150: Drafted to Vietnam, Surfing, and Surfboards with Dave Hall and Josh Hall

0:00:00 – Opening 0:03:01 – Dave Hall: The Draft. Vietnam. 1:48:24 – Josh Hall: Surfing, Surfboards, and Entrepreneurship. Josh Hall Surfboards: http://www.joshhallsurfboards.com http://www.joshhallsurfboards.com/ 2:45:30 – How to Stay on The Path. 3:31:36 – 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 150 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  And who are the young men we are asking to go into action against such solid odds?

• 0:22Jocko Willink?

  You've met them. You know. They are the best we have.

• 0:29Jocko Willink?

  But they are not McNamara's sons or Bundy's. I doubt they are yours.

• 0:37Jocko Willink?

  And they know.

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  They know they are at the end of the pipeline. That no one cares.

• 0:48Jocko Willink?

  They know.

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an anonymous quote from a general in Vietnam to correspondent, a war correspondent named Arthur Haley, who is actually himself a decorated tank commander in World War II who enlisted in the army.

• 1:12Jocko Willink?

  And there's a key word I said there, you know, a volunteer who voluntarily enlisted in the army in World War II and in Vietnam, in the Vietnam War. You hear a lot about the draftees in Vietnam and in fact, 25% of the forces that fought in Vietnam were draftees and draftees accounted for 30% of the deaths in Vietnam.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  Now, on this podcast, we've heard from a bunch of those volunteers, a bunch of those career soldiers, Marines that fought in Vietnam. But tonight, we're honored to have someone on the podcast.

• 2:04Jocko Willink?

  That was not necessarily a volunteer. That was not necessarily looking to be in the military for a career.

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  But who nonetheless stepped up and did his job for our country. And once he served his time, he came home and lived his life. And he had a son. And his son has also joined us on the podcast and his son took a different route. He was guided by his dad, but he was guided not to war, but to the water. So we have tonight, Dave Hall, Vietnam veteran tanker, who's also the father of Josh Hall, who's a surfer, a craftsman, a surfboard shaper,

• 2:59Jocko Willink?

  and an entrepreneur. And I think we're looking forward to this, at least I am. So, welcome to the show, both of you. Thanks for coming on, Josh, Dave. Awesome to have you.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  It's an honor.

• 3:13Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming out here from Hawaii. I, I, I know, you know, most people don't want to leave Hawaii.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  When they're there. But I'm glad we were able to drag you out here.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  No, it was a burden on me, but. I love to see my son.

• 3:29Jocko Willink?

  Awesome, awesome, Josh, thanks for coming on. Thank you, Josh, I'm stoked. I know we've been seeing each other in the water for a while and at contests and whatnot. So it's good we linked up and, and have this opportunity to come on and talk about, talk about some of my favorite things, war and surfing. So Dave, we got to start with you and you know, we always kind of try and take it back to the beginning and just kind of what your background was and you know, where you came from. I know what, you were born in a.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Born in Boston, Massachusetts.

• 4:04Jocko Willink?

  And what did your dad do?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  My dad was a, my dad did many things. World War II, he's a pilot and a B-17 over in England and.

• 4:17Jocko Willink?

  So that's one that just slipped under the radar. Your dad was a B-17 pilot in World War II?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:23Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, B-24s and he always wanted to be a fighter pilot and he tried to go to the Pacific, but that never happened. So anyways, married my mom. And then.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  We ended up living in Boston for a while. I mean, we traveled around the country because he was still in the service, in the Air Force, uh, lived in Texas and lived in Colorado, lived in.

• 4:52Jocko Willink?

  Was he, was he a career, uh, Army guy, Army Air Force guy?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  For, yes, for a little while, yeah. I don't know exactly when he got out. When he did get out, um, he started flying for United Airlines.

• 5:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  And I know in the fifties and stuff, he went to, I, I don't think he went to Korea. I, I'm lost right now, so.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  (laughing).

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Um, but, uh, yeah, he, he, uh, he did a multitude of things. He was a teacher, a lawyer, a farmer, uh, he farmed in Nebraska. He was born in Nebraska, had, we had a big ranch back there. And, um, he taught school, uh, in Nebraska. And then, uh, we had been living in Santa Ana until I was nine years old. I went to visit, uh, my grandfather in Nebraska. And then that summer, at the end of the summer, my folks ended up coming out with all the kids and the, the whole house. So he decided not to fly for United Airlines anymore and become a farmer again. So, um, yeah, it was kinda different. So anyways, that's, yeah. Like I said, I lived in a lot of different states and stuff because during,

• 5:58Speaker 01

  because of the service. But, uh, Nebraska was kinda like my favorite place, you know? From there.

• 6:04Jocko Willink?

  Now you, so you, did you work on the farm?

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:06Jocko Willink?

  Obviously, because every kid that grows up on a farm is like slave labor.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah. Ten hours in the field plowing, uh, you know, we had a, a cow, we had to milk every day, you know? We called her six o'clock, six o'clock in the morning, six o'clock at night. And, uh, a few other cattle. And we had pigs and I raised three hundred chickens, and, you know. Of course, you know, I had my brother and sisters and stuff were there too. They, they all helped out.

• 6:34Jocko Willink?

  And this is when you were, what, like, ten, eleven, twelve years old?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I was, uh, eleven, yeah. I went back there at ten, and I was back there for like four, uh, three summers, you know? So I was twelve, I think, we ended up moving back to, uh, Connecticut.

• 6:50Jocko Willink?

  And then how long were you out there for?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  A year in Connecticut. And then I, then my dad, um...

• 6:58Speaker 01

  He bought a business here in San Diego.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Hall and Hall Personnel. And, uh, so we moved back out here and he found a place and we lived out in Spring Valley. And, uh, he worked downtown, had his own office down there, so, yeah, it was kinda different.

• 7:15Jocko Willink?

  And so then you spent your, your high school years here?

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Here in San Diego. Yeah, I started ninth grade in San Diego, went to Mount McGill High School. And, uh, then I graduated and went to, I was going to college for a while and then, uh, got drafted.

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you start surfing in high school?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Actually, when we lived in San Ana and stuff, I didn't surf. We, we had mats. You know, we had mats up there.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  Old school.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So, and I was young then, and we'd always go down to, uh, Aunt Take Me every day, you know, down, me and the kids and, and, uh, to Laguna Beach.

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Uh, down there, China Cove down there. And, uh, yeah, broke my eardrum down there.

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  Ouch.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  As a matter of fact, yeah. But anyways, yeah, uh, and then I started, I started surfing, you know, tenth grade, you know, ninth grade and stuff. But, uh, yeah, we, uh, when we first came out here and stuff, I loved it. I thought we were gonna move to the beach. We stayed at the San Diego Motel, right down there on, uh...

• 8:18Speaker 02

  It's across from In-N-Out in PD by the freeway.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Right, and we stayed there until my dad found a house to live in, you know, so, uh, you know, I'd go to the beach then, you know, walk to the beach.

• 8:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  It was fun.

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  That's what everyone thinks. Well, people that don't live in California think all of California is like Baywatch. That's the, you gotta realize that there's, you know, massive, I mean, obviously there's massive swaths of land, but agriculture's huge, you know, you'd go up the, you'd just drive by farm after farm after farm after farm. So much of California is farming. And, but people think everything in California is just Baywatch.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  It's not. Can come close sometimes, but...

• 8:58Jocko Willink?

  But then, so you, but you went to high school here and you...

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  You did surf, but you weren't able to get to the water that much?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Quite a bit, actually. Yeah, I had a, I had a, uh, my dad bought me a fifty-three Chevy, fifty-four Chevy two-door and stuff, so I ripped out the backseat so I'd get my boards in there. And, uh, then I got my sister's car, she had a, uh, station wagon, it was a fifty-seven Ford, two-door deluxe, you know, it was, you know, the whole thing, that was a surf wagon.

• 9:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  You know, so me and the boys, you know.

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  So, I was wrong, you actually got to the water a lot?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, quite a bit.

• 9:40Jocko Willink?

  And you did, you, you wrestled, you, um?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  In high school, yeah, a little bit of wrestling, uh, I was mostly on the, uh, I was on the swim team. I dove and I swam and, um, my fault, you know, somebody said, can anybody do the butterfly? And I go, yeah, I can, you know, and early, so you're the butterfly guy.

• 10:01Jocko Willink?

  And then, so during this time period, were you paying attention? I mean, obviously your dad was in the, was, you know, out of the military, but you had that connection to the military. Were you paying attention in those years? Cause now we're talking, this is like the mid-sixties. Are you paying attention to what's happening in Vietnam? Or you're just, you're focused on?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  No, just, yeah, just life, you know, I was a kid, but, um, not that I can really recall. You know, it wasn't really on my radar.

• 10:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and then you graduate and you're figuring you're gonna go to college for a bit?

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we went to Grossmont Junior College.

• 10:37Jocko Willink?

  What year did you graduate high school?

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Uh, sixty-six.

• 10:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, so Vietnam was still relatively?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wasn't, yeah.

• 10:47Jocko Willink?

  I mean, they started, well, the Idrang, the Battle of the Idrang Valley was in nineteen sixty-five, and that was kinda like the big first spike in activity, well, I don't wanna say that, but it was definitely a highlight, it started hitting the news more. And that was in sixty-five, so you graduated in sixty-six.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, there was talk, you know, every draft and the draft and stuff like that, but it wasn't like, you know, like I said, it wasn't, I didn't really pay attention to it. Yeah. Just surfing. Yeah.

• 11:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, surfing can distract you from all kinds of the world's problems.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Which is a good thing.

• 11:20Jocko Willink?

  So then, so then you roll to, uh, Grossmont College, you're there.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:25Jocko Willink?

  And now? Are you, are you starting to become more aware of the draft at this point?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Hmm, no, no, because I, I snow skied a lot, so, you know, there's a lot of activity and I belong to the ski club there at Grouse Mott and, you know, so we go to Squaw Valley heavenly and, and, and ski a lot, so, no, I still don't really think about it. I didn't think about it until I saw my mom pull an envelope up, you know, and she said, hey, you got something from the government.

• 11:55Jocko Willink?

  And what was your reaction to that?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  I can't go to Mazatlan.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, I mean, it was.

• 12:03Jocko Willink?

  So, so it hit you that, it was that unexpected for you when you got that, when you got your draft notice?

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:11Jocko Willink?

  Did you know any other guys that had been drafted?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, uh, the class before me and stuff, no, no, I, uh, Jim Tomlinson, uh, great guy, um, he was 25th Infantry over there and stuff, they came back with all the war stories, so, I take that back, I was aware of it, you know, because all these guys are coming back and talking about it, but I never thought, you know, uh, me, I didn't worry about going, so, yeah.

• 12:35Jocko Willink?

  So then when you got it, what was your reaction when you got it?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  I was like, well, I'm gonna go, I guess, you know, it was either that, you know, or run and hide, and I thought, well, you know, if we make it to Mazatlan, it's not a bad place to be, you know, if I can survive down there, so, and then I said, well, no, I gotta do it, yeah. It was a little bit scary, but, you know, I'm, I, I always look forward to things, you know, I mean, I didn't look forward to going over there, but I mean, it's kind of different, you know, why not try?

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  So what was the shock to your system like, you know, this, this going from the surfing, skiing, and Mazatlan life to checking into boot camp?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Um, well, you had to go through the process of getting, you know, to go up to the draft board in LA, so I did that, then came back, and then had to go up, done second time for something, and then that was when we ended up getting on a bus and going to Fort Ord, and it was like, whoa, you're just locked, you're locked in, you know, you don't. No place to go.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  And now, now this is sixty-eight, so now we're talking, I mean, it's, things have inflamed in Vietnam and it's, I mean, there's a lot of casualties happening and, you know, from your perspective, you must have been thinking, hey, you might not have been thinking about it as much before, but all of a sudden you're wearing a uniform and there's people coming home, you know, people getting killed every day over in Vietnam at this point.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I had friends that came home, or didn't come home, you know, that told me about it, you know, other friends and stuff, but I mean, it was like,

• 14:15Speaker 01

  of course, once you get in basic and stuff, they got, they got you, you know.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  They pretty, they pretty much got you. And you either go along with the program, or they make you go along with the program, and you end up going along with the program.

