#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones

Leif Babin is a decorated former Navy SEAL officer who served for 13 years, including 9 in the SEAL Teams. He is a recipient of the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and a Purple Heart for his service, which included leading major combat operations in the Battle of Ramadi as a SEAL platoon commander in Task Unit Bruiser. After his military career, he co-founded Echelon Front, currently serving as President and Chief Operating Officer to bring world-class leadership consulting to the private sector. Babin is also the co-author of two #1 New York Times bestsellers: "Extreme Ownership: How U. S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win" and "The Dichotomy of Leadership," both written with his Echelon Front co-founder, Jocko Willink. He continues to share his leadership expertise through speaking engagements, executive coaching, and leadership training programs, helping organizations across various industries build high-performance teams. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lumen.me/srs https://PrepareWithShawn.com https://amac.us/srs https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://helixsleep.com/srs https://blackbuffalo.com/ https://betterhelp.com/srs This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. Leif Babin Links: Website - https://echelonfront.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leif-babin-2a43b631 X - https://twitter.com/leifbabin Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/leifbabin/ Extreme Ownership - https://extremeownership.com/ Dichotomy of Leadership - https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250195777/thedichotomyofleadership/ Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.

• 0:32Speaker 03

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  Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 0:59Shawn Ryan?

  Leif Babin, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me, Sean. It's an honor to have you here. It's an honor to be here. And, um, man, we've got history together. We went through BUDs together. I'm sure we'll get into some of that, but, um, man, I just...

• 1:16Shawn Ryan?

  I've been following you for a long time, man, and, and what you're doing. And, um, you just put down amazing stuff. And I think you're a great example for, for veterans and, and SEALs coming out of the teams and anybody coming out of the military, you know? It's, it's, we both know it's, it's a, it's a big struggle for a lot of people. And, um, to have, you know, good examples to follow and, and, and good leaders like yourself, um, it's just, it's really cool, man, what you, what you've accomplished and what you've done after the teams and, and, uh, I just, I want to commend you for that.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Thank you, Sean. That means a ton to me. That means so much coming from you and I keep, I'm so proud of you and your success and the powerful voice that you have been for so many great stories and how you've represented, you know, as a teammate, how you represent the SEAL teams, how you represent the veteran community. And it's great to reconnect with you. It's been way too long and, and, uh, man, I was thinking about all the history that, uh, that we had during our time together, Bud, and, and what a great time that was. Like, what an incredible time. Um, and, uh, and, and our class and what people went on to do and, and the combat that you saw and so many others saw and, and were a part of. Uh, but just can't, uh, can't tell you how excited I am to be here with you and,

• 2:38Speaker 02

  uh, I'm, I'm proud of you and all that you're doing and, and honored to call you a friend.

• 2:42Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, brother. Feelings are definitely mutual and, and, uh, like I said, I've been, been looking forward to this for a long time. So, but, um, everybody starts off with an introduction here, so let me get to yours. Leif Babin, former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, served 13 years in the Navy, nine of which were in the SEAL teams, several deployments to Iraq with the infamous Task Unit Bruiser. Uh, you are the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Extreme Ownership, the number one New York Times bestseller Extreme Ownership, How U.S. Navy SEALs Led and Win, and the number one national bestseller, bestseller,

• 3:25Shawn Ryan?

  The Dichotomy of Leadership with Jocko. You are the co-founder of Echelon Front and currently serving as president. You're the recipient of the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and a Purple Heart. You're a husband, a father to three kids, and a Christian man. Am I missing anything? I'm sure I'm missing quite a bit, but...

• 3:46Speaker 02

  No, that's, uh, that's it, man. I think the, uh, being a husband, father, and, and a Christian, I think are the, the most important aspects of that entire bio there. Um, I think those are the most important jobs I've had. And, and I was lucky enough to serve with some incredible people, um, you know, like yourself, going through training and then on the battlefield. And, um, I'm just honored to be able to share some of those lessons learned with, with others around the world and to see people that can take and apply some of the leadership lessons that we learned on the battlefield and, and their lives. It's, uh, it's... I'm humbling and mystified about how, you know, just the, how far and wide that has spread and the impact it's had and it's, it's, it's incredible to me to see that.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  And, um, and that's kind of what keeps us going. That's our mission of why. And I get to honor the teammates that I lost and talk about their legacies and all that they did and how they lived.

• 4:38Shawn Ryan?

  We have a lot to dive into. We have a lot to dive into and, um, and, uh, so in the interview, I want to, that's what I want to do. I want to cover your, your life story, your time in the teams. I mean, I've heard, I wasn't there, but I've heard a lot, a lot of amazing things about tasking a bruiser. I had, you know, several friends that we went through buds with that wound up, uh, serving with you and under you. And, um, you know, you know, once again, I just, you hear a lot of shit about a lot of people, you know, in the teams and, um, especially officers and, uh, man, I've just, you always come

• 5:19Shawn Ryan?

  like highly recommended and, and your guys just, you guys fucking love you, man. And it's, it's really cool to see that. You don't see that in a lot of, in a lot of platoons, I don't think. Not like what I hear about yours. And so, um, I can't wait to dive into that. But-

• 5:38Speaker 02

  That's the highest compliment you could ever pay me, man. And, uh, I love, I love those guys. I'd do anything for them. And, uh, it's, it's, uh, just the honor of my lifetime was to, was to serve, uh, serve with some awesome, awesome teammates.

• 5:54Shawn Ryan?

  So we have a Patreon and, uh, Patreon is our, they are, it's our subscription network and they are our top supporters. A lot of them have been with us since the beginning and one of the things, uh-

• 6:05Speaker 02

  I'm proud to be a member.

• 6:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Thank you for being a member. They'll, they will be ecstatic to know that you're in there. But, um, so you know, we, uh, I offered them the opportunity to ask each guest a question and, uh, usually I only pick one, but for you, there were a lot of good questions. And so I think we're gonna, we might do three here. First question is from Charlton Clark. What are three words that encapsulate a powerful leader and why?

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Three words that encapsulate a powerful leader and why.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  I think the three words, the three most powerful words are it's my fault. It's my fault. And I think as a leader recognizing that you are responsible for everything that your team does or doesn't do, just as a dad, you know, or a spouse, you're responsible for everything that your family does. And I think that, understanding this concept that we call extreme ownership. Man, our ego is such a powerful driver in the world and it wants us to point fingers or cast blame or make excuses or say, hey, look at that guy over there. He's more successful than me. Well, he got lucky or, you know, he got this break or he started with some

• 7:31Speaker 02

  advantage that I didn't have. Instead of actually, and when you do that, what you do is you don't actually take action to correct the problem, to actually implement solutions to fix that going forward. And so I think when you, when you accept ownership for every single thing that happens in your world, every single thing that impacts your mission, then you could actually take action to solve problems, constantly learn, constantly grow, constantly improve. And I think that that makes all the difference.

• 7:58Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's, that's great advice. Thank you. Stephen Casey, what is the most significant leadership principle you've seen that is essential, but has problems transitioning or translating from the military to civilian situations?

• 8:15Speaker 02

  That's a great question. I think initially I thought that this concept that we call cover and move, which is teamwork, right? We're working together as a team. You and I are trying to move across the street under fire. You're laying down suppressive fire so I can move. And then when I get across the street, I lay down suppressive fire so that, you know, so that you can move. Like we're, we're covering and moving. We're leapfrogging. We're mutually supporting one another. And when Jock and I first launched Exelon Front, our leadership consulting company, we went in to talk to, you know, corporate business and

• 8:53Speaker 02

  We thought, man, should we even talk about this concept? Like, how does that even apply? And, you know, we're talking, this is a gunfighting tactic from the battlefield. And the moment that, you know, the senior executive team is telling us how, you know, the sales team and the production team, you know, are like, they're not on the same page and they're blaming each other and they're pointing fingers at each other. The marketing team is saying, well, the sales isn't telling that. And the, the, the sales team is saying, well, marketing's not actually setting us up for success. You got a bunch of finger pointing, a bunch of blame, blame casting. And we say, okay, let's talk about this concept of cover and move. And, and they, they said, hey, that's, that's exactly what I need you to teach to my team. And so it's really just the recognition that it's not about you. It's about the overall team and the overall mission. And, and that applies, that applies to your family.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  I mean, when you see a, um, when you see a, uh, your, your, your wife, you know, or your spouse, it's like struggling or frustrated with the kids or something that's going on on the home front. And you can say, hey, okay, those school applications are taking a long time and you got a bunch of stuff on your plate. Why don't you let me just take that off your plate? I'll, I'll take that, I'll, I'll run with it. It's, that's, that's cover and move in action. You can actually, you're working together as a team, mutually supporting one another in order to accomplish a mission and win. And, and I think initially, we weren't sure how that would apply in, in the, um, you know, in the civilian world, and it absolutely does. Um, I think one that's harder to apply is the, the, what we call our fourth law of combat, and that's decentralized command. Decentralized command is a, you know, the, the, obviously something you're familiar

• 10:23Speaker 02

  with being in the military. It just simply means that everybody leads. And I think a lot of times when you talk to a, you know, a leader that wants to control everything, they want to do everything, obviously, that doesn't work on the battlefield. And that's one of the strengths of the SEAL teams and special operations units. You've got thinking shooters. I mean, even going through BUDs together when you were 18 years old, you're a smart, capable, talented individual that, uh, just because I'm the officer and I'm in charge, like, I, I need you to be able to step up and make calls. I need you to be able to solve problems. I need you to be able to move the team forward in a positive direction. I can't make all the calls. I can't, you know, if you're just sitting and waiting for me to, to tell you what to do, that doesn't work. So. That's a concept that's hard to get across in the civilian world.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  People say, "Well, I don't trust my team," or, you know, "They don't have as strong relationships." So, we help them work to build those relationships. It's all based on the strength of relationships. It's built on trust. When people understand not just what to do, but why they're doing it, you know, what we call commander's intent, the military, the purpose, and the goal and the end state. But oftentimes, now we start to see leaders, when in the civilian world, they release, you know, the authority, they give people ownership, and they kind of let people run with stuff. The problem is they get too detached. They get too far away. And so, it's always a balance, right? It's a dichotomy, and you're getting pulled in different directions. So, you want to be detached as a leader. You want to step back. You want to let your people step up and lead, and run with the plan, and execute the plan. Give them ownership of the plan. But you can't be so detached.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  You can't be so detached that you don't know what's going on. You're too attached from the challenges and problems. And then, you can't actually support your team. You can't guide your team. You can't actually step in and help them. You know, if you're not even familiar with the challenges, or you can't see when they're getting off track, and you maybe need to, you know, help redirect them.

• 12:07Shawn Ryan?

  When you're talking, I'm just curious. This is a personal question. When you're talking about, when you're relating stuff back to, you know, to Ramadi, or gunfighting scenarios, because it sounds like you guys kind of do that. How quick? I mean, how fast do civilian types wrap their head around what you're teaching them, when you're using those analogies?

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Pretty fast. Pretty fast, usually. I think initially, some people will think, I guess I can put it this way. The biggest excuse is that, I think the biggest excuse that any of us give ourselves, me included, is that it's harder for me than it is for other people. And, so, yeah, Sean's maybe experienced some things on the battlefield. Well, how does that really apply to me? Or, "Hey, you've done some things in your life, and you have some good lessons learned, but that doesn't really apply to me. I have a different situation." Instead of keeping an open mind, instead of saying, "Oh, what can I learn from Sean? What is, what is he experienced? How can that apply to my world? What lesson can I take and apply, you know, to that?" And, you know, before Jock and I wrote the book Extreme Ownership, I'd have a lot of that. Businesses would say things like, "Well..."

• 13:16Speaker 02

  How are you going to translate this to the business world? They would say that over and over again. Tell me how you're going to translate these combat leadership lessons to the business world. And I think once they read Extreme Ownership, they realized that the hardest part about combat leadership is, it's not about planning, executing missions under fire. It's not about maneuvering troops with bullets flying over your head. The hardest part about a combat, the hardest part about combat leadership is getting a diverse group of people with different skill sets, and different agendas, and different perspectives to work together as a team to accomplish a mission. And obviously, that applies to any team in any situation. It's people. It's actually getting people actually work together as a team.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Put their own egos, their own agendas aside, and put the mission first. And I think that's what makes the SEAL teams great. Certainly, the best units in the SEAL teams have that, right? They don't, they put the team and the mission before anything else. And it's not about them as an individual, it's about the team. They're going to sacrifice for the team. They're going to sacrifice for their brothers on that team. And so I think that when people realize that that's how these concepts translate, it's just about getting people to work together as a team, to mutually support one another to accomplish a strategic goal. That applies to everything, everywhere.

• 14:35Shawn Ryan?

  Makes a whole lot of sense. That's good to hear that they can comprehend it that fast. That's really cool.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  We do have people that push back. You know, they'll, they'll, people will come into a company, I was with a company a few weeks ago, and they were, there was half the room of several hundred leaders were female executives. And, you know, these lady executives, some of them were pretty skeptical. They told me afterward, and I was pretty skeptical about how this applies to me, how we were going to take these, you know, leadership concepts and apply them in our world.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  And they they they came up and said, this absolutely applies. We need more of this.

• 15:17Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  And so I think once people are just willing to open their mind, they realize that every problem that you face in life is a leadership problem. Your frustrations with your spouse, your frustrations with your kids, your friction points in the community, the frustration you have with your boss, or the people on your team for not doing what you want them to do, or the the people outside of your immediate team that you depend on for support, these are all leadership problems. And I think once we think about those problems as leadership problems, then we can start to apply leadership to the point of fruition, as the Marine Corps would say, to get those problems solved. But you see that what might seem like a hopeless problem actually is a solvable problem.

• 15:55Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  If you're my my boss and you're micromanaging me, and I'm feeling like Sean just needs to get off my back, I'm being micromanaged, and that's, I feel like I'm in a hopeless situation. Or Sean doesn't trust me, what can I do about that? He just needs to back off and and trust me, let me do my job. But if I realize that actually, I control that situation, I take, if I take extreme ownership of that situation and realize, if you're, if if what I'm feeling is micromanaging, you're asking me questions about what's going on, well, that's because you care about the situation. If I, and you don't have enough information, you need some more information. So I start to take action to push more information your way, to build a better relationship with you, to talk to you about what I'm doing and why I'm doing

• 16:38Speaker 02

  it, to get some guidance, I'm used to, to get some guidance from you, so I understand the strategic goal and that we can be aligned. And if we do that, then then I can get that problem solved. All of a sudden, you're like, hey, Life, you got it. Good to go. Let me know how you want to do this. And so those those check-ins become less frequent. And so what seems like an impossible situation actually is easily solvable. The moment I put my ego in check, and the moment I actually take ownership, and I start to lead lead up the chain of command, and apply leadership to get to get problems solved.

• 17:06Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, that's great advice. Thank you. Thank you.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what...

• 17:32Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 17:47Speaker 05

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• 18:20Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Leif, one last thing. I got one gift for you. Last one, I promise. We're getting to your story, but just a little something for the ride home. Those are Vigilance League gummy bears.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  That's awesome. I've been looking forward to sampling this.

• 18:36Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Well, now you got some.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Outstanding, man. I appreciate it. Thanks, brother.

• 18:41Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome. But, all right, Leif, we're gonna, like I said, we're gonna go into your life story. And I have a feeling this is gonna get really heavy. And I think people are gonna get a lot out of this episode. And so, once again, I just wanna say that I've really been looking forward to this. And so, let's start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  I grew up in a small town in southeast Texas in the piney woods called Woodville, Texas. And it was awesome community to grow up. And it was a small town, about 3,000 people. We had two stoplights. We had two Dairy Queens, which made us, I guess, big time at the time. But it was, it was just a great place to grow up. You know, there was, if you wanted to go to a fancy restaurant or a movie theater, you had to drive more than an hour away. But I loved it. I mean, I spent all my, my childhood playing in the woods. Playing some kind of combat, the woods, throwing spears at each other, building forts. People sometimes asked me if we played Cowboys and Indians. We actually were, we were all Indians all the time. Everyone, no one wanted to be a cowboy.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Everyone was an Indian. And, and so we were, we were the Native American warriors out there, patrolling the woods, setting booby traps for my mom to like fall in her backyard. And we lived in a, in a great neighborhood with just kind of woods behind the neighborhood. And we were just constantly in the woods playing and, and out from like sunup to sundown. My mom had a whistle that she would blow. And we had to be within hearing distance of the whistle, which was, I pushed that pretty regularly, but you could hear that whistle would come back. And, and I grew up in a great household. My mom and dad were loving, wonderful parents. They really took their, their job seriously as, as, my dad was the, was the town dentist. And he had a busy job.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  My mom was a stay-at-home mom and then a part-time school teacher and a school librarian. But they, they really just poured into me and my, my brother and three sisters. We had a big family and they just, they took that as their primary job is raising us right, upright. You know, the, the proverbs, train up a child and the way he will go and when he's older, and not apart from that, I think they took that very seriously and, and really set an amazing example for me, you know, as, as a mother and dad and just were constantly there to support me. And I was my, always my dad's like fishing, hunting buddy. Really? He had friends that he'd, he'd hunt with, but we spent so much time together on the lake, on the ocean, you know, fishing and hunting out in the woods. And it was an amazing place to grow up.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  And I didn't fully appreciate the town of Woodville and the community. Until after I I left school, I went off to the Naval Academy and and when I was really deployed overseas, because the amount of care packages that would come in from not only my family, but friends and just members of the community, I mean, it was stuff that we would share with with the rest of the task in it, because there was so much stuff that was coming in and it just, you know, there were some great communities across the United States, but it was it was it was just a quantitative measure of of just how awesome that community was to grow up in and just how supportive and and patriotic and and amazing. The the church was a big part of of our life growing up. We started going to

• 21:58Speaker 02

  First Baptist Church at Woodville when I was in third grade. My dad became a deacon there and church was mandatory every Sunday. When I started being a little wild man, you know, in my my high school days and partying a little too hard, my dad would come in and drag me out of bed and say, you're going to church, boy? Here we go. So then we'd get home from church and it was put on your working gloves and working clothes. And I remember trying to push back and saying, hey, Dad, are we supposed to not work on the Sabbath? And he said, this isn't work, son, this is fun.

• 22:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  So we'd be out chainsawing brush and clearing land. We grew up on a, when I was about 12, we moved to some acreage kind of out in the woods. We lived in a neighborhood before that with woods behind it, like I mentioned, but then it was it was constantly just working to clear that place and, you know, keep it nice, build build fence and repair fence and clear brush. And it was just an awesome way to grow up. It was a it was an amazing community.

• 22:55Shawn Ryan?

  Five kids.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Five kids in my family.

• 22:57Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you fall in the birth order?

• 22:59Speaker 02

  I was the second. My sister and I are very close. We're 16 months apart. So she was she was she'll never let me live down. She was in those 16 months, I guess she lived a lifetime of experience that she's older than I. Then I have a twin brother and sister. My parents when I had three. Um, they had me and my sister, then the, the third child was twins. Uh, my brother and sister fraternal twins, and then they had a surprise about eight years after that, my baby sister.

• 23:27Shawn Ryan?

  Nice, nice.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  It was, I was the only one that served the military. I always wanted to do that. Uh, my dad had been, uh, in, uh, the army, uh, and then, uh, in the air force. And so I spent my first couple of years on, at Ramstein, uh, airbase. He was stationed there as, as an air force dentist. And, um, I was the only one that went in the military, my, my five siblings, but for me, that's all I ever wanted to do was be in the military, so.

• 23:50Shawn Ryan?

  What'd your dad do in the military?

• 23:52Speaker 02

  He was a, he was a, uh, he was in the National Guard, um, and, uh, in the army and then, uh, and then he was, they, they paid for his dental school and he served his, his, uh, I think four years, uh, after dental school. So he was stationed at Ramstein for, um, I think for three of that.

• 24:09Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  My first kind of six months to, we came back when I was three years old.

• 24:13Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, I lived there too when I was a kid.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  No kidding?

• 24:16Shawn Ryan?

  My dad was in the army too, as a pharmacist. Wow, our upbringing is, uh, very similar.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  I never knew that, that's awesome.

• 24:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, been it, yeah, but, um, who, are you tight with all your siblings or?

• 24:27Speaker 02

  I am, I am. They're, they're, uh, they're, they're a great family and, um, we all keep each other in check and, uh, but, uh, yeah, they're, it's, they're a wonderful family. Everybody's got kids. We have a huge, I think my parents have seventeen grandkids.

• 24:41Shawn Ryan?

  Holy cow, that's awesome.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Eighteen to, you know, two or three, I think.

• 24:46Shawn Ryan?

  That is awesome.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  So it's, uh, it's, it's a pile of cousins. Every time my kids, you know, go, it's, it's magical and they scream, why can't we live in Woodville? Every time we go there, they get to just run around the woods.

• 24:57Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome, man. Does everybody in Texas?

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Everybody's in Texas, no.

• 25:01Shawn Ryan?

  Nice, nice, nice. What were, what kind of, were you a star athlete or anything like that and growing up?

• 25:09Speaker 02

  I played, you know, I played probably like a lot of people, you know, I played soccer and baseball and, and, and basket. I was horrible at basketball. I realized that wasn't my sport. When I, I, I, I got a rebound, I think that was in fourth grade or fifth grade and I immediately shot, I shot the, the basket, scored a goal for the other team. I was like, basketball's not for me. So when I started playing football in seventh grade and tackle football was like everything. And in, in small town Texas, it's, you know, we'd have 3,000 people um in the town and we'd have like, you know, probably nearly that many people at the game, you know, on Friday nights. It was just a, it was an awesome thing. Um, I loved it, man. It was the closest thing to suiting up, you know, and, and gearing up for, for combat. Um, you

• 25:52Speaker 02

  know, that, that, that you could do, I think in the civilian world. And it was, uh, it was a super, it was, it was a fun time. We had our, in, in our high school, um, the, uh, the, the head coach, our head football coach, uh, Coach Melvin Houston, he'd been there for years, awesome guy. Uh, and, and he was a real mentor to, uh, so many people on the team, particularly for some of the star athletes who were raised in, in homes that maybe didn't have a, have a father there. Uh, he was an incredible guy and his wife was also the, uh, was the, uh, the choir director. So all of us, like the entire starting lineup in football was like in choir as well, was mandatory. He was in track, so we all ran track also to kind of keep in shape. Uh, but you know, we had, we had some of the star football players

• 26:35Speaker 02

  that like marched in the band at halftime. Everyone kind of did everything.

• 26:38Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Uh, and it was just, it was just a fantastic place to grow up. Awesome community.

• 26:42Shawn Ryan?

  Very cool. What, what got your interest in the military?

• 26:47Speaker 02

  I can't ever remember wanting to do anything else. I mean, from the time that I can remember wanting to do anything, I, I wanted to be in the military. I was painting my face and crawling through the, you know, the, the backyard jungle and, and, um, it was, I just, I wanted to be some kind of combat leader. I had a little stint where we had these F4 Phantoms that would come fly over from, uh, some of the bases in, in Louisiana. I remember a couple of like B-52, like tree trap level flights that were pretty awesome. So there, and there was like a small stint where I was like, oh man, maybe being a pilot would be cool. But then I quickly went back to like, no, I want to be a, some kind of a ground combat leader in some, some capacity. And then when I was like in probably,

• 27:31Speaker 02

  I was probably in junior high school when I started hearing about the SEAL teams and the Marcinco books came out, Red Rogue Warrior, you probably read it probably about the same time I did and that was that was one that really I started reading about the SEALs in Vietnam and learning about the Rongsat Special Zone and you know, Camran Bay and Na Bay and all these places that are SEAL 45ers operating out of and I was just smitten with that and then the movie Navy SEALs with Charlie Sheen came out. Oh yeah. And while I was in high school and it just that kind of cemented it for me that I wanted to be in the SEAL teams and so I wanted to go to the Naval Academy to pursue

• 28:14Speaker 02

  that that dream and so I put in a package for the Naval Academy, I put in a package for West Point as well and we had a super strong West Point Alumni Association in Southeast Texas and one of the head, I guess he was a Silver Star recipient from the Korean War. Amazing guy, he was really close friends with my grandfather and he was a big advocate of West Point, is a West Point grad and he was pretty heartbroken when I chose I chose Navy but I chose that because I wanted to be in the SEAL teams and my dad and I did a lot of fishing growing up on the Texas coast, there's fantastic inshore fishing, offshore fishing on the Texas coast and we were going out on the Galveston Jetties and

• 28:55Speaker 02

  I remember just watching all these, I'd accepted my appointment to West Point because I got picked up in like, it was like January of my senior year and so I'd accepted my appointment and I still hadn't heard back from Navy, it was like and finally in like late April when I was graduating in May, I finally I got I got I got accepted to West Point, I'm sorry, I got accepted to Navy, so I'd already accepted my appointment to West Point, I finally got a an appointment to the Naval Academy and so then I was like, man, what do I do now, like I don't know what I want to do, the Alumni Network had told me, they said, they said, the West Point Alumni Network said, they said, all right, you got a decision

• 29:36Speaker 02

  to make here, Dwight D Eisenhower went to West Point, Jimmy Carter went to Navy.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  I was like, man, that's a tough one. You're putting it on me here.

• 29:48Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  But I was out fishing. My dad had a little center console fishing boat. We were out trying to catch some speckled trout, redfish on the Galveston jetties. And I remember looking at these, just these oil tankers, you know, the Houston Ship Channel comes into the Galveston there. It's one of the busiest ports in North America. And just watching these different tankers come in and all the different flags, you know, sailing from around the world. And I just remember turning to my dad and saying, I'm going to Naval Academy. I wanted to be, I wanted to be in the Navy and I wanted to be in the SEAL teams. That was the purpose. And after four long years at Navy, I did not get selected for the SEAL program.

• 30:24Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. You know, it's, it's, why did you, I know you said all throughout your childhood, you wanted to be a leader in a ground unit. But why, I'm just curious, why didn't, why didn't you go the enlisted route? Why did you, why were you hell bent on the academy?

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Man, that's a great question, Sean. I, there were many times as an officer when I was sitting in a tactical operations center and when I was, you know, when we were passing out the PowerPoint Ranger patch, you know, 3,000 hours. Where you just, where I was like, maybe I should have enlisted in the SEAL teams.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  I definitely questioned it when I graduated from Navy, because when I didn't get service selected, I, you know, and, and, and man, they made the right call, to be honest. Like, they, they only took 16 guys out of the Naval Academy. And there was a prior enlisted SEAL in my class, so they took 15 guys. And, you know, there was 200 people that went out for the screener. It was probably 80 guys that graduated from the screener. And probably 40 or 50 of those guys could have gone and done really well, any of them. And so they only took 15 and I was not one of those 15. And that was based on my grade point average, which was atrocious.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  I was, uh, I was part of that, uh, that half of the class that made the top half possible. And, uh, I had a terrible conduct record because when you get, you know, a midshipman that was two years older than me, who was kind of barking orders at me and telling me what to do. I, um, I had let them know that I was not too pleased about that. Uh, I was pretty strong willed and hard headed, as you, you know, me to be. And, uh, I think that, uh, that didn't serve me well there. So I had a conduct record. I got, got in a bunch of trouble. Um, and, uh, and so I wasn't selected, uh, but actually was the, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because my time in the service fleet was, was awesome. I, I was instantly thrown into, uh, a position of responsibility and, and, and leadership. Um, and, uh, and I served, uh, you know, three different deployments on two different

• 32:28Speaker 02

  ships. Um, got to sail all over the world and, and see some amazing things, work with some incredible people. So what was? Well, to answer your question. Sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just gonna say to answer your question, I think what my parents were pushing me to like, go to college first. Um, and that was probably a bigger factor, but it was, it was a, um, I don't know, like there were, when I, when I got service selected, uh, out of, uh, for the, for the service fleet, out of the academy, I was like, man, I probably should have listened to the Navy. So, um, I, but it was, it was, I think my parents just kind of encouraged me to go to college. I was interested in the Naval Academy. You know, I was, I was interested in having a, a degree under my belt. If I hadn't gotten one of the academies, I would have gone to Texas A&M and been in the, the Corps of

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Cadets there in the R T C program. Um, so I, I think that was probably more their, their encouragement than anything else. Right on. But there's certainly times that I regretted that. And, and, uh, what I loved about the SEAL teams was, you know, man, the, the, while the college degree might, might have separated, uh, officers from enlisted at some point. I mean, the post nine 11 world, that wasn't even the case, you know, for a lot of guys like Brian Bill in our Bloods class, sort of electrical engineering degree, probably a way better GPA than I ever had, you know, and so many guys that I served with, like you, you know, were just super smart guys, um, you know, and, and were way smarter than I would ever be. So it was, uh, there wasn't a lot of differentiation. It was just something like, like a different role. Interesting, interesting.

• 33:58Shawn Ryan?

  So, so I didn't, so they're recruiting right out of the academy. I didn't, I didn't realize there was that much. The 200 people tried, roughly, 200 people trying out, that's, well, that's pretty stiff competition. What, so when you found out that, that you didn't, how did they tell you you didn't make the cut? Do you find out immediately?

• 34:18Speaker 02

  They announce, it's like service selection night, and so they kind of, they announce you. And, and so I had put, my first choice was naval special warfare. My second choice was marine ground. Uh, I was like, if I can't be in the, you know, uh, a SEAL, I'll go be a marine infantry officer, maybe I can try to go, you know, force, force recon and, you know, that, that route. And, uh, and then my third choice was service, service warfare, the ship drivers. And, um, so when they, they, they basically like just, you know, you, they, you distribute a piece of paper that gives you the service selection with all the, you know, the seniors, the, the firsties there. Um, and, uh, you're sitting there in like

• 34:57Speaker 02

  the wardroom on, on, you know, and it's, it's, uh, I, I saw my best friend and roommate, just his head, just, you know, he was, he was really disappointed to not get served. We were both going out for the, you know, the SEAL program, that's what we wanted. Um, and so when he didn't get it, I didn't get it, and we were right there in the room together, sitting next to each other. You know, it, it was an encouragement, you know, to keep going and, and, uh, but again, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I loved my time in the service fleet. And I wanted to be a SEAL the whole time, but I instantly, I flew out to, I went to about six months of, of school in, in, um, Rhode Island. And then I flew out and met a ship, and we were enforcing sanctions against the, um, against

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Iraq, that, you know, before, uh, before the war kicked off. Uh, so these were the UN sanctions that had been in place since the Persian Gulf War. And, and so I got to work alongside, uh, SEALs, SEALs would go take down these ships. Our boarding team would go alongside and, and take over the ship and then just vector them over to a holding area. It was super cool, man.

• 35:56Shawn Ryan?

  You were, I forgot, you were on a boarding team, correct? If I remember right?

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, we did dozens of boarding sessions. How did you get involved in that? They just, the ship just selected me to be a part of that. I was lucky enough to be a part of that. And it was, it was really, it was a neat thing to be able to see and do. And I think just being able to navigate a ship across the world was, it required a lot of responsibility. I mean, when you're the officer of the deck, you're in charge of the ship. When the captain's asleep in his stateroom at nighttime, or if he's elsewhere, you're responsible for the entire well-being of that ship. I mean, it's massive responsibility on your shoulders. What kind of ship were you on? I was on a destroyer, DD 972 USS Oldendorf. I did two years on that.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  We had an awesome wardroom of great officers and the enlisted sailors were outstanding that were on that thing. And it was just a great leadership opportunity for me. I learned a ton of lessons, I did a ton of things wrong. Came in kind of this strong-willed incident and got shut down. You know, realized like, look, I need to rely on my experience chiefs and sailors to actually lead this team and learn from them. And so I got to see like what good leadership looks like. It's not the person that's barking orders at people. It's actually being the silent leader that listens to the team and lets them run with things. And then I went to a different ship, FFG 38 USS Kurtz. Did about a year on there as a training officer.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  So I did the first ship, I did two deployments to the Persian Gulf. I kind of transitioned that, you know, Indian Ocean, you know, Pacific transits. And then I did a Western Pacific deployment with the Kurtz, the frigate. Both of those were great experiences and awesome group. And I got selected probably halfway through my time at being on that second ship, the USS Kurtz. I got selected, this was September 2001. And I got selected finally on my second package that I put in for the SEAL program.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  So right as September 11th happened.

• 38:04Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  And, and so we knew this was, you know, real. We knew we were going to war. I knew after BUDS, we're going straight to a, you know, to a, um, to a SEAL platoon in the point overseas. And, um, and so probably by the time that you were, you know, going, uh, going through your boot camp and, and just starting your Navy journey, um, I was, uh, for me, uh, it was interesting because some of the sailors, you know, there's so many sailors in the fleet with a 70, 80% attrition rate that didn't make it through BUDS. I remember one of the sailors is a great, great guy, um, asking me like, you know, hey, you got selected, you know, for, for BUDS. How far do you think you'll make it to the program? You know, and I thought, I thought that was a crazy question. I was like, all the way through the program. Like, why, why would I be even going if I didn't think I could,

• 38:49Speaker 02

  I was going to make it all the way through, you know? I think, you know, in his mind, having gone there and not made it through, it just was like impossible.

• 38:55Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  To make it through the program. And, and I think I, I, I was so appreciative of the experience, you know, when I got to BUDS and you and I going through BUDS together. It, it enabled me to, to, uh, to think about what it took to actually get there, all the effort that it took. Uh, and I had some amazing people that pulled so many strings for me, you know, to, to write letters of recommendation, to, to train me and prepare me and get me ready, you know, physically, um, and stuck their neck out to, to get me selected out of, you know, dozens of people that applied. Um, and, and so I was never going to, you know, let them down anyway. And, and it gave me, it gave me, uh, some, some great perspective.

• 39:34Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I didn't realize you got picked up in September of 2001. Where, where were you, where were you when the towers went down?

• 39:41Speaker 02

  I was on duty, the pier side in, uh, San Diego at 32nd Street Naval Station aboard the USS Curt. So I was the duty officer and, um, and, uh, we were just, you know, I was just waking up in the morning and, um, you know, obviously that's, you know, six, six in the morning, uh, you know, on the West Coast when nine o'clock, you know, when it went down and, uh, on the East Coast. And I got a call from the, uh, the incoming duty officer who was listening to the news on his way into work. And he said, hey, a plane's just hit the World Trade Center. And I thought, I'm thinking it's like a little Cessna sightseeing plane or something, you know, that got too close. I'm like, what are you talking about? So I went in and we turned on the news in the wardroom and I turned on the news and

• 40:24Speaker 02

  I'm sitting there watching like, man, just smoke blowing out and we just watched in, on live TV as the second plane hit and we knew instantly this is an attack, like this is real, we're at war. And, and it just was, changed everything.

• 40:40Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow. And so you, you were selected right after that or right before that?

• 40:46Speaker 02

  I don't remember the exact date that I found out, that it was, it was right around then. And I can't remember if it was just before or just after, but I, I know I got the news like, like, like in September 2001. And, and so it was, I knew this is real and I was lucky enough, I had a great commanding officer on, onboard USS Kurtz and he was kind enough to send me TAD over to SEAL Team Five. And so I was TAD to SEAL Team Five. I went over there, I helped out wherever I could, you know, the administrator's side, but they assigned us to a, a senior chief. And he was, all he did, I mean, he just trained us all the time. And, and so we, for like six straight months before I went to BUDS,

• 41:30Speaker 02

  I was, I was spending most of my time over at SEAL Team Five, just training and preparing. And some of my friends were there who had helped pull some, some strings, you know, for me to be there. In fact, that very same SEAL who'd got service elected, and

• 41:44Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, he got, he, he, he had got picked up just the year before. So they went through the year, year before that you and I went through BUDS together. And he, he was just there as a new guy, Assistant Platoon Commander. And so, man, he'd take me out for runs. I would, the runs that he took me on were harder than anything we did in BUDS. Like I, I would puke my guts up. And as a result of that, I, I never, I was, I was a horrible runner. That was the thing I probably struggled with most. And, and I didn't, I didn't fall back into the runs in BUDS, just because, you know, thankfully I hadn't had that opportunity.

• 42:20Shawn Ryan?

  How long was it, how long was it after you got the word that you showed up at BUDS?

