, I don't know. He still wears a visor.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Where they used to cut those, the hat off?

• 1:12:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So he walks out with a visor on and faculty, who didn't know us at the time, we're just new guys, looks at him, he goes, if I see you wearing that again, I'm sending you to the fleet. Like, like, we just got done with BUDS, and he's telling him, he's gonna send him to the fleet.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, this guy, Chris, is like this, a total stud in every way.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  He's one of those mutant humans.

• 1:12:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's a mutant human.

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's incredibly He relieved me in Iraq.

• 1:12:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  I got a cool story about that. Remind me of that.

• 1:12:47Jocko Willink?

  Nice. So you eventually figure out what you gotta do to keep your, keep from getting your ass chewed at SEAL Team One?

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Correct. Do a PECOM deployment, and then Force 21 came about. Remember that?

• 1:13:02Jocko Willink?

  Thankfully.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Thankfully. Well, thankfully and no, there's some very distinct, I mean, like hardcore negative squele because of Force 21. The first and foremost one is it SEALs don't want to do stuff anymore.

• 1:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I guess the, the thing is, at that time,

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  It was needed.

• 1:13:20Jocko Willink?

  It was needed, and it was lucky, because if we would've gone from the old system into what we ended up deploying as once nine 11, it would've been really, it would've been much harder transition. We would've pulled it off.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  And when I say SEALs don't want to do stuff anymore, I mean, we're stone cold killers, right? That's not changed. I just mean like the day to day sort of things. We've lost that.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  We've lost the ability to like learn how to sew your own gear because people I'm like I know how to use an industrial sewing machine as did everybody in the SEAL teams because you'd make your own stuff in the paraloth right things like that how do you build a duck and whatnot but um so

• 1:13:52Jocko Willink?

  What was your job in your platoon at Team 1?

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  I was a corpsman

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  So, oh, so yeah, that's right.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  And I was an intel guy. That's what I did.

• 1:13:59Jocko Willink?

  That's your thing.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  That was my thing. I got it. But so um Force 21 comes around and um I again I was I was distinctly dissatisfied with the line of warfare training that I got at Team 1. I I it was it was not adequate because remember I came from Team 4 where you spent that was what you did. I mean, you lived in the J and um so I'm like there's no war going on. There's nothing. I go I'm going to and remember it was over at Brown or Turner Field. What's the uh you know, next to the EOD buildings over in Coronado?

• 1:14:33Jocko Willink?

  What are we, what are we talking about?

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  That that field Turner Field or?

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Turner Field.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Okay, so this is this is how discombobulated this was and it's fascinating. They just put the road cones like they put a road cone with like Team 1, Team 5, Team 3, Trade At and you would go stand behind the road cone. That's how I got to Trade At. I stood behind a road cone.

• 1:14:52Jocko Willink?

  That's how they figured out how to detail people?

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was

• 1:14:57Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of cool actually.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  It's sort of cool, but it was a mess. And um so I walk over to the building, the starship, you know, I don't know if they're even there anymore. The one that was shared by 1 and 3 and we started um Trade At. We had like the second floor or whatever it was. I walk in an empty room. It's me and Jeff Green. Then we're like, we're it. Like we're the land

• 1:15:18Jocko Willink?

  Beginning of Trade At.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Land Warfare. And so I went through everybody's safes in all of the teams and I took all of their documentation going back to the Vietnam War, you know, the the type stuff, after action reports, and I consolidated all those things and we wrote all of the curriculum for land warfare and then special reconnaissance, taking the lessons learned, going back from our forefathers that gave us our, you know, fierce reputation and then worked those over and over again. But I get there, we start doing that and then um September 11th happens and I was down and we lived in Navy housing. And I'm like, what the heck? We got a phone call from a guy named Andy Dalton,

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  retired SEAL Senior Chief, his wife Cheryl. Just beautiful people. It's wonderful. Oops, sorry. And they're, he's at Team Two at the time. And they're like, turn on your television. So we turn it on and we're like, what the heck is going on? And so I go, hey, honey, keep the kids home from school. I do not know what's happening. I drive to the team area. We get snipers up in the building. We don't, we don't know what's happening. And I remember I went with this big vat board, this big whiteboard, and I took a red marker and I wrote war. And these big letters right there. And at that point, we had desks and everything. Like war, like it's on. And so from that point on, I tried to get out of

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  there. Because we're at war, right? And Lumpy was the skipper there. And every morning, I'd go in his office, just like I do Perry Bruce. Like, okay, I'm ready to go. Bags are packed. He's like, you're going to Afghanistan when I go to Afghanistan, Bano. And I'm like, ready to go. Every morning, every morning. Ready to go, ready to go. And then we're going out to Nairol. I think I was gone, I mean, like 290 days that year. Then finally, he's like, okay, you can go. Leave me alone. So I weaseled my way into an L and O position for the Seachisoda. And I worked that for about a month. And then I was down working for the chief of station in Kabul. Because I identified a problem. I looked at the entire spectrum of all of the operations that were, that are taking place. And I'm looking, we

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  were completely, we were not employed to the capacity that we should be as SEALs. And it's because we didn't have assets and authorities and all this stuff. So I laid this plan out. I'm like, if we tied this asset to this person who has control over this, then we can execute the mission better as SEALs. And I went to John, gosh, what was his name?

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Seleski, Colonel Seleski was the SOF commander. I said, Colonel, NAVSOF is not being employed to our capacity. And he's like, I know, you know what's going on. And I said, sure, if we do this, this, this, this, and this. And he goes, all right, beat it. He was, he was the finest joint warfare fighter I've ever worked with. I mean, Repass was another one. He's another army guy, unfortunately. I wish I could lay out this list of SEAL admirals I can say that about. There's a few, but yeah, John was just, he was amazing. And he's like, get down there and get it on, Van O. What's up? Beat feet. So we tied together for Theater SOF, the first real inter-agency integration. Like biometrics. Remember biometrics? So everyone's like, you

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  know, so I was there and I was sitting around, you know, reflecting, because you should reflect. And I was looking at one of those charts where it has all the people on a targeted list. And I was like, we don't know who is still around off this list. We don't know. And so I went and talked to a guy named Jax. He's still a super good friend of mine. He's the senior FBI agent in the country. And his office was right around the corner from mine down in Kabul at the annex. And I'm like, Jax, how does the FBI know who people are

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  after they're deceased? And he's like, well, you know, we do fingerprints, we do all the stuff. And I go, well, okay. So how do we do that here? And he's like, well, I don't know. I mean, this is a huge story. So I figured out a thing for us to be able to initially fingerprint folks. So the first time, this is why I am the Forrest Gump of the SEAL teams. So the first time that Theater SOF ever used biometrics in Afghanistan, really in the War on Terror, was because I cooked up this idea with this dude who was on the Memphis SWAT team. And so we went out, did this very complicated series of stuff, AC-130 and 47s and all night and, you know, big target deck and everything. And he had like the Johnny

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  G-Man, you know, 1930s FBI fingerprint kit, the blue suitcase with the silver corners to fingerprint these, you know, the enemy combatants that were no longer around. That's how all that started. That was an incredibly interesting thing, man. And then I rolled back and I went to Team Five where I was a potential chief.

• 1:20:18Jocko Willink?

  What year was that? What year was that there where you were in Afghanistan?

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Two thousand and three. I left October thirteenth, two thousand and three. I remember that because it's the...

• 1:20:28Jocko Willink?

  That's when you left Afghanistan?

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  For my first tour, yeah.

• 1:20:32Jocko Willink?

  Wait, you left for Afghanistan?

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  No, I came back.

• 1:20:35Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  I came back. So it took me, I was there for six or seven months. So, you know, do the math between September eleventh to that point.

• 1:20:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  But, um, that's the birthday of the Navy, Jaco.

• 1:20:47Jocko Willink?

  There you go. I was not aware of that. Sorry.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:20:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What can I say?

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Horrible sailor. Sorry to interrupt. But, um, yeah, I came back and I went to Team Five where I was a platoon chief.

• 1:21:00Jocko Willink?

  So you get to Team Five. Now it's two thousand and three. So at this point, we are full on, like, everyone's going to war.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  Or in it to win it. Iraq opened up. Right when I got back from Afghanistan, I can't remember when we invaded, but it was right around there. I saw, it was, so the plan for that was ten oh three Victor. So ten oh three was the, the baseline operational plan. And then the letters on the end are how many, um, how many different versions of it? Right. So it got down to Victor. So ten oh three Victor was the plan when I left. And all the heavy lift aircraft started leaving Afghanistan when I was there. And I'm like, there's only so much heavy lift aircraft. And I go, oh, my gosh, they're going to do ten oh three Victor. So me coming back, I don't know exactly the periodicity when the, the actual invasion kicked off, but I knew it was going to happen

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  because of the heavy lift aircraft, maybe. Um, so, you know, I'm a platoon chief and I want to go to war with my dudes. I mean, I, there's one of these books written by Dick Couch that they interviewed us when I was teaching land warfare. And in that book, I'm like, he's like, what do you want to do essentially? I'm like, my goal is to become a platoon chief. Like, that's it. That, to me, that's a pinnacle of a enlisted SEAL's job, is being a platoon chief. Then I was a troop chief later, but that was, you know, the thing. Um, and then we wind up, they, they get this mission, this mission set protecting these Iraqi dignitaries. And I'm like, oh, man.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  So, I mean, not that it's not important, but the war was not going well at the time. And again, I said this earlier, but that mission is declassified in 2009. So the top six Iraqi officials were protected by SEAL platoons. Then, it's kind of cool. They randomly assigned NFL football teams names. That was your, your callsign. Guess what mine was?

• 1:22:51Jocko Willink?

  No idea.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Packers.

• 1:22:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there you go.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  From Wisconsin. I'm like, this dude might live, man. Like, whoa. So, um, yeah, we protected a guy. He was a deputy vice president. His name was Ibrahim Al-Jafar. He was a family physician at six kids, fled Saddam, lived in Iran, wound up in London. And it was, it was really, it was amazingly interesting to do that mission. And all the bros are out down. You guys are doing your gig, you know? And I was essentially, I went to every place in that country, running protection for a guy that's running a political campaign during a war where everybody wants to kill you.

• 1:23:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it was, it was a miracle. Not just a miracle. It was freaking awesome work by the guys.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:40Jocko Willink?

  To keep the, all those guys safe. I mean, there was, everybody wanted all the, well, not everybody, but a big number of people wanted to kill one or any one of those people. And that leadership was kept alive.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Jocko Willink?

  For, how long was that mission? Cause you said I was out doing, I wasn't doing anything. At that point, I'd come back, you know, I really, you know, my timing was really, really good because I was, went up, did just DA's for my first deployment, which was just awesome. As we left, that mission came up.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:24:14Jocko Willink?

  And then when I came back, it was over. So I had awesome timing as far as not having to do that mission.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  It, it lasted through, I mean, I came back after the elections. So again, the Forrest Gump thing, man, remember everybody's fingers dipped?

• 1:24:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  Alright, so there's a picture of this guy who became the first democratically elected prime minister in Iraq's history, right? There's a picture of him with his finger up there. I'm standing directly behind the camera that took that picture.

• 1:24:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  Because I was responsible for his security.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  So, oh, back to Chris, man. So he, he's coming in and Bliff is there and we're rotating out, right? And two really funny things happened with him. One, it's, it's a prestige thing.

• 1:24:55Jocko Willink?

  So wait, so he's coming in with Team Seven? Or who's he coming in with? Your Team Five must have been.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know who it was. And he was the chief and, and

• 1:25:03Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  And Bliff was his, oh, I see, you know? And, um, so two funny things happened. There's a cultural thing in, um, some Arabic countries, uh, Iraq being one, where, um, you want to be as close to the center of power as possible. I guess that's here in the United States too. But, um, so we would run these motorcades, right? Uh, lead limo follow. And then you'd have, uh, elements ahead of you and then behind you. So if anything happened, you can skedaddle and these guys get in the gunfight. So you're protecting the principal. And I talked to these guys over and over again. I'm like, look, you're very important people. I get that, you know, you're the minister of whatever the heck, but our sole function

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  is to make sure that Echo lives. You know what I mean? We're gonna help you whatever we want, medical, but that will not be to the detriment of making sure that Echo's alive. Check? So they always try to weasel into this convoy. And these guys had one of those beautiful old Mercedes Benz, like the powder blue, you know, I'm talking the big, just awesome. And the guy's name was Adnan Philfil. He was his, his security chief. Philfil is, um, Arabic for pepper, because he had a real hot temper, you know? And Chris is in the car with Bliff and we're sitting there, you know, blazing through Baghdad. And, um, looking in the mirror, you know, it's, it's interesting when you're in combat. You get to that point where you see everything.

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean? Like, things are happening over here. And you have a full holistic understanding of your environment. And that's really why I think people miss being in that, you know, in combat, because you are completely alive. Anyway, so I'm talking to them like, oh, my gosh, hold on a sec. This guy has weaseled behind us in this powder blue Mercedes. It's on not fulfilled. So I just opened up my door like this, this up armored. And I point my M4 back at him. I mean, clearly, I'm not going to shoot him. But I, I point my M4 at him. He's like, and goes back to the back of the, the line of this, you know, huge motorcade. And Chris was like, what just happened? He actually used some expletives. And I'm like, I'm trying to tell you, these people are going to keep doing that. They're on our side.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  But it's very important that they understand the ground rules that are being set here. And that's going to happen over and over again. Chris, it doesn't matter how hard you try, they're going to keep doing it. And then the other thing, it's funny, we're down at, um, do you remember who Tarek Aziz was?

• 1:27:32Jocko Willink?

  I remember that name.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, the guy with the big sunglasses. Okay, so his house was taken over by a guy named Abdul Aziz Hakim, who was part of the Dalai party and was right by the, you exited the green zone, went over the 14th July Bridge. It's like right there. So that's where all these meetings are taking place. So we had to go down there. They only take the AIC, which is the agent in charge. That was the, you know, renamed OIC. They take him inside. They didn't want anybody else there. So we've got all these cars around. And I have my car and my body armor's in there. My helmet's in there, my rifle's in there, and I have a pistol. And we'd set up everywhere and you'd be there for hours and hours and hours. So I'd go around checking everybody, everybody's, you know, good to go.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  I'm in Chris and Bliss's car. And I'm like, okay, so if we have an indirect attack, mortar, artillery, whatever, you just got to wait a minute and see if it develops into a complex attack. Meaning, so they mortar stuff and then they can use that to make everybody go to ground. And then they can start infiltrating, you know, with ground troops. So I go, so if that happens and you just wait a sec and then you punch out a perimeter immediately so that no one can infiltrate your lines and you gotta just, you gotta do it like boom, this happens, go. And I open up the door, I hop out and boom, like right over there, huge explosion, I go, just like this. And I sit back in the car, like seriously, I said, just like this, and I sit back in the car, wait a minute.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  Okay, go. And then I realized, I don't have a rifle, I have my pistol. So you remember that little, the green army man, the medic?

• 1:29:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  Running with the pistol. So I'm running in Baghdad with the pistol. I started.

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  Wait, where was your freaking weapon, bro?

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  It was in my vehicle, which was right next to theirs. Like right there.

• 1:29:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you went over to tell him what to do?

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  I was going in, I was briefing them about how to handle different attack scenarios.

• 1:29:28Jocko Willink?

  In that one time, you didn't?

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  The one time, you know, that happens.

• 1:29:31Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking awful.

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  And so I'm like, you know, running to a perimeter with a pistol in my hand, I start chuckling. Cause I'm like, I just look absurd at this point. But I'm a very good pistol shot, by the way. And what, what it turned out.

• 1:29:45Jocko Willink?

  That ain't gonna cut it, bro.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  That ain't gonna cut it, no, seriously. I know. Hey, listen. I, I think we should discuss things, warts and all, you know. But what, what happened was the Iraqi police had had an AD with an RPG. So that was not an impact, that was an outgoing. But they had that moon dust out there, you know, so you couldn't tell, it looked like a mortar round coming. It didn't sound like a mortar round, but it, it looked like one because of the impact. So that's my funny SEAL story right there.

• 1:30:14Jocko Willink?

  What did you learn from a leadership perspective on that deployment? That's a tough deployment from a different angle. Because you got guys that are pissed to be doing this job, but it's a very, it's a strategic mission to keep these guys alive.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  I learned, well, I didn't really learn it, it just reinforced some things for me. The mission always comes first, no matter what. And the mission's America. It's not some of this woke bullshit that these military officers are coming up with now. Sorry for swearing, but that that ain't the mission, dude. The mission's America. And that's gotta happen every day. That's why, you know, my fat bald person, I'm running for Congress now because the mission is America and and America's being failed by our leadership. Anyway, side note. So mission comes first. And then I also learned to let some things roll.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  And and this is why. We were late. So the doctor lived in the Cottosia, which was like a neighborhood right outside of checkpoint 11. So checkpoint 11 went from the green zone to Route Irish, where everybody's getting killed all the time. You had to drive down a mile or so, whatever. Button hook left into the Cottosia to pick this guy up. And so we were late and I'm like, you know, frick, frack, frack, you know, being a SEAL sailor guy. We're living in Uday Hussein's, one of his joints on, I think it was Grey Wolf was the fob there. But anyway, so we're late and then boom, just massive, massive car bomb goes off right at checkpoint 11. Like it was so big, it blew a car like 50 feet up on top of a tree.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  And here's what happened. They knew we were going to the Cottosia and this, they had this huge bomb. And the traffic keeps going forward and forward and forward and forward. It finally gets to the checkpoint and they clack themselves off. We were supposed to be in that line passing. It would have killed the entire platoon, except for the one guy we had working at the jock. So that was a real lesson. Yeah. Should you strive to be on time? Sure. But you need to make sure that if things are going a little hinky, try to figure out why.

• 1:32:29Jocko Willink?

  I used to have, you know, my, my thing was my joke was, but it wasn't really a joke, but it kind of was. You know, you have no go criteria, like, hey, we, we don't have the aircraft cover we want. That's no go. Or we don't have enough vehicles or we, and I used to joke, but I would, serious, I'd be like, no, it's, we have, in my tasking, we have go, go criteria. Which is we're going and we don't have aircraft, we'll, we'll call tanks. But, but occasionally, even with that attitude, I'd be like, well, okay, we don't have this, we don't have that. We, you know, this isn't working out. We haven't talked to these people. And I'd be like, the. Universe is conspiring against this operation and we're not gonna do it.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:06Jocko Willink?

  So it's just like a gut feeling where I'd like I can there's I'll cover obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle. No factor, no factor, no factor, no factor, no factor. This there's this is this is we're not doing this.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  Well, that's a function of maturity.

• 1:33:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  It really is. And sometimes you just look at things and you're like, nonstarter.

• 1:33:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  And that's okay.

• 1:33:29Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, you get done with this deployment.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  In Iraq.

• 1:33:35Jocko Willink?

  In Iraq.

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:33:36Jocko Willink?

  And then what's your next move? So that's your platoon chief deployment. You get done with that deployment, what's your next move?

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  I came back and I'm a plank owner at what was known as the support activities.

• 1:33:45Jocko Willink?

  Support activities.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:33:46Jocko Willink?