• 14:29Jocko Willink?

  Did you see guys that were, you know, that, that showed up, that realized what they got into and would act crazy, or, you know?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. You, you had all, all sorts of people. One thing about the draft, you had every walk of life. I mean, you have every walk of life in the military anyways, you know, they come from all over, but the draft picks them out of the bushes, you know, I mean, it's like, you know, you got big guys, small guys, you got older guys. Now, I, I was lucky because I was a little bit older, and most of the guys, like when I was in Vietnam, were a lot younger than I was. I mean, other than, I mean, the guys that were with me.

• 15:07Jocko Willink?

  And by older, you were how old?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  I was twenty-one.

• 15:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, old man.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Well, in some respects, yeah, yeah.

• 15:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, it always, whenever I go down to Coronado and I see the, the SEALs, the, and, and, you know, I'll be with my wife, we'll go to Coronado, we'll see some SEALs on the beach or whatever, and you can't help, my, my wife can't help herself from saying, "They look so young, they look like little kids."

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:31Jocko Willink?

  That's the same with me when I was nineteen, you know, that's where I, that's where I was. So, yeah, when you're nineteen years old, when you're eighteen years old, and you're looking at someone that's twenty-one.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:40Jocko Willink?

  They're like the oldest person in the world.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Of course, all the other cadre and stuff were a lot older and stuff, you know, but.

• 15:49Jocko Willink?

  And, and did you, did you have any choice in what your MOS was gonna be?

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Yes, good question. Uh, no.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  We made it through ba- uh, basic training. Um, Sergeant Patterson was my drill instructor, great guy.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  And then towards the end, they came out and they had this chart, everybody's name on it. Eleven, eleven Bravo, eleven Bravo, eleven Bravo, and they saw me and Bob Zickma was eleven Echo. And we asked one of the sergeants who was walking by, I go, what's eleven Echo? What is that? You know, because we knew eleven Bravo was infantry. And he goes, well, you're gonna be a tanker. I go, cool, I'm gonna drive trucks.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  You know, I have farm background, tractor, whatever, you know? And he goes, no, no, because I figure a tanker truck.

• 16:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  In my mind, you know? I was going, oh, shoots. And they go, no, you want a tank.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  I still didn't quite get it, you know? So anyways, yeah. So in that respect, I go, okay, fine. And only two of us out of like two hundred and ten guys or something had eleven Echo. A couple of guys went to the APC schools, you know? I forget what they call it. And it was eleven Echo A or something like that, I don't know.

• 17:15Jocko Willink?

  Would, would, like you talked about, the guys that are putting you through basic, these guys were guys coming back from Vietnam? Was the tone of basic training like, hey, you guys are going to Vietnam? You need to be ready?

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Yes, you had to, yeah, we knew something was gonna happen, you know? And, you know, like towards the end of, of basic training and stuff, they sent us to see this film. And it was John Wayne movie. What was the name of?

• 17:53Speaker 02

  I don't know, you're good at that.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  I wish Jimmy was here, yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  John Wayne movie, you guys never saw it?

• 18:02Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure I have.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  He was in Vietnam, he's a general and.

• 18:05Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Good golly. Anyways, I'll think of.

• 18:11Jocko Willink?

  But that's what they did, they sent you to see it?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  They sent, see a movie. It was, you know, we got to go have a couple of beers and go see the movie and then back. And then after that, we came home, you know, after basic training.

• 18:26Jocko Willink?

  So that, that movie was their way of kinda?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Letting you know what's gonna kinda happen to you, yeah. Why can't I think of that?

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  Did they?

• 18:36Speaker 01

  You will.

• 18:36Jocko Willink?

  Was it, did you feel like the training that they put you through? So, I mean, obviously, boot camp is boot camp and you're gonna get yelled at and you're gonna do pushups. When you got done with boot camp and they were putting you through, today, the Army, they go through.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  A I T.

• 18:50Jocko Willink?

  Like A I T. So, did you go through something like A I T?

• 18:52Speaker 01

  I did. I went through A I T in Fort Knox. That's where the, the tank school is. And, uh, then they put me through, uh, N C O school, which is, cause they need a lot of N C Os, I guess, you know?

• 19:07Jocko Willink?

  So, did you get it, like, meritoriously advanced to become an N C O, or?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  It's hard, it's hard to say, I guess. You know, it's just whatever your aptitude is to, to do things, you know, so.

• 19:19Jocko Willink?

  Was, was that advanced school that they put you through? Was that, was it good training? Were you?

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Oh, excellent training, yeah. Yeah.

• 19:26Jocko Willink?

  So, you were pushed hard? They were, you know, teaching you use all the weapon systems, teaching you how to react in firefights and all that stuff?

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Right. And then, you know, just mentally, you know, prepare yourself for, for what's going on. I mean, radio operations, uh, you know, command and controls and, you know, things like that. So, I mean, it's things I didn't, had no idea what I was doing, but, uh, yeah, it worked out pretty good.

• 19:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. No, it's, uh, it's, it's always interesting to hear the way they prepare guys for combat.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause we, we, we went and became like, uh, E fours, uh, and then, and then once you graduated, you're at E five, you know, so you're sergeant right away.

• 20:07Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then after you graduate from that school, um, I started training, you know, on tanks. I get different, different guys. Lucky me, I got the National Guard guys from California on my tank, which was kind of, you know, they said, well, you're from California, you can train these guys. So, I said, okay, well, yeah, I'll do it. Pretty good guys.

• 20:28Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then you come home, and then they give you leave after you get done with all that?

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, we went through, um, now, what was it?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Some more advanced training and stuff. I anyways, I fell it. I fell asleep in class one day, you know, and we were getting it's it's getting towards like Christmas time and stuff. Everybody's gonna get to go home. And this one lieutenant, I guess, because I I just nodded off. I mean, we've been on this. This drill boom, boom, boom, you know. So you went through one of his classes and and I I nodded off and the guy goes on. Sorry, you you're not gonna go home. Get out of my class. So I I went back and I talked to. My sergeant major. And then he went and talked to some colonel. And then they went, I guess it went all the way to battalion or something like that. And they said, no, he's gonna go home. He finished the class. And so they let me back in the class.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  And I finished it up and. It was kind of like, oh, good. I get to go home for Christmas.

• 21:30Jocko Willink?

  And was that Christmas your pre-deployment leave? Was it?

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Um.

• 21:33Jocko Willink?

  Or was that just?

• 21:34Speaker 01

  No, it was just a it was a two week break, two week break and then I came home.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  This in February or March. I know I was home for my birthday. It's kind of hard for me to remember, right? I'm not sure, but I know I left here like April fifteenth, I think it was.

• 21:52Jocko Willink?

  And that was to go to Vietnam?

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:55Jocko Willink?

  And what was the?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  I almost missed a flight too. So it was great. The PSA flight out of San Diego. So they held the plane for me.

• 22:04Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, that wasn't that nice of them. Were you, you came home, was that, what was the mood like when you were going over to Vietnam and you're saying goodbye to your family? And you're saying goodbye to your mom and and and whatnot?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was that was a. We had a pretty good party, you know, one night and. Uh, my next door neighbor had this beautiful rose gardens and his whole garden stuff, you know, there's guys sleeping out there and went through a couple of kegs and. And also it turned out pretty good. And so, yeah, there was a little bit of moments, you know, where you were kind of a little anxious and stuff, you know, and I talked to my mom and. And she was an army nurse, you know, so she kind of knew what was going on.

• 22:48Jocko Willink?

  I bet that had to be way harder on your mom than it was on you.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't know that, you know, when it was happening, but yeah.

• 22:55Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I I. I don't know, when I was young and even when I was older, I was always like, hey, you know, we're kind of indestructible and especially when you're young.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 23:06Jocko Willink?

  You're like, hey, I'm gonna go over there, we're gonna kick ass, that's what's gonna happen and can be a little, uh, but, but for, especially if your mom was an army nurse.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:15Jocko Willink?

  So she's seen all kinds of stuff.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, she took care of a lot of wounded soldiers.

• 23:19Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, so that had to be way harder for her and it's always, I think, always harder for the families.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  She didn't show it though, you know, she never, uh, she gave me a little book, um.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 23:38Jocko Willink?

  It's alright.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  I'm proud of you.

• 23:40Jocko Willink?

  It's alright, man.

• 23:43Jocko Willink?

  You still have the book?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  I do, someplace. All, all it was, was a little saying that says, uh, out of Psalms, and it says, uh, be part of the answer, not the problem.

• 23:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  You know, so I kept that with me.

• 23:56Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's, that's some, that's some unbelievable advice right there.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:00Jocko Willink?

  That's great advice for any situation.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry.

• 24:04Jocko Willink?

  No, it's all good.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Let it out, man.

• 24:06Jocko Willink?

  It's all good. So, when you, so you fly the, the, um,

• 24:14Jocko Willink?

  the commercial plane over to Vietnam?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  I've.

• 24:17Jocko Willink?

  Or is it a chartered plane?

• 24:18Speaker 01

  No, it was, it was, it was a commercial, it was a, I didn't even know what airlines it was, yeah, but it was a commercial plane.

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  And was there a bunch of other guys going to Vietnam on it? Was all Vietnam?

• 24:28Speaker 01

  All of us, yeah, yeah. We flew from, uh, Frisco or Travis or whatever it is up there and, um, flew to Japan, landed in Osaka, Japan, and, uh, pilot was really nice, he went around Mount Fuji and stuff for us on both sides of the plane and, and, uh, then from there we went to, uh, Konsonut Air Base.

• 24:50Jocko Willink?

  And again, I mean, just to point out to everyone, this is now, this is nineteen sixty, is it sixty-nine yet?

• 24:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 24:56Jocko Willink?

  It's still sixty-eight?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  No, it's sixty-nine.

• 25:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, April sixty-nine.

• 25:02Jocko Willink?

  The height of the war in Vietnam.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:04Jocko Willink?

  And you.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Well, it's one height, yeah.

• 25:05Jocko Willink?

  I guess.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Every, every batt- every battle is an individual's battle, you know, and it wasn't, yeah. You've been there, done that.

• 25:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I, I haven't, I haven't been in the heights of the Vietnam War or any of the heights of the Vietnam War.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, I know, but I mean.

• 25:24Jocko Willink?

  Um, and, and your attitude when you show up, you get there, what was that welcome to Vietnam? You were showing me a picture earlier and you're like, hey, this is me, I just got there, you guys are kind of sitting there.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Me and Bob Zickwitz.

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  Looks like you're getting some kind of an in-brief, like, hey, here's what's going on.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  It was kind of, it was kind of strange, you know, first thing you land on the ground and stuff, just word my weapon. I don't know, because you're obviously in a foreign country and, um, in a hostile country too. And they go, ah, don't worry about it, you get it, you get it, you know, okay. So then they, they, after that, that little gathering there and they said, okay, everybody jump on these, you know, actually Bob and I got split up. He went with another company, I went with the company I, I went with and, uh, it was kind of like, see ya. And, um, so they threw us in the back of a deuce and a half and then we went to, uh, a, uh, God, what was the name of it?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  I should get the name of the places right. Anyways, it was a, another staging area and, you know, you're driving through these villages and stuff and it's like, whoa.

• 26:32Jocko Willink?

  And you still don't have a weapon.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Don't have a weapon, no. You got one guy up there, you know, out of the, they used to have turrets in, in the, uh, deuce and a half and stuff. He's up there with the, the M sixteen and stuff, you know, it's kind of like, where's ours, you know? And so you go into a staging area and you spend a couple of weeks there. And they take you through what they call snake training.