• 42:26Speaker 02

  We classed up, uh, 241 classed up in April of 2002. So, um, that was, uh, yeah, it was, it was, it was pushing six months of kind of prep and, and training. Um, and, and I knew that when I got picked up, like that was the last time. I, I, I was already a Lieutenant JG, um, and I knew I was, I was gonna make, you know, Lieutenant at the four-year mark, which if you remember, I, I put that on in first phase. Um, I got, uh, I got quite the, uh, the promotion party, if you're ready. The beat down. Um, but yeah, it was, it was, uh, uh, I, I knew that was like the last shot. So I was already training for it, I was already preparing for it, but what I had about six months of, of people that really, and it's so hard to train when you're underway on

• 43:11Speaker 02

  a ship, you know, as far as running and swimming and doing the thing, you just can't do it. So, uh, well, so it was just awesome to have, you know, my commanding officer and the, the senior leadership on the, on that ship, support me and, and be excited for me. And on my previous ship, I mean, they wrote super powerful letter of recommendation as well, you know, that enabled that to happen. And if I didn't have the SEALs that were pulling for me, um, that, uh, that, that wrote me a letter of recommendation, you know, and, and more than anything probably was, was Admiral Smith, who was retired SEAL Admiral, um, his son Adam and I are friends and, and, um, he, he had, uh, our close friend who's still serving, I won't, won't name him, um, you know, was, was probably my, my biggest advocate, amazing

• 43:53Speaker 02

  guy. And, uh, pulled so many strings for me, trained with me, got me ready, you know, connected me with, with Adam and then Admiral Smith. And Admiral Smith wrote me a just incredibly powerful letter of recommendation, um, that, uh, that if people hadn't pulled those strings for me, man, I would have never, never even had the opportunity to serve.

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• 45:23Shawn Ryan?

  You know, what is the selection look like for an officer to get into BUDS? What's the selection process look like?

• 45:35Speaker 02

  I think the bill is, I think there's 24 bullets at the academy today. And I think there's something like that for all of ROTC. And then there's like a handful-

• 45:46Shawn Ryan?

  So they take 48 a year?

• 45:48Speaker 02

  Something like that. I don't know what the numbers are. I have to double check that. I think that was it for a while, but it's highly competitive, right?

• 45:55Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. So they only take 48 men-

• 45:59Speaker 02

  It's something like that.

• 46:00Shawn Ryan?

  -to the program?

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't quote me on the numbers of that.

• 46:03Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe half of that.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  But it's very highly competitive. And then there's a handful of officers that come in, like our mutual friend Travis, that will come in with an officer candidate school bullet, and who went through BUDS with us. And they'll, there's just, it's very competitive as an officer. So you're training with people like, I mean, I was competing at the Naval Academy with the captain of the water polo team. I was never a competitive swimmer. That guy's going to destroy me. Somebody who's on the cross-country team, somebody who's on the triathlon team.

• 46:45Shawn Ryan?

  They gotta be looking for more than that, though. I mean, they can find physical fitness anywhere. What are they looking for specifically? And an officer. I mean, you, because it sounds like you weren't even, no, no offense, but it doesn't sound like you were a superstar athlete at the Naval Academy.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  I definitely was not.

• 47:04Shawn Ryan?

  Problems running, you weren't a swimmer, you know, and then you have all these guys that were. Maybe that's not why you got picked up, I don't know, but, I mean, they have to be looking for more than athleticism.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  That was a part of it. I think it was a major factor. I think they're also looking for grade point average, they're looking for, uh, you know, student leadership opportunities. I was never a student leadership because I was always in trouble for something. So, I think, uh, uh, you know, there's just, um, I mean, I wouldn't trade, my, my time at the Naval Academy was awesome. I really enjoyed my experience there. Um, there were some, there was some negative examples, right, that, that, uh, that showed me like the leader that I didn't want to be, uh, as well. I think that's always the case, right? Um, I think, I think good leadership is rare, no matter where you are, but there also were some amazing leaders there who poured into me and then set a great example. Um, and frankly, Sean, I'm, I'm, I am, I wouldn't trade that for anything. I mean, the fact that I didn't get

• 47:59Speaker 02

  service elected for the SEAL program. I had to work as, I had to work my ass off. I had to, I had to train, I had to go out and build relationships. I had to stop feeling sorry for myself and making excuses. Because that would have been easy to do, right? Well, this person knew that person, or this person got picked up, or that person happened to, you know, made better grades than me, or this person's a better athlete, you know, and that shouldn't be what it's based on. You, I could make all those excuses. What I had to do was, before I even understood this concept we now call extreme ownership, I actually, I didn't take extreme ownership to say, if this is what I want to do with my life, I'm gonna have to actually do the work to make this possible. Um, you know, to, to open the door. And I, when I put in my very first lateral transfer package, so I had to get fully qualified as a service worker officer. Um, and, uh, so that, that

• 48:44Speaker 02

  took me about a year and a half on my first ship. You know, man, that's a huge qualification to get, right? You have to study, you have to prepare. It takes a long time and effort. And when you, I finally got that qualification, I put together, I met every requirement possible. Um, and I put in a package that I thought was a strong package, didn't get service elected. Wow. I got turned out again and, and that was crushing to me. I thought, what? This, you know, this is, and I, I, I, the senior officer, he was a captain at the time and he was the chief of staff over at WarCom, the Naval Special Warfare Command, so very senior officer. And I reached out, just tracked down his contact info, scheduled a meeting with him. Uh, and went over, uh, and sat out, I sat out to talk to him. And I said, hey, sir, I'm,

• 49:29Speaker 02

  you know, Lieutenant J G Babin, I wanna be in the, I wanna be in the SEAL teams. This is what I wanna do. I think I can contribute to this community. What do I need to do to make this happen? And he told me, he was like, he, he said, he was like, no one has ever scheduled a meeting like this with, with me. I think that shows a lot of initiative on your part. You know, keep trying, you know, get your scores better, get some better, you know, get, go get some strong letters of recommendation, put in a package again, and I think you'll do better next time. So I think just, we call this concept default aggressive, that problems aren't gonna solve themselves. Like, you actually gotta go solve problems. You actually have to make things happen. Things aren't gonna just fall in your lap. Like, you gotta go make it happen. And that applies on the battlefield. It also applies anywhere in life.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  And the opportunities, I, I think it's real easy for us to look at people and be like, well, you know, that person got lucky, or this person just stumbled upon that, or this person had that door open for them. And more often than not, man, you, people make their luck through hard work, you know, discipline, preparation, effort, all the years and years of, of effort behind the scenes that people don't see. And, uh, and so I think that to me was a tremendous life lesson of like, hey, this isn't going to happen unless you go and do the work to make it happen. And that required training, you know, being the best service warfare officer I could be. I knew that, like, instead of complaining about not being in the SEAL teams, if I wanted to be in the SEAL teams, the best path for that for me was to be the best service warfare officer I could be. And there was, I mean, people would say things like, well, you don't want to be,

• 50:57Speaker 02

  they won't want to let you go, you know, if you're, you know, if you're too, too critical for a member of the team. That's total bullshit, right? You gotta, the, the better that you are on your team, the more, the higher you perform, the, the more that your leadership's gonna want to write you a strong letter of recommendation, right? The more that people are actually gonna want to take care of you and, and help you out. So the more I could contribute to my team, you know, that happened to be a ship, uh, that I was assigned to, the better it would be for me. I, you know, going and building relationships with people, reaching out to folks that, that could write powerful letters of recommendation, you know, um, and, and it was, uh, I, I think for anything in life, like it's, the opportunities are not gonna come your way. You gotta go make things happen. You've gotta be default aggressive. And, uh, and, and it's, you know, again, if you wait for problems to go away on their own, they

• 51:41Speaker 02

  just, they just get worse, you know? So I'm, I'm thankful that happened. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I can tell you, Sean, years later, uh, after I was serving as a, a senior, you know, executive for, in the business world, we call it right, at the operations officer and executive officer position, and I was frustrated with the employment of SEALs or lack of employment with SEALs in, in combat at the time, uh, and I would get super frustrated about things that were way above me in the chain of command. There, I can remember at least three different occasions where I jumped in my truck, I drove across the Coronado Bay Bridge, I went over to 32nd Naval, uh, I went over to 32nd Street Naval Station, which is where all the ships in San Diego are, and I walked out on one

• 52:24Speaker 02

  of those piers I love to cross at, at Coronado, at Naval Amphibious Base where the SEAL teams are. And, uh, and I remembered what it was like, and it was, it just put that all in perspective for me.

• 52:33Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  You know, this is, I can't ever forget what it was like to be over here, wanting to be there and wanting to do anything I could to get over there. So no matter how frustrated I am, um, I'm in the SEAL teams and I gotta do the best I can and, and, and impact the people around me, um, you know, and try to, try to make, whatever, you know, happened to be assigned, try to make life as good as I can for, for those people that I'm with.

• 52:56Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, that's interesting. So you would go back to what you couldn't wait to leave? To reset.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Just to give me perspective on what it was like, like to remember what it was like to, to want to be in the SEAL teams and not be there.

• 53:09Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's cool. That's cool, Leif. So, correct me if I'm wrong, with a breakfast, I think we, I think we had a discussion where are you mentoring junior officers in the SEAL teams or junior officers that are wanting to go to the SEAL teams?

• 53:25Speaker 02

  When I, when I got back from our, my second combat deployment to Ramadi, I took over the junior officer training course. Um, so over two years, I ran that training program, um, for every single SEAL officer that graduated from BUDS. Um, so before they go to BUDS, before they go on to their, you know, the advanced training, the SEAL qualification training, they, they would go through a four-week classroom, week-long SEAL training exercise. And so I'd been through that program. Uh, that's, that's where you and I broke off together, right? After we graduated BUDS, and then you went on to SEAL, SEAL qualification training and, and, uh, so I, I, you know, the officers from our class went to, uh, SEER School and some, some other schools, and then we went to the junior officer training course together. Um, and so I got a chance to run that four years later. And I got, it,

• 54:09Speaker 02

  it was a great program when I went through it, but I think, uh, it, it was focused on trying to help you understand how it was organized. And, and what I got to do was really, I think, try to revamp it to, to just try to set those leaders up for success, you know, and, uh, and, and to help those leaders be ready for the most difficult combat situations that they might come up against.

• 54:32Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get into more details with that, uh, at a more appropriate time in the interview, but what I'm, the reason I'm bringing it up is what, what are you looking for in junior SEAL leadership? What are some of the, what are some of the top attributes that you've identified that, that great leaders inside of Naval Special Warfare all seem to have?

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Number one, humility. Humility is the most important quality in a leader. And the reason I say that is because, look, if you don't have an ego... You don't care about winning, right? You just mail it in. You don't care about outperforming the other, you know, other people or doing well. Ego drives us to be successful. So you've got to have an ego. But so often ego is the, it just, it just absolutely destroys people. It destroys careers. It destroys teams. It destroys relationships. It destroys lives. And when people can't put their ego in check, you just, you can never get better. You can never improve.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  And I think, you know, the biggest lesson that I've learned in life through some extremely humbling combat operations and then beyond is that it's be humble or get humbled. And anytime that I'm feeling like, oh, I've got things figured out. Oh, I've got a, you know, oh, I'm ready for, you know, for the worst case scenario life might throw me, man, you get humbled and, and you get put in check. So I think that humility is, is number one, the most important quality because without humility, you can't learn from anybody else. You can't, you can't, you can't get better, right? You can't evolve. You can't adapt or innovate. You can't listen to other people's ideas or learn from them in any capacity.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  And worst of all, you can't look yourself in the mirror and conduct an honest self-assessment, a brutally honest self-assessment because that's what's key. If you, if you can't do that, there's no way you're ever going to improve. What's required is an honest self-assessment of like, okay, I need to do these things to improve. I need to do these things to actually fix myself going forward. Okay, these might be my strengths, but these are my weaknesses. I need to work on those, you know, to get, to get better. Hey, we might've gotten lucky on that combat operation, but, but if, you know, we better be prepared for that worst case scenario next time in case we don't get so lucky. And so I think number one humility. Number two, ownership. And that goes right along with each other, right? If you're going to point fingers and cast blame and make excuses, it's right there with humility.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  The driver of that is ego. But oftentimes, the reason I say ownership is because if I'm going to wait for you to solve my problem, like that problem's not going to get solved. So, let's say you and I have a conflict and we don't see eye to eye on something. You know, I can, I can say, well, Sean just, you know, I don't like the way Sean talked to me. You know, or Sean needs to come apologize to me, or, you know, Sean, that's Sean's fault for not seeing the world from my perspective. Or I can actually take ownership of saying, you know what, Sean, there's some reason that Sean disagrees with me on this. Um, let me actually learn from his perspective. Let me actually take ownership of fixing this problem by taking some action. Uh, you know, to, to, to actually get his perspective and see his perspective on things. Uh, and see what I could have done better to, to better communicate.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  You know, what, what my perspective was and ask more questions so I could, I could see the world through his eyes. And so I think those things are, are, are super critical. Uh, teamwork is a great example of that, right? If you're just about yourself, um, and you can't actually put the team at the overall team, the mission first. I think that's a, that's never, that's not someone's gonna, gonna do well. And particularly in high performing organizations, whether you're talking led to like a SEAL unit or a special operations unit, or a SWAT team, or frankly, like a super high performing sales team, you know, in, in the corporate world. A lot of times you'll talk to them about the concept of recover and move and teamwork and they'll say, oh, we're doing awesome. We're doing awesome, you know, but our admin department sucks and supply sucks and they're not getting us what we need.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  You know, and hey, the, the, the senior leaders up in their corporate hierarchy, they don't know what's going on down here. And so they, they, and what you realize is like they, they, they think about teamwork within just their immediate team. Not about the other teams that they actually depend on to be successful. So, you know, when you start realizing like, hey, I, I need a better relationship with the admin department. So that we can get paid, so that we can actually get the paperwork taken care of, so that we can actually do what we need to do and, and focus on our job. You know, I need a better relationship with supply so they can give me the tools that they, that they, that I need to be successful. I need a good relationship with my chain of command. Right? One of the biggest lessons I learned from Jocko, um, is not having a good relationship with your chain of command doesn't help you. And it certainly doesn't help your team. So you've got to build a good relationship with your chain of command.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Just to, to make sure you're aligned with them, make sure they understand, um, you know, what, what you're trying to do and how you're trying to do it and why you, you, and, and they have the information they need, you know, to better support you and make better decisions. So I think when you're looking at humility, ownership, teamwork, I think those are crucial things. Discipline, I think is something else. You know, if you have people that, um, are not disciplined, I mean, I, I, I think about somebody, uh, in, in our Bud's class, like, like Brian Bill, you know, for instance, who, um, probably wasn't born great at everything and right? That guy was so, he was the only guy in our entire Bud's class that was first time, every time in, uh, in, in, uh, die face, you know, through, through, uh, the pool competency test, which is,

• 59:55Speaker 02

  you know, if you don't know what pool comp is, it is miserable, right? Where they're tying your hoses and knots and, and, uh, and that was, that's a terrifying test, right? For so many people that, that, you know, even people that are comfortable in the water. Um, and it was, we had so many rollbacks for the previous, you know, uh, uh, class, as you know, you know?

• 1:00:13Shawn Ryan?

  I was one of them.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, you were one of those. It was, and, and the stories you guys told us, it was like terrifying, you know? Uh, and so, um, I think that, uh, Brian was the only dude on that wall this first time, every time. Why is that? Well, he was, he, he was methodical in his preparation and, and it was, he was disciplined. And that enabled him to, to be successful in everything he's trying to do. So I think somebody, you know, it's great to have some innate qualities and natural abilities and those things are great. When you can combine natural ability and, and discipline, that's unstoppable. But, you know, hard work is going to beat, uh, natural ability over time. If you've got somebody who's disciplined is going to put in the work. So, you know, I, I think those are the qualities, um, that I think apply not just to a SEAL leader, but, but I think to any leader in any situation.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  You know, somebody who's humble, somebody who will take ownership, somebody who's a team player and puts the team first, and somebody who's disciplined.

• 1:01:03Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's great, that's great to hear. Thank you. I got a ton of questions, but I'm going to save them for the leadership section. But, so let's get back to Bud. So you show up to Bud's, we're classing up in April of, was it 2001?

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  April 2002.

• 1:01:19Shawn Ryan?

  2002, correct. And, uh, so what, I mean, what was it like for you walking in the compound as a, as a, as a, as a Bud's candidate, Bud's student?

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Man, I might have been different from a lot of us. I loved it. I thought it was awesome. I mean, to me, just to have the... Not that you weren't... Certainly, we were walking on eggshells all the time, right? And I remember afterward, particularly as the class officer in charge, as the senior person in the class, it didn't matter what happened, right? I don't think I failed a single room inspection the entire time. Actually, we had one spot inspection in Die Phase that I failed. And me and my roommate failed. It was like one is... But every other inspection I passed. Every other personnel inspection I passed, which was unheard of. And yet, I got beaten. I was the first guy to get beaten every time, right? Because you're just... Anybody in the class feels you as the leader are responsible.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  And so, you're gonna pay the man for it. That was just part of the game. You know, I embraced that with a sense of humor, you know? So, there was... You know, it took a couple of years to be able to walk on the grinder before you were kind of like, "Who's looking at me?" You feel like you need to be running and calling cadence. But, by the way, they don't call cadence across the grinder anymore, man. It's a... I missed it. That was so freaking cool, like just to my left, to my... You know, just yelling at our class as we came across the grinder. For me, just knowing the history of that place, you know, knowing not only through the SEAL teams, but for the Underwater Demolition Teams, our Frogman forefathers before them, and knowing all of that took place right there, right?

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  I mean, it's Coronado, Neyman amphibious base. I mean, this is where the, you know, the guys were going out and swimming up on, you know, beaches like Iwo Jima, you know, and Guam and Saipan. I mean, just amazing, amazing history. And I just, I thought it was awesome. And, you know, checking in, I mean, you know, for guys like you that were a class ahead of me, you know, initially, it was like, "You might as well have been there for 30 years of experience, right? Because you... I'm just showing up and you don't know like what to do." I quickly like just tried to just have a sense of humor. I remember they... I walked into the indoc office, right? Those first few weeks that they used to call indoc, the indoctrination,

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  before you started first phase. And one of the instructors was a... Was like, "Babin!" He just walks up to me, it was like, "Hey." They had like their coffee mess there and they had like this fancy coffee and I came from the fleet, there's no fancy coffee, everybody's, these chiefs, you know, the fleet are drinking like black tar coffee that was, you know, reheated coffee from like five days ago. So they had this like fancy coffee mess in there and they had a pile of like, like sugar cubes. And it was probably like, I don't know, 50 of them. He's like, "How many of those sugar cubes, you know, can you eat at once, Babin?" I'm like, "All of them." I just like shoved them all in my mouth, you know?

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  And, uh, yeah, I just, I think from that on, I just, I just tried to, you know, just have a good sense of humor about it. And, uh, um, it was, yeah, to me, I thought it was, I mean, it was the quality of people that, that we got to serve with there was, you know, I think in that post 9/11 era of people that, you know, like you, that are like enlisted in the Navy, this is what they want to do, "I'm gonna go serve my country in a time of war."

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  You know, it was, it was, it was just incredible, man. And, uh, and I just, I wouldn't trade that for anything, it was awesome.

• 1:04:54Shawn Ryan?

  What about the intimidation factor, were you intimidated coming in, checking in there?

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Totally, man, of course. You know, I mean, you're kind of like, "Do I make eye contact with people, do you not?" You know, you're trying to just figure that out, um, you know, and, uh, we talk a lot, you know, the dichotomy of leadership, right? You've got to try to find that balance. You gotta be confident but not cocky, right? And I said humility is the most important quality of a leader, so you've got to have some confidence, but you also, you can't be cocky. And I think just trying to find that balance was like, you know, uh, knowing that like the instructor staff that, uh,

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  some of the guys that would, you know, say, "I hate officers" and give us a hard time, you know, more than anything else, um, they ended up being my favorite instructors. And they just, you know, even though they dished out the worst physical punishments and pain, um, they were just, they were awesome. And, and, you know, some of those guys who, who, you know, were like looking to give the officers a hard time, uh, you know, one of the things I loved about in doc too, do you, do you remember the, the officer belly flop contest off the, the high dive?

• 1:05:58Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  Off like the 15 footboard, that was so awesome. And you're just, you're like, okay, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna win. Like, I'm going to all into this thing. I want to make it so painful. I'm gonna like knock the wind out of myself. And someone's gonna have to like haul me to the south. Um, but that to me was like, it was, it was fun. I think you just try to, you know, try to make the best of it.

• 1:06:17Shawn Ryan?

  What was the, usually, everybody I know has some type of, uh, you know, they're worried about a hangup in Bud's, whether it's the pool comp or the 50 meter underwater swim, or the two mile swims, or whatever it may be. Mine was the 50 meter underwater swim was the first one I was really nervous about. Well.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  How'd you do on that?

• 1:06:40Shawn Ryan?

  Crushed it.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  I didn't think that was hard.

• 1:06:42Shawn Ryan?

  It was easy.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  You know what was crazy? So we, I'm sure you watched the Discovery Channel like.

• 1:06:47Shawn Ryan?

  Oh yeah, like 50 times.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  So I did too. And, and they, what I realized later, some things like Hell Week, like they really can't show you just how hard Hell Week's gonna be, right? So like it's, I thought Hell Week's way harder than, you know, that I even envisioned it could be, just kind of based on watching that show. But some of the other things like the ocean swims, the cold water, like the underwater swim, they were, I, I realized they were focusing on people that were struggling. And so it made it look like it was impossible. So yeah, I mean, they, I thought the 50 meter underwater swim was like no factor, you know? But, uh, some of the things that, that, that kicked my ass, man, were, um.

• 1:07:25Shawn Ryan?

  Before though, before we did, um, what were you worried about? What was your biggest fear?

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  I worried about it. I sweated every single evolution.

• 1:07:31Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  Every single one. And, and I had a friend tell me that, sweat every evolution. Like just, just, you, you, you better be worried about preparing. We're gonna spend our weekends prepping, planning, um. We were doing stupid stuff too, like, like pool comping each other in like the, you know, in the, in the, uh, in the like local, like apartment complex pools, you know, into like civilian dive rigs that we rented from the local, like stupid stuff, like dangerous stuff. If you're listening to this, don't, uh, or watching this, don't do that. That's stupid. You know, you're gonna AGE yourself. You definitely need a dive master there to make sure stuff like that's not going on. Um, but, uh, we were, we just tried to sweat every evolution. I was, uh, I was worried about the runs because I had struggled with runs.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  Um, and I found the runs were like, the runs were hard. I mean, they definitely were, you know, all out spread for, um, but I don't, I don't think I, I don't think I got in the Goon Squad even one time. Um. That was also because our, our good friend and classmate Seth Stone uh had made the egregious error of marrying one of the Bud's instructors.

• 1:08:38Shawn Ryan?

  Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  So we, the officers would get regularly pulled out and just beat on for that. And then the entire class would get beat on. And then wherever Stoner was, we call him Seth Stone, we call him Stoner, but wherever Stoner was in the lineup of the runs, if you remember, they would just find him and be like, goon squad, here I'm back. And he, he would just embrace it, you know, and uh just start bear crowing. The goon squad, everyone's just getting beat on and, and uh everyone else is like circling up. But uh you were a good runner, right? You weren't, I don't think you were in the goon squad.

• 1:09:09Shawn Ryan?

  I was good. That was the one thing I was really good at was running.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember you being a good runner. The swims for me, I was like one bad swim. Our mutual friend who I won't say his name, but uh we got put together. It was one, another officer and he was not a great swimmer and I was not a great swimmer. So we were like one bad conditions away from failing the swim. I think the only swim I failed was the, the ones where they forced us to wear like the new fins. Remember that one?

• 1:09:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  And, and like half the class failed. Um, cause we had to wear these, these new fins that were supposed to be so much better. And, and we all went back to the old school, like World War II, like.

• 1:09:46Shawn Ryan?

  UDT, duck feet, yeah.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Uh, but it was uh, that was one where I was, I wasn't a fast swimmer. I'm not gonna go for a while, but um, but I, I knew I was kind of one bad swimmer. But I think one of the most, the hardest things for me um, that I didn't anticipate was drown proofing. People thought drown proofing was easy. Did you, did you have no problem with drown proofing?

• 1:10:07Shawn Ryan?

  I thought drown, I thought drown proofing was easy.

• 1:10:11Speaker 02

  So many people did. Drown proofing was horrible.

• 1:10:14Shawn Ryan?

  No shit? That was hard for you?

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  When I, after we did like, you know, bouncing off the bottom was fine, but once we had to do like the traverse, you know, with your hands and feet tied.

• 1:10:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  And my heart rate got up and then I started doing the flips. Um.

• 1:10:27Shawn Ryan?

  So just for the audience that doesn't know what drown proofing is, basically what they do is they tie your feet. The tie your feet together, the tie your hands together behind your back. And you start off just in the deep end, right bouncing up and down. Kind of getting a rhythm into breathing. Then you have to float, then you have to swim, was it a hundred meters? You have to swim a hundred meters, uh, with your hands tied behind your back and your feet tied together. And, uh, it is challenging. It is, the swim is definitely challenging.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  Well, I, I've struggled with it and I was really struggling with it and, and one of those buzz instructors, who was the, the meanest instructor, you know, and he came to officers and just hammering them. He, uh, he just pulled me aside and put me in like, he put me in like the four foot section. It was like, he's like, hands and feet tied, you just, you're gonna do your bound in the four foot section. And he just like left me there. And then he moved me over to the, to the, you know, nine foot section. And it was, it was like a, it was just like a progression and that really helped me. And then actually, um, one of the other instructors, remember we had to like, you were supposed to, so after you do the, that, you know, you, you do that traverse, then you were supposed to like, you do like a flip and, and, and then go down and grab the mask.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  And then you bat, you were supposed to do like three flips and then like five bounds and then that was the end of the test. And, uh, one of the instructors on the side was like, I, I, I think I was probably thirty flips in. He was like, again, again, again. Yeah. And finally, finally that same instructor that helped me out came over and was like, babe, and you're good, get out of the pool. And so it was, he, uh, he kind of helped me out. But I mean, you knew you were gonna get the full benefit on it, like no factor.

• 1:12:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  Um, and, uh, that was, so that, that to me was harder than I thought it was gonna be for whatever reason. And then life saving was, life saving was a challenge too.

• 1:12:17Shawn Ryan?

  Kick in the ass, man.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  The smallest instructor we had, I, so if you remember, we had our, uh, you had your unconscious victim.

• 1:12:28Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  For the, I don't think life saving is like that anymore.

• 1:12:32Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean it's not like?

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  I don't think it's like a pass fail evolution, like it was. Like, I don't think you can get kicked out of the program. Remember for us, like if you didn't pass it like

• 1:12:40Shawn Ryan?

  Oh yeah, I remember.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  He got kicked out and so the the unconscious victim, I got the smallest Bud's instructor we had, he was like probably 150 pounds. He was the unconscious victim, which means he's laying there, I just grabbed him, haul him across the pool. And then the the very next one was, uh, if you remember this instructor who had started at, uh, he had played starting linebacker at Arizona State University.

• 1:13:04Shawn Ryan?

  Oh yeah, I remember him.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  And, uh, and man, he was an awesome instructor, I loved it, but he, he kicked my ass in the water. Like I, I swam over to him and realized like, he's like, save me. And I, I grabbed him, I think it took me-

• 1:13:16Shawn Ryan?

  Was this Scotty Walker?

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, we could say his name, he's in the Bud's thing.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Shawn Ryan?

  He's in the 234 thing, so.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  I don't know if you can say, yeah, Scotty was, Scotty was hilarious, but he, he just like attacked me underwater and, uh, it was, it was a giant wrestling match with like, what, he probably weighed 250 at the time.

• 1:13:36Shawn Ryan?

  I remember watching that guy when we were doing log PT, pick up the fucking log by himself and just start running up the berm with it. And I was like, holy shit.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  I remember that too. And we were, we were all like, dude, that is, that guy's an animal. And I got, I remember, I, it, it was probably, it, it felt like, it felt like a 20 minute evolution for me to get him to the side. I don't, it probably wasn't near that long, right? But I finally get him to the side and I crawled out the combat training tank just outside and I just puked my guts up. And then I just, and I crawled back in there and it was like the next one, the next one, the next one. So that was, that was a tough evolution. Um, but it was awesome. I mean, you also knew that like, what was cool about that is there's nobody that I can't save. If I could save, if I could save Scotty attacking me, you know, under those conditions and this monstrous human, um, and I could get him to the side and fight him the whole way, like I could save anybody, you know?

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  It was, and just the training program itself was just awesome.

• 1:14:35Shawn Ryan?

  Do you remember, do you remember when Ben, do you remember the armpit hair tactic that Ben created?

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  I do remember that. I had forgotten about that. Yeah.

• 1:14:49Shawn Ryan?

  Genius move.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  That was a genius move. I uh, I don't think that I uh, I don't think that I, I can't remember if instructors shaved their armpits for that or if they uh, if they stopped, but it was uh.

• 1:15:00Shawn Ryan?

  He, I remember, he had, what did they call that victim? You had like the, the passive victim, you had the unconscious victim, you had the one that's gonna fight everything you do. Basically beat the shit out of you as you're trying to save them. And I, I think it was, I think it was Pranger. Was it Pranger? Ben went out to save, to save Pranger. And he just reached all the way around his chest, grabbed a big handful of armpit hair and just yanked it. The instructor was like, "I'm good, I'm good." And uh, what a genius move.

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  Dude, I remember instructor Nave had me, and I didn't even know what a triangle choke was. He had me in a triangle choke on the bottom of like a 15 foot section of the combat training tank. I'm like trying to go underwater to get away from him. And he just like locks me up in this triangle and like down on the bottom.

• 1:15:52Shawn Ryan?

  Man, man.

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  That was crazy.

• 1:15:54Shawn Ryan?

  When did you, when did you find out you were gonna be the Class OIC?

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  So in Indoc, I was the senior guy. I was the only officer uh, for a little while. We had a few officers that ended up getting rolled back. So I think I was the, there were 18 of us in Buzz Class 241 that like started with 241 and made it through in one shot. I think I was the only officer from that, that group. And um, and, and the, the rest of our like 44 guys that graduated, you know, were, were rollbacks. And man, thank God for you guys, cause when you got rolled back into the class, like y'all were, y'all brought in this like, okay, we've been here before, we understand how to prep for these things. Cause at the time, we didn't, other than the Discovery Channel show, like you don't even know what's coming, right? The schedule's secret, you can't, it's not like you can walk in and ask the instructors that, you know, so um, that was, that was massive. But I,

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  we had several Os that were like rolled in. And so um, I think when, when you got rolled back into the class, um, that was uh, I got, there was, there was a senior officer who took that role um, through Hell Week. And then shortly after Hell Week, he got, um, he got rolled out. And so then I, I became the senior officer again. So most of the class, I was the. I was a senior officer.

• 1:17:04Shawn Ryan?

  What did that, I mean, what did that feel like for you to be the OIC of, of, I mean, that's a lot of induced pressure, I would imagine.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, I think it instantly, luckily, I'd learned the lesson of like, hey, I can't do everything. I'm here to rely on my, on my teammates to make this happen, right? I need to use my senior list of leadership. You know, if I'm running around trying to count everyone, right, that doesn't work, right? You have to have a, and if the LPO, the leading petty officer's doing that, that doesn't work. We need quarter way boat crew leaders. You know, you need people in those boat crews that are helping those boat crew leaders out. This is how decentralized command actually works. And so I think it was, that to me was like, the, the, the thing that I was, you know, I would get, sometimes people would come up with ideas and say, hey, let's go ask the instructors if we can do this, we can do that. You know, people wanted to kind of try to cut corners.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  I, I was, you know, I think, I know I frustrated some of the class sometimes when I was like, yeah, we're not gonna, we're not gonna, we're not gonna expend the leadership capital on something like that. We're gonna just show up when they tell us to do it, you know? We're not gonna ask if we can come 15 minutes later, right? We're gonna, like, it's not, it's not worth it. And I think for people that, at that time, I know sometimes, particularly some of the O's and boat crew leaders got frustrated with me, you know, with some of that stuff, but you have to just, I think, really prioritize like what you're gonna put, push back on, what you're not. And, and we, we had a phenomenal class. I mean, it was awesome. And it, it was, I mean, you joining our classes was one of my, my favorite stories of the whole thing, man. The hell we kick off.

• 1:18:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, that was, uh.

• 1:18:42Speaker 02

  That was us, man.

• 1:18:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I got rolled because I failed the first phase exam. Genius move, Sean. But it all worked out.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Everything happened for a reason.

• 1:18:52Shawn Ryan?

  It was an awesome class. And I do think my most memorable experience in BUDS with Leif Babin was the O-Course wrestling match when I got a little too far out in front of my skis and.

• 1:19:07Shawn Ryan?

  Challenged you to a, to a, to a wrestling match, didn't come out on top, but uh.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  Dude, that was so awesome though. We uh, so we show up to the O course, um, and uh, we show up to the obstacle course and, and you know, if you don't know anything about the Buzz obstacle course, it's a notorious obstacle course. These things have been around for a long time. All these obstacles are named and before even CrossFit or these kind of high intensity, you know, uh, intervals training was even a thing. The O course was that, right? You're gonna do seven or eight minutes of like max put out effort. You know, when you're done with that thing and then you add the soft sand runs and you know, uh, to the, to the demo pits and back, um, you know, that's a mile and a half down, mile and a half back. Um, and then, and then, uh, uh, and then add a ruck, you know, ruck run, you know, uh, in that soft sand on top of that for dirt phase.

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  So we were out there for that evolution and I can't remember what happened, like our, something got screwed up, the schedule got screwed up. I know I cleared the proctor, we were supposed to be there, but the instructors never showed up. And of course, there's nothing worse than like bored Bud students standing there. So somehow it started with these wrestling matches that were going on. And, and we had some wrestlers in the class and people were calling each other out like, like WWE SmackDown style. And I remember like, I was just kind of like trying to stay above the fray, making sure, you know, cause it's in the sand. We didn't want people's head hitting rocks or, you know, obviously at this point you get injured, right? You're gonna be rolled from the program, potentially don't even graduate. So I, I wanted to try to prevent that. I was trying to stay above the fray.

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  All of a sudden, you know, I got shot out there. You like walked out in the middle. It looked, it looked like Apollo Creed from the Rocky movies. I want you. You, you were like, babe, I want you. And like just challenging me. I was like, okay, I guess I got, I got no choice here. So they, they like drew a ring in the sand like Kumite and we had a big wrestling match. So it was awesome. I think it was probably more of a stalemate than anything, but.

• 1:21:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  I, I stuffed the tape.

• 1:21:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm pretty sure you choked me out.

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  I, I think I just held you in place until it was like, okay, let's move on to the next. Everybody got bored. But dude, you're, my favorite story from you was that Hell Week experience because, you know, we were, no one knows, it's kind of like combat, right? No one knows.

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  Hell Week was, I think it was the fifth week for us going through first phase. So we've been in five weeks of indoc. We've already been in four weeks, you know, of, of, of first phase at that point. And I think we started our class. Um, we started with 193 guys and um then I think we started with uh I think we started uh we started a whole week with uh 101 guys. So our our automatically was just get all already a bunch of people had quit, right? It's getting whittled down. Um, and I remember those numbers well, because it was you're already losing a bunch of people, you know, in those first few weeks.

• 1:22:02Shawn Ryan?

  Now, hold on, let me just I I just 193 guys that won one day or 193 guys in Endoc?

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  193 guys in Endoc.

• 1:22:11Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  Is what started with Bud's class 241. That's what classed up.

• 1:22:14Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  The original class. Now, some of those guys left, others got rolled back in, you know, the numbers are kind of switched around. And by the time we were in, we were about to start Hell Week, um, we had 101.

• 1:22:25Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  So, uh, we'd already lost, you know, guys, a lot of guys who quit, a bunch of, you know, injuries, things, people enrolled, things like that. Um, but you you were a brown shirt rollback, which is like that that coveted brown shirt was was had to be awesome, right? You made it through through Hell Week. And so we-

• 1:22:42Shawn Ryan?

  If you remember right, they actually took our brown shirts and gave us the white shirt back.

• 1:22:47Speaker 02

  Well, and I think that's what so I know people who I know people who uh in the previous previous years have been given a chance. They screwed up something in Bud's, you know, in in in dive phase or third phase, and were given a chance to go back and start day one. And they're like, no, thank you. I won't do it.

• 1:23:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:07Speaker 02

  They they turned down a career in the SEAL teams because uh they were not willing to go back. And and uh so once you made it through, I mean, Hell Week is Hell Week is uh is close to combat as you're gonna get. I mean, it was designed by Draper Kaufman and his staff at Fort Pierce back in World War II, you know, for the for the uh naval combat demolition units that were hitting the beaches at Normandy and and uh, you know, and blowing up all the op- I mean, these are the first waves, Omaha and Utah, and they were trying to create as much mayhem as possible for them. Uh, and so they tried to combine all this training down, you know, weeks of training into just five continuous 24 hour days. These guys, you know, up all night, no sleep, explosions going off everywhere, chaos and mayhem.

