321: Set a Goal, and Just Get After It. With Retired SEAL, Chris Gifford.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:06 - Chris Gifford. 2:56:33 - Final thoughts. 3:09:39 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:34:07 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 321 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  So it's cold, wet, dark.

• 0:16Jocko Willink?

  I've been awake for a few days. 19 years old. It's hell week. It's kind of crazy, but I'm having fun. A bunch of people have quit.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  And you, you have no idea who's going to quit. My boat, my boat crew leader quit, who he was a prior quitter. So he had been already been to Bud's, been to the fleet, realized he didn't want to be in the fleet. Gone, gone through the whole administrative rigmarole to get back to Bud's. And he just quit.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  Watching people quit is crazy. They quit so fast, you can't keep track of it. It's just, it's just a mass exodus. And so what happens is your boat crew, you're in a boat crew of six or seven guys organized by height. Because you need to be roughly the same height to carry a boat on your head or a log on your shoulder. If you've got six or seven guys, you've got to be around the same height. So you're organized by height. So as people quit, you get less and less boat crews. You keep lining up to adjust who's in your boat crew.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  But by, by late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, things start to settle down. Meaning most of the people that are going to quit have quit. And so now you see who's left and it's again, you have no idea who is going to quit. And you got all kinds of different people, tall, short, stocky, lean, smart.

• 1:52Jocko Willink?

  Some not so smart, some introverts, some extroverts. There's no stereotype. There's no stereotype. There might be a public stereotype of what a SEAL is, but it doesn't exist in, actually in the SEAL teams.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  You have no idea who's gonna make it. Only the big frogman in the sky knows who's gonna be a frogman down here on earth. In my boat crew, end up with some solid guys. One of them is a quiet fella from Kentucky and he's holding strong. His name is Chris Gifford. Steady as a rock. Calm, stoic, solid. And we kept paddling.

• 2:36Jocko Willink?

  And we made it through hell week and we both eventually got assigned to SEAL Team One. And ended up having some pretty cool experiences together. And he ended up with a career as a SEAL like me and a ton of lessons learned along the way. And it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to talk about his experiences and share some of those lessons learned. Chris, it's good to see you, man. Thanks for coming by.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. This is a bit surreal because I'm a big fan of the show and just to be here with, with you and Echo and, and I talk about this stuff. This is, it's awesome. So, thank you. Thank you for having me.

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna get into BUDs because I don't remember a lot of BUDs. And so I'm hoping you can fill in some holes along the way. But before we get there, let's start out the beginning. Let's start about where you came from.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I, I grew up in Kentucky and Lexington, which is, you know, kind of a college town. And it was

• 3:41Speaker 02

  a great place to grow up and it's still a great place today. But when I was in high school, I wanted to leave. I was, I was ready to leave.

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  What, what did your mom and dad do?

• 3:52Speaker 02

  So, uh, my parents were divorced. Uh, my, uh, mom worked, uh, later on she got remarried. They owned a body shop, so, uh, they ran that.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  And then my father was, uh, in, not too far away in Louisville and he ran his own business. Uh, he did, uh, it was a Kind of answering service for people who did inspections, house inspections. So they would call him, he would set up the appointments and then just fax the appointments to them. But who was more influential to me was probably my best friend's family. And he was, Mr. Hall, great guy, and still is today, but he was retired, or not retired, but he was in Vietnam in the Army.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  And just, you know, kind of an outdoors type person and was real instrumental in helping, you know, me kind of get into that outdoor, you know, not staying inside, getting out and being in nature more. Big hunter, had a lot of guns and stuff which made me more comfortable around it. And all this stuff made a big difference later on, because yeah, being from Kentucky, going to San Diego was a big change. And it was pretty evident early that I would have that.

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  Now, if I remember right, you did, you were, weren't you an electrician or something?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the, as I was wanting to go into the military, when I was 14, my best friend and I went to Gulfport, Mississippi to visit his uncle, who was a CB chief. And we spent a week there with him. And he was great. He took us to the base, kind of exposed us to all that. And that's when I was like, yeah, this, I think the Navy's a good way to get out of Kentucky. It's a good, you know, good environment. This is the type of culture I want to be in. And my best friend and I at the time were also dive qualified. So we'd already been through

• 6:15Speaker 02

  like the paddy open water. He was, my friend was big into that. And so we kind of, that was our hobby. So we go down to Gulfport, Mississippi, and he takes us around and he said, you know, if you like scuba diving, you might want to look at the SEAL teams. And we're like, what are the SEAL teams? So he had the All Hands magazine, which is about, you know, so this was mid 80s, which is the only information that was out at the time. And we looked through it and it's like, yeah, this, this sounds cool. This is, I think this would be good. So we tried to do, my friend and I tried to do as much research as we could. And we kind of determined that,

• 6:59Speaker 02

  you know, and now in the Navy, you would call it a POA and M, you kind of set up these milestones on how to get to, to a targeted goal. And I knew that at the time, in order to go to BUDS and be a SEAL, you first had to go to an A school. So my thinking was, okay, if I got to do a trade, and they had a list of the different, the different source ratings that you could be to, to go to BUDS, I figured if I could learn this early, then when I was in A school, I could work out more and I could focus on going to BUDS. So my high school had a program to go to vocational

• 7:43Speaker 02

  school, half of the day. So the first half, you did your whatever required courses, math, English, whatever. And then the second half, you left the campus, went to a vocational school, and you studied a trade. And I chose electricity, just because a lot of my family were in construction. It was, I would spend some summers working for my uncles as a plumber, and I knew I didn't want to do that. So electrical work was a lot easier. Well, that wasn't easier, but it was cleaner.

• 8:13Jocko Willink?

  Cleaner.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wasn't, you know, scooping shit. So it was, so I chose, yeah, electrical work. And with the whole intent of just learning that, so when I got to A school, I didn't have to study as hard. I could just go to the gym every night.

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  What was in the All Hands magazine?

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, it just had.

• 8:36Jocko Willink?

  Just cool pictures?

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Well, it had the pictures, but it, but it kind of outlined, you know, this is what you have to do to,

• 8:43Speaker 02

  to, to go to BUDS, yeah, you have to have so many pull-ups, so it's, you know, the times on your runs, your swims.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  They talked about the source ratings, so it was all about just kind of how to get into it. Very little was about what they actually did.

• 8:58Jocko Willink?

  Did you read any books, uh, like the, there's a couple of books that predated you and I going in the military, going in the Navy. Did you read any of those? I didn't read any of them.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  No, no, I, I, when I was in high school, I was a mediocre student at best. I knew to join the Navy, all I had to do was, was graduate with, with a three-point A.C. And that's all I did.

• 9:23Jocko Willink?

  Did you do any athletics?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  I, I did, I was a runner and I ran distance and that was, because I was, you know, like I am now, but you know, very thin, long legs and, uh, I think it was like 135 at the time, so.

• 9:36Jocko Willink?

  What's distance? What kind of distances?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  So for track, uh, was to the two mile or, yeah, there's the two mile run, the one mile run and the half mile or 880. Uh, so my high school, it was mostly all sprinters. And there were very few distance runners, uh, so it was, it was good that the coach kind of left us alone and, uh, that's, that's all I did was just go in and run miles and miles every day. And, uh, so that, that was kind of my strong point. I did swim, but

• 10:14Speaker 02

  I didn't do the type of swimming that I probably did to be competitive. You know, I think around my group of friends, I was probably a very good swimmer and I think compared to the general population today.

• 10:26Jocko Willink?

  You were a good swimmer amongst your nine friends in Louisville, Kentucky?

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So, uh, but running, running was, was definitely my strong point.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  So you get in the Navy, what, when you show up to BUDS, what, what was your thoughts when you, when you showed up to BUDS?

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Well, I think. By that time, I felt pretty comfortable with, with what, how we were, or how, how BUDS went. And a lot of that was because my best friend, again, we both wanted to go in the teams together, but he was a year ahead of me. So he actually joined the Navy one year ahead. And so he was kind of communicating with me how things were going. And when I was in A school, I actually was here in San Diego. So on the weekends, I would take the bus over to Coronado, meet him and, and you'll hang out with him and, and kind of get some insight. But before that-

• 11:25Jocko Willink?

  Did he make it?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  He did. He did. Yeah. Yeah.

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  What team, what team did he go to?

• 11:29Speaker 02

  He went to STVs. Yeah. And that was, yeah, he, he did one tour there. And then he got out, went into the police force and had a, still has a great career doing that.

• 11:42Jocko Willink?

  So you had a good heads up as to what you were going to be facing when you got to BUDS?

• 11:45Speaker 02

  I did. And that year, while he was gone, I was just so focused on what I needed to do. And I think one of the issues that I had, again, I was a good runner, a decent swimmer, but I'd never lifted weights before. And I didn't even know where to start or, or definitely I would have hurt myself. So I went to the YMCA and I met a former Kentucky football star, Cisco Bryant, Coach Bryant. And just went in and said, look, and again, 135 pounds, 16 years old. I said, I want to be a SEAL. And he's like, uh huh.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  And I said, you know, here's my strong points, but I don't have any weight training or anything. And he- Mentored me for that year. I would go, you know, every day that I could. And he worked with me and if anything, he kept me from getting hurt, which I think a lot of kids trying to go today, you know, they, they just push it too hard and get hurt before they even go. But, but he was, he was a good mentor to me and got me kind of that more comfortable with my body, my weight. And to be able to handle that. So I felt pretty good going to BUDs that.

• 13:06Jocko Willink?

  And you were good on pull-ups, push-ups, dips.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:09Jocko Willink?

  And rope climbs and all that.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, yeah. He's the one who, who kind of worked with me on that and put me on a good program to, to be able to at least again, make, make the markers. And, you know, back then, not a lot of people knew about BUDs. So really all you had to do was, you know, meet, meet the minimum. You weren't trying to outperform at that time. And I remember doing one of the tests. I think it was the test right before you class up. You know, they were like, all right, eight pull-ups and you know, they're trying to get everybody through. Once you did your eighth, they're like, all right, hop down, next. And they were just trying to.

• 13:47Jocko Willink?

  They just didn't even care.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, it was just trying to, yeah, if you were ready to class up and you met the test, then you were ready to go. They weren't, you weren't really competing.

• 13:56Jocko Willink?

  I got a confession to make. You just made me think of this and I, and I feel like a dick. So there was a guy, remember we had to do that class up test? And you, you count your buddy's reps. And my buddy, who I know exactly who it is, cause he ended up making it on sit-ups. He didn't, he was shy, the number. I didn't know him at the time. And, you know, I think you had to do 75 sit-ups or something like this and he did like 68. Maybe he even did like seventy two.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Well, like for time or something?

• 14:33Jocko Willink?

  You have two minutes.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  You have to do, it's run, swim, or it's actually swim, run, pull ups, sit ups, push ups, something like that.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 14:44Jocko Willink?

  Minimum numbers, like you said, Chris said the, the minimum for pull ups was like eight.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:48Jocko Willink?

  But that was it. You do eight. Okay. You're good. You're going in the class. This guy who, who, who I end up, I know him, like later on I know him. He's a great guy. He's a good guy. He's a great team guy, blah, blah, blah. He did like seventy shy of the sit ups and the instructor came over and was like, what was his number? And I'm like seventy one, fail.

• 15:08Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I'm such an asshole.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Buddy.

• 15:10Jocko Willink?

  I feel bad, dude, you know, but at the time, and also at that time, it was like, you didn't know who was making it. You didn't, and I don't think we had really had that attitude. Cause I think you get into an attitude of the class, like you gotta help your friends out, like help your buddy. And we weren't there yet, cause we were just, hey, are we going to class up? And so I just, and I also have like a cold blooded streak of honesty and it's hard for me to lie about shit. And I actually had one person tell me one time, you're incapable of lying. I'm like, probably pretty close. So the instructor asked me, I'm like seventy one. They're like, fail. Cool. Sorry, bro. Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Well, that, yeah, that reminds me of when I first got two buds. So I think when I got there, the class before is just classed up. So everyone that was waiting in that fourth phase or whatever, that pre-training phase, they had all left for the class. So there was, but there was a handful of people that were kind of hanging around and there was kind of a, there were a couple of people that kind of felt that stayed in that limbo, that purgatory for way too long. And whether, you know, they, they're like, I'm not ready to class up. So, you know, maybe they wouldn't do as many of the pull ups just because you had orders there. Costs way too much to send you someplace else. So if you kind of, you know, you, you could stay in fourth phase for months.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  You know, maybe even a year, but too, too long.

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  But your clock doesn't start until you class up. So there's really no reason to stay in fourth phase and. Because you're just never gonna go anywhere, so. But, uh, but I show up and there's not a whole lot of people there. And, uh, I get a room and I meet my roommate who ended up being my swim buddy, great guy. And, uh, it was like a Friday, it was the first day or first day I had just gotten all my uniforms and I, and they would have a schedule, so. You're around the other, the actual classes, but they would meet at morning for PT and they would do something. But then they'd say, okay, come back on the beach and we're just gonna do, uh, surf passage.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  And just practice going in and out of the water. There's no time, there's no limit, nobody's watching you. It's just, just you just go out and do it, or, you know, we're gonna do a run or go to the pool or something. So this day they were, they were doing surf passage and this was, I guess it was March. So the, the waves were, were pretty good there and, uh. So being from Kentucky, didn't grow up around the ocean, I wasn't, you know, surfer or anything. I got my ass hammered. You know, we had those duck feet that weighed a ton. And, you know, I put them on and get out in the waves. I get knocked down, I get up. I'm trying to swim out and I'm trying to swim over the waves and I'm just getting pushed, pushed right back into the, uh, into the beach.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  And this happened, you know, it was the whole time, so the two hours or whatever you're doing it. And I get back to the room that night and I'm like, how can I be a SEAL if I can't even get through the surf zone? This is ridiculous. So I talked to my roommate who was, I think he was from California or from a coastal state. He's like, dude, don't worry about it. Well, we'll go out this weekend. I'll, I'll teach you. And he did. He took me out and taught me how to dive under the water and kick like hell and just get through. And, uh, that was kind of my first experience of this is, this is what a team does, you know, when somebody has an issue. A buddy who has a little bit of knowledge says, hey, you know, I can help you out.

• 18:43Jocko Willink?

  It's a good thing you didn't get the introduction of the teams from me. You're stroking your sit ups like I did to that dude. Oh, man.

• 18:53Jocko Willink?

  So you and I, you and I, what are you, six feet?

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Five eleven.

• 18:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I'm five eleven too, because I remember we got, we got linked up together pretty quick because we're literally the same height. And that means even in, I don't know if we, do we mess with boats and stuff in fourth phase? I don't think we did.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  If, if anything, it was just kind of an introductory thing, like here's, here's how you put it on your head. Here's how we lift it up, but it was mostly, it was just kind of PT type stuff, physical, just general training.

• 19:25Jocko Willink?

  And then, then we roll into first phase. What'd you think of that?

• 19:33Speaker 02

  You know, I, again, I was kind of a small guy, but I didn't require a lot of maintenance, which was nice.

• 19:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you were low maintenance.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Because the big guys, I remember being on the O course, this was right at the beginning. I don't know if you remember this, but we had a big guy.

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  I know exactly what you're talking about.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  And he was awesome. I mean, and he was a good guy.

• 19:52Jocko Willink?

  Everyone loved him.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Everyone loved him. He was a good runner. He was an awesome swimmer. I think he was a collegiate swimmer. And just, but he was, you know, what you would think a SEAL looked like. And we were on the O course and, you know, we were all lined up and you, everyone just kind of goes and it wasn't like a time thing. You just did the, did the loop a couple of times just to practice, you know, your techniques. And I remember this guy got to like the third obstacle, which was the high.

• 20:24Jocko Willink?

  The high wall. So it's a, it's a wall that's probably 12 feet tall and there's a rope on it. And you climb the rope like Batman. You know, you hold the rope and you put your feet on the wall. You kind of walk up the wall. And then you get to the top, you flip to the other side and you drop down. I, dude, I remember that. This is one of the few things I remember from BUDS is this evolution right here. I'm watching that guy. His forearms gave out.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  His forearms got out because he couldn't, he couldn't pull himself up the rope. And, you know, guys were kind of passing him through and he spent, he spent the whole evolution on that wall. And we were, you know, the students that were done were over there cheering him on. The instructors were cheering him on and they were like. Get over the wall, get over the wall. And, uh, but he never made it over the wall. And they, they dropped him. Performance drop, so.

• 21:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that was a performance drop?

• 21:17Speaker 02

  I, I think so, but now that.

• 21:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it might be what you remember. It might've been a, I don't know if it was a D O R or if it was a performance.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  I don't either, but again, but that it was kind of another realization of, you know, you don't know who's gonna make it through.

• 21:30Jocko Willink?

  Do you remember how many people we classed up with?

• 21:33Speaker 02

  So the number that I remember, and I, I don't have any real evidence of this, was about one sixteen or some, somewhere a little over a hundred.

• 21:41Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 21:42Speaker 02

  That's what I remember, but.

• 21:43Jocko Willink?

  More than that, but yeah, who knows? I don't, I don't remember much.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Well, I remember losing a guy in the, on the first P T of the first day. And we were on the grinder, um, you know, they were hosing us down and we got wet a couple of times. And he turned his ankle or at least indicated he did.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  And, uh, and they're like, you know, of course yelling, I mean, it's the first day of BUDs and they were yelling at him and he, you know, went over and, and, uh, and quit. But, yeah, yeah, I remember losing, and then we, we lost people for performance. I think it was safety, you know, a couple of weeks before graduation when we were on the island. But, but you know, you mentioned at the opening about the, uh, about the boat crew leader. And I, I remember that like it was yesterday. We, it was, uh, we're getting ready to do.

• 22:38Jocko Willink?

  Night rock portage.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Rock portage, yeah. And they bring everybody into the, um, into the classroom to give us the brief. And it was looking bad out there. So this, you know, it's probably April, May, you know, the winds were high, the waves were, were going up. And we, we were just kind of sitting in there. You can hear the wind howling outside. And one of the instructors comes in, he's like, oh man, this, this is gonna be, this is gonna be ugly.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  And this was before they had guys wear helmets, right? Cause it's easier now. But they all, they're like, you know, make sure you're wearing your hat, your hat. So if your head smashes against a rock, it'll keep your brains in it, it'll soak up the blood. And they're just going on. So they come in, give the brief and it's, yeah, it's looking bad out there.

• 23:23Jocko Willink?

  Bloodbath.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're just, they're just talking it up. They're like, all right, get to your boats. So we all run outside and we had people quit. Just bang, bang, bang. And I remember, this is the way I remember it. A boat crew leader comes up, he goes, who's the next in charge? And it was one of the other guys. And he hands him his paddle and he goes, I'm falling by the wayside.

• 23:44Jocko Willink?

  Yep, that's the exact quote, bro. That's the exact quote, that's the exact quote that that dude said.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  And I remember you, you guys were, were good friends.

• 23:53Jocko Willink?

  I think I was his roommate. I'm almost positive I was his roommate.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  And, you know, we were all, at first we were like, come on, man, you know, stay in there, stay in there.

• 24:01Jocko Willink?

  At first I go, I go, what? I, I didn't understand what he was doing. Like, I'm falling by the wayside, what does this mean? Like, are you picking up a different position on the boat? Are you gonna, you're gonna paddle from over here? I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about. And so I think I literally said like, what the fuck are you, what are you talking about? What are you trying to say?

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, and, and we were all kind of like, and then Jaco turns and like, alright, see you later. And just walked off. And we're all looking at it like, see you later? We just walked off and, and, and the evolution wasn't that bad.

• 24:32Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't that bad, man. It wasn't that bad.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  He got sucked in.

• 24:35Jocko Willink?

  He freaking rang out. We also had another guy that was a stud. That was like, all the instructors loved him. He was kind of a jacked guy. He was from the Northeast. And I remember he quit. And it was like, dang. I mean, he was a stud. He was doing great at everything. It's just a stud. And you're, and you're just thinking, what is wrong with these people? Which is a really accusatory thing. It's not for everybody. The program's not for everybody. I understand that. It is very, here's the strange thing. You, you research about this thing, this job. You enlist in the Navy for six years of your life. You sign the dotted line for six years of your life.

• 25:18Jocko Willink?

  You train, you wake up early, you swim, you do all these things. And then first night of hell week, you just go, I was wrong, I'm out. Like, that's a lot of investment for zero return on, return on that investment.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:35Jocko Willink?

  Hell week. Do you remember, did you have any hallucinations?

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, when on the, on the long paddles.

• 25:43Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  The, uh, just kind of seeing stuff in the water, uh, the, some lights and stuff, but nothing as bad as some others.

• 25:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Some others.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  I saw a couple of traffic lights out in the middle of the ocean and I knew I was hallucinating. I was thinking, oh, there's a traffic light, but that's obviously not right because we're in the middle of the ocean. We all, uh, one of the clearest memories I have is one of the guys in our boat crew, whose nickname ended up being Chet in the teams.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Who was my swim buddy.

• 26:11Jocko Willink?

  He was your swim buddy. He swore, he was swearing, saying swear words for like a half an hour.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:19Jocko Willink?

  And I just remember thinking, dude, this dude is coming up with some creative words right now. He was just swearing for like a half an hour. He was so mad about everything and he was just dropping F bombs, man. It was freaking hilarious. Hilarious.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. No, he would, and such a great guy. Again, I mean, he, he helped me in so many ways. Uh, another thing was I was a good swimmer, but swimming in the open ocean was, was not my thing. You know, farm boy from Kentucky. So, but he was good at guiding and, uh,

• 26:57Speaker 02

  he helped me a lot of times because when I was guiding, I was all over the place and there were a couple of times where, you know, the instructors were counting down, you know, 30, 29, and we're just, you know, doing everything we can to, to, to make the time. And, uh, and again, it was largely due to just my inability to, to swim, swim straight. But, um, uh, we never failed anything, but yeah, there was a couple of times that we're close.

• 27:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I failed to swim. My swim buddy, who obviously I'm not going to say his name. So we failed to swim and it was a swim that a bunch of pairs failed. So we all lined up.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Now, was this like a timed?

• 27:40Jocko Willink?

  Yep. It was a timed swim sometime in first phase.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Wasn't like, uh, conditioning where they're like, all right, oh, you fail and?

• 27:47Jocko Willink?

  No, but a lot of us failed. Like there was probably a current or something, whatever. So we fail and this particular, who was in our boat crew, by the way, and you, you'll know who it is, but so we're standing in swim pairs and they're calling us into the first phase office to explain why we failed. This guy, this guy, we walk in and the instructors are like, you know, why'd you guys fail? And no shit, my swim buddy goes, Willink can't guide.

• 28:16Jocko Willink?

  And the funny thing was, I was actually, I was actually good at guiding and I wasn't a horrible swimmer. And I just couldn't, I was in a state of shock and I was like, I guess not. And what we ended up doing as a class is we split up between, they gave us two good swimmers. So they're like, okay, you, you know, Willink, you suck. And they put me with another guy and they put the other guy with another guy. Well, I passed the next swim, he failed the next swim. Cause he was slow, but he blamed it on good old Willink over here. That was the first, that's like the first, uh, in the first memory I have of somebody just not taking ownership and how totally jacked up it was. And, and I was thinking even the instructors, I could see the instructors, they, they didn't look like, oh, well, what's wrong with you, Willink?

• 29:00Jocko Willink?

  They looked at him like, oh, you're a, you're a dirtbag. They, I could feel that from them. So oddly enough, what, did you have, was there anything that was hard for you in BUDS?