  So you're going there and the support activity, basic mission is to gather intelligence.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  It's like a combination of all the ins. And, um, you know, I just had an act for that, too. So I was one of the first five guys, you know, sitting around trying to figure this out. Rob Newsom was the first skipper. He's retired cap now. He worked for the 76ers doing some stuff.

• 1:34:11Jocko Willink?

  No idea.

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, um, yeah, that was a very, very, um, rewarding time to build something else up from the ground. Because I only built or helped build, you know, this is not clearly this is all a team effort, but, um, helped build the special reconnaissance land warfare part of trade ed. And then doing that, it's like the whole team. Which was, which was fascinating. And then I did some deployments from that that are not really a topic for discussion.

• 1:34:42Jocko Willink?

  Right. And how, but how long did you spend there?

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:34:47Jocko Willink?

  Like three years? Couldn't have been that long, actually.

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  Well, I came back from Iraq.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  And then that was would have been 2005 or six, and I think I left there in 2008 ish. It's like two or three years.

• 1:35:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  There, because I went to special operations command Europe after that.

• 1:35:07Jocko Willink?

  After that, but didn't you go to seven first?

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry.

• 1:35:12Jocko Willink?

  Cause you, cause I know that's when you and I really, that's when you and I crossed. I think we'd met each other along the way at some point.

• 1:35:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:35:18Jocko Willink?

  But we, I didn't actually.

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:35:20Jocko Willink?

  PID you.

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:35:22Jocko Willink?

  Until I was at trade at, and you were at team seven.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  I was a troop chief. So I went from, you're right. It was sport activity, team seven, special operations command Europe. And then I retired out of since seal swag.

• 1:35:34Jocko Willink?

  So, okay. So you do, you're doing, working with the ins and by what you mean by that is human intelligence, signal intelligence, all that kind of intelligence gathering. We'll say you did that for a few years. I'm not going to talk about that here. And then you go.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  What there, you want to see something cool? Keep talking. Go ahead.

• 1:35:53Jocko Willink?

  Well, you're breaking stuff up.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  I'll, I want to show you one of the coolest pictures ever.

• 1:35:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  Um, because this was on my last deployment from Afghanistan.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  Check that one out. That's a winner.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  That picture's taken about three or four months after the boat scene on active valor was filmed.

• 1:36:19Jocko Willink?

  The boat scene on active valor is filmed.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  So active valor is a movie with much seals in it.

• 1:36:24Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  I'm in the movie.

• 1:36:26Jocko Willink?

  When was that filmed?

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  Gosh, it was.

• 1:36:29Jocko Willink?

  That wasn't, that wasn't until later.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  It came out in 2012 or something, but that, it took like three years to film that movie. Because everybody except for the officer in the, the film deployed to combat during the filming of that movie. What happens if someone gets killed? It's going to wreck the movie. You're like, well, thanks. Deeply appreciate your caring about us. You're going to have to rewrite a script. It will take you eight minutes because there was no script.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, uh, I think it came out 2012. So they started filming that in 2009 ish. Cause I was, that was, I was working up to go to Afghanistan when that was filmed and that. So here's, here's what happened with that movie.

• 1:37:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, let's, let's talk to SEAL Team Seven first.

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  Okay. So you. Well, this is at SEAL Team Seven. Right, so yeah, so check this out. So I am a troop chief at Team Seven. And then this super specialized mission came along that I had done previously. And I'm the only one at the team that has done this. And I'm the only one with the qualification, well, there's two other guys with the same qualification as me. But I'm the only one that has actually done this mission, working for this other subset of people doing this stuff. So the skipper's like, I don't know what I'm doing. I mean, God bless him. He had no idea. He goes, you can pick anybody you want from the team. And take him to go do this. So me and the guy who I won't mention, he's actually right next to me in that picture because he's still active duty. We went through everybody's records at Team Seven. I'm like, you know, this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  And then we need comms guys and all these other folks. And we put together this little group of folks to deploy to Afghanistan to do this super specialized mission. That was at Team Seven. So I went from being a troop chief. We had fifty-six or sixty-three.

• 1:38:03Jocko Willink?

  That was after, that was after you did your troop chief?

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  That was my troop chief deployment. So we, we sent guys to Balad. Iraq was not happening. They're wearing starch uniforms and they have no magazines in their guns. They're walking and saluting people in Iraq. I don't want any part of that. And then there was a small group that went to Afghanistan to get reattached to the siege of Sotomayor for the first time since Red Wings happened. And then I took another group of guys over here. So my guys got farmed to Balad to do nothing. A small group of them, it's declassified now, went to Yemen. And then we went to Afghanistan to do this other subset. So we didn't have a traditional, you know, task unit go out and, you know, like Bruiser.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  We didn't, it just wasn't available.

• 1:38:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  So, no, it wasn't. So I went and did that.

• 1:38:55Jocko Willink?

  How'd you like being a troop chief?

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  You know what? It was interesting, but it's not.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  It's not, uh. It wasn't like as hands-on. The logistics part was, you know, it was more difficult to get done. And then you, you're managing personalities.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  You know, I could, I would prefer to do this.

• 1:39:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, I guess if your, your troop gets all split up.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if, if we had a traditional, or a traditional, you know, air quotations, you know, oh, five, oh, six Iraq, or um, if we could do like, uh, oh, three Afghanistan, where you are seriously getting it.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  That would have been much different. Um, but in effect, you know, I had guys, like, one of my guys, I'll give you an example of why, uh, one of my guys, I think I had six SEALs with me. So going from like sixty SEALs to six, but they're all like, you know what? We were doing that, like, driving around in thin-skinned vehicles by ourselves during the day in Afghanistan. And your QRF is not coming.

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:40:09Speaker 01

  So the level of stress that is applied, I mean, it's so much easier, and you know this, to go with fifty dudes and lock something down and go in and just, you know, do SEAL stuff. And that's great. And it, you know, we get a lot of, it's very stressful. That's really stressful. When you got to plan these things in detail, intricate, and if you make one mistake, it's over. Um, and I did that for several years. I mean, it's upper division warfare is what I call it.

• 1:40:38Jocko Willink?

  Upper division warfare.

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is totally. Cause you have to have a holistic understanding of all the thresholds, going from the E-Lent, the electronic warfare perspective, all the way down to, how do I shoot my gun? Way different than, you know.

• 1:40:54Jocko Willink?

  Go that way.

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  So when you build this picture, you have, um, you have like a, a global perspective, but for a local area. And you understand you have all these triggers that if they start getting pinged, you gotta bail.

• 1:41:13Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  And sometimes you intentionally trigger them. So.

• 1:41:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:18Speaker 01

  Interesting. So that was troop, troop chief thing. Um, in a way, it was not as exciting as it should have been, but you're, again.

• 1:41:27Jocko Willink?

  That's the first place, like I said, that's the first time that I like remember you PIDing, like, oh, yeah, that's, cause you know, I'd seen you around and you were at SA, whatever, but, but that's the first time I remember you, like, we were out at, at desert training and like, meeting you and hanging out and running the FTXs and all that stuff, having good times.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:48Jocko Willink?

  Carrying some, you were carrying some, you know, some wounded men out there, which

• 1:41:52Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:41:56Jocko Willink?

  Which seems to have left a mark on some people emotionally at this juncture. I was a little bit, I was a little bit crazy when it came back, so.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  All right, man. Hey, listen, I got, I'll tell you something. I don't know if your, your viewers understands. I remember when you came back and you went around the teams and you gave a brief that you called "The Pressure." Remember that?

• 1:42:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  The Pressure. And at that point, because I didn't know you either, you know what I mean? You're like some dude, bad haircut, probably lifts too many weights and drinks energy drinks, you know, whatever, just total dime a dozen seal. Let's just be honest. It's good to be the diamond in the rough. But you gave this brief and it was, you called it "The Pressure" and it was, what you're doing is you're conveying, I mean, this is my perspective, obviously you wrote it, conveying the burden of leadership and the fact that you truly, at that point, got it, which is a lot of officers never get it. And I was watching you and I thought you were much younger than me at the time, I don't

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  know, but I was like, this guy gets it. Like he understands ramifications of poor decision making and things are real.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  And it just doesn't affect, you know, your reputation as I'm a, I'm a great operator, you know, that it affects families and then it affects the nation. And I understood that. That's when I really got a respect for you is when, listening to you see that, because I could see your heart was breaking when you're discussing this and that you weren't making anything up. Being very genuine about leadership is really important and we're missing that, dude. We're missing that from the tactical, strategic and operational level throughout our country and private industry and the government especially. It's, it's terrible. So, now you guys know.

• 1:43:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I haven't given that brief in a long time.

• 1:43:49Jocko Willink?

  And I remember thinking about it and, you know, thinking about the experiences that I had, you know, when, when we deployed in tasking a bruiser, you know, they're, they're, we hadn't lost any guys on the west coast yet.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:06Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, even looking into, you know, we were just talking about the workup and you're going through the workup and like a downed man was like a a theoretical thing, a, a, a problem solving event that you're going to get and you're going to go through it and okay, now that person gets, you know, you're back to life at the end of that training mission. And, uh, obviously that's not the reality of the situation.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:44:28Jocko Willink?

  And, and trying to make sure to convey that to the guys and that's, you know, when I got done with that deployment,

• 1:44:36Jocko Willink?

  you know, the, the admiral who I knew was like, where do you want to go? And I 100% just said, I want to go to, I want to go to trade at, I want to go to trade at and run training. And the reason is because first of all, all the guys in my tasking were all going to go right back into another platoon.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:52Jocko Willink?

  And they were all going to go right back overseas into that meat grinder. And it didn't look like, you know, this was in 2006, we got home, it was still, you couldn't tell when it was going to stop. It just looked like it was going to go on indefinitely. We saw some indications that looking in hindsight, you could see that, oh, that was an indication that things were going to settle down. But you couldn't positively identify them at the time, coming home from deployment was like, no, this is going to last. We're going to have to do this in all these other cities. It's just going to continue and everyone's going back to this meat grinder. And I want to make sure that I can convey these lessons to the guys that are going to go back over there and get in it. And that's what, that's, that's where that came from.

• 1:45:30Speaker 01

  So you, you went to trade at for the same reasons I did, but six years later.

• 1:45:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yep. It was to pass on those lessons and get things headed in the right direction.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Combat survivability of SEALs.

• 1:45:44Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent. And that's why, you know, we're out at an island or we're out at, at the. The urban training sites and it was like, you know, I remember feeling I'd see a guy like in in an urban environment, standing in the middle of the street and I would literally have a sick to my stomach not when I'd see a guy standing in the open. This is in training and I'd, you know, go over and be like, you know, go find cover because you're waiting for the guy to get shot. And that's a horrible feeling. And doing the best to pass those lessons on. That's, you know, that was the goal.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that should be everybody's goal.

• 1:46:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  It's I, when you you take that and you transition it to civilian life.

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  I tell people a couple of things frequently. It is the minimum responsibility of every American citizen to pass on to their children in a country where they have at a minimum, the same ability to choose, to have options. And we're failing at that as a society collectively. If you think about what the government did to the population during this COVID crap. You can't deny it. There's five elements to the First Amendment. There's freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom to seek regrets, regret, redress for grievances, right? All of those were smashed into the ground during COVID. So it's our responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen again. How do we do that? We take

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  the impaired knowledge from what we went through these last two years and we apply that nakedly. Meaning we don't try to read into it. We just look at it and say what it is. And the government now is trying to hide everything. They're trying to do everything back.

• 1:47:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, which is one of the worst things possible. When you make a mistake, you know, you go, hey, look, I made a mistake here. And this was, this was horrible during the whole thing because hey, if you think that this thing spreads this way and it's good and you look up three months later and that turns out to not be true. You say, hey, listen, I made a mistake here. We thought it was this. It was that. Here's the adjustment. You know, I wouldn't send you out on an operation and say, hey, you know, I want you to hit this target from the north. And you go, okay, okay, boss, sounds good. And you hit a couple IEDs on the way in and you go, hey, Jocko, there's IEDs here. I don't go, well, you just keep going where I told you to go. No, I say, hey, look, I made a mistake on the analysis of the scenario. Back out. Let's figure out a better way. No factor. And by the way, you're, you're, you're not, you don't lose respect for

• 1:48:09Jocko Willink?

  me. You go, oh, well, Jock was willing to admit that he made a mistake of the analysis of this.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  And learn from it.

• 1:48:14Jocko Willink?

  And learn from it. And now we're going to make some adjustments. And to see the egos come out where. There's no admission that, hey, you know what, I actually, I, I, I made a bad assessment here. It was wrong and here's the adjustment we need to make. As far as I can tell right now, and by the way, there's a decent chance I'll be wrong again. Which, which also is why I'm not over committing and overstating things. You know, I, I always have fun when I work with companies. And I'll say, how, how often do you, I know, how, how often you people think I have to admit that I'm wrong? And people will think, oh, you know, because I talk about being humble and they go, oh, you admit that you're wrong all the time. And I go, no, I hardly ever have to admit that I'm wrong. And the reason I hardly ever have to admit that I'm wrong is because I hardly ever say, I'm a hundred percent right about this thing.

• 1:48:56Jocko Willink?

  This is how we should do this mission, or this is what this means, or this is how, how to, you should interpret this. No, I say, hey, this is what it looks like from my perspective. Let's take a small step and see what we learn.

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  I say, so, I, I agree with it mostly there, but it's, to me, it's not, this is how I think we should do this. That's, okay, when, when people, um, and this was one of the things that we had to break when we were writing all that curriculum for uh, SR and, and uh, land warfare. This is how this is done. When you say to somebody, this is how this is done, you're over. Because this is how this was done at this time in this place with this series of variables.

• 1:49:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, so you actually agree with what I said, because what I said is,

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  Sort of.

• 1:49:42Jocko Willink?

  Well, what I'm saying is, hey, this is what I think we should do right now. Not, not this is what we should do.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:49:50Jocko Willink?

  This is what I think we should do right now.

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, not, this is, this is not, okay, there's a difference. So this is what we should do is different than this is how this is done. So this is what we should do means that this is the way that I think at this particular time this should be done. Right. Because of these variables, it's open.

• 1:50:08Jocko Willink?

  It's open.

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  This is how this is done, it's closed.

• 1:50:11Jocko Willink?

  It's wrong.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, decision making is, is, is not taking place.

• 1:50:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so that's why I hardly ever have to admit that I'm wrong, because I hardly ever say, hey, I'm a hundred percent right about this thing right here. No, you're not going to catch me saying that, because how often can you be accurate with that? It's very, very seldom that you're going to be in a scenario where you know something with a hundred percent certainty. It almost never happens. And I would rather, even if I'm 99% certain, what, what do I gain out of, you know, imposing some directive on you? If you're working for me. What am I going to gain out of that? You got your perspective. There's a decent chance. You see something I don't see. So my mind's open. Hey, Derek, I think Mike, this might be a good way to do this op. And you go, well, I don't agree. Okay. Well, what do you think? Let's talk.

• 1:50:58Jocko Willink?

  And my gut, my, my bias is to go with what you say.

• 1:51:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:51:03Jocko Willink?

  That is my bias is to you come up with a way to do something. Doesn't matter if I'm. Here's the other interesting thing. It doesn't matter if we're peers or I'm your boss or you're my boss. My bias is to go with what you say. Now, look, if you're totally off the, off the res.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:51:19Jocko Willink?

  And your idea is just ridiculous. Well, it's very easy for me to articulate, hey, Derek, I know you want to do this, you know, jumping parachutes out of the space shuttle, but.

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:51:28Jocko Willink?

  It's going to be really hard for us to get the space shuttle for this operation in a short period of time. So.

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  I thought you were wheeling heat, Jack.

• 1:51:34Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. It's very easy to articulate that, but if I'm having a hard time articulating why I think something should be done a certain way. Then that's a big indicator that maybe it's not worth arguing and maybe it's just easier to say, okay, you know what, Derek? Let's, let's, let's roll with your dice.

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  If you're incapable of articulating appropriately, the methodologies that you're applying to a problem set, you have not thought them through well enough.

• 1:51:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  Boom.

• 1:51:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  Someone taught us SEAL how to read, baby. What's up?

• 1:52:02Jocko Willink?

  It's a real good indicator of that.

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  So you roll out on this deployment, you're doing some. What'd you say? Higher level? What'd you say?

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  What was your word? Upper division warfare.

• 1:52:15Jocko Willink?

  Upper division warfare.

• 1:52:18Jocko Willink?

  Running around without a ton of support, if any. And. You get done with that deployment. We'll go into the details of that one. You come back. What's your next job?

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  Okay. I was going to go teach what I was doing. Cause I believe you should do that, right? Like we talked about that. But then they came, so I was a senior chief at that point. And the billet, the job was for an E7, not an E8. And that's when they went through and they said, hey, look, you used to be able to do one up, one down. So the, the billet is for an E7 and E6 could go do that or E8, right? You could do one up, one down. They're like, no more of this. We don't have enough guys to do this stuff. It's an E7 billet. So I'm like, oh man. So I go check in, it's down at the elephant cage at advanced training. And I was just kinda sitting there and they're like, we gotta find an E7 billet, you know? And there was not, because that's a platoon chief job. Hmm.

• 1:53:14Speaker 01

  And I just got done being a troop chief and you know, so finally I go up to WarCom. This is like a month into this and I feel like I'm stealing money from the government. You know what I mean? Because I go in and check in, they're like, oh, we got nothing to do. And so I go up to, um, Pugs is the guy and, um, Pugs? Pugs, right. So I'm like, Pugs, dude, I, I need a job. And he's like, well, I don't know. So he pulls up the list of like all the SEAL billets on the planet, right? And Bosnia, I flew through Germany, Stuttgart, Boebelingen, is actually the name of the town, on the way there and on the way back. And I'm like, and, uh, my wife, she did like a semester in Germany in college.

• 1:53:58Speaker 01

  So I'm like, well, right there. I want to go there. And he's like, okay. So I get a billet. I get a billet as the J35, which is the contingency operations NCIC at Special Operations Command Europe. That's why I went up there. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I have a knack for this stuff. I, the upper division warfare stuff applies. I understand how to, you know, take very complex problem sets and, uh, distill them down into readily available and achievable solutions. Like it's just something I'm good at. And so I wrote all the contingency, the soft response to contingency operations plans for all the countries in Europe. And then we developed further. Some of them being executed right now, I'm sure.

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. The unconventional warfare campaign plan for, um, the Ukraine is one of them. So at that time, when I left in 2012, uh, me and this other guy named Derek, who's a retired special forces colonel, we gave the Ukrainians a month. Like, so we were planning for a Russian invasion of the Ukraine in 2000, that's 2009, 10. Yep. Right. People think the military doesn't do stuff. We do. But we gave them a month because the authorities were different and. What do you mean you gave them a month? We thought within a month, the Russians would take over the entire country. Oh, got it. Like we gave them a month. DoD, I think was giving them about a week. But, you know, intuitively Derek had multiple combat tours as a special forces officer. He's a fantastic officer.