• 26:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  And what it is, is it gets you familiar with the area. And, you know, the ants and the swamps and the, you know, the water and the rain and, you know, and all this. And they, they, they just introduce us to a lot of different things. Well, it was, it was interesting. Because I was a buck sergeant, this one class, this one class, one day, they're all sitting on the bleachers, right? And, and some lieutenant or captain or something says, why don't you sit here and, and just monitor the radio? And I said, yeah, sure. That day, the bleachers collapsed with all the guys on it. And they had broken legs and arms and it was terrible. And I was going, whoa, luck.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  You know, that's all it was.

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  How long was it before, when you got done with snake training?

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:49Jocko Willink?

  And then they, how long was it before you actually went to the field and connected with your unit?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Just like two weeks.

• 27:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  You know, we can have two weeks, something like that. And then I got up to a, an area called Anloch, it was the top of the highway thirteen. And I asked the first sergeant, I, I asked him, I said, well, how many tanks do we have? And he goes, we don't have any tanks. I go, well, I'm a tank commander. He goes, no, don't worry about it. We got something out there, it's got a turret on it and gun out front. And I go, oh, okay. And then I got introduced to the flame track.

• 28:27Jocko Willink?

  And that's a, is that a modified one-one-three?

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, one hundred and eighty gallons of A-POM to your legs. Yeah. So it was a, it was different. And in the hindsight, you know, I'm kind of glad I wasn't on a tank, because that's where my friend Bob, he was only in country three weeks and got hit. You know, I mean, put the new guy in the lead tank, you know, taking RPG through the cupolo and he got shrapnel in the legs and stuff and got sent home. I mean, I wrote, I wrote in country to him numerous times. I'm going, I never got back, never got back. And finally, his mom said, well, now Bob's in Washington, you know, recovering from wounds. I'm going, whoa.

• 29:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The, um...

• 29:14Jocko Willink?

  When you, when you showed up there and you know, you start, you start meeting your, your leadership, what were, what were they like? Were?

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Uh, we had Sergeant Sutherland, he's E6. He was part of the, the Flame Platoon. Um, and I don't know, you know, and Red, Big Red, we call him, he's from, I think he was from Virginia or something like that. He was actually the guy that taught me how to use a flame pack because it's a chemical MOS. I didn't know anything about napalm or anything like that. So it was a learning process. So I rode, um, as a gunner on the track for, well, until my first firefight and stuff. And I was a side gunner on that one. And, uh, so we learned. And it was really, it was kinda nice, you know, you go out and the first few weeks I was there and stuff.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  It was like, the country's beautiful, you know, don't get me wrong. And we were in the Highlands, you know, so it was, it was pretty cool. And, um, so we were going in these villages and we'd take the medics in there and they'd help the kids out and whoever needed help and stuff, you know, and the village chief would divide us off the track and go in and have a little tea with them and stuff in his little dirt hut and, you know, so it was, uh, it was interesting. The Mountain Yard people.

• 30:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mountain Yard's over there. Nice people. I don't think they, I didn't think they, they didn't like the North Vietnamese. I don't think they liked us either, but I mean, they got along with us good, so.

• 30:42Jocko Willink?

  And so that was, I know you did, you did a, a bunch of different like types of missions while you were there, like in terms of you did, let's just ask you like, so what are the, what are the various types of missions that you guys were doing? So one was what you just talked about, you're going out into the villages.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  You're making friends, you're handing out, you know, medical supplies.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Candy, whatever. Yeah. Um, that, we pulled a lot of road security and stuff and, and, uh...

• 31:15Speaker 01

  You know, that was my first firefight. We went out to, to help some convoy. We have tanker trucks. Fuel trucks.

• 31:24Jocko Willink?

  Actual, actual tankers.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Actual tankers, yeah. And they'd gotten ambushed and stuff, so we went out and, you know, you, you tried to suppress that, or we were chasing these guys down and stuff, you know.

• 31:36Jocko Willink?

  So that's your first, that's your first firefight?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  That was my first firefight, yeah.

• 31:39Jocko Willink?

  How'd you take that? The reason I ask this is because we get a lot of guys that are in the military, they're going in the military. And I, I always ask people, what, what were you thinking in your first firefight? So that way, when they're in that situation, they have another little perspective of, of how to think about it. So they can be, because it's hard to get somebody prepared for that, because everyone takes it a little bit differently.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 32:04Jocko Willink?

  So I think the more different perspectives someone can hear, the better it is for them.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Right. So, um, so we were chasing these guys. I don't know how many there were, you know, through the, after this, they ambushed the convoy and stuff. We were chasing them down through the jungle. And, uh, pretty thick in the jungle and stuff, and it's, you know, high brush and trees and, and, um. So we broke out and they tried to keep the flame track kind of in the center of things. So it kind of semi-protected and, and whatever, but I ended up on the flank, on the left flank when we came out of the jungle. You know, because you get in there, you get lost and you're looking around.

• 32:45Jocko Willink?

  And, and the tracks could power through the jungle?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, because there's a lot of tree and high brush.

• 32:50Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Okay, you know, head high or, you know, track high brush and a lot of trees. We broke out into this opening, and I was on the flank. And we're looking across and it was a big rice paddy and there's another section of jungle beyond that. And Red and I kinda looked at each other and we're going, whoa. They couldn't have made a cross there that fast. And just like that, we turned the track back towards the jungle front. And RPG, you know, hit my track. Right in the ass end and then a couple of guys got blown off the top. Red was still on the fifty, I was on the sixty. And it's just instant training jumps in, you know.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  And I saw the three guys that shot the RPG, you know. And just turning the fifty, or sixty on them and Red turned the fifty over there. And, and then by that time, everybody else had turned back towards the jungle and started leveling it.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  The recon outfit that I ran with, um, we had like five tracks. Each track had three fifties on it. Uh, one of them had, at one time had a one oh six.

• 34:02Jocko Willink?

  Each track had three fifties on them?

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. So my track, the track I was on had one fifty, two sixties off, off either side, or one sixty off either side. So it would be like, the six tracks would be like a line company opening fire. You know, a line company was, you know, eighteen tracks or whatever. I don't know how many tracks that were in a line company.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  But we had a lot of firepower. A lot of firepower.

• 34:32Jocko Willink?

  And so did you feel like, like you said, the training kicked in? You saw what was going on?

• 34:36Speaker 01

  I saw exactly what was going on and stuff and we got hit and stuff. And, and then, you know, I, I ripped the sixty out of the mount and jumped off the back and was still firing it, you know, towards the guys and stuff, so, yeah.

• 34:49Jocko Willink?

  Did you use your flamethrower on that one?

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, Red shot, yeah. Just to, just to encompass, you know, he shot way up over the top of the jungle. And a big circle just to make sure, you know, so.

• 35:04Jocko Willink?

  That's a, that's a scary weapon right there.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. It's devastating, but, uh, and man's always been afraid of fire.

• 35:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. There's a, there's a definite instinct with that, no doubt about it.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:20Jocko Willink?

  Now. Would you guys, would you guys return back to a base when you guys got done with these operations? So you'd come back to a base and?

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had a base camp. I had my own little, you know, your underground bunker and stuff, you know, because we took a lot of artillery at night and, you know, the rocket fire and everything. So we had a little underground bunkers and that was, that was, Anlock was a good place. Well, it was the only place I knew at the time, so it had to be a good place.

• 35:45Jocko Willink?

  Would you say it's a good place? Good in terms of the fact that you had it built up enough that there were some creature comforts there?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Well, not a whole lot of creature comforts.

• 35:53Jocko Willink?

  Creature comfort was a bunker.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And that was comfortable.

• 35:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, you know, and then we, a couple of times we'd go out and you'd clear areas a little bit further away from the perimeter and everything, you know, so. And then the town, Anlock itself, was right next door to us. So it was, we'd go through that village, you know, every day.

• 36:14Jocko Willink?

  And what was the reaction from the folks that lived, the local populace that lived in Anlock? Were those mountain yards?

• 36:20Speaker 01

  You know, I don't know. I don't think they were, but I could be wrong, you know, coffee on that. Semi-friendly, we didn't get in contact with them too much. We would, we were ready at that point, after that, that first firefight, I mean, there was, there was a multitude of other ones.

• 36:40Jocko Willink?

  How long, how long into, how long had you been on the ground before you got in that first firefight?

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Three weeks.

• 36:47Jocko Willink?

  So a couple of weeks of snake training?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I landed on, yeah, I landed the 15th and then I think it was May 2nd, April, April 15th I landed and then May 2nd was the first firefight.

• 36:59Jocko Willink?

  And then I, I know some of the notes that you sent over was like, you basically, after that first one, it was just, that's just the way it was. That was just life.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  That was life, yeah, afterwards.

• 37:10Jocko Willink?

  And how would you guys, would you guys take casualties often? When you, um, when you, when you get engagements because you had, you know, armor, it, was your, was your casualty rate lower, you think, than a regular infantry unit?

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Oh, definitely, definitely, yeah. We were a lot better off than a lot of folks who were on the ground and stuff, so.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  One thing about, um, if you do take it casually, they're out of the field pretty fast. So, you're busy doing this, you know, Jimmy's gone, or Johnny's gone, or, or, you know, you don't know until you get back to base camp whether you made it or not, so. Yeah, they were pretty...

• 37:55Speaker 01

  I was thinking about that the other night, you know, because I was going, "Yeah, I don't really remember." I mean, I've seen a lot of guys get hit, you know, when we were doing joint operations or something like that, not necessarily my guys. But, uh, I never lost anybody off my track. And, uh, the other tracks, maybe, maybe one, maybe two, it was very low.

• 38:17Jocko Willink?

  And how much was the enemy using mines on your tracks? And how effective were they?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Um, they're pretty effective.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Depending on where you were, I mean, we had minesweepers and stuff that would sweep 13, Highway 13, you know, it all depend on which firebase they were at, and, uh, they would sweep, and we didn't... My track, not my track, but the track I had, and then I got a new one, I'd given it to a friend of mine, Doug Dodge, and he hit a mine. Actually, the day I gave it to him, he went out on submission, he had the other flame track.

• 38:57Jocko Willink?

  And what, did he, did they lose guys?

• 38:59Speaker 01

  No, just blew the track off.

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  You know, as I'm sitting here trying to figure out-

• 39:03Speaker 01

  It was like a 40-pounder or something like that, 30, 40-pounder.

• 39:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, as I'm sitting here trying to think about, because the enemy in Iraq, which is where I was-

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:10Jocko Willink?

  They were really good with IEDs, and they would take out vehicles, not just Humvees, they'd take out Humvees, they'd take out-

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Tanks, yeah.

• 39:18Jocko Willink?

  Tanks and Bradleys, and even the, even the, uh, mine-resistant vehicles, they would take those things out, because they'd put these big bombs. But, how often were you guys, I'm thinking in my own head, that the reason is because we were on roads, and so, we were in channelized areas, you're going through a city, you're going to go down the road, there's no, you can't drive through the buildings-

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah.

• 39:40Jocko Willink?

  And so, it sounds like if you guys were just driving through- The jungle, driving through the rice paddies.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Not too bad.

• 39:46Jocko Willink?

  You didn't have to be in a channelized area. So there was, it would be harder for the enemy to put the bombs in the, put the mines in the right place because they couldn't predict as well where you were gonna be.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Right. Um, a lot of the roads and stuff were, uh, we did run the roads. Uh, and in some areas and stuff. I mean, I saw a, a M60 tank, you know, he had a 500 pounder. Command detonated, you know, split it in half like that, turned it went off like this, you know, two guys lived, but. You know, it was pretty devastating. And that was in front of us, in front of our column. But, um, yeah, it's, uh, and then I saw a, uh, it was a M47 tank. We called it a duster. And it had, uh, 40 millimeter pom pom guns on the side of it. It was a mean machine, you know? And, uh, he pulled out of our, our, uh, base camp down in, uh, Thunder Three.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  And, uh, before they swept the roads and he was, he was hauling ass and he didn't get hurt. Or anything blew the tracks off, but he hit a mine. Yeah. So.