• 29:13Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say like hard, but, but again, I, I didn't win anything. I didn't lose anything. I was, I was right in the middle. If there was anything that came easier to me, it was just the running. Just because I, I just spent so many years running, I had, and I had the body for it. That wasn't an issue. I didn't really get, I mean, I got cold as, as everyone did, uh, but, but yeah, I, you know, for dive phase, um, no issues, but I was comfortable in the water. I was already a scuba diver.

• 29:47Jocko Willink?

  First time?

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  Damn, I failed pool comp.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  I do remember when we had life saving and, uh, and I, you know, I was a trained lifeguard. So I felt pretty comfortable at that. And I got one of the instructors who was.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Of shorter stature. And I was like, okay, well, I should be able to handle this. I don't know if he had a weight belt on or just whatever, but man, he whooped my ass in the pool. And it was, I think it was right before they started grading us. And I, it, it really kind of shook my confidence a little bit. And, but I ended up doing okay, but, but, but yeah, I mean, sometimes, sometimes you get that. You just get the, the bad draw and especially on pool comp. Uh, you know, if you got it, somebody who's kind of watching for, you know, it's like, did you do 71 sit ups? Or 75?

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I failed pool comp and I didn't even go past the first, the first thing where they rip your mask off. He ripped my mask off and he started just doing, he started going up, getting a breath, coming back down, knock, knocking my regulator out. Go up, get a breath, come back down, knock my regulator. So I didn't get a breath and I was down there for 17 minutes. And I just sat there like, kept putting it back in, kept doing the procedures. And then after 17 minutes, he literally, I sat there on my knees for 17 minutes and all he did was knock my regulator out, come back down, knock my regulator out, come back down. And I kept putting it back in. I'd get like half a breath, boom, it was gone again. So, and then after 17 minutes, he came out down, gave me this, gave me the signal to come up. And I come up and I wasn't even stressed.

• 31:30Jocko Willink?

  I was like, so I come up and he goes, you failed, you didn't look comfortable on there. And I was like, who ya instructor? And anyways, I ended up becoming friends with him later in the teams. And he's like, oh yeah, I remember this guy, I was just fucking with you. And I was like, oh, great, you know, my life. So yeah, you get messed with sometimes, that's the way it works.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I never was a buds instructor. I don't, you know, know if that's part of the program or something, see how you handle failure. I don't know, but. Yeah, it's kind of a weird dynamic and but that school is the way it's run is phenomenal. I mean, it's a science and they do they do good work.

• 32:12Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of crazy.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:14Jocko Willink?

  It's a crazy thing. It's a crazy thing because you would not think that 80% of the people that show up to that, that have enlisted in the military, that have gone through screening tests, that have trained, that have told their friends and family, I'm gonna be a SEAL. You wouldn't think that 80% of those people in that category would quit. You wouldn't think it. And they do.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:42Jocko Willink?

  It's some crazy times. Crazy times. Alright, so we get done San Clemente Island. Well, how many guys did we lose in San Clemente Island?

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Not not too many, but there were a couple of guys, one in particular that was in our boat crew.

• 32:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  That got a safety violation.

• 32:58Jocko Willink?

  Yes, and that's the very guy that called me out as being the failure. So I think he was getting tracked the whole time.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  I do, too.

• 33:07Jocko Willink?

  I think he was getting tracked because I think they just thought this guy's not a team player and we don't want him in the teams.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  It's interesting. I didn't know that.

• 33:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the very same guy.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Makes sense.

• 33:17Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we also lost an officer out there.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:20Jocko Willink?

  And he was a really good guy.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  He was he was. Were we in the same boat crew on the island? Because they move people around. I'm not sure if we were.

• 33:29Jocko Willink?

  I don't think so.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  But yeah, he was my officer, my platoon or element.

• 33:33Jocko Willink?

  He wasn't mine, so we were different. I had a different one.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  He was mine and I remember before we went to the island, we our kind of platoon all met at a pizza place together. And, you know, he talked about what was coming up and

• 33:51Speaker 02

  And we even had our spouses there and stuff. I mean, it was, it was something like you would do in, in the teams. And we get out there and they got him on something. It was so stupid.

• 34:03Jocko Willink?

  It was a weapons test.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:05Jocko Willink?

  Not a shooting.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Academic.

• 34:06Jocko Willink?

  Like an academic weapons test. There, there was something going on there. He made somebody mad or something like that.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  I think, yeah, cause I believe I talked to him like soon after that and he kinda indicated that there was some pass on the officer side. I'm not sure if he was from the academy or not, but.

• 34:25Jocko Willink?

  He wasn't. He wasn't from the academy.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was something that, something there that, that didn't work out. And it was unfortunate because I mean, with little time we were with him, I think he would have made an awesome officer.

• 34:37Jocko Willink?

  That's the, that's the hard part about having a certain level of subjectivity in the training, which there's, there is less of it now.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Is there?

• 34:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's less of that subjectivity. When we went through, it was, it was very subjective. And in many cases, that was the right thing. Cause a team guy instructors looking at a guy saying, I don't really want this guy in a platoon with me, which is the ultimate test.

• 35:02Jocko Willink?

  Now, there's a great trick that one of the master chiefs played on the instructors at one point. One of the master chiefs who you know, but um, he, he was running buds. And he brought all the instructors into a room and was said, you know, hey, all right, who thinks, you know, we should, we should make this, you know, make sure it's as hard as it can be and set the standards. And everyone's like, yeah, yeah. And so they said, okay, what about the runtimes? What should we make it? And guys are chipping down the runtimes, chipping down the swim times, chipping down all these things. And then they get done with this new model of buds. And then he pulls out a stack of records and it's all the instructors' records. And he, and he says, none of you would be in the teams. And he was right, you know, you can only be so hard. So

• 35:46Jocko Willink?

  the subjectivity, I think it's less now. I believe it's less now. But it had a benefit and it had some negatives because the benefit is if a guy really didn't belong, cause look, you can be a tough guy. You can just be a knuckle dragger like, oh, I'm, I'm not gonna quit. That, that does happen. Guys just not gonna quit. They're just tough. But they don't belong in the teams and they could, they would get rid of that guy. But occasionally you get a guy like that officer who was a good guy, but I mean, we did, we, we spent a lot of time with him. And he was a good guy and for whatever reason. Rub somebody the wrong way and that was that bye bye.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:23Jocko Willink?

  Freaking rough.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Hope he went on to do great things. I'm sure he did.

• 36:26Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure he did. So you and I both get orders to SEAL Team One. Did you request, did you request West Coast?

• 36:33Speaker 02

  No.

• 36:33Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 36:34Speaker 02

  So that you fill out your dream sheet, which I think is pretty worthless.

• 36:39Jocko Willink?

  It was for you. It was my dream all day long. I was like, Team One, baby. That was literally my first choice.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Well, it'd be interesting to see how they, how they did the, you know, the division. But so my best friend, who again, I grew up with. Both always planned.

• 36:54Jocko Willink?

  Did you put in for STV?

• 36:56Speaker 02

  I did. I wanted to go.

• 36:57Jocko Willink?

  You're the only person that put in for STV.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  So on that, so I put, you had three choices. My first choice, I think I put like SEAL Team Eight or SEAL Team, you know, it was an East Coast team. But my third choice, I will go to STVs on, on the East Coast, just because that's where I wanted to go. And I, I get SEAL Team One.

• 37:16Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy. That's crazy.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure it was just, you know, needs of the Navy, as I've, I've learned throughout my career, that, that you, that will come first. And I'm sure they had numbers that they needed and I don't, again, I don't know how things got divided because we had almost half our class go to the East Coast.

• 37:36Jocko Willink?

  It was kind of half and half our class. It was kind of half and half. Almost, it almost was like half of us went to the East Coast, half of us went to the West Coast.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  Guys go to STVs.

• 37:43Jocko Willink?

  Were you married yet?

• 37:44Speaker 02

  I was. I got married right before BUDS.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  So I, I went home after A school on that leave. Got married and then went to BUDS. Then my wife finished college and then she moved out to, to San Diego after she finished.

• 38:04Jocko Willink?

  What'd you think about coming to San Diego?

• 38:06Speaker 02

  In the beginning. It was, she didn't want to leave, you know, the east coast because all of our family was there. And so she's like, all right, I'll go to California, but don't ever ask me to go out of the country. And of course, 15 years later, we get orders to Germany and she would have left without me because she wanted to go so bad. She had a total turnaround and but we joke about this all the time because we're still married. Yeah, 31 years.

• 38:39Jocko Willink?

  Impressive.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  But, but yeah, yeah, it was, she came out to San Diego and, and being married in Bud's was kind of interesting because

• 38:49Speaker 02

  a lot of people think, and I did, you know, before I found out that, you know, Bud's kind of like boot camp where you're there all the time, but it's not, you know, you, you have a schedule, you show up for the schedule, when you're done for the day, you're done and weekends are done. So we lived out in town and

• 39:03Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you guys live?

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Down in Ibiza. And I had a crappy apartment. She had a college friend that came out with her, so to help with the rent. And, but our room was all guys who lived off base. So it stayed very clean. Because we weren't living in it. The beds were always made, floors were always swept when we might come in. And, and actually, Ty Woods was one of my roommates from, from Benghazi, who later died in Benghazi. And, but yeah, we, because he had lived off base. So all the guys that had places off base got a room together and so we didn't have to clean it as much.

• 39:46Jocko Willink?

  So you clean, I, I didn't leave our base. I don't think I left base. Like even to this day, if I can stay at my house, I'll stay at my house. I don't want to go anywhere. There's no one I want to go. There's no one that's like, hey, you want to go to a restaurant? Echo's like, hey, we're, I'm having a fight at my house tonight. I'm like, cool. Enjoy watching them. I'll be watching them too. I'm watching them myself at my house. I went out, I was like, okay, this is my barracks. I was in 602, whatever that barracks, the barracks, 602, I'm in barracks. Cool. I stayed there. That's all I did was stay there. I don't think I left, I don't think I left base. In first phase, I don't think I maybe I did I go to Subway or something possibly, but now I was just in there like sharpen my knife, didn't have a car, didn't have a bike. What are we gonna do? I'm gonna sharpen my knife, gonna polish my boots, gonna clean my room,

• 40:31Jocko Willink?

  gonna hang out with my other loser roommates that are also young and just not doing anything. And we're just gonna sit around and have fun. But yeah, that that idea of that people don't understand is that buds, if you want to, when training's over, you can go, you can go get drunk if you want to. Yep. It's almost a test in its own right of what you're gonna do and how you're gonna behave. And you'll get rolled up eventually, or that'll be that. So you end up getting orders to seal team one. Did you protest them? Or you're just like, oh, no, no, hey, Roger that.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  It's where they want me to go. And and I mean, again, it wasn't like I was the only guy. I was with 15, 16 of my best friends. So it's like, all right, well, we're going here and

• 41:14Jocko Willink?

  And did any, we all kind of went to team one, right? Did people go to other teams?

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. So

• 41:20Jocko Willink?

  Other west coast teams?

• 41:21Speaker 02

  A couple of guys went to five, like my, my swim buddy, he went to five. A couple of guys went to STBs. I wasn't, I'm not sure what coast they were on. But but yeah, we had, but they were kind of an anomaly. There was a big grouping.

• 41:35Jocko Willink?

  A crew of us went to one. Yeah, a crew of us went to one. That was what happened.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:42Jocko Willink?

  When, when we showed up, we didn't even, you and I went to comm school before we even went through SQT, right?

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So when we showed up at that time, the training department, which was at the team, they had, of course, they had to train the platoons that were getting ready to go overseas. So they only did SQT, so qualification training at certain times of the year. And you had to wait till you got people because remember, we had people from other classes that came after us that that went through that training together. So during that time,

• 42:24Speaker 02

  We all went to departments to work. And before I joined the Navy, I met a, the only time I ever met a prior SEAL that gave me any decent information. It was in Kentucky. I don't remember how I got connected to him. I think it was through my parents because he had, did something with trucking. And he met me for breakfast one morning. So I'm seventeen, I think, at this time. And I'm just asking him all the, any question that I had. And he just, you know, he was very direct, frank with me. He was, you know, dispelled a lot of the myths, like killing the puppy and, and the.

• 43:04Jocko Willink?

  Literally drowned you.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, all the, all the stupid stuff. And he, he gave me like a couple of pieces of advice. First thing was for, for Hell Week, how to get through Hell Week. This was his, his thought was that what gets guys the most is they plan, or they, they think too far ahead. They're not focused on the now. And so they'll, you know, you're getting ready to do a run or, you know, getting ready to do rock portage and you're thinking of what, what's going to happen next week? And, you know, on the swim that I'm not very good at. And they just, that gets into this loop and you just end up quitting. He said, don't do that. Just think about what, what are you doing right now?

• 43:50Speaker 02

  You gotta run? What do you have to do to prepare? Get your boots, get your, you know, gear and, and do the run. What's next is a swim? Okay, what do I need? I need my knife. I need my this. So just, just stay on the now. And then when that gets too tough, then just take it, you know, I'm going to get to this next hour. And I'm, I'm just going to focus on what I'm doing. Get through whatever it is right now, get over this obstacle, and then I can move to the next one. And, and that's what I, I did that during Hell Week. I was like, what am I doing right now? And Hell Week is great for that because you don't have to plan. All you have to do is show up with the right gear and, and do what they tell you to do.

• 44:33Jocko Willink?

  For me, Hell Week was a relief because I wasn't worried about failing anything. Cause I was like, hey, I, I'm not quitting. And I wasn't, I had failed to swim, like I said, because my, because we had issues in my, I had failed one run.

• 44:50Jocko Willink?

  Because I tried to pace myself and I'm not a fast runner. So I was like, oh, you know, I've passed whatever it was three runs at this point. So I'm going to pace myself on this one and I failed. I barely failed, but I failed. So I was always sweating failing stuff. And so when hell week was coming, I was like, cool, I can't fail anything. Bring it. And I had fun. Yeah, I mean, I, I had fun because I knew that I wasn't going to quit and I was just having a good time.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  So the second piece of advice that it gave me came when, because when you get to the team, you need to find the job that nobody wants. Do it, do it well, and you'll always have work. So when we showed up at SEAL Team One, and we're all kind of going into the departments. I was like, I, I want to go into the comms department and because nobody else wanted it because carrying the radio was heavy and people had this kind of idea that comms was just this mysterious magic thing. When, when it worked, it was PFM, you know, pure fucking magic. When it didn't, well, you know, the gods weren't aligned,

• 46:01Speaker 02

  you know, the, yeah, the moon wasn't aligned that day. And, and I knew that not to be true. And if I could, you know, do that job well, then I knew I would always have a job. And, and back then, you know, if you weren't in a platoon, they had you in a department. And, you know, like, well, today it's, you know, everybody's a shooter. So you just keep rotating out. But back then there was no guarantee of that. And if they had too many people at the team, then if they didn't need you, then you, you just sat in a department until something else came. So I wanted to, to go into comms. And when we got to the

• 46:42Speaker 02

  team, there was a billet, two billets that opened up at the East Coast Comm School. And the way I remember it, at that time, you know, there was this kind of my belief was there was this real. East Coast, West Coast rivalry. And none of the older guys at the team wanted to go to the school because that's the East Coast. I don't want to go to the East Coast. We do it better here. And, uh, and the, I think people in the training were like, you know, you can't teach me anything. And we were new guys, hadn't even, didn't even have our trinit yet, or even through SQT. So we're like, we'll go.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  And, uh, and sure enough, they're like, okay.

• 47:28Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  And, uh, yeah, and they sent us to, uh, to comm school.

• 47:31Jocko Willink?

  I had stood quarter deck watch with a post platoon commander lieutenant. Who we, you know, so we, this is back, we used to sleep on the quarter deck, you know, in that little bunk room. So we were hanging out, you know, whatever. We got pizza for dinner. And I, I mean, this is literally within being at the team for probably a week. And he says, you know, I'm like, you know, freaking, I'm ready to rock and roll. I think we're going to NOM, the whole nine yards. And, you know, he, he says, well, you know, what are, what are your hopes and he's a very cerebral guy. Anyways, very nice guy. He said, you know, what are you, what are you looking to do? I'm like, I'm looking, I want to go on ops. I want to be, I want to go out there. And he goes, hey, if you really want to go on operations,

• 48:16Jocko Willink?

  you need to become a, a comms guy because no one wants to do it. And yet every operation you want, there 100% has to be a comms guy there. You don't necessarily need a sniper. You don't necessarily need a point man. You don't necessarily need a machine gunner.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  A rigger.

• 48:33Jocko Willink?

  You don't necessarily need a rigger. You need a comms guy. And so if you want to go on every operation, you go be a comms guy. That morning I woke up, really turned over the watch and went right to the comms department and said, I want to be a comm, I want to be a radio man. So, so there you go. That's how I ended up. And I remember there was pushback from the guy at the East Coast that said, what are you doing sending me two new guys? This is an advanced course of instruction. You can't send new guys. They're going to get slaughtered out here. And we just said, bring it.

• 49:02Jocko Willink?

  So, so we show up. That was a freaking great course of instruction.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  It was phenomenal. And, you know, that was again, the start of our career. And to have that, that skill and, and again, when, when we get back or got back from, from the course.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  I'm sure that we had some bit of arrogance about us. I know that might surprise you about Jocko. But, uh, but I mean, we, we, we understood it. We had the skill down and there was, uh, nobody could touch us. And you'll probably remember the guy who taught comms in training cell at the time, he was not a fan.

• 49:48Jocko Willink?

  He hated me.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  He hated you.

• 49:52Jocko Willink?

  He hated me. You were quiet enough to be like, go under the radar. I was like, that's actually wrong.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  You did?

• 49:58Jocko Willink?

  Nineteen year old Jocko was a handful, son.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Cause when we were in SQT and he was doing his comms class, he, yeah, he was just all over the place. And I remember specifically the Zulu time. Do you remember that?

• 50:13Jocko Willink?

  What?

• 50:15Speaker 02

  He was, he was trying to explain and developing a comms plan that all times are in Zulu and why it's in Zulu. But his terminology wasn't quite correct. And he was saying that Zulu time is so many hours back or something. And you were like, no, Zulu time is Zulu. And you could see.

• 50:39Jocko Willink?

  I'm a new guy, bro.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  And you could see it in his face. He's getting kind of red. He's like, no, no, no. What, what it means, cause it was something that had to do with daylight savings time.

• 50:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was daylight savings time, yeah.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  And it's, it's like, it's this off of Zulu. And you're like, no, Zulu time is Zulu time.

• 50:56Jocko Willink?

  I used to run my life on Zulu time. So when we went to that course, this is the cool thing. So we show up at this course, we're not SEALs. We're, I mean, we're new guys. We don't have our tridents yet. We jump in with a bunch of experienced east coast guys. And actually, there was another, there was a couple of guys from team five out there that had a platoon or some, platoon or two under their belts. And we just, same thing. Where everyone's, they're, they're living in town, whatever. We're living in the barracks.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 51:23Jocko Willink?

  Where all we're doing is studying, we have to learn Morse code. You and I are like, talking to each other in Morse code, like, freaking C3PO and, and R2D2, right? Uh, studying this stuff. We're totally into it. We have no, like, people think you graduate from SEAL training, you have some kind of tactics for the field. We didn't have any of that. We didn't know what we were doing.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Or equipment.

• 51:43Jocko Willink?

  Or, or equipment. Yeah, that's where we didn't have anything. So the chief, at first he was pissed that we got sent out there. You're sending me these two knucklehead new guys, but then he realized we were freaking fired up and we want to be like, there's not too many seals that are like, hey, I want to be a radio man. That's what we literally wanted to do. So, once he realized that, he was kind of like, okay, but then he would kind of test us. And one of the tests he did, so that course, the end of the course was a six or seven day in the field FTX. And it was around a swamp, it was around an airfield that's a swamp. You're in the middle of a swamp. So this chief that was running the course, he, he goes, "Wink",

• 52:30Jocko Willink?

  and he says, "Hey, if you're hardcore, you'll go in the field with nothing but a poncho and a poncho liner." And I was like, "What? Did you say if I'm hardcore? Is that what you said? Because trust me, I'm Jocko, I'm freaking hardcore." So you're saying poncho and a poncho liner? That's what, okay, cool. Yes, I'm hardcore. I'm going to the field with a poncho and a poncho liner. What? By the way, key component here, poncho, poncho liner, no ground pad, which is, which is insane. Did you have a ground pad? No. So, so you and I are idiots. We have no ground pad. We have no sleeping bag. We have no bivvy sack. We go with a poncho and a poncho liner.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  And we were wearing wool, not the smart wool you get today, but like, like WWII wool.

• 53:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, WWII wool.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  I think we even went to one of those GI Joe's stores or whatever and was buying old wool to wear.

• 53:26Jocko Willink?

  So, we go in the field. When we start, when we drive, when we're driving to the field, and now, so it's January in Virginia, February, maybe?

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Probably, yeah, January, February.

• 53:39Jocko Willink?

  January, February. We're driving to the field. On our drive, it starts raining.

• 53:46Jocko Willink?

  As we start pulling into the area of operations, it turns to sleet. As we're getting out of the vehicles, it turns to snow. It's freezing.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  And I remember as we got out of the vehicle and we start, you know, our patrol into our first point, we get to this little creek or, you know, it actually has water in it. And Jocko and I look at each other and Jocko goes, and he goes, "You know, it only sucks the first time."

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Cause yeah, you get wet. Once you're wet.

• 54:18Jocko Willink?

  You only get wet once.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, you only get wet once. And so we just drove right through it. Yep. It only sucked the first time.

• 54:25Jocko Willink?

  That first time lasted seven days. It sucked once for seven straight days.

• 54:30Jocko Willink?

  So we end up, so on that course, you had, we had communications windows that we had to make with stations around the country. So we're setting up these old school antennas. Echo Charles, this is where you literally take out pieces of wire and you measure the wire to the frequency that you're going to be communicating on and you hang these pieces of wire clandestinely in trees. And then you make these communications window and we had like a communications window every two to four hours, the entire time. And what happens is if you, you're getting graded the whole time and he comes out and checks your, you know, if you've got like what they call, if you're out camping. So if you've got stuff strewn about and you got your sleeping bag out

• 55:13Jocko Willink?

  and everything's out of your rucksack, then he's going to dock you points or he's going to send you on E and E or something like this. And if you miss communications windows, then that's points against you and how strong your comms is, that can be points against you or points for you. So what happens with all the other groups, literally every single other group, they missed some of their comm windows because it's every two to four hours. And why did they miss their comm windows? Because they would fall asleep. Why would they fall asleep? They fell asleep because they got on a ground pad, got into a bibsack and a freaking negative zero degree, uh, sleeping bag and they just would fall asleep. We literally could not sleep. We could not sleep. We were, we were just standing, we were, I remember just sitting

• 55:55Jocko Willink?

  there looking at you. We're marching in place by a tree at two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning. We have every piece of clothing that we have on. We've got a poncho over us and we're marching in place trying to stay warm because we're going to freeze to death, bro. We're soaking wet. It was freaking ridiculous. No ground pad. We don't miss any comm windows. We, we set up great antennas because we had all this time to set them up because we weren't sleeping. And we make all of our comm windows. We make good communications on all those comm windows. And we end up as the number one pair and the number one pair gets the early extract. Meaning when everyone had to stay like the full day or the extra night or whatever.

• 56:39Jocko Willink?

  We get pulled out of the field early as the number one pair. Two freaking meatball new guys. We get pulled out of the field early. And here's a, here's an awesome thing and I don't know if, I don't know if you know this, but that chief called.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:54Jocko Willink?