• 1:55:28Speaker 01

  But we gave him a month because we knew him better. And then they changed the authorities when this happened, so you could give him javelins and stingers, also the weapons that are doing this. So the crux of the plan, I thought, getting, you know, real deep into it, is disaggregated small unit operations facilitated by high-tech weapons. That's it, you know, and then also you have external intelligence and all that stuff. That's just taking place, though. That truly was an amazing thing. It was very intellectually stimulating to do that. But, you know, at that point, because I broke my back and all this stuff, and I can't carry a rock anymore, and that's really why I got out of the teams, is because I just couldn't

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  do the job physically. I didn't want to Brett Favre myself, you know what I mean? Which Brett should have just retired, dude. Green Bay, why'd you go to Minnesota? Brett, I'm looking right into the camera, why did you do that? So doing that really kept me engaged in what was taking place, really, at that point, globally. And so Benghazi went down when I was there, and there were still, SOAF was getting stood up, Special Operations Command Africa, and there was a Commander's and Extremist Force Sharing Agreement, you know, so it was, I was really very deeply involved in the aftermath of Benghazi.

• 1:56:54Speaker 01

  And everything the Clinton folks told you and Obama is a lie.

• 1:56:59Jocko Willink?

  In terms of what?

• 1:57:00Speaker 01

  That should not have happened. And as it was happening, it should have been stopped.

• 1:57:06Jocko Willink?

  And could have been stopped.

• 1:57:08Speaker 01

  Right, so, I mean, background on that. Jimmy Carter, who previously was the worst president in American history, only superseded by the current one, Joe Biden, he is terrible. He just is.

• 1:57:21Jocko Willink?

  It's very difficult to watch.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  It's terrible. I mean... It's painful. So Jimmy Carter did something called Chief of Mission Authority. An American ambassador's real title is Chief of Mission. So the Chief of the Diplomatic Mission, that's the real title. And Carter said, look, no military forces will go into a country without the approval of the Chief of Mission, unless it's a Title X designated country. Meaning, so Title X is the Department of Defense thing, and we're like, hey, we're gonna invade Iraq, that becomes a Title X deal. The military can move troops back and forth into that country without going through the State Department. That was not the case for Libya. You know what I mean? It wasn't. So the State Department has...

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  Ambassador Stevens had to approve the troops that were on their way to Benghazi, had to approve them landing in the country, but he was dead. And the State Department didn't answer the phone. Tina Cadenell was there, along with Secretary Clinton, she's ultimately responsible, they just didn't answer the phone. And birds were spinning up and ready to roll. If you look up Jackalstone 12, I think, just Google it. Jackalstone is a Special Operations Forces annual European exercise. You probably did it if you were two, did you? No. Okay. But I know, but I know what the exercise is.

• 1:58:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so that was taking place in Split, Croatia. And you know that the CIF is there, and they have a full pack, none of this is classified, by the way. They have a full package, they've got shooters, they've got comms, they've got medical, they have resupply, you know, water, everything. That bird was going there. Because that's why it's there. In case something like that happens, and the agreement between SOC F and SOC U was in place, because SOC F didn't have a CIF yet. Yeah, yeah. Right, so, but no one answered the phone. So you can't land that plane.

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  And Ty Woods, man, did you know Ty?

• 1:59:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:27Speaker 01

  Okay, he's a total friend of mine, man. And I didn't know Glenn.

• 1:59:30Jocko Willink?

  He was in my class, he was in my butt's class.

• 1:59:32Speaker 01

  Ty was?

• 1:59:33Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep, and he ended up getting rolled. But, you know, he spent, uh, you know.

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  Right, so shameful. And that, I truly, I mean, I knew it before because I'd seen it on a macro level. But I hadn't really seen on a, excuse me, on a micro level, I've seen it, but on a macro level, I hadn't seen really the hardcore ramifications of incredibly poor decision making. Um, other than the fact we invaded Iraq when we did. I mean, that was a big thing. But that really, really brought it home. That you just can't do that. You, you have to be, if you're in a position of leadership, your phone is on all the time.

• 2:00:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, actually, superior to that is when you're in a position of leadership, you set up decentralized command where people can make decisions without having to run things all the way up to the top.

• 2:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:23Jocko Willink?

  That's what you do.

• 2:00:24Speaker 01

  Um, that's the, um, yeah, I mean, that's, that's how things should function. Great, not that depressing, no?

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so, so this is what you're doing. You get a really, um, good look strategically at the world through this tour that you do.

• 2:00:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:00:39Jocko Willink?

  At SOC, you're in a J35 billet, doing planning and contingency planning, and that's just a, a, a great view to go from being a troop commander, literally on the ground, and then even as a troop commander, being for this particular deployment at a more, even more tackle level than a normal troop command.

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  But troop, correct, but doing a strategic level mission.

• 2:01:02Jocko Willink?

  Yes, and that, but you're on the ground doing it.

• 2:01:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the difference.

• 2:01:06Jocko Willink?

  And then you get to go to a, a, a situation where you're seeing the strategic planning for these things that take place in the future. So it's a really good education for you.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  It's tremendous.

• 2:01:17Jocko Willink?

  And you do how many years over there?

• 2:01:18Speaker 01

  Twenty, oh, I did three years there.

• 2:01:20Jocko Willink?

  And how, how many kids you got at this point?

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  Four.

• 2:01:22Jocko Willink?

  They speak German at this point?

• 2:01:24Speaker 01

  Nine.

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  Two of them graduated from high school there, though.

• 2:01:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:01:29Speaker 01

  But it's an American high school.

• 2:01:30Jocko Willink?

  It's an American high school.

• 2:01:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I just, one of my buddies ran into a team guy and his kids are all speaking German because he came back from there.

• 2:01:37Speaker 01

  Well, he probably put them in the local schools, which you can do.

• 2:01:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:40Speaker 01

  We chose not to.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, you get done with that, what's your next job after that?

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  Center for SEAL and SWIC Excellence.

• 2:01:47Jocko Willink?

  Which is the schoolhouse?

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  No, that is the, um, command that writes all the advancement exams for SEALs. That writes the enlisted ladder. People don't understand, when you join the Navy, um, the Navy plans out a career for you for 30 years. So even though you think you're joining on a six-year enlistment or eight years or whatever it is, you know, active and reserve, the Navy has a plan for you and they palm, well, I don't know what that stands for, but they budget for you being in the military for 30 years. And what, um, at least the SEAL teams have done, I don't know if other communities do this, but you backwards plan on that. So by the time you're in E5, you've gone to this school, you've done this job, E6, 7, 8, and it goes all the way up, that's the ladder.

• 2:02:29Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:30Speaker 01

  To make sure that everybody is hopefully on par with their institutional knowledge. So I did that and it was really fun, right, and the advancement exams, because I'd call all my buddies. And like, hey, will you go down to Florida with me for a week? We'll get locked in a SCIF, you know, a big safe, and we'll go through the previous exams and then we'll write new questions, updating the TTPs and all of the things for the SEAL teams then in order to get promoted, SEALs would have to take that.

• 2:02:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:57Speaker 01

  So that was awesome, too. That's a way to get back to the community, but I went there because, um, I needed to, like, get my medical situation in order. Um, and it took like a year and a half.

• 2:03:09Jocko Willink?

  Cause at this point, you're just a beat up.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  Old frogman, you know what I mean? That's why I'm fat right now. If I go PT right now, I can't walk. I mean, I've got a handicap placard for my car.

• 2:03:19Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 2:03:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, damn. So, I mean, my knees and hips and back and I got, I got a ricochet in the face. It was in training. It doesn't, it counts for nothing. I didn't even get a free dental appointment because of that, you know? So, uh, yeah, I went there to, you know, dual purpose. Get myself physically, you know, up to par, at least documented appropriately, so that when I retire, because anyone's gonna retire, you know, it would be less of a burden. And, um, so that's really what I did there. And again, I've had. I've had the ability and the luck, and I think I'm blessed, man. I mean, I am. I have a deep and abiding faith in God. And I look back, you know, all the way back to getting hit in the head with a shackle. All that led to all this stuff?

• 2:04:04Speaker 01

  You know, there's, there's, I am one of the luckiest human beings that has ever existed. And I am so full of gratitude, man. I mean, I just, I get up and I'm just full of gratitude. And I wish that more people would understand the gifts that they've been given. And understand they're a gift. And when I talk to folks about the cavalry thing, like the cavalry's not coming over the hill, I tell them, I go, "Look, man,

• 2:04:33Speaker 01

  you're placed here at this time, you know, with these people in this circumstance by God. Like, you're put here for a reason. And from my perspective, what I'm doing now, and the people that I'm speaking to, it's to save the greatest country that has ever existed in the history of the world. Like, the United States of America is an exceptional nation. And I don't tolerate anybody talking crap about America. It's not gonna happen. And these folks that I'm dealing with, like, you were placed here by God for that, to save the United States of America, and that's a gift. And you gotta accept the gift. And oftentimes, gifts, you get this. Oftentimes, gifts can be perceived as a burden.

• 2:05:19Speaker 01

  You know, the gift of leadership that the talk used to give, the pressure. You're in that place at that time with those people in that circumstance, and these things happen, you're exercising the best judgment that you were capable of doing, you had the best assets in the world, you're certainly working with the finest human beings that have ever existed. And contextually, in warfare, for sure. And then around the block, you know, you're there for a reason. Because you were given the gift to be able to exercise that mission. If you're capable of doing something, and you don't act on it, you're not giving glory to God.

• 2:05:54Speaker 01

  You're given the intellectual or physical ability to do things. If you don't do them, you're falling short. I believe that. Other people need to understand that.

• 2:06:06Jocko Willink?

  What was it that made you decide that you were gonna retire? You're at, how many years was this?

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  That was, I would say twenty-four, I guess.

• 2:06:16Jocko Willink?

  That's when you made the decision?

• 2:06:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I retired at twenty-six.

• 2:06:20Jocko Willink?

  And how many kids did you have that was, you were up to your four at this point?

• 2:06:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, I just, I knew that I couldn't do the job to the level that, that, that it deserved.

• 2:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Did you have a retirement plan, what you were gonna do when you retired?

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  No. No, man, we had bought a farm in Wisconsin, probably, I don't know, ten years before that, and I wanted to just go back to my farm.

• 2:06:41Jocko Willink?

  Who was taking care of the farm?

• 2:06:42Speaker 01

  My neighbors.

• 2:06:45Jocko Willink?

  How many acres is the farm?

• 2:06:46Speaker 01

  Uh, it was eighty.

• 2:06:47Jocko Willink?

  And what kind of farm is it?

• 2:06:49Speaker 01

  Hay. And we raised animals and all that stuff, but so I, I got out and I did, um, this corporate leadership stuff with Larry for a couple of years. I mean, I didn't stop working. And I did that and then it just-

• 2:07:02Jocko Willink?

  What corporate leadership, where you were just, uh, helping corporations with their leadership type thing?

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  And executive coaching sort of thing. I mean,

• 2:07:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:09Speaker 01

  the stuff you do, but not nearly at the same level. I mean, you've taken it beyond, you know? Uh, and it wasn't interesting to me. So I'm like, you know what? Let's go back to the farm.

• 2:07:19Jocko Willink?

  Where were you living when you were doing that?

• 2:07:20Speaker 01

  That was, we lived in Maple Grove, which is in Minnesota.

• 2:07:24Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you moved to Minnesota after you retired?

• 2:07:27Speaker 01

  For like a year, because we wanted our youngest son to be able to graduate from high school. At that point, he had gone to four different high schools.

• 2:07:36Jocko Willink?

  Ouch.

• 2:07:37Speaker 01

  So we found a, a nice Christian academy. That's really why I did all that stuff, so that he could have that period of time where he could actually graduate from high school in a place that, and where we lived is fantastic. It was Butternut, Wisconsin. It's a very small place and we just wanted him to, to be able to round out his education in a Christian setting. And that was not available there. And then we went back to the farm and, um, the, the cafe in town, it was called the Butternut Cafe. And surprisingly enough, but, um, it failed. So the owner of the building, the person running the cafe, it didn't work well. So, um, it closed. There's three hundred and twenty-six people in the village.

• 2:08:22Speaker 01

  And, um,

• 2:08:25Speaker 01

  These people had, they had taken care of our farm for like a decade. I went to Afghanistan, Iraq, Horn of Africa, and was stationed in Germany for three years. Nothing happened to that place. Not a window broken. My neighbors, Tom and Maria Schulke, they'd mow our front lawn. It was like an acre. And they would not take money for gas. We are not your servants, we're your neighbors. I mean, that's what these, that, people think that Americans are like these, they, the image of Americans, it's not Manhattan, dude. That's it. I mean, I live in America. And people bend over backwards. We have so much more in common with each other than differences, and it's being exploited by these folks that are trying to do, I think, horrible things for the country. But that's really America. Where I live now in Perry

• 2:09:09Speaker 01

  Deschene, it's America, you know? So, this place closes, village takes a huge hit. And I'm like, man. So I talked to Sarah Jane, and I'm like, let's get this going again. So I bought the building from a bank, gutted it, put in new equipment. I, I worked in a restaurant for, I don't know, like a year or something, before I joined the Navy. Sarah was a waitress for, you know, three months in high school. But, you know, I'm a quick study. I love cooking. Cooked around the world, you know? I did, I've made bread on five continents, dude. Like, made bread from flour.

• 2:09:41Jocko Willink?

  I haven't made bread on one.

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  You should try it. Dude, it's cathartic. So, we got the cafe going again, and then sold it to a local lady, my BFF. Her name's Bobby, she's awesome. And, you know, now it's running. So, so many people talk about things. And a lot of people have money in there. They'll throw money at problems. You know, the government tries to throw money at problems, right? If you say you're gonna do something to it, and the most valuable gift you can give somebody is your time. You have a finite amount of time on this planet. Now, I, as a Christian, I believe that, you know, there's something beyond this, but a lot of people don't. You only have, you only have so much time. So if you really

• 2:10:26Speaker 01

  care about somebody, give them your time. Sit down with them. Give them time. So, we, we gave two years of our time back to that village because they were so dear to us. And, you know, I walked away net neutral. But the impact of showing people, demonstrating to them that you truly care about them is priceless. You know what I mean?

• 2:10:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, absolutely. You build this business back up. You sell the whole thing to your

• 2:11:03Speaker 01

  BFF?

• 2:11:03Jocko Willink?

  Your BFF. What's your BFF's name?

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  Bobby.

• 2:11:07Jocko Willink?

  Bobby? But Bobby's a female?

• 2:11:08Speaker 01

  Female.

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  She's awesome.

• 2:11:10Jocko Willink?

  So Bobby's now running the business?

• 2:11:12Speaker 01

  Uh, she has, she had Jenny run that and Bobby started Bobbers on the lake, Butter Nut Lake. If you want to go by and get a beer.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, this is important to put out because people are going to want to hit these places.

• 2:11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bobbers, Bobbers on the lake. Uh, it's in Butter Nut, Wisconsin, run by Bobby Munoz.

• 2:11:29Jocko Willink?

  I actually want to go to both these places right now and I don't even drink beer, so.

• 2:11:33Speaker 01

  Right. Bobby is a whirling dervish. I mean, she is on the go. I mean, you have all these different, you know, entrepreneurial adventures. She's got the same thing going. I mean, she's just

• 2:11:47Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you, you sell that business and now you move back to the farm?

• 2:11:50Speaker 01

  No, I'm living on the farm.

• 2:11:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you're living

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  Living on the farm and then I'm turning 50. So this was three years ago now. And I'm like, this, this is another point in my life where you can either,

• 2:12:04Speaker 01

  you know, kind of like, just stay stagnant or you should do something to keep yourself rolling, right? So I'm like, I'm going to go to law school and just like Buzz, man, you can't just go to law school. Why can't I just go to law school, right? So I studied for the LSAT for a month on the Khan Academy, which is awesome. It's free, you know? And took it and I got accepted to law school. Uh, Mitchell Hamline in St. Paul. But during, so during this period of time, we did what we call cousin camp. So we got all the cousins. So, you know, my brother in laws and all the kids together.

• 2:12:42Jocko Willink?

  570 people?

• 2:12:44Speaker 01

  Not that many. We get them all together and, um, they were given, Sarah, excuse me, hard time about how difficult it was to, because at this point we had four grandkids, I think, and we're having, yeah, we had, we were having, we had three, we're having our fourth, fifth and sixth grandkids. They're going to be born in a two month window. And, um,

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  So they're giving Sarah Jane a hard time about how difficult it was to visit our farm way up north. And it's like an hour and forty-five minutes to the closest regional airport. And then if you're flying to there, it's an extra two hundred bucks a person. You know, I'm not a wealthy guy. We live in our list of retirement. I can't afford that stuff. And or you fly into Minneapolis and it's like a four and a half hour drive. So I'm like, check, got it. I missed the kids growing up. I did, you know, I was working, deployed, training, all that stuff. So I set preconditions, two of them. Well, I love that place up there. It took us fifteen years to get the house, you know, up to, it was just perfect. And I'm like, two conditions. Wait, the family wants you to move?

• 2:13:51Speaker 01

  My wife wants us to go someplace closer to an airport so that our grandkids can visit us and we can visit them more regularly, right? And I had missed our kids growing up because I was a frogman, natural environment combat. And so I took conditions. It has to be in Wisconsin and it has to be a hobby farm. So I get on the old internet in the kitchen in the farm. I find this place in Hager City, which, oh, I did a one-hour circumference around the Minneapolis airport. Got it. Right. And it had to be on what I call the right side of the river. That's politically and, you know, geographically correct. And so I find this place in Hager City. I call them what's going on the market the next day.

• 2:14:34Speaker 01

  Small hobby farm, old farmhouse, nineteen acres, thirteen tillable alfalfa, not hay anymore. But check. I drive down the next day. I look at it. I go, okay, this is it. Put in an offer, buy the house, move down there. Did you sell the other place? We sold it after a couple of months or so it's gone. And, excuse me. So interestingly enough, this is how I wound up running for Congress.

• 2:15:02Speaker 01

  Because Sean Duffy, who was my rep for the longest time, if you look at Wisconsin, the Ashland County is like right in the middle to the top, right? And it's right next to Lake Superior. Just past Glidden, which is the next village up from Butternut, it becomes very liberal because there's a environmentalist liberal arts college there, Northland's College, right? So Sean and his crew would stop in Butternut, and he's a US Congressman, now he's on Fox all the time with Rachel, Kamala stuff, great couple, nine kids. But, so they would stop in our village and I'd cook for him and his staff. So if something was coming up, I'd be like, oh, I'll just call Sean and ask him what's going on, you know?

• 2:15:46Speaker 01

  And so I moved down, and that's in Pierce County, right? Which is in the 3rd Congressional District, not the 7th Congressional District. I don't know any of this stuff, I never tracked politics or anything, right? So I'm like, oh, this impeachment was coming on. I did human intelligence for a very long period of time. I read the Steele dossier, and I knew it was absolute junk. This is manufactured, this is not true. It was submitted by a guy who was a former British intelligence officer that was clearly colluding with Russian intelligence officers to produce this thing, and it's paid for by who? No. I knew it was junk, right? So I'm like, who's my congressman? You know, because it's not Sean anymore. Guy named Ron Kind.