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  And just like combat, nobody knows how they're gonna do until they get in that situation. And I remember just reading the Bible, having Bible study. You were having Bible study in BUDs? Totally, yeah. Wow. Andrew Paul and I on our team, several others, you know, we got issued those Bibles. Yeah. Those little BUDs Bibles that were, you know, in IV translation and in the camo. I still have that one, man. And we, we were reading from Judges about the story of Gideon. And the story of Gideon, who's this reluctant warrior, like the angel of the Lord appears to Gideon and says, "Hey, you're gonna go fight the Midianites." And Gideon's like, "What are you talking about? I'm the least of my family.

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  I'm not even the biggest and strongest guy in my whole family. You know, Midian is so much stronger, more powerful than Israel. Like, what are you talking about? I can't do that." And the angel continually assures Gideon that, and he says, some translation, it's, you know, it was, "You are a mighty warrior and God is with you." And those are just such powerful words, you know. In some translations, it's, "God is with you, mighty warrior." And it's, you know, Gideon is this reluctant warrior. And of course, he is empowered to, he calls out to Israel. Thousands of people come to the call. You know, he has thousands of Israelite warriors that have answered the call. And God says, "That's too many. People aren't gonna believe in the miracle of this."

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  So he like whittles it down to just a few hundred. And Gideon goes and destroys the Midianites with just a few hundred warriors, you know, through the power of God. And so it was, we were reading that verse. In fact, Andrew, Paul and I, like, during Hell Week, you know, when in the darkest hour, you know, like the second day, like Tuesday night, you know, and probably the largest number of quitters, I remember quoting that verse to Andrew, you know, him quoting it to me. Like, it was- In the middle of it? In the middle of it, yeah. Wow. I said, I told him, "You're a mighty warrior. God is with you now." Go get back under your boat, you know, so like those things are, those verses were super powerful to make it through. But even then, like, I'm nervous. Like, I didn't, I

• 1:26:03Speaker 02

  didn't sleep at all, man. You know, prior, prior to Hell Week. Like, like, most people probably didn't. You probably didn't before your first Hell Week. And what's crazy is, you guys at 240 had like, the worst Hell Week of all. I remember, it was like, I was, I was going into SEAL Team Five, because I was TAD there before we classed up. Actually, maybe I was already an indoc, I can't remember. But I was scraping the ice. I scraped the ice off of my windshield.

• 1:26:30Shawn Ryan?

  That was 239.

• 1:26:31Speaker 02

  The 239?

• 1:26:32Shawn Ryan?

  I would love to take credit for that, but I can't. But that was class 239. Because I remember watching that, and I was like, it's fucking snowing in San Diego right now, and these guys are in the water. And I was like, holy shit. And I remember watching, like, all these badass guys, just like, quitting, quitting. I remember just going...

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  Well, 240, you guys had a huge amount of guys that got pneumonia. I think it was a particularly miserable one. It certainly wasn't the June Hell Week that we had, which the water wasn't as cold, the weather was cold, it just meant we ran more, you know? But you, you definitely went through a tough Hell Week, for sure, in 240. And, and so, when you got assigned to come back, and that brown shirt, you, so you get a white shirt, you know, you got a white shirt, you make it through Hell Week, you get that brown shirt. I mean, this is a super coveted thing. We're all looking at, you know, you and, you know, the guys that have made it through, like, oh, man, those guys made it through Hell Week. And we're talking, you know, the vast majority of the, the 70 to 80% of the people that don't make it to training quit during Hell Week. And so, when they took away your brown

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  shirt, and like, sent you back, you know, as a white shirt, and I just remember, like, I was in awe, man, of like, the attitude that you had. You were like, alright, this is what it is, like, we're gonna do it, you know? And, and I'm gonna go through this thing, I'm gonna be a team player for 241, I'm gonna tell them what I know, I'm gonna support the team. And, you know, we're all nervous, man, we've been up, you know, for, for nights on end, everyone's kind of freaking out, we're reading these Bible verses, they're trying to like, strengthen each other. And, and, and right as they kick off, you know, they come into the tents, and they have an amazing way... I think I hadn't slept for easy 24 hours prior to that, just as I was able to kind

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  of relax enough to like fall asleep for, you know, 10 minutes, right? They come in, all of a sudden the blank fire is going off, they'll fit machine guns and grenade sims are being thrown. And, uh, and I remember running out there. We had, we instantly had quitters from the team that had been thinking about it. It got to their head and they're, they're already ringing the bell within minutes. And we're running after the grinder, we're running around. And I remember them calling you out by name and getting, and pulling you out of the class and, uh, and, uh, and then, and then giving you your brown shirt back. And now you got the support. Uh, and it was, it was one of the coolest things I ever saw, man, because there were so many people who would have been like, no way am I doing that. I, I just did this. This is supposedly the toughest military training in the world. You're going to make me go through it again. And like, that's what you

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  were willing to do. And you were a team player the entire time. And then even as a brown shirt rollback, man, you were checking on us. You were looking at us. You're like, hey, guys, you know, you were just striking us, giving us some encouragement. It was freaking cool, man. And, uh, and I remember later you gave me some photos of all of us just like, we looked like just, you know, just, just disaster, like wet, sandy, all like contorted on these cars, you know, three days in when we get like our first chance to sleep for 45 minutes or an hour, whatever. And, uh, you know, you, but you're not taking, taking photos for us, like just helping us out, looking out for us. And, uh, it was, it was awesome, man. It just was a, it was like the consummate team player, uh, and the person's going to put the mission first. And you were like, hey, they're telling me

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  to do this? Cool. I'm going to do it. And even you were, you were willing to go into that with such a great attitude. And you could tell the instructor staff was like fired up by that. And, you know, the, the respected admiration that they had for you to be, to be willing to do that. And you were like, cause I don't, how much you, you were, it wasn't immediate, right? Like it was, I mean, you were running around the grinder.

• 1:30:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we did the, I think we did the whole, they, they, we did the whole breakout and then they, they, they called me and, uh, the other two gents out first, first surf torture.

• 1:30:20Speaker 00

  How about a latte?

• 1:30:21Speaker 03

  Maybe dark roast?

• 1:30:22Speaker 00

  Vanilla?

• 1:30:23Speaker 03

  Caramel?

• 1:30:23Speaker 00

  Blueberry?

• 1:30:24Speaker 03

  You could get them to agree on one flavor, or give everyone what they want. With Keurig, there's over 500 K-Cup Pod varieties of fresh, flavorful coffee. No effort, no grind, no settling. Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 1:30:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was, we were probably 45 minutes or hour of like solid, physical beat down. At this point, you probably are 100% convinced that

• 1:31:04Shawn Ryan?

  I was.

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  The entire next five days of no sleep.

• 1:31:07Shawn Ryan?

  Because Holcomb had actually told us, like, "They're probably gonna pull you guys out." We're like, like, right before. And we're like, "All right, whatever." And then I remember seeing him and break out, and I was like, "They're not fucking pulling us out." And, uh...

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  Like, he was just playing mind games with us.

• 1:31:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. But, um, well, thank you for saying that, man. I will say,

• 1:31:33Shawn Ryan?

  I think the thing that sticks out the most, and you were a great fucking leader, by the way. I really, uh, I've really looked up to you, you know, going through BUDs and...

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a lot, man.

• 1:31:45Shawn Ryan?

  And I had a terrible mistake in third phase right before, right before we were done on the island. I had an AD with a blank round. And, uh, talk about a, one of the most humiliating experiences of my entire fucking life. And, uh, yeah, I had an AD as an accidental discharge.

• 1:32:14Shawn Ryan?

  And I just remember getting called out immediately, and I was like, "Fuck, man. We're like a week away from getting out of here, and we're done, and I'm probably gonna get kicked out." And, um, I don't know what the conversations were, you know, behind the scenes. I never asked, but I just, I always respected you for not making...

• 1:32:37Shawn Ryan?

  For not making more of a thing out of it. And uh, cause it could, man, that's, you know, when you make a mistake like that, it's, you feel like the entire world's crashing down, you know, and, and uh, and uh, I've never even talked about it before, but.

• 1:32:52Speaker 02

  I haven't thought about that in a long time.

• 1:32:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:54Speaker 02

  And uh, you know what though, Sean, like to me, like it was, failure is the best teacher, right? And I think that those are the things that uh, I can't imagine that that helped you as a shooter and as an operator, um, you know, as teaching tactics, you know, down the road, you know, those kinds of lessons learned and the weight and pressure after all that you've been through, you know, weighing on you, but for, um, you know, you were always like exactly the kind of person that we wanted in the SEAL teams, like exactly the kind of person I wanted. I remember at one point, the instructor staff going through hell week saying like, who's not performing in your boat crew? Like who's, you know, always, they're always trying to solicit like info and I'd always be like, me, I'm not, I'm not performing. You know, I wasn't gonna throw guys on the bus or things like that. And then you, but

• 1:33:39Speaker 02

  you, you start to realize like, hey, they're, they, they want good people to serve in the SEAL teams. And if, if you don't want somebody, if you wouldn't want somebody on your platoon, you know, if you wouldn't want to, want to go to war with somebody, then that's like, you owe it to the SEAL teams that like, these guys should be weeded out of the program, right? That's what the program is actually for. Um, and uh, and so I think uh, that was somebody like you were always an absolute standout performer, uh, always somebody that put the team first. And, and I mean, to me like, you know, I don't think that was ever a question in any of these instructors' minds and, you know, uh, and, and everything I could say positive about you was, was always said, man, cause you were a go-getter, you got things done, you're smart, capable, you're talented, you're innovative, you're a hard

• 1:34:23Speaker 02

  worker, you're a physical put-out guy all the time. Um, and you, you absolutely the kind of guy, you know, that uh, that I wanted to serve in the SEAL teams with, that other SEALs you would want to serve with as well. And frankly, my hat's off to you, brother, cause I was 26 years old, man. I was an old man. Uh, there were a couple of guys along with me, um, our leading petty officer and, and a couple of the, our non-commissioned officers, but, um. Man, I was, I had 26 years of, you know, maturity experience for, for you to do that as an 18-year-old, you know, to have the maturity to train and the discipline to actually train and to put out and to be able to make the training. I don't think I could have done

• 1:35:03Speaker 02

  that at 18, man. So, I mean, that's, to me, that's, that's what I loved about SEAL Teams. It was always about the guys and the quality of the people that I got to serve with and, and guys like you, man. And that's, that's what I love most about BUDS is like, hey, we might be getting beat on, this might be physically punishing, but we could look at each other and just laugh about how ridiculous this situation was and, and how funny it was or how much we were actually suffering. And, you know, that, that, that's the best of the SEAL Teams, man.

• 1:35:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm with you, man. And, and you know, like I said, your reputation preceded you and went with you everywhere you went. And so, moving out of BUDS, I mean, where did you, we all get a dream sheet. Where, where did you want to go? What team?

• 1:35:52Speaker 02

  I wanted to be on the West Coast, you know, just because I'd been stationed in San Diego. My friends were out there. Just, you know, I, I had spent some time on a ship during a midshipman cruise in, in Virginia Beach. And I just, I liked San Diego, you know, I, I got to know it better and my closest friends were there. So, I think I'd put West Coast SEAL Teams. And I got service selected, or I say service selected, I got selected for, I was going to be sent to SEAL Team One. And, excuse me, the, so I got sent to SEAL Team One and, or I had orders to SEAL Team One. And that was a problem for me because

• 1:36:32Speaker 02

  in their rotation, like, as you know, I put on lieutenant in, in BUDS. And so I was already a senior guy. What that was going to do was, I was going to, I was going to start as a one-time platoon commander. So I would have had, I wouldn't have been an assistant platoon commander under my belt. And that was a problem. I was gonna like instead of, you know, having a full workup cycle and deployment as an assistant platoon commander, which will give me some experience in the SEAL teams and give me some perspective. I just didn't think that was good for me. It wasn't good for the SEAL teams. And so luckily, I had some good friends. It was my same, my same friend that was at SEAL Team Five and several other friends that were there. They went in and talked to the executive officer and commanding officer at SEAL Team

• 1:37:13Speaker 02

  Five. And they pulled some strings for me and got the DTH to cut me some new orders. So I went to SEAL Team Five and as an assistant platoon commander. So even though I was a, I was a lieutenant.

• 1:37:24Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I never thought of that.

• 1:37:26Speaker 02

  I got a chance to be a platoon commander. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I'm so thankful for, you know, my friends that were there, for the senior leaders that were there that pulled strings for me and made that happen and really opened some doors for me. So we got a, got a chance to go through and got a chance to serve with some of our, our mutual friends, Elliot, you know, from our Bud's class, who maybe, Elliot may be the most senior, the most significantly wounded living SEAL, like through the GWOT era.

• 1:37:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:58Speaker 02

  You know, who got wounded in Ramadi and, and TBI, you know, and, and lost his leg, wheelchair bound, like, like, you know, significant injuries, but just an amazing guy, man, and such an awesome dude. And always loved, like, stories from Bud's. I pulled strings to get him over to SEAL Team Five and try to stack that platoon. He was coming out of, you know, the 18 Delta Combat Medic Course, Special Forces Combat Medic Course that our corpsman went to. But it was, it was great to be there with Elliot, some of the guys that were in, you know, classes just, just before us and, and behind us.

• 1:38:32Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get into, we'll get into deployment cycles and everything that happened. But just real quick, I mean, when you, when you pinned your tryden on, you'd been passed up, you didn't get selected two different times, one in the academy, one a couple of years after the academy. Then you make it through straight with no hangups. I mean, who was your first phone call when you, when you passed Bud's, when you got through?

• 1:39:02Speaker 02

  My first phone call was to my dad. My dad, mom were praying, praying for me the whole time and knew that's what I wanted to do. And, and, um, you know, just wanted to thank them for their love and support, you know? Um, and, uh, all the, all the prayers and, and, uh, that was, uh, I think my dad has since got, you know, disappeared, but, uh, he had a voicemail from me after, after hell week that I called and left for him, you know, to, uh, as well, but that was, it was a proud moment, man, and, and getting that, uh, getting that trident, um, and you and I, you know, we didn't get pinned together because we, that was at SQT during the time, but, um, I remember, remember well, Ty Woods, who, uh, was, you know, our instructor at SEAL qualification training that,

• 1:39:45Speaker 02

  uh, he probably, probably pinned your trident on his chest just like he did for me.

• 1:39:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:49Speaker 02

  Um, as well, man, that we later lost in, in Benghazi. He was an awesome guy. Um, and, uh, yeah, that, that, that blood penning ceremony was, uh, was something that, that we, we had a full on Navy investigation on. Uh, I had to answer all these questions and.

• 1:40:05Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man, really?

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they, they were like, you know, this can't happen. This is hazing and, and that's so they, the, an officer was like, like, uh, doing an investigation. And I was like, I was like, I was like, I wasn't hazing. Like this is completely voluntary. This wasn't hazing in any way she had performed. Like I saw that as that, I saw that as a ritual. It was like, this is what I wanted to be a part of. And so I asked him, the investigating officer was like, hey, did you, did you get your trident pinned on? He was like.

• 1:40:31Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit, he was a SEAL?

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was like, that was a different time. I was like, there was no hazing whatsoever took place.

• 1:40:36Shawn Ryan?

  Ah, that's awesome, man. That's awesome. Well, you know, I do have one other question and I had no idea you guys were studying the Bible and buds. And, you know, I think, I think, um, at least for me, faith in general, kind of dissipated into nothing, uh, for, for a very long time until recently. And, uh, I'm, I'm just curious, did you, did that stick with you throughout your entire career?

• 1:41:04Speaker 02

  Man, I've fallen so far, Shawn. Um, I've stumbled, you know, as much as anyone out there. And, uh, um, I'm glad I had the foundation, you know, built in me. I think, um, uh, and by the way, man, you, you're, it's, I love that you share your faith with people. I think that's an incredible thing. I don't know how people who have been through dark times in their life make it through without faith, man. I, I, people ask me, how is it that you're doing okay? Uh, you know, and I think knowing that there is a Creator that's in charge of the universe, that has all things planned out and has a plan for each one of us, right? That, that to me is, is everything. And knowing that you can screw everything up and all you have to do is simply just ask for forgiveness.

• 1:41:47Speaker 02

  Um, and, and strive to, to, uh, to follow the righteous path as best you can. Knowing that we're all gonna fall short of the mark, you know? Um, but that's all it takes. And, and I think there, uh, that to me is, is, is everything. And, um, it's, I think, thank God that was instilled in me at an early age. I didn't realize or fully appreciate that. I, I went to, I went to, uh, the, the, the public school. I went to a, a private school at a small, like, three-room log cabin schoolhouse. Um, until I was in like fifth grade. And then I went to public school in a, in a small, you know, uh, East Texas public school. And then before my junior, I transferred to a, a, a public school, or I'm sorry, a private Catholic school

• 1:42:28Speaker 02

  in the, the bigger town of Beaumont, that was about an hour away in southeast Texas. Uh, uh, and so, um, you know, I, that, it was, it was, uh, the level of education there, I think, was gonna open some more opportunities for me. It was probably easier to get accepted into the Naval Academy, you know, as a, as a result of that, uh, or one of the service academies. But it wasn't until I started going to school, um, and, you know, I was going to school in, in the, the Catholic school was outstanding school. We had a religious, um, class every semester. Um, and, and I was going to, to school with kids that had, uh, had been in a religious class every, from kindergarten on, you know? And I remember the, and so this is my junior year and, and this is my first ever, like, religious class, 'cause in public school, we, we didn't, we didn't have that.

• 1:43:11Speaker 02

  Uh, but I went to, you know, Sunday school, every Sunday with them. The, uh, First Baptist Church of Woodville. I was in, involved in the youth group and we, we were constantly, my dad would study the Bible and talk about it at home. It was constantly something that we referenced and talked about. And, uh, and so I remember the teacher in, in, in high school, in this, this, um, uh, my senior Kelly High School, asking, like, in, in the, the, um, In the spiritual class there, like, what is, how did the Israelites get to Egypt? And, and I was like, you know, I just, I was kinda looking around the room. I was ready for somebody to jump in. And I was like, I was like, I just raised my hand and, and I thought, I talked about Joseph, the coat of many colors, and you know, his brothers

• 1:43:55Speaker 02

  sold him into slavery. And then, you know, he's, uh, which is an amazing story from the Bible, right? Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers that are jealous of him. He goes, his brothers think he's dead. He goes to Egypt. Years later, um, there's a famine in the land of Canaan. His brothers bowed down before him and are asking for, you know, for food supplies. Um, and, and, and what he says to him is that, you know, what you use for good, you know, what you meant for evil, God chose to, to use for good. And so, all the Israelites come and so they, they, uh, and they start to become, um, you know, populous in Egypt. They, they eventually be slaves, 400 years of slavery, uh, that results from that in Egypt until Moses leads them out. And I was kinda looking around

• 1:44:39Speaker 02

  the room, like, everyone knows the answer to that question. And afterward, people were like, dude, like, how did you know that? And I was like, I was like halfway paying attention and like Baptist Sunday School, you know, like getting kicked out because I was bad and, you know, cutting up and punching people in the back of the head. But I realized like, like studying the Bible was, um, that that had been ingrained in me. That that's something my, my, my family did. That's something that we did in church and in my youth group, like, opening the word, studying the word. Um, and I'm so thankful for that, that foundation, um, that was built in me. And then there's times when I strayed very, very far, you know, from that. But I, I, I thank God that that always has brought me back to like, the truth, right? Always understanding that there's forgiveness for

• 1:45:24Speaker 02

  anything. And, uh, and, and that all it takes, you know, is to, uh, is to recognize your own failures and flaws, that none of us are actually good enough, you know, to, to achieve righteousness on our own. And only through the, the blood of Jesus can, can we do that? And, and that's all it takes. So, that to me is, um, I've shared that with, with many people when I talk about it. You know, we don't need an openly secular organization, Eshelph Bron, but, um, I think there's so many foundations of, that are biblically rooted, right? When it talks to being humble, I mean, you know, that you can't study scripture and not realize like, Abject humility is continually the theme. You know, the proud will be humbled and the humble will be exalted.

• 1:46:05Speaker 02

  And that's throughout the Scripture, particularly in the New Testament. But I think, you know, the idea that like, if we gotta take ownership of our problems, like, we're never gonna actually be good enough. And that's what prevents us from achieving salvation. So that to me, I think to me, faith is everything. And I think having that foundation that's built in and study of the Word. I try to be like the, Paul talks about the noble Bereans, who after he would preach to them in the synagogue would study the Word to see if these things were so. So right, you hear something in a sermon, you hear something from a pastor, you hear something from somebody in the world.

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  We would actually search the Word, open up the Bible, study Scripture, make sure that that actually is the truth. And that it's open for any of us to study and know. But I just, you know, it's been really cool to hear about your spiritual journey. And I thank you for sharing that because I think for so many people out there, they're trying to find some answer, you know, in the secular world. They're trying to find, whether it's fame or fortune or money, you know, power, followers on social media, whatever it may be. And they're never gonna find that, right? We all know that that doesn't lead to happiness. It is the, and I think being grounded in that.

• 1:47:29Speaker 02

  By the way, have you ever been to the Palace of Versailles?

• 1:47:33Speaker 02

  I don't think so. So the Palace of Versailles, I got a chance to go to France this summer just before the 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasions. Oh, man. And I did a go-ruck event there. We did the 80-kilometer ruck. You know, about 50 miles. It was brutal, man. 19-hour get some evolution. But awesome to do that with a go-ruck team. And, but we went to the Palace of Versailles and my wife and I took our kids there. And we had a nanny there that came and helped us with the kids. And she did some great reporting there. And the Palace of Versailles is probably the greatest monument to...

• 1:48:08Speaker 02

  The idea that money and power and fame and fortune cannot buy you happiness. It is the most magnificent place you could ever go, like Golden Gates. And I mean, this was the seat of power, right, for the, you know, for the, for the French kingdom. Uh, from Louis XIV, who was the son king at the height of France's power, one of the most powerful people in the entire world, you know, all the way through Louis XVI, who eventually, you know, he and his wife Marie Antoinette were led to the guillotine. And I think one of the reasons that happened is because I don't think they had a clue what was going on outside the palace, man. It is, I think they were, they're surrounded by people who, you can walk around these amazing gardens and this incredible just ornate, um, uh, palace

• 1:48:49Speaker 02

  that would have just eclipsed, it's mind blowing to think about the power and fame and fortune and influence and, you know, that was going on. This is the reality show, right, TV, the time that everybody wants to be a part of. And, and you just sense that it's probably the most miserable place you could be, right? You can't trust anybody, everybody's got their agenda, everyone's trying to, you know, uh, to undermine the other and, and it's, it, it's, I think it's just a living monument to that. I think it's worth going and worth seeing.

• 1:49:16Shawn Ryan?

  Very interesting.

• 1:49:17Speaker 02

  You know, for that, but it's again, just leading us back to the faith of like, what buys you happiness, right? It's, it's the, it's the, the, the proud will be humbled and the humble will be exalted. And only through recognizing, uh, my own failures, abject failures and flaws and weaknesses, you know, can I actually, uh, find salvation, you know, through, uh, through, through Jesus. Um, and I hope that's something that, uh, that others can turn to and, and see because, uh, that is, uh, that is how you, you find peace in this world.

• 1:49:50Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not like extremely wealthy or anything, but it does, but you know, I'm working towards it. And so, doesn't the Bible say something like a rich man has like a fucking?

• 1:50:03Speaker 02

  It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

• 1:50:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What do you think about that?

• 1:50:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, these are, those are great questions, man. I think, um, uh, Abraham was very wealthy. I had massive herds. Um, so did Isaac, so did Jacob. Uh, um, Joseph became second only to Pharaoh in Egypt, you know, the most powerful empire of the the time, you know, and the day. Um, I think, uh, I think God, I mean, Job was, you know, was given tremendous wealth, right? That's one of those that was taken away from him that when Satan was trying to, um, get him to curse God. So I think there's, I think God, um,

• 1:50:51Speaker 02

  I, I, I think, I think God gives us, I think as long as you remember that the, it belongs to God. It belongs to God. And so you can choose that to do good with it, you know, or you could choose it to be selfish with it. Um, I think God has given you the means to, to, to help people, uh, and, uh, and I think, I kinda like Dave Ramsey's take on it, you know, that when you have like the, the, uh, you can't help your, you can't help anybody else out, right? If you came to me and you're like, hey, Leif, I'm having trouble paying my bills and, you know, I might lose my house here if I can't pay my mortgage. And if I don't have my own finances in order, like I can't help you.

• 1:51:29Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:51:30Speaker 02

  I can't do anything for you. So like, I need to, if, i- i- if I have my finances in order, then I have the ability to actually have the means to help you. Um, it enables me to help other people. So I think when it becomes, when it becomes the object of worship, as like, no, no, I want more money. It's money for the sake of money. Um, I think that's where it becomes a problem. And then when you know that it's all,

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  man, it's all like, it's just all dust, right? It's, you can't take any of it with you. Um, I think when people kinda hold that up, it's like, this is what success looks like. I think you do have to be careful that it's, uh, there is.

• 1:52:08Speaker 02

  You know, I think that Jesus talked about the Jewish culture of the day was like, hey, if, if someone was poor, well, that means that God like, you know, they did something bad. If someone was rich, then God had blessed them. They did something good. And Jesus threw that on its head. Like that thinking is not true at all. In fact, when his disciples had asked him, you know, when he encountered a blind man, you know, who sinned, this man or his parents? And Jesus said, neither. This man is blind, so that God could be glorified. And then he healed him. So, I mean, I think it's, it just throws out the idea that like, you know, bad things could happen to us at any time, right? All of this can be, you know, can be given and taken away. And I think as long as you use the means that are given

• 1:52:52Speaker 02

  to you for good, you know, to help those in need, to help others in need. And I love what you're doing that, man, with like the veterans advocacy groups and bringing people into the fold, like not working yourself, right? So you can actually help people and get them into the fold so they can get taken care of and get the benefits they deserve, you know, through, through the VA. I just think, I think those things, using the platform that you've been given for good, man, like that's, that's, that's, you've been given this platform for a reason, man. God has placed you in that position for a reason.

• 1:53:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:27Speaker 02

  And you, you can choose to use it for good or ill, right? And, and when you share your faith with people, when you try to help those in need and try to actually reach out to those that are struggling, you know, in hard times, like you're using it for good, man. And that's what I think has been so awesome about seeing your success.

• 1:53:40Shawn Ryan?

  Man, thank you. Yeah, it's just something, I don't know, man, I think about it all the time, cause, cause, you know, I wanna, wanna set future generations of my family up to tell you don't get pushed around. You know what I mean? In my opinion, is, is you, you.

• 1:54:05Shawn Ryan?

  You create enough wealth to where you can't be fucking pushed around anymore. That's like something that's really important to me. I don't want, I just, I just don't want to see, you, look, you see all these fucking families and everybody's getting pushed around, man. Pushed around in their beliefs, you know, you see it and you see it everywhere. And, uh, and it just like from the, I mean, it just looks like the people that don't get pushed around are the ones that, that work themselves up to be, to be wealthy so that they, you know, they, they can afford to, you know what I mean? Pull their fucking kids out of school and put them over here and, and, uh.

• 1:54:46Speaker 02

  I think there's definitely something to that, man, right? I mean, if you, if you become uncancellable, you know?

• 1:54:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:51Speaker 02

  Like, uh, where, where somebody, somebody, they're trying to put the pressure on you, um, you know, and you could say like, no, I'm not gonna do that, you know, or hey, I'm gonna, oh, I, you, yeah, that might be a big paycheck. Um, but I'm not actually gonna take that sponsorship because I don't want you dictating what I get to say.

• 1:55:07Shawn Ryan?

  No, I'm never, I'm never, I'm never fucking like that.

• 1:55:11Speaker 02

  Well, I think that's what's been awesome, man. That's what's driven the success of your show, man. I mean, there's no question in my mind about that. Like you get to, you get to talk to people you want to talk to. You don't pull punches. You don't like, you know, you say what you want to say. And I, I think, uh, um, and not that you're not smart about it or professional about it, you know, but I think there's, um, uh, I, I think the self censorship, man, that you were talking about with Joe, you know, on, on the Rogan, uh, Joe Rogan experience was like, that's, that's the worst of all, right? Like, oh, I shouldn't say that because someone doesn't want to say that. I mean, I just think it's, I think that's the kind of thing where, I think there's enough people pushing back on things now where that pedal must start to swing back. Where people are like, yeah, we've had, we've had enough of that.

• 1:55:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I think so too. I mean, is that something you think about though, building, when you're building your business?

• 1:56:01Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:56:01Shawn Ryan?

  The, the wealth stuff and what the Bible says about?

• 1:56:05Speaker 02

  Totally, man.

• 1:56:06Shawn Ryan?

  What was the, what was the passage again? The camel?

• 1:56:10Speaker 02

  Uh, it's easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle. Is the, is the passage that Jesus talks about. Now, there's some controversy about whether he's talking about a an actual geographic place. Or an actual needle himself, like what, and then he was asked about it, his disciples were asked about it, he says, he's saying it's not impossible, and there clearly are many, many, you know,

• 1:56:34Speaker 02

  many examples of wealthy people, including Joseph of Arimathea, who was a wealthy man that Jesus was laid in his tomb. Nicodemus, who was one of the Pharisees and, and

• 1:56:48Speaker 02

  Jesus called him the teacher in Israel. Um, in, in John, where he comes to Jesus by night and asks like, you know, how do you get to heaven? You know, how do you be born again? Um, and, uh, and so those are things that, uh, these, these were, these are believers that were wealthy and positioned to power and, and use their, their power for good, you know?

• 1:57:07Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Yeah, it's just, you know, it's something I always think about, and I know Jesus is, um, you know, all about family. And so if the goal is to, you know, protect your family with it and everybody around you, then I just don't see how it could be bad, but you know, I don't know. I get wrapped up in these little.

• 1:57:30Speaker 02

  I struggle with it too, man. I struggle with it too, you know, as, as we started to gain some success um, as well, but I mean, the cool thing is like, as you're you, I mean, you've got a growing business, right? You're, you're, you're employing people, like you're, you're creating livelihoods for people, you're, uh, um, I think that's, that's huge, man. That builds our economy and

• 1:57:50Speaker 02

  you're promoting, you know, the, the sponsors and those companies, you know, that, that employ people. I mean, those, those things all have huge impacts, so you gotta, you can't lose track of that. I think we live in a society where um, you kind of get demonized, right, of like, success, uh, and you shouldn't be apologetic for it. I think you should be, again, confident, not cocky, right? Like you confident, knowing like, hey, this is what I'm supposed to do. This is, God's given me the opportunity to do this. I'm gonna use this platform for good. And then I'm gonna help people in need. If I see someone in need, I can help them. Cool. I'm gonna, I'm gonna absolutely help them. Um, and I'm gonna use that, the, the means that I've been given for good. And I think also, again, knowing that like, ultimately, our faith is not in money or savings or even our Firearms stash, as much as I hate to admit that in our house.

• 1:58:32Speaker 02

  Our faith is in the almighty creator of the universe, who's in charge of all things, man. And even if he lost everything, right, like Job did. You know, he's still on the throne, he still has a plan. And that's where your faith lies, you know?

• 1:58:49Shawn Ryan?

  So a lot of people looking for that right now. A lot of people looking for that. It's really, uh, it's cool to see, you know, how many people are coming to the word. But, um, well, Leif, let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll pick up at SEAL Team Five.

• 1:59:07Shawn Ryan?

  I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force-feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth in what's going on in the country and in the world. And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign Superbad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show.

• 1:59:50Shawn Ryan?

  And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind-blowing. And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So it's gonna be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not gonna spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's gonna be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that.

• 2:00:34Shawn Ryan?

  But, like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up, link's in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

• 2:00:49Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Leif, we're back from the break. You're getting into, you're getting ready to check into SEAL Team Five as a brand-new guy, but in '03. And so, let's just talk about, you know, what that experience was like checking in. Let's go to day one.

• 2:01:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was awesome. Walked across the corner deck there at SEAL Team Five. And we were in the old, kind of, Quonset huts, you know, then. And we ended up building like a new building that was all kind of fancy. And some of those old Quonset huts had been out there since the World War II, you know, under our demolition team days. But it was awesome. I knew a bunch of people at SEAL Team Five. It was great to be a new guy there. There was a bunch of pipe hitters there. There were people that were just, they had just come back. I checked in, and I, we came back from Alaska, our Winter War for Training trip, which I did in August of 2003, which was actually miserable. It was like 40 degrees and raining on us, you know, for a lot of the time.

• 2:01:51Speaker 02

  But we had a great time up there, you know, on the, we, awesome fishing. And we came back, excuse me, we came back from that, and I immediately went on like an elk hunting trip with my dad and my brother. We went up to the mountains of Colorado and went and pursued some elk with our bows. And then I came in, I checked into SEAL Team Five, and the guys were just, a couple of people had just come back, but the team was deployed. So Iraq war had just kicked off. And so, you know, SEAL Team Five had taken over from Team Three, that had done kind of the initial takedowns of the oil platforms off the coast. And then SEAL Team Five had really gotten to the mix with the DAs, right? The direct action missions, the capture-kill raids.

• 2:02:35Speaker 02

  And they were, they started using vehicles and jumping in, you know, using those vehicles as like their mobility element. I think they initially had to borrow vehicles from the National Guard unit, because we didn't have the capability in the SEAL teams at the time. And so that became like, I came back, and the guys that were coming back from that deployment started trickling back, you know, over the... In the fall were highly experienced. I mean, they had more experience than any SEAL unit since Vietnam at that point. So it was really cool to learn from them and talk about the real world experiences that they were, you know, that they were, they were getting and it was just, just a lot of great mentors, a lot of open up notebooks and ask a lot of questions.

• 2:03:15Shawn Ryan?

  So what, I mean, what was, it's just such a different experience than, you know, from what I experienced. I mean, you're, you're going, especially going to Team Five, I didn't know that they were the kind of the first ones out the door doing it and in Iraq. And so, you know, as a, as a lieutenant in oh three, I mean, we've already discussed the fact that you were going to have to do a platoon commander, which means you're in charge of everyone in the platoon, for those that are listening. And you were able to, you know, finagle your way into kind of an AOIC, we're not kind of, an AOIC slot is what it sounds like. So second in charge, in your, your, you know, from your words,

• 2:03:59Shawn Ryan?

  you're getting ready to lead men who have the most experience out of the entire SEAL team organization, all of naval special warfare since Vietnam. I mean, what is that, what is that like for, to walk into that, you know, with, with, with, I mean, a junior guy right out of SQT. I mean, we basically, yeah, we're SEALs, but we really don't know shit, you know, and we haven't really experienced anything other than training. And you got these guys coming back who you just mentioned, capture kill missions. They're getting after it.

• 2:04:37Speaker 02

  It was very intimidating, man. I, when I graduated BUDS, you know, when you and I, you and I graduated BUDS together, you know, we felt like, hey, we just graduated BUDS. Like, you know, we're ready to go take on the world, right? Then you start going into SQT, SEAL qualification training, you start getting some of the fundamentals of close quarters combat and land warfare and, you know, maritime operations. You realize, man, there's a lot I don't know. And then you start getting that first workup, you're like, I don't know anything. I know absolutely nothing. And then I deployed in combat, you know, I deployed to Iraq. And when I was leading my first combat missions, like, I know absolutely nothing at all. Like, it's even less than nothing. So it definitely was very humbling. It was cool, though, because there was You know, I think just realizing that like, hey, I can learn from these guys. Let me talk to them.

• 2:05:20Speaker 02

  Let me, let me understand what, what they, what they know. Um, and I think everyone was trying to like get in, you know, into the war effort. Everyone get a, got a chance to, you know, everyone wanted a chance to go, go forward and be in the fight. Um, and for me, like right off the bat, um, our very first training block was, uh, was the, uh, our very first training block was, uh, was the assaults block. And, uh, so we started, you know, going, going through and learning that and, you know, doing our close quarters combat. And then we did our, we did our, our visit board search and seizure block, um, you know, shortly thereafter that.

• 2:05:57Speaker 02

  And it was, um, that was, uh, I, I had had a bunch of experience boarding ships as we talked about, you know, in, in the Persian Gulf. So I'd climb down these ships onto a, you know, climb down the, the Jacobs ladder, right? The rope ladder and the plastic rungs that you lower, um, you know, from the side of the ship. I've climbed up and down those things a thousand times. And, uh, in my very first, uh, VBSS training block, we're doing some hook and climbs from the eleven meter ribs, you know, from the, from the special boat team, uh, detachment that took us out. We're 13 miles off the coast of San Diego and we're boarding the duty oiler, right? It's like 800 foot long, uh, uh, a U S Navy service ship.

