168: More Important Lessons on War, Leadership, and Life, w/ SEAL Master Chief, Jason Gardner, Pt.2

0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:14 - Jason Gardner, cont. 2:33:13 - Support: How to stay on THE PATH. 2:59:32 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 168 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Beowulf spoke.

• 0:14Jocko Willink?

  Wise sir, do not grieve. It is always better to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.

• 0:25Jocko Willink?

  For every one of us living in this world means waiting for our end. Let whoever can win glory before death.

• 0:38Jocko Willink?

  When a warrior is gone, that will be his best and only bulwark. So arise, my lord, and let us immediately set forth on the trail of this troll dam.

• 0:52Jocko Willink?

  I guarantee you she will not get away, not to dens underground, nor upland groves, nor the ocean floor. She'll have nowhere to flee to. Endure your troubles today, bear up and be the man I expect you to be.

• 1:15Jocko Willink?

  And there is some more Beowulf to start this podcast. And it's an interesting note that Beowulf, the poem started not as a written poem, but a poem passed on as a story from generation to generation of the pagan Anglo-Saxon warrior people. It was part of their oral history and their oral tradition. And that's basically what we're doing here.

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  Capturing stories from our modern day warrior people, which we are continuing with today

• 1:52Jocko Willink?

  during part two of my brother, Jason Gardner. Part one was the last podcast, number 167. So if you haven't listened to that one, just stop listening to this one right now. Go back and listen to 167. And then when you get done with that, you can come back and hear the rest of it. And if you have listened to 6167, well, here we go. We're going to start kind of where we left off. What's up, Jason?

• 2:16Jason Gardner?

  Not much. Happy to be here.

• 2:18Jocko Willink?

  Check. So, we left off yesterday. You had basically, you'd stayed at Team Three, you're gonna do an Ops tour, an Ops, Task Unit Ops tour, but then you made Senior Chief, and then that's where we left off. So you get done with that, and where'd you go? SEAL Team Seven?

• 2:37Jason Gardner?

  Went over to the Senior Enlisted Academy and knocked that out, because that is basically a prerequisite for making E9, but it's difficult to get away from NSW for that long.

• 2:46Jocko Willink?

  How long is that course?

• 2:47Jason Gardner?

  That one was six weeks. There's two of them. There's another one that's three months, and it's just trying to cram that in. I- i- is difficult. So, made sense to go then, and then they, they popped me over for a, a Troop Senior Enlisted Advisor over at SEAL Team Seven.

• 3:04Jocko Willink?

  And so, for people that don't know what that means, you're going into a Task Unit, your Task, did you guys have a two-platoon Task Unit?

• 3:11Jason Gardner?

  We did. It was two.

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  Check. And that means, explain your position of Senior Enlisted Advisor in a SEAL Task Unit.

• 3:18Jason Gardner?

  So, there are two SEAL platoons, which are the two maneuver elements, and then over the top of the SEAL platoons, there's myself. I was a Senior Chief at the time, and then there was a, a Lieutenant Commander at the time, who was the, the Task Unit Commander. It was the same position that you had in TU Bruce.

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And then you were the Senior Enlisted Guy in there, and I was actually looking at one of my old briefs, leadership briefs from the teams, and I don't know if you remember this, because I haven't, I don't do it when I do it for civilians now, but I used to do the roles and responsibilities of everyone inside the, the Task Unit, and be like, okay, this is what the Task Unit Commanders should be doing. This is what the Senior Enlisted Guy should be doing. And a key word there is, this is what a Platoon Chief should be doing, and this is what a Platoon Commander should be doing. One of the key words there is "should be", because there's a lot of leeway, depending on personalities and what skillsets people have, and sometimes people are capable of doing a part of someone else's job, but they're maybe not so great at doing something they should be doing, so you gotta figure that out

• 4:17Jocko Willink?

  inside of a platoon. Now, I used to say that when you take a platoon, if you take a platoon, you've gotta get to like, you could pick a number, like, you've gotta get to a Level 10. With the top four leadership, meaning the LPO, the assistant platoon commander, the platoon commander, and the platoon chief, those, they have to have a number equal to 10. Like, you can't have a bunch of guys that are ones, because that's only a four. But if you have a chief, that's an eight, well then, cool. It's like, doesn't really matter that the platoon commander's not that great, or the platoon commander's a one, or whatever. And that's fine. Sometimes, you're gonna get some guys that are really good at something. Sometimes, there's people that aren't. And as long as you have some good leadership in there, you'll be all right. And that's what I realized when I was running trade at.

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  You just basically need, you need one leader, one person that knows how to lead things, and everything will be fine. But you actually should have two people that know how to lead things, so that way, if something happens to the number one guy, and then they can kind of communicate, and they can talk to each other, and they can bounce stuff off, and they'll just be like infinitely better. But yeah, it's always a little bit different in every task unit.

• 5:24Jason Gardner?

  And, well, that was great, because that roles and responsibilities brief that you gave, like, at the time, the TU, Task Unit Leadership, going through the unit-level training was new. And it was kind of a new position all the way together, so it wasn't really well-defined, and I was really like, where the hell is my role here? So that was really helpful, and I think what you and your troop SEA did is you kind of defined, because you guys participated in training, and not all the troops, troop commanders and troop SEAs were going out to every ULT block.

• 6:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 6:03Jason Gardner?

  And then now, you guys did everything, and then after that...

• 6:06Jocko Willink?

  That was the standard.

• 6:07Jason Gardner?

  Everybody set that standard, and it's a good standard to have.

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, and I was lucky, because my first deployment to Iraq, I had a task unit commander, and a task unit SEA, and we both are friends with both those guys. And they really, I was watching what they were doing, going, okay, that seems to work pretty well. You know, just looking at how they interacted with me, and they set a good example, and I kind of just took that when I came back, and that's the position I put myself into, was kind of mimicking what those two guys had done. And they were really well-balanced, you know, not micro... And they're just good, just really good leaders, you know? And so I just, okay, that was cool, that worked. And so that's what I did, and then luckily, I got to go through workup, and then go to Ramadi, so I kind of knew how it, you know, I...

• 6:56Jocko Willink?

  I carved that out and there there was and then I wrote the roles and responsibilities because believe me when I was when I first took over trade at there would be all kinds of way sway lay things going on with guys not having any idea what they should and should not be doing because they were everyone was just going what should I do like you said it was a new position a relatively new position I mean we had tasking at commanders back in the day but it was they would be completely detached and then they'd show up hey I'm an O three or O four I'm in charge of you and everyone would be like okay that sounds cool whatever who's this guy

• 7:26Jason Gardner?

  yeah and you wouldn't see him till deployment

• 7:27Jocko Willink?

  yeah yeah

• 7:28Jason Gardner?

  and then now now the new thing was you're like there from day one which was really cool how we we evolved that way

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  yeah yeah no and it's it's as it should be so you get there and form up your platoons and start going through training

• 7:45Jason Gardner?

  yeah we start doing work up and so you know uh the task unit commander he had a lot of experience the the both of all the platoon leadership had a lot of experience too so it was it was I would say it was stacked we had great all the way down to like some of our E5s had deployments to Iraq they had good experience so it it looked like you know hey this is everything's gonna be easy um and then we started started ULT uh went out to the the land warfare block which is really always been where I have a soft spot in my heart because it's it's hard it's dirty um and it's mean but uh you know we train

• 8:30Jason Gardner?

  out there in the desert we were we gone through the first two weeks of the land warfare block which is doing our immediate action drills a lot of our range work our demo all that stuff and then we were coming into the phase the last week which is the field final training exercises and so we're we're in this big classroom and we're getting the brief on you know a a feedback on on the brief that we'd just given for our first operation and after that the Your, your land warfare, senior enlisted advisor came in and he's like, "Hey, everybody listen up. Every task unit that's come through here before you guys has had a blue on blue

• 9:13Jason Gardner?

  during this training. So you need to be really aware of your blue horse picture." And, and so I, well, I'm like, I'm rolling my eyes and, and my internal dialogue is I'm like, "Oh my gosh, what a bunch of clowns. Are you kidding me? Everybody shot each other? That is never going to happen to us." You know, I'm like, "Heck, I used to run land warfare training when I was at, at a training cell at a team and this just isn't that hard. There's no way we're going to shoot each other." Okay. Like, let's just go four hours later. It is just mass pandemonium. We, we went in, we hit a target, things kind of were going

• 9:56Jason Gardner?

  really smooth and then all of a sudden, everything fell apart. We were, we had like, I, I think we had seven down guys that we were tracking and then, but that, we couldn't even get clear word because everybody was talking on the radio at the same time. We were trying to break off the target. There was no organization. There were guys all over the high ground around us. I, I remember real specifically, one of the fire teams pointing up to a mountain that was just to our left saying, "Hey, do we have friendlies up there?" And someone else saying, "No, we don't have anybody," you know, and looking in a battle map, "No, we don't have anybody up there." And then that fire team wiped out what was our sniper

• 10:40Jason Gardner?

  element. So we had a whole fire team just wipe out, uh, you know, our four man sniper element trying to come down high ground with a down man of their own. And then so we, we made it to the extract, uh, dragging all our bodies out of order, everybody talking, get back to the camp, realize we're missing a piece of sensitive equipment. Um, and then in the debrief, we discovered that we'd had this heinous blue on blue and you know, a fire team had pretty much wiped out another fire team and we're just like, "Oh man."

• 11:18Jason Gardner?

  We pushed guys back out to the field to find a gear that we'd lost and thank goodness they found it before we had to stop training to find that gear. Um, and then, you know, we, we did, by no fault of my own, we did a really healthy assessment of what you guys as the training attachment had put us through and instead of going, whoa, you know, blaming you guys or making excuses, we're like, okay, let's make a list and we knocked out like four things that we messed up, the worst four things that we messed up and then how we were gonna fix them. Like, okay, well, this down man thing, we don't have it right, we better start carrying stretchers in the field. Um,

• 12:03Jason Gardner?

  and then we're gonna stick, each fire team is gonna have a para bag, so when a guy gets killed, we're taking all the sensitive stuff off of him so we can move him easy, we put him in the para bag, so we don't lose it. Okay, that's done. All right, um, guys, we get, everyone's gotta stop talking on the radio at the same time. We gotta get some comms disciplines, we ran some drills, uh, we ran drills on how we were gonna get head counts, um, and, you know, then we, then we did the drills on, um, how are we gonna identify each other in the dark as soon as there are bullets without, you know, with

• 12:44Jason Gardner?

  no comms. And, uh, and so we laid that out and like, hey, everybody, here's where, you know, we carry the, the PS17 panel, like everyone's gonna have that in your left shoulder pocket, the little three foot ones down. So that's during daytime. At nighttime, we're gonna use our strobes. And, uh, well, you know, they're at the time.

• 13:09Jason Gardner?

  And even today, I'll tell you what, if I was going out today and I was worried about the enemy having night vision, I would be more worried about, and this is me personally, and I don't want to argue this with anybody, and you can hit me up, about my own guys shooting me because they can shoot and they have big guns than the enemy seeing my strobe. Yeah. So, that was something that panned out later. So, we did that. I thought we did it in a real healthy way. We kind of, we were really cutting corners with our rehearsals because we don't get graded on our rehearsals. We get graded on our brief. So, all the effort goes into the brief, but the brief doesn't stick with you mentally until you go out

• 13:50Jason Gardner?

  and rehearse it. And so, we're like, hey, here's the way we're gonna do our, you know, our head counts. And we would do head counts by fire team. Someone would say, head count, and then, fire team, six is up, five's up, four's up, three's up, two's up, one's up. Like, okay, we go out, rehearse it. And we get to fire team three, and the guy would be spacing it. And we're like, hey, fire team three. And okay. And we get to the point where that was just second nature. And then, to the point where everybody, because we got decentralized command going on now, when we're moving off target, fire team six knows a head count is coming, and they just kick it off, and it just rolls through, and there's

• 14:35Jason Gardner?

  no issues. So, we got that done. We did our next FTX. We did considerably better. But you guys ramped up the pressure, and then we had other issues. And we're like, okay, hey, when we get all mixed up, we gotta be able to reorganize without sounding like a high school cafeteria. So, then I think the next thing we punched into was our reorg perimeters in the dark, and we would go out and just mix everybody up and go, boom. Someone would pass the hand signal for perimeter, and then we would go get it and get reorged, and hit it up like that. And what I really enjoyed about the training, and I told people

• 15:17Jason Gardner?

  who came through it later, was that it was like, it was super challenging, and...

• 15:25Jason Gardner?

  It was like, it was like going to a haunted house and like I enjoy going to haunted houses because I like to go through and something startles me and I'm not really happy that something like a guy popping out with a chainsaw or whatever startles me. And so I'll go through it, then I'll assess how I reacted and I'll go next time, let's do something new, but it's completely new and unexpected. And you guys continued to turn that dial up of completely new and unexpected. And that panned out to work out so well for us because we had the right attitude about it. And later on, when I moved into that position, we can talk about that later. I could see a healthy way to deal with that and the not healthy way to deal with it. And the healthy way is always owning it and taking responsibility.

• 16:09Jason Gardner?

  And then it just, it was so much fun. We'd be done, we'd be covered in sweat, everybody was yelling and uh, um. It was a great experience. And then we just, we took that and then the other blocks of training and the most intense for leadership is definitely land warfare. And then SAUC, which is our urban training. And we just got hammered there too. And then it's paintball and a bunch of other stuff. But that was great. One other thing, like when you did your roles and responsibilities, you didn't really define a position for the troop senior enlisted advisor.

• 16:51Jason Gardner?

  Because in that, you're like, hey, you're not really going to be the assault lead or anything else like that. Cause honestly, like you've said.

• 17:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the thing.

• 17:01Jason Gardner?

  Thor could run an assault.

• 17:03Jocko Willink?

  The thing I used to say is, is the senior enlisted advisor is the action arm for the tasking commander. So there's going to be things that are going to be, need to make, be made happen. And that's the guy that's going to make it happen. So, oh, we got a building that's got a problem or we got a position that's needs support or we got a wounded guy. Like in the army and the marine corps, their SOP is who runs a CASVAC? It's the senior enlisted guy because that's the guy that goes, oh, he has the experience to make this happen under massively stressful situation. So my word. To the senior enlisted guys like you're the action arm this the task unit commander can't make things happen. He he's got a he's got to look at what else is going on. He's got to figure out what the next step is going to be. He's talking getting information. He's passing information.

• 17:46Jocko Willink?

  All that stuff is going. He can't take time to go clear an extra building or set up a security perimeter on this ridge. Like you can't do that. That's the senior enlisted guy that goes, hey, boss. And and obviously, he's saying, hey, boss, if if you want to get out of here, here's what I'm going to make happen. I'm going to go set a perimeter over here. I'm going to put gunners up on that high ground. And then you guys can peel through here and that's where we'll leave. And the TU commander goes, awesome. Yes, execute. So that's that to me has always been the the best way to utilize the senior enlisted. Because if you put the senior enlisted actually in charge of something, well, that's what they're doing. They're doing that thing. And then when something else goes sideways, who's who's going to handle that now?

• 18:26Jason Gardner?

  It all seems to happen in a seam.

• 18:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so it's gonna be the most complicated thing too, right? The thing that's hard to handle is the thing that you didn't plan for. And so if you don't have, it's just like, it's just like you don't want to commit your reserves, right? You don't want to commit your reserves in in a situation where you don't have to. Well, you don't want to you're as a TU commander, you have one guy as like the reserve, you have reserve brainpower and your reserve brainpower is your is your SEA. Because if something goes wrong, you can't get on it. But you need the most experienced tactically savvy guy to go and handle whatever it is, which you may not even know how to handle. But you just know that you've got, you know, enemy approaching on a road from the north, you're getting intel, you're getting fed information. Hey, there's enemy approaching on

• 19:09Jocko Willink?

  the road from the north. Hey, senior, get it taken care of. And then senior goes, I got it, and goes and handles it.

• 19:16Jason Gardner?

  And and that's basically how we executed. And what was what's really interesting is that over comms and guys would think comms would be up and a lot of times comms go down. But over comms, the word be like, hey, we're leaving. Break down your security. And then you're waiting for a call and waiting for a call and waiting for a call. And then you're not have to run over there and say it, looking at someone, actually say it. And then they're like, oh, and for some reason they're they're they're hearing it in their headset. And, uh, um, it it just, it ain't happening and you just gotta go, guys get they get jammed up, you know, and that hourglass is just turning and turning and turning and you gotta go,

• 20:01Jason Gardner?

  you know, hit them to get things moving, get that processor moving and going again. And then sometimes just your presence there. And what, you know, talking about yelling, you're not yelling at them, but like, hey, boom, get the 60 gunner down, let's go, we're moving this way. Hey, get that wounded man over there, the stret- ditch the stretcher, we're done, go. And then hustling everybody up and just trying to keep everything moving around and I'll say this now, everything that we faced in combat

• 20:36Jason Gardner?

  was easier than the stuff we faced in training because you'd put the screws on us so hard that we were like, oh, okay, we've seen something pretty dang close to this before. So when when a guy stepped on a on an IED and lost his legs, that we didn't experience in training. But everybody dealt with it in a professional way. And of course, that was a horrible situation. But that was not something that we were new to. We were like, oh, okay, we've done it down men, we've we've had this situation. You know, we had a couple of guys get pretty severely wounded. Um, and it was

• 21:19Jason Gardner?

  it was a factor in their pain, but it was no factor in how we fought and and how we dealt with the situation. Uh, there were there were a couple of times that we came ludicrously close to blue on blues. But because we had, we had, you'd reinforced everything in training because we'd mitigated those blue on blues bloodlessly in training, we didn't have them on the battlefield.

• 21:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, it was, I mean, for me coming into that role, coming home, I was, I was, I was.

• 21:52Jocko Willink?

  I was pretty emotionally connected to the fact that I wanted you guys to be ready. And just, you know, like the whole down, down man thing, like it's not easy to carry a down man, especially not easy when the guy helps you and he kinda, it's in training and he kinda jumps up on your shoulder and puts his hand in that right spot on your back to stabilize himself. And all those little things that they do to help each other out, it's, it's not that easy. It sucks. And the blue on blue thing, and I, I remember I, a task unit, your task unit included, would have a blue on blue and I'd bring them into the office and everyone in the chain of

• 22:32Jocko Willink?

  command would sign like a safety violation. And, and I would tell everyone, I'd say, listen, I'm not doing this degrading you because the person in this room that's had a real blue on blue where people got killed is me. And I, the one thing I don't want is for it to happen to you. So there's so much, uh, driving me just to, to, to try and make it as realistic as possible. And then, you know, you get the kick ass team guys that are running all the training. Man, once you give those guys the direction, they're just gonna go. And that's just, you know, so I, I mean, I'd show up for the training sites and the guys would be so amped to make

• 23:13Jocko Willink?

  the training awesome. And, you know, the amount of effort that, the amount of effort that guys would put in to make the training realistic was crazy. I mean, some of those, so out, out at land warfare, some of the demolitions that would get set up, they would take them three, four days. They'd stay out on the training, on the site for three or four days, setting demo up everywhere. So there's stuff blowing up and catching on fire and just smoke everywhere. Total, total mayhem. And

• 23:43Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's, there's only, this is the thing, when you're training, there's only so much you can do to simulate combat. Because what you can't do, there's a line that you cannot cross. You can't shoot people. You can't do it. You can't wound your men in training. And so that line can never get crossed. And so what can you do to get it as close to that line as possible? And the, the laser system that we had and the explosives and then all just unleashing all that chaos and mayhem. And I was lucky that I got to experience that on the battlefield and come home and be like, bro. And you know, you mentioned it quickly, like your attitude towards it, but your attitude towards

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  it is what the winning task unit attitude always was. Because it's real easy to go, that was bullshit. You had a bunch of guys set up on that hill. Like, yeah, you don't think Al Qaeda is going to set people up on a hill? You don't think the Mujahid is going to set people in a spider hole in the middle of a compound? You don't think, by the way, all that stuff, we got it from actual after actions reports. So the fact that you and your, your task unit, instead of looking at everyone else as to why you didn't do a good job, you looked at yourselves and said, okay, what can we actually do better? How about we actually try and improve some things? How about we pick three, four things, we try and do those things better? And then you do those things better and you're right.