• 40:48Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's another thing that might've been just the technological advances for the insurgents in Iraq. You know, they had, they had radio command detonated. So you didn't have to run wire. So it was easier for them to, to put mines out there.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we ran into a lot of places like bunker systems and stuff that had wires in them, you know, for tele, for communications and, and things, you know? But, uh, yeah, the, the mines, I was in a situation where there were two tracks in front of me. We, we'd, we'd take this as another firefight we were in and stuff. We had the, we had the, uh, if I'm jumping around, let me know. But I mean, it's, yeah, it's all good. Um, we had, uh, I guess they were the elite forces of the South Vietnamese, a tiger group or whatever they were. Kind of their commandos and stuff. They threw them all on our tracks. And, uh, so we went into this one area and we got bushed and there was nothing but RPGs flying through the air and, you know,

• 41:48Speaker 01

  machine gun fire and, and stuff and. We suppressed that, but all these guys, all the tiger group, they jumped off the track. We're going, "No, no, no, don't jump off, you know, we're gonna move, you know, we capability, you can move back and then read in advance, you know, I mean, you get, gotta think about that, but they just jumped off and they got in crossfires, ended up shooting themselves. But anyways, you talk about the, the mines, we had captured this, this one kid and he was on the captain's track and so we were advancing, we were moving through, uh, past the area where the bunkers were and the captain's track hit a mine and we're just in columns,

• 42:33Speaker 01

  captain's track's here, we got the ammunition tracks, the second one, then my track and so he hit a mine, blew the guy off and he was sitting on the side and stuff, you know, and, well, I don't, anyways, um, so the track in front of me, we're going, "Oh shit", they suckers just into a minefield, what they did, because they had these mines behind the bunker system and stuff and we still, we got in there, the track in front of me, all he did was traverse just a little bit like that, bam, went off and I was like, whoa. So I had to, I got down off the track and ground got in my track through its tracks, you know, because we all went through a column and stuff, but, yeah, it was pretty hairy.

• 43:15Jocko Willink?

  So, I guess I was wrong, the mines were a big threat.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, yeah, yeah, now that I think about it, yeah.

• 43:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because I think, uh, the vast majority of the casualties in, in Iraq were from, you know, from IEDs, roadside bombs, because they're, they just, they were good at it and they, it's a, it's a weapon that you can, you can execute.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  That's scary, I don't see how you guys did it, man, I, that was, that was what I thought was scary than what I went through, so.

• 43:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure, that's the thing that, there's no, that, there's very, a limited amount you can do. Um, to prevent it. Now, we did everything we could and

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 43:53Jocko Willink?

  Uh, actually, my guys never hit a mine in, never hit an IED in, in Ramadi. And that was just, it was amazing. You know, it was a lot of luck.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 44:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's the grace of God looking out for us.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:05Jocko Willink?

  But, but, you know, we also were very proactive in how we planned to do, you know, our missions. We would, we would go after, right after the mine sweeping team would drive, would go clear. We'd go down immediately after them and that way, and then we'd get to where we want to be. And if we had to wait a couple of hours, that'd be fine. We'd wait. But we, we would try and mitigate that risk to the best of our ability. Uh, cause the mines were, were, were such a, a big threat. And it's one of those things that, yeah, well, once you can, I think that's what, that's what, that's what scares people the most. Cause you have so little control over.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 44:41Jocko Willink?

  It's like, hey, if it happens, you're, you could do everything right. You could follow the mine sweeper. Mine sweeper doesn't see everything.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:48Jocko Willink?

  And you can follow the mine sweeper and you can still get blown up.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Go off the side of the road.

• 44:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Look, that's, it's a, it's a definitely a scary thing. And you, you talked about the, uh, South Vietnamese guys getting in a, you know, shooting themselves.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:02Jocko Willink?

  Which is, I believe that's going to happen a lot less when you're in armor. Because obviously it's pretty clear. It's pretty, it's a lot easier to identify, hey, that's a friendly. Cause they're in a 113 like we are.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 45:14Jocko Willink?

  Whereas at nighttime, yeah. And, and, and we, we did have a situation. It wasn't, it wasn't us, but it happened. And that's, I usually use this in it as an example of how easy a blue on blue, you know, a, a friendly fire incident can happen. It happened in Ramadi where a Humvee shot at another Humvee. Which again, the, the insurgents did not have Humvees at all.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:37Jocko Willink?

  And to think of what the mindset is of a kid to look and see another, you know, see movement. That's a Humvee and take it, take some, fire some shots at it. That shows you how nervous guys get and how perception at night is different. And how your mind starts playing tricks on you and you, the things are confusing. And it can be, get pretty, um, yeah, well, just confusing. It's the fog of war.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Nighttime's a kind of, yeah, you know, usually we hunker down at night. You go out and you set out your, your trip flares and claymores and, and all that and.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  One night we did that. And one of those trip flares went off. And we thought everybody was back at base camp. Or back with us, you know. And we started firing. And then these guys hunkered down behind a tree and they yelled and they go, whoa, whoa, it's us. You know, it's like, whoa, okay. I mean, the flare went off, I mean.

• 46:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You need to brief people when you're leaving the perimeter.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 46:39Jocko Willink?

  Lesson learned. Yeah, when I was running training, I always tried to make it. I would, I would inject all that confusion because I wanted the guys to have friendly fire incidents while they're in training so they recognize what the things that, the type of things that cause them.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you know, we, we heard about it, you know, things like that, but I was never involved. Other than that little incident there.

• 47:03Jocko Willink?

  Which, which is.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Could have wasted two guys.

• 47:05Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely. That's, that's the scary thing. Luckily, your marksmanship was a little bit off that day.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Right. They caught us by surprise.

• 47:15Jocko Willink?

  What about the, uh, you know, um, how about the, the arc light, the B-52 bombing? I know you, you were telling one story about that.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that was scary. Kind of scary. We were chasing these guys, uh, and we got a call over the radio. It says, hey, everybody stop. And we're, we're in a, a strike zone. I went, what do you mean a strike zone? He says, yeah, B-52s. And they said, everybody hunker down, get behind the track, you know, it's coming and boom, boom, boom. And you could see, I, we looked up in the sky and I was going, whoa. And there was like five B-52s and you could see all these, they're 500, 1,000 pounders. They're coming down. And, um, I didn't get off the track. I mean, it's a 16 ton track, you know. And what's it gonna do? And sure enough, boy, you know, the shockwave came and that track's rattling around and we're going,

• 48:07Speaker 01

  oh my God, you know. We saw the smoke first and then the shockwave hit, you know. It was pretty intense.

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  How long would one of those missions last for? Like, how, how long would those bombs be going off for?

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Oh, this particular time, you know, it was like one plane after another. And, you know, probably half hour, you know, twenty minutes, something like that for them all to to end. I I'm not sure, you know.

• 48:33Jocko Willink?

  It's an extended period of time.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  It's not like, yeah. Then you go and sweep the area and we found some guys in there, you know. We saw one guy interpreter was talking to him and stuff and he's bleeding from his nose and his ears and his eyes and, you know, the guy's, he's still alive. And he said, all he interprets, so all you could do is every time one hit, he'd bounce in the air. They'd come back down. Another one hit, he'd bounce in the air again. So, yeah, that was intense. We weren't that close.

• 48:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  You know, like he was, but, yeah.

• 49:02Jocko Willink?

  Who would be coordinating that? Would you guys be coordinating those?

• 49:05Speaker 01

  No, we had no idea they were coming. No, it was in a certain area or something like that, you know, then, you know, obviously we got the word, yeah. My best friend, I mean, I, don't get me wrong, I mean, the the B-52 strikes, they did their thing and and we'd sweep areas, you know, we lost a track one time in a bomb crater, you know, that was overgrown and, you know, actually flipped and inside and and so, like I said earlier, you know, Vietnam was a beautiful place, you know, if it wasn't for the war, it'd be great, you know, but there was a lot of bomb bomb craters. Um, the Cobra, I gotta say,

• 49:47Speaker 01

  is our pal. I know you guys had Cobras over there, you had the, what are the black, the

• 49:55Jocko Willink?

  The Apaches.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Apaches and stuff, yeah. But the Cobra pilots and stuff, they were pretty cool. They're pretty cool.

• 50:01Jocko Willink?

  We we've had a Cobra pilot on the podcast.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Have you? Yeah.

• 50:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and he he got shot down.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Did he?

• 50:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, got shot down twice. The second time he got captured.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, oof.

• 50:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, bravest guys I know, they they go into pretty close quarters. I mean, they come in, they used to come right behind us, we'd be in a firefight, they'd come in, you know, fifty feet over your head and they'd Rockets fired, uh, it's pretty intense.

• 50:26Jocko Willink?

  Interestingly, not only do we have, still have Cobras, but you know, in, in Ramadi, um, we had 113s, the same vehicle that you guys drove, we still had it. And they used it primarily for casualty evacuation.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 50:40Jocko Willink?

  But still, um, I, I was in the back of the 113s over in Ramadi, what's that, 30 years, something later, 40 years later.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:48Jocko Willink?

  Using the same vehicles and the same helicopters.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Why not? It worked. Yeah. My track didn't have much room inside because of the napalm tanks and stuff, you know, the other 113s, they had plenty of room. They, they used, I could only carry like 2100 rounds of 50 on my track, you know, they had 6,000 rounds of theirs, you know, so.

• 51:09Jocko Willink?

  How scary is it when you got your track filled with napalm?

• 51:13Speaker 01

  I didn't think about it too much. Well, you know.

• 51:15Jocko Willink?

  I think that would have been in the back of my head a little bit.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  It is, it is, you know, and, and I was, I, we used to play with it every once in a while. It's funny, you should mention that because at the end of shooting it, you could, because it's, uh, gas, you have igniters and then you have raw gasoline. And, uh, so I used to blow out these, I don't know, I might have a picture in there, uh, big billows of flame used to roll out, you know, because I used to pop it and then, then let off, you know? And, uh, we had a chemical guy come up to check out the, the tracks and stuff. And, uh, I was telling him what I was doing, he goes, "You did what?"

• 51:59Speaker 01

  I go, "Yeah, I used to play with it, you know, after, after it empties and stuff, you know, you can roll out this big, I mean, as big as this room." And ball of fire. And, uh, he goes, "Don't ever do that again." I go, "Why?" Because the pressure and, because I didn't know that much about the hydraulics and pressure. I learned real quick, but, um.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  It'll suck the flame back in.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  Eesh.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  It'll blow the tanks up. I was like, whoa. So after that, it was like, the track lasts for like, I mean, if you've powered it on, it's like thirty-two seconds of rod like that flying out. And then you just get rid of the gas, the air. You know, so I think it's twenty-seven hundred PSI or something like that, so. Yeah, you're virtually a bomb. They're ready to happen, yeah.

• 52:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like I said, I think that would have been in the back of my mind a little bit. And you took, you took an RPG?

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:54Jocko Willink?

  And how did that not do massive damage?

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Um, well, the tracks are aluminum.

• 53:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Alright, so, once the RPG's ignited, you have that rod that comes out. And it just went through the back end and then out.

• 53:08Jocko Willink?

  So it did a through and through?

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, right through.

• 53:11Jocko Willink?

  So it must, it must not have detonated or something?

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Oh, it detonated.

• 53:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you had shrapnel and I can show you a picture of all the ammo that I had in the back there, it's all blown up. And it scarred the tank. And went out over the top of the track, you know, on the right hand, right rear side. And, um, yeah, we were just lucky. Yeah.

• 53:31Jocko Willink?

  Rather be lucky than good.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 53:34Jocko Willink?

  And, and, uh, how about the, how well did the tanks work in the jungle as far as like, once it was wet, once the rainy season comes and?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Tanks?

• 53:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  The big ones?

• 53:43Jocko Willink?

  Or, or even the tracks that you drove?

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Um, the mud and stuff was kinda tough. Yeah, it was, it was tough. They took our, um, uh, neutral steer, we didn't have that. And you just had the laterals and stuff to use, because the neutral steer, you got one track going one way and one track going the other and and they'd throw tracks pretty easy in the mud.

• 54:04Jocko Willink?

  Ah.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, it was just right or left. Yeah.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Or back up, yeah.