• 2:06:40Speaker 02

  Uh, this is the ship that like the other, that's refueling the, you know, the Navy warships and the carriers. And, uh, and so we're 13 miles off the coast of San Diego and, um, we're doing the hook and climbs. Uh, you know, climbing up that little caving ladder, just as, as you've done. And I remember I was about to walk off the, the deck. I was like the first down on the ladder to climb back down onto the rib. And we had a guy that was driving the boat. They, they clearly had a new coxswain at the helm, like he was, somebody was having a tough time. You know, and you remember what it's like when you're climbing up that little, you know, caving ladder and you're getting, and your boat's going, you know, uh, left and right, like, you know, uh, are moving out, hauling out from the ship. Like it's treacherous as you're trying to climb up the 25 foot freeboard and you're bouncing up and down the waves.

• 2:07:25Speaker 02

  And so we kind of complained about it, you know, with, this guy can't drive the boat. And people were kind of complaining about it, but no one, no one said anything. I didn't say anything. And so I'm about to climb down. So now the cave ladder, we climbed up, we cleared the ship, we took down the bridge. And so now we're gonna do another run. And they threw the Jacob's ladder over the side, this big, heavy, you know, rope ladder with the plastic ropes. This is now admin, right? We're just climbing down back onto the rib. So I'm climbing down this thing. And right before I go, one of the trading detachment instructors that's running the train says, "Don't be scared, babe." And he made some comment like that. I'm like, whatever. You know, I just, I just like, like, uh, I was like, man, I've done this a thousand times, dude. I walked out, I so I get down to the bottom of the ladder, right? The water line, the waves are going up

• 2:08:09Speaker 02

  and down. The rib comes in. As the rib's about to haul out from the side of the ship, I go to step on, or as the rib comes in, I'm about to go step onto the ship and the rib hauls out, probably 10 or 12 feet from the side of the ship. And I went right down in between

• 2:08:23Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:08:24Speaker 02

  the rib of the ship. And it would have been fine if I had a positive flotation on. We went and did our dip test of the combat turning tank, you know, just like we're supposed to be a positive flotation on. Man, if not, I'd have been 2,000 feet on the bottom, you know, off the coast of San Diego out there. But it was, I go, I got my leg wrapped up in the painter line.

• 2:08:46Speaker 00

  Oh, shit.

• 2:08:47Speaker 02

  So now I'm getting dragged upside down underwater by this 800-foot-long vessel. And, and I mean, I didn't know what to do. I mean, this was, they're going like 12 knots, which is a lot of pressure, you know, if you're underwater. The, and my leg is like suspended, but my body's like underwater. I got my helmet, body armor, weapon, you know, radio, all that stuff on me. Luckily, we had a weapon shape, not a real weapon. Because I ditched that, you know, as soon as I could. I was trying to get to my, you know, my little scuba bottle, the heat bottle. That got just ripped away by the force of the water. So I couldn't get to that. The rib comes in and just, and they're trying to rescue me. And they just smashed me between the rib and the ship. And luckily, if I had, if I had a Protech on, a plastic helmet, I'd have been killed.

• 2:09:32Speaker 02

  Almost certainly would have smashed my head, man. It uh, I had my Kevlar on and so it, the boat smashed my nose. It just kinda like filleted my nose open. Um, but uh, the rib realized they can't help me, so they just kinda hauled off and they were sitting probably 200 yards off the, you know, off the quarter, just kind of, just no one knew what to do. The guys on the ladder didn't know what to do. Um, and I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm trying to reach the water. Every time I tried to get my hand, I would just get ripped right back down by the force of the wave. So, um, I, I, within probably, you know, it felt like an hour, right? It probably was two or three minutes, but it uh, I, I very quickly realized like I'm, I'm not gonna survive this, man. This is, Wow. Holy shit.

• 2:10:16Speaker 02

  And it just happened like that. And it was, I just remember thinking, what a stupid way to go, man. This is, like, this is so dumb. You know, I've done this a, a thousand times. And luckily some heads up guys on the ladder, my teammates above me on the ladder, they realized, you know, climb back, they climbed back up the Jacob's ladder and they, everyone was kinda just wondering what to do and they started, one guy was like, hey, let's haul this thing. And they started hauling it in my hand. Uh, and they lifted me, I mean, that was a massive feat of strength. And very heads up, you know, for them to do, cause it was a contingency that they hadn't really even thought about. Um, and so they, they started hauling the ladder in and, and as it lifted me up out of the water, the painter rope popped free off my leg and I floated down the side of the ship. Damn.

• 2:11:00Speaker 02

  And uh, I mean, I could see just blood pouring down my face. The, the rib, uh, the, so the rib rather, let me to rib comes over to pick me up. I just float right down the side of the ship. They, I'm, I'm kind of in the stern wash, you know, as they come pick me up. And they, they, their faces were white. I mean, they were like, eyes this big. I must've just looked, Probably thought you were dead. Blood just pouring everywhere and, and I, I, I probably looked especially crazy, Sean, cause I had a gigantic smile on my face. I was laughing. Cause I was so, I was so happy to be alive, man. And I, I did not think I was gonna live through that. And uh, I was, I was stoked. And actually Elliot Miller was the corpsman on that, man. Elliot treated me and, and uh, was keeping pressure on my face.

• 2:11:42Speaker 02

  Took me to Balboa, you know, they got me stitched up. Um, I sat out for another couple of weeks till the stitches healed, you know, and, and uh, Damn. And uh, got our, got our go plats on. Holy shit.

• 2:11:56Shawn Ryan?

  So how did you, how did you, how did you gain the respect of the, of the guys? Of the seasoned guys coming back from combat?

• 2:12:04Speaker 02

  Man, I don't know if I did a great job. I'll tell you, I, I learned, I made a lot of mistakes. And, and as I said earlier, like mistakes are the, the best teacher. And I think so many, you know, when you ask me like, what, what are you looking for in a leader? Humility is number one because I think so many of the mistakes that I made, particularly early on, were when I was really trying to prove myself, you know, when I was like, I need to show people that I'm a competent leader. And I need to show people that I know what I'm doing and I'm in charge of this or, you know, that, and, and I made all kinds of mistakes like that, you know, in, instead of actually what you need to do is show people that you're humble. What you need to do is show people that you can listen. What you need to do is show people that you can lean on the most experienced people.

• 2:12:42Speaker 02

  Um, we were lucky, we, we had a super squared away crew in, in our, in my first platoon, uh, SEAL Team Five Bravo platoon and, and uh, they were awesome, man. Like it was a great crew of guys. We had a stellar crew of new guys and we had some, some experienced guys that just come back from, from combat and uh, it was uh, and uh, we had a, we had, we, we had a, uh, our, our platoon was, was tough as nails, man, because our, our, our physical training coordinator was Dave Goggins, who was,

• 2:13:13Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 2:13:14Speaker 02

  He ran all our training and Dave is exactly who, who, who you see Dave today, man. It was, you could always tell our platoon because no one had any skin on their shins because we were constantly climbing ropes, doing, you know, hundreds of pull-ups and running like crazy and he organized all the PTs and uh, it was good, man. It was, it was a good time.

• 2:13:30Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet it was good. With that guy running it, holy shit, man. Well, when did you find out? So you check into Team Five. We talked about that. When, when did you find out where you're deploying to?

• 2:13:46Speaker 02

  We were all fighting to go to chance, you know, to get a chance to go to Iraq and we we've we learned that we were going to get surged, you know, forward with, they were going to combine, we were going to be part of SEAL Team Three's deployment. So they took they took some of the platoons from Team Five and split them up. And so the plan was to go half of that to Iraq and then half to the Pacific Theater, you know, to run JSATs with our, you know, partners. And so we knew we were going to go Iraq, first of all, and then all of a sudden, the, you know, SEALs got handed the personal security detail mission for the top five interim Iraqi officials. I don't know, did you get did you get tied up in that for your first one?

• 2:14:26Shawn Ryan?

  We did. Well, not for my first one with, you know, we talked about my first one at breakfast. When I went to Baghdad, we did, we were, the whole team was tasked with it. And we had a very, just a really fucking cool OIC. And I don't want to say his name because I don't know what he's doing nowadays. He might still be in. But he started farming us out to, he started farming us out to conventional units and who were having problems with with with the ID stuff going on. And so they, yeah, they sent us, he got us into all these

• 2:15:08Shawn Ryan?

  different locations, helping, training, and going on operations with with conventional units, primarily Army units. And we would do like a mini workup, training course on on sniper operations, take the guys out and then get rid of the problem, you know, kill the bad guys. And and and so we, I never had to do any PTS, or PTS, PSD, personal security details in Iraq because he had farmed us out.

• 2:15:41Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 2:15:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:43Speaker 02

  Well, I can't tell you that, that, I mean, having done a bunch of that on that first deployment, for a few weeks.

• 2:15:51Speaker 02

  And then on our second deployment to Ramadi, just seeing, you know, so much of that war was a defensive war, right, for those guys that were, you know, when the enemies, 70, 80% of of attacks are IEDs, you know, roadside bombs, and when there's nothing to shoot back at, you know?

• 2:16:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:10Speaker 02

  And you don't even know who placed it there, and you're losing guys, and you're hauling your dead and wounded comrades out of the street. There was nothing, I think, more powerful, you know, for a morale booster than, you know, for those conventional units that know the soldiers and marines are out there in the streets, running those convoys, knowing that they had frogmen on the high ground, snipers that were, had their backs, you know, and were covering for them so they could move. I think it was, it was phenomenal to be able to do that, support those guys.

• 2:16:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:36Speaker 02

  And I think it was, it was, it was just game changer, you know, and if you think about every, every bad guy you eliminated, right, is more soldiers and marines are coming home to their families as a result, and, and I don't, I don't think we did near enough of it. And some of the people that criticized us, you know, later of like, that's not a special operations mission, I was like, man, you, you know what you're talking about, man, this is, is there Americans that are getting killed? Like, whatever we can do to try to help win this thing and help more of them come home to their families is, is what we're gonna do.

• 2:17:04Shawn Ryan?

  It was awesome, man, I mean, you know, not only the operations that we did, but, but we ran into, and several of these, I've talked about this before, and a lot of the guys, a lot of the conventional guys that we worked with emailed in saying, hey, I was, I was the 18-year-old that got that kill that day, or thanking us, and we ran into, I think it was, I think it was the 10th Mountain guys that we worked with, they were the first ones we got co-located with, and we ran, and they were the last ones that

• 2:17:45Shawn Ryan?

  we saw, we ran into them at the chow hall at the end of the deployment, and One of the sniper teams that we had trained and taken out came up and they were like, "Hey, um, we've killed X amount of, you know, more bad guys. We have not had any casualties since you guys put us through that and we just want to like, all of our equipment's different." Well, they've changed everything. They took all the recommendations that we had and implemented just about everything and, and it was just cool to see, man, like, the impact after you're gone. You know, like, we went there, these guys were getting blown

• 2:18:24Shawn Ryan?

  up like every day. Um, we killed the guys in the first 12 hours, I think, uh, and, and then moved on to the next unit. And, and did like, to run into those guys three or four months later, whatever it was, and, and to see them like, still doing the job effectively, probably even more effectively, and, and taking zero casualties when they were every other day. I was like,

• 2:18:56Shawn Ryan?

  it's just fucking cool, man. You know, I mean, to, I mean, how many, how many guys are still walking around today that would have been killed had we not gone there and trained with them? And then they have kids and their kids will have kids. I mean, you're, when you, when that kind of shit happens, like, you're not just saving a life. It's, it's an entire fucking line of lineage, you know, that is gonna be roaming the earth because 16 guys from a SEAL platoon went and trained with that unit and brought them on a real world operation. And it's cool to think about, you know?

• 2:19:37Speaker 02

  That's awesome, man. That's outstanding. And I think you, sometimes, you know, when you, when you think what it, what it's all about and like, you know, all this loss of life and, you know, friends that we lost and families that have been destroyed, you know, in the wake of it. And, and even those guys are seriously wounded as well, right? Lives are changed and altered forever. Um, it's really good to remember that, man. It's good to remember the impact of that. I think it's a little bit like that. You know, it's kind of like It's a Wonderful Life, right? With George Bailey there and getting a chance to see like, you know, what it would have been like if you didn't do that stuff, right? And I think, I think it's a good reminder, man, of the impact that it has. And it's, it's just, it's so much bigger than us. Like, for me, like, I was gonna do everything in my power, always, right?

• 2:20:21Speaker 02

  To help, try to, try to bring as many Americans home as we could, do everything we could to do as much damage to the enemy as we could. And, and I think that's, that's just an obligation that we all have. And, and, so for me, like, it was, I was, I was lucky enough, we got assigned that, that security detail mission, and the team right before us had been given it. And man, that was, that was not what we wanted, as you remember. But I think Blackwater came in with like a, a bid, it was like a hundred million dollars per, you know, per guy. And the Bush administration said, "Negative, that's too expensive. SEALs, you got it." But I think the, seeing that, like, you know, two of those guys had been assassinated,

• 2:21:05Speaker 02

  you know, in the months prior to the SEAL teams taking over it. And so when this is like a no-fail mission, we have to keep these five interim Iraqi government officials alive. I loved, one of the guys that passed down to me, you know, for the previous SEAL team, said, you know, "We know there's bad guys looking at us, we know they're gonna try to, you know, they're gonna try to take us out at some point. Our whole goal is just to make them say, 'Not today. Not today. They look at us, 'Not today. And we're gonna be, you know, we're gonna be a hard target, they're gonna look at us, 'Not today, we'll try somewhere else. We'll go hit some softer targets somewhere.'" And, and I thought that was something that always stuck with me. And, and the SEALs did that amazingly well, right? Kept all those guys alive. It was frustrating for me, as a, as a, I got to go out with the detail every once

• 2:21:49Speaker 02

  in a while, but most of the time, I was assigned to the tactical operations center. So I'm in there as the, as the liaison officer, you know, just tracking their movements and kind of setting up their logistics. Not what I wanted to do, but it was a job that needed to be done, and, and I felt like I was probably the best guy, you know, to be able to do it for my platoon and, and help them and support them. Learned a ton, you know, about... About passing information back to the TAC and how they can best support you. And luckily, I had a great executive officer who sent me out. He tasked 12 of us, a bunch of us from, you know, from SEAL Team Five, SEAL Team Eight, got a chance to go and be a part of some sniper operations up in Samara,

• 2:22:33Speaker 02

  supporting the Big Red One, first division up there. You know, didn't see a lot of combat, got shot at a few times. Kind of small, little teams, kind of, you know, going through the city, little four, six man teams, and climbing up on rooftops and trying to do the sneaky frog mess. It was pretty fun. We engaged a few guys. I think we had one confirmed kill from that and, you know, a few problems, but we definitely disrupted the IDs that were being laid and the mines were being put in the street. And it also gave me an appreciation.

• 2:23:03Speaker 02

  You know, obviously, I love the SEAL teams, man. And I'm so proud of the training that we went through and the guys that we served with. But when I flew up to Samara, and it was funny, we left Baghdad. We had 12 guys with us. It was like 82 degrees on the tarmac in Baghdad. We landed Samara after a couple other stops. It's nighttime. It was 39 degrees. I had five guys with no warmies. Yeah, bad. And it was like, so we're trying to piece together this stuff. We're living in this like burned out, you know, building. And I didn't realize, you know, our guys are complaining about, you know, Baghdad, and they're eating at the Al Rashid Hotel with ice sculptures and stuff.

• 2:23:43Speaker 02

  And I remember jumping in a, you know, we're rolling around these up armored vehicles and, you know, and it was a lot of times in and out of the green zone. Obviously, there was dangers. I mean, people were trying to attack the guys. I'm not saying the risks were limited, but I remember sitting in the cab of a big like five ton truck. There's like, you know, quarter inch steel plates welded on the back. They didn't even have doors on the cab. It was, it was Arkansas National Guard unit. And they're giving us a ride from the airfield over to like in, in the, in the downtown city center where there's an ODA team, we were gonna stay with them. And I'm talking to this, this, you know, Arkansas National Guard soldier. I was like, man, he's kinda hanging it out up here. I

• 2:24:25Speaker 02

  know, uh, he's, he's like, oh, man, this baby. I've been, he's like, this baby's eating about 14 RPGs at this point. Yeah, she's my good old charm. And I was, I was just like, man, here we are, like, like, these dudes around here roughing it, right? They're in the, they're in the fight. They're getting attacked all the time. They don't have near the equipment that we have. They don't have near the training that we have. And, uh, that, that to me was like, like, I'm gonna do everything I can to help every American who I'm a ground here in every way that I possibly can.

• 2:24:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I thought you were gonna say he looked at you and said, I'm not the one hanging it out. That's your vehicle. But, uh, but, yeah, it was pretty bare bones there at the beginning. But, um, but, um, well, when, when did, when did Elliot get hurt? Was it this platoon?

• 2:25:12Speaker 02

  It was, it was the next platoon. So he, he stayed in that same platoon. I rotated to a different platoon, SEAL Team Three.

• 2:25:18Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:25:19Speaker 02

  We came, we, we ended up getting rotated out of Iraq. So we went up to Samara for like three, three weeks. Then we came back, did, you know, our turnover, and then we, we did the, the relief in place, you know, between the squadrons. Uh, and so we got sent to the Pacific Theater. So we went around doing the JSATs with the Royal Thai SEALs and the, and the Republic of Korea SEALs and, and, um, uh, excuse me, we spent a little time in Okinawa. You know, you just, just, uh, I got, I got to see a different theater, got to train a little bit, spent a bunch of time in Guam, surfing and partying and, and,

• 2:25:51Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 2:25:51Speaker 02

  And, and basically, we just trained like madmen the whole time and, and got in really good shape. Um, and, uh, and, and we're itching for a chance to go back. You know, so I came back with SEAL Team Five and luckily, uh, my commanding officer at SEAL Team Five at the time, he, he said, you're, you're going to SEAL Team Three. And I was, I was so pissed about that, Sean. Like, I was like,

• 2:26:10Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 2:26:11Speaker 02

  These are my guys. I wanna take over this platoon. I wanna be their platoon commander. And, um, And you know, he was detached from this and he said, look, you're, you're already senior. It's, it's important that you, you'll be six months ahead in the workup cycle. Um, you know, that, that you, you deploy so that you'll be eligible. You know, uh, for promotion down the road and like this is best for your career path. And I was like, I pitched a fit about it, man. I was like, are you kidding me? You know, like I was, I was the kind of the argument and pushback type. And he was like, no, it's happening. You're going to SEAL Team Three. And, uh, and thank God he did that, man, because I love those guys at SEAL Team Five. They were awesome and still some of my closest friends in the world. Um, and they relieved us in, in Ramadi. Um, but thank God I, I got a chance to go serve in Task Unit Bruiser in SEAL Team Three.

• 2:26:55Speaker 02

  And so I, I showed up, uh, at the end of that deployment, I came back, did, did a little, you know, got, got a little bit of, uh, a leave and then went straight to SEAL Team Three. Checked in as the platoon commander, uh, got assigned as Charlie Platoon. We heard about this guy Jocko Willink, who was our, our, uh, platoon, our, our, our, uh, Task Unit Commander. He was in charge and, and I, I had heard about Jocko. I'd never seen Jocko. I didn't know anything about Jocko. What did you hear about him? I heard he was pretty intense. Uh, I heard he was a, uh, my platoon chief, uh, Tony Frati, was a phenomenal, phenomenal SEAL. Uh, and, uh, I, I think probably one of the best SEAL chiefs that, one of the best platoon chiefs that the SEAL teams has ever produced. No kidding.

• 2:27:40Speaker 02

  Like, like phenomenal battlefield leader. Wow. I'm talking like, hey, we're taking massive fire from that building across the street. Give me two guys on, on me. Let's go. Wow. And, uh, my, like, he is absolutely the guy that you want in, in a gunfight, you know? Um, and, uh, and so he was like, he was like, you know, he had a reputation, Tony. Everyone loved Tony, been around for a long time and, and, uh, he'd been busted down like, you know, multiple times for, you know, shenanigans. Yeah. You know, just old, old school, you know, teams, teams and, uh, uh, and so here he is as the platoon chief. He's like, he's like, trust me. Jocko is the one guy that we want as our Task Unit Commander. I was like, all right. And then when, so when Jocko, Jocko had been the Admiral's aide.

• 2:28:23Speaker 02

  Um, so we got assigned as the Admiral's aide and he gets, he, he, he comes over. And when I met him for the first time, you know, Seth Stone, our brother from, uh, you know, from Bud's, he was the Delta Battalion Commander. So we were, we were Battalion Commanders together. We had a bunch of guys from our Bud's class in there, you know, as well. I knew a ton of these guys. I've been deployed with SEAL Team Three just before this. So I, I got to meet Chris Kyle and, and some of the other guys, you know, just, just prior to that, they'd been in Baghdad doing a bunch of sniper ops on, you know, Hypha Street and supporting the Fallujah Offensive, you know, that went down, um, while we were, while we were deployed, you know, in, in, uh, the fall of 2004. And so now we're here in the spring of 2005, standing this, the, up the task unit. And so Jocko shows up and I was like, man, this dude looks like an ax murderer.

• 2:29:10Speaker 02

  He doesn't smile at us. He just walks up like just mean mugs, like, hi, I'm Jocko. Like no smile whatsoever and like just walks away. And then dude, you remember Stoner, like, you know, who's, it was an emotional guy. Man, I love Stoner, uh, so much. And he, he was like, that dude hates me, man. I can see it. You know, he's like, and, uh, and, and, and I was like, hey, man, listen, I hear he's the guy that we want. I was like, let's, we knew he trained jiu jitsu. You know, we knew, uh, he just got his black belt. Um, you know, he's a big jiu jitsu guy. Like we knew he had a ton of operations, you know, he'd come from SEAL Team Seven as a Battalion Commander. He had a, a bunch of operations that, uh, that he'd done. And, um, so he probably had as much experience as anybody in the teams at that point.

• 2:29:54Speaker 02

  And, um, and so I was like, hey, man, come on, let's just, let's work hard, let's train jiu jitsu. You know, and, uh, after a couple of months, like, yeah, I didn't, Seth and Jocko ended up being like super close. Right. So, uh, in fact, I think, you know, it was, uh, Seth was probably the little, little brother that, uh, that Jocko never had, you know, to Jocko. And, um, but Jocko was like, I, I. He set the tone for our entire task unit. We had an awesome crew of pipe hitters in there, man. They were excellent. They were just coming back from Iraq. A lot of experience. You know, Chris Kyle was our lead sniper point man, and he had a ton of experience coming from Fallujah, coming from Haifa Street, some of the other places in Baghdad. And then the new guys that we got in were studs too, man. You know, we sent them to schools. It

• 2:30:39Speaker 02

  was an awesome team. But Jocko really set the tone for our entire team. And of like, hey, right away, he was like, we're not tasking a Bravo, we're tasking a Bruiser.

• 2:30:52Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 2:30:54Speaker 02

  So, you know, we had three task units, A, B, C, right? Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, in the phonetic alphabet. And I was like, I thought that was weird for like, 24 hours, like, tasking a Bruiser. And then like 24 hours later, we're like, we're tasking a Bruiser. So like, it was actually, I learned later, this is something that he got from a book by a US Army retired Colonel named David Hackworth called The Bout Face. If you haven't read this book, it is a phenomenal, phenomenal book. Hackworth joined the Army when he was a, he lied on his paperwork, enlisted when he was 17, to try to make it into World War II, just missed World War II, but was brought up to the ranks as,

• 2:31:38Speaker 02

  you know, had learned from all of his mentors who had just defeated the Germans and Japanese in World War II. And then he served in Korea, and was eventually, you know, commissioned as an officer, made it up to Colonel, multiple deployments to Korea, multiple deployments of Vietnam. I think he was the, when he died, he died in the early 2000s. I think it might have been while we were deployed to Iraq that first time. And I think he was the highest, the most decorated, like, living soldier at the time.

• 2:32:09Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:32:09Speaker 02

  I mean, like, crazy, crazy awards. But like, they call him like Mr. Infantry, and it's so much of, he changed the names of his units.

• 2:32:17Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. For what?

• 2:32:20Speaker 02

  To give them like a personality.

• 2:32:21Shawn Ryan?

  So, you know, I'm just gonna...

• 2:32:29Shawn Ryan?

  Task Unit Bruiser is like a legendary unit. And you just, you don't hear... Look, there's no other, there's no other task unit that has a, that has a call sign that I'm aware of. You hear people talk about Task Unit Bruiser all over the place. Uh, it...

• 2:32:49Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know a whole lot about it, other than the reputation. But, I mean, it seems like you guys have really created, or did create, like, some type of, of, like, very strong culture in that platoon.

• 2:33:06Speaker 02

  The culture was massively strong, you know, in, in, in our platoon, Charlie platoon, Delta platoon, SASS platoon, you know, and the entire task unit. And, uh, you know, those two 60-man SEAL platoons and a five-man headquarters home that Jocko was in charge of, that we started out with. And, and he set the tone right from the beginning, like, "We're Task Unit Bruiser. We're gonna work harder than everybody else. We're gonna train harder than everybody else. We're gonna be ready for the worst-case scenarios, you know, on the battlefield." Um, and that, that was the culture of, of our team. And what's interesting about Jocko is you look at him and he's got this, like, super stern kind of look to him. But he, he actually, and even though he didn't smile at us for the first couple of months that we worked together, in fact, the first time, we were, we were all training jiu-jitsu. We'd come in at 5 o'clock in the morning and train jiu-jitsu. He'd lay mats out in the, uh, in the high bay at SEAL Team 3.

• 2:33:51Speaker 02

  It was mandatory for all the officers and we had a bunch of, unless the guys would come in and train too. Um, and you could tell us at, at officers' call, you know, the morning meeting, because you'd say, you know, if you said like, "Hey, Lay, or hey, Seth", like, everyone would kind of turn their head, like, their whole body, because their necks are all, like, jacked up, because we're, like, cranking on each other and hurting each other. And everyone's going just full bore, level 19, Berserker mode. But the first time that I realized that Jocko was, like, actually, you know, not super serious all the time, like, I'm demo, he's, like, demoing a jiu-jitsu move. At 5 o'clock in the morning, we're in the high bay. He's like, he's like, "Bab, get over here", you know, he's, he's like, "Grab my hand, yeah." My other hand, my other hand, and he's like, bow to your sensei, bow to your sensei.

• 2:34:33Speaker 02

  And I'm like, wait, that's Napoleon Dynamite. He's quoting Rex Kwon Do from Napoleon Dynamite, but he's doing it with a straight face. And he's not like, he doesn't even smile. And I'm like, okay, this dude's joking around. So like, that was the first time I got to see, you know, Jocko, who's totally, like totally jokes around, you know, like, and is obviously professional when he needs to. But what I think what Jocko did for us was, I think, channel like aggression and, and guys that wanted to go get after it into like, he, he, he really taught me to be what we call, and I was calling for the silent leader. That like, that's what good leadership looks like. Like you would look at someone like Jocko, I think Jocko's in charge. Jocko's a prior enlisted SEAL. Jocko's got more common experience than, you know, anybody else here.

• 2:35:18Speaker 02

  So he's going to dictate everything and run everything and tell you what to do. And he did the complete opposite. It was, he said, hey, here's the goal. Why don't you come up with a plan and tell me how you want to do it? You know, and it was, it was the first time that I saw like, we'd roll out on operations. Well, he doesn't, he doesn't say anything. He's letting the team run it. So I realized that's what I need to do as a leader, is let my team step up and lead. And, uh, and so when my team is leading, now I can look up and out, right? Every leader should be trying to look up and out down the road. So instead of me solving the immediate tactical problem, I'm thinking about the next step or the next step or the next step beyond that. You're thinking about the long-term strategic problems, you know, down the road. And that's what every leader should be trying to do.

• 2:35:59Speaker 02

  And, you know, Jocko also, he used what we call the indirect approach, which is, you know, instead of saying, hey, listen, you know, I had one platoon under my belt, didn't really have, I had a handful of common operations. I had zero DA missions, right? Capture kill raids at that point, zero. Um, Saff had done a couple of them, you know, I'd done a handful of sniper, uh, operations. But I didn't have any, I didn't really have any experience. And, you know, but instead of, instead of saying, you know, for us, when, when, when the training detachment instructors, who obviously drive a very high standard of performance, when they would say things like, Hey, you guys are good to go. You met the standard? You know, we're out here at land warfare. Okay, your patrol is good to go.

• 2:36:41Speaker 02

  Hey, your immediate action drills when we act a contract and, you know, those are good to go. Hey, you guys can take it back to the camp. Instead of Jocko saying like, you knuckleheads aren't as good as you think you are. Combat's harder than you think it is. You know, we're gonna keep pushing the standard even higher. We're gonna do this again. He actually, he actually just called us over. And he said, hey, Leif Stoner,

• 2:37:03Speaker 02

  do you think we're ready for the worst case scenario on the battlefield?

• 2:37:07Speaker 02

  And we like looked at each other and we're like, no, man. No, let's do another run. Let's do another run after that. Let's do three more runs. And it was us doing it. It was, if we'd have said yes, he would have been cool. Sounds good. Let's go back to the camp. But he, he just, he would ask us an earnest question, right? A question that he wanted the answer to.

• 2:37:26Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:37:26Speaker 02

  And let us reveal the truth of ourselves. And I think it's such a powerful leadership concept. Instead of, you know, this works on your kids, right? This works on, this works with your spouse, with members of your community, with your team at work, anywhere in life, when you can ask someone a question and, and allow them to reveal the truth to themselves, instead of trying to just bash them over the head with the truth. Because what good is telling people the truth if they don't listen?

• 2:37:52Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:37:53Speaker 02

  But when, when you can ask someone a question like that, now it's, it's not Jocko saying do two more runs, and everyone's complaining about it. It's actually me saying we need to do two more runs. So that we're ready for that worst case scenario, talking that over with my potential. They understand it as well. And I think there was, that was the kind of culture that became part of the team. Of like, hey, we have to be ready for the absolute worst case scenario that we might come up against. And, and so I think that was, it was a culture of always striving to do better. And immediately, I think what, what set our tasking apart was, in my previous tasking, it was kind of like most SEAL tasking units where we did, we had some really talented people. We had some experienced people. We did some things well. We did some things not so well. But the things that we didn't do well, when, when training detachment would say, hey, you should improve on this,

• 2:38:38Speaker 02

  there was pushback. You know, we were kind of like, eh,

• 2:38:41Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:38:41Speaker 02

  I'd like to see them do better. Yeah, we're good to go. We'll play the game and just get through this and get overseas. And in Tasking and Bruiser wasn't like that. It was, we were our own harshest critic. It was, it was really critiquing ourselves. And when these training instructors said, hey, look, your head counts are taking too long. You need to figure out a way to be more efficient. We're like, absolutely. Let's, let's figure this out. Let's work on that. And we were our own harshest critic. We're always trying to get better and improve all the time. And that became the culture of the team. Whether you're a brand new guy, you know, that was trying to contribute in some way to, you know, managing your fire team, you know, all the way up to me as the platoon commander to, Jocko is the, the tasking commander and figuring out ways to be more efficient and effective all the time.

• 2:39:25Speaker 02

  And I think that's the strength of the SEAL teams, right, is always that innovation, that, that I like always trying to get better at what we're trying to do. Always trying to improve and, and seeking inputs from, from everybody, no matter if they're in a leadership position or if they're simply just a, a shooter, you know, who's in charge of just themselves and their piece of the mission. I think when you've got a, when that becomes the culture of the team, you know, that makes all the difference. You've got a team that's constantly improving, constantly learning, constantly growing. We made all kinds of mistakes in Tasking and Bruiser. We screwed all kinds of stuff up. But we learned from those mistakes and we would implement solutions to try to fix them and prevent them from happening going forward.

• 2:40:01Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, are we ready for the worst case scenario? That is a, that's a tough question. Was there ever a yes?

• 2:40:14Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I think we were honest enough with ourselves, right, to know like, hey, man, I've never been in the worst case scenario. So are you ready for it? Like, are you going to be ready for it? And I, I think, you know, when you show up to something and you're overtrained, like, hey, we didn't get to train that hard. Cool. It's easy, you know? It's easy. Like, that's no fact. Like, that's what you want it to be. You know, if you can make training harder than actual combat, like, that's, that's the way, that's awesome. That's I D. You know, and that's one of the lessons that we brought back to Ramadi, you know, with us, you know, after we deployed. If you'd asked me, if you'd asked me as young Lieutenant Leifbaben, Charlie Platoon Commander in Tasking and Bruiser.

• 2:40:57Speaker 02

  Hey Leif, are you gonna be in, you know, do you think you'll get in a blue on blue, like friendly fire situation? Man, I told you, like, that happens to losers who don't know how to plan and execute missions. And, you know, the book Extreme Monoship, like, that's chapter one. That's chapter one, the very first major combat operation that I was a part of, massive blue on blue, massive blue on blue issue. And, and, and, you know, we talked about before, like, the idea that, like, we had to, if we didn't take extreme measures to mitigate the risk of that happening, like, it was absolutely going to happen, particularly in the urban environment, where there's, it's confusing with so many different units that are out there, particularly with our SEAL snipers

• 2:41:38Speaker 02

  that are going out undercover, darkness, beyond the forward line of advance, and you've got, you know, uh, US tanks and Humvees and, and units that are coming into an enemy-held area, and they're getting shot at by enemy fighters. You know, it, it just, the idea that, like, that is absolutely going to happen unless you take massive steps to mitigate the risk of it happening. And then, i- it was, it was just one of those things where, like, I, I just realized, like, combat is so much harder than I thought it was ever gonna be, and, and those things can happen so much easier than you ever thought it, it could be. And once you're in it, you can't just, can't just peek your, you know, if you're taking effective fire, man, you can't just peek your head up over the wall and say, "Hey, who's shooting at us?" You know, like, your head's gonna be gone, that's gonna be the end of you.

• 2:42:20Speaker 02

  So, um, if you're getting suppressed, uh, man, that's, that's all you can do, you know? And, and I think it's, uh, you know, we had, we had such a close call on that first, that first situation where we had about, that whole squad of my guys, um, on that operation, uh...

• 2:42:37Shawn Ryan?

  Let's rewind real quick. So, this is your first operation?

• 2:42:41Speaker 02

  That was the first major operation.

• 2:42:42Shawn Ryan?

  First kinetic operation of the deployment.

• 2:42:47Shawn Ryan?

  Let's just walk, what were you guys doing? What was the op?

• 2:42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you will, maybe it's better good to back up to talk about what it was like to arrive in Ramadi and, you know, and start there.

• 2:43:00Speaker 02

  When we were, we were, we were, we thought we were gonna go work with the, you know, with the ICTF, you know, in Baghdad and do the, this high-speed Iraqi commando unit that probably had the most training right of any, any, uh, any Iraqi unit out there. And that's what we thought we were gonna do. We're gonna do, go do these kinetic operations. It was gonna be super fun. We were excited about it. Everyone left to go on pre-deployment leave. And while we were on pre-deployment leave, we got a change of orders. They decided to consolidate the two different squadrons that we're deploying, and we found out we're going to Ramadi. So at the time, Ramadi was just a violent hellhole. I mean, it was, it was, uh, it was, it was

• 2:43:46Speaker 02

  a city of 400,000 people. It's the capital of Anbar Province, and it's a fraction of the size of Bag- I think the whole greater area of Baghdad has something like two and a half or three million people, you know, in Baghdad. There would be more significant attacks, right, or enemy attacks that happened in and around the city of Ramadi, this small city of 400,000 people, just a few miles across the city center. There would be as many or more attacks in Ramadi on a daily basis if there were.

• 2:44:12Shawn Ryan?

  Why, why was Ramadi such a strategic location?

• 2:44:15Speaker 02

  I, I think it was after the, it was in the heart of the Sunni triangle, right? And it was the largest, it's the capital of Anbar Province, which is the, the Sunni capital. So this is where the, uh, Saddam's kind of base of support and operations were. Um, so I think there was a lot of support for, for Saddam and the insurgency that came out of there. I think after the Marines smashed Fallujah in 2004, um, many of the, the fighters that were there fled and went to Ramadi. And so, so, you know, from like late 2004 into 2005, Ramadi was, uh, was, was just really the most violent place in Iraq. Zarqawi, you know, who's the leader of the, of Al Qaeda in Iraq at the time, had declared that, that Ramadi was the, the capital

• 2:44:59Speaker 02

  of his caliphate, and he was gonna establish the capital there in Ramadi. Uh, there was something like three to 5,000 insurgent fighters that controlled most of the city. Uh, and when we arrived in April of 2006, um, it was, man, it was, um...

• 2:45:16Speaker 02

  I think I landed on the ground, it was like April 3rd, 2006, it was, it was instantly, it was apparent that this was a very different deployment than the one I'd been on previously. And I'd been hearing about Ramadi, you know, we, you know, you'd hear, every day in the news, you'd hear like, you know, three US soldiers killed in Anbar Province, or two Marines wounded in Anbar Province, and most of those were coming in and around the city of Ramadi. I think Anbar Province was accounting for something like 70% of US casualties in Iraq at the time, throughout most of 2005, 2006, and most of those were coming in and around Ramadi. So it was, it was just a violent terror stronghold.