• 25:08Jocko Willink?

  Cause and you know this from working in training, you're, you already know what's going to happen. Like you can see, you, you put a guy here, you put a bad guy over here, you put a bad guy over there. You've got a terrain feature like this, you know what's going to happen. And you watch it unfold. And then you also know that if the leadership can make some good calls, it's going to be no factor. If the, if the platoons have good standard operating procedures, it'll be no factor. But if they're not, and the leadership starts to fall apart, I mean, everything falls apart. And that thing you just said about the fire, I used to tell the tasking commanders this, I used to say, Imagine you got, you got your fire teams out there. Imagine if each one of your fire teams was doing something good that was moving you in the direction that you wanted them to move.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  Just imagine if that happened. And what happens when that occurs is the leader doesn't actually have to say barely anything other than, "We're getting out of here." And as soon as everyone, "We're heading south. We're getting out of here, going to our old rally point." As soon as everyone knows that, they just make it happen. And TU commander can do whatever he wants to do. Because the fire team leaders are gonna make things happen themselves. And, and then, and the opposite of that is, there's no possible way you can control all these people. If you have to tell them everything that you want them to do, you can't say, hey, you can't talk to all those people at the same time. You can't know what the vantage point, the best vantage point for a 60 gunner is gonna be on that little knoll. You can't do it.

• 26:36Jocko Willink?

  That guy has to understand what it is that is wanted from him, and why it's important for him to do it. And then, once he knows that, boom, he makes it happen.

• 26:43Jason Gardner?

  Yeah. And then, um, I, I think it was my TU commander that you're talking about when you, you said that you didn't, you, initially, you weren't sure if quiet guys could lead, because he wasn't, he's not a loud guy. Like, I'm a loud guy.

• 26:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 26:59Jason Gardner?

  He's, he, his personality is, is, is different. He's not super loud, but he was direct, clear, and concise, and he did a fantastic, I, I really enjoyed working with him.

• 27:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and he's a good example of that. I mean, he's, he's not the guy specifically I'm talking about, but he's a guy that was, you know, especially, like the little things you were just barking out, "Put a 60 over there. Get, put that stretcher away, we're leaving it. Get that wounded man." Those things, if you're not loud, it's, it, they just don't get heard.

• 27:32Jason Gardner?

  Yep.

• 27:32Jocko Willink?

  And so, with your task unit commander, I noticed that, and was kinda like, "Hey, man, you know, you need to get louder." And, and what he did was this, you know, get, hey, you know who's pretty loud? My stupid SEA standing over there, all those, those tattoos on his arm. He might not be the smartest dude in the world, but he's loud. And when he tells you, "Hey, tell him to put that stretcher away," whatever, then you, or whoever in your, in your task unit starts barking out the orders, and it happens, you know? And so, yeah, he did a, he did a great job of that. And had the same attitude as you because he was experienced. You know, that was another cool thing. You know, I'd get guys that were coming through training more experienced than

• 28:13Jocko Willink?

  me and the good SEAL leaders would come through that training be like, oh, that was awesome, man. Yeah. Hey, you just kicked our ass. Thank you. We're going to try and do better. What did you see? Like they would just want feedback, just want suggestions. And then you'd get other guys coming through that it was everyone else's fault and the training wasn't really, it's not realistic to get hit from three sides. Really? Why is that? Where do you see that in the Geneva Convention that you're not allowed to ambush from three sides? And that attitude never turned out well. It just never, it zero, zero percent of turning out well of, hey, the training is unrealistic. The training is

• 28:53Jocko Willink?

  this, the training is that. Like, no, actually, just do the SOPs, step up and lead and everything works. And that was the other amazing thing is you'd see the same problems. And once it, once the task unit got good, you couldn't even stop them. Cause it's, cause it's 40 guys against four or five. As you know, the training, the training guys are, it's like four or five guys out there shooting them up. So.

• 29:20Jason Gardner?

  Yeah. I mean, when you're running those scenarios, you can't bring your guys back to life, which you can remotely do fast enough to apply a decent amount of pressure to win that troop has just gotten up on step. And then, then everybody is so happy.

• 29:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. You can't, you're right. You can't reset people. You can't reset the OPFOR quick enough because the, because that's when you get a SEAL troop, that's just in straight aggressive murder mode and going hard. Everything they see, they're assaulting. It's awesome. It's a beautiful thing to see. So, um, now were you, you guys, were you guys planning to go to Afghanistan during that workup? I don't think you were, were you?

• 30:07Jason Gardner?

  We were slated to go to Basra. And so we were going to be going down to southern Iraq and working out of there. And then the request for forces popped up that they were asking for a SEAL troop back in Afghanistan. And I think.

• 30:26Jason Gardner?

  On the numbered SEAL teams had been out of Afghanistan since somewhere around 2005. So there had been no presence whatsoever for numbered SEAL teams in Afghanistan in a while. This is 2009. So initially, it popped up, and then it was confirmed. And then, like, over the Christmas holiday, they said, "Okay, hey, we're gonna send... My troop is gonna be the troop to Afghanistan." What that looked like, no one knew. They said, "You're going to Afghanistan because there's a deployment order that has to get signed to go anywhere, that's gotta be signed by the Secretary of Defense." Right?

• 31:10Jason Gardner?

  And ours, to deploy a SEAL troop to Afghanistan, was in the book. It hadn't been signed yet. And so, myself, the task unit commander, and one of the OICs who deployed with you, we did a pre-deployment site survey. And, you know, I think it was like in February, we went... And usually on a pre-deployment site survey, or PDSS, you go over, you see what's going on, then you come back. We went over there, and I stayed. Me and a CB chief came with me, who was gonna set up our birding and stuff with one of our support, or all four of us went. And then he and I never came back from that pre-deployment site survey.

• 31:54Jason Gardner?

  We just stayed there. So, yeah. So going into, you know, in an awkward situation where we're going over there, they were working for the Army, SF, and they don't even know what they're gonna do with us. A lot of them didn't want us, because they'd had bad experiences, unfortunately, with SEALs before. And so, what I did, and I kinda tore a page out of your book, I didn't know this is what you guys did, but this is what I did, is I usually wear my hair like this. I went ahead and got it high and tight, to shift over, to look a little bit more like the Army does. Because it's just another way to establish rapport, and I don't care about my hair.

• 32:38Jason Gardner?

  I just don't. And so...

• 32:43Jason Gardner?

  So when we got there, the first place we went was to the Siege Sodif, which is the O6 that's running everything there. And I went into the Sergeant Major's office, was a senior enlisted advisor. I went in his office and stood in a, I introduced myself and stood at parade rest. And he looked up from his desk and stared at me. And I'm in, you know, I got a clean uniform on, I got a high and tight. And he goes, "I have never seen a SEAL like you before." And I kept it real professional with him. And then he's like, "Hey, we don't know where we're gonna put you. We don't know what we're gonna do with you guys. We're working through that. You guys have got to go ahead and brief the

• 33:27Jason Gardner?

  Colonel." At the time, so we worked up a brief for the Colonel. My task unit commander went in and had a meeting with him. And he was, he was a pretty fired up type of guy. And he asked, he asked the TU commander, like, "Hey, what do you need? What do you need from me?" And the boss told him, "Hey, I, we need the SecDef to sign, sign our line item to get us to deploy here." And a week later, that happened. And he, so, and it's in order where the SecDef is supposed to sign stuff, and ours was like ninth back.

• 34:09Jason Gardner?

  And he went straight to our line item and signed it. So that Colonel, we made a good impression on him. He had some pull, obviously. And made an impression moving forward. So then we were looking at, well, okay, where are we gonna go? We still didn't know where we were gonna go. And, and we talked to the, we had a briefing with the general and he explained, "Hey, I don't have enough partner forces for all of my, you know, SFODA teams that are here." Because normally, we're working by with them through. And he goes, "So you guys..."

• 34:47Jason Gardner?

  Are going to go on whatever con op is hot and plus up my ODAs. You are going to attrite the Taliban and deny them freedom of movement. And I thought, hallelujah.

• 35:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it doesn't get any better than that.

• 35:03Jason Gardner?

  It doesn't. And then we moved down to Camp Brown. And Third Group was running the Special Operations Task Force West down there. And we got there and I met with the senior enlist advisor there and he's like, hey, we really don't, we don't know where we're going to put you guys. We don't have any space for you here. And we just stayed good, you know, and we established a relationship with him and the commander there and the XO and the ops guys. And then two days later, the sergeant major takes me out and he's like, hey, you see this big tent? This is, they had this big tent right inside the gate.

• 35:48Jason Gardner?

  And he goes, this is where we were doing all our vehicle maintenance. And he goes, we're getting ready to move those guys over to another yard. You guys can have this. And so, so that was awesome. We were basically like, initially, we were the unwanted, you know, in-laws showing up for Christmas, like Randy Quaid and Christmas Story. And then now we were like, hey, old college buddies that had come into town. And Third Group was just so good to us. There was absolutely no parochialism whatsoever. And that was just a great experience working with them across the board.

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  So how did you, when did you start putting together? How did you say, okay, this is what we're gonna do? How'd that come about?

• 36:36Jason Gardner?

  They just, they just told us. There's like, here's what, here's, here's, we laid out, here's our capabilities. And there's like, well, here's how we'd like to use you. And we said, Roger that. Where can we help? We never came in and said, Hey, this is, you know, this is what we do when we come in and do this X, Y, and Z because their targeting and their whole, their whole philosophy was completely different than what they did in Iraq. In Iraq, we were very personality-based and NSW as a whole, we were reduced to personality-based targeting. They're more about disruption. They'd be like, "Hey, Taliban's over here in Freedom Movement. We're gonna go do stuff over there and then they're gonna have to come fight us and then it's gonna slow them down, you know, everywhere

• 37:15Jason Gardner?

  they're going or hey, um, they're funding this war with opium. So are we gonna burn down opium fields and punish the farmer or do we wait till the Taliban collects the opium up into one spot and then go destroy it?" And that's the kinda stuff that, that we would do. We would go to the opium caches after the poor farmer who doesn't have a choice about what he's growing is harvested, that they moved it to one spot and then we pop in, destroy all their opium, stay there for, for a couple of days and fight them and then leave. So, so that was good, but our attitude was like, "How can we help? Where can we help you?" And they're, they just gave us work and it was great.

• 37:59Jocko Willink?

  And you guys had some, uh, pretty crazy ops.

• 38:03Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, I, I would say like, so, so the first op, we had the Advon crew that was there and we went out with, uh, um, uh, 3116 and their commandos and they had an op where they, they went in and, and took a, uh, a bazaar, which is like a strip mall, basically, where they're facilitating a bunch of opium, went in, held that, destroyed all the opium for a day and then fought everybody that came at us. So we went out on that operation with them and, uh, it, it was good. It was a lot of fun. Um,

• 38:39Jason Gardner?

  And then that got them used to us and, and, and what we brought to the table. And that was an op that was setting up in a concept of operations called Siege Engine. And that was like, I think the first frag order under it. And they would do a concept operation like, hey, here's what we want to do with this stuff. And this, this Siege Engine was basically hammering the opium in the Helmand River Valley. And it culminated in with the, the last frag order was when we went into Helmand in, or when Helmand into Marjah, which is like at the heart of the Taliban. It was a Taliban controlled town. Coalition forces had never been inside of it. In a year later, it was 2010 or 11, the Marines went in there and cleared it.

• 39:23Jason Gardner?

  And it was a huge fire, huge firefight. Prior to us going in there, this operation, and it was by, when I say we, it was us, the Afghan commandos, the SF ODA and the OAB above them. I think that gets OAB, right? Yep. So that detachment above them and we just plus them up. And their, their OAB commander was equal rank to our task unit commander rank. But like, my boss was just like, he didn't push back. He was like, hey, what do you need me to do? And that OAB commander really appreciated that relationship that he didn't have to, you know, bump heads or-

• 40:04Jocko Willink?

  Ego battle over, well, I want to be in this position.

• 40:07Jason Gardner?

  Exactly. Or I want to make this call. So Coalition forces had never been inside of Marjah. They tried to go close to us and just gotten shot out. We choppered into a, a bazaar, which was, we took four, the corner of four blocks and a, a pretty huge area where there was a ridiculous amount of opium consolidated. They were refining opium into heroin. Um, and make an IED, improvise explosive devices, all kinds of stuff there. In the middle of their town. We went in there at night, we stayed there for four days and just, just got after it wholesale.

• 40:56Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, I think there was 8,000 pounds of opium that we destroyed. It was a big operation. There was a, the DEA was involved. There were FBI agents there. It was a huge, was a huge crew and it was good to go. And some of the lessons, lessons learned from there is, that's, okay, so like the first day, we're, I was in one of the, the blocking positions there and we were taking fire basically from the east into the south because the way the different positions, it was kind of like a cross, the way it crossed out. So when we were taking fire from the south, you had to be aware that like, hey, I can't see them, but my bullets

• 41:41Jason Gardner?

  can see them and that way there's a bunch of guys. And so we took fire from a tree line that was probably 50 yards from the compound that we were holding. And I was up on a, I was up on a rooftop with another guy and I saw like four guys walking around in camis and we were getting ready to light them up, but they were wearing the, like the stuff the commandos were wearing. I'm like, hey, we got guys moving down here. We need a head count. Who's got the Afghani commandos? Cause these guys look just like them. And then they came back with, oh, hey, we got everybody. No one's outside of our position. And then, so we were getting ready. I'm like, don't shoot. Don't shoot. And then we called again. They confirmed again. No one's outside our position. Then finally,

• 42:26Jason Gardner?

  20 minutes later, they're like, oh, wait, we had some guys walk out to go to, I don't know what they doing, if they're going to the bathroom or what they were screwing around doing, but we could have just completely lit them up.

• 42:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:40Jason Gardner?

  We used a lot of 50 cal on that. We had the air support, the, we had everything from... Hueys to B1 bombers overhead all day long bombs were falling that the Taliban was absolutely furious that we'd come into this stronghold of theirs captured this much you know all the opium there was somewhere like 800 pounds of refined heroin and the heroin was like packaged in these these bags that were like this big and they had like a scorpion on it and it said like 2008 after you know it had like a label

• 43:19Jocko Willink?

  Little marketing branding

• 43:20Jason Gardner?

  Marketing like you know made made here in Afghanistan or whatever and so it was a huge affront to them that we were there so after like the first two days we basically killed off every local fighter and then they started bringing guys up from Pakistan and then then it got kind of lively because the local fighters knew every piece of dead space but the guys from Pakistan weren't really familiar with the area so they would be bumbling in the open looking the other direction like oh ha ha bum bum get them um you know we we I think the third morning

• 43:57Jason Gardner?

  this we got up and there's no fighting like when's it gonna cause it's just like you get to setting your watch by you're like okay sun's up and we should start getting some shooting by now and there is nothing and there's nothing and so we radioed up to the to the headquarters were like hey what what is going on did they quit and they're just laughing hysterically on the radio and they were able to tell this and I can't describe to you how but the guy who had the keys to the armory where they were storing all their weapons they couldn't find him probably because we bombed him over the night and they couldn't get into the armory to get their stuff to come us attack us

• 44:44Jocko Willink?

  That new guy's gonna get a beat down isn't he

• 44:49Jason Gardner?

  Oh but uh It was just an audacious operation that worked out great and then

• 44:57Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys take any casualties during that time?

• 44:59Jason Gardner?

  We had

• 44:59Jocko Willink?

  Or did the Afghans or did the army?

• 45:01Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, so we had a rocket hit the compound over next to mine and our dog handler and one of our corpsmen got fragged. The corpsman, the frag knocked a tooth out and then the launch stuck in his tongue. So he's real lucky that his tooth slowed down the momentum and then the dog handler got hit in the back. Uh, there were several of the army guys that got straight up shot. And then here's the awesome part, like the, um, I feel like their call sign was Pedro, but it was Air Force medevac. And as soon as they heard that we were troops in contact, they lifted up and they would just be loitering real close to the firefight.

• 45:45Jason Gardner?

  And then like as soon as that, that missed report came over and like, hey, we got a guy down. They came in and it would be like, I would be watching going, we're going to get that helicopter shot down. And they would just come in, they had a mini, the door gunner had a minigun

• 46:04Jason Gardner?

  and they would just land right like on top of the guy in the middle of the firefight. We don't care. And like I would just, I was so proud. I could just be crying because it's such an awesome thing to see because it's complete disregard for their own personal safety and they're just waiting to jump in there and get guys. So luckily, um, on that operation, no one was lost. And then everybody was, the guys that were shot were all recovered from their wounds.

• 46:33Jocko Willink?

  And what kind of damage, what kind of damage did you guys do to the enemy? Significant?

• 46:38Jason Gardner?

  I, I think it was, it was pretty significant. I mean, um, there was just a huge amount of drugs and, and their equipment and things that we destroyed. And then it, it just had to hurt them psychologically that they thought that that was they had complete freedom of movement. And then all of a sudden we came in and stayed there and just did the meat stomp on them for four days.

• 47:00Jocko Willink?

  And you guys weren't only doing urban situations. You guys were going into other scenarios where you're like digging in on hillsides and whatnot too, right?

• 47:10Jason Gardner?

  Right. So later on, we, you know, we, that, that, that saying, take the high ground or it will take you. Because all of our operations, I think we only did We did two, 23 total operations on that thing. Most of them were multi-day. And, um, so there were only two that we were in and out in the same cycle of darkness. And typically, you know, we would do terrain studies and we're like, hey, we gotta defend these positions. And so when we had a compound that we're like, here's the compound, this is the compound that we're gonna take and hold. Where's the high ground around it? And then we need to get elements up on that high ground as well.

• 47:51Jason Gardner?