• 2:16:29Speaker 01

  And I'm like, whoa, hey, Ron Kind, what's your stance on the impeachment of Donald Trump for the Russian collusion stuff? Didn't write me back. Nothing. Crickets chirping. And I'm like, what? Dude, the job title is representative, it's not your lordship. You know what I mean? This is not how representative democracy is supposed to function, and it sure didn't with Sean. So I'm getting steamed, and I start looking into this cat, right? I mean, finding terrorists in Pakistan is super hard, you know what I mean? It's very difficult. It is not difficult finding out what politicians are doing. So I started looking at this guy from the perspective of doing human intelligence and

• 2:17:13Speaker 01

  finding out what this cat had been doing. He'd been in office for 22 or 23 years at the time. Saying stuff in the district, you can find it in newspaper articles and interviews, and then I'd compare that to his actual voting record. And he was just wrong. He would say one thing, go to DC and do another thing because he was working for the behest of special interest groups, not the people he's representing, right? So the impeachment vote goes down. He is number 435 out of 435 representatives had cast his vote, made public on the floor because he had to. He told everybody in the district, he wasn't going to vote for that impeachment because it was junk. I'm not doing that. Well, he did it, hoping to slide it under the radar.

• 2:17:58Speaker 01

  Nope. So I sent a text message to this guy named Jim, who worked for Sean. I'm like, Jim, who are you guys running against this guy? And he writes me back and he goes, you. And I write him back, I go, ha, ha, ha. And he didn't write me back. So when you write something and somebody writes, ha, ha, ha, ha, and they don't write back, they're not joking. And I was like, oh, yeah. I should be, I, I fixed problems for decades. So why aren't I fixing this problem? And I decided to run for Congress. So I got ahold of the RPW, Mark Jefferson, his executive director, did an interview with him and he's like, well, yeah, I guess, you know?

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  And I formed this nasient political group, you know? Is this 2019? This would be 2019, yeah. So in 2019, and I formed my, my team, I didn't know what I was doing. Here's, here's the metrics, people like hearing these metrics. So Ron Kind had been in office for, at that point, 24 years, 25 years, something like that. He had $3.1 million in the bank. He had a functioning political organization and he had 100% name recognition, 100% Kind, right? They have those Kind bars, that's not him. I had never thought about being in politics, ever, my entire life, right?

• 2:19:27Speaker 01

  We moved to the district to be closer to the airports so we can visit our children. So the only person that knew my name was my wife, right? I have no money at all, zero name recognition. That's, that's the starting point. I decided to run for office, 72 hours, I announced my candidacy, they locked down the entire planet with COVID. Boom. So I ran a nine-month campaign against those odds. I came within like two and a half points of beating this guy and he wound up spending over $6 million against me.

• 2:20:02Speaker 01

  That's why he resigned. Cause I announced my candidacy. I lost and I tried to, this is, this is amazing. You know, you can say whatever you want about the 2020 election, but I did the math. I look at this, I lost by 11,000 votes. I go, I can't make up 11,000 votes. You know what I mean? Even if we found statistical anomalies and all that stuff, that's what I mean. I can't, you know, I'm not going to be able to overcome that. I tried to call that cat. I go, that night, like four in the morning, calling to concede the election, right? Cause you should, right? He wouldn't take the phone call. Interesting. Not interesting. That's an egotistical person whose entire being is based on being a politician, who liked being called congressman, had people open their doors for him. And I

• 2:20:47Speaker 01

  got so close to beating him, like all throughout the night I was ahead and then like 15,000 votes show up at, you know, 2:30 in the morning or whatever, you know, I get it. Check their, their counting ballots that come in. I get it. He was so angry, he wouldn't take a phone call. That's someone who has no business being in leadership anywhere, right? I've heard of sore losers, sore winners. What? No. So, um, yeah, I decided to, to run again because I was talking to Sarah Jane. I mean, really that night, I go, this is not going to bode well for the country. Not me personally. I mean, my ego, it's over here. This is not about me. It's not. It's about our country and our grandkids. At that point,

• 2:21:32Speaker 01

  we had six grandkids, you know, eight now. So I understood that. I had no idea it was going to get this bad this fast. No one could predict this. You just can't. You could not. But I decided to run again. I waited, I shepherded everything. I did some changes in my team. And then we wound up running the number one political campaign in the entire nation for 2021 from Prairie Des Chine, you know, 5,600 people. And then

• 2:22:01Jocko Willink?

  What, what, what makes you classify something as the number one political campaign in the whole country?

• 2:22:05Speaker 01

  So what the inside baseball stuff, because everybody understands intuitively, or they just know it, is that in order to get a word out, you have to be able to raise enough funds to, to get the word out.

• 2:22:17Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:22:17Speaker 01

  You know, I don't get any money from my campaign. You can take a salary from a campaign. I don't. I just don't think that's, you should do that. But you have to buy television advertising, cable, you've print media, you gotta pay a staff, you know, all this stuff, gasoline, whatever. So, um, yeah, we, we raised more money than any Republican challenger in the entire nation in 2021.

• 2:22:38Jocko Willink?

  What, what drove that?

• 2:22:39Speaker 01

  Me and my team. I have an exceptionally good team. I am so incredibly proud of my team. And you, you can perform at a high level for only a certain period of time. You know this. You gotta sleep at some time. So how do you, how do you pull off sustained, superior performance? You make sure that you assemble the best team you possibly can. So I have incredibly dedicated people who are all on board for the right reasons. I integrate every single one of them personally and make sure that they're in this for something beyond themselves, which is the country. That's why we're successful. Our mission is completely pure. Message is pure. And we're here for the right reasons. We want to save our country. And that's very, very rare, I think. There are some fantastic people in public office

• 2:23:22Speaker 01

  and leadership. No, there are. They're fantastic. A lot of them. But other people are just kind of there. They're the dude that was the mar ops instructor for 15 years, you know, at Trade at. They're doing a function, but you know, why are they doing it? That's why we're successful.

• 2:23:39Jocko Willink?

  So what does this look like from here on out? From what, what, what's the next? How, how many months are we around now?

• 2:23:46Speaker 01

  We're 42 days.

• 2:23:48Jocko Willink?

  Forty-two days away. And what does the next 42 days look like?

• 2:23:52Speaker 01

  I work. I, um,

• 2:23:56Jocko Willink?

  Meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting.

• 2:23:58Speaker 01

  This is my schedule. I've been doing this for three years, dude.

• 2:24:03Jocko Willink?

  Who do you meet with?

• 2:24:05Speaker 01

  I meet with a bunch of different people. My favorite meetings are with the guys in the district, the people I'm going to be representing. I mean, what is going on, man? Like, how is your farm doing? What is affecting you so that you can or cannot provide for your family as well? Biggest thing we get, input costs through the roof. Joe Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline. Okay, check this out, man. A guy named Tim Michaels is running for governor. And he's been a friend of mine for, I don't know, three years now or something? Start, he had, his dad started a company, had a couple of hundred employees. He has like 8,000 now. He's gonna win. He calls me like the day or so after Biden gets sworn in, he goes, Derek, I just had to lay off 700 people. And I'm like, what do you mean, Tim?

• 2:24:48Speaker 01

  And he's like, uh, we were doing the electrical substations for the Keystone Pipeline. And Biden just went, flick, shut that off. So the cascading effects of these things, people don't understand, and I do intuitively because I wrote all these plans and did this stuff. And it's something I'm good at. So here's what happens when you stop natural gas movement and production. Do you know where fertilizer comes from, Jaco?

• 2:25:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:12Speaker 01

  Natural gas, that's the nitrogen that comes for, that's where it comes from. The, the Wisconsin's third district is one of the top five users of propane and natural gas for home heating in the country. It gets 20 degrees below zero. Okay, you're not gonna like put an extra sweater on like your mom used to tell you.

• 2:25:28Jocko Willink?

  What about solar?

• 2:25:31Speaker 01

  Okay, so check it out. We, we want our grandchildren to have power, right? But we have kids now. So the Biden administration is trying to skip ahead a generation. You can't do that. The guy named Brent Ridge runs Dairyland Power, one of the biggest co-ops in my district. And we have a lot of co-ops because we're rural. They did the math. So the Biden administration wants to be carbon neutral by 2030. Okay, a noble goal. You know what that takes? You have to double the amount of all of the nuclear plants on the entire planet.

• 2:26:06Speaker 01

  So that is not a real goal.

• 2:26:10Speaker 01

  It's just not. So people are eating it right now because of these horrible policies. Just that simple and it's gotta stop, man.

• 2:26:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, one of people that are in business with me, and there's a lot of them, you know, we've got a lot of, a lot of different businesses.

• 2:26:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:26:27Jocko Willink?

  And, and anyone that works with me knows that when I'm looking at things and we're, you know, assessing something, I'll get to a point where I say, all right, run the numbers.

• 2:26:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:26:37Jocko Willink?

  You know, which is, okay, well, tell me what this is going to cost, how much we're going to put into it. What's the ROI look like? What's the risk? Run the numbers. Tell me what the numbers look like. Cause that's ultimately, and, and then the numbers, you have to put that into the calculus of your gut feeling for sure. But you can have a really strong, positive gut feeling like, hey, this sounds like a great idea. And then you run the numbers and you go, hey, it's probably not going to work, man. Like, that's just too much. Sometimes you go, you know what? This is not a bad idea. You run the numbers and you go, hey, this actually makes sense. We can, we can go for this. And, and that's why I kind of, you know, when, when you mentioned the closing of the pipeline, it kind of, you know, because emotionally you think, well, this seems like a positive thing. You know, people can look at it and go, hey, well, we don't want to have to put, pipes through fields and,

• 2:27:23Jocko Willink?

  and then you run the numbers.

• 2:27:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:27:25Jocko Willink?

  And you, you just run the numbers and it's not even really that close. You know, it's the type of math that you just said, oh, we gotta double the number of nuclear plants in the next three years if we're going to get there. That's what it's going to take.

• 2:27:36Speaker 01

  In the world.

• 2:27:37Jocko Willink?

  In the world.

• 2:27:38Speaker 01

  Right. So check this out, man.

• 2:27:40Jocko Willink?

  We don't do enough running of numbers.

• 2:27:43Speaker 01

  So you know, when you go to your house, let's say you're going to wash your hands. And you turn the faucet on and a little train car comes with water, right? And then you, then you pour the water out of the train car? No. How does it get into your faucet? With a pipe.

• 2:27:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:59Speaker 01

  Because it's the most efficient way to transport fluids.

• 2:28:02Jocko Willink?

  Not even close.

• 2:28:03Speaker 01

  Right. And it's a, and then you want to like light your gas stove. Does a little train come? And then you get gas? No, that comes from a pipe too. Now, trains themselves, we, I'm in Prairie de Chene, it's like Train City, USA, man. Transporting bulk items like coal, for instance, and some other large POL things, if you're going from point to point, you have to have a railhead, right? So there's room for both of them. That's what folks don't understand. But we have a carbon-based economy. And if you shut off the, the fossil fuels that produce carbon, you're going to destroy the economy. That's what's happening right now. You look at the food costs, dude. Farmers have not locked, wait, check it out. Farmers

• 2:28:48Speaker 01

  have not locked in fertilizer prices for next year.

• 2:28:50Jocko Willink?

  Oof.

• 2:28:51Speaker 01

  So it's going to keep going up and up and up. There's a, um, there's two fertilizer plants that just closed in England. There's one in Finland that went down. I think they're only going to produce 24% of the fertilizer that they did before. Russia is not going to export fertilizer anymore, probably for the foreseeable future, at least five years. I mean, they hate us right now. And there's these weird tariffs that we put on Morocco, where they, they produce, um, some fertilizers. What can Congress do? One thing. Right now,

• 2:29:22Speaker 01

  put pressure on the Biden administration to make sure that they open up permitting, and then get rid of the tariffs on Morocco. So looking at all of these problems, people get really worried about a lot of stuff. And, uh, the current leadership of the Republican Party, Kevin McCarthy in the House, we actually have a plan. And they've done a tremendous job of looking at all the problems and figuring out which one of these, from the federal level, will we have the greatest probability of having the greatest positive effect. You know, that's how you're supposed to govern. So I'm, I'm actually very excited. Um, the polls are looking outstanding for us. Um, when I say us, I mean my team. Um, you know,

• 2:30:04Speaker 01

  I'm the head of the team, but us, we've done this together. So I anticipate, you know, being elected in November and giving it a go, man. Isn't that funny? I think about that, dude. I come from the meanest circumstances.

• 2:30:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know, when I kind of opened with that thing for George Washington that I'd heard that quote, read that quote a while ago, and you know, you think about, you know, I just know your career and know what, you know, as an average team guy, what you've done, what you've been put through, what your family's been put through. And it's like, how much are you going to ask from somebody? And I look at the political arena and it makes me sick to my stomach. Like I, I don't, I just think that just sounds, the whole thing sounds awful. When you show me your calendar and I know you're going to a bunch of meetings with people that half of them, you know, are horrible people, half of them are awesome people, you've got all this craziness going on.

• 2:31:01Speaker 01

  I would not say that.

• 2:31:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:31:02Speaker 01

  Vast majority of them are awesome.

• 2:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:31:04Speaker 01

  Like vast.

• 2:31:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, I know that when I look at what happens to politicians. And you're going to get just, you know, your, your life becomes this target, right? And so I know that there's a ton of sacrifice that you and your family are going to make again. In order to do this. And yeah, I guess you wouldn't be setting meetings with people that despise you. But look, the press is going to absolutely, a large majority of the press will absolutely despise you. And they're going to do everything to attack you. They're going to attack your family, they're going to attack your values, your home, your people, your community and everything. So the, the fact that you're like, ah, cool, Roger that, going to step up and, and try and make this happen. And it looks like you are going to make this thing happen.

• 2:31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:53Jocko Willink?

  When you look at all the divisiveness in the country right now,

• 2:31:59Jocko Willink?

  one of the things that I've given an answer to a bunch is something that we already kind of discussed, which is, hey, I look at something from my perspective and I think, well, you know, Derek has a good point there. Maybe he's right about this. Instead of me thinking, well, Derek doesn't agree with every single point that I have. So therefore he's completely wrong about everything and I actually hate him. How do, how are we trying to open people's minds up to get, hey, you know what? I, I get that you see things a little bit differently and you come from a different background than me. And I, I understand your idea. At least I know where you're trying to go. And it seems like in most cases, we can be at least somewhat aligned. You know, you want for food prices to come down.

• 2:32:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:32:45Jocko Willink?

  That seems like a universal, universal thing. Who would say, no, we think food should be more expensive? So what we really should be talking about is if you want food prices to come down. And let's say you're a conservative, you're a conservative Republican. And let's say I'm a, a left wing Democrat.

• 2:33:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:33:03Jocko Willink?

  And I want food prices to come down. So we're actually aligned on where we want to go on that particular subject.

• 2:33:10Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 2:33:11Jocko Willink?

  But it's like, there can't even be agreement on that. And we can't have a logical discussion about, well, okay, well, run the numbers. Show me the numbers that you're looking at and I'll show you the numbers that we're looking at. And let's have a discussion about how we can actually make the food prices come down. Let's try and figure something out.

• 2:33:30Jocko Willink?

  How do we cross that bridge?

• 2:33:32Speaker 01

  Well, how I plan on crossing that bridge. First and foremost, everyone needs to understand that I will work with anybody who's willing to put the interest of the country above their own. I don't care who you are. I will work with you and I've proven that over 26 years of working in the most diverse environments and hostile, straight up hostile environments, people trying to kill me environment. So if you're going to put the betterment of the country in your congressional district above your own personal interest, I'm on board.

• 2:34:03Speaker 01

  And this is, this is what I tell people, it echoes what you're, you're saying. I said, um, you're going to agree with people oftentimes 90% of the time.

• 2:34:14Speaker 01

  You know, if I agree with somebody 90% of the time, that's a big win, right? How many people here can look themselves in the mirror and honestly say that you agree with your spouse 90% of the time? Almost nobody, right? So, finding common ground, that's the term. Finding common ground is imperative to make sure that you can actually govern. And when you do things strictly on party lines, you lose the ability to closely identify common ground. How Congress has gotten around this is they put these big omnibus bills together. So you're gonna, using your example, this is going to unleash American energy, therefore

• 2:34:58Speaker 01

  the input costs for farming are gonna go down, that means food costs are gonna go down. Or this is gonna decrease the price of diesel fuel, which decreases the transportation cost. You understand, right? And then they'll put something in here like, "But we're gonna have red flag laws and you're gonna have your guns confiscated by the state," you know, which I fundamentally did. That is just wrong, right? And they put them in the same bill so that they can vote on it for or against it, and they can justify it when they go back to their district. That's gotta stop. It has to stop. Because in no way, shape, or form do I support red flag laws. I'll give you an example. A well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right

• 2:35:41Speaker 01

  for the people to keep them bare arms shall not be infringed. That's the entire text of the Second Amendment, dude. So, that's out, but lowering food cost is in. So, in order to hold Congress accountable, Congress has to write clean legislation so that I know exactly where Jaco and Echo sit on an issue. That's gotta happen. Are we gonna be able to pull it off? I don't know. But, one of the things that I will do that everybody can count on is I will do me. Meaning like the first pledge that I make to everybody is I will not buy, sell, or trade individual stocks as long as I'm a sitting member of Congress. I will not do

• 2:36:24Speaker 01

  that. And people are like, well, what about this guy? What about that guy? What about that gal? I'm gonna do me. I'm gonna make sure that all the things I'm doing are as morally and ethically and legally correct as I possibly can as a human being when I'm in Congress. I'll start there. And courage is contagious. We talked about that. I mean, ideally, people will see that. And the people that I'm working with, they'll want to do that, too. I mean, people inherently, you know, they want to do things in a way that's beneficial for other people. The American people are benevolent. We're the most generous country that has ever existed. Our populace, you know, the regular people on the street.

• 2:37:07Speaker 01

  So if you give them the opportunity to do what's right, a lot of people are gonna do what's right. They just need to see somebody else do it. You know what I mean?

• 2:37:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I think

• 2:37:24Jocko Willink?

  America right now, you know, you're looking at, anybody looks at some bill that's coming before Congress, coming before the House, and it's, whatever, 792 pages.

• 2:37:38Speaker 01

  They don't even read it.

• 2:37:39Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and there's not one person in America that goes, that seems like a good thing. And you could go down a whole laundry list of things that every American says, this is bullshit. What, this is bullshit. What you just talked about, like having these multiple different

• 2:37:54Speaker 01

  Omnibus bills.

• 2:37:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, omnibus bills. We got all these different categories that are being voted on in one bill. Every American, every American goes, that's bullshit.

• 2:38:06Jocko Willink?

  And there's only so long that the politicians can continue to get away with this bullshit before Americans. Cause you gotta remember, we're the people that were like, oh, you're gonna raise the, the, the tax on tea by two, two cents per, uh, per freaking giant bundle of tea.

• 2:38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:26Jocko Willink?

  No, actually, we're gonna, we're gonna fight you. At some point, Americans go, hey, this is bullshit. And we're gonna get rid of you, people that are doing these things that are clearly wrong. They're so clearly wrong. Everybody knows it. And eventually, we say, oh yeah, we're done. Now, look, I, I don't even think it's gonna, I think it's gonna be a, a change like you're, like you're the personification of this change, right? It's not like everyone's gonna get voted out tomorrow, but people are gonna, oh yeah. Here's a guy that just went in there and said, yeah, this is a dumb idea. Hey, you guys can't pull the wool over the Americans' eyes anymore. I think over the next several years, maybe even take five, maybe even take 10 years,

• 2:39:07Jocko Willink?

  we're gonna get rid of these things that are, for lack of a better word, bullshit.