• 2:45:55Speaker 02

  And when we got, when we arrived there, right away, I mean, even in Baghdad, like, you're flying around in a helicopter, and, you know, if you flew over Ramadi in the daytime, like, you're getting shot down out of the sky. Like, no one was doing it. Yeah. So it was, it was like vehicle convoys, and it was, every single week, there were memorial services going on, at, at, at the camp. It was, there were US Marines and soldiers getting wounded or killed almost every day. Damn. Almost every day. And, and multiple times, I remember there would be like a call of the loudspeaker for like, like a, a mass like blood drive, you know, come give blood, you know, for a mass

• 2:46:40Speaker 02

  casualty situation, everything. I mean, there were people killed on base in the chow hall with mortars in the base, you know, before you even left the base. And when we were driving, so the SEALs were working out of a place they call Shark Base, it was like an old, like, Republican Guard affron, and after Mark Lee was killed, we renamed it Camp Mark Lee, but it was kind of on the edge of Ramadi, like, right on the Euphrates River. And in order to get there, you had to drive, drive off the main camp, and it was still kind of behind the walls of the camp, but, but there was, there was a, you would drive through what they call the vehicle graveyard. And the vehicle graveyard was, you know, these, these, these vehicles that would have IDs, Humvees, tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, they would, they would drag these, these twisted,

• 2:47:25Speaker 02

  burnt hulks, and just, they would just leave them out here in this kind of, you know, it was just kind of a, kind of a junkyard area, and, man, it was a powerful reminder of what was out there waiting for you every time. But you're going, you're going to, uh... Um, you're you're driving past that every single time you launch on an operation. Um, driving to that vehicle graveyard, just knowing that those twisted charred honks of metal that used to be a vehicle, you know, almost all those had had, you know, soldiers or Marines that were killed or wounded them. And, um, and then, you know, the gates were like a, it was, it was a M eighty-eight, uh, which is like a, it's basically like a tow truck for tanks. I mean, these things weigh, you know, a tank weighs seventy tons, you know, an M one April tank.

• 2:48:08Speaker 02

  Uh, and that's what they had blocking the gate because it was such a threat of like a, you know, massive IED threat coming in. Um, and people would be attacking the camp. And I've been on the ground for probably about a week there. Uh, we turned over with, uh, a crew from SEAL Team Two, outstanding crew there. And they had built awesome relationships. They'd trained a bunch of Iraqi units and they were doing a ton of operations. Um, but it was kind of mostly on the outskirts of the city because there was no US presence inside the city, except for the marine bases that controlled, uh, and the one-on-first airborne, uh, first the five oh six, uh, battalion that controlled, um, Task Force Red Curry had control at the eastern part of the city. And the Marines from three eight Marines controlled the, uh, uh, the, the, uh, main route to the city. It was called Route Michigan.

• 2:48:53Speaker 02

  And about every kilometer the, the Marines had a, had a base there. And even still, even though we controlled that road, that road throughout our six-month deployment there was overwhelmingly the most heavily attacked road in all of Iraq. It had seven to ten IEDs, uh, on average in every, any twenty-four hour period. This is a road that we controlled. So like US forces controlled that road. Every kilometer there, there's a marine or army checkpoint. Um, and so, I mean, it was just, it was non-stop, you know, combat that was going on all the time. Nasty, nasty. And when we showed up, it was just, it was, I was just in awe of the soldiers and Marines that were there and, uh, and the fight, there was a, there was a National Guard unit that was on the ground.

• 2:49:34Speaker 02

  Um, and seeing these National Guard, you know, the National Guard, man, they, they, they don't have, they have a fraction of the training and equipment that we have. Um, this was the two-two-eight, the second brigade, twenty-eighth Infantry Division, the Iron Soldiers, uh, based out of Pennsylvania. And, uh, and they had, they had National Guard from really all over. They had some Utah National Guard, Vermont National Guard, uh, Pennsylvania National Guard. Um, and these guys had, you know, they're, they're part-time soldiers. Uh, and.

• 2:50:01Speaker 02

  They, they, many of them had been on the ground for over a year at that point. And I mean, these, these guys were hardened combat warriors. And sometimes they, they, I'd show up and, and the SEAL Team Two, you know, would introduce us and, and they'd, you know, they'd look at us and our high-speed little 10-inch barrel M4s and our, our gear. And, you know, we had better night vision and lasers and stuff like that. And they're looking back at us like, like, oh, man, look at, look at that. Look at the SEALs, they've got, you know, these guys have all this cool gadgetry. And I, I just, you know, for me, Sean, I was like, man, this National Guard soldier, you know, who's probably 19 years old, has fired more rounds through his weapon in his year here than all of us put together are ever going to fire in our entire careers.

• 2:50:43Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:50:44Speaker 02

  And I mean, they're, they were just in the thick of the fight the entire time. Um, the Marines that were manning the, uh, the, the checkpoints through that city, and particularly ones of the government center, that was Kilo Company, 38 Marines, awesome unit of Marines. We worked really closely with, uh, with their Lima Company, uh, Kilo Company and, and, uh, India companies, and man, they were, they were freaking awesome. And the, the government center was taken, uh, an OPVA, which is named after like the Veterans Administration, um, uh, building that was, it was like a Iraqi Veterans Administration building, I guess, um, under, uh, in the Saddam era. But those two, they would, they'd get hit once a week by 50, 100 insurgents attacking

• 2:51:27Speaker 02

  from three different directions, hitting them with, you know, a dozen belt-fed machine guns at the same time, lobbing mortars in, a super accurate mortar fire, and then somebody trying to drive a 5,000-pound V-bet into their position. I mean, it was, it was every week.

• 2:51:41Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:51:41Speaker 02

  For them. And, uh, so we just, you know, when we showed up there, I was like, man, how can we help these guys? What can we do to help in any way that we can? Um, and, uh, and so we just decided to get to work, you know?

• 2:51:53Shawn Ryan?

  So what was the work?

• 2:51:55Speaker 02

  The work was, what can we do? You know, what is our part of this mission? And, uh, and for us, um, it was number one SEAL snipers. Just like the work that you were doing. We can take our guys, we can take a pretty small group. And right away, we, we were told, there was red areas on the map that were like, don't go there, these are Al Qaeda. This is Al Qaeda and Iraq battle space. And if you go there, you're all gonna get killed. Nobody can even come and recover your body. Um, and so we realized like, hey, that's enemy safe haven. Like, is there a way that we can get into these safe havens? And, and mitigate the risk of being overrun, you know, by a hundred enemy fighters? And so what we, what we did was, uh, we started kind of on the edges of the city.

• 2:52:38Speaker 02

  You know, pushing in with some of the marine and, and army patrols. But setting up sniper overwatch position. We'd go in undercover darkness, set up on the rooftops of buildings, uh, in the windows where they wouldn't be expecting us to be. Um, and, and, you know, if you were in a bad area that had no, uh, US presence before, man, all of a sudden, when the, you know, first call of the prayer goes down and, you know, the sun rises and the city's moving around, I mean, you got, you got enemy fighters moving around with RPGs and Belfair machine guns and starting to coordinate attacks on, you know, nearby friendly patrols and, and outposts. And it was just a shooting gallery for the, the snipers.

• 2:53:12Shawn Ryan?

  So you, so you could actually sit in an OP in an area that was black? And see the enemy combatants forming up to go outside of that area to, to engage and ambush US forces?

• 2:53:27Speaker 02

  Definitely, multiple times, yeah. Many, many times. And, and, uh-

• 2:53:31Shawn Ryan?

  In the daytime?

• 2:53:32Speaker 02

  Well, we'd be in there, we, we'd sneak in at nighttime and, and, and try to be hidden as best we could, you know, in a position. And what we did though was we adjusted, you know, the, the, my idea before of a sniper mission was like a little small, like two man, four man element, six man element. Man, these elements, when you're going in there, we had to have, you know, we'd go in with a thirty man helmet. And lock down like a four story apartment building, particularly, it didn't, you know, initially, we started working on the outside edges of the city. And then, once the US forces started establishing these, these combat outposts, they'd build a four operating base right in the enemy neighborhood. A permanent, permanent outpost that they could work out of, bring Iraqi soldiers with them.

• 2:54:13Speaker 02

  Often, that's what we'd do is be the first US troops on the ground for that. So we'd sneak in undercover darkness. And the ID threat was the biggest threat. So how do we mitigate the risk of that? Well, we would full patrol. So, I mean, it was throw everything on your back. We're carrying Carl Gustaf, you know, shoulder fired rockets. We're carrying forty millimeter grenades. We're carrying, um, we're, we're multiple belt fit machine guns, every squad, multiple belt fit machine guns. Um, because we had to be ready, you know, we, we would take the, the minimum force that we would take, we usually was at least a squad of SEALs. Uh, because that way I at least had two fire team elements that could bound. And if we're going into a super hot area, it would be double that. Um, it'd be like a full battalion size or even more.

• 2:54:56Shawn Ryan?

  So you, so you guys are running thirty man teams? And would those teams?

• 2:55:02Speaker 02

  So, so maybe eighteen or twenty of those guys would be SEALs plus, uh, EOD, you know, our bomb, our EOD bomb technicians were phenomenal. Um, and we're, we're absolutely, you know, part of our, a critical part of our team, just like the ones you worked with and, and we had some awesome shooters too, man, that could do both. Um, and, uh, they're, they're, um, so we also had, uh, we'd also, sometimes we would plus up with squads from, uh, uh, conventional, uh, Army units or, or Marine units as well. Just because we wanted to have some more Americans out there with us. Uh, and we'd, we'd always have Iraqi soldiers. So, um, you know, we might have twelve, fifteen, twenty Iraqis with us. I did not, uh, If those guys were out there risking their lives, I did not count on them in the gunfight.

• 2:55:47Speaker 02

  So, you know, when it was, we saw that too many times that when, you know, if you've got a hundred enemy fighters trying to overrun your position like you are, the only thing that's going to save you is Americans. And, uh, and the things that saved us was Americans with belt fed machine guns. Those machine gunners carrying the, you know, the, uh, mark forty eight, you know, seven sixty belt fed machine gun and the mark forty six, you know, five five six belt fed machine gun, those guys saved our lives over and over and over again. Just B back attacks, um, preventing us from being overrun. If we're on, if we were on a patrol, um, with Iraqis, you know, if we're getting attacked, like enabling us to be able to keep the enemy's head down so we could get off the street, laying down cover fire for us.

• 2:56:30Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, I just, I, I talked to those Vietnam SEALs about how much they loved their machine gunners, you know, that were carrying the Stoner machine gunners and the M60s, you know, back in Vietnam and how that would enable them to push deep into Viet Cong territory where nobody could come get them. And the only QRF, you know, a lot of those Vietnam guys had working in like the rungsat and places like that in the, in the, the, the Mekong Delta in Vietnam was like another seven man SEAL squad. And they had some, you know, maybe some, uh, um, they had Sea Wolf, you know, the, the helicopters that were supporting overhead and some aircraft, but those machine gunners kept them alive. And it was the exact same thing for us and tasking a bruiser. Uh, those machine gunners like Markley and Ryan Jobe and, and all those guys carrying the heavy belt fed machine gun, Jake, our,

• 2:57:13Speaker 02

  our mutual, you know, Bud's classmate, man, he was, those guys were awesome. And, uh, you know, carrying so, cause you're full patrolling in every time. And so they're carrying massive heavyweight. Um, and

• 2:57:25Shawn Ryan?

  Real quick, let me, I want to get into some specific examples of how they, how effective the, the, the AW, the automatic weapons guys were, but from, let's, let's look at a bigger picture real quick. So from, for Ramadi, what was the, what was the overall mission? Not just of tasking a bruiser, but what was the overall mission? Was it to, was it to infiltrate and occupy and? The city and take it from AQ, Al Qaeda?

• 2:57:53Speaker 02

  That's a, it's a fantastic question, man. I think what's interesting about it is um, never did I see a time where the generals in Baghdad or someone from the Pentagon came and said, "Here's your mission, Ramadi." And so the guys in Ramadi figured out what that mission should be. They were close to the problem. Uh, and the, the brigade Colonel that was in charge, you know, the, the Colonel and, and his staff that were in charge of that National Guard unit, they got, they got, uh, um, relieved by, uh, about a month into our deployment by the Ready First Brigade Combat Team of the First Armored Division. Um, and those guys were brought in tanks and firepower. But they brought in a, a, a perspective on that as well about what that mission should be.

• 2:58:34Speaker 02

  Uh, Colonel Sean McFarlane was the guy in charge, um, and his staff were just, they were phenomenal, man. And, uh, we, uh, we loved that National Guard unit too. Those guys were outstanding, but the, the, the Ready First Brigade Combat Team is who I spent the bulk of that deployment with. You know, helping them. Many of the Marine units and the, uh, that Task Force Red Curry, that 101st Airborne unit, those guys stuck around as well for, for much of that, our deployment. Um, and, uh, but they, they, they, what they realized was the, the mission Ramadi was to stabilize the city, secure the local populace and ultimately lower the level of violence. That was the goal. That was the goal. And I think if you, you know, I think for so long, if you'd asked a SEAL, if you'd asked me, you know, my first deployment, like, what's your, what's the SEAL mission?

• 2:59:17Speaker 02

  And, and you know, in Iraq, what are you trying to do? I said, kill bad guys.

• 2:59:20Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:59:21Speaker 02

  And I think some of that Jocko really recognizes, like, look, either US forces win in Ramadi and we all win, or US forces lose and, and we all lose.

• 2:59:31Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:59:31Speaker 02

  And it doesn't matter how many bad guys we kill or capture. It doesn't matter how many operations we conducted. If US forces lose here, we all lose. So what we have to do is help US forces win. And we understood that that was the mission. was to stabilize the city, secure the local populace, lower the level of violence. And we realized our part of that was to take a small element that was very heavily armed. I say small, right? It might have been as many as thirty guys if you're locking down a four-story apartment building. And many times we tried to put two elements in that were mutually supporting one another. Because there's nothing stronger than mutually supporting Overwatch positions with interlocking fields of fire. I mean, that's how you're gonna defeat an enemy that way outnumbers

• 3:00:13Speaker 02

  you when they're trying to come and attack your position, when that other position could cover, move, you know, cover for you, and you can cover for them, you know, as well. But that's how we mitigated the risk of going into some of those areas. And we knew that we could take a fairly small group of guys with a lot of firepower, carrying the shoulder-fired rockets, carrying the belt-fed machine guns, you know, carrying the forty-mic mic grenades, you know, JTACs with aircraft support in its overhead. We had artillery battery. The artillery battery in Ramadi fired, I think they fired over five thousand rounds.

• 3:00:46Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:00:46Speaker 02

  From their one-five-five batteries.

• 3:00:48Shawn Ryan?

  So when you're going out with thirty guys, are you breaking them up into fifteen two-man teams and putting them in different locations?

• 3:00:55Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 3:00:55Shawn Ryan?

  Seven four-man teams?

• 3:00:56Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 3:00:57Shawn Ryan?

  All in one location?

• 3:00:59Speaker 02

  Sometimes. But what we typically would do, we would, I like to be in multiple locations so we can mutually support one another. We also found, though, that when we teamed up, a lot of these operations, we were the very first US troops on the ground. We would even go in and do some reconnaissance in the area. And as frogmen, right, the river, the Afraidis River runs right through Ramadi, and there's a Habenia Canal kind of breaks off from there as well. So we had access to much of the city. And there was a badass marine boat unit there called the Dam Support Unit. They had these cirque boats, these small, small-unit riverine craft, I think it stands for. But it's kind of like a rib, kind of like a combination between like a rib and a soccer. And...

• 3:01:42Speaker 02

  So we teamed up with those guys, man, they would, they would, we'd sneak in there at nighttime, totally blacked out, um, and, uh, you know, night vision, and they'd just drop us off in the bank. No one had any idea we were in there.

• 3:01:52Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. So you guys would do a water insertion at night?

• 3:01:56Speaker 02

  Did a ton of them.

• 3:01:57Shawn Ryan?

  To do a reconnaissance to what? Find your, find where your sniper hides and OPs are gonna be?

• 3:02:02Speaker 02

  Find out where they would be, do reconnaissance of the area, you know, engage IED layers, which we often did. Um, and then, and then we, we'd use that as an insertion platform, uh, go in there at nighttime, jump off on the beach, full patrol in, um, so we could set up a sniper, you know, our sniper hides. And so we would oftentimes take down the buildings or buildings near those buildings that would eventually be the, the, the combat outpost.

• 3:02:25Shawn Ryan?

  So would you, would you insert guys, they would, they would infiltrate the OPs? And then the rest of the team would come and link up later? Or would you exfil back out of the, the, the location that you're at? And then get the rest of the team and then go back in?

• 3:02:44Speaker 02

  Sometimes we did reconnaissance missions where we'd go in and kind of just probe and do a little recon and they'd come back and kind of use that as part of planning. You know, obviously you have to hit multiple buildings that don't know exactly where you're going. Try to go into different areas and do some misdirection stuff. Um, but, uh, usually what we would do, excuse me, usually what we'd do is, is an insertion method. Would, we would, we would go in there and set up in a sniper hide and try to get in position before the first call of prayer, you know?

• 3:03:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:03:09Speaker 02

  Get in position by, you know, uh, by daylight. Um, then we would start to like, we, we would want to try, try to get some long axis looks down, you know, some of the, the main, uh, the main avenues of approach. Um, and then usually we would be, so we would wait, uh, until, uh, oftentimes the, you know, the, the first, the, some of the, some of those larger operations, you're talking over a thousand soldiers and marines on the ground, 50 tanks, dozens and dozens of heavy, um, you know, uh, engineering vehicles. I mean, they're, they're trucking in, you know, 70,000 sandbags to, you know, uh, multiple semi truck loads of, uh, you know, Jersey barriers and, and Texas T barrier, you know, those giant concrete barriers to try to, you know, concertina wire rolls to like reinforce these positions.

• 3:03:53Speaker 02

  Cause you know you're gonna get attacked. I mean, they're coming. Um, and that's usually where we could, we could really help those guys is, so we would set up and cover for them as they infiltrated. And there were multiple tasks, I remember that.

• 3:04:04Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, so you would, so you would know, I'm just trying to wrap my head around the, the overall mission. So, so you would know where the conventional units are setting up. Then you would conduct reconnaissance around that specific area, find the best vantage points? And then, and then set up the OPs?

• 3:04:21Speaker 02

  Well, sometimes we would conduct reconnaissance provided to the, the conventional units to, to maybe recommend, made a recommendation of where they could set up, you know?

• 3:04:29Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:04:30Speaker 02

  Or take them with us, you know, on those reconnaissance missions. And then we would plan that thing out. Um, and we became like their go-to, uh, as far as like, you know, they, they realized the effectiveness of SEAL snipers. Um, and what we could do for them, um, you know, to disrupt attacks because, you know, they're super vulnerable, right? When they're trying, before there's any, they're just out there in these neighborhoods. They're getting shot at, you've got, you know, hundreds of enemy fighters that can muster and start attacking their positions. Um, and so our snipers were able to, to disrupt those attacks.

• 3:05:00Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 3:05:02Speaker 02

  But a lot of times we'd be sitting in position and you'd see like the, the mine clearance element. And their big like MRAP, you know, those V hull vehicles. They were the only guys that had them at that time. We would ask for them and nobody else had them. But you'd see them slowly like on white lights, like digging IDs out of the road. Um, and there was to, to, to the, one of the first major operations we put in. Um, I mean, they cleared, they cleared, they cleared dozens of IDs out on that, I mean, like a, uh, just to tell you how bad things were. There was a route that was coming down off route mission, that main road that I said was statistically the most heavily ID'd road. A couple of months before we, uh, moved into that area, uh, right before we deployed, the Marines had tried to push down, uh, a road into where we ended up putting a, a combat outpost.

• 3:05:46Speaker 02

  It was called Route Sunset and they hit something like 13 IDs in less than 500 meters. So, I mean, it was just, it was, it was constant. Um, you couldn't even get into these areas. And so we're just, we would watch those guys clear. And so it took like four, five, six hours for them to clear all the way down. And we wanted to make sure that IDs weren't being in place, you know, on, on top of that. And so then, then all of a sudden, tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, you know, those troops are coming in, you know, in, in Humvees. And man, I remember this one time we were Sitting in this sniper hide in what was gonna be the buildings that would become the combat outpost. And we're on the third story. And I'm looking over the side and I got that mine clearance element. I mean, they got this. It was called a dagger was the call sign for the vehicle. They got this huge like arm. That's like, like, I think they call it the buffalo was the vehicle.

• 3:06:30Speaker 02

  Um, and they're like digging. It's this big robotic arm that's like digging in the dirt. And this robotic arm got like blown off like every night, you know, they like replace it. Um, and I'm looking down there and I could see these like projects. And I mean, I'm, I'm looking over the rooftop. I'm like.

• 3:06:47Speaker 02

  I was like, this is, uh, all of a sudden it occurs to me that like, if that thing goes off, I mean, this is like, this is like one in five rounds, you know? Like that thing's gonna take my head off. You know, my face is gonna be gone. I was like, if I could see the, you know, explosive, it can see me. I need to get back behind the rooftop. I mean, it's like right there, like at the base of the building that we're in. And we found a bunch of them too, like on the, uh, along like the creek we were patrolling across as the army went and burned. Burned out the vegetation later and they dug like, I mean, they'd find eight or 10 IDs in there. We were like patrolling all around.

• 3:07:18Shawn Ryan?

  Things are just ev- everywhere.

• 3:07:21Speaker 02

  And then from the combat outpost, once we had that established, so then we could push out. It deeper in enemy territory. And so initially, the army would say like, hey, we want you here. In, in this building so that you could cover our guys and, and, you know, you're looking 360 for a hundred yards in all directions. You know, for blocks, it's, it's, all you can see is US soldiers and marines. Like I can't even engage anybody like them. So, so we talked them into it and luckily Jocko would kind of explain why we needed to do it. And we pushed about 300 meters outside the, the perimeter. And they were worried about us getting attacked, but we pushed 300 meters outside the perimeter, set up in a big four story. Uh, apartment building. I wanted to go in a different direction. Chris Kyle was like that. We need to go there. That's the apartment building.

• 3:08:04Speaker 02

  Um, and luckily I was, uh, I was, I was at least humble enough as a leader. I made. All kinds of terrible mistakes, but at least humble enough to listen to the guy that knows who he's talking about. Um, to say, okay, cool. Let's do, do it. You know, Chris wants to do. Thank God we did that. Cause I mean, we had. Um, I, over the next 48 hours, we disrupted like all kinds of attacks on that combat outpost. Uh, and that was just kind of the motto for what we did over and over and over again. You'd, you'd see like a dozen enemy fighters. That are trying to like rally. To, to, and, and they, they know they're, they're gonna attack the combat outpost, which you can't see. Or, or you get, you know, uh, right as the sun comes up, mortars are landing dead center of the combat outpost, kills a soldier, wounds three others. And, uh, the soldiers can't even shoot back, right?

• 3:08:47Speaker 02

  Indirect fire, it's coming from kilometers away, over blocks of, you know, the city. And, um, you can't even see the launch point. And so our cybers were able to engage, gauge guys loading mortar tubes into the back of a, a vehicle, you know, from 600 yards away.

• 3:09:01Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:09:02Speaker 02

  It was that kind of element where, like, those soldiers, when they started hearing, like, the 300 wind mag, you know, it was like, three enemy fighters engaged with 300 wind mag. I mean, you would just hear, like, they were, they were so stoked about it. They knew the, like, we were up there on the high ground, you know, to protect them and help them out. And as a result, I mean, every single time we called them, um, cause when we're deep in enemy territory, like, we got, we got viciously, they always figured out where we were. They, they, sometimes it was like, sending like unarmed kids through the neighborhood, knocking on gates. I mean, you know, all the standard stuff, and they knew we weren't gonna engage that guy. Um, but, uh, but they, they, they wanted to figure out where we were at. So, um, it would, we just adopted the marine tactic from three marines of like, it became an over fighting position.

• 3:09:46Speaker 02

  So if, if you didn't have an urgent surgical casualty, like, you weren't calling evac. Cause that's what they wanted you to do. You were gonna be in the streets, getting ambushed, have an IED clacked off on you, you know, or, or, or having, you know, multiple machine guns engaging you while you're patrolling out. So we tried to wait till undercover darkness, if possible.

• 3:10:04Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:10:05Speaker 02

  Sometimes we didn't do that, cause if I was, felt like I was in a position that was not very defensible, if they attacked us. Um, like, if they could get, if we were on, we had rooftops, but the, all the rooftops were kinda equally, you know, higher, even higher around us, and they might have the advantage over us. So there were a couple times when we had to make the tough call, we just, you know, it's kinda like the, you make the, the, the least bad decision you can, right? Or you're like, hey, man, I know we're gonna get attacked, but we can move fast on foot, we could do some misdirection, um, and we can get back to the base. It's gonna be better than allowing them to set up a massive attack, you know, on our position where they have all the advantage, you know?

• 3:10:44Shawn Ryan?

  So I think we've, it, we've done a fantastic job of painting what Ramadi was like back in 2006. And so, let's rewind back to your first kinetic operation with the blue on blue.

• 3:11:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, even before that, when the guys hit the grounds, the very first, like I've been advanced, I've been on the ground for like a week, everyone arrives. And so they're just offloading in the camp and we got in, there's like a massive, multiple, like multiple unit, like well coordinated enemy attack on the camp. We're talking like, so every single SEAL is on the rooftop of the camp, just dumping fire across the river. And that was like the first, the very first, one of my guys who was our, probably our most senior machine gunner, he'd been, it was his third deployment to Iraq, he'd been a machine gunner, you know, every time, he'd done a bunch of assaults, done a bunch of

• 3:11:44Speaker 02

  capture kill raids, you know, those direct action raids, and he was like, this is the first time I've ever fired my machine gun. I mean, he'd been on the ground for like three hours, you know?

• 3:11:54Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 3:11:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they shot like 500 rounds off the rooftop, you know?

• 3:11:59Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:12:00Speaker 02

  So we knew like this is gonna be different, you know, and then that first particular, the first major operation, first of all, I was so pissed at Jocko for this because he wasn't, I was, I had to be acting task unit commander for that because, and it was the right call, man, it was the right call, but I like, I want, obviously wanted to be out there with my guys on the battlefield and a bunch of guys, they, the army, this was the 101st Brigade, or the 101st Airborne Division, this was the, the first of 506, Task Force Red Curry, and this, I mean, they, they lived that, the celebrated Band of Brothers tradition, you

• 3:12:40Speaker 02

  know, from the book that Steven Ambrose wrote in the HBO mini-series, this was the first of 506 parachute infantry regiment, awesome, awesome unit, and

• 3:12:52Speaker 02

  They had a, they just had a phenomenal soldier, incredible leader, their battalion commander. And they were asking for help. They were about, they were doing some operations, pushing in what was called the Malab district. It was a really, really bad area. And so our guys went out there and set up a position. We had, you know, our, our job, tasking from the combined joint special operations task force, you know, that was the Green Beret Colonel in charge of all the special operations at theater at the time, was everything was going to be by with and through Iraqi soldiers. So we were, we were tasked to train and fight

• 3:13:31Speaker 02

  company and battalion size elements of Iraqi soldiers. Like that was literally our tasking. So that's what we were there to do. And obviously that was an ODA mission. It was a little bit different for SEALs to kind of adopt that. But we took with us, we took Iraqi soldiers with us on every mission. And the SEAL Team Two guys before us had done a great job of training those guys up and trying to mitigate some of the risk of their training. But that's what our guys were doing that very first mission. They sent, we had an element of SEALs that was going out as combat advisors to Iraqi soldiers. And we're talking like, like a hundred Iraqi soldiers on the battlefield. You know, with, with like a dozen of our guys and some of the Army, the military transition team and some Marines that were with them. And then we had two different SEAL sniper teams that were going out there along with some Army sniper teams.

• 3:14:15Speaker 02

  And so they went out on the battlefield. They briefed where everybody was going to be, you know, everything, the plan made a lot of sense. I'm kind of tracking this mission. I, you know, I'm watching their con ops and I'm listening to it on the radio. And it was pretty clear that like all, all hell kind of broke loose on the operation. And we expected it to. Because in the Malab district, this was like, and this is our very first major operation is tasking a bruiser. So Jocko felt like he needed to be over there, located with the battalion leadership. So he could kind of be the liaison officer to manage that as the command and control with all those different elements out there. Hundred percent the right call to be able to do that. So Jocko's out on the battlefield. But instead of being, you know, there's all these different multiple SEAL units out there, he's co-located with the battalion staff from Task Force Red Curry, you know,

• 3:15:00Speaker 02

  try to manage that. And we have this report of like a massive enemy attack that goes on. So our SEAL sniper element is reporting the attack. And then all of a sudden, we also get a report that, you know, there's a report that the insurgents are attacking the Iraqi unit that's out there. And there was some, there were some issues I won't get into on the communication side, you know, as well, that kind of broke down passing communications. But Jocko's out there on the battlefield, he shows up there, he knows that his guys are in trouble, they're calling for heavy QRF, right? They want tanks, that means they're in a dire situation, they feel like they're about to be overrun. And

• 3:15:45Speaker 02

  so Jocko shows up there, the command and control element, he moves up, sees the Anglico officer, right, the Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Officer that's there to coordinate an airstrike on a building. There's red smoke marking where the enemy is, he knows that his, that the sniper team is in there somewhere or should be close by. And so he just, he, he's kind of trying to de-conflict what's going on. And he went up and kicked the gate open. And it was Tony, my platoon chief on the other side, was like, and realized like this is a blue and blue situation. So, and no one understood what was going on. This was, meanwhile, I'm monitoring the radio on the other side of the city, I'm getting traffic

• 3:16:30Speaker 02

  passed back to me. There's a, there's a huge spin up on this, but all of my guys that were in that sniper position, that was, that was a squad of my guys that were there. And it was, they were all convinced, I think, that they were about to die. I mean, they, they had moved, they moved out to a sniper position undercover darkness, they realized that where they were was not a good and defendable position. They didn't have visibility on where they needed to see, to cover the road that they were supposed to cover for the soldiers and the Iraqi, the US Army soldiers, Iraqis that were moving down that road. So they moved position across the road. And they weren't able to pass that, that information for, for, you know, for a, a series of reasons, a breakdown in, in communication.

• 3:17:15Speaker 02

  Then the Iraqi soldiers were out of sector, so they were supposed to, it was supposed to be like hours before they were clearing. Well, some of the Iraqi soldiers, I think, decided like, hey, we're gonna get killed if we're out here, let's get this thing over with. They like rushed to the furthest point away, you know, from, uh, the friendly, uh, you know, outpost, Camp Corregidor, and then tried to rush back. And so they were out of sector, so all of a sudden, you know, as, as our sniper team is setting up, they zip tied the, the, the gate to the, um, and they're setting up and you know, it's, it's just starting to get light, so like first call the prayer goes down. So night vision doesn't work, you know, but you can't really see, um, and, uh, and all of a sudden they've got somebody, you know, creeping by the window with an AK-47, like they see the unmistakable sign of AK-47, like they engage that guy.

• 3:18:00Speaker 02

  Um, and they, they didn't realize it was Iraqi soldier that was out of, out of, out of sector. So the Iraqi soldier, you know, they, uh, that guy gets killed, several others get wounded, the Iraqis engage back, um, the Iraqi gets dragged back, they call in for fire support because they're thinking, oh man, there's Al Qaeda insurgents are holed up in this building. And, uh, man, we, we got this on video, uh, there was an embedded, um, there was an embedded reporter, I think from Stars and Stripes with, with the, uh, the, the, uh, unit, ANCO unit, they, they pulled up Al Hubei and they dumped probably, they probably dumped 300 rounds of 50 cal into the building. And our mutual friend Matt that we were in buzz with is on the rooftop and, uh, and I mean, guy, all he could do is just take cover, rounds are coming to the rooftop,

• 3:18:45Speaker 02

  like one round, luckily it went through the concrete wall, not to slow down, like hit him in the face and like embedded up under his cheekbone.

• 3:18:52Shawn Ryan?

  Are you shit?

• 3:18:53Speaker 02

  He said he was burning him, but he like grabbed it, like and pulled it out of his face and like threw it, threw it down on the roof. And so these guys are like, man, we're about to be overrun, right? They're calling for that QRF. And, and they're thinking, man, these guys, this is, they're bringing it. This is our first major operation. So they're calling in for tanks and fire support. Outside, they're calling in for tanks and fire support. So a tank pulls up when Jocko gets up there before we kick the gate open. There's a tank with their gun trained directly on the building where my guys are holed up. And they're just all kind of hunkered down trying to just take cover and not get their head shot off. I mean, you can imagine, right? There's 50 cal rounds coming, you know, and been belt fed, you know, 762 coming right over your head.

• 3:19:35Speaker 02

  All you can do is just bury your face and try to take cover and return fire as best you can. And, and they think they're about to get overrun. And, and, and then on top of that, not only were they going to engage with tanks, they're coordinating an airstrike. So the Anglico, you know, the, the JTAC, right, the air controller, he's coordinating an airstrike that's about to just demolish this entire building. So I'm able to wipe out my entire squad. And so this was the lesson from that of like, just how easily, like, we thought we had taken every step possible to mitigate the risk of that happening. And so meanwhile, I'm back at the Tactical Operations Center, you know, we're monitoring radio reports.

• 3:20:18Speaker 02

  We're hearing that, you know, we've got wounded SEALs. And I know it's, I know it's one of my guys, I know it's, it's Matt at this point, but then we're hearing that it's friendly fire, right? So like, okay, what's going on? Man, all of a sudden, word spreads like wildfire, right? The, the webby, like, instant, you know, chats are going on across the, the, you know, the, the, every, every talk of like, friendly fire, friendly fire, like, what's going on? What's going on? And, and so, I mean, there's, there's like massive scrutiny on this operation, you know, right away. And I remember I jumped in the truck. All I know is that Matt... You know, uh, my brother, our brother, we went through Bud's with that I've done, you know, the, this workup cycle with this in my platoon, his platoon, I know he's been shot in the face.

• 3:21:01Speaker 02

  I don't know what that means. I don't know if it means his head's gone, you know? I don't mean if he's gonna die. So I jumped in a truck, drove across the base, uh, to Charlie Med, that was a medical facility, and, um, and I went, went to, to, to pick him up. And man, they, you know, they, they put him on a morphine drip and, um, and patched him up and gave him some antibiotics, you know, for, for infection. And when I was talking to him, you know, obviously he's kinda out of it, right? He's got, it's a morphine and, and, uh, but, but he's like, man, they brought it. Those guys brought it. It's like they were gonna overrun our position. He's like, I thought we were all gonna die. And he kept saying it over and over again. And I was like, Matt, I was like, Matt, it was friendly fire, man. It was friendly fire. It was friendly fire. And I probably said, I probably said it was friendly fire probably six times before it like sunk in. And he was like, what?

• 3:21:46Speaker 02

  And it was like, he, he couldn't, he couldn't believe it. You know, he couldn't believe it when I said it. And, uh, and so I think that right there as like, you know, our rocket banding officer flew out, we had an investigating officer that flew out. Um, it was, we were so fortunate to not lose any of our guys on that. And, you know, it was horrible that we lost an Iraqi soldier on that. We took up a big collection for his family and tried to do everything we could, you know, for him. There were a couple other Iraqi soldiers wounded. Luckily they recovered, you know, from that. But it was so close to being just absolutely catastrophic. We're talking, you know, wiping half my platoon out. Um, and then, you know, when people were looking like what heads are gonna roll over this? What heads are gonna roll? Who screwed this up? But this is friendly fire. This is the worst, this is the cardinal

• 3:22:31Speaker 02

  sin. The cardinal sin that you commit. Ex-ray platoon in, in Vietnam, right? That had a, uh, a friendly fire incident and, and this is, this is the worst case scenario that can happen. Um, and so we had a big debrief and our commanding officer, our commanding master, we were sitting in there, the investigating officer who was our JAG was in there. Uh, people were wondering like, who's responsible? Like who's, how did this happen? Who's responsible for this thing? And we knew it was probably some heads were gonna roll over it. And, uh, and Jocko stood up in front of the, of the task and we're all in there. And, um, and he said, whose fault is this?

• 3:23:09Speaker 02

  Man, the radio man stood up and was like, "Man, I didn't pass the traffic on where we move location. I should have made sure that got passed. That's my fault." The SEAL that engaged Iraqi soldiers said, "I didn't get proper PID. I thought that was an enemy insurgent and I engaged him before I had proper PID. That's my fault. I should have made that happen going forward." Over and over, the guy with Iraqi soldiers, who'd been combat advising them, said, "This is my fault. Those Iraqis were out of sector." And we just went around the room, around the room, and Jocko was like, "No, it's not your fault." Like, "No, it's not your fault. No, it's not your fault." He's like, "This is my fault. I'm the Task Unit Commander. Everything that happens in this Task Unit is my fault. I'm responsible. And we're gonna do everything in our power to make sure nothing like this ever happens again."