• 54:11Jocko Willink?

  And then, so you, you got, you ended up getting wounded? Well, how'd you get wounded?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  I don't know whether it's shrapnel from, from the RPG or uh we opened the breach at the fifty and a fifty cal blew up in, in my face and you know, cause we were firing so many rounds and stuff and you get cook offs, you know, it just cooked off and we thought it was done, it wasn't boom, and blew me off the track. So it wasn't it, I went to the medic, you know, cause I had a little, got hit in the eye, that was it. You know, it wasn't like I got shot or, you know.

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  So is it relatively minor?

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely, I know. Absolutely.

• 54:52Jocko Willink?

  Well, we'll thank, we'll be thankful about that one.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, didn't lose an eye.

• 54:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. When um, when you would stay out, how long would you guys stay out in the field for?

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Uh, the longest we did was probably about, I'd say six weeks.

• 55:10Jocko Willink?

  I thought you were gonna say like, you know, a few days, three, four days, six weeks.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Well, that's when we were moving.

• 55:15Jocko Willink?

  And, and you guys would live out of your tracks? You guys must have gotten good at living out of your tracks.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, had everything on it, yeah. Everything you owned.

• 55:23Jocko Willink?

  Would you dig in at night or would you sleep in the tracks?

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Hmm, like I usually, like it was raining or something like that, I'd throw a poncho up over the, over the track and tie it down, then live, then sleep on one of the stretchers that'd be carried. I know, so.

• 55:37Jocko Willink?

  And how many guys were in a track? Was assigned to you and your track?

• 55:40Speaker 01

  We had, most of the recon tracks had five guys on it. Uh, you had a driver, main gunner, two other guys, or four guys. And at first mine was like that. And uh, so we had four, you know.

• 55:57Jocko Willink?

  When you looked at it from like the big picture of what you guys were doing over there, did you feel like, hey, we're making progress? Did you feel like, hey, we're just trying to get by? Did you, did you get any strategic guidance from up the chain of command? Like, hey, this is our purpose for being here?

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Hmm, that's a tough question. Each day was different. Uh, we would have missions that we would go on and sometimes we'd get hit, sometimes we wouldn't. Uh, and those missions would just be going into an area and, and checking it out.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  As far as.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Accomplishing things, you know, it was an individual thing. I mean, it was not an individual like myself or anything, but I mean, as a group, you just, you know, go where they told you to and do what you could. Yeah, it was, uh...

• 57:00Speaker 01

  You're talking about, is there an end result that we saw, or?

• 57:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm just asking, especially from like a leadership perspective. You know, I always talk about the fact that if your frontline troops don't really know what they're doing or why they're doing it, then eventually they're, they don't see any purpose in what they're doing, and that's where you start getting negative reactions. You know, whereas at least if you say, "Hey, look, this is what we're trying to get done today. We're trying to get this area cleared. We're trying to, this is going to contribute to this larger success," or something like that.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  On that respect, yes. Yeah, but I mean, as a big picture, like the whole country and stuff, no, I didn't, we didn't think too much about that. But our individual things, yeah. Okay, we know there's a bunker complex over here, we're going to go into it, you know, so you plan that strategically. I mean, you have people out there, we have LERPs and stuff, you know, that would alert us of, you know, certain areas, hotspots, or intelligence would come down and say, "Okay, there's a thousand troops coming down through the Michelin," or "There's a thousand troops coming out of the Highlands," or "There's a hundred troops over here," you know. That gets your, your blood pumping, because we're only six tracks.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Well, we had other, we worked with the 11th Cav and, and, I think it was the 1st 28th or something that worked with us and stuff. We worked with other companies, too. You know, they would utilize us to go help them, or we, they would help us, or, you know. We were, that's when we were like a ready reactionary force, you know. You'd go out and, you know, base camp got hit, you know, in the middle of the night, so you're up at two o'clock in the morning trying to gather all your troops and stuff out of their bunkers to run a road down to some base camp that's eventually going to get either overrun, or, you know, they're blowing through the wire and, and they're coming inside the compound and stuff. So we go in and reinforce them.

• 58:51Jocko Willink?

  That had to be a tough, that tough kind of operation, right? They're just out of a de-confliction between, you know, if you've got bad guys that are in the, inside the wire...

• 59:00Speaker 01

  No, that's a nasty, that's a, that's a scary thing, yeah.

• 59:04Jocko Willink?

  When you go into that, what are your, what's your thought process going into that?

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Hmm, protect yourself and the guys around you. That's all you could do. You know, I mean, it's just uh

• 59:15Speaker 01

  try to figure out where you, the area they're coming in through, you know, they use a Bangalore torpedoes and stuff, blow holes in a wire and then they, they run on through and it's you know, then okay, you're gonna concentrate in that area. I know, so if a few of them get through,

• 59:30Speaker 01

  they get through. I mean, you have other infantry on, on the ground and stuff that they're dug in, you know, they're taking care of themselves, so they kinda know what's going on. It's kinda like, you don't know everything that's going on, but you can see around you what's happening, so uh you try to diffuse that.

• 59:48Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys, when you guys would come back to base and you'd be in bunkers, you'd still be in the field, you'd still be getting artillery, you know, rocked with artillery and

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Rockets usually, yeah.

• 59:59Jocko Willink?

  Rockets too, huh, great. Uh, would you guys, would you ever get, um, during your time there, would they ever let you go back to somewhere where you could get a break and get some R and R?

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Um, they had in, in, yeah, yeah. Uh, our longer missions and stuff, they'd, they'd, they'd do a little stand down and you know, for three days or something, you know, go drink yourself silly and swim in the pool and, and

• 1:00:28Jocko Willink?

  Where would you go for that?

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  You know, I don't know exactly where it was. It was someplace in country. It's like, like down at uh Lai K or just outside Saigon or

• 1:00:38Jocko Willink?

  So occasionally you'd give, they'd give you a little breather?

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, not much. You know, I mean, I went to Thailand and I went to Australia. You know, that was my big R and Rs and stuff, you know, but uh you know, a few people go to Hawaii. Yeah. I never, you know, I didn't wanna do that. They'd come back and see their folks and stuff. It was kinda scary.

• 1:00:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you mean scary from the fact that it's like

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  No, what happens is you, especially if you When we communicated with our people back here, it's usually by letter tape, you know, a cassette tape, and they'd talk and we'd talk and send it in the mail and stuff, you know. And so the guys that left and went to see like their loved ones and stuff like in Hawaii and stuff, when they came back their head's not, you know, it's not there, you know, it's kinda like, you know, Johnny ain't got the gun.

• 1:01:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  You know, it's, it's, it's not a good thing.

• 1:01:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, people, you know, I've talked about that with a bunch of people, but the fact that nowadays, and there's, there's positives and there's negatives to it.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:47Jocko Willink?

  There's positives and negatives, cause nowadays with the internet, you can literally go face to face with your family every night that you're not in the field.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:01:55Jocko Willink?

  You can jump on there and you can talk to them and you can see them. And I don't know, I'm sure that's good for some people, for me, that's not a good thing.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:02:02Jocko Willink?

  For me, you know, when I was overseas, I was overseas and I, I would talk to my wife and kids like once a week.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:10Jocko Willink?

  I'd call them, we'd talk for five minutes, I'd ask them, how's, you know, the standard, whatever questions they are. How's school? How's everything going?

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:18Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you know, daddy loves you, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll talk to you, you know, next week. And I'll tell you, even, I was very emotionally detached from my family when I was overseas. And it's hard to explain to people, you know, at that time I had three kids, now I have four kids, but, um, you know, I've told the story about the fact that my kids, my wife said, sent me an email that said, oh, can you take a picture of where you sleep at night? Cause, cause the kids wanna see where you sleep.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Jocko Willink?

  And I, we had an old Saddam palace and I had one of the rooms there and I had a plywood, um, you know, bed with a crappy, you know, mattress on it. And the plywood bed, you know, had like a, a headboard on it, right? But it was just blank, it was just plywood.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:03:02Jocko Willink?

  And I took a picture of it on a little digital camera and I was gonna send it to my wife and I looked at it and I realized it was, that it was just, there was nothing there. So I opened up a folder that I had in a drawer and I took pictures of my wife and kids up and I, and I hung them up.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 1:03:17Jocko Willink?

  And then I took a picture. And then I took them back down. I put them back in the folder. I put them back in the drawer because man, I didn't want to see. Again, this sounds horrible to say, but it's it's directly related to what you're saying. Is I didn't want to see my wife and my kids every single day, every single morning when I woke up, every single night before I went, I didn't want to see them.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  You start worrying about them.

• 1:03:39Jocko Willink?

  Cause I got a job to do and the people that I really need to worry about at this point were my guys. And so I totally agree with that, you know, you you want to have some sort of emotional detachment from your family. Now, can you go too far with this? Absolutely. You can go too far with this. And now all of a sudden, you know, you you you get too detached and your family doesn't mean anything to you anymore. And that's going to be a problem as well. So you but I think people got to pay attention to that and find that that that medium, the happy medium, where if they are still enough touch, but it's not, it's not dragging them off because

• 1:04:16Jocko Willink?

  you don't want to let that happen.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:04:18Jocko Willink?

  You don't be focused on those other things when you need to focus on.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you had your quiet times and stuff. You could listen to the cassette, you know, and at least hear their voice, or you get a care package or something, you know, it's got some good cookies in it from home or something like that. So yeah, you take time in your bunker, whatever, you know, and you relax and you do that. But no, as far as running down to the Mars station, which I guess they had a Mars station somewhere in Vietnam, you know, where you could make a phone call back to the States. I mean, I never did. But if you know, a few people did, just just by telephone. But now today, yeah, like you said, I mean, it's like you can see daddy on a big screen.

• 1:04:57Jocko Willink?

  The other thing that I think it happens is is if you're worried about those things, you you start to be less aggressive. And in my opinion, when you're less aggressive on the battlefield, you'll end up in more trouble than if you're if you're if you're offensive.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah. That's

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  The guys that I ran with, uh, they're a pretty tight group. I don't think as tight as you Navy SEALs guys are, but you know, uh, all of us had a different story in life and, and, uh, but as far as getting the job done that we were out to do, we did a pretty good job, I think.

• 1:05:41Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you, I worked with all kinds of guys in the Army and Marine Corps and the camaraderie in any military unit, especially once you're fighting hard, it's, it's all, it's all awesome and it's all

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:52Jocko Willink?

  super tight.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:54Jocko Willink?

  And I'm sure your guys going out on mission for six weeks, living in a track.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it couldn't have been less than that. It could have been less than that, but I mean, any time is, is a long time, you know, when you're at, you're spending the night. There was just one time when we were traveling and we were having supplies hard to keep, keep up with this and stuff, you know, so it was, you know, you, no water, you know, the fuel and, you know, you ended up, you know, bathing in bomb, bomb craters and, and things like that. So, and then you don't know where you're going. I know I, I was a lousy map reader over there because everything's flat. Uh, so.

• 1:06:32Jocko Willink?

  No GPS?

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no GPS, but somebody knew where they were going. We'd follow them.

• 1:06:38Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it's really the technological advances there are very, very high, you know, we got the guys will be looking at a map, a moving map, and it's showing exactly not only where you are, but where all your other friendly guys are. It's, it's pretty impressive.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So we, we had none of that. None of that.

• 1:06:54Jocko Willink?

  So would you, what would you have to pay attention to guys to make sure that, I mean, you know, you're in that sustained combat, making sure that guys weren't getting to a point where, you know, they, they needed a break?

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Um, my drivers and stuff were, I went through quite a few drivers. I mean, not that they, they just went on to do something else. I mean, that was kind of their starting point. And, uh, they drove for me, but you could tell. I mean, I had one driver, he just jumped out of the hatch. We were getting fired at and stuff. He jumped out of the hatch and I was like, get back in dude. I'm not driving it. I'm, I'm on my 50, you know, and we're moving out of the area. You know, cause we're getting away from what was happening. Cause we regroup and go back in. And he goes, ah, I can't do it. And he's throwing up and, you know, cause he's scared.