• 2:39:12Speaker 01

  Right. So I, I wanna be very clear. I am absolutely, I 100% disavow any type of political violence. I do not condone it, and that will be the destruction of America. If we take up arms against each other, I'll have no part of that. First time I went to combat, Bosnia and Herzegovina, civil war. Went to Afghanistan, turned into a civil war. Iraq turned into a civil war. Worked in the Horn of Africa, civil war. I'll have no part of that in the United States of America. So how do we prevent that from happening? Which I will do anything to prevent that from happening. Political violence cannot be part of a discussion in the United States of America. It cannot. So how do we do it? We do it by what you're saying.

• 2:39:56Speaker 01

  We exercise our rights as American citizens, and we get into office, and we make the change from the inside. And here's, here's what's, this is fascinating, dude. Okay. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Who said that? John F. Kennedy. JFK said that, right? So, he said that in 62? 61, 62. So, we went from that, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." We went from that to, "You're gonna do everything I say you're gonna do. You're gonna lock your church, you're gonna close your business, you're not gonna be

• 2:40:37Speaker 01

  able to speak to each other freely, you're gonna go to this store but not that store, you're gonna get shot, or you're gonna get fired. You're gonna do everything. You're gonna give me your money, the sweat of your brow. And if you don't willingly do this, I'm gonna use the full coercive power of the federal government to compel you to do this." You got that? Who's that? That's AOC. So, the Democrat Party went from JFK to AOC in 50-some years. How? Republicans led 'em. Something goes wrong on a mission, who's the first person you look at, dude? It's you. What did I do or not do that led to the failure of this mission?

• 2:41:21Speaker 01

  Hopefully, you're saying, "What did I do or not do that led to the success of this mission, right? Never take anything for granted." So, we as Republicans have let people get away with this for such an extended period of time. And we've done it by saying, "Oh, you know, they have the best interests of the country at hand." They really do. They want the same things that we do. Yeah, in some aspects, you do, but in others, they don't. And there's people that wanna fundamentally change the system of government that has proven to be the best one on the entire planet, like, ever in history. You know what I mean? We're one of the youngest countries in the world, we have the oldest standing constitution in the world. Why? Because it is an incredibly functional and beautiful document. There's people that wanna throw the Constitution out. Why? Because they're not getting the way.

• 2:42:05Speaker 01

  They're not getting their way. So, the beauty about our Constitution is something's wrong in it, the mechanism for changing it is written into the document itself. It's the amendment process. You know what I mean? So, use it. And they're like, "Well, it's so hard." Yeah. It's very... It's supposed to be. It's supposed to be, right? So, are we changing stuff? Yeah. Are people waking up to how destructive this, the policies have...

• 2:42:33Speaker 01

  The destructive effect that the policies are having, yeah. I mean, I see people that are just beside themselves. That $10,000 college thing? They want to give $10,000 to, for, you know, student debt relief? Check this out, man. 75% of my district does not have a four-year degree. Only 9% of my district, 9% has a graduate degree. And I did a roundtable with some folks. And they're all blue collar folks. This is what, 21,000 square feet?

• 2:42:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:42:59Jocko Willink?

  This gym is 21,000 square feet is what he's referring to.

• 2:43:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry, the gym is 21,000 square feet. We do this thing at a HVAC place, probably 18, 20,000 square feet. Two brothers got this thing going. They don't have high, they have high school degrees and then trade school. We're in this, you know, beautiful business. All the people are just real estate agents. No one had a four-year degree. And we're like, well, what do you think about this? Like, well, this is absurd, right? So I do this roundtable. I go to a place to get lunch. I'm talking to Hannah is her name. H in the beginning, H at the end, I remember. Cause she said that, stuck in my mind. And we started talking, she goes, yeah, this is great. You know, I graduated from college, I have all this debt. You know, I'm working here as a bartender. And her degree was, uh, degree was in, um, gosh, she was like, uh, public or communications with an art major or art minor, right? I'm like, well, you know, kind of get what you pay for there.

• 2:43:46Speaker 01

  And she goes, yeah, I think it's a great idea. Okay, Hannah, hold on a sec. Let's say this place is banging on a Friday night. And there's, there's 100 people here. And you go, all right, timeout. 91 of you go over there. Okay, and then 91, and the other nine, you sit here. All 91 of you are going to pay for everything they eat and drink tonight. And you're going to sit there and watch them.

• 2:44:11Speaker 01

  I go, would they be mad? She goes, well, yeah, that's just unfair. And I was like, okay, so 91 folks, even if they were just getting it, you know, you're talking 25 bucks a person, maybe? I mean, they could have lavish dinner, right? So this is $2,500 out of every single American taxpayer's wallet to pay for somebody to have dinner on you. No, that doesn't make sense on any planet, right? And I told her that and she's like, wow, yeah, that is just unfair. I'm like, Hannah.

• 2:44:43Jocko Willink?

  Hannah, run the numbers.

• 2:44:44Speaker 01

  Walk the dog. That's what I call it. Walk the dog on this. You know what I mean? It, it doesn't make sense. So people are seeing that and, um, I, there are so many reasons to be discouraged, Jaco. And you can always find one. You can always find no. You know, no is easy. It is. It's easiest in the world. No.

• 2:45:04Speaker 01

  And it's easy to get stirred. It's easy to get down, you know, with all the circumstances. But I'm telling you, if you wake up in the morning like I do, and you just have overwhelming sense of gratitude, like we talked about, just be so gracious. Look at yourself. Look at, look at the things, the opportunities that you have as a human being in the United States of America right now. To create something, to do something worthwhile, to help somebody out. That doesn't exist in a lot of countries. And when you just take a minute and go like, yeah, you know, I'm gonna go buy that cup of coffee. I do that for cops and they're like, I'm sorry, sir, I can't accept a gift. I'm like, you're not the boss of me, dude. Like, I don't work for you, police officer X, you know, I'm buying you this cup of coffee, dude.

• 2:45:48Speaker 01

  Or you help out a homeless person, like help them out, not just throw money at them, because that doesn't help anybody. I mean, it doesn't. The ability to do that is unique.

• 2:45:58Speaker 01

  And we gotta remember that. And you gotta tell your friends. And you gotta encourage your friends to tell other people. Because you've seen the downward spiral. You know, when things start going bad, and then it's just that, it's this, this negative feedback loop that people get into. We're in a negative feedback loop, but the inputs are coming from our government. And we should be in a negative feedback loop, feedback loop right now. So how do you get out of that? You put goodness in there. That's what we're doing. It's, I mean, some things are so basically, you know, philosophical, and it was interesting teaching special reconnaissance, because you have time to reflect. When do you have time to reflect? And, I mean, they started with videos, remember, they're like two minutes long?

• 2:46:44Speaker 01

  Then they made them one minute, then they made them 30 seconds.

• 2:46:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're just talking about social media videos?

• 2:46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're like, what, seven seconds now?

• 2:46:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:50Speaker 01

  So there's been a crunch of the attention span of people, and it removes your ability to reflect on something. You truly don't understand something until you ponder it. And teaching special reconnaissance and doing special reconnaissance missions, you have time to ponder things.

• 2:47:05Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you do.

• 2:47:06Speaker 01

  And sometimes pondering while you're freezing and starving, you know. But, um, and again, starting as a kid, you know, reading so much. Reading takes time and reflection. And when you're, you're putting an author's voice inside of your mind. Cause you're reading it and you're, you know, you're hearing that inside. You're not receiving this like a television image. It's you internalize it.

• 2:47:32Jocko Willink?

  So we're putting some good in there.

• 2:47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're injecting good into the cycle. Seriously, so being encouraged, I want you, listen, people, I want you to be encouraged. You live in the best country in the world if you're in America right now. And if you're not, move here legally. Emigrate to the United States of America and we'll welcome you with open arms if you do it the right way.

• 2:47:50Jocko Willink?

  Check. That gets us, I think that gets us up to date. That's where we're at, right?

• 2:47:55Speaker 01

  Um, these are excellent, by the way.

• 2:47:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, thank you.

• 2:47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:59Jocko Willink?

  Thank you. Appreciate it.

• 2:48:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I haven't had one before. I guess you have this whole line of everything, right?

• 2:48:03Jocko Willink?

  We got a line of a bunch of stuff, you know? We got a, we got, um, we're making supplements here.

• 2:48:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:48:09Jocko Willink?

  Um, we've got clothing, we got factories, we got two factories in Maine. We got maybe three factories in Maine, depending on what you're counting as a factory. And we just consolidated, or we're in the process of consolidating our two factories in North Carolina to one factory in North Carolina.

• 2:48:24Speaker 01

  Well, back up. Why don't you have a factory in the third congressional district of the state of Wisconsin?

• 2:48:29Jocko Willink?

  We can talk about that.

• 2:48:30Speaker 01

  Let's talk about that.

• 2:48:31Jocko Willink?

  Um, we can go out there and check it out. And as, as we grow, which we're growing very rapidly right now. And the reason we're growing very rapidly is because people want American made stuff.

• 2:48:41Speaker 01

  Sure. Hey dude, we've got power, we've got rail. Uh, during the, um, summertime, we've got the Mississippi River to move, uh, commodities up and down. And I have the most fantastical, hardworking, uh, ethically sound badass Americans in the world.

• 2:48:56Jocko Willink?

  Well, that, that is, that is outstanding and, and. That's what we're looking for. Um, you know, we've, we've kind of a little bit maxed out our resources, our human capital up in Maine. We're still getting people that are, I mean, the beautiful thing is we've got people coming in from all over the country are moving to Maine, moving to North Carolina, knocking on the door, I want a job. I want to work here. It's, it's outstanding. And so that's been a huge part of it. Um, just growing that. But yeah, we make boots, we make jeans, we make hunt, hunt gear. So American-made hunt gear. I don't, I don't think there's anyone more patriotic in the world than hunters in the, in the country than hunters.

• 2:49:34Speaker 01

  Hunters need to vote. Like 30% of hunters vote.

• 2:49:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 2:49:38Speaker 01

  That little. We all sit around and, and you know, griping about this and that. They don't vote. If you're a hunter, vote.

• 2:49:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:45Speaker 01

  Register and vote.

• 2:49:46Jocko Willink?

  No doubt about it. There's no doubt about it.

• 2:49:48Speaker 01

  If you're not part of the problem.

• 2:49:49Jocko Willink?

  For hunting rights, for gun rights, for conservation, like you, you definitely want to be voting if you're not voting right now. But they definitely, I mean, I, I saw a bunch of hunters over the past, you know, September, the past hunting season for me, and everyone is just so excited about being able to buy stuff that's made in America. Because this is, you're literally taking money out of our economy. When you buy something from overseas, you're just giving that money, not only giving it overseas, but they don't care about the environment at all in these overseas factories. They definitely don't take care of their workers. Their workers have no future. They're slave labor. It's, it's, it's horrible.

• 2:50:24Speaker 01

  We are paying the Chinese Communist Party to oppress their people and plot against the existence of the United States.

• 2:50:35Jocko Willink?

  It's what is happening.

• 2:50:36Speaker 01

  I know, man.

• 2:50:37Jocko Willink?

  And that's what me and my friends are doing to push back against that is bringing manufacturing back to America. I mean, you, you love it. We, we are literally, we have, have literally brought machines that were outsourced to America, from America 30 years ago. We've bought them and have brought them back to America and are putting them to use. That's what we're actually doing it, uh, right now. I mean, we got, we got great documentation of this too. Uh, so that's what we're doing.

• 2:51:07Speaker 01

  Well, I'll tell you what, dude.

• 2:51:10Speaker 01

  Let me get elected, keep working hard, and then student official visit.

• 2:51:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:15Speaker 01

  Cause I, listen, I will do anything to help the people that I'm representing. Those three conditions morally, ethically, and legally correct. Then we got, we have to find ways that meet those parameters with the end state of your congressional district. The state and the country are better off because of it.

• 2:51:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:35Speaker 01

  And it's, it's just a little nose to the grindstone dude. You really gotta think about what's taking place and then act on it.

• 2:51:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, a huge part, a huge part of what you're talking about is, you know, you've said it multiple times. You've got to put your country first. And you know, when, when I've, as I've gotten involved in the, in these industries, you, you can look back very easily in the last 40 years, 30 years really of the history of the companies in America, where you can increase your profits, your short-term profits by a little percentage. And therefore you make this, and oh, you know what? We can, we can, it's going to cost us more to get it over here. It's going to cost us to transport it. It's going to cost us time, but we got plenty of time because we're big and it's going to save us, you know, 38 cents a garment.

• 2:52:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:52:24Jocko Willink?

  Let's do it. And that's what they did.

• 2:52:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:52:26Jocko Willink?

  And they did that over and over again. And then they spread the lie of not, not what they, what we were up against is they said, oh, you can't, it's impossible to do this in America now.

• 2:52:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:52:35Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's like, are you kidding me? This is America.

• 2:52:38Speaker 01

  It's America.

• 2:52:39Jocko Willink?

  This is America. We outproduce the world.

• 2:52:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:52:41Jocko Willink?

  And we can build anything. We can make anything. And that's what we're doing. And look, it starts with boots and clothing and jeans and jujitsu gees and rash guards. That's where we're starting. I don't know where we're going to finish.

• 2:52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:52Jocko Willink?

  But that's what we're doing.

• 2:52:53Speaker 01

  So we, we have a, we have a globally integrated economy. Right? It's carbon based and, and I'm okay with that to, to an extent. What I'm not is, I'm not a globalist. And I understand that we need to make sure that we're putting the interests of our people first. And the best example of this is. Let's say you're a 98-year-old person with osteoporosis, whatever, and you see someone being assaulted. Can you help that person? No. I mean, you can call police, but you can't get in there. So you have to be strong in order to help somebody.

• 2:53:38Speaker 01

  And this administration either doesn't understand that, or they don't care. So when you are... The difference between equality and equity is everyone should have the... Everyone should have the ability to start with a level playing field. Do you know what I mean? And then you succeed or fail predicated on your God-given gifts and your drive. Right? But if I force you to perform less so that you have equity vice equality, it ruins everything. Thomas Sowell is brilliant.

• 2:54:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we've been kind of exploring, bringing him out to bring him on the podcast.

• 2:54:27Speaker 01

  If you do, can I come here?

• 2:54:28Jocko Willink?

  Talked about him a bunch, and he's definitely had a big influence on the way that I think.

• 2:54:33Speaker 01

  Equality of opportunity, not outcome.

• 2:54:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, just brilliant, man.

• 2:54:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so Echo.

• 2:54:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's up, man?

• 2:54:42Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any questions?

• 2:54:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's rewind a little bit.

• 2:54:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, oh.

• 2:54:45Speaker 02

  Real quick. You're working at a gas station. Yes. Did you have any roommates at that time?

• 2:54:50Speaker 01

  No, I was working at Drysdale Chevron.

• 2:54:52Speaker 02

  So you could work at Chevron and have your own apartment. Granted, we're starving, for sure.

• 2:54:57Speaker 01

  Wait, so check this out. You guys, do you track Dennis Prager?

• 2:55:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:04Speaker 01

  Okay, so PragerU, they did, you know, those series of four-minute videos. They did this one. If you do three things, doesn't matter where you start, on the lower socioeconomic scale, you're going to wind up in the middle class. You graduate from high school. You do not have a child out of wedlock and you have a full-time job. That could be at the gas station, that could be anywhere, right? So you do these three things, statistically, you're going to wind up in the middle class.

• 2:55:32Speaker 01

  It just takes those things and a lot of people give guff about um intergenerational wealth transfer, right? Well, we were raised dirt poor, but my ma, because she was a hard worker. When she died, she had a home and we sold the home because we didn't want to live there. And then we had had to pay a bunch of taxes and then we received this, you know, a little nest egg from my mom. That's money that went from one generation to another. That is intergenerational wealth transfer. And all it takes, I mean, that's what it is. I mean, like, you don't get to make up the, we're SEALs. SEALs make up definitions of words all the time, by the way.

• 2:56:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'll change your name, you know, uh, Jason, I'll say his name, Jason, uh, Jason Cabell.

• 2:56:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:19Speaker 01

  Okay, so Jay Bell's his nickname. He was in BUDs and they're like.

• 2:56:23Jocko Willink?

  Were you in BUDs with him?

• 2:56:24Speaker 01

  No, I was not. He's after me.

• 2:56:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:56:27Speaker 01

  So Jay Bell's nickname, you know, Jason Cabell.

• 2:56:29Jocko Willink?

  He was my, he was my LPO when I was at Team Seven.

• 2:56:32Speaker 01

  Okay, he just finished directing an episode of SEAL Team.

• 2:56:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right.

• 2:56:36Speaker 01

  Over in Jordan, I think. Yeah, so we're buddies. I did him, uh, he asked me, he's like, hey, I want you to play Airship's Captain in a movie I'm directing with Nicolas Cage. And I'm like, okay, I was working at the cafe. I've never chased acting before, but he called me because they're friends. I'm like, sure, I'll do it. But um, so Jay Bell, he's in BUDs and they're like, get over here. And like, get over here, Cable. And he's like, it's Cabell. And he's like, don't church it up.

• 2:57:00Speaker 01

  Your name is Cable. So SEALs will literally change your, your name. So, sorry, yeah, gas station, poor.

• 2:57:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you had your own apartment, though.

• 2:57:09Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:57:09Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, it seems like here, here in San Diego, anyway, if I work at Chevron, I don't think I'm getting my own apartment.

• 2:57:16Speaker 01

  Then move.

• 2:57:17Speaker 02

  Can you?

• 2:57:17Speaker 01

  Or get a different job.

• 2:57:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, uh, honestly, we, there's people that here, that live here, that work at Chevron, that live somewhere. They have apartments or something.

• 2:57:26Speaker 01

  Right, but with a roommate or something like this.

• 2:57:28Jocko Willink?

  Look, you, actually, you know, when, when guys are in the military here, especially their young guys in the military, they're, they're, if they got a family, they're either having to live on house basing or maybe they go out in town.

• 2:57:42Speaker 01

  And a lot of them are on, on uh. WIC and SNAP and all that stuff. So you have, so when we were raising our kids, and this is a, it's a choice that you can make. So Sarah was an RN, she was an ICU nurse, and I was a E4, I guess. And we had our second child, and I think I made E5 by then. And we just looked at it and said, hey, look, her economic earning potential is three times what mine was. But we said, we have these kids, and we chose to invest in the children. You know what I mean? So Sarah stayed at home since we had our second child. And we supported ourselves off a single enlisted person's salary. And we had, what's that?

• 2:58:25Speaker 01

  It's the WIC, Women Infant and Children, you know, like coupons to get milk and all that stuff? I mean, we were poor. But relatively speaking, you know, if you, you projected across the globe, we're still incredibly wealthy. If you look at that in perspective. And I think when the Department of the Army just came on and said, hey, instead of paying enlisted people more, put them on food stamps. That's an issue.