• 3:23:51Speaker 02

  And just to watch that happen, like the power of extreme ownership in front of everybody in the Task Unit. Our respect for him was already high, man, and it went through the roof after that. I realized, and like... And our commanding officer, instead of... He actually left there. He had greater trust in Jocko and in Task Unit Bruiser because he knew that we were gonna take steps to make sure that it didn't happen again. And we did prevent it from happening again. Friendly fire happened, probably... Friendly fire would erupt, but it never became catastrophic. We were always able to manage it. We could stop it before anybody was killed or wounded. And it was always a constant threat, but we took massive steps to mitigate the risk.

• 3:24:31Speaker 02

  And in fact, even I... Even some of the guys, some of your SEAL teammate brethren that plugged into our team, they were an awesome crew that came out and joined us. And they were kinda jokingly calling me the Rocket Man there for a little bit, because I had these two... I had these two flares on my back. We had a white flare and a red flare. A white flare was... A red flare was Send QRF. A white flare was like Cease Fire. And so those were single and devices. I was like, "Man, I want that with me all the time, just in case that we have that happen. I'm gonna carry that thing. Those things around on me. That's supposedly my job is to prevent this from happening." So, we implemented lessons learned at every level of the team. We took massive steps

• 3:25:12Speaker 02

  to mitigate it from happening. And when it did happen, like, "Oh, we get some rounds over our head," we instantly had the radio comms, and we had a good comms check with that, the tank that was shooting at us. We could get them to ceasefire. And we're marking our positions. Cease fire. Sometimes we'd throw a freaking giant, you know, VS-17, day glow, orange signal panel, you know, half the size of this room over the side of the building. It let every... Insurgent know where we were at just because uh that was better than taking you know one twenty millimeter main gun rounds you know in into your position uh because the threat of that was significant every time.

• 3:25:48Shawn Ryan?

  Damn wow wow you know I heard you talking um I heard you talking once I think it was with Jocko about getting shot in the chest in the plates can you run through that?

• 3:26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, that was uh the darkest day of my life.

• 3:26:10Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sorry, I didn't know that.

• 3:26:11Speaker 02

  August 7th, 2006, man, we lost Markley and uh and Ryan Job had been wounded right before that and uh yeah, I took a round, I think it was a ricochet, you know, otherwise I probably would have killed him, I split my spine in half, you know.

• 3:26:26Shawn Ryan?

  What were you guys doing?

• 3:26:27Speaker 02

  We were uh it started as a big uh uh basically a coordinated search operation into what was called the J block sector of Ramadi and so after we'd established those common outposts, we'd push sniper overwatches out and then we would push um we would push uh patrols with the Iraqi forces out, you know, to try to patrol into the city, engage with the local populace, show them that we were there to actually support them, talk to them about where the insurgents were, um you know, these these were the Marine Corps called them census operations of kind of just showing the local populace that like we were here to support them, you know, that was that stabilize the city, secure the local populace, you know, part which which paid huge dividends down the road, you know, to ultimately lower

• 3:27:08Speaker 02

  level of violence and and um you know, the Anmar Awakening, you know, uh came out once, but all that started with breaking the back of the insurgency, like really lowering their their their military capability, um but what we would do is is push our uh push patrols out with the Iraqi soldiers um and the the military uh transition teams that they were assigned to them uh and we put sniper overwatches out there and we had a bounding overwatch that was in a cyber, you know, cyber position covering um and we were out with um we were out with uh. Um, an awesome unit, uh, from the, uh, this was from, uh, this was from the Task Force Bandit,

• 3:27:49Speaker 02

  uh, Team Bulldog. So this was, this is Bravo Batoon, um, uh, first, uh, it was Bravo Batoon, First Battalion, Thirty-Seven Armored Regiment of the First Armored Division. I mean, this is a, this was a unit that had been in the Ardennes, you know, force in the Battle, Battle of the Bulge and World War II, like historic unit, incredible group, um, that we built some awesome relationships with and, and, um, we, by the way, we couldn't have done any of these operations without these soldiers and Marines. You know, we pushed into these areas. The only reason that we could do that, the only reason that we could push so deep into enemy territory is because we knew that the soldiers and Marines were going to mount up in their tanks, mount up in their Humvees and come to our rescue and aid. And they did it over and over and over and over

• 3:28:32Speaker 02

  again, all the time. Um, and we, we had an, just an incredible working relationship with those guys and, and I wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for them. Um, and, uh, so we supported them as well, right? When they asked us to do things, we helped them. We put in sniper overwatch positions. And so we were pushing Iraqis deeper into, you know, enemy held areas. And, um, as we were clearing through an element of the J block, we'd, we'd done probably, I don't know, six or eight operations, like in this area, kind of pushing deeper and deeper in. Um, and, uh, Ryan Jobe was one of our machine gunners, amazing guy, incredible guy. Um, and, uh, well, the kind of guy that, I don't know, I don't know how long it took him to get through BUDS, but it was a long time. He was one of those guys that was never going to be the best athlete, was just absolutely tough as nails.

• 3:29:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:29:17Speaker 02

  Um, and, uh, was a, was a just a stud, uh, you know, awesome machine gunner, uh, super strong man of, of faith as well, you know, and hilarious. Uh, but he was, he was the machine gunner, basically holding the security for Chris and the sniper team that was on the rooftop as we had this kind of bounding overwatch. And I was with the Iraqi, uh, element that was moving forward to the streets. Um, and we were about an hour and a half or two hours into that operation. Again, one that we conducted many, many like that before. And all of a sudden, I mean, we hear a, we hear a, a, uh, a shot right now. I mean, you can hear the impact of it, you know? And uh, and I, I hear, you know, our most experienced, our most experienced guy was Chris Kyle. Awesome, awesome teammate and tremendous sniper.

• 3:30:03Speaker 02

  Saved lots of lives on the battlefield and, and man, I could just hear in Chris's voice, man, he's like, we, we call Ryan's nickname was Biggles. And uh, he was like, Biggles has been hit, I need a corpsman to the rooftop now. And uh, man, I could, I could just hear the, in his voice, you know, how horrific that was. Um, and I literally been talking to him, you know, both those guys, like 30 seconds before that, just walked down the stairs, you know, to, to, to try to, you know, we're gonna organize our team and kind of push out to the, to the next building before we take the rooftop there.

• 3:30:36Speaker 02

  And man, we get, you know, so we go rushing back up to the rooftop and uh, Markley, who was uh, rolls right back up there, another awesome machine gunner, just an incredible, incredible guy, steps right into the very position that Ryan got shot. Like right in the position with his belt fed Mark 48 machine gun and just starts laying down suppressive fire.

• 3:30:59Speaker 02

  Knowing that like we're gonna get shot back, you know, at any moment. Um, and we got up to Ryan, you know, I, Ryan had been hit in the, hit in the face. Uh, and just a single, single shot hit him in the face. Um, you could call an enemy sniper round, you could call it just a, you know, he, obviously it was not your average, like spraying prey, you know, insurgent, somebody that had some good side picture trigger squeeze, engaged him, hit him in the head. Um, and man, it just, it just looked horrific. I mean, he's, you know, he's, his eyes gone, like his, Holy shit. Half his face looked like it's missing. You know how blood looks, man, it's just, so I, I just, I ran up to him, I just grabbed his hand, I was like, Is he conscious?

• 3:31:38Speaker 02

  When I rolled up to him, he's just, he's just laying there. And I gra, I grabbed his hand, I was like, hang in there, brother, we're gonna get you out of here. And I, I didn't believe that for a second, man, you know, like it just looked like it was, there was no chance. Um, and.

• 3:31:51Speaker 02

  You know, meanwhile, Mark is standing there laying down some press fire right over the rooftop wall where he just, Ryan just got hit. Other guys stepped up there too, laying down some press fire. You know, we're getting, we're calling in the cas back vehicle, the corpsman rolls up there and is, is working on him. That corpsman was Johnny Kim, or, you know, just a phenomenal guy in, in there, you know, going to work, um, you know, on Ryan. And miraculously, Ryan like sits up. He like sits up and says, I'm okay. And, uh, you know, he's, he was, the, the blood was kind of going down his, his throat, right? So he has to kind of sit up to kind of clear that. And, um, and we get under his armpits, we're getting him down. So the cas back vehicle, you know, we had a, uh, M113 armed personnel carrier down there, you know, for cas back.

• 3:32:34Speaker 02

  And, uh, so we get Johnny, uh, our, our corpsman and, and we got, you know, guys under each, each shoulder of Ryan, we're getting an escort off the roof and he, he walks off the roof really by his own power, like down the stairs. Um, and, uh, just, uh, just incredibly, incredibly tough, you know, human being. And, uh, we found out later that Ryan got hit in the, when, when he was in the, in the hospital, you know, he had all this shrapnel in his face and they were trying to figure out like what exactly happened. Cause I thought the round just impacted him, you know, uh, but he, he, we, we realized that like there was a, there was a round impact on the receiver, right at the base of the receiver where it meets the buttstock where his Mark 40 machine gun. And we were an hour and a half into this operation.

• 3:33:19Speaker 02

  He was, uh, you know, it's, it's 117 degrees, you know, it's miserably hot repairing all our gear and water. I mean, Ryan must've been swept profusely. Um, and hit man, just like the awesome teammate that he was, the awesome machine gunner was, Ryan was on that machine gun. He was on that machine gun looking down the sides of his weapon, ready to provide cover fire. And if he hadn't done that, he would've just taken his hat off, you know? That round would've just taken his hat off. So, um, like that saved his life. Um, and, uh, we, unfortunately, we didn't figure out till later, it was, it was two weeks later that we realized that, uh, that, uh,

• 3:33:55Speaker 02

  The the shrapnel had severed his optic nerve to his good eye and he was going to be blind as a result of that. And so I didn't know how it was going to go at the time we evac we evac Ryan, you know, we sent our corpsmen with him. We pulled back to the, you know, we pulled back to the base. And August 2nd, we'd done multiple operations in this area, we'd gotten tons of gunfights in this area. There were definitely a lot of insurgents. But there was something different about August 2nd, like this was probably, I think it was the largest single like engagement of any of the the the engagements that made up this like, you know, eight or nine months like Battle of Ramadi. And insurgents were just coming out of the woodwork attacking the soldiers that were out there.

• 3:34:39Speaker 02

  So we had one sector, they were clearing another sector after Ryan got hit, we pulled back and and went back to the, we put patrol back about a kilometer to the to the base, kind of refitted. And the soldiers were like under attack, man, they they, you know, and they asked us if we could we could help them. And and, you know, they were getting attacked from these different positions. So we loaded up in in Bradley Fighting Vehicles and we rolled back out, you know, into the into the city. And it was, it was. Man, there was so much going on that day, like, like for guys like Mark Lee, for all the guys who were in charge of the battalion, like, they knew they were going back at it in the teeth of it, like we'd just seen what happened to Ryan.

• 3:35:24Speaker 02

  And, you know, our brothers in the army needed our help from Team Bulldog there. And and nobody hesitated for a second, man. Jocked up in their gear, reloaded mags, refitted with grenades, loaded up into those Brad's and we we rolled out.

• 3:35:41Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 3:35:42Speaker 02

  Hit those target buildings.

• 3:35:43Shawn Ryan?

  No hesitation.

• 3:35:44Speaker 02

  No hesitation, man. Those guys did did everything I asked them, man. Unbelievable courage. We had. The firefight was so bad that day, man, we had like, I think for uh, the company commander's name is uh, Mike Byham is a close friend of mine, he's retired now, Main Gun Mike, we called him, he fired over fifty main guns from, from the, his tank throughout his, his uh, time there. And um, I, I don't know how many people have done that since like the World War II era, man. Fifty main guns, but uh, he was a, he was a phenomenal guy. I think every, I think just about every tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle out there was uh, you know, we would use the term Winchester, they're out of ammo, like they go black when the tank's out of ammo, like they, they shot every single main gun round that they had.

• 3:36:29Speaker 02

  Damn. In that engagement, and uh. That is some serious shit. It was, it was uh, it was, it was right in the teeth of it, man. And so I think for, for me, you know, I talked quickly over with Tony, my, my platoon chief, I was like, look, if we're gonna hit a target, we got bad guys that are shooting at us, you know, the best thing we do is soften it up, you know, first, so um, we had the uh, we wanted to go in and try to stay off the street, we knew we had at least one sniper out there, so we wanted to try to use armor, you know, to get into, to, to, to these areas. Um, and so we had those, the Bradley Fighting Vehicles and the tanks just blast these buildings, man, before we went into them. Um, and then smash to the walls, uh, and lower their, lower their, their ramps, you know, before we engage.

• 3:37:12Speaker 02

  And we hit, we hit one building, um, the insurgents had already like pushed out of it, that the, you know, the army told us, hey, we're getting engaged from, from this building, there's a surge in that building. So we loaded back up, we hit, we hit another building. And in the second engagement, as we went into that building, man, the building was on fire as we went in there, like the, a main gun round had already hit the building and just blasted it open. Um, there were uh, as we started moving into the building and clearing through the building, uh, we took fire from the opposite end of the hallway and uh, Mark, Mark was killed. And somewhere I was hitting that gauge, I, I heard the gunfire ring out, I stepped out into the, into the hallway, got, got hit, and I just grabbed one of our guys who was in the hallway, it was clearly a hot hallway with bullets and ricochets flying around, I

• 3:37:54Speaker 02

  had to push him across the, the um, the uh, the hallway, you know, just to try to get him out of the line of fire. And uh, and, and you know, I heard the man down call, Mark was twenty feet away from me, you know, when that happened, and, and um, you know, guys came, came uh, as more assaulters poured in the building, like they, they cleared the rooftop and, and um, it was uh, it was. It was the absolute worst day of my life, man. Um, and I think the fact that I got hit, you know, just in between the plates and um, I knew I'd been hit, you know, but then uh, the guy that I pushed into that room was like, "Hey Leif, you're bleeding," you know, just, just, blood always looks like more than it is, right?

• 3:38:35Speaker 02

  It was my whole inside of my, you know, uh, inside of my vest was soaked and it was just like trickling down, you know, you could just hear like the tap, tap, tap, tap, like blood on the floor and, and uh, but there just wasn't time to even think about that, man, you know, it was, Mark was down, we moved up to him, got the corpsman on him, got him casavacked, um, and for whatever reason, like I thought there might be some hope, you know, Mark was unconscious when we got to him. I thought there might be some hope to him, man, but he'd been, he'd been hit in the head, he was killed instantly. And um, Mark was just such an incredible, incredible warrior, man, and he was doing exactly what I asked him to do, you know, which was uh, engage uh, enemy insurgents.

• 3:39:17Speaker 02

  He was, he was moving down a hallway, stepped up right in the doorway to um, you know, to engage enemy insurgents that were shooting at us from the building next door, man, and uh, and sacrificed himself for me and the rest of the guys that were coming in there, and he was, uh, I mean, just like Ryan, just the most incredible teammate, just the, just absolutely hilarious, strong as a, just, just strong as an awesome, incredible athlete, but just the, the kind of, just representing the absolute best of the SEAL teams, you know, and uh, and I would do anything, Sean, I'd do anything to trade places with them, man. Um, I got lucky, you know, for whatever reason, I got, I got lucky and, and some ricochet hit me and, you know, they patched me up and, and uh, and I, I, you know, there'll never be a time when I go up to

• 3:40:01Speaker 02

  Fort Rosecrans Cemetery and see Mark's grave there, I don't wish that was me laying on the ground there, man, and not him. And uh, I think that's one of the hardest things, um, that I could have never prepared for, right? When these, these guys that you love and would do anything for, um,

• 3:40:19Speaker 02

  It's the ultimate dichotomy as a leader. It's the ultimate dichotomy, which is to, to love your guys and want to do anything for them and be willing to trade your life for them if you could. And yet, sending them out on missions where you know that they, they might get injured or killed. Um, and I think it's, uh, it was, it was something that I tried to pass on to the next generation of SEAL leaders that I, you know, just to, the reminder of like what's at stake. And we would do a memorial run, um, uh, every junior officer training course that I put through, like we'd park our, our vehicles down at, at Dog Beach and, and Ocean Beach. And we would ride five miles uphill all the way to Fort Rose County Cemetery.

• 3:41:01Speaker 02

  And we'd go pay our respects to where Mark Lee's buried and Mikey Montsu of our teammate and, and Del Platoon, uh, who was killed about a month later and pay our respects there. And, and just, uh, remind, remind these young leaders about what's, what's at stake, man. And then the burden of leadership. And, um, I think for me, um,

• 3:41:24Speaker 02

  they'll never be, like, it's a, it's a burden that never goes away. You know, it's a burden that never goes away. Um, and I think what's, as a man of faith, Mark was a tremendous man of faith. And, uh, he had wanted to be a pastor and he had gone to the master's college, um, to study to be a pastor before he decided that he wanted to, he wanted to join the SEAL teams. And, um, and I remember quoting scripture and talking about, um, there were, there was a, there was a time when we were out, uh, when, you know, there was, uh, we were engaging targets, uh, and we were talking about like the worst case scenarios, you know, these mangy Iraqi dogs that are like, you know, these kind of junkyard dogs that are running around, like the worst case scenario is that they, these mangy dogs are like chewing on you on the street, right?

• 3:42:10Speaker 02

  And we talked about how this was, you know, uh, that, uh, in the Bible, there's, there's numerous examples of that where like the prophet Elijah, uh, you know, and Jezebel who's trying to kill him in the prophets of Israel, that the dogs are going to chew on Jezebel. Um, when David and Goliath, Goliath says that he's going to give David's body after he kills him to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. And, and we were talking about this with, with Mark, right? This idea of like, uh, of being a warrior on the battlefield. Um, and, and I remember sharing those scriptures, you know, with Mark and talking about his faith and, and how powerful that was for him. Um, and I know I'm going to see him again one day. And I look forward to that day, man. He's a, he was an incredible man and uh,

• 3:42:53Speaker 02

  and Ryan Jobe, you know, three years after the surgery, uh, I wanna, I think it was the 20 second surgery to repair those wounds that, you know, when he was wounded, um, we lost him, you know, from complications of that surgery as well and uh, like him, like, just like Mark, Ryan was an awesome man of faith. Um, you know, he came back from that deployment and being blind to him was like an inconvenience, you know? It was uh, he, he, he climbed 14,000 foot Mount Rainier, totally blind, um, to this awesome organization called Camp Patriot. I know, I know a number of SEALs that attempted it and were unsuccessful in their summit attempt, you know, with, with, with their sight, you know?

• 3:43:32Speaker 02

  And uh, and all their limbs and um, we, he asked me to go on, I was, I was the spotter for him and we, he shot this world-class bull elk using this little camera system. I mean, Ryan was just a phenomenal guy. He married his longtime girlfriend, um, they were expecting their first child. I, and you know, when, when that happened, it was just, just a, just a tremendous, tremendous loss. Um, but I know that, that, that Mark would have wanted us to keep going, right? To keep operating, to keep doing what we're doing, to try to make a difference there. And I would talk to Ryan on the phone and Ryan would tell us to keep going, you know, in those operations. Keep doing what you're doing, keep going out there. Um, keep getting after it, uh, do everything you can, you know, to try to bring more soldiers and Marines home,

• 3:44:14Speaker 02

  to try to win this thing in whatever capacity we can and, and uh, and uh, man, I just, I'm just so thankful and fortunate and honored to have been able to serve with guys like that, you know, who were willing to lay down their lives. Um, and, and Ryan one time told me, he's like, it doesn't make me a hero just because I got shot in the face. I'm not a hero. That didn't make me a hero because I got shot. And I told Ryan that what

• 3:44:42Speaker 02

  What made him a hero is not that he got shot. It was the fact that he knew that he could get shot at any time. That he could get gravely wounded or killed. And yet he jocked up in his gear and he rolled out all those operations over and over and over again. And he did it for me, he did it for his teammates, he did it for the teams, he did it for the soldiers and Marines that we were trying to protect. He did it for the innocent Iraqi people that were out there, you know, living under this brutal reign of terror and fear. You know, that Sarkhawis, Hinchman and Al Qaeda in Iraq, later ISIS, you know, ruled over them with. And, uh, and I know Mark, Mark was a hero for the same reason, man. Mark was a hero for the exact same reason that he was, he was willing to do that over and over and over again.

• 3:45:26Speaker 02

  Um, and I just think it was, it's the honor of my lifetime to be able to, to have served alongside heroes like that. And have, uh, and be able to tell their story and share their legacy.

• 3:45:38Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, life, that's heavy, that's heavy. I'm sorry I had to go through that, man.

• 3:45:44Speaker 02

  We're gonna see him again one day, Sean.

• 3:45:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:45:47Speaker 02

  I look forward to that day.

• 3:45:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah, you know, when I first checked into 240 at Bud's, Mark was the, Mark was my, my headmate.

• 3:45:57Speaker 02

  I'm kidding, man, I didn't know that.

• 3:46:00Shawn Ryan?

  Didn't get to know him terribly well, but, um, I am very thankful that I got to meet him and, and, uh, he, he gave me the ins and outs of Bud's. What a great guy.

• 3:46:17Speaker 02

  I, I, I didn't realize that you guys, uh, I guess I should have known that because, you know, I didn't put it together for several, several months into Charlie's, as he started to come, uh, he joined our battalion, started working with us. Um, and, uh, and it was, that wasn't in our initial workup, that was just, that was several months before we deployed. Um, but somehow we put it together like he knew Brian Bill. So I realized that he had been to Bud's previously.

• 3:46:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:46:41Speaker 02

  Um, and, and, uh, and those guys, you know, Brian was one of the guys that had trained with him, they'd lived together in Virginia Beach and, you know, they, they, Brian was one of the guys that encouraged him. Um, and I'll tell you what, man, as destroyed as I was, um, he, Brian Bill, um, was...

• 3:47:03Speaker 02

  It's as close to Mark as you could be. And Brian wasn't close to a lot of people, man. He was, but he was very close friends with Mark Lee. And we talked a lot about Brian and, you know, obviously I was close to Brian and Bud's and was a friend of his through that time. And when we came back, I mean, I was, I just was, just, my soul was crushed. My soul was crushed, man, from losing Mark and Ryan being blind. And, uh, and particularly knowing that I had some minor wound, man. It was like, hey, patch me up and I'm going back to work, you know? Like it was, like, why couldn't that have been me? Why couldn't I have been killed and not Mark? Why couldn't I have been blind and not Ryan?

• 3:47:43Speaker 02

  And, you know, luckily I had a, I had a great commander in Jocko who pulled me aside and said, hey, man, we don't have a crystal ball and we don't know when that stuff's gonna happen. And if we did, we wouldn't go on that operation. But we can either choose to do nothing, you know, and take no risk, or we could do everything we can to try to make a difference here, to try to save American lives here. Uh, that's what Mark would want us to do. That's what Ryan is telling us to do, you know, and encouraging me to keep going. And that support from Jocko was, was immense. But I remember sitting in the mission planning space as we're just kind of all reeling, you know, from, from Mark's loss. And, and at this point, we didn't know Ryan was gonna be blind, you know? I knew it was grave.

• 3:48:28Speaker 02

  I didn't know how, I knew he was wounded badly. I didn't even know if he was gonna like out of the woods as far as making it at that point. And I got a call from Brian Bill, who was in Baghdad, was SEAL teammate. And he said, hey, man, I heard about what happened. And I just want you to know, like, I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna take care of the family. I'm gonna take care of Maya, Mark's wife. You know, I'm gonna be there for Mark's mom, Debbie, and his family. Like, don't worry about it. I know you guys are gonna take the operation. Like, I got this. And, uh, man, I can't even tell you how much that meant to me. Like, for, he never questioned a thing. He never like said, what, what happened? What are you guys doing? Like, all the emotions that you might, you know, expect. Um, he just, he just said, hey, man, I'm here.

• 3:49:13Speaker 02

  I'm here to help. And gave up what was an awesome deployment, you know, for those guys. Um, you know, in Baghdad, doing a bunch of great operations, uh, to go and support Mark, man. And it was, uh, that was the kind of guy that Brian was. And, um, It was, uh, I can't even tell you how much that meant to me, man. Just getting that call in like the darkest hour in real life and like a teammate just putting his arm around you saying, you know, because that was one of the hardest parts is like, hey, I, we're here, like the, what poem is to continue and operations are going on. I want to go back, you know, I want to be able to talk to Mark's family and, and support them and be there for, I want to be with the riots family. And yet you can't do that, right? There's still operations going on. So just knowing that teammates like that, um, you know, we're doing that was, that was,

• 3:49:57Speaker 02

  I'll never forget that, Matt, for Brian. That was just, I think a real testament to the man that he was.

• 3:50:02Shawn Ryan?

  How long was it after that that you guys were on the next op?

• 3:50:07Speaker 02

  We, we had a stand down and, uh, because we just, we needed it, man. We'd been going hard. We'd been going hard and, uh, Delta platoon, uh, working across the city out of Camp Corregidor was going to be on the, uh, they were going to launch an operation like the next day and, um, and Seth Stone called Jocko and said, hey, we're going to roll this 24, 24 hours.

• 3:50:35Speaker 02

  And so, uh, he, Jocko said, hey, man, you can still go on the op and Seth was like, look, I think we need to roll this 24 hours, right? Everybody needs to decompress. Everybody's emotional. Um, you know, and, and so that was, that was an important thing for us, I think, just to realize like we need to, we need to allow our guys to decompress, but we, we had a memorial service for Mark and, man, it was so, guys drove down the most dangerous roads in Iraq. You know, our teammates came from Volusia and Aditha and, and, uh, and from across the, you know, the, the Ramadi down that, you know, Route Michigan, that deadly road, you know, to come pay their respects. And we had a awesome memorial service where we said goodbye to Mark. And then 40 hours later, we jacked up in our gear and we, we roll back out.

• 3:51:19Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to talk about the service with Mark or do you want to keep that between the platoon?

• 3:51:27Speaker 02

  I think we all just said our goodbyes, man. You know, we all just did our best to honor him and, you know, four guys had gone back with Mark to escort his, you know, earthly remains home and be there with his family and be there for the memorial service. Um, you know, for that. And I think it was a, it was an amazing turnout, man. Soldiers, Marines there, Iraqi soldiers. Um, it was, uh, it was just the kind of person he was, man. He, he was, um, he was just a, he was the best, man. He was, I've never seen anybody who could use humor in the darkest situation, like to just drop a joke or, or like a movie quote, you know, and get people laughing and like get them, get them just to kind

• 3:52:08Speaker 02

  of shake things off. Like he was, uh, he just was, uh, yeah, man. He was awesome.

• 3:52:17Shawn Ryan?

  You guys took a lot of losses and, um, you know, the, the, the world is very volatile right now. And we're gonna get involved in some more stuff. There's not a doubt in my mind, the US. And so, you know, for the future generations that are gonna go through similar experiences, is what you just described, you know, what advice do you have? For them?

• 3:52:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, our losses, you know, every time I think I've seen some combat, Sean, I read about, I read about Marines at Iwo Jima, you know, I, I, I got a chance to visit Normandy this summer, right? And I'm standing on the beaches of Okinawa and, and, uh, I'm sorry, the beaches of Utah. Um, I've been, I've been on the beaches in, in Okinawa as well. Um, you know, when I was deployed there back in the day. Um, but just being there at Normandy kind of opened up my eyes to some stuff, like some of the inland fighting campaigns and things that were happening. Um, and you realize the kind of losses that, that. That military units have sustained over the years.

• 3:53:21Speaker 02

  You know, you go to the battlefield like Gettysburg, you know, or so many of the battles around here, you know, in Tennessee, they're not far from where we are now. I mean, just massive, massive loss of life that did eclipse anything that I've experienced. And I think what I could just, you know, what I could say is like, what's helped me is number one faith, man. Knowing that like God has a plan for you, um, you know, and, and the survivor's guilt that, that's so easy for any of us to carry with us.

• 3:53:49Speaker 02

  Is, uh, is like the God has a plan and, uh, and so I think you've got to lean on God for his plan. We don't know what that plan is. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow. Um, we don't know what, what he has in store for us. But just trusting in him for that plan, leaning on faith, um, and knowing too, that like, you know, it's taking extreme ownership of situations, debriefing, learning lessons, even if it's things that, you know, August 2nd, the enemy fought in a way that we hadn't really expected them to do. Like they brought it, they attacked in huge numbers. Um, and that was, that was a different, uh, that was, that was a different tactic, right? The enemy's going to adjust tactics. So you got to debrief, you got to learn lessons to apply that stuff going forward. To make sure that you try to prevent those things from happening, uh, again.

• 3:54:34Speaker 02

  And, uh, and I, I think more than anything else, I think it's about taking care of your people, man. Like, like you, your responsibility as a leader goes way beyond, way beyond just looking out for them in the time that you serve with them. It is about looking out for them and their families, like for the duration of your life. And, and I, I will feel that way about the guys that I served with and as long as I'm breathing, man, like there's nothing I wouldn't do for them. You know, there's nothing I wouldn't, wouldn't help them out with. There's, there's, and sometimes, you know, you lose touch with people and you haven't talked to them in a while and maybe people forget that. And I think it's important to reach out to people and remind them of that. It's important to check in with people. It's important just to, to, to be thinking about, um, how you can continue to support them.

• 3:55:16Speaker 02

  Cause it goes way beyond just in the immediate aftermath of some horrible situation like that. And it's, it's not just about showing up and, and paying your respects at their graveside. It's about checking in with their family, checking in on their kids. You know, reaching out to your teammates, asking them how they're doing, um, letting them know that you're there for them, man. And that is, you're all in this thing together and no matter what. And I think that's. You know, when you go to battlefield like Gettysburg, um, there's, there's memorials all over that battlefield and that's what it's for, man. People put their hands up. Just like in Normandy, there's memorials all over there. People, people, the veterans that survived those battles go there and they put their hands on, on, on those memorials and they remember their lost teammates and they, and they support each other and they

• 3:55:59Speaker 02

  help each other. And I think that's something that, that goes way beyond just the time and service that you have with people. Um, it's lifelong and even beyond that.

• 3:56:08Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for sharing that, Leif. Let's, um, I know it's been heavy for you and I just, I appreciate you going through that, man. And, um, let's take a break.

• 3:56:24Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Leif, we're back from the break. Uh, once again, I just, I really appreciate you digging deep and, and, and sharing those stories, uh, because one, I think it's, it's, it's extremely important, um, to, for those guys to live on, you know, through stories. And two, it's a very, very important piece of history that, that I'm just honored to be able to document here with you today. So.

• 3:56:52Speaker 02

  Well, I appreciate it, man. I'm honored to share it. And anytime I get to a chance to talk about, um, you know, the teammates that I lost and, and, and honor the legacy of Mark Lee and Ryan Job, I think it's, um, I'm, I'm happy to do it, Sean, and I appreciate you. I appreciate you passing on. I think there's, there's so many lessons, you know, that, uh, that we learn from that. And, and I think, uh, for me, I think some Americans though need to, need to understand, like, sometimes people will come up after I speak about leadership and I talk about Remont and I talk about Mark and Ryan and, and Mikey Mousor, you know, and, and, you know, gave his life in our sister platoon, another phenomenal team guy and, um, awesome machine gunner, you know, just like Mark and, and Ryan. And

• 3:57:36Speaker 02

  people will come up and be like, I'm sorry, man. Like, I'm sorry you went through that. And I think it's important to say that, that. Like, we had some dark days in Ramadi, man. I think the, you know, the, it's kind of cliche, right? The Charles Dickens Tale of Two Cities, right? The Best of Times, it was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times. But I think it's important to say that, man. Like, I would trade those dark days for anything. I would trade the days when we lost Mark and Ryan, and when Cowie was wounded, and when we lost Mikey Montsour. I could trade those days for anything. But most of those days were some of the absolute best days of my life. And knowing that we were working with an awesome crew of warriors,

• 3:58:19Speaker 02

  that we were out there fighting against an evil enemy, making a difference, and have an impact, and making sure more soldiers and Marines came home with their families, this was the whole thing. And I think that's something that I think a lot of Americans have a hard time. You know, we kind of live in a day sometimes where it's like, well, you know, is there really good and evil? Like, yeah, there is. There absolutely is. And I think when you see the kind of savagery that the, you know, the precursor to ISIS, the Al Qaeda in Iraq, what they're doing to innocent people, just the butchery and torture and rape and murder, and just horrific, horrific stuff. And I think when you know that you can make a difference in the world, and rid the world of some of that evil,

• 3:59:02Speaker 02

  then it's a great thing, man, to do everything you can in that regard. And I think, I think America needs to remember that.

• 3:59:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:59:11Speaker 02

  And so, most of the days that I served there were some of the best days of my life, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

• 3:59:17Shawn Ryan?

  Is there anything else on this deployment you'd like to cover?

• 3:59:21Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I think that's, I think just knowing that we,

• 3:59:26Speaker 02

  you know, there were so many lessons there, like so many things that like, that I thought I was ready, you know? I thought like, hey, we, you know, combat was so much more difficult than we thought it was gonna be. And we were just humbled, like on every single operation. Like, something didn't go right, the enemy does something you hadn't planned. You know, you thought you de-conflicted that, so that all the friendlies knew where you were, and next you know, you're taking 50 cal, you know, rounds right over the top of your head. You thought everyone knew, you know, what the position was, because they could see your marking device, and come to find out that they can't see that, you know, when they're looking through their tank sites. I mean, just so many things like that. It was just over and over again, those lessons that we learned. And I think probably the biggest lesson that I learned is that it's...

• 4:00:13Speaker 02

  It's not about you, man. It's not about me. You know, it's not about Charlie Platoon or our SEAL unit. And that's one of the lessons I tried to pass on as I went to take over that leadership training course. And, you know, one example of that is like, you know, when we first joined the SEAL teams, right, it's you're training to operate in a SEAL squad or a SEAL platoon. And it's just you, right? And you have assets that are supporting you. And obviously, you know, if you're JSOC, or, you know, there are times when you've got a whole bunch of assets that are supporting just a special operations unit like that. But on the battlefield for us, we would have, you know, there might

• 4:00:51Speaker 02

  be, there might be two aircraft all of Anbar province wide. So if you're gonna like, declare troops and contacts so that the aircraft will be over your head and you could utilize them just in case you might need them, where you're pulling them off of a, you're pulling them off of a marine squad that's pinned down and maybe have guys that are gonna bleed out and die, you know, maybe they get overrun, or maybe these soldiers that are, you know, in this horrific situation, like you're, you're pulling assets away from them. So I think that really was, you know, that really for me was an eye opener of like, it's not about me or my platoon, or like, it's, we're part of the overall team, the overall mission. And, and, and so we gotta share assets, right? We gotta share resources, like, we gotta

• 4:01:33Speaker 02

  actually contribute to the overall success of the mission. I think sometimes, teams get focused on like, what they're doing, you know. But I think Jocko really kind of pulled me aside and helping me understand that like, this is, this is not about us and how many operations we do, or how many bad guys we kill or capture. This is about, you know, are US forces winning or losing? Like, are we gonna be successful as, as, you know, as a nation here? Are our coalition partners or not? So I think that was one of the biggest lessons to bring back.

• 4:02:04Shawn Ryan?

  It's interesting. I've never heard it put that way, to be honest with you. It's always been about the unit.

• 4:02:12Speaker 02

  I think that's what-

• 4:02:13Shawn Ryan?

  Pulling assets. Let me, let me re- it's always been what assets can we get? Not, we're pulling them from these, these, these units and

• 4:02:23Shawn Ryan?

  unique perspective.

• 4:02:25Speaker 02

  Well, every, everybody, I mean, look, you should be trying to get as many assets as you can, right? Like, if you've got an AC-130 gunship, use that thing, right? If you've got helicopters, use that thing. If you've got tanks or Bradley fighting vehicles, whatever assets you can have, that's great. But I think when you start to, one of the things, one of the, um, this, this is my favorite thing to do with, uh, when, so it was, when I, when I came back from that deployment from Ramadi, uh, they, they, they sent me to the center and someone decided to put me in charge of the junior officer training course. Um, and so, uh, I was happy to pass on whatever lessons I had there. But we spent four weeks in the classroom and a week-long field training exercise. And the thing that I loved to do was I would play the part of like a army company commander.