  The master chief. Yeah. He called the master chief of our command and said, hey, you sent these two knuckleheads out there. They just graduated the number one pair in the class. They're freaking squared away. You should, you should take care of these two guys. They're great seals, which was, we weren't even seals yet. So it was really cool. Obviously I let it go to my head like, hey, no one can tell me anything about comms. I'm the freaking ultimate comms guy.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, if you look at it, it wasn't like we were at just the right place at the right time and you know, we made a good decision. That was it. I mean, we knew, we knew our shit.

• 57:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  And there was no one else at that team at least that could counter that. So yeah, I, I think we were somewhat arrogant. But again, that's what we set out to do. We, we wanted the hardest job. We were going to do it well. And we never had a problem finding work.

• 57:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was, uh, that was good times. So then we go into SQT.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 57:53Jocko Willink?

  So we go into SQT when we get back, which we had just been through freaking hell week. I think it might've been harder than hell week.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  Well, I came out worse.

• 58:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. You had significant trench foot, right?

• 58:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. To where I, for weeks I was down and I remember like sitting at home, having my feet in hot or warm Epsom salt. And just the. The pain of that feeling when it, when it, you know, comes back to your nerves and, and still today I have nerve damage from that. It's when I retired, you know, you go through your, your medical screening and yeah, I still have a part of, from that. Now I've gotten used to it because it's been, been so long, but.

• 58:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you had a legitimate case in 1991 or 1992 of World War One trench foot.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:44Jocko Willink?

  From spending a whatever, seven days in the freezing cold with our feet were wet the entire time. That was another thing we, he told us to wear jungle boots. He was like, you, you wear, cause you can wear all these, these.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Danners.

• 58:56Jocko Willink?

  You know, danners and these high speed boots, you go, they're going to get wet and you're, you know, you, they're never going to dry out. And I was like, Roger that. So what I wear jungle boots. What do you wear jungle boots? And I actually carried that through my entire career. My entire career, I almost wore jungle boots 90% of the time. Unless my rule was if there's snow on the ground in insert, during insert, I'll wear something else. If there's not snow on the ground, I'm wearing jungle boots. And I did that my whole career because your feet, because jungle boots, they dry out echo Charles. So there's little, there's little drainage holes. So they dry out and it might take them a few hours, but if you're wearing a pair of thick insulated boots, they are not going to dry out. And so I wore jungle boots almost my whole career.

• 59:38Jocko Willink?

  And finally I started making some modern boots that were comparable to jungle boots. So now we go to SQT, uh, which was awesome. We had great instructors in there. Great instructors teaching us the fundamentals. We were kind, we, we got.

• 59:57Jocko Willink?

  It was almost like our generation of instructors, those guys were like one degree of separation from Vietnam. For the vast majority of our instructors.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  It was, I also think it was important that. The training was still at the team at the time. So, you know, these were people that you were gonna be in a platoon with. And, you know, there was a lot, especially SEAL Team One, we have, you know, kind of that history of having that ownership and, uh, you know, meeting a certain standard. And they, they really, they really pushed that. And I think that came out in the training that we got during that time. But yeah, they, these were guys that had been in for, and had multiple, multiple platoons. I mean, they just did it over and over. And, uh, yeah, they had quality, quality training.

• 1:00:43Jocko Willink?

  It seems kind of funny now when I look back on it, but there was this thing that they would say at Team One, Team One, it's not just a number, it's an attitude. And they, in fact, our seniors oftentimes were kind of joking when they said that. Cause you know, we also had the nickname with stalag Team One, because we had uniform inspections and haircut inspections and everything was like more militant. But I believed it. I mean, I was like, yeah, hey, it's not just a number, it's an attitude. Especially Yugg, Doc, he was all about that. Like, we're number one. That means something. There's a reason. Team One.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:01:21Jocko Willink?

  So I got a little crazy with that. Uh, but the instructors freaking outstanding. Um, and, and I still, I, so much of what I learned, I learned then, and I fast forward a little bit, but I always say like 70% of what I had learned in the teams, I learned while we were instructors at training cell at SEAL Team One.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:43Jocko Willink?

  We'll get to that. Um, so

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  we go through that, we go through SQT, we had anything, any big high points of SQT?

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  No, it was just, again, we were with all the guys from Buzz and some others. And just quality, quality people. And, uh, no, it was, it was a good time. The training was good. And, you know, back to the stalag one. And I consider, I'm sure you do too, I mean, we grew up at SEAL Team One and just what we learned there set for the rest of the career, set your, your work ethic, your, you know, the way you see things and the, the, the community as a whole. And I'm, I'm proud to have been at Team One and from that period of time, it was, yeah, it was phenomenal.

• 1:02:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I think I remember this time where you, you told me you were going on a trip. And I think you were going on some kind of a trip and Team Five was also going on a trip. And I remember you telling me you should have seen their pallets, like meaning their aircraft pallets. When you build, when you go on a big trip, you, you load your, your aircraft pallets with all your gear and there's a science to it. And there's an art to it too, like making it all squared away and making it weigh the right, making it look good and making it look clean. So the Air Force inspector will pass you. And I remember you saying, man, you should have seen the Team Five pallets. You were disgusted.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, if it looks like trash, it probably flies like trash.

• 1:03:12Jocko Willink?

  We get done with SQT and you, we roll into our first platoons. We're in sister platoons now.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  We had to be.

• 1:03:24Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Because they didn't want to stack the platoons with, with, with both of us. So they, and this was, I think, a great, you know, strategic decision. They always had us, you and I, in different platoons. But I mean, we talked every day. And I remember, if I did a comm plan or something that worked or didn't work, we would get together and debrief about it. And, uh, but yeah, they always kind of kept us, uh, kept us separated.

• 1:03:49Jocko Willink?

  Were you the primary comm guy in your first platoon?

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  No, I, there was a, a primary, but, you know, it was early on, like just, just get it done. So I had a lot of leeway.

• 1:04:01Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Uh, but, uh, cause you know, he was, had other stuff to do, but, um, but it was pretty, pretty clear who was making. The uh, the comm plans and who was keeping the gear and uh, but uh, and then from then on, yeah.

• 1:04:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was super lucky being they, I was the primary comm guy in my first platoon. Pretty awesome, a lot of responsibility for a freaking meatball new guy. And that's also where I realized, hey, if you don't want to be told what to do, do it ahead of anyone being able to tell you what to do. So that was my goal. Our platoons had some unique personalities.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  Very, very unique.

• 1:04:38Jocko Willink?

  Your platoon was pretty savage dude.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  They uh, it, it was again, an interesting time and it wasn't.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  It wasn't like an even or like a bell curve. It was, you're either a brand new guy or you had four or five platoons. And there, there was maybe one, but there, there was, there was really no in between. And uh, luckily, I think there was five or six of us.

• 1:05:09Jocko Willink?

  New guys.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  New guys, that uh, there was at least one or two that had the spotlight on them. So it kept the spotlight off, off the, off the others.

• 1:05:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  And, and I was in my low, you know, low mode.

• 1:05:22Jocko Willink?

  You were like, hey, I'm gonna keep my mouth shut. I'm gonna do what I'm told.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Just gonna make.

• 1:05:25Jocko Willink?

  Cause it was a scary place in the nineties, uh, at team one as a new guy. It was, there was.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  Much different.

• 1:05:32Jocko Willink?

  There was, there was, there was, there was scenarios that could unfold really quickly if you were out of line as a new guy. And your platoon had, definitely had some bruisers in it.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:44Jocko Willink?

  Some bruisers in it. Studs, freaking leg- legendary freaking nineties team guys just getting after it. My platoon was a little bit more, uh, a little bit more mellow than that. So, I mean, great guys, but just a little bit of a different personality. The personality of my first platoon was a little bit different than the personality of your first platoon. We end up going on deployment together. We go to Guam. My platoon got in so much trouble on our first trip that we didn't do, we never left Guam again after my first trip.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:06:20Jocko Willink?

  Yep. We did one trip. We got to Guam, we did one trip and we got in so much trouble that we never did a trip again. They pulled us off the schedule.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Where you're not going there, you're not going there, you're not going to there.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  I didn't remember that.

• 1:06:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's why we, that's why, that's why I was sitting in Guam for five months. And how many trips did you go on?

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  I think we did three.

• 1:06:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so you probably did at least one or two of ours that we were supposed to do. We got rotated out. We were a disaster. The guys like to party, I must say, so.

• 1:06:53Jocko Willink?

  Got done with that. I mean, what was your first platoon? Any, any big leadership lessons learned?

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  No, again, at the time, you just, I just did what I was told and you were, even though technically with, as being a comm guy, I was, I was well aware of what I needed to do, but you're still kind of learning how the community works and there's things in the, in the field that, that you're still trying to develop. And, and you know, you mentioned the guys, they were, it was a unique dynamic, but they, they were still solid people and they were good mentors and you know, they, they worked with you. If you, if you were really, hey, I'm, I'm here to do this, then they were all about teaching you and sometimes, you know,

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  not the carrot, but the, the stick, but, but you, you know, they, they did get you to where by the next platoon, you were ready to, to be a department head, you were ready to lead and, and you knew tactically what you needed to do.

• 1:07:57Jocko Willink?

  The, the, the, the underlying tone that I took away, that I think was instilled in me the most at SEAL Team One was being professional. And that applied to like, hey, when you're in the field, you're a professional and that's what you need to do. You, you're squared away. You don't have your crap line all over the place. Your gear squared away. You don't have straps hanging off of everything. That, that was the deal.

• 1:08:23Jocko Willink?

  Time to shoot, you freaking, you shoot, you shoot the way you're supposed to shoot. You're not throwing rounds all over the place. When it's time to make comms, you make freaking comms. And I still have an eval that said made comms 100% of the time. 100% of the time. There's no, there's no voodoo for, for freaking me and GIF. We were making freaking comms.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 1:08:42Jocko Willink?

  We were making freaking comms. That's what was happening.

• 1:08:47Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, but that, that high level professionalism. Yeah. And when I was talking about your platoon had personalities. They definitely had awesome, crazy personalities, but for sure professional. It's the same thing with the guys that were in my first platoon. They were a little bit more lighthearted, but they were professionals and you didn't want to mess up. You wanted to do a good job. You wanted to learn as much as you could. You wanted to be a good, you wanted to be known as a, as a good operator. That's what you wanted to be known as. And so that's what you did, you know? We'd always be, all of us, our whole new guy crew, Saturday morning, be at the team. We'd be working out, we'd be fixing gear, we'd be hanging out. That, I, I remember that until, until basically we went on that first deployment.

• 1:09:32Jocko Willink?

  That was what it was. I just remember always being at the team, always being at the team. This is, this is the way it was. Uh, after that first platoon, then I started volunteering for arg platoons on the ships. And you continued doing the, the, what we called spec ops platoons. Which was going to Guam, basically, and then going on exercises from there. How was that next platoon?

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  Uh, it was, it was good, you know, because again, now you're past the new guy stage. And now people are looking to you to, you know, to, to start being a leader. And, uh, we had, we had good new guys, great new guys. And I had, now I'm the department head. So if there was any strains on me before, now those are all gone. Uh, you know, we had, we had good officers and it was, it was good, but it was still back to Guam. And, uh, spec ops, um, you know, it was the nineties. So, you know, you did, you did what they asked you to do, a lot of FID, but, uh,

• 1:10:33Jocko Willink?

  The dry years.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Jocko Willink?

  The dry years. Then, then you did another platoon? You got back from that?

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  Yep, did a, a third one. And, um, again, now I'm starting to look at, okay, I, I'm, I'm ready to be LPO chief. I, I've got the comms thing down. I'm good with that. Now I need to, to start moving up. And the problem that we had at that time, uh, was the, the way the Navy worked is you had that source rating. So you competed against that source rating to promote. And my source rating was ICeman, Interior Communications Electrician. So my job in the Navy was supposed to be fixing phones and navigation equipment on ships,

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  which I had no clue how to do, but because I was an electrician and I was, I understood how, I could look at a schematic when I took the test, because that's what you take the test on, I could look at the schematic and go, oh yeah, well, this is, this is a resistor, it's probably this, and, you know, Navy tests are all the same, there's two answers that are totally out, and then there's two that are pretty close, and you just gotta choose the right one. So I was good at taking the test and promoting all the way up to E6. But after that, now you're competing, you're still competing to, to make chief, but we're all competing against in different ratings. And ICeman just was not advancing.

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  Because at the time, a lot of people that were doing that job were, would get out and go work for like AT&T or something. And, but now cellular networks were coming in, so nobody was getting out. So the only people that were advancing were people who'd been in 17, 18 years, because you had to build up that time. But then, but all my friends who were in different ratings, like I think Hull Technician was one, you know, they were making rank because everyone was getting out and working at the, at the shipyards. But we were all doing the same job as a SEAL, but that's not what they were testing. Thankfully, that, that changed, and we have an SO rating, and, and that, that's better.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  But at the time, and that, that was really weighing on me on promotion, because I was ready to advance, but it was the Navy system that was keeping me from, from doing that. And so after the third platoon, and that was our first rotation date, and we knew that some people had to leave, and, and some, some people would stay, and I think the, the corps was, was gonna stay, but I needed to find another way to kind of break out. And, and at the time, because we were deploying down to Southeast Asia. I looked at, okay, how can I be more of a, of an asset to the team?

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  And in my third platoon, who we had a, our, our platoon chief who made master chief and who I'm talking about because I think you did a platoon with him too. Awesome guy, but he was a Thai speaker. And we did a trip to Thailand and I just remember he, he kind of commanded everything, even though he wasn't the guy in charge, but he spoke the language. And, you know, kind of going back to, you know, you want, you want to be an asset. And to be a comm guy, you're always going to go because you have the radio. Well, if you're a linguist, that, that too. And this was the nineties.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  So at the time, the adminis, I think it was Bill Clinton administration, they were starting to normalize relations with Vietnam. And we didn't have any Vietnamese speakers at the team. I think we had one, he was actually from Vietnam. But we had a ton of Thai speakers and a ton of others. So I was like, okay, here's an opportunity to, you know, kind of get a skill. I could, I have, you know, they're wanting people to, to rotate. So I want to go to language school for a year. And I want to stay on the West Coast, so I want to take a, an Asian language. I ended up taking Vietnamese, but that was an opportunity to, to be able to come back.

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  And, and I eventually came back to one, but. So that was a one year school? One year, yeah. It was one of the worst years of my career for sure. And it, one, because the, the school in Defense Language Institute is a phenomenal school. I mean, there's, there's no other like it. But you, that's all you do is study. How many hours a day are you in class and how many hours a day do you have to study? So the class was a regular eight hours. It's from nine to, to whatever. And you take a, a break for lunch. But I, and this was one thing I wasn't prepared for. And I probably should have studied harder in high school, should have taken a language. But.

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  I would get up first thing in the morning, early, like around four thirty-five, and I would study for an hour and a half before before school. Then I would drive in, go to class, take an extra, because I think lunch was an hour. Yeah, it was like a like an hour for lunch. But they had to deal with, you could spend thirty minutes one-on-one with an instructor while they ate, so you just kind of discuss things. And then, you know, you eat for half an hour, then you start class again. Finish the day, I would drive straight home, study for another two hours, eat dinner, study for another hour and go to bed.

• 1:16:12Jocko Willink?

  And you did that for a year?

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  I, well, I did it for about eight months. And it took about eight months to feel comfortable enough where I could take, you know, maybe I didn't study that extra hour after dinner or something. But, I mean, they, I mean, we were learning fifty, sixty vocabulary words each day. And and this isn't a romance language, you know, Vietnamese is, you know, it's, you know.

• 1:16:34Jocko Willink?

  Completely and utterly foreign.

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and.

• 1:16:37Jocko Willink?

  And it's a to, is a tone language?

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  It's tonal, so they have.

• 1:16:40Jocko Willink?

  I remember you telling me about this when you got back.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  So how you say a word.

• 1:16:44Jocko Willink?

  I think you told me about rice, like rice means rice, white, eat, and some other things depending, there was something like that.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  So the word I I use is ma, that's when I tell people about tones. So you can say the word ma six different ways in Vietnamese. So it's ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma. I might have missed one anyway, but each of those words means something different.

• 1:17:09Jocko Willink?

  Totally different.

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  About how you say it. So one means a rice plant as it's coming up the water. Another means your cheek, another way means your mother, another way means a horse, another way means a ghost or a crypt where you bury people. So if you say the the phrase like de la ma. You know, if if I'm pointing to a horse, obviously, I'm not talking about my mother. But if you say it wrong and someone's just listening, it it has a total different meaning. But you can say de la ma, de la ma, de la ma, and it means something different each time. So, yeah, it it's just what took hours of just listening to to, you know, cassette tapes. That's what we had at the time.

• 1:17:53Jocko Willink?

  And some people are better at this naturally than others, correct?

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  I I would hope so. I wasn't because the amount of hours to towards, you know, if you compared with the grades I was getting, I I was way overworking myself. But but I learned, so I learned how to study was a big one. They actually had somebody who was getting their PhD on on learning styles or something. And they came in and and actually worked with us where we took like a survey. Then she met with us and says, OK, you're this type of learning style. And what it taught me is like I was wasting my time with with flashcards. Because that's what everyone was using flashcards.

• 1:18:35Jocko Willink?

  Dude, this is like, this is my my bread and butter is flashcards.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  So what she told me is you are better off just getting a blank notebook and just writing stuff down over and over, kind of like on on the blackboard, you know, when you get punished, because the way.

• 1:18:53Jocko Willink?

  I will not make fun of my comm school instructor. So I will not make fun of my comm school instructor.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  So I would just listen to conversations and I would handwrite it down. I'd, you know, run it back and that helped me kind of on the listening side, you know, understand what I'm hearing and be able to to work it. But it was, the other bad thing about, bad thing about DLI, but challenging thing was the leadership. And I know you have a lot of different listeners. The intel community, in my opinion, are not, you know, they're they're not necessarily leaders. They're good at getting information, putting it in reports. I mean, that's their job. Leadership wasn't quite it. And the the people that ran the Navy side of DLI were all.

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  Intel people that were there for like their shore duty. And most of the students at DLI are all kids right out of high school because they, you know, this is like their job. And they score high on a test and they bring them in and say, hey, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna study Arabic and they're like, okay. And, you know, they would do fine for a while and if they failed, then they would kind of move them down to an easier language. And if they failed that, then, you know, they, it was to the fleet or whatever. And, but the leadership at the school was, was, was challenging because they didn't want to do any of the leadership part of actually mentoring and leading.

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  So they, guys like, because I was a, I made E6 while I was there. They kind of pushed it to us like, okay, you're the LPO, the Asian division. And, you know, I'm, I'm just struggling to study every day and learn my 60 vocabulary words so I can, you know, talk that day. And now I got to deal with, you know, this person over here who, you know, went out and got drunk last night and, you know, was underaged or crashed their car or it was just silly little, little things. And, and I'm thinking, you know, you're on shore duty, shouldn't, isn't that something you should be doing? But, but it fell to us.

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  Luckily, we had some good representation there, some officers and senior enlisted that were going through different languages. And they, they put a stop to a lot of that. And I'll, I'll tell you one story. The, one of the guys was, he was later our, our training master chief.

• 1:21:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  And he was there and I show up, so I'm, I'm just showing up to DLI, coming from team one and got my, my whites on. I think I was, we were wearing whites at the time.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  You know, my try, you know, I hold business and I walk in and the lieutenant that was running the school, you know, they, they kind of, as you do your check in, she's like, well, I know you're an E6, but we have, you know, we, your class doesn't start for a couple of weeks. So we'll just have you work in the master at arms shack or whatever until your class starts. I'm like, huh, okay. So I go down there and the person working in the shack was like an E4 who had never been in the real Navy, had been at this school the whole time and

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  was failing. So they put them in this office to, to be the master at arms or whatever. So I show up again, E6 or I was E5 at the time and I walk in and they're like, well, yeah, we're, we're, we're doing some painting of some of the offices. So paint cans are over there. Just grab a, you know, grab a can and a, and a brush and, and you can, you know, work painting the office for the next couple of days. I'm like, okay. So I walk out and I, I see the, the master chief and yeah, and he's like, oh, great. Another team guy. And I talked to him and I'm like, Hey, uh, what's the deal with, they, they want me to paint an office for the next two weeks? He goes, no, walks into the lieutenant's

• 1:23:07Speaker 02

  office, shuts the door, comes back out for like five minutes later and says, you work for me for the next two weeks. So that ended that.

• 1:23:15Jocko Willink?

  Good stuff. Now, when you came back to team one, now it's like 1997, 1996, 1997, something like that?

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:25Jocko Willink?

  And you go right into training cell and that's where I've been now for a year or something like this.

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  So kind of our core group all went to, to training. And so I was, I was gone for a year, come back and I'm kind of, you know, kind of getting the layout of, of what's going on.

• 1:23:44Speaker 02

  And I see all you guys and you're like, yeah, we're in training cell. We're, we're running things. All right. And I'm like, are there any

• 1:23:54Jocko Willink?

  Straight team one mafia at this point, man. We had our hands in everything, bro.

• 1:23:58Speaker 02

  And I'm looking at, I'm looking at the platoons. I'm like, I mean, all my friends are, are in training cell. And so, and then I think you and I talked, because at the time, I think you had maybe started the, the, the comms program.

• 1:24:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I kind of started. Yes, I had started, but I hadn't run like what I, what the vision was.

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:24:21Jocko Willink?

  Which was to run a core data vision, boy.

• 1:24:24Speaker 02

  So I think we talked about it. We're like, look, we, we could do something, something big here. And I'm like, I, I'm all in. I'm all in. So yeah, I came back. The, I think the leadership had just turned over in training and we had good people in there. The guy from DLI was there. And so I already knew he was awesome. So I'm like, yep, let's, let's do this.

• 1:24:49Jocko Willink?

  So we end up teaching a bunch of different stuff, but one of the, one of the coolest things that we did was we launched a comm school for the communicators at SEAL Team One. And it was a struggle. It was kind of hard to get the, but yeah, I don't know if you remember this, the, the hardest thing about getting it actually approved was the amount of batteries it was going to take. The 5590 batteries that cost $64 each or something like this. And we're going to have to outfit 20 guys or whatever it was. And our initial answer was no, no, you, you can't have money for those batteries. Use the rechargeable batteries, which were the BA,

• 1:25:29Jocko Willink?

  what were they called? BA 55 something else. And we were like, that's, that's unrealistic. We'd never carry those, but they only last, and we ended up fighting and our commanding officer, like we pitched to the commanding officer. He's like, all right, approved. And we got whatever it was, $4,000 to buy enough batteries to run this exercise. And we set up a freaking crazy FTX out in the field. And man, we weighed the guys. I remember we started off by weighing the guys to see how much equipment they had. And, and they averaged, averaged was what in their gear and equipment? 120 pounds?

• 1:26:07Speaker 02

  At least, yeah.

• 1:26:08Jocko Willink?

  So the guys are rolling out on a seven day. Two man reconnaissance and we've got, how many teams you think we had? On that first one, six or seven?

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that sounds about right.

• 1:26:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, it was probably, actually it was probably six because it was probably two guys per six platoons at team one. And so there you go. Here we go, rock and roll. And we took those guys out and it was a ball buster.

• 1:26:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, to put it lightly. So. I'm sure some of the guys probably had better terms for.

• 1:26:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh dude, it was harsh. So we did it up in the Southern California mountains. We had a really great target to observe. It's a military target. There was military activity at the target.