  Uh, there were also, there was, there were two, like, um, time-sensitive targets where we came in as a quick reaction force, where other elements, where there's another, um, coalition soft element and, um, SF element that got assaulted in a valley and they had the strong point of building because they'd been hit in this valley. And then we came in on the high ground, um, during the night and then the next morning, because that, most times the Taliban didn't fight at night because we had the advantage. The next morning when the Taliban assaulted them,

• 48:31Jason Gardner?

  we were on the high ground behind them and laid the hammer down and then were able to get stuff to where those guys were able to get out that day. Uh, yeah, so we were taking, we were taking high ground positions quite, you know, when it made sense. There's one operation we were on where there really wasn't any high ground. And so there, there were some, there, there were like, the furthest we could clear away from the compound that we were holding was 30 yards. And then it was a dense, like, green zone and a wall. People could completely creep up. So, we had guys go, you know, we identified that. We're like, okay, what are we gonna do?

• 49:13Jason Gardner?

  And then someone's like, hey, we can put, well, let's go put pop flares out there. You know, and so, i- i- you know, that's like going back to Vietnam stuff. But, guys went out and placed those and then boom. You know, we, we, when, once the bullets started flying and we were, the, the troops in contact, the tick, as we say in the vernacular, started to really get up to speed and then all of a sudden you're like, "Choo, choo, choo." Like, "Oh, those pop flares are going off. Okay." Start pumping 40 mic, mic over there or whatever. And, uh, um...

• 49:50Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, it was, it was cool. There's a, one of the stories we have back in Marja. The guys brought a, the ALGL, which is like this 40 millimeter chain gun. And then it has this, the new one has like a computer mount that goes on the top. And so you look at the screen and then you, you put the little cursor on, on what, what your target is. Okay. And then it lasers it and then gives you an elevation correction based on the ballistics for the 40 millimeter.

• 50:25Jason Gardner?

  And then you raise it up, you depress the lever, and then just, so there was, there was guys in a, in a tree line

• 50:38Jason Gardner?

  that were shooting at our guys and they had set this thing up and basically it's a 40 millimeter sniper rifle. And they're, they had the, like a Predator was overhead watching, giving them feedback on the fire. So they shoot at these guys in this tree line. And then they ask the Predator for a battle data damage assessment. And the Predator comes back with two EKIA, which enemy killed in action. One ran away on fire.

• 51:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's good. And what about, I know you told me a story one time about you guys weren't in the high ground. There's somebody, there's somebody like across the valley that had a little elevation on you and you guys were digging in and digging in and digging in, sandbag, sandbag, sandbag as much as you could.

• 51:31Jason Gardner?

  Yeah. So there, there was one, one of the operations we were in, um, Sawali Kot. And that, this was one of the places that was bad enough where they actually came at us at night. So we did our insert, helos dropped us off. And we were, we're in our perimeter, getting ready to start our offset patrol in to hit these confines we get. When PKM and two RPGs just come zipping overhead. And luckily we had, whenever we got inserted, we always had Apaches that escorted us in. They went over and started hammering these guys. They wound up getting, they wound up killing like 30 people. And what had happened was, as it turned out, we were offset from a target, but where our

• 52:15Jason Gardner?

  offset was, put us right next to where some other, a bunch of other Taliban guys happened to be, and they thought we were coming to get them, so they maneuvered. Then when we did our offset patrol, got to our target, guys came at us in the dark. We could see them coming from the high ground. We laid a fire team, pushed out, shot them right when they came around the corner, completely no factor. And then, you know, just 30, when they got within, they came around a corner 30 yards away from two AW gunners who just cut them down. And then, one of those guys, I think later, we figured out was probably some big wig with the Taliban. So we took that compound, and we took the high ground

• 52:57Jason Gardner?

  immediately behind it. But it was in a mountain range. So there was, there was always going to be high ground around our high ground. The next day, once they figured out where we were at, and then they got on all the high ground around us, and then they just brought it. And I can, so, where we were at on that high ground, it was like, the ground was too hard to dig. We always brought 10 empty sandbags per guy, so that you could fill them up and make defensive positions. We couldn't fill the sandbags up, because it was like trying to dig in your parking lot. So we just stacked all the rocks we could stack around us. And then, they kicked this thing off with a barrage of RPGs, and

• 53:42Jason Gardner?

  then, just a steady stream of PKM fire, which is, you know, their belt-fed machine gun. And I remember being, laying flat on my chest, and there's like 8 inches above my head, are the right, and by the way, I'm not, I took my body armor off, because I was, oh, it's hot, I'm gonna take my body armor off, and my helmet. And I'm like, oh, got my helmet back on, and I snaked into my body armor, everybody did. And then, these, the bullets are hitting the rocks steadily, 8 inches above my head. And the gunner is, he's 1,100 yards away. And he's just basically, you know, almost lobbing them in.

• 54:23Jason Gardner?

  Lobbing them in because I'd been shooting at, we'd been shooting at the guy a little bit. And we just couldn't, he kept sliding behind a rock and it was too windy to get him. And, uh, we had, uh, I think we had a Reaper overhead, but in the middle of the day in Afghanistan, when the rocks are 90 degrees and a person's 90 degrees, it, it's worthless. They can't see people and the Afghans are not sitting out in the open where you can kill them. So I was like, and at the moment I wasn't scared, but I'm like, okay, I'm getting ready to get shot and I'm, I'm getting ready to die by the sword. This is what I get. And that was,

• 55:02Jason Gardner?

  and that was it. And then our satcom radio antenna got shot and got knocked over. And so now we had no comms to get air support because we desperately needed to get some more air in. And then my boss, I go, I don't know how he got shot. He didn't get shot, but the TU commander is like, all right. And he just got up there and, and fixed the antenna and, uh, um, was hitting it. Well, down in the compound, our guys just started lobbing mortars and we used, uh, uh, we had the, uh, they started using the delayed fuses. So they were detonating 25 meters above the ground, which, which lays down an impressive

• 55:45Jason Gardner?

  frag pattern and tamped things down a bit. And then we just got hammered and hammered and we're like, oh, this is not going to be good. Um, like 15 minutes later, they're like, hey, we got some air to you. And it's not, it's not like we weren't without air cover because we did have a Reaper and I think a Predator showed up too, but they're, there's limited. So two French jets showed up and a lot of the coalition forces will be difficult with you sometimes when you're calling for air support and argue with you. And I'm not sure that these guys would have argued with us, but we just said, hey, there were two

• 56:27Jason Gardner?

  main ridge lines that we were taking heavy fire from. And we said, do, you know, give us a show force flight where they'll fly real low over those ridge lines and see if it pushes their heads down. And they came in. Right over both ridge lines and that tamped it down because they got down. And then a little while later, uh, that, that slowed things down and it was more manageable now for us. We get our heads up and start to shoot back a little bit. Then the B1 bomber shows up and they've got bombs to waste, you know? And they gave us, uh, four, 500 pound bombs on each ridge line airburst

• 57:11Jason Gardner?

  at 100 yard increments. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know? And then that hammered them a bit. Then we were able to isolate some of the other guys, use our own organic weapons to hammer the other guys. And then we were like, phew, man, this place is bad. The next day, so we were supposed to extract that night. And we were like, hey, when's our extract? Oh, and at two in the afternoon on the high ground position, we ran out of water and it was 114 degrees. So there's no shade, there's no water. It's just a massive suck fest and, uh, that, that nothing's coming until it gets dark.

• 57:54Jason Gardner?

  So we just waited, the helos came in after dark, kicked out pallets of water and ammo to resupply us. And they're like, by the way, you're staying for another 24 hours. Because what we didn't know is that us being there was having a huge effect on the whole battle space. And some other elements were able to adjust their position and some of the Afghan, uh, surrogate forces were able to get a whole bunch of stuff done. But, oh, when we got that over the radio, I was like, oh, we're gonna stay here. Don't they know that we almost got hammered? Like this is the first time, up until then, we always had the upper hand. They weren't really worried about getting like, just getting overrun.

• 58:39Jason Gardner?

  And in this point, there was a real fear, any second now, we're gonna get overrun. Um, and then they're like, you're staying for another day. And I remember talking to my two platoon chiefs. I'm like, hey, we're staying here for another day and you're gonna push out and clear this stuff. And we're gonna reinforce this position and here's what we're gonna do. And then they took a deep breath and they're like, okay, Roger that. And um, we stayed another day and the next day we, we uh, we got into it. They threw it, came at us pretty hard again, but then we uh, we had a little bit more air support. We had developed a relationship with the 82nd Airborne Combat Air Brigade, their Apache helicopters, which are like tanks in

• 59:24Jason Gardner?

  the air. They lived right down the road from us. And so we would have barbecues with them. And we would, we would run a range and have them over and then they would come suit at the range and we'd stand around and bullshit. They broke their sleep cycle. So this is really important for pilots. They have got to have a X amount of rest before they can fly. And they do not break their sleep cycle lightly. They broke their sleep cycle to come support us. And then they put themselves at risk where, like the Afghans don't like helicopters. So when a helicopter shows up, they'll sink. They flew low on purpose because they'll go, oh, that helicopter's low. I think I can hit it. And then they, they can't resist. They

• 1:00:07Jason Gardner?

  come out and then they'd ham, these guys would just hammer them. And uh, they came in the next night and that, that was awesome.

• 1:00:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So I was still at Trade Out while all this was going on. And I remember I would get emails um, from you, from the, from your task unit commander as well. And we were just be talking about, you know, like, hey, this is what's going on. And I remember I was signing the um, emails back to you guys as the spiritual advisor for T U Travis. I was there in spirit, dude.

• 1:00:43Jason Gardner?

  Yeah. And we, and, and yeah, we were, we were hitting back up to you because there's a lot of, there's a lot of massaging and stuff that has to get done. You know, we got, like I, I was looking at a picture in the hallway the other day and it's that, that classic picture with the yellow smoke and Mikey's there and, and Seth's right behind him. And I never really studied everyone's gear, but I looked at Seth and Seth's got the enhanced battle rifle, which is the M14 that just in, you know, the situation it was, it didn't work for our lasers in our sights. So they, these guys up at Warcom fixed it up. So you could use it and have 762 on the battlefield and you guys all had that.

• 1:01:25Jason Gardner?

  We got there right away and they were just getting ready to field the SCAR heavy.

• 1:01:31Jason Gardner?

  And we got them to field it first overseas, which is not what they like to field it first. Everyone trains with it. We got them to field it overseas. That was awesome because all of our guys had, you know, 173 grains of democracy and justice flying out there. So when you, when we would take, when we take an app, when we take a compound, right? Take, clear, clear compound, hold a compound. The Afghans would, they were used to 556. So they would know, like, okay, it's pretty windy today and um, I'm out at 500 yards. It's not likely you're going to hit me with your 500, your 556 rounds.

• 1:02:14Jason Gardner?

  So they would be like kind of out in the open and we would just kill them. And then, then, then that, that circle would go out and our guys were regularly getting guys at 5, 6, 7, 800 yards. And these were just off the SCAR heavy? With it, they, so here's what they did. Most of our snipers took the, the Nightforce 3x5 to 15 scope that was on our um, SR25s, which that, that gun had some issues and, and would jam a lot. And then just put them on their SCARS and that's what they patrolled with. So they would have it all the way down in three and a half power. So if you're patrolling, you can just swing it up. It's got a low magnification.

• 1:02:56Jason Gardner?

  So you have both eyes open and you can shoot and then they can put the bipods out and hit stuff far out. And, and, and those things were, were in fricking valuable. And, and it just brought a whole new dynamic to the battlefield. And, and you know, the SCAR had some problems. There's, it, it's not a, a direct impingement thing where the gas doesn't go all the way back as a gas piston like the M14 did. They told us, don't lube those. And guys would still lube them and then it would jam up and they're like, ah, this gun sucks. I'm like, well, I hope you lubed your gas piston. Yeah, I put a lot of lube on it. Like, don't do that. Don't do that. So, so that worked great.

• 1:03:40Jason Gardner?

  And that, that was, that was awesome that we were able to get, get that over there. And the, the Commodore at the time basically gave us whatever we wanted and asked for. The, the support we got from Group One was incredible.

• 1:03:55Jocko Willink?

  You guys, you guys didn't really take that many, I mean, no one got killed, right?

• 1:04:00Jason Gardner?

  No one got killed.

• 1:04:02Jocko Willink?

  How many guys got wounded?

• 1:04:06Jason Gardner?

  Two guys got wounded with frag, um, you know, we had a couple concussion injuries where guys got knocked out, uh, and, and it's hard to quantify how serious that is. And then, um, on, on our turnover operation, when SEAL Team One came to relieve us, is when, uh, when, when Dan Coniston got hit by that, that IED and lost both his legs. And, uh, that, I mean, ho- horrible event. And, and thank goodness, we're just like, there's so many things that lined up to save Dan's life because we'd been inserted for an offset patrol, went in there, um,

• 1:04:50Jason Gardner?

  got, got in there, uh, secured the, the bizarre, and then we pushed guys up to high ground like we always do, except for the Taliban suspected, you know, oh, well, they'll, if they come to take it, they mined the entire high ground. So as that element was pushing up, um, there was an explosion. And then there is quiet. And then TU commander gets on the radio, hey, was that a controlled death? And, uh, um,

• 1:05:21Jason Gardner?

  oh, I see who deployed with you came back and he's like, it was not a controlled death and we've got some wounded. And we're like, okay, work through it. Get on the satcom, the, uh, the forty-sevens that had dropped us off, it was an SOP for them to have a flight surgeon on one of their birds. And so they hadn't made it all the way to back base, or it may have been that they lawyered around for a little bit, that could have been too. So they were right there and there was surgical stuff right there when, because Dan's wounds

• 1:05:59Jason Gardner?

  were absolutely horrible. Um, and then, once the EOD guy started, once that happened, and it was lucky because the charge went low order. So if it'd gone high order, it would've killed like six guys. He discovers that they're in a minefield, basically. His metal detector is getting overrun, so he's got a bayonet or a big screwdriver, and he's probing the way out in front of the guys. So they could get Dan out and onto the medevac that later got him back.

• 1:06:36Jocko Willink?

  How, how long had you been on the ground for? Like a matter of 10, 15 minutes?

• 1:06:40Jason Gardner?

  No.

• 1:06:42Jason Gardner?

  We, we did like, we did an offset. So we, we patrolled in for like three or four clicks. So it was a little, it, it, it wasn't a couple hours, but it was inside of an hour. That's why I'm not sure how long those 47s were loitering, or if they were on their way back and they were able to turn them around. But they, they were back quick and they had that surgeon on there, which I think really made the difference for, for Dan. You know, now he's, the guy's running marathons. Guy haven't run a marathon let, yet. I feel like such a loser.

• 1:07:16Jocko Willink?

  And he's competed in the Olympics a couple times right now?

• 1:07:19Jason Gardner?

  He got a gold in the Paralympics, right?

• 1:07:21Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:07:22Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's awesome. Awesome guy. Yeah, that was, that was, that was devastating. Devastating. I remember

• 1:07:34Jocko Willink?

  we got word back that, you know, one of, one of the guys, and we, we just assumed it was one of your guys, actually, because I don't think we even knew the turnover, that, you know, the turnover was taking place. I assumed it was one of your guys. But, you know, and then, then I heard it was Dan. And I remember the first phone call that I got, and I was like, is he gonna live?

• 1:07:56Jason Gardner?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:57Jocko Willink?

  And at this point, they were like, yes, he is. Because, I mean, I know it was like touch and go, but then, the first person, I don't, I don't remember who it was, was like, yes, he's stable, he's gonna live. And I was like, then we're good to go. And I just remember thinking, thank God, he's, you know, he's gonna make it, you know?

• 1:08:18Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Jason Gardner?

  The uh, the like on a, unlike the second or third op we were there, our guys were Mick were doing an op with they, that one, we always had Afghani commandos with us because they were the partner force, the ODAs we were doing. And one of them stepped on a mine and it blew both his legs off and part of his arm. And uh, one of our guys got cut in the face with his femur and then there were some issues where, when they were putting, all of our tourniquets were failing because the, it had a plastic windlass that was, was going. And so the, the one guy,

• 1:08:59Jason Gardner?

  he, that got hit and then he got cut in the face with his femur and it messed him up mentally for a little bit and I didn't know what to say to him. So I didn't say anything to him and I, you know what, I wish I had because I've come to a conclusion now with a lot of this pain that everybody carries around that, that it's, it's a poison you carry inside of you and if you talk about it, it lets it out. And then, then it's kind of detoxing you a little bit. And so like, I don't know, you know, if you're listening to this and you're in a situation and someone's gone through something horrible and you don't know what to say, say something. Just sit down there and, and just talk with them about it, you know, ask how they're doing, see if they can get it off their chest because it helps.

• 1:09:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, same thing. We had guys that got, like I had one guy that got shot in the chest plate and got shot through the um, camel back, on his back. Those are two different operations too. I mean like, so what does that do to you when you're thinking, how close was I to just getting killed twice, you know, in two different scenarios? And for sure, I think, you know, if you don't, and what is, you know, what, what do we do in the teams? Like make a joke about everything. Everything's a big joke, which probably helps in some cases.

• 1:10:14Jason Gardner?

  I think it does.

• 1:10:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, but yeah, let, let, you definitely gotta, if you get the opportunity, talk to people about what's going on. And what I think it does is even more than like, well, I'm sure, I don't know, because I'm not a psychologist. But, okay, there's the idea that you're like letting this stuff out, right? I'm gonna let this stuff out. There's also the idea that when you talk about something, you articulate what you're thinking and you have to like put it into words that somehow they become a thing that you can manage. Yes, that makes complete sense. So like, when you don't talk about it, it's just like you have a conversation with somebody about whatever. You want to debate with somebody about some subject. If you never debated about it before, you're going to be at a disadvantage.

• 1:11:01Jocko Willink?

  Because you don't really understand all the ins and outs. But when you actually talk to someone about it, then you say, oh, here's, here's a point that I can make here, and here's a point that I can make there. If you don't talk about this stuff, it's just sitting in there and it doesn't get any better. You don't understand it any better. But when you talk, when you, just like we were talking on the last podcast, how when you teach something, you understand it more? Because you have to detach from it to look at it from the outside? Well, if I explain something to you, I'm explaining it to myself too. You know, I'm explaining it to myself too. And I told you this yesterday, you know, when, um, when I had Tom Fife on the podcast, who was in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and got a Purple Heart and all those.

• 1:11:42Jocko Willink?

  And it, and I asked him, I asked him some question about losing guys when he was a battalion commander in Vietnam. Sixty years ago, I didn't say that part, but like, you know, what was, you know, what was, how did you guys handle casualties or something like that? And I don't know what the question was, but here he is, this, you know, army colonel, retired army colonel. And he's talking about the guys that he lost sixty years ago and he got choked up. And I remember looking at him and I'm thinking to myself, okay, this is the way I'm always going to feel about the guys that I lost. It's never going to go away. And like, just hearing him talk about it and seeing that reaction, I was like, okay. And that's what I tell all my, all my bros now. I'm like, hey, you're always going to feel that way.

• 1:12:24Jocko Willink?