• 4:03:10Speaker 02

  And I used like main gun Mike, the guy I talked about earlier is, is like, this is, you know, he's got tanks, he's got assets. So, so these SEAL, you know, these junior officers, they're leading a squad, you know, on the, onto this training battlefield. They gotta come up with a plan. They gotta come brief me on what they're doing and what support they need from me. And so they'd come up to talk to me about their mission and I would just be like, "Hold on, what you got, man? I got some guys, uh, we're, we're actually activating QRF right now. So, stand by." And, and I would just have them like stand there. And, uh, and just, just to, to realize that like, hey, uh, these army units that you're working alongside, like they, that, that company commander's in charge of 200 soldiers and a dozen tanks. Like, he's got a lot of stuff going on. You're not the only thing that's going on.

• 4:03:52Speaker 02

  So if you're showing up there thinking it's, it's all about you and, and, uh, hey, my big op that's, that's happening. Um, and I got to witness that with a special operations unit. I was standing right there next to, uh, a company commander when a special operations unit rolled into theater, rolled up there, handed them like the GR, you know, the, the, uh, the GRG and said, "Hey, here's what's going on." And the, and they were actually were blocking the exits to the combat outposts. And the company commander is like, hey, man, I got troops out of the field right now. You gotta get your vehicles out of here. I gotta be able to use these tanks. You know, and it was kind of a rude awakening for that special operation unit to be like, oh, there's other stuff going on around here.

• 4:04:33Shawn Ryan?

  I bet it was.

• 4:04:34Speaker 02

  My big mish, you know? So I think that was what I tried to train those junior officers is just to pass it on to them. You know, it's not that as a leader, you don't try to get every asset that you can for your team, but it's that you realize that it's about the overall team and the overall mission. And so if you are hoarding assets, you know, or you are focused on yourself, like there may be things that you're doing that could negatively impact others, you know, who are also trying to carry out their mission. And we're all in this thing together. So I think looking up and out for a leader and thinking about others and those other units that you got to operate, you know, in the same battle space with is crucial.

• 4:05:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, definitely. Before we move on to the rest of your career, I want to go back and I wanted to ask you, what did you receive the Silver Star for?

• 4:05:20Speaker 02

  I received the Silver Star for that horrible situation on August 2nd, 2006. And I don't know if I've ever publicly said that before, but I asked Jocko not to write me up for that, man.

• 4:05:32Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 4:05:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was like, I don't want an award for that. This is the worst day of my life, man. I'd trade it for anything. Mark got killed, Ryan's wounded. I don't want an award for that, man. We did the best that we could in a horrible situation. I'm proud of my platoon and how they responded in the worst situation imaginable. You know, to get the building clear, to call in air support, you know, to get casualty evacuation, all the things that they did under the worst situation imaginable. But I was like, I don't want an award for that. And for whatever reason, he decided to... That it was deserved an award and he wrote me up for it. So I accepted that award as a recognition for my team, Charlie Platoon, and what they were able to accomplish.

• 4:06:17Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel that there's anything you could have done to prevent that?

• 4:06:21Speaker 02

  I think that when you lose guys on the battlefield like that, like I will rethink that for every moment of my life, you know?

• 4:06:30Shawn Ryan?

  I know you were going to say that, and that's why, as tough of a question as it is...

• 4:06:39Shawn Ryan?

  If you found anything you could have been different? Or is it a never, is it a never-ending thing where you will always look for what you could have done different?

• 4:06:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think that, uh, I think that there is, you're constantly thinking, man, what if I'd have done this, or what if I've done that, or what if I'd have done this? And that's, that's where I think Jocko's guidance, you know, is my task at a commander and saying like, man, we don't have a crystal ball. Like, if you'd have known that stuff was gonna happen, you wouldn't have gone on that op. You know, also on operation, you know? And I think the tough thing for me is like, you know, is realizing like, I can't, you know, we've got the army out there that needs our help, and they're in the worst situation of in, they're in the worst single engagement of like, the entire Battle of Ramadi. It lasted for nine months, um, you know, that killed, um, 94 guys, you know,

• 4:07:30Speaker 02

  in, uh, I think 94 guys killed in action in the 228, that National Guard unit. Um, and I think 98 total guys killed in the, uh, ready first brigade combat team.

• 4:07:41Speaker 02

  And so, uh, of all the combat that those guys saw, like, this was like, the worst. Um, you know, or this was the single, like, hottest day of, you know, gunfire and, and, uh, mayhem and enemy attacks. And, and so I, I think for me, it's the recognition of like, I, you know,

• 4:08:00Speaker 02

  when somebody needs your help, you know, I think you do everything you can to help them. And I, I try to mitigate the risk that we can control, you know, by riding in Bradley Fighting Vehicles so that we were behind armor and not out in the street, getting shot at by snipers, by smashing through the walls, by softening up targets with 25mm chain gun, um, rounds from the Bradley Fighting Vehicles and, and, uh, and, and main guns from the tanks, you know, before we actually entered those buildings.

• 4:08:28Speaker 02

  But there's, there's just never, it's just a burden that never goes away, you know? And I think, I think you, you just, you have to do the best you can in the, with the information that you have, you know? And I think there's, uh, I would trade that, trade that day for anything, to do something different, to bring Mark back or Ryan back.

• 4:08:45Speaker 02

  And it's something that will always be with me, you know?

• 4:08:50Speaker 02

  I think sometimes too, when you're on the, on the battlefield, that, uh...

• 4:08:55Speaker 02

  If you're conducting operations, like, there's no... The expectation that you are going to be able to be in significant combat, sustained combat over time without taking casualties, it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. And, you know, I remember a question our commanding officer asked us, like, you know, with any... with any operation that you go on, you know, you should ask yourself, like, is it worth it? You know, is it worth the loss of one of your guys? And, you know, as we thought about that question, like, I can answer that question right now. No, it's not. I wouldn't... I wouldn't trade my guys for... I wouldn't trade my guys for Osama Bin Laden, you know?

• 4:09:37Speaker 02

  I wouldn't trade my guys for Zarkawi. I wouldn't... I would trade any single one of my guys for any of these, you know, insurgent terrorist savages that we're fighting.

• 4:09:50Speaker 02

  But that's not the right question to ask. And I don't think it's any different than... I don't think it's any different than a... If you'd have asked a company commander at Omaha Beach, like, would he trade one of his soldiers for Adolf Hitler? I think he'd have said no. I think he'd have said no. Of course not. Like, this is my soldier I care about. I'm not... I'm not gonna... I'm not gonna trade that guy's life. But they were willing to make the sacrifice because they realized that establishing a foothold in Fortress Europe was the key to being able to defeat Nazism so that we could live in freedom around, you know, across the globe and maintain our way of life. And so I think it's the same thing, right? If you're looking at...

• 4:10:35Speaker 02

  If you're looking at a mission like that, it's... It's never gonna be worth... Like, you're never gonna make that trade. But the trade is that you do the best you can to try to... to try to have the most impact that you can. And in the time that you have, and you gotta mitigate the risk of getting control. And I think that's all you can do as a leader.

• 4:10:57Speaker 02

  And I think sometime the lesson learned is that combat is dangerous, man. It's dangerous business. And if we don't have the will to kill... If we don't have the will to kill the enemy, and if we don't have the will to sacrifice American lives, then we shouldn't be in combat in the first place.

• 4:11:15Shawn Ryan?

  Lee, if I just want you to know that I don't take that question that I asked you lightly. I asked it because there's gonna be people in your shoes. There have been many people in similar situations and, you know, just your answer alone might save somebody's life. So, thank you.

• 4:11:35Speaker 02

  Well, I'm happy to share that, man. I think, you know, for every leader, right? We gotta, we gotta take risks. There's no, there's no combat operation without risk, right? There's no, you can't do anything in life without taking a risk. But you gotta mitigate the risks that you can control, right? You don't wanna run to your death, right, with your hair on fire. And I think, I think trying to balance that dichotomy, right, of being aggressive but not being reckless is crucial for every leader out there. And it definitely made me think, you know, deeply about that. In fact, there was, there was a follow-on time where we had, we had some aircraft overhead that saw like some armed insurgents like run into a building.

• 4:12:15Speaker 02

  And, and so, you know, after, after losing Mark and, and, you know, losing Ryan, like I wasn't, it was, we were gonna look at alternatives, you know, to, to try to hit them in a different way instead of, even if we smashed that building with tanks and blasted it, like, we weren't gonna run into that building. We were gonna make some adjustments. So, I think every leader has to make, has to learn the lessons that they can, lessons that they learned. And I did a poor job, I think, of, of even letting my guys know of even some of the, some of the ops that we turned down. I've, I've talked to some, some of the guys I served with in Charter Battalion that were like blown away that we, we turned down operations. Cause we looked at it, the risk versus reward wasn't there, you know, we're like, no, we're gonna focus elsewhere here. It's, that's, there's too risky and I think the, you know,

• 4:13:00Speaker 02

  the chance of mission success are limited, so we're not gonna take the risk there. And, and some of them never even knew that, you know, that we were, that, that we were doing all we could to try to mitigate those risks, you know?

• 4:13:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:13:11Speaker 02

  But you're not going into combat without taking risks. And if we're not willing to take risks, man, it's, we oughta not even be there in the first place. And I think that's the kinda thing, like the idea that we can, we can go to war without taking casualties, you know, it's just, it's, it's just not true, man. It's not true. And, and I think that's, more than anything, I wish that we had leaders who have been to war, who understand that, so that they can think very deeply about whether or not those risks are worth it.

• 4:13:39Shawn Ryan?

  You know, at breakfast, we had a small discussion about, I guess there had been some controversy about the Special Operations Mission that you guys were on and people were saying wasn't Special Operations Mission because you were operating and gunfighting in the daytime. And so I wanted to just give you the floor on that.

• 4:14:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was all kinds of criticism, you know, like that. I've certainly been the victim of the arms here quarterback stuff. And that's going to happen, right? When things go wrong and things go bad. And I understand that. I think that's a function of people just, I think, not understanding what we were doing and why we were doing it. And I think I could have done a lot better job of instead of getting angry or frustrated with people of just kind of explaining that, you know, and talking about why we did what we did, and the impact that it actually had. And, yeah, I think, you know, Caskin and Bruiser killed a lot of bad guys. And a lot of those, Chris Kyle, our lead sniper point man at Charter Battoon, was, you know, was the ringleader of that, like, who did a tremendous

• 4:14:47Speaker 02

  amount of damage to the insurgent fighters there, disrupted dozens and dozens of attacks on soldiers and Marines and our own guys, Iraqi troops. It saved a lot of lives, man, and had some huge impact. And when we were in the squadron after action brief, you know, when everyone's standing in there, all the senior officers and non-commissioned officers are in there, kind of talking about the lessons learned, someone stood up and asked Jocko, hey, you guys were out in the daytime for a lot of this stuff, you know, do you think that's a Special Operations Mission? And Jocko explained that, you know, 99% of the enemy fighters that we killed were during the daytime, you know, and he said killing

• 4:15:32Speaker 02

  bad guys is a Special Operations Mission. And that's the question. And I think this is exactly right. Like, it's, this is, you know, I think, sometimes...

• 4:15:46Speaker 02

  As special operations units, we need to be innovative. And I think you can be conventionally unconventional sometimes of like, oh, we can only go out when it's nighttime. We can only go out when we have like the, you know, the, uh, well, what happens when you have a target that shows up in a marketplace in the middle of daytime? Like we have, we have to be able to actualize targets, right? We have to be able to figure out ways to, um, you know, to, to, to do things where people aren't expecting. If they're expecting us to come at nighttime with a, you know, undercover darkness every time. So, um, I think our, our best special operations units are constantly innovating and adapting, you know, ways to do things like that. Uh, but I looked at what we were doing in, um, in Ramadi, we were, we were going out. A lot of what we were doing was undercover darkness in that it was going in at nighttime, setting up, remaining over day when the enemy was actually out.

• 4:16:31Speaker 02

  When they had freedom of movement, um, when they were actually running around the streets. Cause they knew we, we were dominated at nighttime and aircraft could take them out and, and, um, and they knew we, we owned the night. So, and then trying to patrol out, you know, undercover darkness at nighttime. But there was, um, I, I think that, you know, taking a fairly small group of guys, a lot of firepower, going in deep in enemy territory in a place where people couldn't get, supporting the conventional units that were then coming in, you know, in, in behind us en masse, I think is very closely equivalent to our forefathers from the underwater demolition teams, the naval combat demolition units, right? These were the first guys on the beach, taking the, taking the, um, taking the risk, um, you know, that were hitting the beaches in, in

• 4:17:16Speaker 02

  landing craft like Higgins boats and naval combat demolition units or scouts and raiders. And then in the Pacific theater, the, the frogmen, right? The underwater demolition teams, they were out there, uh, doing the reconnaissance, uh, opening up the way, blowing blasting holes in, in the, you know, the coral reefs, uh, and obstacles so that, uh, so that, you know, the Marines and soldiers could land. Um, and I think that's a lot of what we're doing. And there was a, there was a shift in World War II where those, those, uh, combat, uh, those, uh, underwater demolition teams, the UDT. Went from daytime to, or nighttime to daytime operations. At nighttime, they were trying to do nighttime, they thought it was safer.

• 4:17:56Speaker 02

  And they shifted to daytime because they thought, uh, okay, well, well, initially they thought it was too dangerous. But they realized that when they got these little frogmen swimming around, even with the Japanese pillboxes blasting at them with mortars and artillery and machine guns, most of the time, these guys wouldn't be hit. And it was only, I think there was only a handful of UDT men that were wounded or killed throughout the entirety of like daytime, like beach reconnaissance operations. So they were able to do it to mitigate the risk and they also were far more effective in the daytime. Um, and so I think that was what we were doing, um, uh, in the daytime was I think very similar, right? To just the making that shift. And then it was the opposite of Vietnam, you know, where the, in the Vietnam war, when, when, um, SEALs, you know, were, were going out in the daytime initially, right?

• 4:18:40Speaker 02

  You're chaining the Vietnamese frogmen and that's kind of how the, the mission started. And now all of a sudden, we're going to start into some kinetic operations. Well, nobody went out at nighttime because Charlie owned the night. You knew the Vietcong were out there patrolling, setting booby traps, setting up ambushes. Uh, and I've talked to some of those, those Vietnam SEALs who made that transition and realized like, okay, the enemy's out of the night, nighttime, we've got to shift to be out at night. And the conventional units thought that was crazy. They thought you're going to get a bunch of people killed, but, but, uh, the SEAL teams were able to have massive impact, you know, for such a small unit on the battlefield. Because they went out at nighttime, they went into areas that nobody else could get into. Um, and they did a lot of damage to the bad guys. So, um, I felt like what we were doing in Ramadi was very much in the spirit of, uh,

• 4:19:23Speaker 02

  of that, you know, the SEALs of Vietnam and those same underbar demolition teams in World War II.

• 4:19:27Shawn Ryan?

  Great analogies, great analogies. And so, so you get home, you can, let's wrap up tasking a bruiser deployment. You get home, you move into this leadership course. What, what's the timeframe here? How, how fast did you change?

• 4:19:42Speaker 02

  I, I, I reported in, uh, I think it was, it was like February 07 and, uh, so, so we got back end of October 2006.

• 4:19:55Speaker 02

  And, uh, we, I mean, I basically spent a couple of months as SEAL Team Three, turned over and then, and then went to the center. And we, uh, so I, I just, I took over the course. Did you wanna go over there? I was ready. Very different role. I was ready for a break. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wanted to see, you know, do I wanna get out? I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Um, that, that was a heavy deployment, man. Yeah. And, uh, it was, um, so I wasn't seeking that role. Somebody decided that that was a good place to put me and, um, what was cool about that is, uh, is I loved it, man. I loved every second of it. It was, it was awesome.

• 4:20:39Speaker 02

  And the best job in the world has been a SEAL特种 commander. There's no better job in the world than that. Uh, the next best job I think was teaching that junior officer training course. It was, you know, I had some, you know, the, the, I got to see, it was, it was an amazing leadership laboratory. I got to see different, uh, officers that were coming to that training. We had prior enlisted SEALs coming to the training. We had, um, you know, we had guys coming out of OCS that had been in the civilian world. And now all of a sudden in the Navy, we had people coming out ROTC, uh, programs. We had people coming from the Naval Academy. Uh, we had people doing inter-service transfers from, um, the Marines or Air Force or Army that would come to that program. Um, also put some special operations, uh, or some Air Force special operations officers through there.

• 4:21:24Speaker 02

  And some Norwegian Marine Jaegers that came to that program as well. So I just got to see a bunch of different, different people, a bunch of different styles of leadership. And it really solidified for me like what works and what doesn't work. Because I'm putting them all in these challenging situations and seeing how they react to things. And so it really solidified like this is what works and this doesn't work. And, uh, and so it was, it was awesome to see just the, um, it was, it was a phenomenal learning experience for me. I think if you really want to know something well, you need to teach it. You know, I'm sure just like when you started teaching tactics, you know, it, all of a sudden you gotta, people are gonna ask you questions. You have to be able to know things from different angles. You have to be able to, to think deeply about things and how you might react to certain situations and, and with different variables.

• 4:22:07Speaker 02

  And so, um, that I think really solidified my thought process and thinking about leadership. And of course, the first thing I did was bring Jocko over to give what we call the Jocko brief. Um, you know, and kind of his lessons learned and, and, uh, seeing that over and over again. And I got a chance to bring in Vietnam SEALs and, uh, and, and, uh, one of my most favorite things was bringing in the most outstanding. Senior and junior enlisted seals that I work with. And having them talk about the officers that they respected and liked and admired and the ones that they didn't. And what the difference was and give their perspective. You know, and so I think that's something as an officer, you don't often get to see that or hear that.

• 4:22:47Shawn Ryan?

  What were the major differences?

• 4:22:50Speaker 02

  Many of the ones I talked about humility, people that were humble, willing to listen. You know, I think there were, I think the people that wanted to try to act like they have it all figured out or have to show people that, you know, I've got something to prove. I think that number one is that that's what pisses everybody off. I mean, you got somebody that's not humble and thinks they know everything. Nobody likes that. No one likes to know it all. Doesn't matter what you, what experience you have. We used to joke, we, we had a, we had an acronym for a wee weeab. Which was when I was in Baghdad and then it became wee weer when I was in Ramadi. You know, so like when people are like dropping these, like when I was there, like, you know, when I was here, when I was this unit or that unit.

• 4:23:33Speaker 02

  And like, look, man, that's not, you know, that's not the way to lead, right? I think asking people questions, helping people understand, you know, the truth for themselves, like I, like I mentioned before is, is, is the way to lead. And so I think, I think that's what really rose above is people that were humble, people that were willing to listen and learn. I think, and then the fact that people were going to like look out for the team and the mission first. It's, it's amazing to me, I remember the first time I heard the, the term servant leadership. And I was like, what does that mean? And the idea that like a servant leadership means that, you know, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look, like I'm here to serve the team. I'm here to, they don't work for me, I actually work for them. I'm here to help them.

• 4:24:17Speaker 02

  I'm here to put the team and the mission first before myself. And I thought that was kind of a crazy term the first time I heard it. I mean, obviously that's what good leaders do, that's great. If you're a servant leader, that's awesome. But I just thought that was weird that there was even a term for that because it's like the worst leadership ever, right? If you're gonna look out for yourself, if you're gonna be one of these ticket punchers that's gonna be like, hey, I'm all about me, I'm gonna put my needs and my wants, you know, before the, the, the team or the mission. And I think that's, that's just, that's terrible leadership. No one wants a word for someone like that. So those are things that kind of, and then obviously somebody that just puts out, somebody that's gonna try hard, somebody that's gonna have a sense of humor, you know, somebody that's gonna hold the line on things when it actually matters.

• 4:25:03Speaker 02

  And, uh, and let some things slide when it doesn't.

• 4:25:08Shawn Ryan?

  How do you, this is a personal question about leadership and,

• 4:25:14Shawn Ryan?

  you know, how do I, I gotta,

• 4:25:19Shawn Ryan?

  there has to be a line between you and your guys. And how do you keep, how do you keep,

• 4:25:31Shawn Ryan?

  let me rephrase this.

• 4:25:35Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it sounds like your leadership style and, and, and, you know, the conversations that we had at breakfast and, I mean, you were really fucking close with your guys. Like, very, very close relationships, uh, very personal relationships, it sounds like. And so, how do you,

• 4:26:00Shawn Ryan?

  how do you maintain that respect as a leader

• 4:26:06Shawn Ryan?

  at the same time as, as, as getting so personal with, with your guys? Because that, you know, as a business owner, I've found that that line can be very tricky to navigate.

• 4:26:21Speaker 02

  It's extremely tricky. And that's a fantastic question, Sean. I think this is the million dollar question, right? As a leader, you have to be close with your troops, but you can't be so close to them that one becomes more important than the other, or, or more important than the, the overall team and the overall mission, or that they forget who's in charge. And I think there's, uh, that's a real fine line because it's different for different people, right? I, I mean, there's, the SEAL teams, you know, I came from the fleet where it was, I was gonna, you know, I was Insign Babin or Lieutenant Gigi Babin. You know, it wasn't this like first name basis. We worked with a lot of the soldiers and Marines and they were like that. Um, whereas we're on a first name basis, you know, uh, my, my chartered lieutenant, I was a life lieutenant.

• 4:27:04Speaker 02

  That was my, you know, like, like, yeah, I'm a lieutenant, but I'm life. Like that, that's, you know, everyone was on a first name basis. I'm sure your, your platoon was like that. You know, your platoons were like that as well. And, uh, But it's so the line's a little more blurry, but I think it's different for different people when you realize like, hey guys, we gotta knock this off and like get focused on what we need to do so we can get this done. And if people aren't paying attention, then you know like, okay, I'm a little too close. Okay, I've, you know, I, I need to, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to maybe create some degree of separation, you know, here i- in some way. So you gotta be close with the team, right? I think the, you gotta know your people, you gotta understand what motivates them, you gotta understand who they are, what they do, what their skills

• 4:27:46Speaker 02

  are, and what their strengths and weaknesses are, and, and how you can help them, like where, where they wanna go in life, what you can do to like, to set them up for success. And I think that's crucial, you know, for any leader to, to know, but you do have to like find that, that balance. And I think for me, as the O, as the A Y C, right, the Assistant Platoon Commander, you're like one of the boys, and you're not quite the O I C, you're not the platoon commander in charge. That was, it's a big step up, I think, from, to go from A Y C to O I C, and all of a sudden, like, you're in charge. And, and I realized, I probably crossed that line, you know, with, particularly with guys that I go on the buds with, and I was, you know, or I've been in S Q T with, and I had very close relationships with, and, you know, we'd go out drinking and party and hanging

• 4:28:30Speaker 02

  out, and realize like, oh, okay, I have to, like, there's, there's, I'm gonna have to create some degree of separation, or maybe it's, maybe I go out and, you know, spend some time with them, like, all right, guys, stay out of trouble, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm heading back. But I think, I think it's just trying to create that, so that they, you're close with your troops, you're, you're close with the team, you understand them, you know them, they know you, they know you care about them. And, but, but you're not so close that, that one becomes, you know, more important than the other, or the good of the team, or, or that they forget who's in charge. I think that's a, it's a tough balance. But it's, it's different for different people, so you have to just,

• 4:29:12Speaker 02

  I think if you're aware of it, you know, one thing that Jock and I say with dichotomy leadership is, even just the awareness that there's this dichotomy that exists, and you have to find the balance is one of the most powerful tools you have as a leader. Cause then you can start to monitor it. Hey, am I too close? Am I not close enough? You know, and then, and then you can start to find balance, and you're never gonna be perfectly in equilibrium. It's always gonna be constantly trying to make adjustments all the time.

• 4:29:35Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 4:29:38Shawn Ryan?

  Makes a lot of sense. Do you, did you ever vent to your, to your guys frustrations?

• 4:29:47Speaker 02

  I was probably the chief hater, red drinker and chat tasking a bruiser. Just if you remember the old Dave Chappelle, the Chappelle show, the player haters ball was one of my favorite episodes. And remember they just held up pictures of people and they would just like, they sit around and go hate, hate, and just like make fun of them. And I would just throw shade at my chain of command, you know, talk about, I had a great relationship with Jocko, like we all love Jocko. But, you know, the next level up, the chain of command, our commanding officer and staff, they were always asking for paperwork and, you know, look, they were good people. I liked them, but they, they would, they would pile a bunch of paperwork requirements on them. Like, I don't have time for this stuff.

• 4:30:32Speaker 02

  We're out here trying to fight the war. I don't need to be doing that stuff. You know, and then, you know, you get questions from, you know, the, the siege of Sotaf in, you know, 80 miles away. And, you know, the, the, the JAG officers asking, you know, about, you know, the rules of engagement and just making sure that all, everything was followed, you know, precisely. And, and you, you start to, uh, it's really easy to get frustrated and get emotional and push back on that. And I'm lucky that I had, you know, Jocko to, to, to ask me, it's like, hey, does it help you to not have a good relationship with your chain of command? And I was like, no, it actually doesn't.

• 4:31:15Speaker 02

  And worse than that, actually, it actually hurts my team. Cause if I don't have a good relationship with my chain of command and they don't trust me, well, they're not going to prove our operations, right? They're not going to give me the resource I need. They're certainly not going to be, we're not going to be the go-to unit that they choose to go action of, of, you know, a, a target if they're going to pick one platoon out of the entire team, where it's not going to be us, you know? And so.

• 4:31:41Speaker 02

  You know, when I would vent sometimes, Jocko would kind of just allow that and then just ask some questions to kind of turn it back around to kind of think about like, what can we do to actually lead up the chain command? Like, our commanding officer and staff, what do they want? Do they want us not to be successful? Do they want us to win? They want us to win. So if they've got questions about what we're doing, about how we're mitigating risk, I haven't pushed enough information up their way. They don't understand why this mission's important and they're questioning that mission. I need to actually push some information to them and talk to them about why we're doing this, pick up the phone and call them and talk them through it. And then, you know, the JAG at Cigisodaf, we were writing these like really basic like engaged military age male, you know, with an AK-47.

• 4:32:25Speaker 02

  And the JAG is like, well, every, you know, senior male of the household is allowed to have like one AK, you know, within their home. If you remember, they had, they were allowed to have one firearm. It's like their second amendment because a lot of people didn't have access to banks and so they had their valuables in their home and that was how they defended their valuables. So the JAG is like, hey, this is, is it illegal for them to have an AK? And, you know, meanwhile, I'm like, are you kidding me? This guy's shooting at us, you know, and you're questioning my decision, but I didn't write that in the report. So that's why you had some questions. And the moment that I put the haterade down, stopped like, you know, hating on the chain command and telling them they just need to back off and let us do our job and realize like, oh, I need to push more information to the chain.

• 4:33:09Speaker 02

  We started to think, okay, well, does a JAG, he's never sat behind a sniper rifle, he's never looked through a 22 power night force scope. You know, he's, these snipers are operating with incredible discipline, man, incredible discipline. I'm talking, you know, watching hundreds of people walk in front of their sniper scope and they're engaging enemy fighters. And we're talking about like with minimizing collateral damage in a way, sometimes these, sometimes these savages would use like human shields, like children, like hold them in front of them and try to run across the street with their RPG. You know, and snipers like Chris and Tony and others were like able to drop those guys and not injure the children. I mean, amazing in a way that no one with a machine gun's gonna be able to do that. Nobody with a Bradley fighting vehicle, 20 millimeter chain gun's gonna be able to

• 4:33:54Speaker 02

  do that. And so...

• 4:33:59Speaker 02

  I was very proud of our snipers and the discipline that they were using. And I realized that the problem was we weren't describing it in a way that articulated to someone who had never been there, you know, what we were actually seeing. And the moment that we started doing that and putting that into our shooter statements, man, they were like, awesome, that's great. Keep doing what you're doing. What support do you need from us? So, you know, I think so often we feel like we're in a hopeless situation, you know, if we're getting scrutiny from our chain of command and if we take ownership and actually just lead up the chain, it makes all the difference. And I realized, you know, when I was venting to my, to my guys and kind of throwing hate, you know, at the CJ soda for at our task group that was, you know, 30 miles down the road in Fallujah, all that

• 4:34:42Speaker 02

  does is just undermine my authority, you know, as well. Like that never helps you, right? If you're gonna, if you're gonna just throw your chain of command under the bus, that just, that just undercuts everybody in the chain of command if you do that. It's not good leadership. And the best thing you could do is to say, hey, listen, understand this is frustrating. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna put this paperwork together. We're gonna get this done. We're gonna send it to our chain of command because they need this information. And we're gonna do this so we can build a relationship with our chain of command. So that they're gonna support us, you know, where we need it. And so, when you could talk to your chain of command about the realities of it, you don't have to just, you don't have to like just sugarcoat something that doesn't make sense, you know, like, hey, they're telling us to do this stuff. It's not fun. It's a bunch of extraneous work that we have to do. We're gonna have to put in a bunch of extra hours, maybe you have

• 4:35:26Speaker 02

  to stay long, you know, stay late or stay over the weekend or whatever. You don't even, you don't lie to the team, right? You don't say like, oh, this is great. We're gonna do it. Like, they're gonna see right through that. What you have to do is tell them the truth, tell them why you're gonna do that, and then help them see that you're building a relationship with the chain of command. You're, you're putting some leadership capital in the bank. So that you're not pushing back on everything. So that when it, when it comes time to really push back on the things that matter, you're able to.

• 4:35:51Shawn Ryan?

  What, how much of your decision-making process and, and the reason that you made certain decisions did you share with your guys? If any? Did you, did you ever feel like, these are personal questions that I'm asking for myself running as a, as a guy running a company and, and, you know, I feel the need to...

• 4:36:17Shawn Ryan?

  To explain some of the decisions that I make to my guys. I don't necessarily know if I should be doing that.

• 4:36:27Shawn Ryan?

  And so I'm just curious, you know, what? What do you do?

• 4:36:31Speaker 02

  I think it's absolutely the right call. To, uh, I, I, you know, you, this idea of like a hundred percent transparency. Not everybody needs to know everything that you know. You know, you would spend all your time trying to communicate things to people all the time. That's, that's not a good use of your time. As, as the owner of a company, but if that's one of the biggest lessons and the most humbling lessons that I brought back with me. Um, I wrote an entire chapter about, about the extreme ownership. Um, it's chapter 10, leading up and down the chain. So I talked about leading up the chain. Um, but this is leading down the chain, which is, I don't think you can,

• 4:37:09Speaker 02

  I don't think you can do it enough to explain why we're doing what we're doing. Because I think when you kind of think people get it. You know, leaders will think, well, they, maybe they get it like seven out of 10. Like, no, they get it like three out of 10, maybe one out of 10, maybe zero out of 10. And your job as a leader is to connect the dots between the hard work that people are doing, the overall success of the mission. And, um, and it's because they don't see it, right? They don't see it when they're out there in the grind, you know, e- every day. You've got to constantly help them see how, what they do contributes to the overall success of the mission. And how it's going to ultimately benefit them as well. So I don't think as a leader, you can remind people that enough.

• 4:37:49Speaker 02

  And I mean, I, I planned the, the, so many major operations to go and take areas of that city back. And we were the lead element on the ground with this, you know, thou- a thousand soldiers and Marines and the, all the tanks, everything we talked about. And when we got back, Jocko put this slide together. He, he was tasked with going and giving a brief to like the, I think it was the chief of naval operations. You know, the senior admiral in the Navy. And, um, and he put this slide together and they showed the map of Ramadi. It showed the red areas that were Al Qaeda battle space. Where when we'd arrive and been told, don't go, they're all going to get killed. And then it showed these blue circles going in with these combat outposts, the US outpost that went in. And then it showed like, and each one had like what our SEAL involvement was, and how we supported them. And then it would have like,

• 4:38:34Speaker 02

  yellow and green kind of expanding out. And he put this, it was like a building slide, you know, on a Microsoft PowerPoint slide. And so, the map overlay with this building slide. And before he went to brief, just Jocko was a great leader, he always was like, "Hey man, take a look at this, tell me what you think."

• 4:38:55Speaker 02

  And he played that slide for me, and I was like, "Damn dude." Like, that's what we freaking did. Like, I'd never put it together like that before.

• 4:39:02Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:39:03Speaker 02

  Never. And it was,

• 4:39:08Speaker 02

  I planned and led every, every single, almost every single one of those operations, that are the blue circles that are going in. Like, we were the first boots on the ground for these, you know, so I was intimately involved in the planning for these things. Some of them were weeks in planning, you know? And, uh, and when he saw my reaction to that, he was like, he, I had never put it all together, because, "Man, I'm coming back from a mighty event, we lost Mark, we lost Ryan." Like, I'm like, "Man, I know we made a, like, we certainly had some impact there, but do we have any lasting impact? Like, should we, should we have done what we did?" Like, all these questions, right? That I'm constantly running in my head all the time. And when he put that together, I was like, "That's what we did. That's what we contributed." We contributed to take that city back and,

• 4:39:52Speaker 02

  and you could see it in the combat outpost, knowing that hundreds, or maybe a thousand soldiers and marines for each one of those blue circles are going in. You know, that, that, these are people that dozens of them might have not come home with their families otherwise, you know? And so, when you, when you start putting that together, what's cool about that, Sean, is, you know, we all split up and kind of went our separate ways. And I have had the chance, over the years, to pull some of my guys together and show them that slide.

• 4:40:22Shawn Ryan?

  Do you still have that slide?

• 4:40:23Speaker 02

  I do have that slide.

• 4:40:24Shawn Ryan?

  Can I put it up on screen?

• 4:40:25Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And it will be, uh, it was, when I showed them that slide, they say the exact same thing. "Damn dude, I had no idea that's what we did."

• 4:40:34Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool, man.

• 4:40:35Speaker 02

  And so, I think it's a reminder that, like, you can't do that enough as a leader. And it's one of the most humbling lessons I learned of like, if I'd have just taken the time, just take a step back, remind people about what they're doing, how the impact, you know, our our mutual friend Jake, you know, that we went through BUDs with, was a machine gunner for us. I remember him telling me,

• 4:40:58Speaker 02

  You know, he's like, man, I'm just carrying this machine gun. He's carrying this 600 round loadout and his machine gun. And we put, I mean, we put optics on those machine guns because they needed PID. They weren't using like the ACOG to shoot the gun, but we needed a PID, a target. So I mean, it's getting heavier, right? With all this gear you're putting on, it probably weighs 20 pounds, you know, and you're carrying, you know, 600 rounds. Each of those 100 round boxes is what, seven and a half pounds? They're carrying, plus you've got helmet, body armor, water, you know, all this stuff. They're patrolling multiple kilometers to get in, you know, some of these areas, particularly in the rural areas outside of the city when we were doing some of that work. And I remember Jake coming to me being like, dude, I'm just a security detail for Chris and the snipers, man. And

• 4:41:41Speaker 02

  I was like, man, I have just failed him as a leader. I was like, I was like, Jake, when we get attacked, which is pretty much every operation, and we have three dozen enemy fighters trying to overrun our position, we're not beating back that attack with a bolt action rifle, bro. We're beating back that attack because of you and your machine gun. And that machine gun has saved our lives over and over and over again. We could do none of this without you carrying that heavy firepower. And then we talked a little bit about, I was like, how many times have you like shot your loadout, you know, your entire loadout? And he was like, I don't even know. Like, I don't even know. Like, he didn't

• 4:42:22Speaker 02

  even know. And it was interesting because I talked to, I talked to some of the Vietnam SEALs and some guys that were machine gunners, including Mokie Martin, who's a phenomenal SEAL. If you remember Mokie, was just a legendary West Coast SEAL, six deployments to Vietnam, amazing guy. And he was telling me, like, we were just talking about like how many, how many times they actually like changed the belt on their machine gun, their Stoner, you know, their M60. And it was like, in his six deployments, he was, he told me it was just a, it was a handful of times. Like, you know, they would break contact and they would break off. And I was like, wow, how many times did you guys shoot your, you know, like your entire loadout of belt fed rounds you're carrying? He's like, I don't ever remember a time doing that. So, you know, Jake and our machine gunners did that.

• 4:43:07Speaker 02

  I mean, like, almost every single operation we went on. So, I think I had, I did not help him understand just how important he was for the mission, and how he was contributing to the mission. We couldn't do any of this without, all the work the snipers were doing and making precision shots is not possible without those belted machine gunners. You know, guys like Jake, guys like Mark, guys like Ryan and Mikey Montsour that were out there, you know, carrying that heavy equipment. So, every leader, I think, has to do that. And then when you can put it in context-

• 4:43:36Shawn Ryan?

  You're just consistently empowering your guys every chance you get.

• 4:43:42Speaker 02

  Well, I think the lesson is that I was, I wasn't doing a good enough job of, I did not do a good enough job of taking a step back and realizing, like, hey, they don't know that. And they don't know that because I'm not telling them.

• 4:43:53Shawn Ryan?