• 1:07:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  And he's scared and a lot of guys are scared, you know? And, uh, mostly the drivers, cause they're, they're kind of confined, you know? And, and, and, uh, we're kind of freewheeling with the 50s and the 60s off the sides and stuff. So, um, yeah, you jump down and say, you know, get back in the track. Boom, smack him upside the head and you get, you know, you get in and then you leave. But then maybe you go back to base camp and say, maybe that's not the guy for, for this mission. Or these missions, you know? So you go on and do something else.

• 1:08:21Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's, it's an interesting dynamic, cause I mean, I guess maybe you're just a mellow guy. Cause you're telling these stories about doing this and doing that. And you, and you're making it sound like you're going out to, uh, In-N-Out Burger to grab a burger. And in reality, you got, just to, just to put it in perspective, some of the guys that you're with are, are scared and throwing up from fear and so that's.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's horrible. Um, you, you take care of those guys, you know? So you can get them back to base camp or whatever, you know? And then, or they overcome, you know, what, what was bothering them. Um, Rose is a perfect example. Uh, this kid from Des Moines, um, good, nice young kid and stuff, you know? But you couldn't shoot somebody one day and, and, you know? So I, I grabbed the gun right out of his hand and shot the guy. So, but that was just one incident. You know, we, we ran into some pretty heavy duty guys and, and, uh, they took out a track right in front of me. And, and they were in a bunker and they were, they were doing some damage. And, uh, Rose just goes, he froze. Well, he froze.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  You just can't do that.

• 1:09:30Jocko Willink?

  Wait, so how'd you handle Rose after that?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  He mellowed out a little bit and he ended up being a pretty good driver, you know, so I mean, he got over that, I think. But again, that driver moved on.

• 1:09:44Jocko Willink?

  It's another kind of misconception in the, in the military that if you're in a leadership position, you're just gonna bark orders and you're gonna yell and people are gonna listen to you because you, and, and you're just giving these beautiful examples of the fact that like, okay, you've gotta have the understanding of the person, you gotta, they're gonna, people are gonna make mistakes, people are gonna get scared. And it doesn't matter how mad you yell at them, it doesn't matter, it won't help. You need to develop a relationship with them, you need to get to know them, you need to understand them. And then, just because they, you know, you, you learn something about them if they have a shortfall like that. Like you said, maybe I'm not gonna put him in that position again, but where can I use this individual?

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 1:10:25Jocko Willink?

  And, and a lot of times, people view the military, you know, especially, especially when they see a Full Metal Jacket, where it's, you know, the drill sergeant yelling for forty-five minutes in the movie, or the, the drill instructor yelling for, for forty-five minutes in the movie. They think that's what military leadership is. And the classic examples that you're talking about of what real military leadership is like, and it's, really, it's the same as all leadership, but getting to know your people, building a team, figuring out what your mission is.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  And you're not better than they are, you know, and, and, and I, that was pointed out to me one time by a, by a Colonel. And you live with these guys, you live on the track with them, you know, you live in, in, in, in the groups, the sergeants, you know, we, we'll get together and we'll have meetings and stuff, you know, and the guys will be out on the tracks cleaning whatever they're doing. We happened to be filling sandbags one day. Got my shirt off, filling sandbags, you know, my guys, actually, he was one of my drivers, just holding a bag and filling it. And this Colonel, and he was in the communications area. He says, Sergeant Hawk, come here. I go, oh, shoot, okay. And so I went in and

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  says, hey, um, he goes, you see that shade over there? I go, yeah. He goes, go sit down in there and watch your guys fill sandbags. And I'm going, whoa. I'm going, I, you know, these guys are, you know, part of me. He goes, it doesn't matter. You just sit in the shade, watch them do it.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  And he says, if you, if you wanna fill sandbags, you know, I can make it so you can do that. And he was gonna take rank from me, you know, and I said, well, okay. And I, but I had to go and I explained to my guys, I said, look, I'm sitting in the shade over here, you guys are filling sandbags. So I, you know, little things like that.

• 1:12:14Jocko Willink?

  So what was his point in saying that?

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Point was because I was a sergeant and they were privates and they should be doing the work and you're not. Supposed to be, you're supposed to be watching them do the work. And I'm going, it was hard for me.

• 1:12:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:12:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I'll, I'll tell you that you had better leadership instincts than your Colonel at that point. I guarantee it, cause that's, that's what, that's what makes your guys. If you, if your mentality is, hey, my guys will respect me if I sit over here in the shade when they're working. That's just the wrong mentality.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  They knew, they knew what was going on.

• 1:12:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That's truly, that's a, again, that's just a classic example of good leadership. As opposed to what people think, like, hey, and all the sergeants gonna be over here and watching you with his hands in his pockets while you guys do the work. It's like, no, I'm actually gonna be here with you guys, we're gonna, we're gonna build, I'm part of the team. And there's times, of course, there's times where you gotta go to a meeting, you know, you gotta go. And, and your team now looks at you like, hey, you go do your job and we're gonna do our job. And at some point, you're gonna, when you have some spare time, you'll come help us with our job and, and you know what? You're gonna come back at some point and say, hey, I need help with this plan. I need help with, uh, getting this, getting these maps put together, getting these waypoints figured out or whatever.

• 1:13:26Jocko Willink?

  They're gonna help you and it's much more about building the team than it is to, than it is about, I'm gonna tell you what to do. And I'm gonna sit in the shade while you're filling sandbags. As a matter of fact, our new book, our new book, we talk about the fact that, you know, Leif's platoon came back to a, to a, a combat outpost. And there was a bunch of army guys, they were filling sandbags up, they actually weren't filling the sandbags, they were already filled, but they were moving the sandbags up to the rooftop of some of the buildings on the combat outpost. And Leif's like, hey, you know, my guys are gonna help out. And, you know, it's like, the, this, it's a small little, it's a small little, you know, indication of, hey, like you said, we're, we're not better than you.

• 1:14:05Jocko Willink?

  We're here, we're, we're gonna bleed the same blood, we're gonna sweat the same sweat and we're gonna fill and move the same sandbags.

• 1:14:14Jocko Willink?

  Another topic that's come up, um, some of the guys talking about, uh, Vietnam. And believe it or not, I think it's, I think it's 60% roughly of the, of the, uh, service members that fought in World War II. It was higher, 60% were draftees. In Vietnam, it was 25%. Now, there's a bunch of reasons why people focus more on Vietnam draftees rather than World War II draftees, because in World War II, the whole country was at war, right? The whole country was at war. And it was everything from, hey, we're not going to eat meat tonight, or we're not going to get new tires because we need that for the troops. So the whole country is at war.

• 1:14:55Jocko Willink?

  Vietnam was different than that. I mean, as you said earlier, you know, Vietnam war was happening, you were surfing, you know? And so when the drafts started coming, it was like, okay, it's, it was a different reaction. So I think that's part of it. But I have, I talk with, uh, a lot of companies now and people will bring up the question of millennials. And hey, you know, the millennials, they don't want to work and it's really hard to work with them. And I've explained to a bunch of them now that, you know, in the Vietnam war, they had soldiers, Marines that had been drafted, didn't want to go, had their, had a normal job or had their life going on, in many cases, didn't believe in the war, didn't believe in what we were doing.

• 1:15:36Jocko Willink?

  And yet, good leaders would take those draftees and David Hackworth, who's a guy that I've read his books and talk about him a lot, he loved his draftees. And he said, oh yeah, those guys, they fought hard. If, if I was doing something stupid, they would tell me. I actually enjoyed having guys that would raise, because they weren't a career guy that's trying to kiss my ass and say, hey, that sounds great, boss. No, they'd say, hey, that's actually a dumb idea. And so this idea that, that, um, these draftees were, if you, if they, the draftees were under good leadership.

• 1:16:09Jocko Willink?

  The leaders that I've had on here, I've had quite a few guys from Vietnam that were, you know, ground commanders in Vietnam and they said, "Oh, I couldn't tell the draftees from the lifers because they all worked hard, they all did their job." Whereas if you read people that maybe weren't good leaders, that would have an attitude, you know, that was, "Oh, the draftees didn't want to do it, they didn't work hard, they didn't do their job." It's, to me, it's not about the draftees, to me, it's about the leaders. And you're a great example, you know, of a guy that not only said, "Okay, hey, did you want to go to Vietnam in 1968 getting pulled out of, you know, going to college and skiing and surfing?" No, but guess what? Okay, you're gonna go do your job.

• 1:16:52Jocko Willink?

  You not only did your job, did it well, and also stepped up and led other people that were in the same situation you were in.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had great leaders too, you know, I mean, people we can look up to and we had this one lieutenant who became the captain of our outfit and he was with another company and they were in a situation where almost all of them got sniped because we, like the commanders and stuff, the captains, lieutenants and the colonels, they'd all ride on the side of the track, had a little chair for them there, makeshift something or other, but they ride on the side and they went into, to, uh, in Tainan, a place called New Badan and I guess they sniped almost all of them. Anyways, we got this lieutenant from there, he was, I don't want to say he's the last

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  survivor, but I mean, he was one of those that didn't get sniped and he became the leader of our, great guy, great guy. And, uh, but there were other ones too, I mean, everybody got along pretty good. I refuse to go out one time on a mission, it was a, it was a S and D at night and...

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Literally, I didn't wanna, much wanna go, cause I knew it was gonna be a real cluster. And anytime you do, run roads at night, uh, without knowing exactly what you're, where you're going or what you're doing, you know, and they were just gonna go out and search and destroy, and see what they could run into, and I'm, and I'd been there a while, so I'm going. Problem with that was, I did, I kinda overstepped the lieutenant's authority a little bit, and I talked to my captain, I mean, I just, like, I'm gonna look. You know, by the book, the flame track's supposed to stay inside the compound at night. And that's just, I, somewhere, I read it, or something like that, he wanted me to go with him.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  And, um, I said, I don't know, so I talked to my captain, anyways, I didn't, I didn't go. I didn't have to go. They went out, and they came back, and they bumped one guy off, you know, on a hill someplace, you know, he ended up walking back into base camp, and another guy broke his arm on a tree limb, you know, you don't see it at night too well. You can't go busting through the jungle with big lights on. And, uh, but he got back at me. He goes, okay, so you're gonna be protected at night, and, not necessarily protected, but I mean, you're inside the compound. Ended up, I had to take my two sixties off.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  My two guys, that were on those sixties, left, and all I was left with was my fifty cal, the flame, and my driver. So, I'm going, whoa. I mean, that wasn't a good idea. Yeah, yeah. You know, but it could've been worse if we'd gone out on a mission, you know, I don't, I don't know, anyways. So later on, in, um, my time there, I became resupply sergeant in the field. This is kinda after, you know, we'd been through quite a few firefights and stuff, and they said, okay, it's time to slow down a little bit. So, I became resupply sergeant, but it was resupply in the field, so I was still running with the same guys I was with, except I got to fly a, a shithook back and forth to, to

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  someplace else to pick up fuel and, and food and stuff, and then deliver it to, to my guys. Unfortunately, that lieutenant's outfit got fuel last, they got food last, they got, you know, it's kind of chicken shit. I shouldn't really have done anything like that, but I was going like, took weapons away from me, yeah. I mean, that's my livelihood out there, you know.

• 1:20:48Jocko Willink?