  Like, it's, it's just, here's a guy that was in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, he got a Purple Heart in all those. And he gets choked up talking about the guys that he lost in Vietnam and Korea in World War II. But, you know, I specifically asked him about Vietnam, so. When you talk about these things, I think you get some kind of handle on them. Because you have to articulate them in such a way that you can then. It's like, uh, what, what, you have to name your enemy, right? You have to, you have to name your enemy, they say, if you don't name the enemy, then you, how are you going to fight them? Well, it's the same thing when you actually say, hey, you know, I really feel bad about this. Or whatever, or I think I could have done this better. Or I think I made a mistake, or I wish we would, or whatever it is that you're thinking, you know? Whatever survivor's guilt, whatever that thing is that you have when you say it.

• 1:13:09Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're, you get to look at it and you get to look at it from the outside and go, okay. Yeah, I'm explaining this to Jason and I'm telling him what I'm thinking and then. While I'm explaining it to you, I'm explaining it to myself is what's happening. And that's why I think talking about it, not only does it get it out, but it gets you a handle on it somewhat.

• 1:13:29Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, the process of it coming out of your mouth and then back into your ears or. Maybe letting different parts of your brain. Adjust and deal with it, but. Yeah.

• 1:13:42Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:13:42Jason Gardner?

  What else, uh?

• 1:13:43Jocko Willink?

  So you come home.

• 1:13:47Jocko Willink?

  From Afghanistan, I mean.

• 1:13:49Jason Gardner?

  So like, and, and here's another thing I, I want to talk about too. And, and you brought this up in this, the, the book you were covering in the last couple of podcasts about fear. I'm like. Once that first bullet goes by, or the, it just like. Everything shuts down and you just go to what you're supposed to do. And then you do it. It's like in the moment, all emotion goes away. There's no fear, but then. Afterwards and before is when you have the fear like I would lay in my bed there and I would completely was, would picture. Notification going on for my wife. Like I, I, I could see.

• 1:14:33Jason Gardner?

  The guys in blues driving out to my house or, you know? Okay. This is a good chance that I'm going to get severely maimed and I, I could picture myself. Sitting in a wheelchair outside of a, you know, the, the, the paddock that I have my horses in. And I can't even ride them anymore. And you know, now I'm getting emotional about that. It's kind of, it's, it's odd to me, but that, that's weird how, how it, you know, when you're in the moment, you're not afraid. Later on, when you're thinking about it is, is when you, you start to freak out about it a little bit.

• 1:15:10Jocko Willink?

  There's no doubt, and this has been confirmed over and over and over again, that the waiting is the worst. I, that's just, it's just, you're just anticipating. And then once you're going, you're going and you got stuff to do. And I was never in situations where I like, didn't have anything to do. And there was no other things happening where I was like, well, the, the few times I've been mortared, where I'm like, sitting there waiting for a mortar to either hit me or not hit me, that sucked a lot, but it wasn't a long, it wasn't like, it wasn't like an hour though, you know, it's like, boom, boom.

• 1:15:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay, we got about 30 seconds. I don't know, maybe a minute before we find out where, where it's going to be at. But I also think that,

• 1:16:02Jocko Willink?

  you know, if you're scared of dying, it's going to be a real nightmare all the time, I think.

• 1:16:09Jason Gardner?

  Yeah. And like, like, like I said, that one point in Swalee caught where I'm like, okay, I'm going to get, this is what I get. It was just, was there was not fear. It was just an acceptance. I'm going to get shot here pretty soon. I wonder how bad it's going to hurt or burn or whatever it is. And it's like, all right, that's going to happen. Okay. Now later on, you think about it, um, there's one other thing, I think on an earlier podcast, people were asking a question about if you had a routine, because I had a really definite routine that I went through prior to going out in Afghanistan. And it wasn't like anything religious, but I, I'd sit there, I'd be in my room.

• 1:16:54Jason Gardner?

  And you know, we'd have everything but. Like, well, we had everything in our room, but we had a ready room and all that. So Iris had sent me this CD from this country singer, Cor Blund. I put that on and then the first thing I'd go through is I'd change out every battery in all of my gear. Cause you got like your Peltor headsets, your nods, all that stuff's getting new batteries. Then I would go through and look at all my battle maps, clean out the ones from the last one, get my new battle maps for this one, study them. Then I would always, always, always carry 24 hours worth of water with me and then pack out my food. Then I would go get fresh

• 1:17:37Jason Gardner?

  batteries for my radios. Then I would go through all of my gear, strip it down, put it back together for anything that I, any special gear and equipment I needed for that op. There was a, later on, I liked to carry a 60 power spotting scope because I was spending a lot of time on high ground. Make sure that was all clean up. Um, make sure that my radio was charged with crypto, all that stuff. It would take me like two hours to go through that whole process. And then we would go outside, we would do our comms checks together and uh, um, go out and get on the helicopters and get after it.

• 1:18:15Jocko Willink?

  And so that, that routine right there is like so good because if you had all that stuff ready and you just sat there for two hours, that would not be fun.

• 1:18:24Jason Gardner?

  No. No, and I mean, you gotta go, you gotta check everything three or four times. I remember riding with a guy on, on a, on a ride and his, his battery died on his nods in the middle of the, you know, when he's driving on a convoy. I'm like, good grief. You didn't put a fresh one in? That costs like 90 cents, dude.

• 1:18:43Jocko Willink?

  My, my first deployment to Iraq, we were doing that and we stopped. We stopped changing batteries for every op, like after a week because the ops were like an hour long. And all of a sudden we realized we were going to run out of batteries. Like we just didn't have enough batteries. So we just went to like, hey, carry an extra battery. And if, you know, if it dies, then whatever, change it.

• 1:19:06Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, ours were always all night.

• 1:19:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You guys were going out all night, isolated. You know, we were 10 feet from our Humvees or whatever, 20 yards from our Humvees. They have a big stack of batteries in there. It didn't matter. It's totally different scenario. Yeah, I think that I would always be super busy with doing stupid, you know, officer stuff. Before we go out, you know, getting this brief, checking in with this guy, whatever, doing all that stuff. And I, I would just get all ready and it seems like I would work up until I got into Humvee.

• 1:19:35Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, and that's what my T U commander did too, and it was hard on him because he would go on the op already on arrest deficit.

• 1:19:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:44Jason Gardner?

  And then when you're gonna stay out there for two days, eventually, you know, he's gotta go down. But they, we figured out like, uh, um, he would, he would pass it off to one of the other O I Cs to be the G F C. Cause he didn't want me to be the guy talking to the J TAC about what to drop.

• 1:20:01Jocko Willink?

  He had more sense than that.

• 1:20:03Jason Gardner?

  Well, I would be pretty liberal.

• 1:20:05Jocko Willink?

  There's a

• 1:20:09Jocko Willink?

  There's a picture of me and Dave Burke.

• 1:20:11Jason Gardner?

  Good deal Dave.

• 1:20:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good deal Dave and it's, it's in downtown Ramadi. I think it's on the roof of Cop Falcon and we're both just completely asleep, sitting there, just asleep.

• 1:20:21Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:21Jocko Willink?

  Cause, and the same thing, cause when I'd go out, I'd, a lot of times I'd been awake and, you know, late, all of us would be awake for a long time. So you get in the field and you're like, cool, I can sleep now.

• 1:20:31Jason Gardner?

  And, and that was like, okay, so that was like, one of the hardest things as a leader is like, you get there, you get in the O P and everybody wants to stay awake and that means we're all gonna hit the wall in like six hours. So it's, you, you gotta like go and say, hey, you four guys, get in there and I need you to take sleep. So you're ready to bump out on these security positions or these fighting positions or whatever it is. Cause it's coming.

• 1:20:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:58Jason Gardner?

  Everyone's just gonna hit the wall at the same time and you're all asleep.

• 1:21:01Jocko Willink?

  So tired.

• 1:21:05Jocko Willink?

  All right. So that's a, was that the last op you did was with Dan? Was that the very last op or did you do a couple more?

• 1:21:13Jason Gardner?

  I don't remember. It was pretty close to the last op because one of our platoons had already redeployed at that point. Um, you know, in, in leadership, you're the first one there and the last one to go. So we didn't go until the last bird, but I think, I think that was our, if it wasn't, it wasn't when our last one, it was our second to last one.

• 1:21:35Jocko Willink?

  Was going, was coming home from this deployment, any different than coming home from your other deployments?

• 1:21:40Jason Gardner?

  Oh, yeah. I've been, I've been there for eight months and it was the most kinetic deployment of, of my career. So, yeah, they, and, and, uh, NSW started doing the, the third location decompression stop. Where they're like, hey, before you get home, we want you to sit down and blow off some steam. And, uh, sit down with, uh, you know, a psych and talk to the psych a little bit. And our, our redeployment flight kept getting bumped, so we redeployed like, I think, eight days later than we were supposed to. And every day it was like, hey, the bird's gonna go tomorrow.

• 1:22:23Jason Gardner?

  Get up, muster. They're like, nope, maybe tomorrow. And we did that for eight days in a row. Finally, we got on it. And it was getting so long, I, I was really angry. I'm like, just let us go home. And, uh, they held their ground and I'm really glad that they, you know, held their ground. Because when we got to the other location and you start drinking, I was just a frigging idiot. Drank way too much. Um, but I, I needed it. I needed to blow off some steam and stuff. And it was good to have the other guys to talk to and, and, and to be somewhere where, you know, uh, my loved ones didn't have to see me being just a complete buffoon. And then, you know, and then I, I got home, um,

• 1:23:10Jason Gardner?

  and, uh, yeah, that, that, it, it took a lot. So, so I live kind of, at the time, I was living in East County, San Diego. And the area I live in is really similar to areas of Afghanistan. So I would find myself in my yard, you know, and I'm, I was back. And constantly scanning the high ground and, and doing a technique called ballooning. And that's where, you know, I'm here and then I'll sidestep here and then I'll backstep here. It's so like, you're just making it difficult if a sniper's aiming at you. That you're hoping that he's squeezing the trigger as you're stepping to the side. And you're gonna step out of his, his crosshairs, doing stuff like that. And then, um,

• 1:23:53Jason Gardner?

  You know, when you go eight months and every stressor that you have is a fight or flight, full blown stressor, whether it's the enemy shooting you or indirect fire coming in, it's hard for your body to come back and then differentiate between somebody not agreeing with you on something you just said, or anything else. My sleep was completely jacked up based on us operating a lot at night. And I had, I've always had issues with my sleep. So on the deployment, I'd started taking Ambien, and they were giving it to

• 1:24:31Jason Gardner?

  me. And so I was having difficulty sleeping without that. And then, you know, I think it was the first night or second night, I was home, the dog started barking. And I kept a gun on the nightstand, which is just, just an SOP. Now it's in a safe because I have kids. But dogs are barking, I roll out of bed, grab the gun, and I'm at the ready, waiting. Just like, okay. And then Iris, you know, rolls out of bed, and she's, or looks up and sees me standing there naked, holding a gun next to the bed, breathing heavy, scanning both the entrances. And she's just like, oh, wow, what came back. And you

• 1:25:13Jason Gardner?

  know, I didn't get a chance to talk about my wife and where I met her, but she was a wrangler on a ranch that we go to a lot for training when I met her. And she's just, just hard, a good, good, good partner, soulmate. And, and she's been extremely patient and put up with a lot of stuff that most women wouldn't have. And when I came back, I was doing, I was drinking heavily, just in mainly, you know, as I assess my drinking issues, it was because I was so wound up, that it would be four beers is to where I could get myself back to where everybody else walks around in their daily life where they're

• 1:25:56Jason Gardner?

  just calm. Because I was just like, grr.

• 1:26:02Jason Gardner?

  And that's just a factor from one is not sleeping. And then the other one is just coming back from a deployment like that. It takes you a while to decelerate when people are shooting at you and all these horrible things are happening. And then now you're back in society, but you're not really, or you're back here in the US, but you're not really, you're not all the way back. And so, and my temper was like a millisecond fuse. We'll get mad about stupid stuff and all kinds of stuff. And finally she said to me, she said, you know, hey, baby, you're not, you're not the same guy you were when you left. And, uh, I really want you to talk to somebody.

• 1:26:47Jason Gardner?

  And so immediately I got on the phone, I called up the psych and I started seeing the psych and talking through a lot of the stuff that I had going on and started working at getting better. Um, and it's a, it's a long process and it was, it was helpful to talk to those guys. Uh, it, to say that you have PTSD and, and is, is somehow maybe admitting a weakness. And I, I don't know if it's, you know, how do you define PTSD? For me, it's like, okay, well, if I'm in a crowd, I get hyper alert. And when I came back from this one, I was hyper alert all the time and adrenaline, just a constant steady drip of adrenaline going in.

• 1:27:31Jason Gardner?

  And that's why I was kind of drinking heavily to calm down. Um, you know, and in the vicious cycle I got into with the Ambien and that's a, and then my sleep been jacked up and then inflammation and all the other health, health issues that came with that. So that was like, kind of the first step. The second step was at this time, I came over to the training detachment and, and, you know, 2010 and was now running the land warfare section for you. Um, and Doc Parsley, Kirk Parsley was our, our diving medical officer group one. And he's a SEAL, later on went and got his, uh, his, you know, doctorate and became a doctor.

• 1:28:13Jason Gardner?

  He kind of, at that point was discovering that all these health issues that we were dealing with was, were, were revolved heavily around sleep. And so he was able to help me. Like get off the Ambien, start doing stuff to take, you know, natural things to get my sleep back in order.

• 1:28:35Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever do the sleep study? Did he put you on the?

• 1:28:38Jason Gardner?

  He didn't, but I, I did a sleep study later and uh, um, I have sleep apnea. And so I've got a CPAP machine that I sleep with for that and, and that helps, but you know, sleep and diet are a linchpin, like sleep, diet and exercise. There's the three pillars of good health, probably. Is there a fourth pillar? Probably like hypnosis or, I don't know. Those are the big three, I would say. And uh, getting that sleep fixed up helped my mental state a huge bit and it helped my physical state. I was in terrible shape at the time. I had a lot of different joint pains and ailments. And so that was good, you know, I was taking melatonin and he goes, how much melatonin do you take? I'm like, oh, I'm taking six milligrams.

• 1:29:22Jason Gardner?

  He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, you need, your body is going to not make its own. And ideally you get to the point where you're not even taking, you know, like some magnesium at night to, to help you calm down. And so that, that started me on the, on the path and that I was really glad because otherwise I, I know guys that can't sleep without Ambien. And I don't think that they're really, they're not really getting into the sleep. And it's just, it's not good.

• 1:29:55Jocko Willink?

  And this time you were working at Trade Up.

• 1:29:57Jason Gardner?

  Came back and took over the, the land warfare, uh, senior enlisted role there.

• 1:30:05Jocko Willink?

  As it should be.

• 1:30:06Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, that's, that was my dream. Usually guys don't ask to go to an island and, and I was like, hey, please send me out there. This is what I like. And uh, and that, that was good to go. Um, you know what's, it's, it's really interesting and we talked about this earlier. As we applied pressure to the different troops, we would see troops that were, that were loaded with superstars. They had so much raw talent.

• 1:30:36Jason Gardner?

  But then they didn't own their mistakes and they were just terrible.

• 1:30:39Jocko Willink?

  They'd be terrible.

• 1:30:40Jason Gardner?

  And we'd be like, what? I know you guys are good to go. What is going on here? And then we would see troops that necessarily did not have a whole lot of raw talent. But they were very humble and they were, they kept their, their op plan super simple and they would just, they would be the troops that, that like we couldn't, the op four just couldn't, our opposition forces couldn't keep up with them.

• 1:31:06Jocko Willink?

  That's just a fact and it's over and over and over and over again and again and again. And the, the people, the people that, it's interesting too, because you might think, well, if you're not humble, then you're going to be cocky. And if you're cocky with the training guys, then they're going to be more judgmental and they're going to push you harder and they're going to jump on everything that mistake you make.

• 1:31:31Jocko Willink?

  It's not like that. It's like, it's so clear that when a, when a troop was humble, they would fix themselves and fix the problems and the mistakes that they made. And when they weren't, you know, you get four, five guys, six, seven guys in a troop that are cocky and arrogant. And not only are they not owning their own mistakes, but they're blaming everyone else inside their own troop. And it just turns, it's so horrible to watch.

• 1:31:58Jason Gardner?

  Vicious.

• 1:31:58Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's horrible to watch because they're at each other's throats. They're blaming each other for everything. And no one's taking ownership. It's just a total nightmare. And it has nothing to do, it's like even completely objectively looking at a troop. You just, you just watch them fall apart because someone doesn't say, hey, you know what? Maybe we should just work together and try and do better. Which is essentially all you need to do is say, wait a second. It took us 12 minutes. The trade that guys timed us on getting our head count, leaving that building. It took us 12 minutes and in that 12 minutes, we took four more casualties. Maybe we should look at how we're getting our head counts. Whatever, just whatever little thing.

• 1:32:39Jason Gardner?

  Yep.

• 1:32:40Jocko Willink?

  And if you're an arrogant person. You just, it just, and then guess what? Then you end up with a bunch of new guys that are all arrogant because they're all just imitating you, you know, they're all imitating the senior guys. There's not a new guy that checks into a team goes, you know what? My chief seems a little bit arrogant. I'm going to be more humble. That doesn't happen. No, you're a new guy. You're like, I'm going to act like my platoon chief. That's what I'm going to do. And that's what you do. And you end up with a whole, whole task unit of just people that don't want to say that they did anything wrong. And again, it was just horrible to see. Cause it'd be guys that were all over me, guys, we like, we know everyone, you know, know everyone on, on the west coast. Know every guy, like they're our friends. And you'd be like, bro, no.

• 1:33:25Jocko Willink?

  And it was so hard. That was the hardest part of the job was, was, was having to, you know, you're looking at your friend and saying, bro, man, I'm, I'm, I'm not like, you're not, I'm not just saying this. You guys are doing really, really bad and you need to fix some of this stuff or it's, you're not going to get through it. You're going to get reloaded.

• 1:33:48Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:49Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, that was, that was the worst part of the job, in my opinion.

• 1:33:53Jason Gardner?

  Absolutely. And then it's super tricky just to, to be able to debrief these guys and do it in a manner where you're, you don't sound condescending.

• 1:33:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, um, God, I love that job. I would, I would, you know, go out there, I had my little voice recorder. And I would sit there and I would take all my notes in the voice recorder because you can't write while you're, all this stuff's going on. And sometimes I would just record the guys as they're freaking out, total panic screaming at everyone. I'd just record them. And I'd get back and I'd be like, hey, man, okay, when you guys got strong pointed in that building, what were you thinking you wanted everyone to do? He's like, they just needed to move. And I go, okay, let me do, let me just play what you were saying. And you'd press play on the recorder and the guy'd be like,

• 1:34:37Jocko Willink?

  and you couldn't even understand him. Couldn't even understand him. And I'd be like, man. Bro, this isn't just like, this isn't just me. And there's some guys that didn't like me, you know? Or whatever. It's like, it's not just me. And I like you, actually. I think you seem like a good dude. I'm just saying, like, these mistakes are bad. And they're not just made up, man.

• 1:34:56Jason Gardner?

  No.

• 1:34:56Jocko Willink?