• 1:26:55Speaker 02

  And that was the key because I think, you know, when we went through our course, all we had, I think we're counting cars on a road or, or watching something and a lot of the training was, you're gonna watch this missile site and it was a piece of PVC pipe. Maybe somebody come out one today and use, but we had an active target where stuff was going on all the time. And it was important because you knew, based on the reports, who was actually doing the work. Because there was stuff to report. It was good.

• 1:27:28Jocko Willink?

  And we set up comms shots all over the country and so then the, the, the highlight of this first course that we ran though, was these, there was one three man pair. For whatever reason, that always happens to the teams, you end up in a three man pair for some reason. So there's one three man pair. And we're monitoring everything. We're not sleeping at all. We're, we're just not sleeping for seven days. We're like, we're just so freaking fired up. To be running this thing. And one of the, that three man pair misses a comm window. And so we immediately roll out there. We're like freaking Starsky and Hutch, like we got a missed comm window on freaking Delta four. Let's go.

• 1:28:10Jocko Willink?

  So we roll out there and, and we get to their position and bro, we, this was, we just knew too much. And I remember.

• 1:28:21Jocko Willink?

  We said like, hey, you know, why weren't you up on that comm window? And they said something along the lines of like, well, we tried, but the other station wasn't up. And you and I looked at each other like, because we were monitoring the station, that what, the frequency they were supposed to be calling on. We were listening to it. And we were close enough. Yeah, yeah, we would have heard it regardless. Yeah. Like, we 100% would have heard it. We didn't hear anything. So we were all out there, hey, why, why'd you guys miss that comm window? They go, well, we tried, lie, but the other group wasn't up. Lie, because we got, we got comms with the other group.

• 1:28:55Jocko Willink?

  So I remember you and I looked at each other, we, we just, I don't know if you said, I was like, let's separate them. Oh, we like, well, it took us that way, like, let's separate them. So we separate them and we're like freaking, uh, who's, we're like freaking two Sherlock Holmes up in this piece right here. And so I remember I go, and, and I said, what kind of antennas do you guys set up? And he's like, oh, we had a long wire and you're asking, I, we come back to you, what kind of, he says, he says, uh, inverted dipole, oh, this guy says long wire, they're liars. So we come back over and like, all right. Um, you guys didn't tell us the truth. And there's got to be consequences to that. So we start making these guys walk.

• 1:29:41Jocko Willink?

  And like up hills, up the big hills with all their gear and equipment. And they start walking. And then when they would get to those points, we'd be like, call us when you get there, but we'd be waiting for them. And they still had to make their comm windows. Along the way, that's right. That's right. And the good, the cool thing about this, they, they shouldn't have lied and everything, but they were good guys. Yeah. Especially that one character. The one character's like, I'm sorry, man, we shouldn't lie, it's my fault, we shouldn't have lied. And we're like, yeah, cool. But that's four minutes too late, bro. And he was a new guy at the time too. So these guys were just hating life. They they knew they'd screwed up. But I remember so we so we they'd get to a spot that we took like on the top of a mountain.

• 1:30:27Jocko Willink?

  And we'd be waiting for him and they'd get up there and be like, get out your map. And they you just have a look in their eyes because get out their map. Get out your map means we're going to assign you another spot. So we'd pick point to another top of another mountain. And they'd be like Roger. So we did that to him a few times. Finally, we did one. And we opened up the back of the truck, put the tailgate down. And I remember going, um, hey, you know, go back. It was actually go back to the mountaintop you just came from. And you could hear like a little bit of a and I said, or you guys can just put your gear in the back of the truck and call it quits. And I remember that one character, good guy, he's like, no, no, sir, no, or he didn't call me sir, but he's like, no, Jaco, it's all right. We're going, we're we'll start walking. Good to go.

• 1:31:12Speaker 02

  Fill up your water.

• 1:31:15Jocko Willink?

  Fill up your water bottles. Um, what'd you tell me that guy told you? That was like the hardest training he ever did.

• 1:31:21Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I talked to him a couple of years ago, great guy. And he's like, yeah, man, I was still one of the hardest training. You should actually have him on your show. I think he's still in, but yeah, it was.

• 1:31:35Speaker 02

  From his perspective, I'm sure he would think differently, but but yeah, it was it was good.

• 1:31:42Jocko Willink?

  Awesome stuff. Great training for those calm guys, really. And that was, you know, you and I were obsessed. We realized the importance of comms. We over indexed the importance of comms to you and me. It was like, hey, if you can't get comms, you can't get extracted, you can't get fire support, which is true. It's true, but we were crazy about it. Kind of crazy.

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  Passionate. Maybe that's a better term.

• 1:32:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm sure some people might call it passion. Some people call it psychotic. But that's that's how it rolls. Um, the truth hurts, but lies hurt more. That was the lesson learned there. So then you end up putting for a commissioning program, right?

• 1:32:20Speaker 02

  So when so this was about the the time that you left and I was.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  Again, I've been ES6 for several years now and I was just, I was reading the tea leaves, you know, I would take the chief's exam on a, on a job I didn't do, didn't know how to do. And uh, so I thought, okay, this, this isn't, if I gotta wait another five, six years to be chief when all my friends are, are making chief, then, then I, I need to find another job or another career and you know, this is the time, because I was at about 10 years at that time.

• 1:32:58Jocko Willink?

  So you're actually waiting getting out, you're thinking about getting out?

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like, yeah.

• 1:33:01Jocko Willink?

  This is what, 99? So there's no wars going on?

• 1:33:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:04Jocko Willink?

  You've kind of done what you could do?

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, there was, you know, if, in hindsight, if I knew we were gonna go to war next year, I was, I would have not even thought about it. But, but yeah, at the time, I was like, okay, 10 years, if I'm, if I'm not gonna stay, then I need to go and, and do something else.

• 1:33:22Jocko Willink?

  What'd you think you would have done?

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, I hadn't an electrical background, you know, I was, I, I could.

• 1:33:31Jocko Willink?

  Get that job at AT&T you was talking about?

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  At this time, you know, I spoke Vietnamese, I mean, I, I had a, I, I knew I could find a job somewhere, I could do something, but uh, or maybe go back to school and we had the GI Bill. So I had, I had options. So I go in to talk to, to the mass chief, same, same guy from DLI. And, because he's now the senior enlisted for training and, and I talked to him, I go, look, you know, this is, this is my situation, you know, I, I love this job, but I, I can't sit as an ES6 for another five years while everyone else is promoting and just do the same thing. So he's like, you know, maybe you should be an officer. I'm like, fuck no. And I would go off on this tirade about, you know, I, I'm, I'm here to

• 1:34:20Speaker 02

  be a mass chief, that's, I want to do that job, you know, I, I enlisted.

• 1:34:24Jocko Willink?

  I work for a living.

• 1:34:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. And uh, no way I was gonna be an officer. And uh, he, he says after I ran for a while, he goes, look, and I, and you know, this guy's very well spoken and I. I can't say it like he did because I just don't remember it, but in essence it was, he said, "Give. Everyone here has something to give to this community. You just need to find the right medium to do it." And, you know, if, if the enlisted route isn't working because of outside of, of, you know, your, what you can do, I mean, it's a system, you're not going to change that. So maybe you just need to find a different way and maybe being

• 1:35:07Speaker 02

  an officer is, is the right way to go. So I said, "Okay, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll look at it. At least consider it." And, uh, you had just, I think, didn't you just get picked up?

• 1:35:19Jocko Willink?

  I got picked up in, I left for OCS in 1998.

• 1:35:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:35:24Jocko Willink?

  And I had applied in 1997 and didn't get it.

• 1:35:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:35:28Jocko Willink?

  And so I had to try again.

• 1:35:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think he, he had, he had mentioned that. So I looked at your program, but there was, I think I was too old.

• 1:35:36Jocko Willink?

  You were too old because you were the same age and I didn't get it my first year. And I was like, well, I had some other career choices I was looking at, not, they were in the Navy. But I was like, okay, well, I'll go to a different command, but I'll take one more crack at this to see if I can get it. And I got it the second time. But yeah, you would have been too old to get that program.

• 1:35:54Speaker 02

  I was too old. So they had another, a kind of a legacy program, the enlisted commissioning program, that they were kind of phasing out because they were going over to the Seaman Admiral. And, uh, but it, the way you read it, I, I actually could apply for that. I was, I was right at the line, but I could, I could still qualify. So I thought, okay, I'll give it one chance. I'll put in a package. And we had a guy from the command who, actually I did a platoon with who just got picked up. So I talked to him about it and he kind of gave me some advice on, on the package. But I said, "If, if I pick up chief this year, regardless of what happens, that's, that's the route I'm going."

• 1:36:35Speaker 02

  So I put in the package and go through the whole process. And that year, they took 300 packages and they accepted 150. So I had a 50% chance. I took the chief's exam that year and I think 6% advanced to chief in the Navy. So I had a 6% chance of being a chief or I had a 50% chance of being an officer. And I actually got picked up for the program that year. But the chief results hadn't come out yet and I was determined, again, if I got picked up for chief, I would just turn down the program, but, uh, but I didn't make chief that year or so. It's like, okay, this is where I'm going.

• 1:37:18Jocko Willink?

  And then what, then what? You had to go to college to get that program, get through that program?

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the unique thing about it, you had to have prior college to go. And the benefit, and I, I joined the Navy right out of high school. I mean, I graduated on Friday, that Monday I, I was, I was gone. But when I went to DLI.

• 1:37:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you racked up some college.

• 1:37:38Speaker 02

  That was a, DLI is actually a, uh, an accredited university and, uh, they have an accreditation. And while you were there, if you took a couple of extra classes at Monterey Peninsula College, you could actually get a, um, an associate's degree in foreign language. So, you know, you're already in study mode when, when you're there. So it's like, yeah, easy. I'll take a couple of extra courses, you know, do a lab on a weekend or something. And so I, I did that. So I actually had two years of college on, on my record. And that's what I used to get in because they only gave you, you had to finish in, well, they only gave you two years, but you had to be done before 31 and that was the other problem.

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  I was going to be 31, you had to be commissioned before you were 31 and I could only, I only had like three semesters, but, uh, I'd been through DLI. I knew I could study. Yeah. I was a comm guy. I, I can do this.

• 1:38:37Jocko Willink?

  So you know what's freaking ridiculous? The program I did, the program I did, I was an E5 at Team One. I packed up my shit. I went to OCS for 13 weeks and then I was an officer at SEAL Team Two.

• 1:38:52Speaker 02

  And that was the better program.

• 1:38:53Jocko Willink?

  It was the freak, it was ridiculous. It's the reason, that's why it doesn't exist anymore. Cause it was too good. It was too awesome.

• 1:39:01Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:39:01Jocko Willink?

  Like I, there, there, I had, by the way, I had zero college. It was like, okay, cool. Yeah. Go ahead. Be an officer now. It was like, are you, I was kind of looking over my shoulder. Like, are you serious? This is, this is happening? Cool. Cool. Right on. Yeah. It's, uh, I feel bad. You had to go and, you know, get your DLI done. And now you had to go back to college and get a degree, man.

• 1:39:23Speaker 02

  Well, the bat, I guess the.

• 1:39:27Speaker 02

  Worst part about it, now, were you guaranteed to go back to the teams?

• 1:39:31Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:39:31Speaker 02

  I wasn't.

• 1:39:32Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  So I had, when I accepted, it was, and it was part of the interview process, like, well, what if you don't come back to the teams? Because at the time, you know, again, this is the nineties, late nineties, you know, they, it, it, they didn't have that, that, uh, that, you know, opening, so I, uh...

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  Now that you say that, here's the difference. They took fifty people from the entire Navy for my program. You know what I'm saying? So like, the chances of getting picked up from my program were next to nothing. Cause there was, uh, at least, at least a thousand of applications of people. I mean, that's my guess, that's not an official number, but a lot of people applied for that program. Because it was such a good program. It was created and endorsed by the Chief of Naval Operations. Like, it was a big program, and it was freaking hard to get picked up. So I guess that's why, when you look at a percentage, why, you, not too many people got that program that I got. I freaking got lucky.

• 1:40:34Speaker 02

  So for me, when, yeah, by accepting the program, I was coming out of the community. They let me go to school, and, but when I graduated, and got commissioned as an ensign, they could have sent me to, you know, to SWOES school, like, you know, you could be a pilot, you could be whatever. And you had to reapply to get back into the community. Which meant, I had to take the, that PT test, you know, from the All Hands Magazine. I don't think it changed that much, but we had to take that again. There was a couple of other guys, uh, guys with me, one I, I saw last night. But, uh, we, yeah, you had, you had to reapply, you had to put in your package.

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  And, uh, I remember driving up to DC to meet the detailer. And, not the uniform one, but, uh, but the civilian one that really ran things. And, uh, talking to her, giving her our package, and, you know, hey, we really wanna get back. It was me and, and my, uh, my buddy. And, uh... And yeah, but I mean, we had good scores because I mean, my bachelor's degree after being at DLI was was a joke. And I mean, and when that's your only job is to go to college because I was still getting my paycheck, not any of the the special pays or anything, but I was getting

• 1:41:59Speaker 02

  paid as a six. They yeah, that's all you had to do was was hand in your papers on time, which you know, I had done two, three weeks early. So, but so we had strong packages. We got picked up and picked back up to go straight in. But there was one guy that was an Arcustorian that

• 1:42:16Jocko Willink?

  did not Are you serious?

• 1:42:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:17Jocko Willink?

  Was he not was he questionable?

• 1:42:21Speaker 02

  He did. He did 71 sit ups.

• 1:42:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, oh, yeah. One of them, huh? You called him out, bro. And I so when I was at OCS, before I left, one of the Master Chiefs at Team One said, Hey, when you're getting ready to graduate OCS, and you talk to the Detailer, as you just described her, the civilian Detailer that actually runs everything, he goes, when you talk to her, tell her when you want orders, tell her to look in her top left drawer for your orders. And I go, okay, Roger that, Master Chief. So I'm at OCS, I'm whatever, three weeks from graduation, we can finally use

• 1:43:03Jocko Willink?

  the phone. And we got a square way orders. I called the office. I said, Hey, ma'am, my name is, you know, Jocko Willink, and I'm about to graduate. And I was trying to get orders. I want to go to I was hoping to go to Team Two. And she goes, Wow, yeah. And she's like, starts going off. Well, you know, the failed, you I'm gonna have to look at and I said, and then I listened to her, and she was not sending me there. And then she go and then I said, uh, Master Chief so and so, I said, Master Chief so and so told me to ask you to look in your top left drawer for your orders for my orders. And she goes, Oh, where do you want to go? And I go team two and she goes, okay, I'll cut your orders this afternoon. Boom, done.

• 1:43:47Jocko Willink?

  How's that for some good old boy network activity? That's so crazy, right? She was powerful.

• 1:43:55Speaker 02

  Powerful.

• 1:43:55Jocko Willink?

  Powerful.

• 1:43:56Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:43:57Jocko Willink?

  And she always took care of me and she took care of me and she took care of all of my friends.

• 1:44:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:02Jocko Willink?

  All my friends. All my friends, she was awesome.

• 1:44:04Speaker 02

  No, she was good to me too. And when, uh, so when she, when we found out that we were going, we were getting back into the community, she's like, all right, so where do you want to go? And before I could even say, it's like anywhere on the east coast. Cause I was, again, you know, this, I was wanting to go back out to the west coast. You know, I speak Vietnamese. I mean, doesn't that make sense?

• 1:44:26Jocko Willink?

  Is that because you'd gone to, because you went to college on the east coast?

• 1:44:29Speaker 02

  I did, because I, that was the only school that was, yeah, I didn't say that. So I, I had, I had to graduate in three semesters. And I wanted to stay on the west coast. So I applied for, uh, UCSD and all, all the local ones. Got accepted to all of them. However, they all said, you have to do at least two years, two years minimum. I guess, you know, that's how they get their money. I don't know. So I was actually at a point where I didn't find any place that would let me go for three semesters. So I actually called the, um, uh, the guy in charge of the program. He was civilian.

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  And I said, look, I've tried everything. I just, I just can't, because you had to submit like a, uh, a, a, a degree plan. And I said, I, I, I'm coming up short. I, I don't have anything. So I got to turn it down. He goes, he goes, call this guy. He's a retired captain, oh, oh, six captain at Norfolk State. See what he can do for you. So I'm like, all right. Call him up, start telling my story. And, uh, he like stops me halfway. He goes, look, just send me all your transcripts, just fax them.

• 1:45:42Jocko Willink?

  Good old boy. Good old boy network coming at you once again.

• 1:45:45Speaker 02

  So I fax him all, you know, all my, all my paperwork. Within 30 minutes, he faxes me back a training program. And they didn't get, they said, if you can do it in one semester, we'll graduate you. And we'll get you commission. I'm like, all right. So I turned that in, I got accepted and, but yeah, we had to move to Virginia to, uh, to, to go to school. And then once I graduated, it was, uh, an East Coast team.

• 1:46:13Jocko Willink?

  So when, where were you when September 11th happened?

• 1:46:16Speaker 02

  So I.

• 1:46:18Jocko Willink?

  What was your status?

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  So I was still at school and, but I was in my last semester and it was a couple of, a couple of months before graduation. Cause I graduated in December and I remember I was, uh, at home, working on, on a paper and I was listening to, uh, to the local radio station, uh, the talk radio. And they came over says, we're getting some reports, something happening. I got up, turned on the TV and, and that's, that's where I was. And I remember that day I was getting phone calls on my, on my cell phone from people from all over that I didn't know. And they were trying to call somebody else, but I guess all the towers were real screwed up.

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  So calls were getting directed to people that, that it wasn't, cause they would, I'd answer the phones like, is Scott there? You know, they're, they're panicking. I'm like, he got the wrong number. He goes, no, this is Scott's number. I'm like, I'm sorry, man. I, I don't, I don't know anybody and I got a couple of those. But, um, and then like every other team guy, you know, I'm, I'm looking, and I already had orders. So I knew what command I was going to by that point. And, uh, but I only had a couple of months left. So. I wasn't making calls like get me, you know, get me there because I knew I was going there within a couple of months. So I just had to finish that one semester, graduate, get

• 1:47:45Speaker 02

  commissioned and, and yeah, that day I got commissioned. I left the university, drove straight from Norfolk to Virginia Beach and checked into SEAL Team Four.

• 1:47:55Jocko Willink?

  And then what was your role at Team Four when you got there?

• 1:47:58Speaker 02

  So this was another one of the, I found out that kind of the issues of the program that the day you graduate, I mean, new butter bars, Ensign Gifford is, and I'm now at day, at day one. Well, all of my, everyone at the team, all the officers, especially the JOs, you know, there's, they've been a JO for a year and a half because they had to, you know, finish school.

• 1:48:26Jocko Willink?

  Go to BUDS.

• 1:48:27Speaker 02

  Go to BUDS.

• 1:48:27Jocko Willink?

  Go to jump school, go to Ask UT.

• 1:48:29Speaker 02

  All that. So I'm.

• 1:48:31Jocko Willink?

  Behind them technically.

• 1:48:33Speaker 02

  By a year and a half, even though I've had 12 years in the community at this point. I'm, to them, I'm just day one Ensign. And so all the platoons are filled and I show up and, you know, the, again, this is right after nine 11. So, you know, everything's crazy, but things haven't changed enough yet to where they start deploying, you know, people differently. So we're still sending, you know, people to the different theaters. And, and I show up and of course I want to get in a platoon. I'm, I'm, I'm ready to go. And they're like, yeah, everything's filled. So we're going to make you the training officer. And which I was okay with because having been in training cell, I can, I can

• 1:49:18Speaker 02

  run training. That's, that's not hard. However, at that time, all the training had been taken away from the teams and centralized. So I was more of a, like an LNO from the command to the, to the training department, which again, wasn't, wasn't bad, but. But at that, also at that time, they didn't, they just do like the unit level training. But the training where you train with the people that you're going to deploy with hadn't happened, or that was still at the team. So that was kind of my focus was coming up with a good ORE. And, you know, of course, at that time, the big thing was the, you know, the weapons of mass destruction.

• 1:50:00Speaker 02

  So we had to come up with stuff where guys were wearing mop gear and all that craziness. But, uh, so that, that was kind of my, uh, my focus during that, that, uh, that first workup. But then, right before deployment, one of the JOs of the platoon that's going to Afghanistan gets fired.

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  And

• 1:50:26Jocko Willink?

  Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding.

• 1:50:28Speaker 02

  Where am I? And I, I didn't have a job, you know, when you deploy, because the whole team deployed. I was just going to be an ops assistant, but I'm ready to go. And so they ended up putting me in that platoon as, uh, as the third O, uh, or yeah, yeah. Third O at the time, which again is kind of crazy because, hang on, 12 years. And, uh, I think the big learning experience from that was, it was tough for a lot of the other JOs, because again, we were still sending guys to South America, to, uh, uh, other theaters to, you know, because we still had responsibilities there.

• 1:51:12Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:51:13Speaker 02

  And here's me who's junior to everybody. And I get the one platoon that's going to Afghanistan. And, uh, so I could tell in the JO jungle that, uh, I, I wasn't their favorite person. But, you know, again, I was a lot older than most of them and, and their approval wasn't really what I was looking for. But, um, but it was, it was a, a, a great opportunity, but there were, there were problems there. And even inside the platoon, there were, you know, some feelings that, uh, you know.

• 1:51:45Jocko Willink?

  Why did the guy get fired?

• 1:51:48Speaker 02

  I don't remember. I wasn't really part of that. It was, yeah, it was something internal. I never really asked, you know, my, when I showed up to the platoon, my thing was, you know, I'm just here to, do what I can to make the platoon better. You know, we're, we're going to Afghanistan. And at this time, that was right when Iraq was starting up. So a lot of the focus wasn't on Afghanistan. Everybody was kind of focused on Iraq. And, uh, yeah, I'm like, I'm, I'm here to help out. You let me know how I can do it.

• 1:52:21Speaker 02

  But again, the hard part, and even for me, you know, I'm, I'm not a one-year ensign. I have 12 years in and I've done a lot of stuff. I've, and it was hard for me at times. And this was kind of my first being as an officer in a platoon. You know, I had a lot to learn of, you know, you're not, you know, the E6 anymore.

• 1:52:45Jocko Willink?

  Wanted to learn, want to hear when I learned that? So I'm at Team Two. I freaking have an awesome platoon filled with awesome guys. And we're going on a trip and we're building a pallet. And we already talked about pallet building today. Like, hey, you're gonna make a squared away pallet. So I'm, I, I'm down there. I'm seeing the pallet being built. And I'm like, hey, we need to move this box over here. We need to get to, put, put these rigs over here. And I start building the pallet. And, and my LPO, who's a freaking great guy and a great friend of mine, Scotty Neal, Navy SEAL, who unfortunately passed away, but he's, he was a freaking great LPO. And he, he looks at me and he goes, hey, sir. And I was like, oh damn. He goes, why don't you let me do my job and you go do yours?

• 1:53:29Jocko Willink?

  And, and it was the perfect thing to say to me. And I, I just was like, he's 100% right. I'm down here trying to build a pallet. These guys, this is, this is what they do. This is his domain, right? The LPO is gonna run that shit. And I was down there stepping on his toes. And I, from that point on, in the, the, the switch went in my head that if

• 1:53:52Jocko Willink?

  If I don't need to be giving my input, I'm not going to give it. If I don't need, I don't need to prove to anybody that I know how to build a pallet. No one cares. They want to build the pallets, their pallet. They want to come up with the, with the, with the navigation route. And you know what? The hardest one obviously is like, oh, they want to come up with a communication plan? If it's going to work, if it's a viable plan, we're going with their plan and I'm not going to interfere with it. And that's the, that's the moment, the exact moment in time when Scotty Neal said to me, "Hey, sir, why don't you let me do my job and you go do yours?" And I was like, "Roger that." Part of me was a little bit paranoid, I think too, of like, I want to show everyone that I'm a hard worker. Like, "Hey, I'm, I'm here to move, move." And, and I would continue to do that throughout my career of like, "Oh, if you got stuff to move, I'll move it."