• 2:58:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, that's a way for them to save money in the long run, right? Which is not giving, you're not raising their base pay, which means you don't have to pay their retirement as much. But Echo, what was your, what was your point in saying that?

• 2:59:01Speaker 02

  Like, it's- I'm making the comparison, but you make a good point too, because, and this was actually kind of maybe a few years after that. I remember, I had a roommate too, though, but my portion of the rent was like 450 bucks or something. And I was making like 300 bucks every two weeks. So I was making like 600 bucks.

• 2:59:22Jocko Willink?

  Where was this here?

• 2:59:23Speaker 02

  You know, I-

• 2:59:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. Yeah. Bro, you were living large.

• 2:59:26Speaker 02

  So your point is-

• 2:59:27Jocko Willink?

  Wait, were you moving, moving company?

• 2:59:29Speaker 02

  No, no, no. Moving company was my first summer job.

• 2:59:31Jocko Willink?

  But you made good money moving, right?

• 2:59:33Speaker 02

  I was a part-time bouncer at that time.

• 2:59:35Jocko Willink?

  You ain't gonna make a bunch of money for being a part-time bouncer.

• 2:59:38Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. I'm just making the comparison with like how much you can make versus what you can kind of live off of and have your own apartment and whatever. And you know what? I'm biased, that's why. Cause I'm like, I look at like the apartment rent right now, and it's like- Three thousand, thirty-five hundred, four thousand, forty-three hundred is what I'm hearing.

• 2:59:57Jocko Willink?

  You're saying in San Diego.

• 2:59:58Speaker 02

  Exactly, right. San Diego in, in UTC.

• 3:00:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, oh come on, man. There's places in, even in, even in San Diego, which is super expensive. There's places that are way cheaper than that.

• 3:00:08Speaker 02

  In fact, I would actually even say that most places are gonna be way cheaper than that. In all of, probably California, really, when you think about, I mean, there's certain designated cities that's like, okay, it's crazy. But everywhere else is probably a lot cheaper. But you make a good point where it's like, yeah, I worked at Chevron, but then even you saying like, oh yeah, you're starving. It's kinda like, okay, there, that's kind of the deal. No one's really starving now. You know, everyone's got their phone and they got their this.

• 3:00:35Speaker 01

  I'm thankful that people are not hungry.

• 3:00:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, fully, but that's a whole different thing though. Than, as far as like, what, what I was kind of trying to compare.

• 3:00:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:43Speaker 02

  But I don't think we're way off. I think, I think it's kinda similar now. I think just now, we're just distracted by way more things, you know?

• 3:00:50Jocko Willink?

  But you also gotta look at what you're gonna accept and what you're gonna do about it. Cause I, this, I was, I was in Iraq, we hit this Target building and we roll in there. And there's a family, whatever, live in there and there was a bad guy and we got the bad guy and we're, now we're like looking at this place where it lives. And, uh, in the, it was basically one big room and then like two smaller sleeping rooms. But in the one big room, there was the kitchen where they made the food. And then there was like, uh, there was like a sink to make, to, to do dishes. It was the kitchen. And there was a, a small bench or table to prep the food. And then right next to that was the shitter.

• 3:01:32Jocko Willink?

  It was like, it wasn't, it wasn't a toilet. It was a trough that had a little hole, but you would shit right there.

• 3:01:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:01:38Jocko Willink?

  And these things were separated by no more than five feet.

• 3:01:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:01:42Jocko Willink?

  If I moved in there, within thirty seconds, I'd be assessing how we're gonna do this different, what changes we're gonna make, we're gonna make this thing better. We're not gonna, we're not gonna shit where we eat. That's just the general rule. We're gonna, we're gonna make change now. This family had been living there for a long time.

• 3:01:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:01:55Jocko Willink?

  And I noticed that wherever we would go. There would be some guys in a platoon that'd be like, "Oh, we're moving into this building now? Cool. Here's what I'm gonna do." They start fixing stuff, they start making stuff, they start building stuff, they get everything set up, they'd get a fan from somewhere, they'd rig that, they'd make it work. Guys, guys would just take, take action to improve their situation that they're in. And some people aren't. So, if you're in an apartment and you're working at Chevron, and you're starving, you go, "Hey, you know what? This sucks. I think this sucks. I'm gonna go and see what the US military, if there's an opportunity for me there." That's Derek. You know, "I'm working at Wendy's." Guess what? Working at Wendy's sucks. It sucks working at Wendy's. They have these fantastic potato wedges.

• 3:02:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, believe me, I'm not, I'm not knocking, I can't say I didn't really dig Wendy's. But, I'm, I'm looking at it going, "Hey, you know what? This sucks. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this for a long time. I, I want to find something else." Okay, what, what options do they have in the US military for me? You and I both kind of look towards the military, but no matter where you're at, you look around and go, "Hey, you know what? Where I'm at right now kind of sucks." And if you're thinking that right now, then you say, "Okay, why does it suck? What do I need to do to improve it? How can I start building in the right direction?" But, so you know how we get there? When we looked at, uh, how things were being manufactured, the only way to manufacture something is do it overseas. That sucks! Right. And my, my business partner Pete said, "That sucks. I want to make stuff in America."

• 3:03:21Jocko Willink?

  Had to go and find a freaking loom and pull it out of an abandoned factory and get that thing working again and find people that knew how to work it. Why? Because it sucked and we're gonna do something about it. It sucks that we couldn't get boots that we wanted, that were made in America. Cool, that sucks. What are we gonna do about it? So, if you're in a situation, "That sucks!", don't just sit there and grovel in it. Figure out what you can do to make some adjustments. And listen, there are there hard times that hit people? Yeah. You know, it's a classic extreme ownership question that I'll get. "Hey, I've been hit with this disease, been hit with cancer." I mean, I, I remember distinctly, I got asked this question, uh, at a live event. A woman said, "You know, my, my, my,

• 3:04:05Jocko Willink?

  my child, it was a daughter, daughter, has cancer. How can I take ownership of that? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to take ownership of it? How's that my fault?" And I said, "No, it's not your fault, obviously, that your child got cancer. What you take ownership of is how you respond to it." Right, so, so...

• 3:04:23Speaker 01

  I see what you're saying. So here is the the the nexus of personal responsibility and governmental control. So the government's job is to make sure that the playing field is level. And also, we've gotten to the point where we seem to have demonized labor. So we have to not take away the dignity of labor. You know what I mean? Like, I have a picture on my phone. I'm handing a young guy named Joey his first paycheck today ever in his life. You know what I mean? He'll remember that 250 bucks the rest of his life. Raleigh Bevins handed me my first check at a movie theater. I remember that. I remember the guy's name.

• 3:05:08Speaker 01

  That was 50 years ago or whatever, you know? No, 50, I'm 53, so 35 years, 40 or whatever it is, I don't know. Right? So I remember Raleigh Bevins doing that. So what is taking place in the United States of America is that for some reason, we've allowed these folks to convince people that if you work with your hands, you're lower and you're lesser. So even for some people, they're okay with their circumstances by working at Wendy's. And we have to understand that it's okay if that's what you're gonna do. But then again, if you want something more, you that's the part where you gotta look inside. And I think that's what you're articulating. If you're not happy with your circumstance and the level or the playing field is level

• 3:05:50Speaker 01

  because the government has set conditions for everybody, level, and you're living in a place where you don't want to be, it's up to you to facilitate that change.

• 3:06:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, of course, there's people, yeah, that's another leadership question I could ask. You know, I got Fred, and Fred, he comes to work from nine to five, but he's he's not motivated to do anything else. He's perfectly fine, just just work. And I say, oh, you've got a great person then that's satisfied with where they're at. They're doing their job every day. They're working hard. It doesn't mean turn their turn your back on them and think, well, I'm never gonna pay attention to Fred again. No, it means every six months, you check in with Fred and you say, hey, Fred, I know you were waiting for your kids to, you know, get through middle school or you're going to a lot of their games. Now that your kid left middle school, you are you thinking about maybe moving into a leadership position? Nope, I want to wait till they're done with high school. Hey, cool, no problem. I appreciate the work you're doing.

• 3:06:37Speaker 01

  Are you familiar with the concept of the regimental corporal?

• 3:06:41Jocko Willink?

  Speak to me on the regimental corporal.

• 3:06:42Speaker 01

  Alright, so in the British Army, they have something, it's called a regimental corporal. Like in the American military, you have to promote, promote, promote.

• 3:06:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:06:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so they have people that are corporals.

• 3:06:51Jocko Willink?

  Yep, for life.

• 3:06:53Speaker 01

  Right, because they are the best weapons technician in the world. And they really want to do that, you know what I mean?

• 3:06:59Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:07:00Speaker 01

  And that's, it's not the English dream, clearly, but that's where that guy wants to be. So it, the, the beauty of the United States of America, and we gotta get back to this because we're getting away from it, is when you work yourself into a place where you're content, it's okay to be content. I mean, it's nice to be content, not complacent, there's a difference. So when you're content with your family situation, and your school, and your job, and all that stuff, that's awesome. That's your American dream, man. You don't, you don't have to have a mansion in Beverly Hills, we've been just fooled.

• 3:07:30Jocko Willink?

  I have guys that tag me in, uh, social media of like plumbing installs that are super freaking dialed. Or they're putting an electrical sub panel and everything is squared away, and they're like, yeah, check it out. Hell, yeah, absolutely, a hundred percent. That's a trade, that's a skill, and that's awesome. And I'm super stoked when I see that stuff. And that's, again, one thing I'm very lucky is that, you know, I work with my consulting company, Echelon Front. We work with companies all over the country and all over the world. And so I get to travel into wherever, North Dakota, and go out and check out the oil rigs that are being drilled, the drills, the guys working, what they're doing. Those freaking guys are awesome.

• 3:08:14Jocko Willink?

  The linemen up in Michigan, you know, hanging wires, going through.

• 3:08:19Speaker 01

  Wisconsin.

• 3:08:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in Wisconsin, all over.

• 3:08:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:08:21Jocko Willink?

  And, and these people are skilled, they've got a badass job, they know that their job is completely me. They literally supply power to the country, freaking outstanding.

• 3:08:34Speaker 01

  So, linemen, right?

• 3:08:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:36Speaker 01

  I'm going around, right off the Great River Road, Highway 35, goes along the Mississippi. I'll have the largest contiguous section of the Mississippi River of any congressional district in the country.

• 3:08:46Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 3:08:47Speaker 01

  Bam, it's beautiful. See this great house on a corner, big, uh, garage, it's like a three-story place, truck in the driveway, this new pontoon boat with like a 250 horsepower motor or something outboard, you know, costs more than my truck. And so I whip in there, because I want to put a yard sign on this guy's. And I go, hey, man, do you mind me asking what you do for a living? Lineman. Lineman. Went to trade school for two years. And he had two kids and I can't remember his wife's name. For Pete's sake, she was a radiology technician, not a radiologist, but she. Okay, she went to trade school. So you got these two people went to trade school, graduated from high school. And they're ballin', dude.

• 3:09:31Speaker 01

  I mean, they're living their American dream. They got their kids in school and I'm like. Why is that wrong? And you. You can't fix a toilet with a degree in 13th century French poetry. And. You just can't. So. Why have we demonized the things that built this nation? You know what I mean? You can't. You can't pump the air conditioning in this room. If you have a degree in communications. You gotta be a metal worker. You know what I mean? You have to be a sheet metal worker to make ducting. So. One of the things that I'm doing, Jaco, is. I consider myself and I think that the federal government needs to do more cheerleading. Like we have to cheerlead. I did a, I got endorsed by 16 of the 19 sheriffs in my district.

• 3:10:17Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Because they know I have their back 100%. I've lived in ungoverned space. I'm unwilling to do that in the United States. How do you prevent that? You support the police officers. That's what you do, right? So. I'm all in with these guys. Uh, all the time. And I'm also all in. With people that are going to trade school. So we have to have people in positions of power. Go, it is so awesome that you are protecting me when I say, I tell them this, okay dude. So I'm a Christian. I was never afraid of being injured or killed. It was not part of my calculation. You know what I mean? I, for me, I've read the end of the book, seen the end of the movie. I know what happens. Even me, I used to joke.

• 3:11:02Speaker 01

  You know, with my wife about this. And it was just kind of. She's a frog man's wife. Well, she's a frog. No, she's a frog man's wife, you know what I mean? So.

• 3:11:12Speaker 01

  I was never worried about that. What I was worried about was my family. Do you know what I mean? I was worried about my family. And the most precious gift you can have, from my personal experience in a combat environment. Is like a two hour nap. Right?

• 3:11:29Jocko Willink?

  It's nice.

• 3:11:29Speaker 01

  You get two hours of sleep and things are squirrely. Why can you get that two hour nap? Because your brothers have guns and they're looking out and they're protecting you in your sleep. That's something I cherished and I still do. Who does that for my family? Police officers. That's a gift. And when, when people are demonizing them, they just don't understand that. These people are literally watching your children as they sleep to make sure they're not harmed. What is more honorable than that and noble? I don't know.

• 3:12:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, same thing with the guys and gals that are building our country.

• 3:12:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Same thing when you flip on that electrical switch.

• 3:12:07Speaker 01

  It's honorable and it's noble. And things don't work without that. So the federal government needs to cheerlead. We need to tell people, you're not, you're only here because these people are working so hard. That's why you could drive your car to work. That's why you're eating. And that's why you have clothes. These are things that don't take these, you know, fancy pants degrees. And I don't have an issue. I mean, I, I went to law school. You know what I mean? I get it. Higher education is very important. Graduate degrees are important. By the way, I finished my first year of law school and did full-time congress. So I'm technically on a sabbatical, which.

• 3:12:43Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 3:12:44Speaker 01

  I'm.

• 3:12:45Jocko Willink?

  You may or may not get back to.

• 3:12:47Speaker 01

  Well, I'm going to have a greater positive effect writing laws than I will interpreting them.

• 3:12:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:51Speaker 01

  And again, you know, I, I got into that. I went to that for intellectual curiosity, not to, you know, be Perry Mason or something like that. Anyway, so that's the next thing I'm doing, cheerleading.

• 3:13:01Jocko Willink?

  Check. Was that the only question?

• 3:13:03Speaker 01

  That's the only one.

• 3:13:04Jocko Willink?

  That's the only one.

• 3:13:05Speaker 01

  I was trying to comparison, just.

• 3:13:06Jocko Willink?

  You've got, you've got to test him a little bit, you know, he's going to be up against the big dog, the big, uh, tough questions.

• 3:13:12Speaker 01

  That's it for right now.

• 3:13:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Right on. Derek, any closing thoughts, man?

• 3:13:17Speaker 01

  Um, gosh, I, uh, I, again, I want people to be encouraged. And, you know, how are you encouraged is you, you sit down and you, you practice, actively practice gratitude for what you got. And you understand that you are empowered to change your circumstances. And I know that because I was raised dirt poor in a single home, high school dropout, the whole works and jerks. And I'm going to congress next year. So if I can do this.

• 3:13:53Speaker 01

  You can do it. It's, it's the same rea- I told you, man. I knew I could graduate from BUDS because there is a seal with a trident on in front of me. Right?

• 3:14:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:03Speaker 01

  Means it's possible. So act. Right?

• 3:14:08Jocko Willink?

  It is possible. So act. Awesome words to close on. Thanks for joining us, brother. Thanks for your service.

• 3:14:16Speaker 01

  Well, thank you for yours. Echo, it's really nice to meet you, man.

• 3:14:19Speaker 02

  Likewise.

• 3:14:19Speaker 01

  I'll give you my phone or you can call me.

• 3:14:21Speaker 02

  Right on. Sounds good.

• 3:14:22Speaker 01

  I think you already got it. Well, God bless you guys and your, your listeners and I just wish you the best. Oh, hey. Where's that thing?

• 3:14:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh, we got a baseball bat?

• 3:14:30Speaker 01

  Check this out. So this, this was made by the Three Brothers Bat Company. It's in Wisconsin. Got ahold of these guys. Couple played college balls. It's actually four brothers and a sister. But they decided to start making baseball bats. So this bat is, it meets all the standards to be used in the Major League Baseball. And these dudes just bought this whole building and started making these things.

• 3:15:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So what happened with bats is I did like a, okay, long story on the bats. Here's the long story on the bats. When I went to Iraq Platoon Commander 2003. When'd you go there for the first time? 2004?

• 3:15:17Speaker 01

  I was in Afghanistan in 2003. I was in Iraq in 2005.

• 3:15:20Jocko Willink?

  When you were in Afghanistan in 2003, was America sending a bunch of stuff over there? Just like care packages and like sunscreen?

• 3:15:28Speaker 01

  Still are.

• 3:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So that was going on. And for whatever reason, you know, they're sending sunscreen and like M and M, just all this stuff. And they would send baseball gloves and baseballs and baseball bats. So for whatever reason, we had a bunch of baseball bats. So we're living in a, you know, this was 2003. The war had kinda, well, this is the fall of 2004, 2003. So the war wasn't very deep. There wasn't all this infrastructure. There wasn't like a Wendy's on the base and everything like this yet. And so we were briefing in this crappy room with a, you know, like a sheet hung up on the wall. And I would brief, I would go and get one of the bats from this MWR, the morale.

• 3:16:12Speaker 01

  Welfare and Recreation.

• 3:16:13Jocko Willink?

  Recreation bucket, which had three baseball bats in it that somebody, some cool person from America threw them into a package and sent them to support the troops.

• 3:16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which is beautiful.

• 3:16:22Jocko Willink?

  And so I would walk over there, grab a bat, and that's how I'd brief. And one of my friends has a, has a video of me briefing with the bat. And, you know, that's just like how I would point to like, hey, we're gonna go into here, we're gonna move over there. And so then when I was a task unit commander, it kind of continued on that we had like a briefing bat. And then we did a video the other day, and I was just like talking about leadership or something, I was holding a bat. And I forget what bat it was.

• 3:16:48Speaker 01

  It'll be that one in the future.

• 3:16:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, in the future will be this one. But then now a bunch of people, now I have, I think, I think I've received five baseball bats from various people, custom baseball bats. I mean, you see, there's another one right over there. I got a few of them at home. But yeah, this one is, this one's awesome. Made in America. It says Defcor Pro Model Def 434.

• 3:17:10Speaker 01

  Three Brothers Bat Company, dude. That is in my district. And that is another example of people saying, I have got a good idea. There's, I'll tell you one I gotta get out of here. There's Weiser Concrete, Concrete Company. Joe just died, um, gosh, it must have been six, seven months ago. Joe had like six kids, and they had a house, and marries his wife. And he's like, I got an idea. Like, I got an idea. How to make concrete this certain way to make this stuff, and it's gonna work. Mortgages his house again. So you want to talk about risk? Homeless, Wisconsin, six kids? That would happen if

• 3:17:53Speaker 01

  he failed. But he's like, I have an idea. He died a billionaire.

• 3:17:58Jocko Willink?

  Jack.

• 3:17:59Speaker 01

  Because he was like, I'm sticking with it.

• 3:18:02Jocko Willink?

  Check on the billionaire part, not so much the check on the died part. But I mean, if you're gonna die, you might as well do it as a millionaire.

• 3:18:06Speaker 01

  Right. So the, that's one of the things where people demonize business people. I'm like, the hardest.