  They're not just like, I'm not just making it up. You guys ran to the wrong target. And the whole task unit ran to the wrong target. You're in charge of the assault. And you ran to the wrong target and everyone followed you. And that just, you know, you didn't, you didn't do what you were supposed to do. That's not good. And I'm not just saying this because I want to be cool. I'm saying this because it's not good.

• 1:35:23Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:24Jocko Willink?

  It's just, it was crazy.

• 1:35:26Jason Gardner?

  And the great opportunity of that is it was a non-stop experiment to where you could watch how guys organize themselves. And how they, their organization structure responded to pressure.

• 1:35:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:39Jason Gardner?

  And you could see like, oh, well, these guys are using decentralized command. And we can put all the dang pressure we have to bear, short of killing every other guy. And they can still function.

• 1:35:51Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:35:52Jason Gardner?

  Or these guys have over centralized their command, or there just isn't any. And I can put a fraction of pressure and then it just cracks everywhere and falls out. And that's cool. That, that, I, I mean, again, I learned so much from the several years that I was doing that, why I could see the personality traits that guys were exhibiting as they came through there. And then how they were organized functionally and what worked and what didn't.

• 1:36:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the other, and I just said a bunch of negative stuff about how much it sucked. But it was so awesome. You'd get these studs, these young SEAL beasts, E5s that would just be like, I'm taking this element, we're moving. And you'd be like, I love this guy. And I just, they would just be awesome. And so you'd see that all the time, too, of course.

• 1:36:46Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:47Jocko Willink?

  And so that was what made it so cool. And yes, it's the ultimate leadership laboratory to, to experience from the outside, from the instructor cadre perspective of, we're going to put 28 platoons through this little problem. It's the same problem. And the only difference is, and you could say that there's some difference in the guys, but there's really not. There's actually like, The SEALs in the platoon, they're good, they're solid, they're fine. There's a couple knuckleheads, there's a couple of great guys, there's a couple of guys, there's guys in the middle, but that's not the difference. The difference is so blatantly clear, the leadership, that you just get to see that over and over and over again. So it's awesome.

• 1:37:29Jason Gardner?

  Yep.

• 1:37:30Jocko Willink?

  How long did you stay there for?

• 1:37:31Jason Gardner?

  Those are three years.

• 1:37:33Jocko Willink?

  And then, what came next? You made Master Chief?

• 1:37:37Jason Gardner?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:38Jocko Willink?

  And then wrapped up your time at trade at, and then, then it was time to?

• 1:37:44Jason Gardner?

  Go over to Team Five.

• 1:37:46Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:37:47Jason Gardner?

  I went over to Team Five and the way the progression is, you do a slot as the Operations Master Chief, and then the next cycle, we're built on a two-year cycle, you would fleet up to become the Command Master Chief. And Operations is just, it is a crazy job because you are responsible for every single moving part that the SEAL team does. So you're looking at what all nine platoons are doing for training. You're involved with where everybody is going to deploy, all the gear they got, all the ammo that they order, anything in between,

• 1:38:28Jason Gardner?

  outside, you're dealing with all the other commands. And then, so halfway through our workup, the ISOL went and took MOSL, and then deployed, they split up how the team was organized, so that that kind of threw a wrench into how we were deploying. We had to come up with a plan to possibly deploy half of the team during unit-level training. And it was busy, but then it was a fantastic experience, because you basically learn how to do everything. And then every time...

• 1:39:13Jason Gardner?

  So, working with, with like, if someone came to me and they complained to me about our admin department, and then I would go to admin and like, "Hey, what's going on here?" And then I would find out that like, we'll have to blame, and sometimes all of it, lies with the guy complaining about it. Or, "Hey, this other unit over here, they're not doing this right." And then I'd just go over and talk to them and find out that, "Hey, they've got some issues I don't know about that we could help them out with," or, "We're not doing everything correctly." And so I got, I took that stuff that I learned from, you know, like Danny Carroll and Steve Hines and Monty Treseys, and started to apply it outside of just a platoon level, but to a command level

• 1:39:56Jason Gardner?

  and a relationship level, and it, it worked out great. We got, we got a lot of stuff done.

• 1:40:05Jason Gardner?

  And, yeah, I'm rambling a little bit, but there you have, that, that, that stuff, every time there, there was, every time there was a complaint, "This isn't doing it right, they suck at this," I'd dig into it. And there were a couple times I didn't dig into it, and then I'd wind up with egg in my face. And now I just dig into everything. I take what someone tells me, like, somebody gets in trouble over the weekend. And it's like, "Okay, this is what we heard right now. The first story is never the real story. And then let's just, hey, we don't have to make a call now. Let's wait and let things develop and find out what the real facts are before we do something knee jerk

• 1:40:46Jason Gardner?

  that we can't take back." And sometimes it winds out that it's worse, and sometimes it winds out that it's better. I remember, one of the things I heard a general say on, on, on the deployment that I was on later on, he says he's, he's not gonna make a decision until he has to. They're like, "Hey, we want to do this." And he goes, "Do I need to make that decision today?" "No." "Okay, then I'm not gonna." Because he can let more facts come in, he can deal with more stuff, which made sense. That was General Nagata, which was the SOCCs and commander when that stuff went on. And he was, I've never met him personally, but he believed in real, flat

• 1:41:29Jason Gardner?

  communications. So, when he sent out an email, there'd be like eight, a couple hundred people CC'd on it. And he-

• 1:41:39Jason Gardner?

  Because there's a tendency for people on staffs to use the the flag officer that they're working for, they're using him like the uh um the Wizard of Oz, right? They're like, oh, the general just said this. And then you're like, well, I saw his email and that's not what he said. In fact, here's, let me forward you the email and highlight it and everyone else will be CC'd and no one does that. But there's, I I've seen it happen a lot of times with other leadership who doesn't, don't use flat comms where people below them will start saying, this guy says this or this guy says that and start doing a little bit of manipulation to maneuver whatever their agenda is or just get things going the way they want to do. But one thing I heard him-

• 1:42:24Jocko Willink?

  You know, just to catch on that, uh, don't make a decision until you have to. And there's a weird dichotomy in that because, you know, every, there's, there's plenty of quotes that are, are the opposite of that, which is, um, you know, a good, well, like we said, the good plan right now is better than a great plan executed tomorrow or whatever, or, you know, you gotta be decisive. And the reality is, there's, and, and I've, I say this a lot, which is, if I know that we're, if we get intel that there's bad guys in this building, in this town somewhere, and they're like, we want you to go hit it. That doesn't mean it's like, okay, okay, I decide right now, okay, yes, we're gonna go hit it. We load up

• 1:43:06Jocko Willink?

  the vehicles and we start driving and we drive there and hit it. No, we actually go, okay, well, let's let the information develop and we'll start planning. So I made a decision. The decision was to start planning. The decision is to go hit the target. And then it's like, okay, well, now it's nighttime, we have a good plan, but we're not sure. We haven't confirmed the intel. Okay, well, let's, let's drive to a forward operating base and get staged, right? So we've still flexed, I've decided to do that, but we haven't decided to go hit the thing, but we're still prepared to if we need to. We've moved in the right direction. And then we get, you know, intel that, well, we don't know, but a vehicle arrived at this person's house and we think it might be him. Okay, well, let's push to a staging point,

• 1:43:51Jocko Willink?

  right? We still haven't decided to hit it, but we've moved in that direction. And this happens with businesses too, where there's something unfolding, a new market, right? Hey, this new market might open up. Okay. Let's invest all of our money into this new market right now. No, that's not a good move. What you do is, okay, let's, let's find out, let's, let's invest a little bit of money and find out how big that market really is. Okay, cool. We do a little study. Oh, it turns out that that market does look pretty big. Okay, let's do a little research and see what it would take for us to push into that market. Okay, cool. And so you're moving in the right direction, but you're not just jumping in with this decisiveness to say, okay, I've seen all I need to see. I've decided that we're just gonna go all in right now.

• 1:44:37Jocko Willink?

  That doesn't make a lot of sense. Sometimes. There's other times where it's like, guess what? We're standing in a hallway, or we're standing in the street, and we're getting shot at. We're gonna get into a building. That's what we're gonna do. Like, there's no, we're not gonna think about, we're not gonna move towards the building. No, we're going in the building because right now, out here, we're gonna die. So, yes, be decisive in those situations. Be decisive when you have to be decisive. But if you don't have to make a decision, the big decision, right now, and you can make a series of smaller decisions, iterative decisions, that move you towards what you think decision you will have to make, then go that route.

• 1:45:12Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:45:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so, you guys deploy to, and this is when you guys get into Mosul?

• 1:45:21Jason Gardner?

  No, that's a following deployment.

• 1:45:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so what'd you guys do on this deployment?

• 1:45:25Jason Gardner?

  I, I went to the, the, the command split up, so the CO and the command master chief were up in Iraq. And then I was at another spot, non-disclosed location on a crisis response element with the XO.

• 1:45:45Jocko Willink?

  And that was, that was six months?

• 1:45:46Jason Gardner?

  That was six. Well, we did five months, because at the time, they said you have to be front door to front door in six months, and because you can't predict the airflow, we did a five and a half month

• 1:45:59Jason Gardner?

  deployment. And, and then that was a big eye-opener too, because we, on that deployment, I was going to an embassy once a week.

• 1:46:08Jocko Willink?

  How'd the boys handle it?

• 1:46:11Jason Gardner?

  They did good. We had guys kind of spread out in different spots. And there was a big operation that went on there that one of the National Mission Force did. And our guys participated in it. And it was a good, like, shooting deal. Nothing happened up in Iraq. I think it was frustrating for them. And then by the nature of how everything was, there was a really slow strike process. So when our guys could see like a vehicle borne IED driving towards Iraqi counterparts

• 1:46:52Jason Gardner?

  to blow them up, it would take 20 minutes to get clearance to drop a bomb on it.

• 1:46:57Jocko Willink?

  And only 15 minutes to drive there.

• 1:47:00Jason Gardner?

  And like five minutes to drive there. So they just watch it happen live on TV and they're like, ah. So that aspect of it was frustrating and there wasn't a real clear decision made on what was going to happen at that point. So there wasn't, I don't know, the guys up there didn't do much. But just spin, spin and spin and spin, which is really difficult. Hey, get ready. Oh, never mind. Hey, get ready. Oh, never mind. And yeah, that was good. So it was a good deployment overall. It was a good experience for me to kind of like, because I was the senior enlisted guy where I was at. And so that was great.

• 1:47:42Jason Gardner?

  And came back from that and we did our change of command. And then I've leaded up to be the Command Master Chief. And you don't really know who you're going to get paired up with when you're in that leadership role. Because there's a commanding officer and a commanding master chief. And as it happened, I got paired up with a guy that was just awesome and I'd known forever. And The two of us are a lot alike personality wise, which we real, you know, like we went to a couple of leadership seminars and they're like, you guys are almost the same person. So, hey, here's what you're gonna have to watch out for because both of you are really blunt.

• 1:48:27Jason Gardner?

  And, uh, um, yeah, I, I really won the lottery. It was a, it was a real pleasure working for him. He was a fantastic leader and what he did really well specifically was he communicated a lot. So he's, he always speaking with his, his XO, his ops officer, myself, and then the task unit commanders, he spoke with all, once a week, he would have a meeting with them. Once a week, you know, and he was all, all the way down to the platoon, oh, I see. And he did it in a manner where he wasn't stepping on other people's toes.

• 1:49:04Jason Gardner?

  And there was never any, there was never any, any guessing on where he was coming from or what he expected. And everybody knew that he cared about them was, was his, his first priority. And then the mission came after that. So that was really good. But hey, you know what? If you, if you, if you messed up, he'd hold you accountable. He, he, he'd give, give you a written counseling and he did that for some of his guys who just did some shady stuff and they're good dudes. And he's like, okay, well, hey, you know, hopefully this stops here and did, does a written counseling. So, so that was good, but, uh.

• 1:49:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, again, it's the same message that we talked about on the lost podcast, which is just knowing where you stand.

• 1:49:56Jason Gardner?

  Absolutely.

• 1:49:57Jocko Willink?

  Having predictability and know, when, when you know a guy's got a reputation like, oh, if you step out of line, you're gonna get formal written counseling, that tightens people up immediately. Whereas if you think, oh, this guy's kind of a pushover, guess what you do? You cause more trouble and you cause more problems.

• 1:50:12Jason Gardner?

  You, you, yeah, you really do. And it, and it was like, it, there was always an escalation with it, but it was, it was straightforward. And then everybody always understood like, hey, I'm, I'm not mad at you. These are just the standards we have here and you did this, here's the consequences of that. You know, I, we need you to fix yourself. I'm rooting for you to fix yourself. I'm not mad at you. And then let's just move forward from here.

• 1:50:38Jason Gardner?

  Got back from that deployment and then I got back in February. You started this podcast in December. Iris had started listening to it and then like I said, Podcast Six is when I started listening to it. And then I was caught up within a week because I was able to do it with my, my longer commute. And then just, you talk about, I wish I had this. I had the luxury of having this when I was in a really important leadership position.

• 1:51:09Jason Gardner?

  Threfold, as a husband, as a father, and as a SEAL, right? And those, the priorities are almost always the same, or it's weighted heavily, husband, father, SEAL. And so, all the stuff that, that is discussed here through all these lessons from these books and all that, it can take and apply to every stinking aspect of my life. And I did it. And like, the hardest thing for me was to really get introspective and honest with myself about what my shortfalls were. And it's not something that you can do overnight. It's not like I can get a shot and get inoculated. It's something that is water tortured in.

• 1:51:52Jason Gardner?

  And then I just growing so much from it. And like, I'm going, you know, the, like, starting with the dang sea of machetes. Season of the machetes, right?

• 1:52:05Jocko Willink?

  Machete season.

• 1:52:05Jason Gardner?

  That was like, the first really dark podcast. And I was driving, I was wincing, listening to that. I'm like, why did he do that to me?

• 1:52:14Jason Gardner?

  But then I appreciated how good I had it, right? Then, then, then, and so now, as those, those podcasts are so dang necessary to understand how evil I could be, because I could, I could completely go down any of those roads.

• 1:52:34Jason Gardner?

  And then, once you understand that that's in your heart, you can control it, but then you can appreciate how good you have it. And, and you've got that, like, the, the, um, the episode that you did on the My L.A. massacre. I had to pull my car over because I was crying, because I was so ashamed that this, this is, I was just like, can't this story be about somebody else and not Americans? And then, um,

• 1:53:02Jason Gardner?

  Later on, when I, when guys make chief, and I talked to you about this, I'm like, hey, when my guys make chief, we have, we have to put them through all this training. A lot of the training I don't think is good. One of the things I did for them is like, hey, we're going to listen to these three podcasts. And Mylay was one of them. The other one was, Steal My Soldier's Hearts, which was an awesome podcast and awesome lessons. And they're all awesome lessons, but it was all good because the guys listened to it and we'd have discussions. And then, you know, you came in and we VTC'd and talked to them. And that was such good stuff. But going down that road and then being in all these different situations at the executive

• 1:53:44Jason Gardner?

  level, levels of leaderships in the SEAL teams, and I could see in real time, I'm like, oh, okay, this is, uh, this is, ah, yeah, my face is getting flushed and I'm a little emotionally attached to this idea. My, my, my fists are clenched. What did he say? He told me to breathe. All right. And then I come back and like, oh, or someone said something and I disagree with them. And I just ran headlong into, you know, a pillbox. And like, that did not work out well. Maybe I can learn to finesse it. And then it worked out great because our, I think we did, the feedback I've gotten anyway, is that we did really good at the team and we dealt well

• 1:54:28Jason Gardner?

  with a lot of other people. Uh, and, and so that is, is a huge degree for myself was having the podcast to learn these things of military history and then being able just to be introspective and improve on, uh, on my life as a whole. And then having these discussions with my, because she listens to the podcast all the time and we discuss it. And it's just been good for, for us across the board. Um, you know, when we deployed on that deployment, and that's during the deployment when we did the, uh, the clearance into Mosul, we had one platoon that went to an

• 1:55:12Jason Gardner?

  area and they were working under, um, the conventional Marine, well, it was all, we were all working for the conventionals. The conventional forces in Iraq in 2000.

• 1:55:25Jason Gardner?

  1617, they were the main effort we were in support of. And then our guys went to a location where they inherited a pretty toxic relationship. And they took some of the lessons that you talked about and they went in there humble. They said, "Hey, how can we help? What can we do? Oh, hey, when are your, when do you have, when are your normal battle rhythm meetings? We want to send a representative there so we make sure we're doing everything right and we're getting the word and all that." And they really leaned into it. They turned that relationship around in a matter of a month. Completely around.

• 1:56:03Jason Gardner?

  And, and then they were in an area of Iraq out west that was not, there wasn't a lot going on out there at the time. But that Colonel was so impressed with them and liked them. He bent over backwards to make sure that he could get them outside the wire so that they could get after it. And we were able to get them outside the wire. And at the end of deployment, all five of our platoons had been in combat. They were the last ones, the fifth platoon that hadn't. And then they got the opportunity to really mix it up on two operations. And it was 100% because of that, that Colonel liked them as people and trusted them and wanted to see them do well. He wanted to celebrate it.

• 1:56:48Jason Gardner?

  And when people don't like you, they want to see, they'll walk across the street to see you get screwed over.

• 1:56:54Jocko Willink?

  Relationships are stronger than the chain of command.

• 1:56:56Jason Gardner?

  Absolutely. And they, they had written in there, I love this because I've copied this, on their, on their whiteboard in their, their, their joint operator, their JOC, they had at the top in all caps, "Relationships equal mission success." So when one of their E5s went over and talked to a Marine Corps E5, they were really cool with them. They didn't manage their own security like the Marines did security around their camp. They would bring dinner out to the guys that were standing watch at night. Just like it, it was, it was awesome. And then everybody, there was a, you know, a real, a real sense of teamwork and stuff out there. So that was good.

• 1:57:37Jocko Willink?

  And that was, but you guys did some real tough fighting inside of Mosul.

• 1:57:44Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, now our platoons that were up north, you know, when they kicked off the liberation of Mosul, which was the biggest military operation since the invasion of Iraq, and there were, I believe, three different main lines of approach going towards the city, and ISIS pretty much controlled everything on the outside. Guys, the first couple of days of that, there were semi trucks that were loaded with explosives, vehicle borne IEDs, that was a semi. Like, I don't think, you know, outside of the Moab, we don't have a bomb that's carrying that much stuff coming at them.

• 1:58:26Jason Gardner?

  And that's where, you know, EOD Chief Finan was killed on the first couple of days when our guys had gotten into an area, they were partnered up with the Peshmerga, which are the, who are the guys that, Kurds, yeah. Yeah, so they're partnered up with them, and they were pressing into an area, and they got into an area that was just too laden with IEDs, and they were having to back up their Mat V, the truck they were driving in, and Jason had the door open so he could

• 1:59:08Jason Gardner?

  make sure that he was in the same tire tracks that he'd just driven over. Unfortunately, they'd driven over a crush plate once, it crushed it halfway, they hit the rest of the crush plate, and it was a daisy chain of explosives, it went off, a bunch of it hit him right in the face. It was a fairly horrible experience for our guys that were there because he was still breathing.