• 1:54:35Jocko Willink?

  And I'll keep my mouth shut because I know you guys don't want to hear from me about how to build a pallet, about where to, how to set up a range, about all that stuff. That's, that's the, that's the E-man's domain and I didn't mess with it. As long as there was viable plans happening, we're going with the, with what the plans are.

• 1:54:54Speaker 02

  So true. And I had a very similar experience, I think it was even with the pallet as well. And I was very fortunate that the LPO was just so squared away. Just one of the best people I've ever worked with, still a very good friend. And, but because I was in his squad, you know, I, I dealt with him quite a bit. And we came up with a signal that if I was out of my box, so if we were at a meeting, he would like rub his forehead or something. And that was like, "Okay, shut up and just let, let things go." And yeah, just phenomenal guy and, and you need that because again, it's, it's hard for

• 1:55:37Speaker 02

  us that had that background to, to, to step back and learn that.

• 1:55:43Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And when I had, in my second platoon, I had the, the officer that got fired and I had the legendary officer takeover and he was super experienced. He was a prior senior chief. He was a prior senior chief. And he didn't put his, he didn't, he didn't tell us how to build pallets. He didn't tell us how to do anything. He asked us, he put us in charge. He was awesome. And, and as soon as my LPO said to me, "Hey, why don't you go do your job?" I was like, "Man, that's what..." That's what the best leader that I saw did. He did that for us and I'm gonna do that from now on. Good little lesson learned.

• 1:56:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it was.

• 1:56:20Jocko Willink?

  So what was that deployment like? So you're, you're pretty early into Afghanistan.

• 1:56:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:56:24Jocko Willink?

  What year was this? Like 2003?

• 1:56:26Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, so it was, it was, it was early, but more importantly, again, everyone was focused on Iraq. So we were kind of a, like a task unit light. So it was mainly a platoon with some supporting people, some head shake guys. And we weren't really established yet in kind of our, our operational sense. So we, you know, we were just trying to find work. And we did a lot of special reconnaissance, a lot of driving around Afghanistan. And non-armored Humvees and with the doors off, it's just too heavy. And so we did a lot of those missions. We did a couple of direct action.

• 1:57:06Speaker 02

  And it was, it was, it was a good deployment. Again, I learned a ton. I was with really, really good people. And, you know, we had our issues, just like, like everything else, but it was a, a good learning experience from that. But the main leadership things and the OIC and I had a couple of words sometimes. And, and it was, again, I think that, because he told me, there was a feeling that, you know, I kind of got lucky to be in this. And he made a comment like, you know, guys, some guys really earned to be here. And I was thinking, what do you think I've been doing the last 12 years? You know, all this, you know, when, when,

• 1:57:51Speaker 02

  I was in my first platoon, you're still riding your huffy bike up and down the street. So, yeah, I try not to take it personally and, you know, it was, it was a lot of growing for me too. Because again, it was, it was kind of a strange time, but, you know, we came back from that, didn't, didn't lose anybody. And, and it was, it was a good first deployment to a combat zone. Because we got to shake a lot of stuff out and we weren't really driving like, you know, like we were later. Or, you know, definitely what you guys were doing later.

• 1:58:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that that's such a nice gentle ramp up. And I had that too. Uh, like even even literally when I got to Baghdad in my first deployment. My, the, the S E A, who's a freaking like awesome guy. His wife used to say that me and him were soulmates, but we just always got along like brothers. And but he was already on the ground. And so we showed up and the night we showed up, he's like, hey, we're getting mortared from this area. Take your platoon out and go check it out. And so we're like, I'm like, okay, cool. And basically, he just kind of made it up just to get us out there, shake out the whatevers, get, okay, look, you're in Iraq now. Get over it. It's time. And then you came back and he's like, all right, cool.

• 1:59:08Jocko Willink?

  Now let's start looking at our first mission. But that's, and then that whole deployment was a nice ramp up of of learning opportunities to learn. Going back to your point of like when someone says you're lucky to be here. I was just talking about this on the academy. Uh, training leaders and one, it's such a, and we actually just talked about this on the underground.

• 1:59:33Jocko Willink?

  Just just saying like, yeah, yeah, I I agree. And it's so disarming to people when you say, you know, I'm a hundred percent lucky to be here. Absolutely. And

• 1:59:44Speaker 02

  I wish I had that advice.

• 1:59:47Jocko Willink?

  We all wish we had that advice, you know, you're talking to the guy that was telling the instructor of our communications course that no, it's Zulu time.

• 1:59:55Speaker 02

  Is always.

• 1:59:56Jocko Willink?

  Zulu is always Zulu. I was nineteen years old. That guy was what thirty five? He was a senior chief?

• 2:00:02Speaker 02

  He was definitely a chief.

• 2:00:03Jocko Willink?

  He's a chief. Yeah. So he's a chief. So I'm telling a chief. Hey, listen, chief, let me tell you how it is, bro. Jaco's got a word to put out, son. So, yeah, we all, we all wish we could go back and maybe freaking check some stuff, but that's, that's a good one. You know, like, hey, when somebody tells you something. And well, it's like, okay, yeah, absolutely. It's disarming. It's a good way to understand what their perspective is. It's a good move. It's a hard one to learn.

• 2:00:30Speaker 02

  It is.

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  Cause that's a shot, right? You're like looking at him, literally thinking to yourself, are you kidding me right now?

• 2:00:35Speaker 02

  Total ego thing and I fell right into it and uh, but yeah, it's, but yeah.

• 2:00:40Jocko Willink?

  What was your op tempo like on that deployment?

• 2:00:43Speaker 02

  It, it wasn't uh.

• 2:00:44Jocko Willink?

  Not too crazy?

• 2:00:45Speaker 02

  Not too, I mean, we were doing like long patrols, like week long, you know, eight days, nine days uh, with resupplies, that kind of stuff. So, you know, it was, it was tiring on the guys. It wasn't real strong kinetic. It was just long, long drives and we just drive around and see what, what we could find and would talk, you know, try to talk to people, try to get an idea.

• 2:01:08Jocko Willink?

  And the 2000, the IED threat wasn't heinous yet.

• 2:01:11Speaker 02

  No, no. And, and again, we were in non-up armored Humvees. We had the doors off, you know, so we could uh, easily uh, engage. And um, so yeah, that, that wasn't uh, that wasn't big at that point.

• 2:01:27Jocko Willink?

  So then what'd you get, what'd you do when you got home from that deployment?

• 2:01:29Speaker 02

  So I got home, I'm like, all right, you know, now, now I can finally do my AYC slide because that was, you know, really what I wanted. I wanted to start at the beginning so you could, you know, do a good mentoring. And uh, I get back and say, hey, I'm, I'm ready for my platoon. They're like, oh, you just did it. You just had your AYC slot. So it's on a fit rep.

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:01:51Speaker 02

  So um, so now you gotta wait another two years cause they now, cause I'm still behind. So my year group is still kind of working their way through uh, SQT at this point. And uh, but I've already had my thing. So uh, the, the new CO of the command uh, came in and I, I talked to him and again, it was like, how, how am I going to be relevant? So at that time, a lot of people were getting the um, Going to the Army ASO schools because that was

• 2:02:25Jocko Willink?

  So like advanced special operations stuff.

• 2:02:27Speaker 02

  Right. And so I'm like, right, that's, that's what you, uh, is that what you need? Then I'll go it. And it was again, nobody wanted to do it because they had to deal with the Army and I knew why. And, uh, cause the, the one school was in Bragg for like three, two months, three months. It was a long time, probably two months. And, uh, it was exactly four hour drive from Virginia Beach to Bragg. And it was, you know, one of those regular schools, you do it during the week and then on the weekend you do whatever. I had to, in the beginning, I, I would drive home for the weekend and then drive back on, on Sunday for a class on Monday.

• 2:03:09Speaker 02

  And I had to, I stopped driving home because I knew if I went home, I, I wouldn't go back because I hated it that bad.

• 2:03:18Speaker 02

  And it was just

• 2:03:20Jocko Willink?

  What part did you hate about it?

• 2:03:21Speaker 02

  It's just the way the Army ran it, you know, it was kind of protector of the tab type thing. And it wasn't just me because there were just a couple of Navy guys and it was, it was mostly Army. All SF guys and, uh, and all, all great people and, and I got along with, with everyone. And, uh, but it was, and even, even they were getting frustrated from the silliness and it was silly. And, you know, all of us had, you know, what 12, 13, 14 years. I mean, these were senior guys and like, you know, I still gotta prove to you that I get to be here.

• 2:03:56Jocko Willink?

  What kind of stuff were they making you prove?

• 2:03:58Speaker 02

  Just, it was, a lot of the stuff was very subjective and, you know, they would, they would test you. So they would fail you on something to see how you, how you reacted. And some guys were like, screw this, I don't need this. And they would just leave. And then, uh, but, you know, they were just kind of wanting to test you. So you have to do it again. And it was a lot of just kind of administrative kind of stuff that, and I was a class leader, which, you know, so I had to meet with them every day and, you know, they had to tell me how to take out the trash and all that, whatever. Okay.

• 2:04:28Jocko Willink?

  Get some.

• 2:04:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. But, you know, I, I got through it and, and it was good because the, the community was just, it wasn't something that we were used to. And we didn't really have anybody qualify. I think it's better now, but we needed that. And, uh, when we got on that next deployment to Iraq, it was, uh, it was somewhat

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  A benefit to have that that type of skill and the so I had like a small cell of mostly chiefs because again all the platoons were filled but you had guys that weren't in a platoon so we all just got trained up and then when we deployed we kind of got farmed out to to different units and our command had the PSD personal security detachment for the the top five.

• 2:05:22Jocko Willink?

  So this is now this is now 2005?

• 2:05:26Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, yes, yeah.

• 2:05:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:05:29Speaker 02

  It was that that summer.

• 2:05:31Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:05:31Speaker 02

  Pretty sure.

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:05:32Speaker 02

  And so we my team of guys again kind of got farmed out because the army was kind of running that at the time. So I got put into an ODA house north of of Baghdad and for about three months and because their guy that did that job had to leave.

• 2:05:54Jocko Willink?

  Was it on a river?

• 2:05:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:05:58Jocko Willink?

  I did some work up there. It was on the river. It's actually a crazy area and awesome ODA team, but.

• 2:06:04Speaker 02

  And and I have to say that these guys were phenomenal to to work with and you know, I get asked all the time. I'm sure you do too, you know, who's better the Army SF or or SEALs and I mean, obviously we are, but the but but truly, I mean, these guys were professional like awesome professionals and their concept of was a little bit, you know, they just did things a little bit different, not better or worse, but they were just a well-developed group of guys and what struck me as the.

• 2:06:46Speaker 02

  It's the most beneficial and what I really admire them, the leaders, so the OIC and they had a senior enlisted. Yeah, they only had one officer. So I show up and, you know, they didn't ask for me, you know, or really, they needed some help, but, and I show up and I talked to the OIC and we were about the same age and we, you know, talked for a little bit. And so they have a meeting of the group of the house. So they bring everybody in and I remember, you know, they kind of introduced me to everybody and they made a couple of Navy jokes, which was

• 2:07:28Speaker 02

  fine. But then the senior enlisted, who again, just a phenomenal individual, he goes, "So today, Mr. Gifford is part of this team and he is one of us." And they call themselves Eagles. He goes, "Today, he is an Eagle and from as long as he lives in this house, he is an Eagle and you will treat him that way." And from that whole time there, I felt like I was part of the team. And I, you know, even though we didn't go through the same training or anything, I, they brought me in and they were just a phenomenal, phenomenal group of guys.

• 2:08:12Jocko Willink?

  And how long were you up there working with them?

• 2:08:14Speaker 02

  About three months.

• 2:08:15Jocko Willink?

  What were you doing? So with this new skillset, which we'll say is pretty much intelligence, gathering intelligence through various methodologies is what you're doing and you are basically helping them gather intelligence?

• 2:08:28Speaker 02

  So I was the primary, like, report writer. So when all the information came in, I did the evaluation on it, write the reports and send it, and send it out. The reason that we chose to do that by farming guys out was because of the PSD mission, you know, they were really relying on intel heavily because, you know, they were going out for

• 2:08:52Speaker 02

  Public things and you know when there's a threat they want to know about it. And there were all these units scattered everywhere. So we chose certain specific places that we figured there was some could be some pretty hot intel that concern the top five. And they want to be able to get that information right away. So by having kind of a liaison in those houses, if something came up, then they could, we could get the information to our guys doing the mission very quickly.

• 2:09:27Jocko Willink?

  What were the living conditions over there, right?

• 2:09:29Speaker 02

  It was, it was awesome. So we lived in a house in the middle of town. And then it was adjacent usually to a Iraqi military base. And then so there, we're like the deep inside perimeter. You had several rings and you know, at that house, we, we used to get hit maybe at least once a week, if not more. And you know, we all just go up to the roof. We had stuff everywhere and it was just you battle until they stop. You know, you weren't moving, so you just kept going until it was over. And so, yeah, you had everything right by your bed.

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  And as soon as the alarm went off, because we always had somebody on watch that was,

• 2:10:17Speaker 02

  they, they would send out and everyone would just go up. And then, then we would run, you know, our operations from there. And then, and we, we did a couple of DAs. I did those with, with them and they were good again. We went out.

• 2:10:32Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys have a partner force that you were working with? Were the Iraqis that you were on base with? Or were you guys just doing hits kind of solo?

• 2:10:37Speaker 02

  We, we did have a partner force, but it, we didn't really use them that much. They were kind of on their own. I think some of our guys did some, some teaching over there. But if we did something, it was, it was pretty much just us. And so I went to, you know, like I would go to the range with the guys and they would kind of teach me some of their TTPs. And again, not better or worse, just a little different, but total professionals. And I was able to, to work with them. Yeah, that three months and it was, it was phenomenal. It's one, one of the best, best parts of that tour, but. Even on the wide scale, just to be able to work with guys from that ODA was phenomenal.

• 2:11:23Jocko Willink?

  So you were only there for three months? What did you do when you got done with that?

• 2:11:26Speaker 02

  So after three months, they were switching out. So they were kind of off cycle from us. So they had about the same length of deployments, but they rotated out. That way all SF wasn't rotating out at the same time. So when they left, the new ODA that took over that house had everybody they needed and

• 2:11:49Jocko Willink?

  Apparently Chris Gifford wasn't part of that team.

• 2:11:51Speaker 02

  There wasn't, it was like, we appreciate it, but we're good, kind of thing. And I think it was, you know, kind of more of a headshed thing. And there's no way to force, you know, no reason to force it on them. You know, I kind of explained to them, you know, this is what we're looking for. If you get this information, please just send it to these people. So I got brought back and the, there were two teams deployed at that time. So one from the East Coast and one from the West Coast. The East Coast team was doing the PDS. The West Coast was doing more connect type stuff. So they needed somebody, I think their ops officer

• 2:12:34Speaker 02

  had to go back or something, but they needed a spot filled. So my command asked if I would just go down and work there for a month. And so I did that and I was just in the ops shop or in the talk, running ops, getting all the, you know, the briefs in, making sure. And then while they were outside the wire, make sure we were monitoring the operating picture and everything. And that's when your old roommate was down there.

• 2:13:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right on.

• 2:13:07Speaker 02

  And, and yeah.

• 2:13:10Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 2:13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was awesome. Cause you know, now it's old team one guy.

• 2:13:14Jocko Willink?

  Him and me got to do missions, man, together.

• 2:13:16Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:13:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And there was like a weird confluence of events that happened for a short period of time. And we were like out in the middle of Iraq together, just doing ops. And it was, it was pretty freaking cool, man.

• 2:13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, he, I did, we did one mission together. It was It was kind of a circus, but it was a target that was like right outside the gate. And I mean, you could almost see it if you looked over the wall from, from the, uh, uh, from the compound, you could see the, the target. I mean, it was, it was pretty close. And, uh, for some reason,

• 2:13:54Speaker 02

  people came out of the woodwork to go on this op. So we had like officers and chiefs.

• 2:14:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you mean strapped. I thought you were talking about enemy personnel coming out of the woodwork. I'm like, here we go. It's like, no.

• 2:14:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:14:07Jocko Willink?

  We had strap hangers galore.

• 2:14:08Speaker 02

  We had a lot of people who needed to experience to outside the wire. And so they were going to be on this thing. And, uh,

• 2:14:19Jocko Willink?

  They're all looking at the con ops like, hey, it's only, it's only 1,200 yards away. Let's, let's get on that one.

• 2:14:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, uh, so we're, we're, you know, the op, we get out there and it's just a clown show. People are running everywhere. So I look over at our, uh, friend and he looks at me and goes, come with me. So we go to like this, uh, barrier position, you know, we're kind of on the edge as a, uh, as a, you know, blocking position because we were away from everybody. And we're like, we're going to sit this one out. We're going to sit right here until all this is over and, uh, you know, it was a dry hole or whatever, but it was, uh, yeah, it was, it was funny.

• 2:15:01Jocko Willink?

  He's, he's like a real life Sam Elliott with his attitude, you know, just like, well, we're not doing that. You know, just like, just a freaking classic. And then, and so, so you were done with that, but that's still, you still had more on the deployment, right?

• 2:15:15Speaker 02

  So a couple of months left, I, I go back to the PSD mission and we, we just help out there. You know, we still have liaisons to, uh, some of the, uh, outside units. Of course, all the OGAs and all that. So I spent two months just kind of bouncing around and just. Helping out in in ops there just to try to get everything out. I don't think I did any more missions or anything. Most of that was that first three months. So it was just and then, you know, of course, right before you leave now all the rewards, all the awards have to be written. And all the, you know, fit reps need to be done. So I I was I was part of that.

• 2:15:54Jocko Willink?

  You got your.

• 2:15:57Jocko Willink?

  And then what did you do after that?

• 2:15:59Speaker 02

  So we got back from that deployment. And and I'm still not up with my my year group. So I talked to the the CEO and and he recommended or but he's like, why don't you go to Germany? For a couple of years that you can do.

• 2:16:21Jocko Willink?

  The CEO had been in Germany before, right?

• 2:16:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. You know who he is?

• 2:16:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's like, freaking awesome.

• 2:16:27Speaker 02

  One of the top.

• 2:16:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, freaking awesome.

• 2:16:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, definitely one of the top five, but he he's like, you know, you you should go out there. You'll enjoy it. And and I remember he told me. He goes, if you live on base, I will come out there and punch you. Because he's like, you need to get out in town, live amongst the

• 2:16:48Jocko Willink?

  The populace.

• 2:16:49Speaker 02

  The populace and experience living overseas like you should.

• 2:16:53Jocko Willink?

  I went to his house when he was living overseas in Germany.

• 2:16:59Jocko Willink?

  And it was absolutely freaking epic. I wish I had taken pictures. I wish I knew the name of the village of the house because it's still there. It was like one of these postcard villages. And he had this crazy like old house that was completely like gutted and modernized inside. It was freaking awesome. Yeah, it was freaking badass. Yeah. So him and and by the way, like, everything that guy does is like all dial did. Yeah, I remember I was going to his house. He's like, hey, you need to wear a shirt. I'm like, bro, I don't like I'm I go I'm wearing a shirt. He's like, no, a shirt like a like an actual human shirt, not a freaking jujitsu t shirt, you idiot. I was like, I was like, I don't have any shirts. And he goes, all right, come. And he opens up his closet. His closet is like.

• 2:17:44Jocko Willink?

  A room and he's got no kidding hanging up just button down whatever really nice shirts in the color of like the rainbow like starting with what is it red orange yellow green blue purple with with freaking nine shirts of red and it goes all the way through and I'm like bro are you freaking James Bond or what I don't even have a shirt much less forty nine shirts of varying colors but yeah and that was all in this completely dialed house overlooking this green lush valley it was crazy beautiful.

• 2:18:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and again a phenomenal person and and for what he's done for the community and yeah just just a great guy so he convinced me this would be a good good place to go and and he was right it was probably my one of my best tours uh because you you move your family out there and you know you're you're part of not not the war necessarily because it's it's not in that AO but you know you're still doing really good good stuff and at that time you know Africa was really starting to pick up so I was able to uh be there as that was kind of starting and again with my my background and you know all these

• 2:19:04Speaker 02

  these uh intel type type schools it was it was a very good fit so um I worked in the uh as as a task officer there at the at the unit uh and we were moving guys down to Africa so we would send guys you know they would basically check into the unit in Germany and then move straight to Africa for four to six months some sometimes and you know working through embassies so that was my my experience of you know starting to to deal how the state department works and how all these other.

• 2:19:39Jocko Willink?

  Good times.

• 2:19:39Speaker 02

  Oh, oh yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:44Speaker 02

  You know, when you, when you retire and you know what you don't want to do, that, that was one of, I, I knew I did not want to, uh, State Department wasn't in my, uh, but they're good people. They, they do, they do a hard job. They really do.

• 2:19:58Jocko Willink?

  So you, you wrap up, that's what are the, what's that, a two-year billet?

• 2:20:01Speaker 02

  It's a two-year billet and I was there exactly two years. We, we left almost, I mean, exactly two years and, uh,

• 2:20:09Jocko Willink?

  And now it must be time for your platoon commander tour because you already knocked out your AOC.

• 2:20:12Speaker 02

  Yep. So my, everything, now I'm aligned with, with the rest of my, my year group. So, uh, so I get sent to, uh, Team Ten to do a platoon commander and

• 2:20:27Speaker 02

  the, because I came from, I think because I came from Germany and I understood how the Africa COM and UCOM work.

• 2:20:37Jocko Willink?

  I can see where this is going.

• 2:20:38Speaker 02

  That they put me in that task and, and again, I was fine with that because I'm, I'm here to support the effort. Nobody wants to do it, then, you know, I, I don't have anybody breathing down my neck trying to get my spot. So I, I'm, I'm finally getting my platoon commander and I'm, I'm just stoked about it. So I show up to, uh, Team Ten and, uh, I get in the task unit and I kinda get an indication pretty soon that the, the, all the guys that just came back were in, I think it was Iraq. Yeah. I think they, they, they came in from Iraq. Maybe it was Afghanistan, but they'd just come back. They had a really good deployment,

• 2:21:20Speaker 02

  high energy, intensive and, uh, but now they're on the UCOM. And we had a bunch of, you know, new guys who never, hadn't deployed yet and they're on UCOM and they're seeing all their friends, getting ready to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, because I think we were, we were still sending people to both. So yeah, there was that kinda idea that, you know, we're

• 2:21:46Speaker 02

  That's where we want to be and hey, I get that. But as our, our mutual chief used to say, you know, orders aren't invitations. They're, they're orders and this is what you're given and you need to. It's, it's our responsibility as the leadership to make sure our guys are, are ready for that. And that's, that's what I was doing, but there was a lot of, you know, you know, if we're, if we do really well, then you know, we'll get move over to here. Somebody will get fired and you know, we'll, we'll be able to take that mission. And, and again, there's always that chance, but there's also the chance you're going to do what they.

• 2:22:24Jocko Willink?

  What you were assigned to do.

• 2:22:25Speaker 02

  What you were assigned to do. So we really need to, to focus on that. And there, there was a big, I guess, kind of rub between, you know, me and, and the leadership. And especially being in Germany for two years, I, I saw platoons come out all the time. And you could tell the ones that were ready to do the mission and accepting. And they did a great job. And then the ones that are like, hey, we're just sitting here until we get the word that we're going in. And guess what? The word never comes, you know? I mean, again, they may take ones or two because somebody gets hurt, but you know, we have a mission too here. So there, there, there was a big leadership challenge on my side. I need to keep the guys motivated, interested in this job.