• 3:18:14Speaker 01

  The, I would say the wealthiest people I know are some of the hardest working people I know. And, you know, that's their thing. That's their metric. As I started off, you know, I still do this. I collect relationships with people. To me, that is my metric of success. How many people do I know? At what level do I know them? How can I help them? Will they reach out to me if they need something and can I facilitate that need? That's my metric of success. It always has been. Sarah Jane and I live on my enlisted retirement. You know what I mean? Cause we don't chase nickels. It's not my thing. But if, if that, if you're a businessman, your metric or woman, your metric of success, more likely than not is financial.

• 3:18:54Speaker 01

  So therefore, if you're doing this and that's the metric of success, you should be wealthy as a business person. If you're a doctor, you should be caring people. So I love that about this job because I get to meet the most fascinating people. Like those dudes that made that bat for you. And it was an offhand comment. You know this Jaco guy?

• 3:19:16Jocko Willink?

  When, when did you meet him and when did they get the bat to you to bring it, hand carry it to me?

• 3:19:20Speaker 01

  That got shipped overnight to my mother-in-law's house. It was delivered yesterday. So I talked to the cats and they're like, oh, you know this Jocko Willink guy? And I'm like, you know, and they said it like, you know, cause apparently it's a big deal. I mean, I don't know this stuff dude. Like, I didn't know you had this. It was like, you don't know he has all this stuff? Cause I started looking into it. And you wrote all these books and everything. I go like, if you're an accountant, you know, would you like go watch a movie about tax season or? You know, you wouldn't. I was like, so why would I be looking into Jaco? I know the dude. He's an awesome cat. You know, why would I be following him around? So, um, I didn't, but they're like, that offhand comment. You know this Jaco? I go, yeah, man, I've known it for like 30 years, I guess now, team one, right?

• 3:20:06Speaker 01

  And they're like, you are kidding me. I'm like, no. So they follow your podcast. They watch it. I think that they've taken a lot of your lessons because they're incredibly squared away dudes. And family's awesome. And just their name, they have, you know, too many siblings to put it on a bat. That's why it's three brothers back company. But yeah, so that was made for you. And I have one. It's in my office, which I think, again, cheerleading for people is what, that should be a primary function of politics. I mean, clearly you must write functional policy, translate ideas into action. And you do that through the written word vice a gun like we used to do. But the rest is just telling, telling people about other people.

• 3:20:46Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like if, if, if I could, if I could tell you about all the people that I know. And what they've done. It would just be an endless conversation. And to me, that means I am the most successful person in the world. Cause that's my metric of success.

• 3:21:07Jocko Willink?

  Awesome, man. Well, like I said, thanks for coming down. Appreciate it.

• 3:21:12Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for, thanks for the service of your family, by the way.

• 3:21:17Jocko Willink?

  What the, what the military wives and spouses.

• 3:21:21Speaker 01

  Through the bomb.

• 3:21:22Jocko Willink?

  Go through. Incredible. The kids that grow up. You know, without dads around, without moms around, really, really challenging. So thanks to your family as well. And.

• 3:21:33Speaker 01

  I'll pass it on.

• 3:21:34Jocko Willink?

  I wish you fair wins, fair wins, following seas, and a lot of votes.

• 3:21:39Speaker 01

  There you go. Get them.

• 3:21:40Jocko Willink?

  All right, bro. Thanks.

• 3:21:41Speaker 01

  Cheers. Oh, one more thing. I forgot. Van Orden for Congress.com.

• 3:21:45Jocko Willink?

  Van Orden for Congress.com, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, you're at Derek, D E R R I C K. Van Orden, O R D E N.

• 3:21:58Jocko Willink?

  And you're up on all those different platforms. You got, you got a YouTube channel as well.

• 3:22:01Speaker 01

  I do.

• 3:22:02Jocko Willink?

  So we can, you can explore. You got lots of 30 second clips on there. Those are your little ad spots.

• 3:22:08Speaker 01

  I do those. I also make these little videos and just try to explain.

• 3:22:12Jocko Willink?

  Where do you put your little videos?

• 3:22:13Speaker 01

  Uh, they go mostly on my social media.

• 3:22:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:22:16Speaker 01

  And then we also rip them over to YouTube.

• 3:22:19Jocko Willink?

  So, so it's all out there. If you want to get a feel, a better feel, if over three hours of conversation, if you don't think like you feel, feel like you know Derek yet, you want to get to know, you might know Derek, do you know Van O?

• 3:22:31Speaker 01

  Do you know Van O?

• 3:22:32Jocko Willink?

  Do you know?

• 3:22:34Jocko Willink?

  DVO. Alright, man. Thank you.

• 3:22:36Speaker 01

  You bet.

• 3:22:37Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Derek Van Orden, Van O.

• 3:22:42Speaker 01

  DVO.

• 3:22:43Jocko Willink?

  DVO. That's what we're going with?

• 3:22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:22:45Jocko Willink?

  DVO. DVO has left the building. A lot going on in the life of DVO.

• 3:22:55Jocko Willink?

  Some pretty important themes throughout the talk, the discussion.

• 3:23:05Jocko Willink?

  And you know what I just realized? You know, he was in that movie. Did you know he was in that movie? He mentioned it, but then we, and I like pulled him back to talk about something else and then he's using the movie, the movie is called Act of Valor.

• 3:23:15Speaker 01

  I did not know that.

• 3:23:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So he was, he played a scene in that movie. He was an interrogator and came in and he, it was pretty funny.

• 3:23:24Jocko Willink?

  Just, he was kind of like just him, but being super aggressive.

• 3:23:32Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, man, what a, what a dedication to jump back into this stuff and get after it. But um, hey, with that, appreciate everyone listening, appreciate the support. And if you want to support.

• 3:23:50Speaker 02

  You mentioned something real quick.

• 3:23:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay, thank you. I was waiting for you to chime in with something or you're just sitting there looking puzzled.

• 3:23:56Speaker 02

  I wasn't looking, but I was thinking about the movie, actually.

• 3:23:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:23:59Speaker 02

  And him playing himself, not much of a stretch, not, not a demonstration of range.

• 3:24:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:24:04Speaker 02

  You know, similar to, to you.

• 3:24:06Jocko Willink?

  To my spirits.

• 3:24:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Pretty, pretty much the exact same thing. But you guys did mention something in passing.

• 3:24:12Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 3:24:13Speaker 02

  Seemingly insignificant, but it stuck with me. You're talking about, he talked about the, the incident where he left his rifle in the other car.

• 3:24:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:24:20Speaker 02

  You know, and he just has his pistol. And you said, that's not gonna cut it.

• 3:24:24Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:24:25Speaker 02

  Why is that? I mean, I can kinda maybe understand, but obviously I've never been in a gunfight.

• 3:24:32Jocko Willink?

  So what he's talking about is the enemy puts indirect fire on you, which is mortars. Maybe rockets. Rockets aren't really indirect, but, but they basically are, are lobbing bombs at you. The purpose of them doing that is number one, that could, could be just a singular purpose. Hey, we're just gonna try and randomly throw some bombs at people and kill whoever we can. Random mortars, maybe we kill one or two Americans. But they could also do it. So when mortars are coming, you have to get, you have to take cover. So now we get, the enemy can get you to take cover. So they drop a couple mortars while you're hiding.

• 3:25:08Jocko Willink?

  They commence a ground assault. Either with a vehicle borne IED. That's what they would do in Ramadi was, was, was, was very aggressive. They would, they would hit you with indirect fire. As the indirect fire is hitting, they start laying down machine gun fire. As the machine gun fire is coming in, then comes IEDs, vehicle borne IEDs. And they overran several, several friendly positions in Ramadi by doing that. Horrible. So. When you, so he gets mortared and he had told the guys like, hey, when you get mortared, give it a second, see what's going on, let it develop and see what's developing. But then as soon as it kind of stops, boom, push out perimeter.

• 3:25:53Jocko Willink?

  So then if anybody attacks, you can fend them off. So he's pushing out to set perimeter and all he has is a pistol. The pistol is not a good weapon for a free gunfight.

• 3:26:08Speaker 02

  So, and that's really the part that I was wondering, like it's, I feel like I understand it kind of, but the way I've heard you say it and my friend Jeremy, he mentioned this one time we were talking. He was like, yeah, a pistol is no match for a rifle. So I'm like, okay, see how you say it's not even close. Like, why is that? Cause there it rifle, you can just aim it better, more range.

• 3:26:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, the range is, the range is 10 times as much. Yeah, like, like sure, you can shoot someone in kind of at 50 yards with a, with a pistol. If you're really, really good, anyone, just about anyone can pick up a rifle and shoot someone at 50 yards. Like almost anywhere, but you can also shoot someone at 500 yards. So it may even be more that, cause, cause really it might be like 12 or 15 times more accurate and ease of shooting.

• 3:26:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:26:57Jocko Willink?

  For a rifle and then the impact, right? You know, the impact of a rifle round is devastating. You know, it can punch through body armor, certain levels of body armor. It can grip through a car, you know, certain parts of a car. So you're just going to get better penetration with a battle rifle than you are with a pistol. Pistol and what's funny is when I got to the SEAL teams, we used to use the, the MP5, which is a nine millimeter submachine gun. A submachine gun is basically a, a machine gun that shoots pistol rounds. So they're small, small little bullets and.

• 3:27:35Jocko Willink?

  Luckily, we went away from that because it's cool for literal close quarters combat. So if you're inside of a building, then it, there is some potential for it. Actually, I think that the, that weapon, the, a submachine gun, like the Heckler and Koch MP5, I think is a great weapon for like home self-defense. Because it's not going to penetrate through a bunch of walls. It's really easy to shoot, like really easy to shoot. So if someone, you know, let's say you wanted to get your wife a self-home defense weapon. Now, look, she could also get a shotgun.

• 3:28:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, maybe a, a smaller gauge shotgun, like not a 12 gauge shotgun, but like a 20 gauge shotgun. Pretty easy to handle, kind of a point and shoot scenario. So that would be one option, but I think a good option. Another good option would be a little submachine gun that she feels super confident shooting.

• 3:28:34Speaker 02

  Can we shoot machine guns in California?

• 3:28:35Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's semi-automatic.

• 3:28:37Speaker 02

  Semi-automatic.

• 3:28:38Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what the legality is on the MP5. Well, no, you can't have a fully automatic weapon in California.

• 3:28:45Speaker 02

  No, I don't think so.

• 3:28:47Jocko Willink?

  Without certain, like.

• 3:28:50Speaker 02

  Criteria.

• 3:28:50Jocko Willink?

  Criteria met. They have some, the, the laws, the laws in California for weapons are really kind of ridiculous. Because all they do is they create a law and then the gun manufacturers create things that get around the law.

• 3:29:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:29:05Jocko Willink?

  And in, it's just weird.

• 3:29:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's like this weird dance.

• 3:29:10Jocko Willink?

  It's a weird dance. Yeah. Instead of just being like, hey, look, this is what you, and it doesn't make any sense. The whole, I mean, look, you hear this stuff all the time about, what is it? Like, what's an assault weapon?

• 3:29:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:29:20Jocko Willink?

  And well, an assault weapon is this type of thing.

• 3:29:23Speaker 02

  AR-15, assault rifle 15?

• 3:29:26Jocko Willink?

  But it's because of like the shape of the grip, like a pistol grip makes it an assault. A muzzle suppressor, a flash suppressor makes it an assault weapon, according to this weird.

• 3:29:39Jocko Willink?

  Thing. So instead of having a pistol grip, they'll like put this weird shaped thing that serves the same function as a pistol grip.

• 3:29:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:29:47Jocko Willink?

  But it's actually not a pistol grip at all.

• 3:29:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:29:50Jocko Willink?

  But it is a pistol grip. It gives you the same function. They just do all this dumb, silly things. And then, and then the gun manufacturers make something that just overcomes that. Maybe it's a little bit awkward or whatever. Not as cool, but it's just a silly dance. It's just this, like you said, it's a silly dance.

• 3:30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, and when I was browsing, um, one of the guys there said something real, one of the main guys there, might've been the owner, he, he said something interesting where he's like, yeah, well, one of the main problems is the people who make the laws and even propose the laws, they don't know anything about guns. So they, they, it just, it's the, the mere conception of the law comes out of ignorance.

• 3:30:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's just, it's just dumb.

• 3:30:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:30:36Jocko Willink?

  It's just dumb. So it's, uh, one of the things about California that's just really bizarre. It's just bizarre. They make laws that, that literally don't make sense.

• 3:30:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yep. When they land, right? It's like, wait, we're like, what's the issue here that this solved? And they're like this. Well, that didn't even solve it.

• 3:30:56Jocko Willink?

  Didn't even solve it.

• 3:30:57Speaker 02

  It actually kind of made some more issues.

• 3:30:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:59Speaker 02

  And that made a lot of people mad who were kind of in the know. Meanwhile, I bike, I can buy Desert Eagle fifty calibers, fifty caliber round. I can shoot with one hand if I want to. That seems kind of dangerous.

• 3:31:13Jocko Willink?

  Could be. I mean, depending on what kind of thing you're shooting at, how dumb you are.

• 3:31:20Speaker 02

  I'm pretty dumb. So let's face it. But yeah, yeah, that is, uh, that's interesting though. That's good. Interesting to know about the pistol versus rifle. Yeah. I didn't realize it was that much of a difference.

• 3:31:33Jocko Willink?

  Huge difference. It's, it's almost incomparable.

• 3:31:36Speaker 02

  Probably because I'm thinking of movies, you know, how like in, you know, Lethal Weapon, remember?

• 3:31:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What, but what part?

• 3:31:41Speaker 02

  I don't know. He was just really good at aiming. So he would be like.

• 3:31:44Jocko Willink?

  At what distance?

• 3:31:45Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 3:31:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. He shoots the smiley face into the target, right?

• 3:31:50Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, that was one of the parts for sure.

• 3:31:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's really, depending on what range, that'd be difficult to do. I think in the movie, it was far away, like pretty far shot.

• 3:32:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, he pushed it all the way back. That was kind of the thing.

• 3:32:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:32:05Speaker 02

  Very interesting.

• 3:32:06Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 3:32:07Speaker 02

  He said a lot of cool stuff, though, and you know, I like hearing cool stuff, like presented a certain way. Um, but at the same time, I do like, kind of like what it says. And when you think about it, you'd be like, oh, man, you know how it kind of dawns on you, like certain things. He said, if you keep your head down, you won't see the world around you.

• 3:32:24Jocko Willink?

  That's a really good point.

• 3:32:26Speaker 02

  And even metaphorically, you know, like if you stay in the house all the time, or if you don't, you know, like they say work-life balance, I get that, that that's a thing or whatever, but let's say you don't see your friends, or you don't, you don't socialize, or, or you don't talk to a bunch of people as much, because you're focused on this or that or whatever, you, you'll miss out a lot of beneficial, like beneficial stuff for you and your, your whole goals. Right? You can miss out on key elements of those goals if you keep your head down in, in all these.

• 3:32:54Jocko Willink?

  When I was in my first SEAL platoon, we, my, my leading petty officer, he, he had this thing, like he would want to go out, party, right?

• 3:33:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:33:03Jocko Willink?

  And he would say, always go out.

• 3:33:06Jocko Willink?

  Like, oh, you know, we're gonna always go out. And I took that because I was like, oh, the car, right? And we always go out, like always go out. Surfing, go out. Like, there's a training mission, always go out. Oh, always go out. So, yeah, always go out, party, cool, get it. I'm, I'm, I approve of that when I was younger, you know? Now that I'm older, I'm not so much supported that, you know what I mean? But always go out, always go on the mission, always step up, always volunteer, always go out, always waves, always go out. You know, snow, always go out. Always go out. So, I, I kind of adopted that attitude a little bit, not only strictly with

• 3:33:44Jocko Willink?

  going out and partying. This guy, one time, he was super drunk, and he's, I think he had to go to the bathroom, and we pull back into the barracks in Guam. And he like gets out of the car and it's dark, and he goes running across the, from the parking lot to the barracks, there was, you know, maybe a hundred yards of grass. And he goes running, and I'm just kind of walking because I'm not in a rush, and I think he had to go to the bathroom. And all of a sudden, he just like disappears, falls. And then I just hear this, ow.

• 3:34:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he fell in a hole or something. He's just like, ow.

• 3:34:25Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, so there you go.

• 3:34:30Jocko Willink?

  With that, um, we talked about some of the stuff today. Hey, Jocko Fuel, get yourself some of these goat new improved flavors. Do I, I, I am apologizing for the previous flavors.

• 3:34:41Speaker 02

  Comparatively.

• 3:34:42Jocko Willink?

  Comparatively speaking, the new flavors are just amazing. And look, with the old flavors, it was like, oh, you know, I got my favorite flavor. Don't really like that one. This one's okay.

• 3:34:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:34:53Jocko Willink?

  Actually don't want to drink this one over here. You know, it's kind of that thing.

• 3:34:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:34:57Jocko Willink?

  Now, no matter what, you can go party mix.

• 3:35:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:35:01Jocko Willink?

  And you're gonna like them all, right? You can grab one, grab the other. They all, they're all freaking tasty. So if you, if you were a little bit maybe cautious or concerned before you tried me like,

• 3:35:15Jocko Willink?

  now you can just get right in there. Just get right in there and get yourself some, some go. Some Jocko go.

• 3:35:22Speaker 02

  Fully good for you, by the way.

• 3:35:24Jocko Willink?

  Which is a totally different thing.

• 3:35:25Speaker 02

  I was watching the show, Netflix show. I don't know. It wasn't my show. My wife was watching it.

• 3:35:30Jocko Willink?

  Your wife's watching a show you're observing.

• 3:35:33Speaker 02

  I'm in the vicinity, my eye, I saw. And they're, they're making this, um, this scene of this girl. She was trying to travel. She was running away from some killers. I don't know, something. So she was driving up to Maine, by the way. And she stops at this convenience. She's all disheveled. She shops at this, and she's a disheveled character. Just to begin with, you know, like, doesn't, doesn't have her shit together kind of thing. She stops at this convenience store and just gets like, in the scene, I see what they were trying to portray there that she's just like, doesn't make the greatest of decisions in general. So like, what'd she get? Like chips? And like, you know, not a good, not a sandwich or not a, you know, she's getting any chips and then she gets an energy drink. And it was like a recognizable brand.

• 3:36:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 3:36:16Speaker 02

  And I was like, hmm, interesting how they chose that brand for to to to convey this message about this character in this point of the story. Interesting. And I was thinking, oh, you know, it's a brand you recognize. You're like, okay, cool. Uh, they, oh, I recognize the brand on the movie, kind of a thing. I was like, oh, that'd be cool if there was some Jaco go in there, right?

• 3:36:35Jocko Willink?

  But it wouldn't fit the character.

• 3:36:35Speaker 02

  Would not fit the the scene. Exactly right.

• 3:36:37Jocko Willink?

  Had to be squared away.

• 3:36:38Speaker 02

  Squared away.

• 3:36:39Jocko Willink?

  She had to be legit.

• 3:36:40Speaker 02

  Exactly right, man. I thought I thought that was kind of interesting.

• 3:36:44Jocko Willink?