  This is one of those, this is one of these things where, again, from my perspective, I was trying to look at things from a leadership perspective. If I've got an experienced guy that's, that's telling me that something is wrong, or telling me I should do something a different way, then I'm gonna listen to him. That's what I'm gonna do. And if you were telling me, hey, this doesn't make any sense to go out at night, this is not a good idea, I'm gonna say, you know what? Okay, let's reconsider why we're doing this mission and how we're gonna execute this thing. To me, that's, that's part of leadership. And again, if I took care of you by saying, okay, tell me, explain this to me, and we had a real conversation about why it is you don't think

• 1:21:31Jocko Willink?

  we should go out, because maybe there's some things that I could have done to mitigate that, say, you know what, since you are in the flame, maybe we'll put you in the back, or we'll do something different. And then, at a minimum, you, you, you, you are happy that I listened to you. I didn't just bark and order you, no, this is what we're gonna do. Because what does that end up turning into? What that ends up turning into is, you got a negative attitude towards me. And as a leader, I don't want you to have a negative attitude towards me, because guess what you end up doing? You end up in a position where you're not giving me my reason why when I want it, which is, which is, again, these things just boil down to having respect up and down the chain of command. And if you listen to the people below you in the chain of command, let's, let's, let's ask this question. If I was in that guy's shoes, I'd say, okay, I got Sergeant Hall, he's telling

• 1:22:14Jocko Willink?

  me he doesn't want to go out. Why is he saying that? Let me listen to him. He's saying it's gonna be hard to maneuver at night. He's got more experience than me. Maybe I should listen to him. And on top of that, what am I going to accomplish tonight? Is it my ego that wants to go out? Because sometimes it's just... No, we're gonna go out. No, no Hall, you're gonna listen to me. We're gonna go out this and that just becomes my ego versus your ego. And of course, can I win that contest? Yes, because I outrank you. So we're gonna do what I said. But what is that? What, how does that really help? It doesn't, doesn't help bring our team together. So that's another thing to think about when it comes to just this stuff from a leadership perspective is, is if you listen to the people below you in the chain of command and you

• 1:22:55Jocko Willink?

  hear them out and you take to into consideration what they're telling you, it is going to, number one, it's going to improve the way you do your job. Because if, who's smarter? Me who just got here or you who've been here for eight months? You're gonna have more information, you're gonna know more than I do. It's gonna make me better if I listen. And we're gonna accomplish our mission better if I listen. And on top of that, it's gonna strengthen the bonds that we have because we're reciprocating thought between our brains and we're listening to each other and that brings us tighter together. So these little leadership lessons are important.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  There was no more SED in at night after that mission though.

• 1:23:35Jocko Willink?

  Well, there you go. So, so and what did he prove by that? You know, I mean, I bet your captain went to him and said, hey, listen, what, what, you know, hey, listen, Lieutenant, if you got Hall telling you we shouldn't be doing this, I'll let you do it tonight because you want to prove your little point. But that's it.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Basically, that's what happened.

• 1:23:50Jocko Willink?

  So, so there you go. So he, he, he cost himself some leadership capital that actually ended up hurting him later on in the resupply.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  I took care of his guys, but I mean, it made it look like he was gonna get the last stuff. But I'd never do that to anybody.

• 1:24:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, you, you took care of him, but you, you made him wait for it.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  Made a little point.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Mr. Rubber Plantation was exciting. So we're cruising one day, we're coming back to base camp. And we're all in a column, we're just cruising along normal like, and the lead track takes a couple sniper rounds. You know, we're going, whoa, and it's coming from the hillside up here. So we pull in a little half shoe, you know, and, and just let go with 1850 calibers or 17, whatever it is, up into the hillside. It's all Michelin Rubber Plantation stuff up in there. And then it quieted down, you know, nothing's coming back. We're going, okay, you know, things are rolling. I look at a corner of my eye and down the road I can see dust coming down there. And here's a red, white and blue.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  Ford Bronco, fairly new one. I'm pretty sure it was blue, I know it was white and red and it had some blue on it. And he comes in and he broads right into our little horseshoe there. I'm just going, "What the heck?" And he gets off, goes over and talks to the Colonel. I think it's Colonel McKenzie here. And Colonel jumps off the track and stuff and this guy's sitting there and he's doing like this. I go, "What the hell?" Jumps back in, he's got his little plantation worker with him too. He jumps back in his Bronco and he takes off and I walked over here and Colonel, I says, "Well, why would that guy come in the middle of this little firefight?"

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  He goes, "Well, we pay fifteen hundred dollars apiece, that guy, for those trees and if a fifty caliber hit that tree, it'd bleed the tree out and bleeds the rubber out." So I'm going, "Oh, that's a good gig." So his plantation, they'll go over there up there and a couple pot shots, don't hit anybody.

• 1:25:54Jocko Willink?

  That's one way to make money off the US government.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. The Michelin, the Michelin plantation was, it was pretty good. They, they, they had this thing though, because there was a lot of movement down through the plantation, you know, of troops and stuff. So they came out with this idea about, okay, we'll have red zones and green zones. A red zone, anybody inside the red zone, one clicks, square, right? And anybody in the red zone, you know, that's free fire. And green zone, no, because you have the plantation workers, you know, stirring the pot and stuff. Well, they used to melt right into the, and we'd get workers that we'd seen before that are in red zones. And we're going, "This is gonna go work out good." So anyways, they stopped doing it.

• 1:26:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  That's my story, I'm sticking to it.

• 1:26:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Like I said, that's one way to make money off the US government, for sure.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  Well, unfortunate.

• 1:26:50Jocko Willink?

  And, so you ended up doing how, how long, how long in Vietnam?

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  Uh, ten months, twenty-two days.

• 1:26:56Jocko Willink?

  And then was that, that was shorter than a normal, normal tour?

• 1:26:59Speaker 01

  I got early out to go back to school. Uh, company clerk one day came out in the field, he's delivering checks and, or money or whatever and, uh, he says, "You know, I'm starting all, you can get early out, they just approve something or other." I go, "How do I do that? You know, I'm up." Um, he says, "Well, you just need a letter from school." You know, and I- Brought my mom by mail. And sure enough, she she registered me at at the college, at Gresham College. And so I got out a little bit earlier.

• 1:27:32Jocko Willink?

  And that was because Nixon was at this point looking to try and downsize.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  Things are slowing down, yeah. Things are slowing down, you know, a little bit. So they wanted to get guys out.

• 1:27:43Jocko Willink?

  Hey, well, before we before we kind of wrap on Vietnam, but one more one more note that you made was about your your medic.

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:51Jocko Willink?

  I just wanted to touch on that one before we come back to it.

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  I wish I knew his name. I wish I knew his name. Um. We were we got in the shit a little bit and he was a CO, a conscientious objector, and a hell of a medic, bravest guy I ever knew. And one day we got in the shit and he was riding on my track and he picked up a weapon and started firing. And to save his ass, you know, and ours, you know, and but he never did it again, never did it again.

• 1:28:21Jocko Willink?

  But then the rest of the time, you're saying he would.

• 1:28:24Speaker 01

  No, he'd brave. Yeah, he was insane.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Good guy, really good guy.

• 1:28:32Jocko Willink?

  And there's there's just, I mean, what kind of that's an incredible.

• 1:28:38Jocko Willink?

  Again, just talking about from a leadership perspective, you got a guy in your unit that's a conscientious objector that doesn't want to be at war. And yet you got him out there and he's risking his life and even in the moment of truth, he actually steps up and.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  No, he could see what was happening.

• 1:28:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. What was going on that he needed to step up? That's going to be a pretty dire situation.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were puffing up out of the bush pretty good and and and, you know, I didn't have any control where they were or anything, you know. You see guys over here, okay, you can fire over there and. They were starting to hit us from the, from the rear and he happened to be there and so he picked up the sixty and started having at it.

• 1:29:21Speaker 03

  What's the rule or like what's the whole situation with a conscientious objector? Like why he doesn't?

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  It's one that serves and but he doesn't wanna, wanna kill anybody. I mean, he doesn't wanna shoot, he doesn't wanna, you know, carry weapons or anything. I mean, he wouldn't even carry a forty-five. He'd carry a medic bag.

• 1:29:39Speaker 03

  And that's just cool with everybody and that's, so it's like an understood thing like, hey, I dig it. Your views on this whole thing, come do your job. We don't expect you to fight or whatever.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's, there's.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  But stop my bleeding.

• 1:29:55Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, of course. Yes, yes.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and he was good at that, yeah.

• 1:30:00Speaker 03

  How common is that?

• 1:30:01Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's not very common.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  It's not very, I don't think.

• 1:30:03Jocko Willink?

  Not very common. I'd say it might have been more common in World War Two. Only because I, and this is like complete speculation on my part. In Vietnam, someone that didn't wanna fight was more apt to just run away to Canada or something or get a deferment for whatever, you know, medical or, but it seems like in World War Two, again, because the whole country was at war, that they would be like, well, uh, you know, I'm just gonna be a conscientious, there's a, there's the movie about the, the guy that won the, was awarded the Medal of Honor.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:35Jocko Willink?

  And he was a conscientious objector and he saved, what, like seventy-five or a hundred people.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, crazy stuff, yeah.

• 1:30:41Jocko Willink?

  And took massive risks to, to make it happen.

• 1:30:45Speaker 03

  Does that go down, go on now, nowadays? Like in Iraq or anything?

• 1:30:49Jocko Willink?

  I, I have never met a conscientious objector myself, no, so I don't know. I haven't heard of it lately.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  That was just something that was, you know, he's a great guy, you know, and he just didn't, you know, that's okay. He's a medic.

• 1:31:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:05Jocko Willink?

  I guess, I guess it really, I guess it really wouldn't go on now because there's no draft. So if there's no draft, you don't need to go. So if you don't need to go, you're just, you're just not go.

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:16Jocko Willink?

  Whereas Vietnam, they had the draft.

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, unless, yeah, unless they have, you know, people, they have their principles where they're like, hey, I wanna go make a difference.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:25Speaker 03

  But, you, you know, they're kinda detailed in their deal.

• 1:31:28Jocko Willink?

  Maybe that person would go in the Peace Corps instead of the Marine Corps.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Or maybe be, be in resupply.

• 1:31:33Speaker 03

  There you go, yeah. They have options now, more.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Yeah, I captured two guys over there one time, and I know the medic, uh, he'd get a little upset, and, uh, I was on a mission, we were, we were tailing some guys that were surveyors or something like that and pulling security for him and stuff. We were coming back, and I was on battalion radio. And, uh, this is after we got, sorry, we got overrun on, at Thunder Three a few days later. And, uh, so cruising down the road, and I see this guy, and we, we had what they called chuhoy back then, we meant they, they give up.

• 1:32:10Jocko Willink?

  Open arms.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so he's chuhoy, and he's got, you know, mantoliers across his chest and stuff, you know, he's in lion's cloth, and he was part of the thirty that hit our base camp the three, two nights before that. And so I was last in the column, I was on battalion radio, and I was trying to get ahold of my guys on the company, and, and I'm on battalion, I'm going, hey, I got guys out there open, mama, I need help out here, you know. So anyway, we pulled over in the mud off the side of the road, and he's sitting in this little saddle on this hill. And so I got down and went up, took the mantolier off and stuff, and he said something, he was talking, he was yelling in the back, and I was going, oh, shoot, this is gonna be somebody else back there, right?

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  And, uh, so I had, I think it was tuggle, and I said, hey, keep an eye on this guy here, you know, and he, they had him. And so I'm looking up over, and I go up over the hill, and here's this guy laying on the ground, got AK-47 beside him like this, and he's laying on the ground, and I'm, I'm going, get up, get up, get up, you know, I was going, and he's, he's going, whatever the guy said was good, because I didn't shoot that guy, you know, and so the other guy, he goes, okay, well, you know, I, the poor guy, he stood up, I made, I made him stand up, and his... Calf was blown off from his knee to his ankle with only his bone, you know, and I was

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  going, oh no. So he left his AK on the ground and stuff. So I went over to him and I put him on my back because I was going to carry him out to the road on 13. By that time, the medics had come out and stuff and my guy, a couple of my guys on tracks and stuff were out too. And so I put him on my back and I carried him out and threw him in the back of the jeep. And this other medic grabbed him by the hair, stuck a 45 in the side of his head. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing, man? I just carried him 50 yards across the street, you know, across the mud. He's not going to do anything. Well, you never know. And I'm going, look, and his legs all blown off and stuff. That AK though,

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  was on full automatic and he was going to go for it. And interpreter talked to him and he says, yeah, he's pointing to the sky. The night that the attack happened, Puff came by and, and he peppered the whole area and stuff, you know, it was beautiful sight, you know, a big ribbon of red and boom, boom, boom, all around the compound. And he must have got hit by it or something, or either that or one of the Cobras or something like that. But yeah, they did damage. It was funny, the interpreter came back and told me, he says, you know, he says, I think you're a doctor. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, yeah, because you helped him and stuff. I was going, well, okay, whatever the mentality

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  is. That guy was a sergeant, was a staff sergeant, I think, in the NBA or something like that, you know, he was, he was up there and the other guy was like a captain or something like that. It was weird, you know, they're little guys and stuff. Those guys.