• 1:59:38Jason Gardner?

  Biologically, he was alive for like the hour that they were with him before they could finally get a medevac to him that was too hot. The medevac wouldn't come in, so they had to offload him off the truck, get him in the back of a pickup truck, and then drive through all this heavy fire and a lot more IEDs to get him on, on, uh, onboard the medevac and then, you know, then he expired.

• 2:00:06Jason Gardner?

  And, uh, it, it, it's the worst-case scenario, period. And it's something that we drilled. We, we started drilling, we call it a CAKO drill, for when you lose a guy back on the strand, and we would do full-blown drills, like, okay, here's what we need to do, um, to, to cover down on that, so that we're ready. And, and I'm a little bit superstitious. I think if we practice to do something a whole bunch of times, it's not gonna happen. And then, it happened, but luckily, it's something that we, it's not lucky that it happened, but it's something that we drilled. And more so, we had like a book, because

• 2:00:50Jason Gardner?

  there's an incredible amount of emotion, and everybody wants, everyone gets excited, they all wanna do stuff. And so, there, it's, sometimes you can do, there's too much that you can do, and you can confuse a situation, so we, we just opened it, we had the CAKO book, we opened it up, and like, our admin guy is like, "Hey, what's step one?" And he goes down, he goes, "All right, we need to do this. What's step two? We need to do this." There's no way we would've remembered that. We went through it, went through the steps. One of the things that, that I was pretty adamant about is because I, I had a good

• 2:01:30Jason Gardner?

  idea, although I haven't experienced it directly, about what my guys had gone through that were there with him. Um, and I wanted to get a...

• 2:01:44Jason Gardner?

  A psych out to just help them unpack some of the stuff they went through before the end of deployment. So he could do two things. He could get out there and help them unpack what they were, you know, what they went through and then he built up some rapport. So at the end of deployment on the, the, the next stop, they had some rapport with them. So the, the group sent, sent the guy out now. This is like three weeks after this happened because the best thing to do is to do something and the guy stayed busy because there was a freaking war to fight. But then when stuff tapered down for them and now like

• 2:02:25Jason Gardner?

  oh, there's downtime. Hey, guess what? The psych's coming out and he's going to hang out there and you don't need to speak with him, but he's available. And typically he, he, you know, he'll get out there. He puts a thing up. Hey, you want to speak with, no one signs it. But then he's just there and at lunchtime, a guy hits him up and then later on, another guy hits him up. And

• 2:02:51Jason Gardner?

  yeah, and the guys went through and there was, there was heavy fighting up until the day that, that we redeployed. Team seven basically came in and we're doing turnover ops and going out and doing stuff there in Mosul. We had just, there was a little bit law of a law when eastern Mosul was finally cleared. And then there was a big reassessment on moving over to the other side of the, uh, the river. But, uh, um, it, it was, it was busy and it was, uh, it was pretty good. I mean, we had a couple of vehicle borne IEDs that got within a hundred yards of our guys before they were able to kill them with.

• 2:03:36Jason Gardner?

  And then the the driver's got like a kill switch on him. So when he dies.

• 2:03:41Jocko Willink?

  It gets released.

• 2:03:42Jason Gardner?

  It gets released and detonates. And there was no shortage of, I think there was at least like seven or eight of these things coming at us a day. And then they they'd been prepping for months. So they were laid in. All across Mosul, there was a garage underground that had a V bit in it. And so as the frontline moved closer, all of a sudden, this car would just drive out and drive right into the Iraqis and blow them up. And there's no time to hit it with a hellfire or or or stop it or whatever. And they they had them coming pretty quick.

• 2:04:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, going back to the casualty plan, it's it you were giving me a almost a hard time, but you were harassing me saying like, when are you going to write your protocol book? Because I've talked about, you know, how you got to have protocol for certain situations that are, like you said, things that are real emotional, things that are moving real quick, things that you know you're you need to be thinking about, but you won't be able to think clearly about when they're actually going on. And that's what you're talking about. You know, you guys put together a protocol to follow. And the Navy has one and the teams have one. But, you know, you got to look at it and actually understand what it means. You can't just open up a book that you've never looked at before. So but but that protocol

• 2:05:04Jocko Willink?

  idea for for your life is definitely a powerful thing, whether especially for things that are going to be emotional and and rough to go through. If you have a good protocol, commence the protocol. Step one. And and you also talked about the guys continuing to be busy, and that's absolutely true. If you're going to sit around and if you're going to sit around, you're just going to think about the the horrible event you just went through. And that's not going to go well because you're not ready to deal with it. So get back to work, work, let it settle a little bit, and then you'll, you know, you'll you have to deal with it later. But you do have to deal with it at some point.

• 2:05:42Jason Gardner?

  Yeah. I know that like, one of the times that I got to go out to the to the to the to basically the flot with our guys who were going advise and assist, and they would be about three blocks back or four blocks back from the front lines.

• 2:06:04Jason Gardner?

  The civilians that lived in Mosul would just move away from where the fighting was and then just kind of mingle around just outside of it and then go back to their houses. So, we were at this one location where the guys were providing support to the Iraqi CTS and we had snipers up on rooftops. We were able to see all the way to the front lines and take shots and then we were also using mortars pretty heavily. We got some 81s in that are just friggin awesome. So, two things, or so, one thing and another story right after this. So, there's all these civilians around. It's a little nerve wracking because

• 2:06:44Jason Gardner?

  who's who, right? And there are a bunch of kids, there were some kids right next, living in the building next to, with their families next to where our trucks were parked. And they were really nice kids and they spoke pretty clear English and they wanted candy and stuff. So, we were chatting with them a little bit and messing around. And then, so we were there all day and then in the evening, a bunch more kids came out. There was a whole group of kids and I don't know if they just come in the area or was the evening and they just wanted to come out and play. And so, there's, we were in this area where there weren't a lot of buildings. So, we were right in the middle of this big

• 2:07:25Jason Gardner?

  field. So, you know, we could see anything coming. And the kids were all playing and then a salvo of 120s came in. And so, 120 million more, boom, boom. And they basically kind of bracketed us. But then, where one of them landed was right where those stinking, those poor kids were. And I looked over there and I saw like this beautiful little girl hopping away in the smoke and she's missing a leg.

• 2:08:06Jason Gardner?

  And then I, I saw a guy run out and snatch up a little body. And he's just wailing.

• 2:08:17Jason Gardner?

  I thought, you know, I thought about my kids at home. And what those people are going through and how awful it must be.

• 2:08:27Jason Gardner?

  And now we just gotta redouble our efforts to stop this freaking crap that was going on with ISIL. Because it is just so unsat. Because little kids are little kids are little kids, you know, wherever they're from or what, you know. And to see innocents shattered like that.

• 2:08:48Jason Gardner?

  It was rough.

• 2:08:55Jason Gardner?

  But that's, that's part about, you know, knowing the darkness and what does that do? That makes me appreciate my kids more. And then never pass up an opportunity to hug them or tell them I love them. Or, anything like that.

• 2:09:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that, those, those kind of stories right there.

• 2:09:17Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, I, I pretty regularly have to explain to people that there are evil human beings in the world. That, there, those, those people that drop those mortars, they don't care about those kids at all. And I heard other stories from guys coming back from Mosul after you were there. Where, one of the biggest risks that was going on was the EOD, the guys doing the EOD job. Well, what does the EOD guy do? He dismantles bombs. Well, they do that in the lowest possible risk way that they can. Which often means if we find, or if they find an IED of some kind, what do they do? They just blow it up in place.

• 2:10:02Jocko Willink?

  They send a rob, robot over there and detonate the thing and just blow it up. And that makes your job a lot less risky. Well, what was happening over there, it was suicide, there was suicide bombers. Okay, so what do you do with a suicide bomber? Well, what you do with a suicide bomber that comes up that's wearing a suicide vest? You shoot them and you kill them. And that makes your job pretty easy. Because then you can, then, once you got a dead person with a bomb on their chest, you can send a robot over there and blow up the bomb. Well, what happened and what the, some of these stories I got told was that these ISIS was putting these suicide vests on little kids. And so you can't shoot the little kid and you don't want the little kid to get detonated. And it was one of the riskiest things that they had to do.

• 2:10:47Jocko Willink?

  And you know, that's, and again, that's what, that's the kind of thing that, that, you know, there's, there's like, there's a lot, I'm, I'm not saying America is a perfect place because it is not, but that kind of, when you hear a story like that, and you know that there's a, some random EOD guy with a wife and kids at home and whatever

• 2:11:28Jocko Willink?

  else he's got going on, and he puts all that on the line to try and help some little Iraqi kid from getting blown up. That's, say what you want about America, but that right there is America.

• 2:11:47Jason Gardner?

  We went out to the, to the, well, I, I, the guys were going out to the flood every day. I got an opportunity to go out with them another time when they were right on the edge of, of Mosul going into it. And the, the building that they were occupying, um, was a school. And one thing I noticed as I was walking through the buildings of the school is that on the walls of the school, like, okay, inside the classrooms, had all the Disney princesses, Dora the Explorer, all the stuff that our kids enjoy. They're, so it's twofold. There's, there's, there's a thought like, oh, our Western culture and lifestyle is going to get overrun? Negative. Because.

• 2:12:34Jason Gardner?

  Western culture on the whole, while you said it's not perfect, is still the best thing going. And it is completely contagious. And even over there in Iraq, in a school that was controlled by ISIL, their little kids are looking at the Disney princesses and Dora the Explorer and, you know, that stuff, Western things. Because it's good, it's appealing.

• 2:13:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:00Jason Gardner?

  And that, that gave me, that gave me a tremendous amount of hope.

• 2:13:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's.

• 2:13:07Jason Gardner?

  In just our culture and way of life moving forward.

• 2:13:10Jocko Willink?

  That's the whole idea of months ago when I had said that, oh, you want to solve the problem in North Korea? Give those people iPhones so they can start watching YouTube. Cause you watch a couple of YouTube videos and you look around at your, you know, barren neighborhood where you're eating like, uh, uh, water with salt in it is your dinner. And you watch a YouTube video of people eating steaks and McDonald's and Subway. And you think to yourself, there's something's not right here.

• 2:13:40Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:41Jocko Willink?

  And it's not going to take real long before those people say, look, we're doing this wrong. And I don't, you probably heard that story about Gorbachev when Gorbachev came to America.

• 2:13:48Jason Gardner?

  Uh huh.

• 2:13:49Jocko Willink?

  And went in, have you heard the story?

• 2:13:50Jason Gardner?

  No.

• 2:13:51Jocko Willink?

  Gorbachev came to America from the Soviet Union and he went into like a, a Vons or whatever supermarket he went into. And he went into the cereal aisle.

• 2:14:01Jason Gardner?

  Uh huh.

• 2:14:01Jocko Willink?

  And saw that there was 390 different kinds of cereal in there. And he realized that they needed to stop what they were doing. Cause you know how many different types of cereal there was in the Soviet Union? One, you know, that's it. And when you try and control everything, it doesn't work. And, and actually I remember you calling me up one day, you're like, hey, this, he was like, I was listening to this podcast. This applies to everything. Cause like, it's the same with government. I'm like, yes, it is. You can't control everything. If one person tries to make all the decisions, it doesn't work. I was actually going to read this Thomas Sowell chunk from when I, when I, last time I had Jordan Peterson on.

• 2:14:44Jocko Willink?

  Because he lays out this thing about how the government, with the, the government trying to control the pricing of. Some kind of pelt, some kind of pelt in, in if the government raises the prices, every hunter goes and buy, goes and gets all these pelts and then turns them into the government. And then the government, what do they have now? An excess of pelts. And so now what do they do with them all? They don't do anything because there's nothing to do with them because they, they don't have, they don't, they aren't needed. And this whole cycle unfolds where things just don't work with centralized command.

• 2:15:17Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:18Jocko Willink?

  And things like Dora the Explorer and the Disney princesses and Thomas the Tank Engine and all these Mikey and the Dragons, these things are going to spread. And those evil bastards, what do they do to try and stop it? You know, what do they do? They try and control anything, any, and any form of freedom. And especially freedom of speech, you know, controlling the internet, all those things. And it's disturbing to see, but I believe that like in Jurassic Park, Echo, movie reference.

• 2:16:02Speaker 02

  My dad was in that movie.

• 2:16:02Jocko Willink?

  Give me a credit. Was he really?

• 2:16:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's like one of the first guys to appear on the screen. He just walks past.

• 2:16:08Jocko Willink?

  He's an extra.

• 2:16:09Jason Gardner?

  Still, still.

• 2:16:09Speaker 02

  Still, that's something.

• 2:16:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. In that movie, I think the line is life will find a way, right?

• 2:16:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:16:14Jocko Willink?

  Life will find a way?

• 2:16:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:16:16Jocko Willink?

  That's what happens. That's what happens.

• 2:16:18Jason Gardner?

  I think so.

• 2:16:19Jocko Willink?

  You know, with all these, um, these, these folks will remember, those folks in Mosul, they'll remember that. They'll remember who gave them freedom. And by the way, it was Iraqi troops, which was amazing to hear. The Iraqi troops fighting hard and sacrificing because in Ramadi, it was pretty rough to get the Iraqi troops to take lead. And when they would take lead, the insurgents would be waiting for them and would deal heavy blows to those guys. And it was a nightmare to watch. But it's, it's awesome that they stepped up and they did the house to house clearance. Were they heavily supported by coalition forces, by Americans and firepower and all that? Yeah. But guess what? I mean, how, how many people did they lose?

• 2:17:02Jason Gardner?

  Uh, at one point, we thought we were going to lose our entire partner force. When they first kicked it off, they were losing.

• 2:17:12Jason Gardner?

  They were losing 15 to 20 guys a day and and we did the math we like at this rate and it was because our our strike process was really slow and it hadn't gotten decentralized yet that was fixed later but we're like okay at this rate in three weeks these guys were our entire partner force is going to be gone.

• 2:17:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah and what's really impressive is that we lost a battalion in Ramadi that they deserted and they had shown up they did a couple operations they took some casualties and they left and so for for those guys when you were in Mosul to take massive casualties and stick it out that shows you that how much that's just leaps and it's it's incomparable to what it was like before.

• 2:17:59Jason Gardner?

  It was their CT their counterterrorism unit which is their like premier basically tier one they were all really really good to go dialed in and and it was just the fighting was so brutal they were losing guys heavily.

• 2:18:15Jocko Willink?

  And the other funny thing somebody put this on social media the other day and it was like Jocko Willink predicts the future or something like that because I was on with Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan's like you know what do you do about these ISIS guys and how could you ever defeat them and I was like if you gave the ISIS problem to like a Marine Corps second lieutenant and said like hey figure out a plan on how to beat these guys they could do it it's like there's a bunch of bad guys surround them and move through and kill them all that's what we're gonna do and he's like yeah that actually did happen and and that is what happened.

• 2:18:47Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:48Jocko Willink?

  And it was it was beautiful and the amount of attrition that took place was awesome.

• 2:18:55Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:56Jocko Willink?

  And for those people that think that you can't kill an idea.

• 2:19:02Jocko Willink?

  They're wrong.

• 2:19:03Jason Gardner?

  You know, and then there was some of the stuff where ISIL had gotten so hysterical with some, there was a video, there was one of those, you know, they do those horrible videos. And it was something happened over in Syria and they released a video where they, you know, they killed like nine guys, but they were from the local area. And, and then I guess the tribe was like, hey, can we have the bodies back of our guys you just killed? And they're like, no. So the next day, a suicide bomber walks into the ISIL headquarters in that area from that tribe, which the way the tribalism works, they're willing to do that. And boom, clacked off, killed like 30 people. They just, you know, and, and I think

• 2:19:48Jason Gardner?

  there's one or two people that are kind of hardwired, maybe to do that out of a thousand. And they, they have to do these videos and force people

• 2:19:58Jocko Willink?

  Totally.

• 2:19:59Jason Gardner?

  to do that stuff because it's not in their nature, it certainly isn't in mine.

• 2:20:02Jocko Willink?

  Another, that's another big misconception is like, oh, they're just willing to die. No, they're getting coerced and forced into those situations. You know, that's, that's what's actually happening. Like you said, sure, is there one out of a thousand that's like so brainwashed that they're like, yes, I'm going to go be a martyr? Sure, there is some of those, but most of them are, hey, if you don't do this, we're going to kill your whole family. So which one do you want? And the guys go, yeah, okay, go ahead, kill my whole family.

• 2:20:25Jason Gardner?

  And I'm talking about situation two where they've got, they got like a guy strapped to a post with the thing on. And then they tell someone, go stab them. And the guy, no one wants to do that. You know, like they're, they were doing what the Japanese were doing in World War II.

• 2:20:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. I see what you're saying.

• 2:20:42Jason Gardner?

  Hey, go hack off some heads for training today. Go kill some poor Chinese farmer.

• 2:20:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:46Jason Gardner?

  Go. And no one wants to, most people don't want to do that. And that's like in, in their situation too, a lot of those people are like, I don't want anything to do with this. No. Well, you gotta do it, or the result is we're going to kill your family. And then they just get into a situation where they're doing it and it's not good.

• 2:21:06Jason Gardner?

  Anyhow, on a positive note, like on that deployment, I cleaned my dang diet up. As a result of, you know, Peter Attia being on this podcast and now I'm listening to Peter Attia's podcast and keeping smart on my health and started doing, uh, basically I did pretty strict keto. There was a couple of weeks where I ate nothing but eggs and sardines. And man, that is boring. Oh, but, uh, I felt, I found, you know, my inflation went away. I dropped pounds and I was getting in good shape and then I started experimenting with the intermittent fasting, which is something that I'm still doing now. And that was, that's good stuff.

• 2:21:51Jocko Willink?

  Did you start that during deployment, before deployment?

• 2:21:54Jason Gardner?

  On the deployment, I'm like, hey, okay, I'm going to quit eating sugar. Cause you, you'd mentioned sugar's bad for you and I never really paid attention to it because I like. Sugar is bad. And then I'm like, uh, okay. I, I'm like, I, hey, I'm going to stop eating sugar. And I was eating big salads and stuff like that. And, and there was a guy that I was deployed with is really smart on this stuff. And, and he's like, well, hey, if you're, if you stopped eating sugar, then you need to eat, quit eating that yogurt and that milk's got a lot of sugar. And guess what? That fruit has got a lot of sugar in it. So, man, then I started looking at labels, getting smart, picked up a book, read it on basically,

• 2:22:35Jason Gardner?

  you know, how I eat now is, is, is roundabout a paleo thing. Like I try to avoid grains and carbohydrates and stuff that's processed.

• 2:22:46Jocko Willink?

  I'm laughing because the other day you're like, you know, I mean, you're like, yeah, you know, I'm stay, I stay that way. But then you're like, but if I go to someone's house and they say like, hey, do you want to, you know, do you want a piece of bread or whatever?

• 2:22:59Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, I eat it. Cause, cause there's, there's another aspect to that. I don't want to be the vegan guy. Is like, hey, you know what? I'm better than you because I'm a vegan. So.