• 2:23:09Speaker 02

  And I would tell them, you know, there's, there's good stuff going on. There's, there's really important stuff. And, and for the most part, I think the guys accepted that some, some didn't. But, but yeah, that, that's, it's, it's a tough, tough thing to, to work through.

• 2:23:24Jocko Willink?

  I remember one thing that always, always stuck in my mind. There was a, a Master Chief Fakety. So Master Chief Fakety, um, who died in 2017, but he was a huge, had a big impact on all of us at Team One at the time. But I remember him telling me a story that there was a, a Vietnam guy that had come home, that had done like a pretty heroic deployment in Vietnam. And that guy was faxed like LPO. And they're out in the desert, doing the desert warfare training. And that guy who was like the combat vet.

• 2:24:04Jocko Willink?

  He was like they're out on patrol and he had his like rifle up over his shoulder then just kind of like walking like it didn't matter and and he just and he was he I think he was the platoon chief and you could see the just disappointment as fac was telling me this story and it was one of those things that again he probably told me that when I was 22 or 23 I never forgot that fact not only of hey don't be the guy that's like been there done that I don't need to be fired up for training anymore but also what an

• 2:24:43Jocko Willink?

  impact that has on everybody else and you don't want to be like that then fast forward however many years I was now at trade at west coast trade at and I had a guy that's a great guy and he was in he was in Ramadi with me as a new guy and now he's in his second platoon and we're out at the mount facility and like you know we're training's hard and kicking ass and blah blah blah and I I talked to him about whatever but I remember him saying to me he says uh I'm kinda getting burnt out and this was during mount training

• 2:25:25Jocko Willink?

  in his second platoon and I'm like I go hey bro you remember when you and I were in a workup together and he goes yeah and I go that was my seventh workup and he was like he just got that look on his face and he goes Roger that because I was fired up in my seventh freaking time to go let's rock and roll like every taking everything seriously and that's just what you want to do so that infection can spread and it's a hard pill to swallow team guys want to go to combat that's what they want to do and

• 2:26:00Jocko Willink?

  When they don't get the chance, it hurts. And but like you said, you gotta pick it up. Okay, this is what we're doing. Let's do it to the best of our ability. And and the only thing you can do is just keep going on deployments. Like, the god of war is gonna do what he's gonna do. And hopefully, you get blessed by him. And if that happens, great. And if it doesn't happen, keep working, because he's watching. That's the way I look at it.

• 2:26:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you and you saw it, you know, guys would, you know, kind of have to get through that that rotation. But then the next one, they they go back, or, you know, they get another shot at combat. And, you know, we all knew eventually it was gonna calm down anyway, but nobody knows when, and you don't want to miss it. And I really felt for the new guys, because, you know, all they're seeing is their friends that are going, and they didn't do anything wrong. And that that was really a

• 2:26:56Speaker 02

  a big kind of complaint that I had about how it was perceived is, you know, we're waiting for, you know, if they get into trouble, then we get into that spot. It's like, well, so are we here because we got in trouble? You know, how do how do we end up here?

• 2:27:09Jocko Willink?

  And are we hoping that our teammates are screwed up?

• 2:27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:12Jocko Willink?

  Because that's not a good attitude.

• 2:27:13Speaker 02

  So we get that spot. So I, you know, my thing was, look, again, the war is bigger than just what's going on in in CENTCOM. We have a mission to do. It's a good mission. It has value. And and, you know, thinking back, you know, maybe I could have done better on certain things. But but, yeah, I mean, it was it was what it was. And we actually had a good deployment. I took a crew of of people to to Africa, and we were there for several months, and we did good stuff. And and, you know, I like to think that we, you know, moved the needle, hopefully, a little bit.

• 2:27:54Speaker 02

  But but it was, yeah, you know, I think and I think most people that were with us kind of got that after a while.

• 2:28:02Jocko Willink?

  And then what'd you do when you got home from that deployment?

• 2:28:04Speaker 02

  So I got home and so I'm looking at TU commander and

• 2:28:13Speaker 02

  but I didn't want to stay at Team Ten for different reasons, but

• 2:28:20Speaker 02

  But those positions were already filled. So it's like, okay, I need to to move on. And so now I'm caught up to my year group. But it's still a little bit different because I've had all these other experiences. And because of a lot of the, you know, victim of my own success, a lot of the schools I went to kind of put me on a little bit of a different track, which was fine. And so I I end up taking a

• 2:28:51Speaker 02

  an ops tour at another command there in Virginia. And which was great. And again, great experiences and and everything. But it's it's kind of where I was. When that was coming to an end, they I met with the detailer. So now I'm at 21 years, 21 and a half years. And I met with the detailer and I wanted to take over East Coast training, the CEO of that kind of what you did, but on the East Coast. And I knew the guy that had the position, good friend. And I talked to him about it. He's like, oh, yeah, you would do great here. And it lined up.

• 2:29:33Speaker 02

  And so I talked to the detailer and he goes, you need more joint time. I'm like, oh, okay. Which means, you know, you get orders to probably Tampa. And you move your family there. And at least at the time, then you deploy overseas for a year or so and write reports for others. And and work on your JMP and, you know, all that. And your your your family sits there and because it's a PCS move. And at the time, you know, my wife had a great job in Virginia. She was working for the governor's office. And, you know, she wasn't really wanting to move. So I was thinking, okay, you know, maybe I can do kind of a bachelor kind of thing.

• 2:30:19Speaker 02

  And but then I thought, you know, it's I've had 21 years. And I think maybe this is time that I find something else. And I was very fortunate. The Navy was great to me. I got to do everything that I wanted to do. I had a great career. And I I felt like I had closure. And I don't, you know, put it on the detailer. I mean, he's he's trying to fill these bullets. And for an officer at 10, 11 years, that is a great move.

• 2:30:48Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:30:49Speaker 02

  And you know, that's going to set you up for your XO tour and you know, probably another staff job and CO. But you know, I wasn't an officer at 12 years. I was an officer at 21, 22 years. And I just, I just felt it was, it was time to, to retire and, and try something else. And so I went home and talked to my wife about it and she's like, I was like, yeah, I'm thinking about retiring. She's like, okay, whatever. Go in Monday, drop my, put my paperwork to, to retire and went back and like, okay, I did. She goes, what'd you do? Like, I retired. She goes, you did what? It's like, yeah, yeah, I did it.

• 2:31:33Jocko Willink?

  How long was it between when you dropped your papers and when you actually retired?

• 2:31:37Speaker 02

  Probably about six months or so. You know, you have to, I had a lot of, you know, leave built up that I needed to get rid of and I had made lieutenant commander, but because I wasn't doing the full time, they, they didn't commit or go to that next step. And then I just retired as a, as a lieutenant.

• 2:31:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, those savages.

• 2:31:59Speaker 02

  Well, you know, they're like, you know, you have to do another three years. And honestly, I did the math.

• 2:32:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:04Speaker 02

  And going from O3E to O4 is not that big of a jump than going from a regular O3, especially when you have, you know, 27 years. And the math, I think I would have gotten maybe an extra 100 bucks on my retirement. And it just wasn't worth another three years. I felt like I wanted, you know, I could do something else.

• 2:32:26Jocko Willink?

  So how was the transition? What'd you do next?

• 2:32:29Speaker 02

  Well, so it was a lot harder than I thought it would be because you know, again, this, we grew up in the SEAL teams and we all, I mean, that's, that's, that's what we knew. That's what we did. And even, even to this day, I tell people, I still have dreams that I'm still in uniform. And you know, I'm at some command somewhere and I'm talking to, to people, but I'm, I'm still.

• 2:32:55Jocko Willink?

  Somebody just called because one of the guys got in trouble.

• 2:32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:58Jocko Willink?

  Like I always have that dream of, oh gosh, God, someone got arrested.

• 2:33:02Speaker 02

  Get that cigarette back.

• 2:33:03Jocko Willink?

  Like, here we go. I gotta go yank somebody out of jail, whatever.

• 2:33:08Speaker 02

  So it was, you know, I have to have a new focus and, you know, a new mission. And so my thing was I want to learn about business. I've been in government since I was 18, 19. And, you know, I've been in leadership positions and I think you would agree. The leadership's not different. There may be some different terms, but it's all the same. But there's other things about business that I didn't really understand. Like what is marketing and what is, you know, social media was a big, you know, was starting to be a big thing. And, you know, at that time, we couldn't even have any accounts on social media. And I think, I think it's changed now.

• 2:33:51Speaker 02

  I think it's a little bit better because it kind of hurts guys getting out that don't have that presence. Cause that's how a lot of businesses is done now on LinkedIn and stuff. So I felt I need to learn business. I need to get, get more informed on that. And I still had half of my GI bill left. So I thought, you know, I could go to grad school. But I, I, I still want to learn a little bit more about how, how it runs first. So, so I make sure if I go to grad school for a business degree, that's really what I want to do. So I, I looked for just a way to get into business.

• 2:34:36Speaker 02

  So one thing I had a friend who, a pilot friend that got out kind of the same time. He was starting a consulting company and he asked me about coming on as a, as kind of like a 1099 contractor. Excuse me. So, yeah, that's, that's fine. And, you know, I'll work with you and we'll do that. And as I was doing my, you know, the transition classes, the, what do they call it?

• 2:35:01Jocko Willink?

  They call it tap. I didn't do it.

• 2:35:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35:03Jocko Willink?

  I didn't do any of it.

• 2:35:04Speaker 02

  So I did tap.

• 2:35:05Jocko Willink?

  I said later.

• 2:35:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was mostly a. I want, I want to say it's a waste of time because it is, it had some value to it, but they had like this entrepreneur class.

• 2:35:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:17Speaker 02

  Which was an hour, it was during your lunch hour. So instead of, you ate your lunch at a table and somebody talked about it. So they said, um, if you want to start a business, just find something you like and start a business. So I'm thinking, what, what do I like to do? What, you know, what would be fun? I knew I did not want to do government. So I didn't want to work for any of the alphabet soup. I didn't want to do, um, uh, you know, stay on at any of the commands or, you know, work, work as a, as a GS. I just want to do something totally different, real business. And, uh, I thought, you know, I, I love music. I've been playing music all my life. I'm going to join a band.

• 2:35:57Jocko Willink?

  Somehow we missed this whole story. What freaking music did you play?

• 2:36:01Speaker 02

  I, I played upright bass. Well, actually when I was at like team one, I was, I played saxophone.

• 2:36:08Jocko Willink?

  That's weird. I remember that you played saxophone.

• 2:36:10Speaker 02

  And I would bring it on the trips. I had a little alto.

• 2:36:12Jocko Willink?

  Now I remember that. Yeah. I forgot about that. You could blow up that sax, bro.

• 2:36:17Speaker 02

  And I was not that good. I was actually.

• 2:36:20Jocko Willink?

  I remember that.

• 2:36:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was not good. And I played, you know, through high school and, and, uh, but I was never really good enough to, to do it. But I always liked the bass. It was always something that I, I really enjoyed.

• 2:36:34Jocko Willink?

  Did you play it? When did you start? Oh, so you just liked it?

• 2:36:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Check.

• 2:36:38Speaker 02

  But I had enough music background that, that I could, uh, I could figure, I'll figure it out. So I just bought one, started learning how to play it.

• 2:36:46Jocko Willink?

  When you say bass, are you talking bass guitar? Are you talking stand up bass?

• 2:36:49Speaker 02

  So at that time it was electric.

• 2:36:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:36:51Speaker 02

  Bass guitar, uh, yeah, bass guitar. And, uh, and for some reason it just, it just came like it was natural.

• 2:37:00Jocko Willink?

  Easier than Vietnamese, apparently.

• 2:37:02Speaker 02

  Very, very much so. And, uh, so I kind of took some private lessons and, uh, and yeah, I just kind of took to it. And then after doing that for a while, I, uh, as I was getting out.

• 2:37:18Speaker 02

  Trying to find bands, there was the, the market was, was pretty heavy with bass players. It's, you know, probably, you know, a lot of guitar players that don't play that well play bass.

• 2:37:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:29Speaker 02

  I'm not sure if that's true, but that's what they told me. So, you know, I need to find how to be, how to stand out. So I was like, you know, I'm going to learn how to play upright bass because nobody wants to do it. It's a big instrument. You have to have a car, you know, or a truck.

• 2:37:43Jocko Willink?

  You have to have a van.

• 2:37:44Speaker 02

  A van. And it's fretless. So, you know, it just scares people, but I'm going to learn it. So I bought one.

• 2:37:51Jocko Willink?

  How much is, how much does a stand up bass cost? Like for your starter model that you get?

• 2:37:55Speaker 02

  So I, I knew this is what I wanted to do. So I didn't really, I kind of bypassed the starter and got a nice kind of pro model, a Inglehart. And so it was about 2,000, around 2,000.

• 2:38:09Jocko Willink?

  That's it?

• 2:38:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38:10Jocko Willink?

  Dang, bro. And that's actually way cheaper than I thought it was going to be.

• 2:38:14Speaker 02

  But, you know, it's a plywood. It's not like a car, you know, 200 year old.

• 2:38:18Jocko Willink?

  I have good electric guitars that are way more than that.

• 2:38:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

• 2:38:24Jocko Willink?

  More than that. A ridiculous amount of money because I'm stupid.

• 2:38:27Speaker 02

  But this, you know, it's a, it's a new one. It's not a classic, but it, it plays really well. And so I worked on that.

• 2:38:34Jocko Willink?

  So when they don't have a fret, how do you know where to hold down?

• 2:38:37Speaker 02

  So there, I do have markers on the side. It's like, like the dots that are on a guitar. It's the same. And, but you, you have to listen and, and it really forced me to listen to what the rest of the band is doing and make sure I'm, I'm, you know, got the right tone. And, um, yeah, I just, I worked on it. Like I took six months of just.

• 2:39:01Jocko Willink?

  How many hours a day?

• 2:39:02Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:39:04Speaker 02

  Two, three hours. I would take a break and go back to it. And, uh, yeah, just worked on it.

• 2:39:10Jocko Willink?

  So you mean five to six hours a day?

• 2:39:12Speaker 02

  Uh, not that much. Probably, yeah, about two or three hours.

• 2:39:15Jocko Willink?

  But you retired at this point? This is when you retired?

• 2:39:18Speaker 02

  Well, no, I was, I was still kind of, uh,

• 2:39:21Jocko Willink?

  You were wrapping up your career?

• 2:39:22Speaker 02

  Wrapping up and, and going through, uh, uh, terminal leave.

• 2:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Three, three to some, three or four hours a bass a day?

• 2:39:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and then when I felt comfortable, I started looking for, uh, for bands to play in. So I go on, you know, where else would you go but?

• 2:39:38Jocko Willink?

  Craigslist?

• 2:39:38Speaker 02

  Craigslist, yeah. And, uh, just typed in upright bass and sure enough, uh, this guy posted that he was doing an acoustic blues thing and he was looking for an upright bass and it's like, yeah.

• 2:39:50Jocko Willink?

  There's only one. You got the job.

• 2:39:53Speaker 02

  Well, so I called him up and, uh, or messaged him or whatever. And he said, you know, show up to this open mic night.

• 2:40:02Jocko Willink?

  Learn to play in front of a real live audience.

• 2:40:04Speaker 02

  And he, he didn't tell me what we were gonna play or anything. And, uh, so I showed up and he's like, all right, you know, we're playing in this key. And I, I was all over the place. I mean, I was, I was nervous. This was, it wasn't my first time playing live, but you know, I was just trying to follow what was going on.

• 2:40:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cause you played sax live in eighth grade, at the eighth grade freaking student council meeting.

• 2:40:32Speaker 02

  It wasn't that bad, but, uh, but yeah, I, I played a couple of songs and I was like, yeah, that, that really sucked. And, uh, afterwards he goes, okay, yeah, let's, let's meet next week and, and do another three. I'm like, okay. And by that time, now I knew kind of what he was looking for and, uh, we, we did it. And, and then we're like, yeah, let's start a band, brought in a, a friend of mine that was a drummer and, uh, eventually a sax player and we

• 2:41:04Speaker 02

  Created the band and my intent again was not really to be a musician or an artist really. And I don't really consider myself an artist. I'm artistic and I can, I understand, you know, how to do it, but I wanted to run the business. So I wanted to, you know, manage the books. I wanted to work on the marketing. I wanted to learn how the, uh, how the social media worked and how that, you know, worked into getting us gigs. And then we got into recording and writing and I helped, you know, write some of the songs and we recorded a couple of albums so we could sell. Cause that was a big thing. When, when you were gigging, you know, it's, it's great to get that,

• 2:41:46Speaker 02

  that, uh, you know, that money for the night, but if you have merch, right?

• 2:41:50Jocko Willink?

  Merch.

• 2:41:51Speaker 02

  Get the merch out there, then, you know, we, we saw things go up and we could show, I could show each year, you know, we were making more money and we were doing, uh, doing better.

• 2:42:01Jocko Willink?

  How often are you gigging?

• 2:42:02Speaker 02

  So, you know, the first year, probably about 30 or so gigs.

• 2:42:07Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 2:42:07Speaker 02

  But by the third year, I mean, we were touring, so I would do a two week.

• 2:42:11Jocko Willink?

  So now you're out of the Navy completely?

• 2:42:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:13Jocko Willink?

  And, and you're going on tour in your blues band and playing stand-up bass?

• 2:42:17Speaker 02

  Yep. And, uh, Herbie D and the Dangerman is the, uh,

• 2:42:21Jocko Willink?

  Are you still, are you still around?

• 2:42:23Speaker 02

  No. So I'll, I'll get to that in a minute, but the, um, so by the third year, we're playing probably a hundred and eighty gigs.

• 2:42:30Jocko Willink?

  Making money.

• 2:42:31Speaker 02

  Making money. Yeah.

• 2:42:32Jocko Willink?

  Playing how big of shows? Clubs?

• 2:42:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, we would get a couple of festivals. We would get, uh, you know, mostly bars, you know, that, that kind of scene.

• 2:42:42Jocko Willink?

  What do you make a night in the bar?

• 2:42:43Speaker 02

  Uh, it depends on, on where you are, but you know, four, 400 bucks, 500 bucks.

• 2:42:47Jocko Willink?

  And how many people are in the band?

• 2:42:49Speaker 02

  Uh, four. Yeah.

• 2:42:50Jocko Willink?

  So from a business perspective.

• 2:42:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, but it.

• 2:42:54Jocko Willink?

  We're thinking to try something else.

• 2:42:56Speaker 02

  No, no, not at all. So it, it makes you really look at the, the business model and because all, all businesses have, have the same, all successful businesses have the same, uh, concept. You gotta make it for a dime. You gotta sell it for a dollar. You gotta make it have it for me.

• 2:43:17Speaker 02

  If you don't do that, you're gonna go out of business. Now, you can supplement it with outs- outside income, but eventually it'll fold. You gotta make it for a dime, sell it for a dollar, and make it have it for me. Did you make that up right there? No, I learned it when I was in my MBA program. No one taught me that, by the way. That was basically my MBA and those three sentences. That was two years of grad school. But it makes you, especially in an adventure like that, it really makes you look at your cost. You know, are you really making it for a dime? Or are you spending 90 cents? And of course, the numbers are arbitrary, but if you're not, then how do you cut that down?

• 2:44:02Speaker 02

  So, as we were touring, you know, in the beginning, we were getting hotel rooms. Of course, we were all staying in the same room because, you know, there were four guys. But eventually, we're like, okay, how can we cut that down? So, we, one of the things, we got on couch surfing. Have you heard of this? Yes, I have. So, we- When I was 19. Yeah, exactly. Well, we had a band profile as for couch surfing, and as we were, as I was making the tour, I would say, okay, we're gonna be in this town. We would submit, you know, hey, this four-piece band is coming to town, could we stay at your house?

• 2:44:43Speaker 02

  And surprisingly, a lot of people let us do it. And it's free. And it's free? It's free. And, of course, we would try to do special stuff. So, we, of course, give them a CD or a T-shirt or something. And if we were there for a day or two, we'd break out the instruments in their living room and just give them a little concert. And it was, yeah, it was great. And what was really nice about it is because we stayed with them, we told them where we were playing that night, they would usually come out and bring some friends. So, that would, you know, butts in seats. That's a big part of it. So yeah, make it for a dime. You gotta get your costs down.

• 2:45:24Speaker 02

  And, uh, and we learned, you know, like buy your water, not at a gas station, buy it at Walmart before you go because it's cheaper.

• 2:45:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:32Speaker 02

  And all these little things to get it, the price down. And then you look at, are you selling it for a dollar? You, are you really getting the, the top price? And you don't set the price. The market sets the price, you know, supply and demand. And, uh, so that's what, you know, we are focusing on. Where can we get the best bang for our buck? You know, if we play at a, um, at a, uh, a festival or something, you know, the focus isn't on the money you get to play. The focus is on the merch. So having the guys actually push the merch, you know, put the CDs in your hand as you go around and talk to people because they see it in your hand. They want to buy it. And you don't just sit back and wait for them to come to you. You, you gotta get out. So are you,

• 2:46:17Speaker 02

  you know, making that price and is there enough of a profit margin there? That the business is actually going to, to survive. And then the most important part, as you know, you gotta make it habit forming. If somebody just watches you once and they're like, hey, that was great. And they don't follow you, then how are you going to sell them, you know, the new album when it comes out? Or, you know, your, your new, uh, you know, the new song or whatever. You, you got to get that, that, that fan, you know, down the, the funnel to, uh, to get them from interested to fan to real fanatic of, you know, the super fan or they're gonna buy your stuff as soon as it comes out.

• 2:46:58Speaker 02

  So that's what I learned during that time, you know, how, how do you actually physically do that? And so we did it for four years and, uh, had to.

• 2:47:08Jocko Willink?

  Was that your job for four years?

• 2:47:11Speaker 02

  Yes. So I was doing a little bit of the consulting on the side and there were other like 1099 type jobs that I was doing from here to there. But, you know, again, I was very fortunate that I married up. So my wife was making good money. Uh, we don't have any kids. So, you know, I'm not putting anyone through college. Uh, and I have a good retirement. So I was able to do that full time.

• 2:47:36Jocko Willink?

  And so what happened? So at the end.

• 2:47:39Speaker 02

  Well, it's like any business, you know, you, you have that arc and there comes a point where you gotta pivot or perish. And we have been playing kind of the same material for.

• 2:47:49Jocko Willink?

  How many albums did you make?

• 2:47:50Speaker 02

  Two. Well, one EP, one LP.

• 2:47:53Jocko Willink?

  I watched a couple of your songs on YouTube.

• 2:47:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:55Jocko Willink?

  I thought it was pretty cool. The guitarist, I think this was like a thing, right? You had that, there's a song where he's playing a guitar that only has three strings.

• 2:48:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. GGB is what we call it.

• 2:48:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was pretty cool. And you think, okay, well, he's got some, like the white stripes, he's got some constraints around what he can do. And it's gonna make him kind of push a little bit. I thought that was pretty, pretty cool.

• 2:48:15Speaker 02

  It is. And, and that was, you know, kind of the, you gotta break away from the humming and strumming, you know, the, the normal stuff. You gotta keep updating, especially in the entertainment world. Because there's so much competing with your attention. And so after about four years, we, we needed to kind of change some things. But the, the lead guy was, you know, he was kind of comfortable where he was and, and we could have kind of gone, you know, a little bit further. But, but the sax player wanted to do some other stuff. So he, he left. And we tried to bring in some other people and that. And then I was like, you know, this is the time to make a difference. We got to totally change.