  Bro, without opening up a can. ADCC, you and I just went to the ADCC.

• 3:36:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:36:49Jocko Willink?

  Championship.

• 3:36:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:36:51Jocko Willink?

  Which was awesome. We'll do some kind of a thing about that, a little debrief on that at a future time. But we had the ready to drink milk there. How many of them did you have?

• 3:37:01Speaker 02

  Oh, one.

• 3:37:01Jocko Willink?

  Really? I had like, because I was there for two. How did you only have one?

• 3:37:05Speaker 02

  Well, because I drank one and then it was like the next opportunity I had, they were like, Brian was like, because he couldn't give them away. Or something like that. Something happened where they couldn't give away.

• 3:37:18Jocko Willink?

  You got scammed.

• 3:37:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, when they were like, oh, here they are.

• 3:37:22Jocko Willink?

  Five a day. I was there for two days.

• 3:37:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:37:25Jocko Willink?

  They're freaking so tasty. And so good for you. Hey, and this is cool. Good news. We have been having a hard time finding the manufacturer for it. We just got cleared out. We just built that relationship with this manufacturer. We got millions of ready to drink milk coming. It's delicious. Way better than other brands, which you and I just had a little taste test comparison and it's not even close. It's not even close. And this is a big brand. We tried. As a matter of fact, my daughter, Rana, did a taste test while we were at camp. Chocolate milk, legit chocolate milk.

• 3:38:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:38:04Jocko Willink?

  From a milk carton, like, like, like ready-made chocolate milk, but not any kind of, just chocolate milk that's just made to taste good versus milk. Chocolate milk. She picked it. My, my daughter ran it. It's not play around. Like if she's gonna tell you what's up.

• 3:38:19Speaker 02

  She's looking at school.

• 3:38:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, she's kinda like offensive, right? She's kinda like gonna bring it. She kinda raised her eyebrows. She's like, oh damn. Yep, the milk. So we got ready to drink milk coming worldwide. Um, well, not worldwide really, nationwide. You'll be able to order it. Uh, so check that out. Jacofuel.com. Go to Wawa. Go to Wawa and just clean the shelves in there. Let them know what's up. The, the more you buy from Wawa, the more flavors they're gonna bring in. The more we'll open up that supply chain. So go to Wawa, clear shelves. Vitamin Shoppe. We got pink mist at Vitamin Shoppe. Right now it's the only place I think you can get it. We had to run that first run of them.

• 3:39:06Jocko Willink?

  Vitamin Shoppe's been awesome. They got everything in there. So go in there and just get some, get some pink mist. It's tasty.

• 3:39:11Speaker 02

  So we're at 80 cc as you mentioned, and I'm not gonna say who, actually I'm gonna say who, it's my wife. She was like, hey, this pink one is good. This would be perfect with vodka in it.

• 3:39:25Jocko Willink?

  She said it.

• 3:39:26Speaker 02

  She said it and I was like, you know what? You're kinda right. Cause remember back in the day Red Bull vodka or whatever, right? Like that was like, kinda, that was kinda like a death trap kinda thing. Like you're, you're not doing the right thing with a Red Bull and a vodka. And then drinking them all, all night. That's bad. But think about it. The pink mist might balance out some of the repercussions of the vodka.

• 3:39:46Jocko Willink?

  Look, it's not the right thing, but it's not, it's less, it's less wrong. Than going with Red Bull and vodka. It's definitely less wrong than that.

• 3:39:55Speaker 02

  Kind of balances itself out a little bit.

• 3:39:57Jocko Willink?

  It's not balanced.

• 3:39:58Speaker 02

  It feels, it feels like.

• 3:39:59Jocko Willink?

  It's not balanced, but it's a move in the right direction. Let's face it, we're not going out and drinking vodka and thinking that there's, that this is gonna make it okay.

• 3:40:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It felt like a violation.

• 3:40:09Jocko Willink?

  If vodka's kinda on the schedule, which I don't recommend, right? It's not on my schedule at all, zero percent. But if it's on your schedule. And you want to mitigate the issues that you're gonna have.

• 3:40:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:40:22Jocko Willink?

  Then it's not going to mitigate you going to jail. It's not going to mitigate a DUI. It's not going to mitigate you getting arrested. It's not going to mitigate you spending all your money on stupid shit. It's not going to mitigate any of that.

• 3:40:32Speaker 02

  No, probably not.

• 3:40:32Jocko Willink?

  It may give you a little bit of a less hangover in the morning. We'll go with that. Uh, so there you go. Joggofuel.com. Get some of that. OriginUSA.com. Just got back from my hunt. It's another one. We should just do a podcast about the hunt. Lots of lessons. Just, but hey, we made hunt gear. Remember I had said if, if the hunt gear wasn't ready, I was hunting in a loincloth. That was my plan. Luckily, didn't have to break it into the loincloth scenario. Everything is freaking legit and it's just so, so good to go. Um, super stoked. The team from Origin, the team in North Carolina, the team in Maine, everyone putting that stuff together is just turned out

• 3:41:18Jocko Willink?

  freaking legit. So stoked and everyone's kind of stoked, man. Everybody that I saw

• 3:41:24Jocko Willink?

  that hunted was like, hell yeah. Hell yeah.

• 3:41:30Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for making this in the United States of America.

• 3:41:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's legit.

• 3:41:34Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 3:41:34Speaker 02

  Did you shoot anything?

• 3:41:35Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I shot an elk.

• 3:41:36Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 3:41:39Speaker 02

  You're just wanting to see what up.

• 3:41:40Jocko Willink?

  Bro, there's a lot and there's a lot of people. This is a very tough year for hunting. Uh, there's been a lot of rain out west. So there's been a lot of grass. A lot of grass means there's a lot of eating. That means the elk are fat. Which means apparently, and talking to hunters, they're like, well, all that fat on the elk means it's harder to kill them. Because they bleed less, the blood doesn't flow as easily.

• 3:42:10Jocko Willink?

  So it's been a really challenging year. There's a lot of people that that didn't get elk. And it's been a tough year. I was very lucky, very fortunate to get one.

• 3:42:22Speaker 02

  To score.

• 3:42:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I'm at a point now, I got four elk with four arrows. Which is kind of, I told that to Leif and Leif was like, dude, you are freaking lucky bastard. I'm like, I'll take it, man. Hundred percent.

• 3:42:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what do you, what did you do with the elk?

• 3:42:39Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean?

• 3:42:40Speaker 02

  What did you do with elk?

• 3:42:41Jocko Willink?

  Eating it.

• 3:42:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, so you bring it back?

• 3:42:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

• 3:42:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, you drove, huh?

• 3:42:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, I understand.

• 3:42:48Jocko Willink?

  Elk's for dinner, bro.

• 3:42:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I understand, but you know, you know, I'm just saying, does everyone, like if you shoot it, is that the common thing?

• 3:42:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, of course. I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's a few hundred pounds worth of meat.

• 3:42:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I've heard of like, oh, they'll give it to the who, you know what? I'm thinking of this, actually a few stories I heard in like, it was in a different country.

• 3:43:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 3:43:06Speaker 02

  And then they give it to like the village or something like that.

• 3:43:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's villagers that were like starving, maybe.

• 3:43:11Speaker 02

  In Utah?

• 3:43:12Jocko Willink?

  In Utah. There's no villagers starving in Utah.

• 3:43:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I didn't think so.

• 3:43:16Jocko Willink?

  But, so we got the stuff made in America. OriginUSA.com if you want to support an American company that's bringing, like I told Derek, is there anything cooler than buying machines in another country and that were sold to that country and bringing them back to America?

• 3:43:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, conceptually, it is very cool. One time, okay, remember back in the day, the little, it's this little.

• 3:43:38Jocko Willink?

  Wait, when?

• 3:43:39Speaker 02

  Back.

• 3:43:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:43:41Speaker 02

  It, uh, it's called Roller Racer. Do you remember that thing?

• 3:43:44Jocko Willink?

  What is it?

• 3:43:45Speaker 02

  It was like, okay, so think of a skateboard. Okay, think of a hard bicycle seat.

• 3:43:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:43:50Speaker 02

  But a little bit bigger.

• 3:43:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:43:52Speaker 02

  Bicycle handlebars on a half of a super skinny skateboard with a pivot. And then the front of the skateboard.

• 3:44:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:44:01Speaker 02

  So you sat on it with handlebars down like this and you wiggle it back and forth and it would go.

• 3:44:06Jocko Willink?

  I kind of remember like seeing people on that thing.

• 3:44:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it was like a little fat.

• 3:44:11Jocko Willink?

  Definitely didn't have one.

• 3:44:11Speaker 02

  As seen on TV scenario. This is back in maybe 90, maybe probably before that. Eighties, eighties. Anyway.

• 3:44:19Speaker 02

  So one of our friend's neighbors had that and they left it out on the road. They lived right up the road. So technically I didn't steal it, but I just wanted to use it. So I grabbed it and I used it for a few days. I was gonna bring it back for real. I for real likely story.

• 3:44:36Jocko Willink?

  This is not sounding good.

• 3:44:37Speaker 02

  I didn't bring it back, but I would, the plan was to bring it back at some point. Right? So I was using it and then I just left it out in my yard. That's how, right? I live on Koi. Few days later, it was gone and then we passed by that house every day and I saw it back at their house. I was like, oh, they came in kinda took it back or whatever. Then the guy, the kid.

• 3:44:58Jocko Willink?

  Meaning in a good way? Like, oh, they go, they grabbed it back. No big deal? Or kinda like what?

• 3:45:03Speaker 02

  Totally neutral, in my opinion. I was like, oh, it's theirs, you know? Like, I wasn't gonna return it yet. I still wanted to play with it for a little bit, but hey, man, it is there, so whatever. And then the kid confronted me about it. He's like, hey, you thought you were all slick, huh? And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, yeah, cuz you ripped off the roller racer and I ripped it off back. That's what he did with the looms. That's what you guys did. Same exact thing. I thought it was cool. I was like.

• 3:45:31Jocko Willink?

  How your brain works. For the first time, I've kinda started to ponder, like, how you got to that story? From what I just said and try to connect them.

• 3:45:40Speaker 02

  It's the exact same thing. That's what I'm saying.

• 3:45:44Jocko Willink?

  OriginUSA.com. Get American made stuff. We'll leave it at that. We won't, we'll try not to lure out any stories of madness. From, uh, from you.

• 3:45:54Speaker 02

  It's true. Also, speaking of madness, Jaco Store. Jaco Store, it's called Jaco Store. So you go to JacoStore.com. It's where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom shirts. We got a new one out. Standard issue.

• 3:46:06Speaker 02

  There's nothing standard about it. It's freaking awesome. That's, this is the feedback I'm getting from the field, but yeah, it's a good one. Also, we have the Shirt Locker, which is the subscription service.

• 3:46:14Jocko Willink?

  Seems like you've been getting a little wild on the Shirt Locker designs.

• 3:46:17Speaker 02

  Yes, and we're going harder even in the next few, let's say the next three months are gonna be kinda like, okay, I see, I see what you did there. We're very excited about the new design.

• 3:46:29Jocko Willink?

  Check. Right on. That's JacoStore.com. Subscribe to the podcast. Don't forget about, um. The Jaco Underground, right? JacoUnderground.com. We don't know what's gonna happen with this platform. Did Derek say anything today that could get us banned?

• 3:46:47Speaker 02

  He mentioned Donald Trump.

• 3:46:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, there you go. That could be a flag.

• 3:46:51Speaker 02

  He said the word Trump, so yeah, that could be.

• 3:46:54Jocko Willink?

  So, in the event that we get banned because we don't control the platform that you're currently listening on, unless you're on Jaco Underground. If you're on Jaco Underground, we're good. We're still here. We're talking to you. But if you're not, you're like, wait, what happened? What? Jaco and Echo just got lazy. They stopped making podcasts. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but if it does, we'll be ready. JacoUnderground.com, $8.18 a month to support that. And if you, we make a little extra podcast for that. We answer your questions if you want to get involved in that. If you can't afford it, we still want you in the game. Email [email protected]. We got a YouTube channel. We got Psychological Warfare. We got Dakota Myers, got FlipsideCanvas.com. I've written a bunch of books, published some books, published a book by Holly McKay. Check that one out.

• 3:47:41Jocko Willink?

  And then you know the books that I've written. If you don't, go to Amazon and put in Jocko Willink. And then you'll see books that I've written and you can order some of them. You can order kids books. Get the, before you even, you know, you know, you gotta get the, uh, oxygen mask on yourself first.

• 3:47:58Speaker 02

  Yes, I do.

• 3:47:58Jocko Willink?

  If you go to Amazon right now to go, you know, Jaco sounds like he knows what he's talking about here. Don't order the adult book. Get your kids that wore your kid books first. Get the oxygen mask on them, then save yourself.

• 3:48:10Speaker 02

  So the opposite of the airplane.

• 3:48:12Jocko Willink?

  No, it's the same in the airplane.

• 3:48:13Speaker 02

  No, you gotta put it yourself first.

• 3:48:15Jocko Willink?

  Right. Yes. Okay. Opposite of the, opposite of the, you're right.

• 3:48:18Speaker 02

  So I could see how you could get confused, you know what I'm saying? Cause it seems like, hey, save the women and children first, kind of a scenario, but hey, you can't save nobody if you're suffocating. See what I'm saying?

• 3:48:27Jocko Willink?

  But where, if your cognizant enough to order something from Amazon, order the kids books first. Cause you, look, your life is half over at this point. You know, you got kids. You, you've kind of already blown it.

• 3:48:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, one foot in the grave.

• 3:48:40Jocko Willink?

  Right. You're one foot in the grave, but your kids, they got their whole life ahead. Might as well get them on the path.

• 3:48:43Speaker 02

  It's true. It's true.

• 3:48:45Jocko Willink?

  Let them rise up.

• 3:48:46Speaker 02

  The, my daughter was, she, she learned her times tables last year and then this year said, she's in literally the, the, where the word came in one mark.

• 3:48:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:48:56Speaker 02

  Same exact scenario. So, but she learned her times table, but she forgot all of, a lot of them. So she's doing this other stuff, you know, you know how you kind of need to know the times tables, right?

• 3:49:04Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 3:49:05Speaker 02

  Same exact deal. She starts crying and all this stuff. She doesn't know her times tables. She's nine years old. She's all this stuff. I was like, we read that flashcards made them boom, right? On the spot, man, on the spot. I said, you read this whole book twice, by the way, and you're still crying about this right now. So you need these flashcards on the spot. We do, we went slow. There's a lot of it was review. She already knew it. But so, boom, we ironed out the wrinkles. Easy money.

• 3:49:29Jocko Willink?

  Back in the game.

• 3:49:30Speaker 02

  Back in the game.

• 3:49:31Jocko Willink?

  Back in the game.

• 3:49:31Speaker 02

  The manual, yep.

• 3:49:33Jocko Willink?

  Warrior kid, get your kids on the path. Echelon Front, have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Oh, you heard me talk about a little bit today. When you got problems in a company, in an organization, the problems are leadership problems. You want us to help you solve those problems with these principles, go to echelonfront.com.

• 3:49:51Jocko Willink?

  We have some live events you can come to. They get sold out. Our next one we're doing is in Atlanta. It's sold out. Sorry. But if you want to go, go to there, check out events, come to some of our live events. We have a online training academy. Where, look, leadership takes practice, not once a year, not once every six months. You need to get in the gym, the leadership gym, the life gym.

• 3:50:17Jocko Willink?

  Extremeownership.com. Come on there, take some courses. We're on there live a bunch. You can ask me questions. Go check that out. And if you want to support service members, active and retired, you want to support their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate to that or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And don't forget about Micah Fink, taking, taking vets out into the wilderness. So they can find solutions to their problems.

• 3:50:59Jocko Willink?

  In the darkness, they can find the light. Heroes and horses.org. And once again, if you want to follow and support Derek Van Orden. DVO, that's what we're going with?

• 3:51:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:51:14Jocko Willink?

  DVO. You want to, want to support him? VanordenforCongress.com. And then on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, he's @DerekVanOden. You can see the guy's got a, a big heart and he's trying to help. I say we go support him. And it certainly, if you're in that district in Wisconsin. He brought me cheese, bro. You see that? He brought me cheese, he brought me cookies, which you ate.

• 3:51:44Speaker 02

  I sampled, yes.

• 3:51:48Jocko Willink?

  You ate the cookies, because we're not, the discipline doesn't allow cookies over on my side of the table. Uh, cheese curd, which I have not tried before. Apparently I got to cook it.

• 3:51:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:51:59Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, he said, he said deep fry them or something.

• 3:52:01Speaker 02

  Oh, you can, yeah, yeah, for sure. Cheese curd is like, you know what that is technically? Well, you know, my wife is, is from the Tillmook Cheese Factory area. So we go visit that one every year when we go, when I go. But it's the pre, it's like, it's, it's one of the final processes before they do another one or two processes to make actual cheese. So it's like the base.

• 3:52:21Jocko Willink?

  Does it taste good?

• 3:52:23Speaker 02

  Depends how you do it, that one does, because there's like garlic, the regular cheese curd, not really, it's like.

• 3:52:28Jocko Willink?

  I think that stuff's getting fried in a pan. That's what I think.

• 3:52:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could see that. I've never had fried. That one's solid.

• 3:52:35Jocko Willink?

  It just seems, I don't know too, because he brought it in like a bag.

• 3:52:41Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't, I don't think it's supposed to, it's supposed to be refrigerated?

• 3:52:44Speaker 02

  I could see how.

• 3:52:45Jocko Willink?

  He pulled it out of the bottom of like a travel bag. DVO was not forward thinking on his transport of cheese curd for Jaco.

• 3:52:54Speaker 02

  I think you might be right.

• 3:52:55Jocko Willink?

  For JKO.

• 3:52:57Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? But we appreciate it, Derek. We appreciate it. We will try it out, we will see what's up. Uh, of course, that's, that's Derek Van Orden on all those social media. And Echo and I are on there too. If you want to follow us on the Twitter, on the Gram, on the Facebook.

• 3:53:13Jocko Willink?

  Echoes at Echo Charles. I'm at Jocko Willink. Watch out for the algorithm because it'll kinda, it'll kinda grab you. And thanks once again to Derek for joining us. Thanks for sharing some of those lessons learned. And thanks for everything you have done for America and what you are trying to do for America right now. We are here to support. And thanks to all of our military personnel that have served and are serving. Nothing more important than what you do to keep us free. And we are grateful for your service. And thanks to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret

• 3:53:55Jocko Willink?

  Service, all first responders. As Derek pointed out, you're the one that protects, you're the ones that protect our kids as they sleep at night and keep us safe. And we are grateful for your service as well. And everyone else out there. And we started off with some George Washington today. Close it out with a little George Washington as well. He said to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace. And that goes for life as well. And you take a guy like Derek up from nothing. And he's prepared for war his whole life. And I

• 3:54:37Jocko Willink?

  think he's going to be ready for whatever politics can throw at him. And for the rest of us, I think we also have to prepare for war because it's coming. And look, I'm not talking about outright literal war, but in some form, in some form, you will be at war for your health, for your business, for your family, for your community. War comes in many forms. So be prepared for it. And of course, the best way to do that is to go out there every day and get after it. Until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.