• 2:23:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm on the, I'm better than you diet.

• 2:23:13Jason Gardner?

  Yeah. And so it's like really uncool if someone offers you food to say no.

• 2:23:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:20Jason Gardner?

  So that's, that's where, that's something I weigh out. If it's like, okay, I go over to your house and we're having pizzas for dinner. That's what I'm going to eat. Cause I can afford to eat a piece of pizza or.

• 2:23:30Jocko Willink?

  You're not going to die.

• 2:23:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and then you just gotta watch out for the slippery slope.

• 2:23:39Jason Gardner?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:23:40Jocko Willink?

  Cause it is, I say no to bread all the time.

• 2:23:43Jason Gardner?

  Uh huh.

• 2:23:44Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm good. Um, and then, like you said, if it's someone, hey, if it's, if it's a situation that unfolds where it's like, oh, I'm gonna look like, I'm gonna be bringing attention to myself is really what it boils down to. I'm gonna make everyone talk to me about me and my little thing. It's like, no, I'm not that important. I'm just some dude who like is weird. So I'm not gonna make a big thing out of that.

• 2:24:11Jason Gardner?

  Yeah. And bread's handy. I mean, you can eat some meat without getting your fingers all dirty.

• 2:24:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's, it is, it is handy. And the, the lettuce wraps, while good in theory, and actually, have you had someone make a burger? I had one the other day. It was iceberg. They, I said, I asked for like lettuce on the burger. And it was iceberg lettuce. Cut in like, basically in half. So it was big, two big giant chunks and it worked really well.

• 2:24:42Jason Gardner?

  Oh, that's great.

• 2:24:42Jocko Willink?

  It was pretty, cause normally it's like, oh, they give you that one big piece of lettuce. That's all wilted by the time it gets you. You can't pick that thing up. It's not happening. You actually gotta use a fork and knife to eat a burger, which in its own right, is kinda disturbing, right? If we're eating burgers and we're using a fork and knife, we don't respect that. I mean, that's just not something that we're doing. But all of a sudden, we are, if we got wilted lettuce on the situation.

• 2:25:07Jocko Willink?

  Check. And so you started, so you cleaned up your diet. What did you weigh when you went on deployment?

• 2:25:11Jason Gardner?

  Hundred and ninety-three pounds and I'm five foot six.

• 2:25:15Jocko Willink?

  And then what'd you weigh when you got home?

• 2:25:16Jason Gardner?

  Uh, I think I was one sixty-five.

• 2:25:18Jocko Willink?

  How did you feel mentally?

• 2:25:20Jason Gardner?

  Way better.

• 2:25:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:22Jason Gardner?

  Way, and, and.

• 2:25:23Jocko Willink?

  And Doc Parsley had already cleaned up your, your sleep habits.

• 2:25:26Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:27Jocko Willink?

  So you were basically getting on step.

• 2:25:30Jason Gardner?

  Right, as, as I've been, I've been on step probably for two years and, and you know, it sleeps like anything else, it's just gotta be disciplined with it. I'm, I don't get up at four thirty in the morning, I get up around five thirty or six. But I'm really careful that, that like, you know, the lights are all out. Cause for me, even stupid little lights will wake me up and, and it's quiet and all that. And then I got, I got one of those weighted blankets, which is pretty cool.

• 2:25:58Jocko Willink?

  You, you must've told my wife about that, or Iris did, because we have a weighted blanket now too. It's not on my side of the bed, it's just on her side of the bed.

• 2:26:07Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, they're not cool in the summertime, cause they're too hot, but man, I just go to sleep and sleep, I don't wake up. At all, till, till the next morning, you know, like normally you wake up a couple of times during the night and that thing, you just get under there and you feel all safe and you're like, oh. Feel like I'm in the womb, done.

• 2:26:24Jocko Willink?

  You're all, you got the weighted blanket, you got the CPAP machine, you're just keeping it real.

• 2:26:29Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:29Jocko Willink?

  One of our mutual friends that has a CPAP machine and his wife was like, you know, when you, when your mask comes off, do you, you know, I'm trying to wake you up so you can put it back on. And he's like, don't, you know, don't, just leave me alone. And she's like, well, what if your mask comes off and then you stop breathing? And he's like, just let me die.

• 2:26:55Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so that's good. So you come home from that deployment?

• 2:27:00Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:00Jocko Willink?

  And then what'd you do when you got back?

• 2:27:03Jason Gardner?

  I went over to trade at and became the command master chief there. And then started, you know, preparing, ma- making sure all the fundamentals that you'd stayed in place were still there and they were still there. The guys were just really hard and doing a good job. And then, uh,

• 2:27:23Jason Gardner?

  and that was it, overrunning unit level training and, and seeing that. And then, uh, working myself out of a job, getting the, the, the, the guy that's my replacement set up to take my job. And, and, and here's the deal, like, as I leave Naval Special Warfare.

• 2:27:44Jason Gardner?

  They are so good to go and I see the younger guys now that are coming up at every level. People like to complain about the millennials and I really don't see any issue with them because they're doing good and when I measure myself against who they are when I was their age, they're way better. I'm like, oh my goodness.

• 2:28:04Jocko Willink?

  Biggest problem I have with millennials right now is I look at them, I'm like, how are you so much bigger and stronger and smarter than I ever was when I was 22? Come on. I told you this the other day, I roll in here and I hear some like guys training over on like another mat and I look over there and they're clearly young frogmen and there's six of them and they're all dripping with sweat because they've been getting after it hard and they all look like they're yoked and just ready to go start just killing people. And I'm like, what's up fellas? And they're like, we're getting ready to go to land warfare. I said, legit. I was just so happy. And it just, yeah, you're right. These guys in the

• 2:28:47Jocko Willink?

  teams right now and in the military at large, if you're going in the military, you're doing it for a reason, you know? When you and I joined, there wasn't no war going on. We were hoping there would be, but you're going to now like you know what's up. You know what you're doing. You know what you're stepping into. And now retirement, you're good to go?

• 2:29:05Jason Gardner?

  I think so. I'm really excited. But 30 years is a long enough time to where I'm like, oh, I'm ready to go.

• 2:29:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the hardest part is that like, I'm glad that you're going with the feeling like, hey, things are good to go. Because the hardest part is you start thinking that you like that you are so critical and now like, oh, what? And it's like, no, there's 10 guys that are just as good as me, better than me, and they're all going to get in there and they're going to do a better job than I could have ever done. And, and then the other thing is like, when you hear some rumor or whatever about something going sideways and you get, you get all freaked out because you want to be like back where you can help and you got guys going on deployment, like if something, it just like that, you have to, it's just hard to let go. And I mean, I'm not saying you're gonna be able to let

• 2:29:54Jocko Willink?

  it go, but it's, it's hard to not just think about it the same all the time, like.

• 2:30:02Jocko Willink?

  It's hard to, it's hard to come to grips with the fact that you're not in the teams anymore. That's all it is.

• 2:30:09Jason Gardner?

  Yeah. And then that's what, that's, I mean, I'm super appreciative that I'm getting to work with Esalen Front because the word, that the best thing about being in the teams is the peer group. And so I'm trading right into the same peer group of just a bunch of awesome people. And then getting to go and, and I really enjoyed like a third of my career was at SEAL Team Five. The other third of it was at Trade Ed and I really, really enjoy working with people. Um, teaching, passing stuff on, learning, I'm always learning and uh, that's, I'm, I'm super excited about it.

• 2:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's like I said, once you get over the fact and um, I'll give you a little heads up. Have you cleaned out your locker yet?

• 2:30:54Jason Gardner?

  It's, it's like 80% done.

• 2:30:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Yeah. That last 20% sucks. Yeah. That's the worst part for me, loading that stuff into my van and knowing, and then your, your car, your access card doesn't work anymore. It's just like game over and you just drive out. And you know, especially for guys like you and me and you know, you even 10, I mean, I was in for 20 years. You were in for 30, but I mean, how many memories do you have at the SEAL Team One Grinder? At the SEAL Team Three Grinder, at the Trade Ed Building? It's like my whole life is right there and you know, when you're leaving, you're just, it's, it's.

• 2:31:38Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, it's gonna be, it's scary. Cause all those memories are there, but man, they're good memories. And I know that if I pick up the phone, guys will answer and uh.

• 2:31:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know, when uh, when Facetti died, like um, last year and I was like, what I felt like.

• 2:32:00Jocko Willink?

  All that, yeah, I just felt like all that memory, all that memory that he had of us is gone. Like that he had of me and all my little running mates that I used to run around with. We were all Team One guys. We were all, and like he had these images of us and knew us when we were little kids and kept us out of trouble and all that stuff. And I'm thinking all those things, which he had a perspective that only he could have. Like, I was like, oh, those are all gone. And that was, that was a crappy feeling of just, damn, why does that have to go? And I never got him on the podcast either, which is a freaking shame.

• 2:32:36Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:38Jocko Willink?

  But the good thing is, like you said, we're still all just kicking it.

• 2:32:44Jason Gardner?

  Yeah. And I mean, really, it's like just this naval special warfare, any organization or team. We're just in that for that little time. And then it's shaped us way more than we shaped it. We had our influence and it'll just keep on going. And that's what, that's like, there's a piece of, piece of us that's never, ever, ever going to die. As long as this country's around or there are guys doing Frogman stuff, there'll be a little piece that it gave us and we gave it there moving forward.

• 2:33:17Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep.

• 2:33:19Jason Gardner?

  That's good to go.

• 2:33:20Jocko Willink?

  It's about as good as it gets. About as good as it gets.

• 2:33:25Jocko Willink?

  I think that's probably a good spot.

• 2:33:28Jocko Willink?

  And we might both be retired, Echo Charles, but we're not done yet. In fact, we're just getting warmed up. Plenty of fighting, albeit in a different way. That is left to do and we're gonna do it.

• 2:33:45Jocko Willink?

  You got any suggestions on how we can stay in the fight?

• 2:33:47Jason Gardner?

  Stay in the fight and on the path, big time.

• 2:33:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:50Jason Gardner?

  Okay, first thing, jujitsu, right? A little bit more direct.

• 2:33:55Speaker 02

  Relationship to the expression, fight, jujitsu. You're not doing it, do it for many benefits that we always talk about. Not gonna go too deep into it. I wanted to, because I was thinking about it.

• 2:34:08Speaker 02

  You know, some people don't call a jujitsu match, or jujitsu training.

• 2:34:13Speaker 02

  Some people do, some people don't. So this is what I kind of discovered, or realized, that if other types of fighters, or martial arts practitioners, they tend to not call jujitsu a fight. You know, like, oh, no, it's not a fight, you know. It's a match, or it's a whatever. And then you have the totalitarian kind of attitude, which is like, hey, anything that you're struggling against another person or another force, it's a fight.

• 2:34:39Jocko Willink?

  Even for you, going to the grocery store and looking for a certain kind of

• 2:34:44Speaker 02

  It can be a fight.

• 2:34:44Jocko Willink?

  spaghetti sauce is a fight.

• 2:34:47Speaker 02

  Sometimes, yeah. Especially when I'm doing it for somebody else, because it's another element. Nonetheless, that's the way I look at it.

• 2:34:53Jocko Willink?

  If you and I roll.

• 2:34:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:34:55Jocko Willink?

  And we go hard.

• 2:34:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:34:58Jocko Willink?

  Is that a

• 2:34:59Speaker 02

  Fight.

• 2:34:59Jocko Willink?

  That's a fight for you, huh?

• 2:35:01Speaker 02

  Well, okay, so, because I look at it in that way. Anything that I'm struggling against another person, or force, or in your case, another person and force, it's a fight. So that, you know, with you, that's essentially a good example. Unless, fighting, all-out war, total war.

• 2:35:19Jocko Willink?

  Total war.

• 2:35:19Speaker 02

  Total war. It's good to exercise that in our lives.

• 2:35:24Jocko Willink?

  That whole book, Psychology for the Fighting Man, is just so good. But just starting off with total war, and when you start to view your life through the aspect of just total war.

• 2:35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because now we're taking it to the next level. This, this workout I'm gonna be total war.

• 2:35:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35:43Jocko Willink?

  This person that's trying to get, somebody, somebody hit me up on, uh, social media today. Said, said he was getting emotionally blackmailed. He said, what would you do? I was like, I'm not getting emotionally black blackmailed. No factor stifling your emotions.

• 2:35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so to say, well, you're not because well, you it's like you don't even have emotions. So how can you blackmail you some person? So yeah, I mean, but it makes sense though. I don't know though, because what emotions sometimes can be more, you know, more of a thing.

• 2:36:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:36:15Speaker 02

  For certain people, you know, that's kind of everything.

• 2:36:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:36:19Speaker 02

  Unless you.

• 2:36:20Jocko Willink?

  If you have no emotions, well, then you're going to have real problems.

• 2:36:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like.

• 2:36:24Jocko Willink?

  But you can learn, but you should learn to control your emotions. And one thing that can help you learn to control your emotions is jujitsu.

• 2:36:31Speaker 02

  Jujitsu, because it's an exercise in prepping for all out war in life. Very good, direct. Anyway, when we're doing jujitsu, we need a gi and rash guards. That's essentially the uniform, uniforms.

• 2:36:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:44Speaker 02

  For the jujitsu and you get that at the best ones anyway, at Origin. Origin Maine dot com. That's where you get it. It is in Farmington, Maine, all made in America.

• 2:36:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Which is not a small deal.

• 2:36:58Speaker 02

  Not a small deal at all.

• 2:36:59Jocko Willink?

  You can say, oh, whatever. No, it's, it's a big deal. And what's awesome about speaking of America is going up to Farmington, Maine and seeing a factory with 40 people working in it, craftsmen making stuff here.

• 2:37:17Jocko Willink?

  Bringing back a town, right? Bringing back an industry.

• 2:37:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:37:22Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing here. Movement. Check.

• 2:37:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:37:24Jocko Willink?

  You can get rash guards.

• 2:37:26Speaker 02

  Other clothes, joggers, athletic gear, apparently jeans, from what I hear.

• 2:37:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. You don't know about those yet.

• 2:37:35Speaker 02

  American denim.

• 2:37:36Jocko Willink?

  And then we got supplements.

• 2:37:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:37:38Jocko Willink?

  Jason Gardner, talk to me about Origin Jaco supplements coming at you live.

• 2:37:44Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, I am on the joint warfare, two in the morning, two at night. Krill oil every morning and I am on the mulk train. I am on the mulk train. You know, when I get, when I want to have some dessert and I like, eh, you know what? Almond milk and then a scoop of the.

• 2:38:06Jason Gardner?

  Mint chip milk, hit that with a stick blender, it satiates me. And then every morning in my coffee, I got a scoop of the vanilla milk.

• 2:38:14Jocko Willink?

  Actually, now that you know that, you know, the, uh, video you made with Tim, Tim Ford? Where he's like probiotics? That was Jason. Jason was like, you know, I wasn't sure if I was gonna get that stuff, but then I saw it had probiotics. I'm all laughing. I was like, probiotics.

• 2:38:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:38:29Jocko Willink?

  Cause that's what you need.

• 2:38:30Speaker 02

  Have you seen that video before?

• 2:38:31Jason Gardner?

  I did.

• 2:38:33Jocko Willink?

  Did you know that was you?

• 2:38:34Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, I pretty much figured it. I'm like, hey, that guy's me. He's got it all in his mustache when he gobbles it down. That's exactly, I was on the site looking, I'm like, I'm gonna look at this milk. I'm like, man. So first of all, it said keto compliant on there. I'm like, oh, good to go. Cause a lot of the protein stuff is loaded with sugar. And then I saw probiotics. I'm like, okay, I'm done.

• 2:38:54Jocko Willink?

  Here's the, here's the, here's the issue. It's either loaded with sugar or it tastes horrible. Cause even you put whatever, uh, sweetener, artificial sweeteners taste horrible, except for one, the one that we use, which is not artificial. It's actually from nature itself.

• 2:39:10Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, that monk, monk fruit?

• 2:39:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So yeah, you can get all those from originmaine.com and, and I, I also realized that you haven't tried the Warrior Kids strawberry milk yet. And I'm, I'm gonna get that to you and you're gonna get nuts, bro. It is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. So get some of that, check.

• 2:39:32Speaker 02

  It's true. Also Jaco has a store, as we all know by now. It's called Jaco's store. So you go to jacostore.com. This is where you can get your shirts, more rash guards,

• 2:39:45Speaker 02

  trucker hats, flex fit hats. We're doing both.

• 2:39:49Jocko Willink?

  Did we, do we know which one sells more?

• 2:39:52Speaker 02

  They're even.

• 2:39:53Jocko Willink?

  Really? Are you just making that up?

• 2:39:54Speaker 02

  They were even when I checked.

• 2:39:55Jocko Willink?

  When did you check? This is like such a scam what he's telling you. He's so untruthful. Nothing he just said to be made. And he says whatsoever. Kids, bro, I've been around, man. You can't look at me and say it's equal. That's so, just don't lie to me, dude. It doesn't work. I, I'm like smell it.

• 2:40:14Speaker 02

  How about this? I'll, I'll check it. Get back to you.

• 2:40:17Jocko Willink?

  See, we're good. Now we're good. Now there's no factor. I'm good.

• 2:40:20Speaker 02

  No, here's the thing.

• 2:40:20Jocko Willink?

  They're not trying to look at me and tell me something that you don't know.

• 2:40:23Speaker 02

  At the end of the day. At the end of the day, doesn't even matter. Cause look, what if I'm like, hey, I like flex fit.

• 2:40:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh, but the trucker hat. See, this is now we're trying to deflect, change subject. We're not talking about that. We're talking about being truthful.

• 2:40:35Speaker 02

  I want the flex fit.

• 2:40:37Jocko Willink?

  Cool. Do what you want. Tell me the truth. That's what I'm saying.

• 2:40:40Speaker 02

  Well, I'll report back. How about that? Is that cool? Anyway, hoodies, like I said, women's stuff on there. If you want to represent while we, we are on the path, that's where you can get the stuff to represent.

• 2:40:52Jocko Willink?

  You can also get some

• 2:40:57Jocko Willink?

  ah, Jaco White Tea. You can get it from wherever. Yeah. It's cause it tastes good and it's awesome for you and it gives you an eight thousand pound deadlift. Which is not, you know, light.

• 2:41:10Speaker 02

  Something.

• 2:41:10Jocko Willink?

  Uh, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't yet. Otherwise Echo is going to keep telling you to subscribe.

• 2:41:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 2:41:16Jocko Willink?

  He's gonna invade your dreams and tell you to subscribe. Whoever you people are that haven't subscribed yet, you're crazy. Well, this is a hundred and sixty eight podcasts. This is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of listening, but you didn't click subscribe. We got issues with you. So just subscribe. Don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcast. Trying to tee up a couple more right now to get them out there to all of you. So get some of that. And then also uh, YouTube, we have a YouTube channel. If you want to check that out. It's, it's starring Echo's videos.

• 2:41:51Speaker 02

  It's starring the video version of this podcast.

• 2:41:54Jocko Willink?

  That's right. Well, who made that?

• 2:41:57Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I guess so.