  That's what you, you did have-

• 4:43:54Speaker 02

  That's the lesson I brought back, is like, I gotta do a better job of telling them, of letting them know what they're doing, why, you know, why they're doing, the impact they're actually having. What's the strategic impact that they're actually having? So, you know, I think when you've got people on your team that are in the grind, you know, they're head down, they're doing a thankless, you know, what seems like kind of thankless work, you know, where there's editing videos or posting social media clips, or, you know, scheduling travel for podcasts, whatever it may be. It is, it is absolutely imperative that you constantly remind them about how important their job is, and how what they do contributes to the overall success of the mission, and how that ultimately is going to benefit them, you know, down the road as your team continues to grow and expand. And I think it's every leader's job to do that.

• 4:44:39Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's some great advice on this one. Thank you. So, after the, after the, the, I'm sorry, the, the, the, the leadership, what was the unit, where did you, I'm sorry, after the next-

• 4:44:55Shawn Ryan?

  After your next station.

• 4:44:57Speaker 02

  So I went back, I talked to junior officer course for two years. Um, and tried to teach, you know, those junior officers, everything I wish someone had taught me before I went into a tough combat situation. And, um, and then, uh, then I went to, uh, the, uh, the director of training, um, was, uh, was, was an awesome leader who came to me and said, Hey, why don't you come be my operations officer of SEAL Team One? And, and, um, that was, uh, he was, that was Key Davids, who was our, uh, just, just stepped down as our naval Smith War for Admiral. He was a phenomenal leader and was an awesome guy to work for. So got a chance to, um, got a chance to go and serve with him as operations officer, uh, at SEAL Team One. Did another deployment to Iraq, supported some guys in Afghanistan.

• 4:45:43Speaker 02

  Um, you know, we sent to, to, we sent guys to multiple locations around the world, but, uh, I was pretty frustrated on that deployment, man, like sitting in, you know, we did a, I, I, the theme was to like, I had said for all our guys were in Iraq, we were trying to embrace mediocrity and like not operate a bunch so that we could try to pull our guys and move them to Afghanistan where the fight was going pretty hot and heavy. That was 2009 and 10. Um, and so things were kind of just ramping up for like the, uh, you know, the marine push down in Amargha and Helmand province. And some of these big operations that were going on and, and kind of the Taliban strongholds, um, in, in Helmand and Kandahar province. And, um, and we didn't do a good job of embracing mediocrity because we did a ton of operations.

• 4:46:28Speaker 02

  Uh, but I don't think I was single SEAL on the, on, on that operation or in Iraq, we captured a bunch of bad guys and, you know, disrupted some, some terror cells and, and guys did great work, man. We had an awesome team. Um, but, uh, I don't, we didn't have a single SEAL fires weapon in anger in Iraq on that deployment. And, uh, and meanwhile, you know, it just was Marines are getting blown up all the time, you know, soldiers getting killed and, and in Afghanistan, and it was very frustrating me, you know, uh, every time we tried to say like, Hey, we can send more guys to Afghanistan, we can support, you know, the, the conventional units and they're moving into these villages and Taliban stronghold areas. We can do what, what Task Force Ruzor did for the, you know, for, for the Army Marines in the, in the urban environment.

• 4:47:09Speaker 02

  Um, just it from the high ground, you know, on the ridge lines with, with SEAL snipers. And we would constantly get told like no demands to go for more SEALs.

• 4:47:17Shawn Ryan?

  What changed?

• 4:47:20Speaker 02

  I think it was the force cap. Um, you know, President Obama approved like the surge, the surge numbers there. Um, and I think there was just a, I think there was some, there was a force cap limitations. Hey, well, well surge forces there, but we're only going to serve X number of forces. So people are tracking everybody that's there. And frankly, I don't know that there was a lot of appetite in our senior, in our senior leaders. Um, I think there was more of a, there was kind of a, a, an argument going on that we should be more on the kind of the find fix and let the kind of host nation forces do the, the finish piece.

• 4:47:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You know, it was a really interesting time. I mean, I had no idea you were, you were, uh, sending guys down to Marja in Helmand at the time. And I was down there contracting for the agency. We had a safe house, get hit. And, um, I remember the, it was supposed to be the biggest offensive, the second biggest offensive force of the entire global war on terrorism since Fallujah. And they had amassed a ton of Marines down there to do this push. And then I remember when the ROEs came out for the military that they were, somebody

• 4:48:36Shawn Ryan?

  could shoot at you and drop their weapon and you, you could not engage them. And, you know, I just, I remember hearing that and, and thinking like, holy shit, you just chopped the fucking legs out from every Marine down here that you want to conduct this massive offensive force with. And it was just, it was, it was mind blowing to me. Like, talk about demoralizing your fucking people.

• 4:49:11Speaker 02

  I can only imagine, Sean. There's, there's no way you can win, right? It's what I talked about before, right? If you're going to go to war, man, you gotta have the will to kill the enemy and you gotta have the will to die. And, and I mean, there's, this is what it takes to win. And I think the, uh,

• 4:49:25Speaker 02

  You know, my frustration was that we didn't, we couldn't, we couldn't get hardly anybody involved in it. So, you know, we had one troop that was working out of Kandahar at the time and they kind of got split up, um, uh, and, and tasked to some different provinces. And we had some guys that did some great work there, man, and, and it made a difference, you know, it made an impact for sure. They did awesome, awesome work, uh, did a bunch of combat operations, they killed a bunch of bad guys and opened up some areas that Taliban had kind of controlled before and, you know, enabled freedom of movement for US forces and kind of pushed the white space back around some of those bases where they had kind of, you know, uh, kept people, you know, in where they're attacked a moment to get off the base. But we couldn't get more people there. And, you know, I, we only had a handful of guys that supported, you know, some of the Marines pushing into

• 4:50:09Speaker 02

  those areas. Um, and the whole time, like, you know, the, there was just a pushback with the Naval Special Warfare and, and, um, I just felt like, uh, to me, that was probably the, the number one driver, you know, our, our friend Elliot, that, um, a month after we left Ramadi, got blown up, um, coming out of a sniper overwatch position, he'd been wounded. The, uh, and one of the insurgents had crept up near his position and literally like rolled a grenade through a loophole. So he's sitting there on a sniper weapon and they pushed a grenade through the loophole. They like snuck up, like somehow jumped from roof to roof, up, pushed the grenade, grenade goes off, wounds him in the arm. So as he's getting evacuated, um, you know, they called in the Bradley Fighting

• 4:50:51Speaker 02

  Vehicles as they're getting evacuated, they clacked off a big ID on him. And, um, I think it like ripped an Iraqi soldier in half in front of him and blew him up, you know, really bad, he lost a leg. Um, I think there were white phosphorus shells, Willie P. shells, so like horrible burns on it, on his body and, um, and, um, yeah, man, he just was like, man, you remember, Elliot's just as good a dude as there is, you know, just an awesome, awesome team guy. And, uh, we'd serve together, SEAL Team Five, and been to Bud's together, served together, SEAL Team Five, then I turned over to him, I remember, remember. Seeing him and my close friends that were now relieving me, you know, as we went home.

• 4:51:34Speaker 02

  And I remember seeing him with the turret turret of a fifty cal. A man in the fifty cal and a turret of a Humvee about to make the push across down that horribly dangerous road, Route Michigan, that was the most heavily ID'd road in all of Iraq. And he was like all smiles, like fired up, you know, and I was just, man, just just said prayers to, you know, protect these guys and look out for them. I knew what they were up against, you know. Um, and I think it was November nineteenth, like he he got injured and then one of the other SEALs got injured, like, like, uh, thought he lost both his legs, like just, you know, was like blasting on his back and then I did lifted his legs up in the air, but his like, his tib fib is like, like he's got double compound fractures, so like all he sees is like his stomps and he lifts his legs up, they're like hanging down.

• 4:52:18Speaker 02

  So thought he lost his legs and that guy, thank God, ended up recovering and had, you know, these titanium inserts in the legs, like amazing, amazing guy. Um, but Elliot was in, was in real bad shape, man, and, uh, I, uh, so I spent a bunch of time with him, uh, when he came back to the States. Um, and he went to, uh, Brooke Army Medical Center, which is the primary burn care facility, you know, center for the, uh, for the, uh, the military and, um, you know, just seeing some of the guys were in the ICU there and coming out of Iraq at the time was was a horrific, horrific thing, man. Um, just knowing like, you know, you see these soldiers, Marines with like their faces burned off and no fingers and like no ears and

• 4:53:00Speaker 02

  noses and lips and stuff gone and just, and many of them still are like, you know, they're, they're making the best of it, man, you know? Um, they're happy to be alive and they're, they're continue on their lives and, and it was, it was, man, those, those guys were just, just heroes, man, just heroes, just awesome. Uh, their, their attitude on life and, uh, but it made me wish that we'd put a lot more of those insurgents in the dirt than we did. And we did everything we could, um, but then when I, you know, as I was served, I would go over and Elliot then went to, um, He then went to Balboa Naval Hospital, and so I was going up there and visiting with him, and I'd see a bunch of those Marines that were coming in, coming in from Helmand Province,

• 4:53:42Speaker 02

  Conroe Province, and places like Sangin, and, you know, Marja, and, you know, legs gone, arms gone, you know. And to me, it was, I think that was kind of the final straw for me of like, man, this is, we can help these guys, and, you know, we're not being allowed to do it for political reasons, whatever those are, whoever's responsible, you know, and, you know, I felt like it was, that was, that was probably the final straw for me of like, you know, I think it's time for me to probably get out, do something different. How was it getting out for you? A lot of people struggle with that. Hard. Like, I never wanted to do anything else, you know, and... Had you met your wife yet?

• 4:54:23Speaker 02

  I did. I met her. She put up with the final deployment for me. We were dating. So she, so you married her in service? Well, we didn't get married until right as I left. Okay. So, we, we got engaged right as I got back from my, my last deployment. So, I was like, you know, we're gonna put her to the test, see how she does in the deployment. But we had met at the SEAL Warrior Fund event, you know, which is the, the big fundraiser for the SEAL Teams in New York City, and, in October 2008. So, the financial world had just melted down, and yet we still had some very patriotic Americans that are giving money to support SEALs and their families, and, and it was, it was, Elliot was there for that. Ryan Job was a speaker for that.

• 4:55:08Speaker 02

  In fact, I don't think I would even have spoken, I don't think I would have attended if Ryan Job called me and said, dude, if you're not, if you're not going to this, we're never talking again.

• 4:55:20Speaker 02

  So, he was a speaker. He gave an amazing speech, you know, and they handed him the speech like the night before, and he's like, hey, knuckleheads, I can't read, I'm blind. Someone's gonna have to read this to me. So, you're gonna have to, you know, give me the speech. But he, yeah, he gave a fantastic speech, man, and we were all there because...

• 4:55:38Speaker 02

  Because the Montessor family had wanted Mikey's teammates to be there. You know, Mike had received the Medal of Honor for jumping on a grenade to save his two teammates on either side of him and my, our teammate and, you know, Delk Platoon. And, um, and so the Montessor family had, had, uh, had asked that Mikey's teammates be there to save a few bunch of us out there and, uh, it was, uh, it was amazing. I, I sat right next to Mike's mom, Sally, who's, um, as, as I, I met Jenna for the first time, I met this pretty red haired girl, I was like, what's, what's her, do y'all want to get to know her better? And, uh, I told her that we had, you know, she worked at Fox News, I told her that Fox was on, uh, in our tactical operations center. She's like, well, if you guys want, come by, I'll give you a tour.

• 4:56:20Speaker 02

  And so we, uh, I brought me, Seth Stone, and another one of his guys, uh, by who were like the biggest like wannabe lady killers ever, they were just spitting game at everybody. You know, the, the, the interns to the, you know, to the, uh, to the anchors and, uh, and, and Jenna, who was just put them up, just put everybody in your place, like didn't take any of that stuff from anybody. Um, and then I took her out that, that night, like I talked her into coming to meet us for a drink and, and I took her to meet Elliot, she met Elliot and, you know, was instantly like loved Elliot and, you know, was, uh, um, was, was fast friends with him and, and, um, and so the, the rest was kind of history there, man. But that was, that was another contributing factor for me certainly to get out.

• 4:57:03Speaker 02

  I mean, I had, you know, we had been dating two and a half years on the opposite sides of the country, I was stationed in San Diego, she was in New York City, closest the Navy's gonna get me was the Pentagon, I had zero interest in being a, a staff officer at the Pentagon, um, and, uh, and so I was like, it's, it's time for me to move on.

• 4:57:22Shawn Ryan?

  What was it about her that, that got you?

• 4:57:26Speaker 02

  Man, she's beautiful, she's smart, uh, and she's got an amazing heart. And, um, she asked me...

• 4:57:34Speaker 02

  Within like two minutes, three minutes, like she probably learned more about the SEAL teams than anybody. Like, you know, people are like, oh, you're a SEAL. Like, oh, that's that's cool. Like, oh, that's really neat. Or, oh, I'm so and I, you know, like, people are, you know, that that might say something like that. But she was asked, she was like, how do you guys train exactly? You know, how often do you play? And where, you know, what is, what's the training like? And, you know, how are you organized? Like, she asked all these just like interesting questions. And I was like, I definitely want to get to know her better. And it was, yeah, man, I just, I knew right away. I texted, I texted somebody when I was leaving New York City of like, I just, I just, I just met the future Mrs. Babin.

• 4:58:16Shawn Ryan?

  First night, huh?

• 4:58:19Speaker 02

  Girls in the phone book, yeah.

• 4:58:21Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. How long have you guys been married now?

• 4:58:23Speaker 02

  Thirteen years.

• 4:58:25Shawn Ryan?

  Thirteen years? Congratulations. What is the secret to a successful marriage?

• 4:58:31Speaker 02

  Man, the secret to a successful marriage is extreme ownership. It's extreme ownership, man. If, because it's also, it's the most important place that you can apply these leadership concepts we've been talking about. It's also the hardest. Because you're so emotionally tied to someone, you know, and your ego's involved. And like, and I could tell you that when I start pointing fingers and casting blame and making excuses, my wife reminds me that I wrote a book called Extreme Ownership, and I should start taking some. So she, she definitely puts me in my place. And I'm like, check. But all the things that like any team needs to be successful, right? Cover, move. We talked about is, like, this

• 4:59:14Speaker 02

  is, we got to cover, move for each other on the home floor, with the kids, with work, like around the house, you know, whatever it is. We got to be able to cover, move for each other. We got to communicate a manner of simple, clear, concise. It's not that, hey, I, you know, she asked me to do something, I need to give, use a read back to make sure that I understand, you know, what it is that I need to do. I need to ask for some clarification. I need to make sure that, you know, just because I asked her to do something, she'll put something out in the morning like, okay, this kid, the kids need to be here, here and here, you know, and then she thinks that like, that doesn't all process in my brain, right? I got to write it down. I have to reference it. So prioritize and execute. There's going to be a billion things going on at the same time, you know, for the family. We got to be able to pivot and be flexible and shift to emerging priorities.

• 5:00:00Speaker 02

  And stay detached, particularly from our emotions when somebody's like, you know, had enough, like the kids who are kind of, you know, they got you at wit's end and you're frustrated. Be like, hey, I got the kids. I got this. I'm gonna take them out for a little bit. You know, just, I don't need to ask what she needs me to do. I don't need to ask her where she needs me to help. I can just step in, you know? And then decentralized command, I think if we all kind of understand, we understand like, what's the goal? What's the goal we're trying to do? Um, and I think when we do that, that, uh, that enables us to, to, to, we can all work together toward that goal. You know, she may, she may do something that's slightly different than I might have wanted it done, or I might have not thought about it doing it in that way. But if it gets us toward the goal that we're trying to accomplish, if it helps us to raise,

• 5:00:44Speaker 02

  you know, uh, some, some patriotic, God fearing, competent, um, kind-hearted children, you know, that are gonna be good members of, uh, contributing members to their society and, and, and community. Um, that's what we want, man. That's what we're trying to do. So I think, uh, um, I think letting some things go. Sometimes you're like, you do these little pet peeves, you know?

• 5:01:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:01:07Speaker 02

  Um, I think that's the most important thing of like, okay, if she's doing something that's annoying me, it's not her fault. It's actually my fault. It's my fault. And, uh, that's, I, I need to, I need to figure out a way to like, take ownership of that and like, fix that.

• 5:01:22Shawn Ryan?

  Great advice.

• 5:01:23Speaker 02

  I think that's, I think that's the key.

• 5:01:24Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move into your transition into, into civilian life. How, how was that for you? Did you find it? I mean, you know, there's no secret. There's a suicide epidemic going on in the veteran community. A lot of addiction, a lot of alcoholism, a lot of drugs, a lot of womanizing, a lot of, I mean, it's just, it's, it's really a nasty time in a lot of our lives. And I'm wondering if you experienced any of that.

• 5:01:56Shawn Ryan?

  Lot of depression, lot of resentment, lot of anxiety.

• 5:01:59Speaker 02

  I, I, I certainly I think I experienced some depression, anxiety. Um, I think when all of a sudden, the thing that I had always wanted to do with my life is like now behind me. You know, and now what, you know? Uh, and I think that's a, that's a, that's a freaking hard thing, man, you know? It's hard for anybody.

• 5:02:19Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel like you wrapped a lot of your identity into being a SEAL?

• 5:02:25Speaker 02

  I don't know if I wrapped my identity into being a SEAL. I, I, I loved it. I mean, I just, I just thought it was the best job in the world, you know? And even though it's, look, it's not, it's not without frustrations, right? It's not that it's, as I, as I got further up the chain of command in the SEAL teams, you get further away from the guys you like to be around and the, the job that you like to do. So, I mean, I, just an example that I was at the, the, I was at the special operations task, uh, task force like headquarters and we were in Ramadi. Um, just down the street from Camp Markley, we'd named the shark base Camp Markley and then, uh, and, and so the, what had been a former kind of, uh, intel base was, was, uh, was named after Mike Montessor. So I was at Camp Mike Montessor, we're working out of there and, man, there was,

• 5:03:11Speaker 02

  you know, I think we had a hundred and eighty people at the, at the special operations task force headquarters. And I think there were like six SEALs there. You know, so it was, but we were great people there, all, all performing an important function. Um, but it was, you're just getting further away from the guys you like to be around and the things you actually like to do. So, um, I think, you know, when you, you, you, you're completely removed from that, right? When you get out and so then it's like, okay, now what? Um, and I was gonna do like a lot of people do, just go back to school. Cause it's kind of a transition and, you know, there was, you can get paid, you get a, you get money through the post nine eleven G I bill and. So I was gonna kind of follow that path and for whatever crazy reason I decided I was gonna go to law school. And I had some people help me out because my grades were atrocious in college, but pulled some strings to like,

• 5:03:56Speaker 02

  get me into law school and like, you know, uh, I was accepted to Fordham Law School in New York City. And uh, and so it was just right down the road from where my, you know, wife was living at the time and, and uh, and so we just got married and, and, and man, I started this like two week kind of academic enrichment program they called it, which was like the, for the people that have been out of school like me or didn't make good grades like me. And uh, and so they, they, as I started it, I just realized like, man, I had zero in common with the other students in the class. And as we started to study law cases and things like that, I'm like, I don't think this is what I want to do. Um, you know, and this is a three year program. I have to spend three years doing this.

• 5:04:37Speaker 02

  And uh, and then extortion seventeen happened, you know, and uh,

• 5:04:45Speaker 02

  you know, the largest loss of life in a single incident in the history of the SEAL teams. Helicopter shot down.

• 5:04:53Speaker 02

  Brian Bill, you know, Derek Benson, both in our buds class, awesome dudes. You know, both lost on that. I knew another handful of guys who were on that too, as I'm sure you did. And um, and Brian, Brian Bill had just been at my, my wedding a month before that. It was just crushing, man. It was crushing. And um, it was uh, I mean, he actually like finagled a deal. He stayed to like, go to like a jump master school. So that he could like stay late, go to the wedding, and then he like flew, you know, flew overseas to like, you know, to meet his, meet his unit and um, yeah, it was just horrible, man. And it was just a reminder of something that you and I both know, right? Which is life is too short, man. You can't waste a day of it, man. Can't waste a day of it. So I immediately

• 5:05:39Speaker 02

  deferred law school. I was like, I'm not gonna spend three years going to school.

• 5:05:44Speaker 02

  And so then it was like, well, now what, now what do I do? So I go into defer law school. I'm like, I don't have a job. I'm not employed. I don't know what I want to do. You know, I had people offer me some positions in like the finance sector and I went in and like, saw what they were doing, you know, the traders and, and I was like, I don't care how much money they make, like I, I would rather, I would rather uh shear my testicles off with a rusty bolt human scissors than sit here in front of this like, you know, training. Like it just wasn't what I wanted to do.

• 5:06:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:06:13Speaker 02

  And uh it was um, so we went out to this little place down the way, had some good margaritas and and I was sitting there with my, my wife Jenna and, and she says, wha- what are you gonna do now? You know, I was like, I have no idea. She said, well, what is it you love to do? Like, what are you passionate about? And um, I said, SEAL platoon commander is the best job in the world. Like, that was the favorite job in the entire world. I'd do that over again in a second if I could, but I can't. And even if, even if I could do it, I wouldn't be deployed to Ramadi, you know, like, there's no, there's no uh, I can't go back and relive that again. But actually, you kind of asked me that question. I thought about it. I was like, the next best thing was teaching leadership to those junior officers.

• 5:06:57Speaker 02

  That two years that I spent training those junior officers, putting a hundred and thirty something SEAL officers through training and uh trying to pass on all the lessons that someone had taught me, like, it was incredibly rewarding to see those guys grow as leaders, take on that, you know, the lessons that we learned, apply it, get better, and then I see them go forward. Go, you know, places that I didn't deploy or didn't have any combat um experience with, like, like Afghanistan. They, they would come home and say, this, this was game changer. Thank you for teaching us. Hey, you taught me this leadership concept. I applied that. It made a huge difference, you know? We focus on building these relationships and, and, you know.

• 5:07:33Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, that's awesome.

• 5:07:34Speaker 02

  It opened up all kinds of opportunities for us.

• 5:07:36Shawn Ryan?

  These guys all kept in touch with you.

• 5:07:38Speaker 02

  A bunch of them did. A bunch of them did, yeah. You know, I've lost touch with, with someone, but they, it was awesome, man. It was so rewarding to see that and um, and to know the lesson that we learned and that we paid such a heavy price for, you know, a task in a bruiser were being passed on. And uh, and so when I said that, my wife said, call Jocko, start a company. So I did and we launched, launched a company that became National Front.

• 5:08:03Shawn Ryan?

  How'd that conversation go?

• 5:08:06Shawn Ryan?

  Jocko.

• 5:08:07Speaker 02

  Let's start a, let's start a company.

• 5:08:08Shawn Ryan?

  He just said, let's.

• 5:08:10Speaker 02

  Let's start a leadership company. He said, Roger that. Let's do it.

• 5:08:12Shawn Ryan?

  Well, what was he doing at the time?

• 5:08:14Speaker 02

  Uh, he was working for a mortgage company and then teaching leadership for that mortgage company and kind of helping them, uh, kind of in their process and they kind of, they basically like carved out like a, you know, I think they made.

• 5:08:25Shawn Ryan?

  Jocko Willink was working at a mortgage company?

• 5:08:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:08:28Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 5:08:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, he learned a ton about leadership, right? And how it applied to the business world. It's all, all the problems that they were having, you know, from the inside. And so from that, he taught me a ton about what he learned, you know, from there. I thought Exelon Front was my idea, Sean, for about a year and a half. And then I realized that just like this is Jocko's way, like about, about, Jocko retired in, uh, October 2010. So about a year before, uh, I left active duty. And, um, and he, he was, I went over and was like cleaning out his cage. I did. I was like, I was like, man, it's a, you know, it's a sad, it's gonna be a sad day in the Jocko Lucille team's here.

• 5:09:06Speaker 02

  You know, when you get out and, uh, and he said, I, I forgot about this conversation. We had a conversation and he, we were standing in his office at, at training detachment. You know, and he said, um, he said, uh, what would it take to bring you onboard to start like a leadership consulting business? And I, I threw out some number that I thought was like gargantuan, right? It was like barely, you know, barely six figures, you know, it just seemed like, like, uh, um, it seemed like the most gargantuan number in the world compared to my like, maybe paycheck. And, um, and, uh, so he had planted that seed, like probably a year and a half before we had that conversation. Um, and I did, I'd forgotten about it for a long time. Uh, and that's kind of Jocko's way, right? That indirect approach of like plant the seed.

• 5:09:49Speaker 02

  He wasn't, he wasn't like, hey, remember when I said that? Like this, he doesn't care who gets the credit. Like this is, this is what good leadership looks like.

• 5:09:58Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool, man. And so how did it develop?

• 5:10:02Speaker 02

  It developed, uh, the very first year I made less than half my Navy paycheck and I was like, "This thing is never gonna pay the bills." And thank God my wife had a great job.

• 5:10:10Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let me, let me re- what was the original, what was the original plan? What were you guys doing at the very beginning?

• 5:10:18Speaker 02

  The plan was to teach leadership. The plan was to teach leadership, the same leadership concepts that I taught in that junior officer training course, the same leadership concept that he taught when he was running training detachment.

• 5:10:27Shawn Ryan?

  To who? To companies?

• 5:10:29Speaker 02

  To anybody that wanted to talk about leadership. And, uh, and the I had, just to back up a little bit, I had, the first epiphany that, that I recognized that leadership applies everywhere.

• 5:10:42Speaker 02

  There was a company that did an offsite to San Diego, big corporation, kind of in rapid growth mode, and they had had like a, so they had a leadership offsite in San Diego. And somehow they got connected to someone at the SEAL team, like one of, one of the junior officers that I put through training, and he was one of my, um, he was one of my, um, uh, he'd been an assistant platoon commander, then was a platoon commander. And, and, and he said, "Hey, this company's gonna come by." Um, there was a retired, I think it'd been his former, like,

• 5:11:11Speaker 02

  his, the, the CEO, cause he, he was allowed to transfer from the service fleet like me. So he'd been on a Navy ship, and the commanding officer of that ship had retired and was running this, had a leadership consulting business. And so he was bringing this team of, I don't know, 10 or 12 executives by. And, and so he's like, "Hey, will you come and talk to them about the stuff that you taught us in, you know, the junior officer training course?" And I was like, "Well, how long is it gonna be?" He's like, "Uh, I don't know, man. 20 minutes, whatever," you know, something like that. Just short. Just, you know, put out some, share a thought, answer a question or two, you know, that's about it. And so we went in there and, and, um, and I talked a little bit about- I talked a little bit about leadership and like what we were trying to teach these,

• 5:11:53Speaker 02

  you know, the, I mean, even just like putting the team and the mission first, right? It's not about you sharing resources across the entire organization. They just started firing questions and, and we were in there for an hour and a half of just nonstop like questions being fired and, and I, I didn't know anything but the military. I mean, like you, I, I, I went to the Naval Academy out of the, out of high school and so I was 18 years old. I, I never knew anything about the civilian world other than part-time jobs, you know, that I worked in high school, but it was the first epiphany for me of like, hey, everything that we learned here applies and the world needs this. The world needs leadership. Leadership is the solution to people's problems. They, they don't know that. They don't know it. And what we understood is that leadership is a skill. It's a skill

• 5:12:37Speaker 02

  that we're not born with. It's a skill that we have to learn and you're not, just like you don't know how to play the piano when you're born or drive a car or, or, you know, shoot a basketball or wrestle or whatever it is. Like you have to learn that stuff. You might have some innate abilities that give you an advantage over others, you know, that may, maybe give you a leg up on others, but if you're not willing to learn the skill, you're not going to improve. You're not going to get better. And I think leadership is exactly the same way. And I, I witnessed that over and over again when I was teaching that course because I saw leaders who might have what you might think are a lot of, of innate leadership qualities that, that would be important, right? Like they were charismatic. They could, you know, they weren't nervous to stand up in front of a, a room and present an idea or

• 5:13:22Speaker 02

  talk to their team. And then you had other leaders that were super introverted, like didn't want to, you know, like were terrified to stand up in front of a group and present an idea. And of course I made them do that all the time, you know, just try to get them used to that. But what I realized is that even people that you might have think have all this advantage with these innate qualities of charisma or, you know, they're kind of a, you know, loud, you know, person that, that, that kind of people gravitate toward or they can engage with people and. If that person wasn't willing to learn, if that person wasn't willing to humble themselves and get better and apply, you know, and take ownership of mistakes they made and apply the skill of leadership going forward to improve, like, they didn't get better.

• 5:14:06Speaker 02

  They struggled, and some of them actually got fired, and maybe even had their birds pulled and, you know, left the teams as a result. And yet I watched leaders who were terrified to stand up in front of a group, like, super introverted, like, the quiet-spoken, kind of soft-spoken types, maybe didn't have any of the, what you might define as an innate quality that might give people an advantage in leadership, and they did awesome. I mean, they were phenomenal. As long as they were willing to learn, they were willing to improve, and they were willing to get better all the time. And I'd see those guys go, some guys who struggled in the field training exercise portion of that course that I ran, and I would see them get better and then, and watch them

• 5:14:49Speaker 02

  go out on the battlefield and do amazing things, man, and have their guys talk about what an extraordinary leader they were, and how they made, you know, just how they've saved lives, or, you know, were able to build relationships or direct resources, I mean, just incredible stuff. And so, that to me, it was a recognition of, like, everything that we learn applies, you know, to people in the corporate world, in the business world. We work with people in the nonprofit sector, in the education space, you know, first responders. We do a ton of work with first responders, and anywhere that people want to talk about leadership. I think we take the lessons that we learn and we talk about how it can apply. And I think we totaled it up, last year, at the end of last year, we've worked with something like sixteen hundred companies and organizations over the last...

• 5:15:33Shawn Ryan?

  Sixteen hundred?

• 5:15:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 5:15:35Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. How many of those, you know, we had talked about a lot of the SEALs that went through the leadership course with you, you'd heard from, you know, after, later on in their career about what worked, and do you get a lot of that in the civilian world as well?

• 5:15:53Speaker 02

  We do. We definitely do, and it's super rewarding, man. It's our why, right? Sometimes when you're in the grind and you're traveling and you're gone from home a lot, and I'm always thankful for the opportunities that we have, you know, and it's amazing to see, I mean, even after, you know, we're pushing... This month marks the uh the ninth anniversary of the publication of Extreme Ownership.

• 5:16:17Speaker 02

  And the Fallen But Diakonos leadership that was published in 2018 has now been been re-released. But there's still people driving the sales of that book through word of mouth. People are people are reading it, buying five copies for their team, buying it for their, you know, their kids, buying it for their family members. And that kind of word of mouth of like, hey, this has been impactful and it's been amazing to see that. That and when people come come back to us and tell us that, you know, Extreme Ownership saved their marriage, you know, they were blaming their wife for all their problems. And, you know, or the wife blaming their husband for all their problems or, you know, having issues with their kids. And and or they're were frustrated at work that they were in a hopeless situation. It didn't feel like they had any influence on the organization, didn't think that their leaders cared about them.

• 5:17:02Speaker 02

  And and they were able to start to take ownership of those problems and lead up a chain of command. It's amazing to see, it's amazing to see uh the impact that has. And it's it's just humbling and mystifying to me, man, to see how um you know, how those lessons continue to be applied. And I just, it's it's, I'm blown away by it over and over and over again. And about how how people are taking and utilizing this. And it's it's not me that's doing it, it's not Jocko's doing it. We just shared some lessons learned that they actually have to apply. That's the hard part, you know, I could share some concept with you that can then that can help you. But it's it's up to you to actually put your own ego in check. Have an honest assessment with yourself and actually, you know, implement a solution to get problems solved going forward.

• 5:17:46Speaker 02

  And I think, you know, for us, probably the best thing that we do is just help people realize what winning looks like. What does winning look like, you know, is it, what does winning look like for you? And when you start to think about that from a detached perspective.

• 5:18:01Speaker 02

  It's not about how much money you make, right? It's not about proving that you're right. You know, if you're in a conflict with someone. It's actually about, it's about building the strongest relationships that you can, you know, with people and having the most impact in the world that you can. And spending time with the people that you love and care about most, you know, that's most important. And so I think when we can get people to detach from their emotions, kind of put their ego in check. And like if you and I have a conflict at a company and let's say we're fighting over resources and we're two department heads. I want those resources, you want the resources. You know, I'm in there like lobbying to have the resources taken away from you.

• 5:18:41Speaker 02

  You know, or some cases that may be so, it may be, we'll see conflicts that get created so bad that we might have to only, we can only communicate with, through like mediated email by HR. This is what happens. Wow. In human conflicts and you're like, wow, crazy. When you can help someone say like, hey, is it important? Is that other department important for like what you're trying to do in your department? Like, yeah, it is. Okay. Do you think it's important that you have a good relationship with the leader of that department?

• 5:19:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it probably is. And so like when you, when you can't communicate with someone except through mediated email by HR, does that, do you think that makes you look, what does that look like to everybody else as a leader? You know, when you can, when you can help them start to reveal the truth, what's the chairman of the board thinking about? What's the CEO? What's the senior executive team thinking about you? Like, how's that? Do you think you're ever gonna get a chance to be promoted up the chain? You know, if you can't actually get along with people and work alongside and build a friendly coalition so you guys can actually cover and move for each other,互相 support one another so that the team can win? And when you get people to start to think about leadership like that and they realize like, oh, you know, they're looking at this little tactical victory of like, I'm trying to get the best of this person. You know, I'm gonna demand that I get the resources from them and that's what winning looks like.

• 5:19:58Speaker 02

  And it's really the opposite, right? What, if I care about the team, like, I should be in there lobbying for you to get the resources. Like, hey, you know what? Sean, we got some limited resources here. Your team needs these resources more than my, I think my team could probably do without. Until we can get, you know, more resource available, I'm gonna give these resources to you. We're gonna build an awesome relationship, man. I'm gonna help the team win. That's, I'm showing everybody, I put the team and the mission before myself or my team and our own interests. And, and it's like, this is what it takes, right, to, to, if I wanna be a, a, a winning, a, a, a member of a, a high-performance winning team, like, that's the attitude I gotta have. And, and when you, when you start to just get people to see, like, what winning actually looks like,

• 5:20:41Speaker 02

  um, it's, it's often very different than, well, you know, you, you gotta, if you can put your emotions in there, put your ego in check, it, it just, you, you free your mind.

• 5:20:50Shawn Ryan?

  Man, you know, this

• 5:20:53Shawn Ryan?

  sounds like a lot more of a, uh, a lot more than just a leadership training course. Sounds like a, a, a way of life and, uh, that can help you with all aspects, you know, of what you're going through with your family, with your business, wherever, wherever, in the military, doesn't matter. Sounds like these aspects apply to, to every, every aspect of life. And, uh, that's really cool that you guys put that together.

• 5:21:22Speaker 02

  I appreciate it, man. It's, uh, I wanted to be able to share that. And, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's, like I said, it's humbling. It's humbling to see how many people have taken and, and utilized that, you know? But if I can help even one person out there in some way to not make the mistakes that I've made as a knucklehead leader, to not lead with ego or try to prove that I know, you know, all the answers, um, I think, uh, that to me makes all the difference, right? Of, of the, uh, it's in a life, right? It's, it's, it's be humble or get humble. That's the way it is. So, um, happy to pass those lessons on.

• 5:21:56Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Well, Leif, um, you know, we're wrapping up the interview now and I just, um, I just wanna say, uh, you know, it really was, man, it was, it was great to reconnect and, um, but it was a real honor to, to have you here to share what you shared with, about everything, man. Especially, you know, the, your darkest day. I mean, I, I, I really commend you for how you handled that and, and, and, and how you described.

• 5:22:31Shawn Ryan?

  The guys that have passed and, and, um, and he's just a, he's just a hell of a guy, Leif, and, and a true leader. And, um, I appreciate you.

• 5:22:41Speaker 02

  I wish I was better, Sean. I wish I was better, man. And, uh, and I think, um, I'm, I'm just on the path, you know, trying to learn from my mistakes like everybody else. And, uh, I hope that people can take, take those mistakes and learn from it and apply going forward. It's, um, it's an honor to be here with you, brother. I can't, I'm so proud of, of, uh, all that you're doing in the world, man. You got such an important voice on so many topics that, you know, other people aren't willing to tackle or, or take on. And, uh, I couldn't, I couldn't be more, uh, you know, we were joking earlier before we started this. I've never guessed, we were working together in buds with 18-year-old Sean, that you would, that you would have the, uh, the wardrobe with so many, uh, so many, uh, uh, sport coats out there to put on. But, uh, it's awesome, man. And, uh,

• 5:23:25Speaker 02

  so proud of you. Love, love what you're doing. Keep doing it, man. You're making a huge difference to the world.

• 5:23:30Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, Ben. And, um, and just for the record, I personally learned a ton, uh, about leadership talking to you today. And so, thank you, Ben. God bless.