• 2:48:57Speaker 02

  Because if we try to keep doing the same thing, we're gonna start losing people. And that's what happened. We, we didn't really change enough drastically. That we started to lose fans. And by that point, you know, I'd been out of the Navy, been retired for about five years, four, yeah, about four years. And I had enough of a grasp of, okay, this is the things I need to work on, that I was like, okay, I'm, I'm going back to grad school. So the, I still played a little bit on the side. We did some, some duo stuff, but now I was, I was focused on going back to grad school for my MBA. And that's what I did.

• 2:49:36Jocko Willink?

  And how was that program?

• 2:49:37Speaker 02

  It was good. I did it at Old Dominion University there. Because it was close, you know, it was easy to, to, to get back. A lot of people in that area went to ODU. So, you know, we had, you know, planned to stay there for the long term. So it, it, it made sense. And, you know, my, the GI bill covered it. So, you know, the cost was low. It was a dime and the, the return was hopefully a dollar. And it was good. So it, yeah.

• 2:50:09Jocko Willink?

  And did you do anything with that degree?

• 2:50:11Speaker 02

  So, yes. So I, once I got, actually while I was in school, I had talked to a couple of business owners that needed someone to help do kind of due diligence on some, some business stuff. So it was small companies that were expanding and looking to, to do some different things. And I actually still work for them today. But they would, so I, I would, you know, do like the, the analysis on it, you know, is this the right thing to do? They're a developer, so they would buy property. And then they would say, okay, what business can we put on here to make,

• 2:50:51Speaker 02

  make money? And then we'll turn it over. So I would do kind of the analysis of, you know, if we do this, you, and you take out a loan, here's all your initial costs. If you can keep your, you know, fixed variable costs, all that, then you can make a profit over a certain period of years. And then they would say, okay, let's, let's do it. So, so yeah, more of a, kind of a business analysis.

• 2:51:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Kind of, kind of work. And it's, it's, it's good work. And when you actually see something, one, one of the projects we, we did, and it made great money. And so I got to see all that develop. And, and so, yeah, it was, it was really interesting, especially to be able to kind of say, this is what I think is happening. And then you look at how close it actually did. It's not perfect, but, but it was good. It was a really, it's a good thing.

• 2:51:45Jocko Willink?

  And does that bring us up to present day?

• 2:51:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, well, so when I was in, in grad school, my wife got diagnosed with breast cancer. And, yeah, that was, it was good being out of the military, although, you know, the teams were great about that stuff. But because I was home every day, it was good that I could, I could be there and kind of work. Cause it took like two years to go through it. From the time she was diagnosed, she had three or four surgeries. Then the chemo and then the. Recovery from all that took about took about two years. And so I was home for all that.

• 2:52:30Speaker 02

  I was still going to school, but I could I could manage it because most of the stuff was was at home. And so she went through that. And when we

• 2:52:47Speaker 02

  kind of got through that, it was and still in the recovery stage.

• 2:52:52Speaker 02

  We kind of got into a rut of because she just didn't have any energy. So we're staying at home all the time. Watching TV, just, you know, eating three meals a day or whatever. And just wasn't a lot of activity. And at one point I was like, you know, we we need to break this cycle. And so we bought a small sixteen foot camper. And I was like, we're, you know, we talked about this is we we need to at least once a month. Just get out of the house. We didn't have a TV in it. It was, you know, just, just a nice, it was an airstream base camp.

• 2:53:27Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:53:28Speaker 02

  And we're like, we just need to get out of the house at least once a month and just kind of get back. Even if we just walk around a little bit or and there was a campground right there in Virginia. So we did that for about two years as she was recovering, just going out, just getting in into nature and just, you know, trying to get get past that. And after doing that for two years, we were like, why aren't we doing this all the time? So we decided that about this was about fifteen months ago, we said, hey, let's just let's just sell our house and get rid of all the extra cars and the

• 2:54:10Speaker 02

  extra furniture and stuff we have laying around. Let's get a bigger camper because sixteen feet is not

• 2:54:15Jocko Willink?

  That's small.

• 2:54:16Speaker 02

  Enough to live.

• 2:54:16Jocko Willink?

  How big is your new one?

• 2:54:17Speaker 02

  Thirty. We have a thirty foot airstream. Yeah. And so we traded that in, got the thirty foot, sold our place. It was a good time for the market. And so, yeah, for the past fifteen months, we've just been touring around. North America, just going from place to place, trying to hit a lot of the, the national parks. And you know, America is just such a beautiful place. And you know, growing up in, in the Navy, we traveled all over the place, but never really got to see a lot of the US, even on training trips, you don't really get to see much. So yeah, that's what we've been doing for past 50 months. I still, she retired totally after her chemo. She lost a lot of,

• 2:55:03Speaker 02

  a lot of that, that drive. So we decided, you know, why, why don't you take some time off? And I still do part-time work. It's all remote. They send me emails when they need stuff to do. Sometimes I take a business trip if we're, you know, I'll fly someplace and come back. But yeah, we've just been, been doing that and seeing people like, you know, opportunity to be here and to use one of the, the big benefits, but.

• 2:55:30Jocko Willink?

  Have you seen the end in sight?

• 2:55:32Speaker 02

  No, not right now.

• 2:55:33Jocko Willink?

  Just gonna keep rolling?

• 2:55:35Speaker 02

  Just keep doing it. Every place we go, we, we say, hey, would, you know, would we come back here to live? And you know, if we, there's some, some places we really like, but.

• 2:55:47Jocko Willink?

  What's the top of the list right now?

• 2:55:48Speaker 02

  Uh, we really like Denver, Colorado. They have, they have a really good blues scene. So, so I, I have my upright base with me.

• 2:55:55Jocko Willink?

  Takes up half your freaking vehicle.

• 2:55:57Speaker 02

  It, it does take up a lot, but I have like my little space over by the bed. I can keep anything I want. And that's, that's my music room. And, uh, but we, uh, yeah, when we go to these places, I look up blues jams and show up and, and get to play with some phenomenal people. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's just part of the, just traveling around, meeting people and seeing really friends and family. I, I, I got to see some family in Texas that some on her side that she'd never, or I'd never met before. And I, we've been married over 30 years. Uh, friends, team, you know, guys from the team that now live in all kinds of places and. You know, we stay connected and say, I'm going to be in from this time. If you've got

• 2:56:42Speaker 02

  time, I'd love to see. If not, you know, I understand. And, and so, yeah, it's been awesome.

• 2:56:47Jocko Willink?

  Freaking legit. And you're tracking this whole thing on the gram, on Instagram?

• 2:56:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, my, my wife runs most of that. It's taking leave underscore RV. And she, you know, posts every day because you know how important you gotta, for social media, you, you gotta be consistent.

• 2:57:04Jocko Willink?

  Are you playing any bass riffs on your Instagram?

• 2:57:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:07Jocko Willink?

  I think the people are going to want to hear that.

• 2:57:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, she, she records it live and then, you know, posts it later. But yeah, when we go to these jams, I'm up there playing, so.

• 2:57:16Jocko Willink?

  Check. Well, that's outstanding. Hey, probably a good place to wrap it up. Echo Charles?

• 2:57:23Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:57:23Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any questions?

• 2:57:24Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I do. So you ran back, let's go back to high school.

• 2:57:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:28Speaker 01

  You ran track. Did you do cross country?

• 2:57:31Jocko Willink?

  Damn, you've been saying this question for freaking two hours and 45 minutes.

• 2:57:34Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 2:57:35Speaker 02

  You know, my school didn't have cross country. I think some of the other districts did. But my, my school was very somewhat in an urban area. So we had track. And yeah, most, most of the guys were sprinters. So the, so we didn't have cross country, but we had long distance on the track, which is, you know, going eight circles.

• 2:58:01Speaker 01

  But cross country would have been your jam, though?

• 2:58:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would have loved to do it. And of course, I ran a lot outside of just track. But, but yeah, like today, another thing I try to do as we, as we travel, I look for great runs, you know, running, running places. And I've been kicking around a YouTube video because I carry a camera with me. And I kind of film little parts of the run. And then when I get back, I of course, upload all that and then put together these four to five minute videos of, you know, this is all kind of the data of the run. You know, this is how far it is. This is the elevation. You know, is it a lot of hills?

• 2:58:44Speaker 02

  Is it straight? What kind of turf is it? You know, what, where do you park? You know, here's the address you want to use to get to a parking area. Is there support? Is there going to be a bathroom there or what? And so I've gotten about 30 runs done.

• 2:59:02Speaker 02

  With with the raw material, I just started kind of putting them together. I've got four completed. And I've got my process down to about four hours. So the first one took about a couple of days because I had to figure out the format.

• 2:59:17Jocko Willink?

  That's like Echo's pace on making videos.

• 2:59:20Speaker 02

  So now, yeah, I can get five, six minute video done in about four to five hours. So, you know, again, it's make it for a dime, sell it for a dollar. If it takes me a couple of weeks to do one video, it's because you got to be consistent, as you know, you got to post consistently to to get a good following.

• 2:59:39Speaker 01

  Would you say that you're, as far as what you'd prefer as far as runs go, do you prefer the two mile, one mile, or eight eighty or eight hundred meter?

• 2:59:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the half mile is not a distance run. I don't know who that's a sprint. I mean, the guys that are doing that are sprinting. And I don't know why it was like this, but I remember at the track meets, like, the first run was the two mile. Then it was the one mile. Then the last one was an eight eighty. So I've already run two races and I'm I'm more out. And now you got to sprint the eight eighty. So I like the distance running. And the runs I do now are anywhere from five to 12 miles.

• 3:00:19Speaker 01

  What's your fastest mile?

• 3:00:21Speaker 02

  Back in the day, so when I was running, uh, back in the day, when I was running marathons, then I could get down to a good

• 3:00:35Speaker 02

  around seven minutes, seven, a little over seven minutes.

• 3:00:38Jocko Willink?

  For a marathon?

• 3:00:39Speaker 02

  For for, yeah, for for a marathon.

• 3:00:41Speaker 01

  What about like when you were competing in track or whatever?

• 3:00:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that got down, I think, about a six and a half, somewhere around there. But I'm not doing that now. Now it's I'm more along for the ride.

• 3:00:55Speaker 01

  Kind of like me.

• 3:00:55Speaker 02

  I want to look at the things and yeah.

• 3:00:57Jocko Willink?

  Hey, talking about YouTube, one last thing I want to talk about, or just at least explain, you made a really cool video about your grandfather. That was pretty cool that people might want to check out.

• 3:01:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, you know, I attribute that to really to you, Jaco. You know, listening to this podcast, one of my favorite things is when you have guys from World War Two, Korea, the Vietnam, and just the stories that they tell. And everybody's got a story. And when I, when I hear that.

• 3:01:30Speaker 02

  I remember my grandfather, actually both of them, both served in World War II.

• 3:01:37Speaker 02

  And, but my one grandfather was just a very introverted and he was in the army, he was in the mechanized in tanks and he went over as a replacement for the, it was the 81st Tank Battalion and, but he never talked about it. When I was growing up, I would spend summers working on the farm with him and he never mentioned it and at that time, you know, I didn't know what to ask for, you know, tell me about the war and, but he didn't ever,

• 3:02:18Speaker 02

  but it wasn't like it's just me, he'd never talked about it with his kids or, you know, his family, it was just a part of his life that was kind of in the past and, and just never talked about it. So, and he passed away in the, in the early 90s when a couple of, about a year or so ago, my aunt brought me his, like his old photo albums from that, that time and it also had all of his military paperwork in it, which, you know, you think of our field jackets are pretty thick, back then it was like a page or two, I mean, there wasn't, wasn't much at all.

• 3:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Like go to war, cool your home.

• 3:02:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:59Jocko Willink?

  That's it.

• 3:02:59Speaker 02

  Exactly. And, you know, so because of my, my time, I was able to look at these and, and kind of understand, all right, so he was at this unit at this time and he was actually in the 4th Cav back when they had horses.

• 3:03:15Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 3:03:15Speaker 02

  So, you know, to think about that, that time of when your main asset was a horse, I, you know, this, this animal that has its own personality and, you know, you think of, of what we drive today and, but, but that, you know, that's, that's part of your main thing. So. So I was able to come up with a timeline of where he was, what units he was in. Then I spent some time just reading books on it. So finding books about that unit overall, reading it, reading about that time, reading about the operations to kind of get a better idea of what he did or what he may have done. Cause I don't know for sure. I never, he never told me.

• 3:03:58Speaker 02

  But I was able, especially on the internet, I was able to find some after action, like their monthly reporting from that unit when he was, when he was over in, in Germany as they were pushing to the Rhine. And, and of course, I've written plenty of after action reports. You can kind of read between the lines sometimes, but it had great data. And I was able to kind of take all of his pictures that he had in his albums, digitize them and then go kind of walk through the story using all these external sources and say, okay, this is, you know, where he would have been during this time. This is what happened during that time.

• 3:04:41Speaker 02

  So he was probably on this, this cavalry march, or he was probably in the tanks when they got hit on this. So I kind of found the, the one day that he probably was in combat for the first time, you know, where they first took casualties. And again, I don't know for sure, but, but I was able to kind of create a timeline. So I created a video of all of his pictures. So when I'm doing the voiceover and I'm telling the stories, they're showing pictures of kind of that period of time. And so you kind of get an idea. And I totally just did it for my family because they didn't have really any stories from him.

• 3:05:23Speaker 02

  And yeah, I set kind of a deadline to have it by Veterans Day. I missed it by a little bit, but I wanted to do it before the holidays. So when they were with their kids, they could watch it with them and kind of understand who their grandfather was and where he came from. And so, yeah, that's, that's what you saw.

• 3:05:41Jocko Willink?

  What's the YouTube channel that that's on?

• 3:05:44Speaker 02

  So it's on my personal channel, but his name is Everett Wees. I think the name of the, the. The file or the, the video is, you know, Corporal Everett Weis. So if you-

• 3:05:57Jocko Willink?

  Spell Weis, W E I I, W E I S S?

• 3:06:01Speaker 02

  W I E S E.

• 3:06:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 3:06:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's German, but it's, uh, W I E S, yeah, Everett Weis, um, yeah, W I E S E. But, uh-

• 3:06:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, uh, one of our mutual friends sent that to me and told me to check it out. Very cool. Um, awesome stuff.

• 3:06:17Speaker 02

  If there's one thing I could say that I found that I don't like about this is, or-

• 3:06:25Jocko Willink?

  The nomad lifestyle?

• 3:06:26Speaker 02

  The nomad, yeah, is, uh, the vagabond. Um, it's, it's because you're traveling around so much, you're moving, you know, we, we move every, uh, two weeks to a month. You really lose that kind of connection to a community. And, uh, for example, like for jujitsu, for the, before we did this, I was training, albeit I was, you know, white belt, no stripes, but, uh, and if I could, I'd give a shout out to Coastal BJJ. They're in Virginia Beach, phenomenal gym. They, they were awesome. You know, a guy, white hair coming in at 50. They, they, uh, they, they took really, really good care of me. Nestor and the guys down there, just, just awesome guys.

• 3:07:11Speaker 02

  And, um, so I, I was, I was training with them and, and it was, it was that, that community. But by doing this, you gotta leave that. And I, and I talked to him before I left. I was like, you know, what do you think? You know, can I just go to another gym and, and start working? And he said, yes, but what I found, especially with COVID, it's tough to kind of show up for just a couple of weeks and, you know, nobody knows where you've been. And, you know, I, I think a lot of gyms, especially like this, because it's such close contact that, you know, they kind of stay in their own and, uh, and it's, it's tough to, uh, to kind of be part of that community.

• 3:07:53Speaker 02

  And, uh, I think we're going to change that as, as we go through this lifestyle, we're finding that, uh-

• 3:08:02Speaker 02

  The first year and a half, we've been jumping around so much that we kind of need to home base a little bit more. So we have a property down in Florida. And so our plan is for the winters, we'll probably be there and spend about five, six months there. And then be kind of part of that community. And then for the summer, pick a place like I think this year, we're going to go all the way up to Maine. We're going to hit those areas and then maybe the next year, go out, maybe back out to the west coast like we did this year.

• 3:08:34Jocko Willink?

  Where in Maine?

• 3:08:35Speaker 02

  To see people.

• 3:08:36Jocko Willink?

  Farmington, Maine. Go up to the origin factory. You know, the deal. You got people to train jujitsu with. Come to the camp. We have camp in August.

• 3:08:44Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:08:44Jocko Willink?

  Freaking awesome.

• 3:08:45Speaker 02

  Actually, I might be there.

• 3:08:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:47Speaker 02

  During that time.

• 3:08:47Jocko Willink?

  Come on up, man.

• 3:08:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:08:48Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, it's awesome. I mean, it's so cool. There's several hundred people there from all over the world. To train jujitsu, hang out. It's, it's great.

• 3:09:00Speaker 02

  Again, I'm white belt.

• 3:09:01Jocko Willink?

  There's all kinds of white belts there. It's no factor. No factor at all. Come and get it.

• 3:09:06Speaker 02

  All right.

• 3:09:06Jocko Willink?

  That'd be freaking legit.

• 3:09:08Speaker 02

  I'll look for those dates.

• 3:09:10Jocko Willink?

  Any other closing thoughts, man?

• 3:09:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks to my wife that supports all of this, this, this crazy thing that we do. And she's just, I mean, she's my best friend. And we've been married coming up on 31 years and just no one else that I'd want to do that, do this with. So really appreciate her.

• 3:09:32Jocko Willink?

  Right on, man. Well, thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for, uh, thanks for sharing your stories. Thanks for sharing your lessons. Thanks for your service to the country, to the Navy, to the teams. And thanks for being someone I'll always be able to call friend, man. Appreciate it.

• 3:09:49Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:09:51Jocko Willink?

  All right. So Chris, he's gone. He stepped out. You, you may have heard people say there's no standard day in the SEAL teams. That's absolutely true. You don't have, hey, this is just a normal day. But what I think this highlights is there's just no kind of standard career. There are so many different directions things can go that you're just going to have a different experience. And what's cool is you can have some control over that experience. You have, you get, you, you have the capability of adjusting. I mean, you look at. Giff and I very, you know, came in at the same time. We're in the same Buzz class. We kind of like the same,

• 3:10:33Jocko Willink?

  same, we're on the same path. And yet, you know, he's speaking Vietnamese. We, and we both became radio men, but he's speaking Vietnamese. Just all these different things happen. He ends up like doing the, the, the advanced special operation stuff. Just, it's just different things happen and you just get different experiences. So it's that to me is a benefit to joining the military is, and I can only really say this with 100% certainty about the SEAL teams because that's where I spent my time. But most of the military, everyone I talked to, it's the same thing. You have, it's like a choose your own adventure book. The chances that somebody else chooses the same adventure as you is very small.

• 3:11:18Jocko Willink?

  So awesome to talk to Chris and, and hear, and hear his, cause, cause he's a friend. This is the other thing that's crazy thing about the SEAL teams. Like your friends come and go and you may not see a guy for, like when I saw him downstairs, I don't think I've seen him for probably 15 years. 15 years. We, we, and we, he hit me up, like got his my number, whatever. And he's like, hey, hey, John, I'm in town. I'm like, oh, cool. You, you want to come hang out? You want to be on the podcast? He'd be like, oh yeah, that'd be awesome. I listen to it all the time. So just, but no, no, like, well, how have you been? No, cause it's a shared, you have this shared common background. Yeah. And then with that shared common background, your friends, you're like, cool. I have friends I don't talk to. If I saw them tomorrow, I'd be like, hey, well, you know,

• 3:12:04Jocko Willink?

  uh, no factor, like no factor. That's the, no one.

• 3:12:08Jocko Willink?

  May I, there's no, hey, you didn't call me. No one expects you to call me. Don't expect me to call you. I'm not calling you. You're not going to call me? Cool. But if you need something, call me. Call me. You don't have to call me. You don't have to prep. Call me. You don't have to keep, you have to send me birthday cards, whatever. Um, you need me? Cool. I'll show up or you want to, you got, you're in town? Give me a shout. We'll go roll. We'll see what's up.

• 3:12:32Speaker 01

  You it does go to show too how like it's almost like if you put into perspective where you have people with such different backgrounds and then they kind of can converge on this Navy SEAL journey. They get washed up and filtered out and then they get kind of spit out into their, you know, common interest for sure and common goals. But in such different ways, like if you talk to, you know, you say like Navy SEALs don't have a stereotype or they you think they have a stereotype.

• 3:12:58Jocko Willink?

  Think they do, but they don't.

• 3:12:58Speaker 01

  But they don't. Yeah, this is like a really good example because I'm, you know, I'm talking to him. He's like a super nice, kind of introverted person and then now talk to you. You're like, no way that they were like kumpads in the team. Like it doesn't make sense.

• 3:13:12Jocko Willink?

  And had the exact same. And had the exact same job.

• 3:13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Hung out and did stuff together.

• 3:13:17Speaker 01

  I know, man. And then so like I'm trying to imagine, you know, like every time everyone talks like when they tell their story. I always try to kind of put myself like, I wonder how they were, you know, like what they looked like. I see him in front of me now, but what did they look like? The young version.

• 3:13:31Jocko Willink?

  You know what Giff looked like? He looked exactly like that, man. He looked exactly the same.

• 3:13:35Speaker 01

  Just darker hair, probably.

• 3:13:37Jocko Willink?

  He had darker hair, but he looked the same, you know, there's almost the same build. I mean, I I'm I'm bigger than I was. Like when we went through Bud's, when we started Bud's, I was one seventy-four, you know, I'm two thirty right now. He probably weighs somewhere in the neighborhood. Well, I don't know what he weighed in Bud's, but he looks about the same.

• 3:13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:13:57Jocko Willink?

  You know, and sure, does he have a couple more wrinkles? Whatever.

• 3:14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:14:01Jocko Willink?

  We all do, but looks about the same.

• 3:14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you imagine him like just functioning, you know, can't imagine him yelling at nobody. To me, he's he's just like this super friendly person, but I'm sure he was like getting after it the way everyone else was. It's weird. That contrast is real weird.

• 3:14:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:17Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 3:14:18Jocko Willink?

  It is. Good stuff, man. Good stuff. Oh, it's always good to talk to your old friends and see where they're at, see what they're up to and maybe, maybe there's a chance they're playing stand up bass in a blues band.

• 3:14:31Speaker 01

  What, right, every the actually I'll say this in a second, what I did kind of what did hit me at one point, you know, when you're talking about, um.

• 3:14:41Speaker 01

  When someone, one of your superiors was like, if you're really hardcore, you're gonna go what with no, no ground pad or whatever.

• 3:14:48Jocko Willink?

  All you're gonna bring is a poncho and a poncho liner.

• 3:14:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so and you just.

• 3:14:52Jocko Willink?

  Worst advice ever.

• 3:14:53Speaker 01

  Well.

• 3:14:54Jocko Willink?

  Or was it?

• 3:14:55Speaker 01

  Or what? Yeah, in a way, it was like, it was, it fulfilled itself, right? As a thing.

• 3:15:00Jocko Willink?

  The no ground pad is a problem. By the way, after that, like I never go in the field without a ground pad. I never go in the field without a wool beanie. And I did have a wool beanie, but that saved me. And I never go in the field without my Gore-Tex jacket. Cause worst case scenario, you put on a Gore-Tex jacket, a beanie, man and a ground pad, you're gonna be able to like last a lot longer with a lot more comfort. You, if you don't have those things, you're screwed.