• 2:41:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So it's starring Echo Charles's videos. So check out that.

• 2:42:03Speaker 02

  You see what Jason Gardner looks like. So that's something.

• 2:42:06Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna, you're definitely gonna want to see what Jason Gardner looks like. Does you think Jason, okay, does, and people, please let me know. Does Jason Gardner look how he sounds?

• 2:42:18Speaker 02

  I think so. Yeah, I think so.

• 2:42:20Jocko Willink?

  You think so?

• 2:42:21Speaker 02

  Well, the thing is, I've, I

• 2:42:23Jason Gardner?

  You already saw.

• 2:42:24Speaker 02

  I saw you and didn't hear you. A lot of people in this sense is gonna be the opposite.

• 2:42:29Jocko Willink?

  I think you probably, I think you probably, look how you sound. I think, but it's hard for me to make that judgment cuz I know you.

• 2:42:38Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 2:42:39Jocko Willink?

  I, I can, I gotta find that picture. I'll post a picture of you and me, age whatever, twenty or nineteen.

• 2:42:46Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:46Jocko Willink?

  And we both look completely insane.

• 2:42:49Speaker 02

  So you guys went in at the same time?

• 2:42:51Jocko Willink?

  No, he went in a few years before.

• 2:42:53Jason Gardner?

  Few years before and then we ran over into each other overseas and just really hit it off.

• 2:42:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:42:59Jason Gardner?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:00Jocko Willink?

  Uh, what else? Psychological warfare?

• 2:43:03Speaker 02

  Yes. What that is?

• 2:43:08Speaker 02

  I used to go into this all deep, get mad every single time.

• 2:43:11Jocko Willink?

  That's, this is the one that broke me. This is the one where I was like, bro, we're not doing this whole support thing anymore. We're done doing it. We're done. I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not gonna listen to you. It's not happening.

• 2:43:20Speaker 02

  But here's the thing.

• 2:43:21Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna go Joe Rogan style and just record it afterwards by myself somewhere. You can just be quiet.

• 2:43:26Speaker 02

  No, the proof is gonna be in the pudding. Jason Gardner, you know what psychological warfare is?

• 2:43:30Jason Gardner?

  It is.

• 2:43:31Speaker 02

  Actually, you know what? It's not because Jason Gardner's in the game, deep in the game.

• 2:43:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:36Speaker 02

  So of the, you know, for him to know what psychological warfare is.

• 2:43:40Jocko Willink?

  Isn't a big stretch.

• 2:43:40Speaker 02

  It's not gonna be very surprising. Yeah. So for the, for the people who don't know what it is, this is what it is.

• 2:43:47Speaker 02

  It's an album with tracks, Jocko Chak.

• 2:43:49Jocko Willink?

  The thing you gotta remember about this, this whole segment of us just sitting around and talking for the quote unquote supports, which it barely is, right? It's more just like a, a, a, just a session of. But it was because when we got done with some podcasts early on, it was like being drugged through like the emotional freaking hell and you get done and you don't wanna just go home. Like you wanna just like, okay, let's, you know, it's like my, my youngest daughter. She'll, if she sees something scary or whatever, or you know, she'll say like, can we watch something funny?

• 2:44:31Jocko Willink?

  You know, just, and so that's what this actually is, is hey, okay, we're gonna talk about people getting killed, people getting blown up, people getting butchered.

• 2:44:43Speaker 02

  Real people.

• 2:44:43Jocko Willink?

  Real people, by the way, and when we get done with that, we're gonna lighten it up a little bit so we can carry on. We're not gonna forget about it, but we're gonna have a little bit of levity towards the end. That's what this originally was. Somehow you ended up just saying the same thing over and over again.

• 2:45:00Speaker 02

  Well, cause I felt, I felt like I was getting good at saying it.

• 2:45:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:04Speaker 02

  You see what I'm saying? So yeah, so what I did was I did lose sight of some things.

• 2:45:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:09Speaker 02

  You know, but we're back and you know, I'm gonna explain what psychological warfare is for the people who don't know. It's an album with tracks, Jaco tracks, talking about how you can overcome certain moments of weakness on the path. Boom, that's pretty concise, right?

• 2:45:22Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 2:45:23Speaker 02

  Boom, there it is. Next, Onnit, Onnit.com, kids, Onnit, good company. This is where I get kettlebells. Home gym, home gym?

• 2:45:33Jocko Willink?

  You don't have a home gym yet?

• 2:45:34Jason Gardner?

  No, I just moved.

• 2:45:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:45:36Jason Gardner?

  Getting ready to build it.

• 2:45:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:45:37Speaker 02

  Okay, boom.

• 2:45:38Jocko Willink?

  You don't have one right now.

• 2:45:39Jason Gardner?

  Just got the rings, but.

• 2:45:41Speaker 02

  Oh, rings, boom.

• 2:45:42Jocko Willink?

  So that's the, that's the original thing that you need to get. That's the first thing you need to get.

• 2:45:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:45:46Jocko Willink?

  I didn't used to think that. I used to think it was a pull-up bar, but I changed my mind.

• 2:45:48Speaker 02

  Rings, yeah.

• 2:45:49Jocko Willink?

  Cause you can do more versatility.

• 2:45:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, cause rings are a pull-up bar.

• 2:45:53Jocko Willink?

  Yes, they are, and they're, and they're also a dip bar, and they're also a, a ring push-up bar.

• 2:45:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:45:59Jocko Willink?

  It's a thing.

• 2:46:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Big time, it's a thing. I got my rings from Onnit. Anyway, Onnit.com, you can get kettlebells, rings, what, battle ropes, those maces, those crazy maces, do workout with that, man. You'll be, you'll be in the game big time. Anyway, a lot of good stuff on there. Go there, Onnit.com slash Jaco.

• 2:46:17Jocko Willink?

  We got some books too. Um, we got some books like Mikey and the Dragons, which, you know, I think might be the best kids book ever written. I don't know.

• 2:46:28Speaker 02

  Maybe. I don't know. I, I read this other one that was really good.

• 2:46:33Jocko Willink?

  The Warrior Kid. Uh, Mikey and the Dragons, check it out. It is gonna help kids overcome fear. And it's an entertaining story, and it's got awesome drawings in it.

• 2:46:46Jason Gardner?

  And it rhymes. Yeah, I just shipped one out to my buddy on the east coast. And he's got little ones and he hit me up yesterday on text. He goes, you know, bro, I just read that to my kids because three hours ahead of us. They loved it. That book is awesome. Thank you.

• 2:47:01Jocko Willink?

  I have people that this is odd, but I have people that and I have people that say, I get a got a tears in my eyes. When I was reading the letter to his son. You know, that can be kind of heavy.

• 2:47:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. So when I made that original short video about it, whatever. Yeah, I should. I think I said this. I showed it to my brother and he's like, he's like, man, I'm kind of like tearing up. I don't know why, like, what? And we're watching the video, you know, on the TV. And it's not like it's a super sad thing, but it just, it's like, I guess it's like so like real, you know, like, these are things you kind of got to deal with. And now you got to take on this courage kind of thing. And it's like, I don't know. It's weird.

• 2:47:39Jocko Willink?

  To my son.

• 2:47:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. Funny.

• 2:47:42Jocko Willink?

  So check out that. Check out the Warrior Kid books. Warrior Way of the Warrior Kid and Mikey or and Mark's mission. Somebody asked me, people sometimes ask questions that center around themselves. They're asking you a question, but so somebody asked me a question. It said, two words. What is the theme of Way of the Warrior Kid?

• 2:48:06Speaker 02

  Oh, in two words?

• 2:48:07Jocko Willink?

  So that was the question. So, so, so now this person just wanted me to say, like, sum up this book in two words. And this was a mandate. It wasn't like, hey, man, could you kind of give me this? It was like two words. So I was like, cool. You know what I said? It's re- it's actually really easy. What is the underlying theme of the Way of the Warrior Kid book series? The underlying theme is this. Warrior kid.

• 2:48:35Jocko Willink?

  There you go. It's like you want your kids to be warriors. What does that mean? Does that mean you want them to join the military and and go fight? No, it means you want to be warriors. Whole thing, which actually gets explained in there.

• 2:48:48Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. All out war, man.

• 2:48:51Jocko Willink?

  That's the Warrior Kid books. Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. You, I've signed a lot of those for your people.

• 2:48:58Jason Gardner?

  Yeah. I bought like 10 of them and had you sign them to a bunch of guys and sent them out. They love them. It helps people out. And then I've had guys.

• 2:49:10Jason Gardner?

  In the last year, lose somebody, like have someone in the family or friend die. And then I'm like, okay, go look at this page, you know?

• 2:49:18Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:49:18Jason Gardner?

  Where you describe how to deal with it.

• 2:49:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I actually had to use that page myself and

• 2:49:28Jocko Willink?

  hopefully you don't have to use that page, but there's other things that go on in your life that can steer you off the path. And there's other pages in that book that will keep you on the path. This one goes freedom field manual, extreme ownership.

• 2:49:44Jocko Willink?

  Everything Jason was talking about, what we did at trade debt, everything that we tried to teach to the seals that were going to go overseas. It's in the book, extreme ownership. It's in the book, the dichotomy of leadership. They're both in there. You were showing me your notes the other day, Jason, from, from when I in briefed your troop. It's like, oh, here's your notes. You gave me, sent me a little picture. What do they say? They say cover and move, simple, prioritize and execute and decentralized command. That was, I don't know, 12 years ago or something like that, 10 years ago, same word coming out, same word, hasn't changed. Learn those. Extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership.

• 2:50:29Jocko Willink?

  Echelon front, that is our leadership consultancy where we solve problems through leadership and every organization has problems, all kinds of problems, all kinds of problems. And every single one of those problems is a leadership problem. That's what's going to fix it is fixing leadership. That's what we do. It's me, it's Leif Babin, JP Denell, Dave Burke, Flynn Cochran, Mike Sorelli, Mike Baima, and

• 2:51:00Jocko Willink?

  Does this make you a new guy? You're a new guy at Echelon Front, bro. Yay. And our latest member, I won't call him a new guy. Cause it really does matter. You went to Bud's before me. Right? So that's like a real thing. Like I'm a new guy. Yeah, apparently.

• 2:51:18Jocko Willink?

  Though. Nothing I'd ever say. Yeah. Anyways, our latest, um, Jason Gardner, who you've just listened to for five hours, is also on the team. And if you want help with your organization and your leadership inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com.

• 2:51:38Jocko Willink?

  Also, we have the muster.

• 2:51:41Jocko Willink?

  The muster is a leadership conference gathering. Magical, magical. It actually, actually it's just muster. It is a muster. That's what it is. We're all going to get together, talk about leadership, get granular and delve into leadership from a lot of different angles. May 23rd and 24th in Chicago, September 19th and 20th in Denver, December 4th and 5th in Sydney. Extreme ownership.com. I haven't posted about this yet. Just the muster in general? I haven't posted at all. When I post, it's a lot of stuff. It sells. So if you want to go, all I'm saying is if you want to go,

• 2:52:23Jocko Willink?

  register now, go to echelonfront.com. Actually go to extremeownership.com and that's where you can register to come to the muster in one of those locations. We will see you there. EF online, online interactive leadership training, starting to see the cool feedback from people on that. So EF online, it is EF online.com. We have leadership training, courses, online, interactive.

• 2:52:55Jocko Willink?

  What else? What other verbs or adjectives to describe? Interactive, engaging.

• 2:53:00Speaker 02

  Very engaging. Uh, what? Name your adventure with.

• 2:53:04Jocko Willink?

  Choose your adventure. There's a choose your own adventure scenarios that you have to unfold.

• 2:53:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:08Jocko Willink?

  And we're updating it and adding different content to it monthly. So it's going to continue to grow and educate both you and us as we all learn to become better leaders. If you want in on that.

• 2:53:25Speaker 02

  I went through that, obviously, to make the video and coincidentally few, like a month, maybe a month and a half before. I went through an online training for CPR.

• 2:53:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:53:38Speaker 02

  Okay. So the online training for CPR, well CPR, you gotta do the physical thing too, you know, for the certification, whatever. But there's an online training part of it. So, you know, and not too bad. Not too bad. The online thing, you know, I, I really went through it, kind of committed myself to it, not as long or whatever, but you know, kind of. So I went through it and I was like, cool, good. But there were tangible things that I've been, you know, you could have done this a little bit more different to actual, actually get the training, quote unquote, training that someone, you know, might need, whatever. So, you know, a few months later, I do.

• 2:54:13Speaker 02

  I go through the EF online and I'm thinking to myself, when I think back on the CPR, this is what they should have did with the CPR thing. Granted, the CPR one, I could tell was a lot older, wasn't quite as contemporary. So I'm not really blaming them, but that's the way I really saw it. I was like, okay, this is good. This will give you like the training training, you know, it'll, it'll allow you to make mistakes on an online training or do the wrong thing and then get corrected. Say, hey, you did this, you know, kind of.

• 2:54:39Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's one of the things that worried me, but, because you remember the Navy, like Navy course you take on something? That was online?

• 2:54:48Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:54:48Jocko Willink?

  And it would be horrible and boring and everyone just copy each other and just click through the things to get it done and you don't take anything away from it. That was my fear. How does this, if we, if we don't do this right, but then as soon as I started looking at the technology and the things you could do and the way you could make it engaging, it's, it's, I don't want to say it's better, but. If you're sitting in a, if you're sitting at the muster and I say something and you're like, wow, and you go to write that down and then you hear me say this tail end of something else and you missed it, you can't press rewind, you can't re-watch it. You can't press pause and be like, that was a really good point. I know how I can apply that to my world and just write down how to handle something. You can't do that at the muster.

• 2:55:32Jocko Willink?

  On, online, oh, let me re-watch that. Oh, oh, Jaco and Leif just did a role play on dealing with uh, uh, someone in the office. I actually need to deal with a person like that.

• 2:55:46Jocko Willink?

  How should I, how should I, I'm gonna watch that again. I'm gonna see those little maneuvers take place. So, that's what we did and we realized that we just don't have the reach for the demand that's out there for Echelon Front. We appreciate the demand and we want to satisfy the demand. So, that is efonline.com if you want to get fully engaged in our leadership training. That's it. And of course, we have EF Overwatch where we're taking all these experienced leaders that have been in combat for the last couple decades. And as they move into the civilian sector, placing them into jobs where they can help lead organizations using the experience they have and their understanding of the principles

• 2:56:31Jocko Willink?

  that we talk about at Echelon Front, in the book Extreme Ownership and on this podcast. Go to efoverwatch.com where they're standing by waiting for you, by the way.

• 2:56:43Jocko Willink?

  And if you got done or get done listening to this three hours of conversation and you want to continue it further, it wasn't enough and you're not sure what to do, well, then that's cool because you can actually get in touch with us and have little commerce, little mini micro conversations with us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram and on Dash.

• 2:57:14Jocko Willink?

  Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at at Jocko Willink and Jason has multiple handles. Go.

• 2:57:20Jason Gardner?

  Jason N Gardner on Twitter. Jason dot N dot Gardner on Instagram and Jason N Gardner on Facebook.

• 2:57:30Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna have fun with Twitter. I'm just gonna let you know because Twitter is the place for somebody with little one-liners to hang out and participate and throw one-liners out into the world and make people laugh or make people think. And it's just, it's, it's pretty fun. It's, remember, you ever feel like the Terminator robot? You ever feel like that?

• 2:57:59Jason Gardner?

  No.

• 2:58:00Jocko Willink?

  I do sometimes. And one of the ways that I feel that is when I'm having a conversation with someone and I see little one-liners of what I could say. And sometimes, I mean, if I'm answering questions for a client, I'll be like, okay, here's, like, as soon as they're asking me, I'm seeing little possible answers of how they fit in their world and does it make sense to them? And I've got all this, and then I just kind of choose one and go. And when I'm having, but I remember that in like when I was a school child. I was a little kid going to school, especially like around, what grade is fifth, sixth and seventh grade? How old are you?

• 2:58:41Jason Gardner?

  Nah.

• 2:58:41Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:58:42Jason Gardner?

  Fourth is nine.

• 2:58:43Jocko Willink?

  Eleven, like eleven, twelve, thirteen, right?

• 2:58:45Jason Gardner?

  Yes, yes, indeed.

• 2:58:46Jocko Willink?

  It was like every single comment or statement that a school teacher made was just a prime setup to knock it out of the park with a one-liner from the back row. You know what I'm saying? You just, I would just be sitting there going, oh, I, I, I would, I would be so tempted, I'd have to bite my tongue all day long, as much as I could. Because when you're 12 years old, you can only hold it in for so long. Before it just comes out. And then, so anyways, you're gonna like Twitter because you can use your little one-liners, which you are very. Very good at and they're always like I said, they're always very educational or humorous. Or they at least make you think. So you'll have fun with that.

• 2:59:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:59:31Jocko Willink?

  And don't feed the trolls and don't feed the Russian bots.

• 2:59:35Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:59:36Jocko Willink?

  That's my new thing.

• 2:59:37Speaker 02

  Be careful. Don't click on anything.

• 2:59:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, don't click on anything. Check. All right. Echo, anything else?

• 2:59:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:59:44Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Jason?

• 2:59:46Jason Gardner?

  Yeah, I'd like to thank my parents, Jim and Cookie Gardner, for all your unconditional love and support over the years. My sister Ari, who's a blue belt into jujitsu.

• 2:59:56Jocko Willink?

  How'd she get into jujitsu?

• 2:59:58Jason Gardner?

  What?

• 2:59:58Jocko Willink?

  How'd she get into?

• 2:59:59Jason Gardner?

  Listening to the podcast. Listening to the podcast, immediately found a jujitsu place up there in San Clemente and started training. And then my brother Thaddeus, who's a tattoo artist, tattoos up in San Clemente at San Clemente Tattoo. If you're gonna get some ink, go see him if you're local. And

• 3:00:17Jason Gardner?

  thanks to everybody else and thanks to all the frogmen out there, past, present and future, get some.

• 3:00:25Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah. And we always thank everyone in uniform that protects us at home and abroad from the evil that we talked about today.

• 3:00:37Jocko Willink?

  And that includes obviously our military personnel, police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, correctional officers, border patrol, all the first responders. And also thanks to all of those that did serve. And that have done their part. As veterans for our great nation, like my brother here, Master Chief Jason Gardner. Thanks for your service.

• 3:01:10Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming on. And of course.

• 3:01:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm looking forward to another bunch of good years together. Thanks for everything, bro.

• 3:01:22Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else that's listening.

• 3:01:26Jocko Willink?

  I'll go back to Beowulf.

• 3:01:31Jocko Willink?

  For every one of us living in this world means waiting for an end.

• 3:01:39Jocko Willink?

  Let whoever can win glory before death.

• 3:01:46Jocko Willink?

  So endure your troubles today, bear up and be the man I expect you to be.

• 3:01:57Jocko Willink?

  That's how our ancestors lived and that's how they died. So let us do the same. Arise, set forth.

• 3:02:08Jocko Willink?

  And get after it. And until next time, this is Jason Gardner and Echo and Jaco.

• 3:02:17Jocko Willink?

  Out.