• 3:15:25Speaker 01

  So you learned your lesson.

• 3:15:26Jocko Willink?

  Lesson was learned.

• 3:15:27Speaker 01

  Was, was it that experience?

• 3:15:30Jocko Willink?

  That.

• 3:15:30Speaker 01

  That made you.

• 3:15:31Jocko Willink?

  Ground pad? Hundred percent.

• 3:15:33Speaker 01

  Okay, so to me, what was funny, I mean, good, then that's good for sure. But what struck me the most, what stood out is like, you know who you're like? You watch Back to the Future?

• 3:15:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I mean, I know the movie, but I can't say I know the plot.

• 3:15:48Speaker 01

  So.

• 3:15:48Jocko Willink?

  Cause I'm not a freaking dork.

• 3:15:51Speaker 01

  Marty McFly, right? The main guy, Michael J. Fox.

• 3:15:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:55Speaker 01

  He, his weakness was if you call him chicken, he'll do the dumbest stuff. All you gotta do is call him chicken. And that's like a theme throughout all the, you know, that in fact, like later on, that's like why he like ruins.

• 3:16:06Jocko Willink?

  So someone questions my being hardcore.

• 3:16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're the exact same. You're Marty McFly, but instead of chicken, it's a freaking hardcore.

• 3:16:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:14Speaker 01

  Or not hardcore, sorry.

• 3:16:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I would say especially when I was, well.

• 3:16:19Speaker 01

  You're still like that, bro. You're still like that.

• 3:16:21Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 3:16:23Speaker 01

  If, in fact, now you're smarter though, I think, I'm assuming. But so that like, if I were to be like, hey, Jaco, you would be like, hey, Jaco, like, do this. If you're hardcore, like you would do this, right? Something that you maybe didn't want to do or you said no to or something like that. If I said it that straightforward, you'd, you'd know what I'm doing and you'd figure it out and be like, hey, I'm, I'm not gonna fall for that. But if I just hinted at it.

• 3:16:45Jocko Willink?

  If you use the indirect approach.

• 3:16:46Speaker 01

  Indirect approach, maybe took a couple of days to maybe, you know, like plant seeds and stuff like that. Oh, I think I could get you fully to do some stuff. I don't know what.

• 3:16:55Jocko Willink?

  There's nothing wrong with getting people to do stuff. I like it. I appreciate it. A little bit of peer pressure in a positive way. Let's go with it, you know?

• 3:17:02Speaker 01

  Have I ever told you about the cliff on quiet, um, on Shabrek's beach?

• 3:17:07Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:17:07Speaker 01

  Actually, I think I'm, you know what? Nah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna retract what I was about to, I was about to say, I could get you to jump off that cliff.

• 3:17:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you could.

• 3:17:14Speaker 01

  You'd probably jump off that cliff.

• 3:17:15Jocko Willink?

  It's showing to me.

• 3:17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not even, it's actually not that scary.

• 3:17:17Jocko Willink?

  How, how many feet is it?

• 3:17:19Speaker 01

  It's not, it's, put it this way, it's high, but not super high, so.

• 3:17:23Jocko Willink?

  Is it over one hundred feet?

• 3:17:25Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 3:17:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:17:26Speaker 01

  It was like, okay, so the last time I jumped was the last time I went, and I hadn't jumped for like a long time, probably like eight years, maybe. It's like when you're young, you jump, it's fun. It's a little bit of a swim, maybe a hundred meter swim back there.

• 3:17:38Jocko Willink?

  Give me an estimate on the height.

• 3:17:39Speaker 01

  Uh, thirty, thirty-five, maybe?

• 3:17:42Jocko Willink?

  Bruh.

• 3:17:42Speaker 01

  Put it this way, I went to jump.

• 3:17:44Jocko Willink?

  Throw that up as a challenge.

• 3:17:46Speaker 01

  Me, I know, I know, that's what I'm saying. But I'm saying, if no, if you haven't jumped there, it's, it's like, it can be intimidating, and people jump off there. Cause they see other people, cause everyone on the beach can see you jump. The cliff kinda wraps around, and the beach is literally like a, like a audience.

• 3:18:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:03Speaker 01

  Perfect, like, spot.

• 3:18:04Jocko Willink?

  Sure.

• 3:18:05Speaker 01

  So when you jump, everyone watches you, right? So what?

• 3:18:08Jocko Willink?

  Me and Tulsa used to do that. Tulsa used to go jump off that beach, where she was a water woman.

• 3:18:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:18:13Jocko Willink?

  She used to put the cape on, back in HI.

• 3:18:17Speaker 01

  Sure. This is unquiet, by the way. So, when you go up there, it does two things. One, it makes you wanna like jump, when you see other people, it's like, ooh, that's fun, that'll be an adventure, right? You go up. And, but, another thing that it does is when you go up there, and you stand at the edge, everyone's watching, so you can't turn back and walk down. Cause you can be like, oh, you're the guy who walked down.

• 3:18:36Jocko Willink?

  You're going.

• 3:18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're going. So we went, I went with my fifteen-year-old nephew, and he was like, I wanna do it, I wanna do it this time, so I'm like, cool. And he jumps, but before we jumped, there's these, there were these people up there, they didn't live there. So, they're like, oh, you guys gonna jump? And we're like, yeah. They're like, okay. Kinda like it was a bad idea. So I was like, she was like, oh, our friend is still in the hospital, cause he broke his back yesterday, jumping off. So I was like, dang. So it's high enough to break your back, but it depends on who you are.

• 3:19:08Jocko Willink?

  It also depends on what you hit. I mean, this person that broke their back hit the bottom, is it not deep? So they're not breaking their back from just a regular jump, if they're a normal person at thirty-five feet, bro.

• 3:19:18Speaker 01

  That's.

• 3:19:19Jocko Willink?

  There's some other, there's some other elements into this story that we're hearing.

• 3:19:23Speaker 01

  Here's what, he, uh, they said he was fifty years old.

• 3:19:27Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I'm fifty years old. I'm not breaking my back jumping.

• 3:19:29Speaker 01

  No, I I believe hundred percent. You're not breaking your back when you can, but you're not the average fifty years old, the year old person. And if you land a certain way, like, oh, yeah, you can break your back, I think. And not the kind you be broke his back and he was like, done. He he like, you know, had a fractured one of his vertebrae in this way. He's in the hospital for more than a day, though, so.

• 3:19:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, weird things can happen when it comes to injuries. That's true. You gotta take that into account. I gotta don't wanna be talking too much smack over here.

• 3:19:54Speaker 01

  Plus, you gotta be careful. But in your case, I just call you not hardcore and you'll do anything. Whatever.

• 3:20:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, everyone, thanks for listening. Thanks for hanging out with good old Giff, Giff and me. If you want to help us out with supporting what we're doing, check out jockofuel.com. We got some, we got some tasty goodness on there. Which is a weird thing. You say, first thing people think about when they think of supplements, they're not generally thinking like, oh, tasty. Sometimes they even don't think tasty.

• 3:20:24Jocko Willink?

  The first thing I said was tasty. Why? Cause, cause Molk.

• 3:20:28Speaker 01

  It's a front runner.

• 3:20:29Jocko Willink?

  Cause Molk is a front runner. It's a front runner in food to take into your body and and enjoy that process.

• 3:20:36Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 3:20:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man, they're gonna help you. Remember the, uh, remember the freaking protein shakes back in the day?

• 3:20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:20:42Jocko Willink?

  They were so bad. I was on a arg platoon on a ship. And we had the, the latest and greatest. And everyone had it. And it was so, it tasted so bad. It was vanilla. I remember I used to have to hold my nose. Cause I was on the train, right? We were doing, we were doing this stuff. We're trying to get jacked. I would hold my nose. And do it like I'm doing a shot of tequila. So that's how, that's not what we want. We wanna have a good taste.

• 3:21:11Speaker 01

  Or remember the old school freaking mega mass five million or whatever, you know, the one in the big dog food bag or whatever. That tasted good. But I think it had like boatloads of like sugar and like bad stuff.

• 3:21:23Jocko Willink?

  Like straight up bad.

• 3:21:24Speaker 01

  Technically had more protein or whatever.

• 3:21:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, that were also like, hey, this is for gaining mass. So we're literally just gonna give you sugar, fat, protein, just whatever. We're just gonna throw it in there, make it taste good. Hey, more power to you. If you're a, if you're a hard gainer. Remember that back in the day? You got the hard gator coming in hot. And then what's the two, three body types, right? Mesomorph, ectomorph, what's the other one? Endomorph.

• 3:21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:21:50Jocko Willink?

  Right, there you go. So they'd have those little graphs, you know, maybe you need.

• 3:21:53Speaker 01

  Is that a real thing now?

• 3:21:54Jocko Willink?

  I have no idea. I think it is a thing. But I don't know what determines that thing. Cause I don't know if it, what's, you know what, let's face it, there's some truth to it because there's some dudes that I know that would just eat pizzas and whatever and they're lean.

• 3:22:08Speaker 01

  Yep, that's true.

• 3:22:09Jocko Willink?

  So they might be the hard gainer.

• 3:22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:22:11Jocko Willink?

  And then some people, doesn't matter they lift or not, they're kind of jacked.

• 3:22:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:22:14Jocko Willink?

  You know, I've known people like that.

• 3:22:16Speaker 01

  I, yeah.

• 3:22:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, what's, and I know some people that work all out like crazy.

• 3:22:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:22:20Jocko Willink?

  And they don't look like it and they can even be strong.

• 3:22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:22:23Jocko Willink?

  And even be fast, but they still look like kind of dumpy.

• 3:22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is true.

• 3:22:27Jocko Willink?

  So I guess the thing is a thing.

• 3:22:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:22:29Jocko Willink?

  So we gotta watch out for that one.

• 3:22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. I literally know someone like immediately comes to mind for every single one of those. That's interesting. Alright, well, you gotta watch out for that, of course. So know your body type, right? Um, also speaking of taste good, the energy drinks, healthy energy drinks too, but.

• 3:22:46Jocko Willink?

  Which is a rare thing.

• 3:22:47Speaker 01

  Very rare.

• 3:22:48Jocko Willink?

  Kind of a unique thing. Get some of those and you can get this stuff at jockofuel.com. You can get it at Wawa. Get the drinks at Wawa. You can get it, you can get all the stuff at Vitamin Shoppe as well. So check that out. Also, if you need some jujitsu gear, which you probably do, go to originusa.com. And what's cool is we started with jujitsu gear, but now we're making just straight gear for your life. Jeans.

• 3:23:12Jocko Willink?

  T-shirts, hoodies, boots, whatever you need, we got it. So check some of that out.

• 3:23:17Speaker 01

  The, the jeans and I don't know why these ones struck me so hard or whatever. It's the, the, that new, the new jeans that they're coming out with. They're like green or something. The one that Pete said the next one's gonna be camel.

• 3:23:31Jocko Willink?

  The work, they're work pants. Yeah.

• 3:23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know if I do the work.

• 3:23:36Jocko Willink?

  Actually, I'm not sure which one I know you're talking about.

• 3:23:38Speaker 01

  I'm pretty sure.

• 3:23:38Jocko Willink?

  You don't do the work that's required.

• 3:23:40Speaker 01

  For those kind of pants. But I do want the

• 3:23:45Jocko Willink?

  You're disqualified for work pants across the board.

• 3:23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, they got any padding in the knee. Let's face it, that padding is not going to get any, any action.

• 3:23:55Jocko Willink?

  No use.

• 3:23:55Speaker 01

  For my work.

• 3:23:56Jocko Willink?

  That's for damn sure.

• 3:23:57Speaker 01

  But nonetheless, for people who do do work, these are both functional and a stat. Man, I'm looking at them. And I want them, you know, just for the look alone. And then I know they're probably more functional than they look good. So that's saying a lot.

• 3:24:10Jocko Willink?

  OriginUSA.com. Go and get yourself some gear. And by the way, support an American company that's rebuilding American manufacturing and helping American communities and workers. That's what we're about. That's where, because if we weren't about that, guess what we'd be doing? Hiring some slave labor overseas in China to make everything for us. And get, make a little bit more profit. Make a little bit more probably, we can stuff a little bit more money in our pockets over here.

• 3:24:38Jocko Willink?

  Rip it out of the hearts of the American worker. We're not doing that. That's not what we're doing. So OriginUSA.com. Go check it out. There you go.

• 3:24:46Speaker 01

  It's true. Also, when you're, when you're in the mood to represent on this path, hey, look, we're, we're capable. Which kind of reminds me, you know how like, and some, some of the guests will have this where they'll talk about like their background or whatever. And then, you know, they went through this, they went through that. They already have this certification or this, you know? It like makes you think, man, those sort of, and there's a lot of them available, by the way.

• 3:25:08Jocko Willink?

  Like certifications?

• 3:25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Giff mentioned, uh, he.

• 3:25:11Jocko Willink?

  Who's a paddy diver.

• 3:25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:25:14Jocko Willink?

  Before he even joined the Navy, maybe.

• 3:25:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he wasn't even really, um.

• 3:25:17Jocko Willink?

  I never dove on scuba gear until I was in the Navy.

• 3:25:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. See, and that's one that I always was like, man, that'd be a cool intent. Cause I grew up diving.

• 3:25:25Jocko Willink?

  Did you dive?

• 3:25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I grew up diving.

• 3:25:27Jocko Willink?

  Scuba diving?

• 3:25:27Speaker 01

  No, never.

• 3:25:28Jocko Willink?

  So snorkeling?

• 3:25:29Speaker 01

  Free diving, we call it.

• 3:25:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:31Speaker 01

  Wait, wasn't, who was it? Um, Micah, right? Was talking about free dive?

• 3:25:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And we didn't go into that. He was some kind of world class, uh.

• 3:25:39Speaker 01

  Bro, my younger brother, Yata Charles, he is heavy, not so much in more his kids and all that stuff now, but he's heavy into free diving. Spearfishing, all this stuff. Really good too. One of his friends, I think.

• 3:25:49Jocko Willink?

  Did you know who Michael was?

• 3:25:50Speaker 01

  I don't know. That's why I want to kind of ask him.

• 3:25:52Jocko Willink?

  Check Yata.

• 3:25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. He, and one of his friends, actually, I think still holds the record of the deepest free dive. If I'm not mistaken, I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure. He showed me the videos freaking crazy. Nonetheless. I know a little bit about free diving and but and scuba diving has always been like kinda like oh man that'd be a cool one to have you can just stay down there and breathe.

• 3:26:11Jocko Willink?

  The the kind of dive rig that you eventually end up using in the sail teams which is called a rebreather a rebreather.

• 3:26:20Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:26:20Jocko Willink?

  And it has no bubbles.

• 3:26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26:23Jocko Willink?

  And when you're down there it just like quiet it's like.

• 3:26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26:26Jocko Willink?

  It's not like a normal a normal when you're scuba diving with a normal what's called an open circuit rig is like.

• 3:26:34Jocko Willink?

  It's all noisy there's bubbles everywhere. And I don't like it at all and I've spent way more I've probably spent a hundred times more in my life on Drager.

• 3:26:44Speaker 01

  What's Drager?

• 3:26:45Jocko Willink?

  Drager's the rebreather.

• 3:26:46Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:26:46Jocko Willink?

  Then open circuit open circuit you basically do it in BUDs you get qualified. And then as soon as you're done with that you go on closed circuit and that's where you dive for the rest of your career. Maybe every once in a blue moon you dive open circuit I can't I think I dove open circuit on a ship one time to like clear some some seaweed out of something or something like this but.

• 3:27:07Speaker 01

  But have you ever gone scuba diving in any capacity after you retired from the Navy? Would you like is that your jam like would you?

• 3:27:15Jocko Willink?

  If I could get a rebreather?

• 3:27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:27:17Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:27:17Speaker 01

  Like just to go or what or go spearfish?

• 3:27:19Jocko Willink?

  If I was like let's say we were went back to Hawaii and we were just gonna go diving. And I could use a rebreather I'd probably look into it maybe do it.

• 3:27:28Speaker 01

  A rebreather is like available or is that just?

• 3:27:31Jocko Willink?

  But I don't know what the rules are you know.

• 3:27:33Speaker 01

  Brother not available they're like plutonium.

• 3:27:35Jocko Willink?

  No you they are available I've looked at you can buy one it's like five or six thousand dollars you know.

• 3:27:40Speaker 01

  How much is a regular scuba rig like a middle of the road?

• 3:27:43Jocko Willink?

  I I would guess fifteen hundred bucks for the whole thing if you went over to the dive shop and hooked it up.

• 3:27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah huh but that seems like to me anyway that seems like a cool little just certification you can just decide to go get you know. Just like even like the guns thing like you know how to you know those kinds of certifications just have more capability overall you just choose plenty.

• 3:28:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah and there's people that chase those little qualifications right?

• 3:28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah and I dig it.

• 3:28:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah yeah.

• 3:28:07Speaker 01

  But I mean of course just like anything else it's like you know if you don't wanna do it for nothing they gotta be applicable I would think anyway.

• 3:28:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:28:14Speaker 01

  But it's better to have the capability and certification than not.

• 3:28:17Jocko Willink?

  Build capability is what is what we're saying.

• 3:28:20Speaker 01

  You know which one I randomly got um it's not random it's for a reason but it seems but it seems like you would never just think to go get it but once you kinda think about it for a second it's like super duper useful is CPR.

• 3:28:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:28:34Speaker 01

  I'm CPR certified.

• 3:28:36Jocko Willink?

  Dude, did you put that on your resume for this job?

• 3:28:39Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, if you blackout or something like this, I got you, brother.

• 3:28:43Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I didn't know. I'm dealing with a highly qualified, highly qualified individual.

• 3:28:49Speaker 01

  I told you, I told you it's small, but it's one of those things you can just get and it's better to have.

• 3:28:55Speaker 01

  Better to have than not have. Bro, I'm just saying.

• 3:28:57Jocko Willink?

  What did you like, apply to college to get that degree in CPR? Jack, alright, so, uh, there you go.

• 3:29:06Speaker 01

  Are we done?

• 3:29:06Jocko Willink?

  If you're down, if you go down, remember, text Echo Charles, he'll come and give you CPR, he's qualified.

• 3:29:14Jocko Willink?

  It's like a 15 minute class, bro.

• 3:29:17Speaker 01

  Bro, I don't even know why I tell you these things.

• 3:29:18Jocko Willink?

  I don't know why I tell you anything. I don't know why you do that, that's ridiculous.

• 3:29:22Speaker 01

  Either way, if you want to represent while you're on the path, CPR certified or not,

• 3:29:29Speaker 01

  go to jocko store.com. You can get your, um, discipline equals freedom shirts and hats and there's a lot of good stuff on there, check it out. If you want something, get something to represent.

• 3:29:39Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget, we got some other podcasts too. We got the Jocko Unraveling with Darryl Cooper. Got the Grounded Podcast, Warrior Kid Podcast. We got Jocko Underground, that's a huge way to support. There's people getting banned. You got, what just happened? Neil Young told Spotify, get Rogan off. Get him off.

• 3:29:57Speaker 01

  Straight up ultimatum.

• 3:29:58Jocko Willink?

  And guess what happened? Did you see the outcome? Neil Young's off Spotify.

• 3:30:05Jocko Willink?

  We should do, we should say, we, we, we want Joe Rogan off Spotify. Or we're, you're gonna have to get this off the, who are you?

• 3:30:14Jocko Willink?

  But listen, that's a scenario that happened. Luckily Spotify made the call to keep Joe Rogan, cuz Neil Young, cool. I don't know if that happened to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young as well. I don't know if he screwed over all of his old bandmates too. You know, who knows what happened there? Good old Neil Young, but you jacked it up, son. So, we don't know what's gonna happen. We don't know if somebody's gonna come on, uh, on to Apple and, and we don't know if some big band, if Neil Young's gonna go on Apple and say, hey, take down Jocko Podcast, cuz I don't like what they're saying about CPR calls.

• 3:30:51Jocko Willink?

  So we don't know if that's gonna happen. So that's why we have Jock On The Ground. So if you wanna, if you wanna get on board there, you wanna help us out, it costs $8.18 a month to come and we have a podcast that we do there. Little bit of, little bit of a project to pass more information. If you can't afford it, it's okay. Email [email protected] so you can be in the game. Check out our YouTube channel. Check out flipsidecanvas.com with Dakota Meyer. Check it out. I wrote a bunch of books.

• 3:31:17Jocko Willink?

  Check them out. I would say especially check out the kids books. Most people know I've written some books, but some people don't know I wrote kids books. Kids books, keep them kids on the path.

• 3:31:27Jocko Willink?

  And also we have Echelon Front, which is our leadership consultancy. If you want to have us help you with your leadership, go to extremeownership.com and a online training platform. So look, a few years ago, if someone said, hey, you know, I really wanna learn about leadership. Do you, can you help me? I'd say, yeah, just listen to my podcast, man. And they'd be like, oh, okay, cool. Thanks. And they'd listen. There's good information. But now there's 300 plus podcasts and they're about war and they're about atrocities. And so the leadership lessons are strewn throughout.

• 3:32:06Jocko Willink?

  So we, this is one thing that we've done to sort of, hey, let's get these things into a consolidated curriculum where you can literally learn from step A through step Z. There you go. Go to extremeownership.com. Little story about the word strewn. So I got two, I got three daughters. The two older ones, they're very, they're very, you know,

• 3:32:25Speaker 01

  Articulate.

• 3:32:25Jocko Willink?

  Well, they also get hostile, you know? And, and they shared room for a long time and they still share a room when they're home. But one of them wrote, the older one wrote a message to the younger one that said, you know, something along the lines of, listen, I just got home. I've been out all day working and I just got home and as soon as I walked into our room, I could barely get in there because you had your clothes and your stuff strewn about the floor. And I would really appreciate if you come home and clean this up. And my middle daughter replied, strewn. That's all she wrote back.

• 3:33:08Jocko Willink?

  So I thought that was pretty funny. Strewn. So now it's a joke and inside of our family. If there's something been left out, then it's been, there's, then it's strewned about and then the response is just straight up strewn. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, go check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an awesome charity organization. If you want to donate or get involved, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org.

• 3:33:34Jocko Willink?

  And if you need more of us, for whatever reason, we're on social, watch out for the algorithm. I'm not trying to draw you into the algorithm where that thing grabs a hold of your soul and drags you down, reading into comments and feeling bad about yourself and scanning to another screen and another one. I don't want you to do that. I don't want you to do that. I'd rather you not do that. But if you feel like, oh, I got a question, I want to see what's happening. Cool. We're on, we're on the gram, we're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, Echo's at Echo Charles, I am at Jocko Willink. And once again, if you want to hang out with Chris Gifford and his wife Julie,

• 3:34:15Jocko Willink?

  go to Instagram, takingleave underscore RV. There you go. That's Julie and Chris. Who knows what they got going on out there in the world in an airstream. What did it say? 30 foot airstream? That's a nice ride right there. Nice ride. And speaking of Chris Gifford, just want to say thanks once again to Chris on his travels. He was nice enough to stop by. He was a silent professional in the teams and a pro. And I appreciate it. Appreciate your service and thanks for coming by. And to all the other vets out there, both the vets and also the folks that are still active duty, manning the watch worldwide. Thank you for your continued

• 3:34:59Jocko Willink?

  service. And to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all the first responders. Thanks for manning the watch here at home and to everyone else. Everyone else, remember what Chris did with his life? He set a goal and then he went out and he achieved it. And then he did that again and again and again, and that is a good plan.

• 3:35:30Jocko Willink?

  So go out there, come up with a goal and execute by getting after it.

• 3:35:38Jocko Willink?

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