• 1:35:18Jocko Willink?

  And would you say that those guys would then turn to be that full like um help, help out or?

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  They were a lot of times where they're reintegrated and depending on what area they were, they had come from. And they'd find that out and then they'd, they'd uh, you know, blend them back into the, the society that was there. I guess. I don't know. I never saw them again too, so. Yeah.

• 1:35:44Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's another thing. There's a lot of similarities, but not a lot. There are definite similarities between, you know, what it was like for us over in Iraq and, and I didn't fight in Afghanistan, but the guys that fight over there, you know, just the, and then in Vietnam, just trying to tell who's a good guy and who's a bad guy and it's, it's one of those things. It's uh, there's no easy way to do it.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  No, there isn't. And, and a lot of the villages and stuff were pro VC villages and stuff and we knew that and the daytime was fine. At nighttime, I don't want to go through there. I know. We had some, some girl um, get into our compound and once the gates were closed and stuff, they found her inside. And she was from the village, which was a pro VC village and I don't know, they got some intel and stuff from her and, and all that. And the next thing you know, the recon's mounting up and they're going to take her back to the village. And I go, hey, I'll go, you know, I'll ride shotgun on one fifty off one of the recon tracks. And uh, so we pulled into this village, wish boned it, you know, and make sure and they kicked her out of the back of this track,

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  threw her out of the bike and she's yelling all the time. It's, no, no, they'll kill me, they'll kill me, they'll kill me. I'm whoa. But the interpreter goes, nah, should be alright, you know. I was going, whoa, okay, whatever. At that moment though, when we did, we pulled into this village and stuff, I saw this, what I thought was a, a head coming up over one of the, the little hooches and stuff that they had. Almost fired, but but didn't and ended up being a like a palm frond or something, you know, just popping up over the ridge of this this hooch and stuff. So it was kinda that was kinda scary.

• 1:37:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I would think.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  Fun mission though.

• 1:37:25Jocko Willink?

  The the insurgents definitely in Iraq, if they found out in Ramadi, if they found out that somebody was working with the coalition, they'd they'd kill them. They'd they'd skin them alive. They did that. They'd behead them. It was pretty awful. We we the US coalition forces were very careful not to ever indicate that any of the people that were working with the coalition, especially when I first got as as the transition happened and the insurgents got were on the defensive more and the local populace realized that we were going to stay and protect them, they got more we they got more verbal about like, hey, no, there's a bad guy down there. And and and the the momentum shifted towards the local populace just being like, hey, we're good. You're good. Those guys are bad.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:10Jocko Willink?

  And there was less fear. And that was really one of the tipping points. So you get this early release program. And how's that? You just boom, they pluck you out of Vietnam, you get a letter. Well, how'd that go down?

• 1:38:25Speaker 01

  Um, no, actually, the Colonel flew into where I was on uh, this other track. It was one of those command tracks that had a little bubble on top.

• 1:38:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, the five. I think it's called a five seven seven.

• 1:38:38Speaker 01

  Whatever. I I don't remember. One one fours or something like that. I think it was what it was. And Colonel's Colonel came flying out there in his helicopter and stuff. And came into where we were staged. And he says, Sergeant Hall, there's a ride out of here. What are you talking about? He goes, no, he doesn't like sticking on the ground. It was a little loach, man. It was a great, great helicopter ride. And he goes. Go and I mean, I I got a duffel bag and I started giving stuff away, my camera, my tape recorder and nothing, you know, and just grabbed what I could and jumped on this helicopter and boom, we were up in the air and I was still trying to do the four-point buckle. I didn't know,

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  I've never flown in one of those little ones before, you know, trying to put the buckle on and stuff and he just reached over and went like that and was done. And then we're up in the air, tree top, heading to Douchiang and that was it. And then went back to base camp, got my stuff out of the locker, caught a ride on a, I don't know, was it caribou? I don't remember. Anyways, anyways, got down to down to Tonsonute, down Saigon and stuff. And it was quick. It was quick. Like, I missed the first flight, you know, and I was down showering and shaving and Sergeant came up and says, hey, you just missed the champagne

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  flight and it was a nice one too. And United Airlines, I think it was. And they, so I said, well, so I had to wait around another day. And then finally, we left and got on this World Airlines. I don't know, it was either Korean or Japanese or something like that. But yeah, they flew us home. Yeah, it was quick.

• 1:40:27Jocko Willink?

  Now, you you fly right back into San Diego?

• 1:40:30Speaker 01

  No, we went to

• 1:40:32Jocko Willink?

  San Francisco?

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  They said, yeah, I went to Frisco, but they, we got de-roasting in Oakland or something, I think it was, or whatever it was down there. And so they give you all your, all your stuff and you give them all your stuff that you have, this military-wise, and they go, yeah, you can catch a cab out there at the airport. I said, okay, all right. Went out there, took a PSA flight back.

• 1:40:57Jocko Willink?

  So now we're talking nineteen

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Sixteen seventy.

• 1:41:01Jocko Willink?

  Nineteen seventy.

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, February.

• 1:41:03Jocko Willink?

  So, and this is the height of

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  Nineteenth.

• 1:41:05Jocko Willink?

  The height, the height of the anti-war movement.

• 1:41:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:11Jocko Willink?

  Was, what was that like?

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Not too bad up there, San Diego and stuff, we had some hippie guys out front when I came out and I wasn't really too worried. Uh, glad to be home and stuff, saw my brothers and stuff. That's bad, you know, not spit on, but at my feet and, you know, the, wasn't the baby killer or stuff. I forget what he said, you know, but it was like, you ignorant ass. And this, saw my brothers and stuff and took off.

• 1:41:40Jocko Willink?

  And that, that was really the extent of the, uh, of the, of the war protesters that you saw, some jackass at the airport?

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was it.

• 1:41:50Jocko Willink?

  Was that, were you, did you just look at it like you just did just now, which is like, yeah, whatever, this guy's an idiot?

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, what do I do, punch him?

• 1:41:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  At that point, I might have killed him. No, no, I, it just, you know, it's just like irritated me a little bit, but then I get in fear, you know, cause my brother saw me and stuff, so. Brother John and Doug came and picked me up.

• 1:42:14Jocko Willink?

  And then, um, so now you're, you're done. So this is like, this is a period of what, like three days, four days, five days or something like that?

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Less than five days.

• 1:42:23Jocko Willink?

  Less than five days, you go from the jungles of Vietnam.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  Drop you off and you're back in the world.

• 1:42:28Jocko Willink?

  And then you're back in the world.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:31Jocko Willink?

  Well, did they give you, did they give you any kind of?

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  No. There's the door right there.

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  Get a cab.

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a funny thing too, cause, cause I went through NCO school, right? So they had track of all the sergeants and stuff that were in Vietnam. And so, moving back to Zeon, Zeon, I think, they had, you had to go through certain bungalows or buildings and stuff and I went through one and he goes, he gave me a name and he marked it off, he goes, oh, you're one of them that made it. And I go, what do you mean? Says, yeah, you're on, on the list here. You made it. Okay, fine. I didn't understand what it was, but they were counting how many uh NCOs from that period uh made it through.

• 1:43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, but no, there wasn't, there was no debriefing or, or, you know, have a good time or, you know, this is what you should do or. And uh.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  Good job, America.

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  Well, no, they didn't know.

• 1:43:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  They didn't know.

• 1:43:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:36Speaker 01

  I'll talk later.

• 1:43:36Jocko Willink?

  Well, one of the big things that gets pointed out a lot is in World War II, when you finished World War II, at a minimum, you got on a ship with.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  And you talked about it.

• 1:43:44Jocko Willink?

  You got on a ship with five hundred other guys, thousand other guys, and you rode with them for six weeks until you got back to America. And during that time, you talked about everything and you kind of got it off your chest and out of your system.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:43:56Jocko Willink?

  And then you got back and it was, you, you got that decompression time. We didn't even know what it was called. But putting you, you know, from the jungles of Vietnam to Main Street, San Diego.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:06Jocko Willink?

  But how did you feel about it, though?

• 1:44:08Speaker 01

  Um, didn't know any different.

• 1:44:10Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  You know, how was I supposed to feel? You know, I figured that happened to everybody. You know, the only thing is that I had a family to go to. A lot of guys did.

• 1:44:18Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 1:44:26Jocko Willink?

  It's all good.

• 1:44:29Jocko Willink?

  Well, we're, we're, we're glad that you had a family and glad you, glad you came on home when you did.

• 1:44:37Jocko Willink?

  Did you, um,

• 1:44:40Jocko Willink?

  did you jump right back into college? Or did?

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Uh, that was a, yeah, I kind of blew that away. You know, I take astrology, geometry, and whatever, and you get a classes all mixed up, and that just wasn't for me.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  But I did get out. You know, what are they gonna do, send me back?

• 1:44:56Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:44:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so, so you, you were still in the army? They outprocessed you. Yeah, okay. They outprocessed you.

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you're, you're good for, you know, you're still in reserves or whatever it is for a couple of years. Yeah.

• 1:45:11Jocko Willink?

  So, so what'd you do? What'd you do when you got back?

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  Kind of chilled for a while, you know, and then I went to work with my dad at the unemployment. Unemployment. I did get unemployment for a year, I think it was, or six months or something like that. That's another funny story, you know, the people at the unemployment, you know, ask you, well, what did you do in the military? Or no, what do you want to do? And I go, I want to build wooden boats. Well, we don't have any, you know, wooden boat builders and, but they did in San Diego, but. And, well, what did you do in the military? And being a sarcastic little ass, I was, I said, well, I killed people. You got any jobs for that? You know, I was just being sarcastic. I, I didn't know what to say.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  But anyways, I went to work for my dad and at the

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  employment agency for a while. Then through that employment agency, I got a job at a building material warehouse down in San Diego, Case Products. And I worked there for quite a while, for a little while. But I used to meet contractors and stuff, you know, that came in there and they said, hey, you want to work on the weekend? I go, yeah, you know, and before you know it, you know, I was working in a cabinet shop. And then after that, I was building houses and, and then

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  I worked for the gas company in the eighties.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  I stayed in uni for about eight years and stuff, and I never saw this little guy grow up or anything, you know. It was kind of like I worked at nights and days and, and afternoons. And then I got the job at the, I quit that. I quit a lot of things during that period.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  Then I got the job at the Hotel Dell.

• 1:47:00Jocko Willink?

  Nice. What, what, what point, how old were you when you had Josh?

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  I was thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-two. I got married when I was thirty-two, so it was like thirty, I was thirty-three or something like that. Yeah. And then I got divorced when I was forty-two.

• 1:47:17Jocko Willink?

  Do you think you bounced around from a lot of jobs because you were looking for something like you did, you weren't quite sure what you wanted to do?

• 1:47:23Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  The SCG and EVA, that was a good job, you know, I mean, that was an excellent job.

• 1:47:29Jocko Willink?

  It was just a matter of finding a job.

• 1:47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and people helping you and stuff, you know, and they go, cause I didn't, I was lost. I didn't, you know, after, you know, the divorce and stuff, you know, I was just wandering, you know, in my mind and literally wandering. And then I worked the thunderbolt races for a long time during the eighties. And a couple of those guys said, hey, you know, you gotta, you know, try to go to the, uh, the Dell, you know, so I went down there and they go, what do you do? I says, well, I'm a carpenter, you know, I had been in the past. And, oh, yeah, okay, so they hired me for ten bucks an hour, you know, I said, well, that's better than nothing.

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  And it was, it was a good job, it was a good career move, you know, so, good family down at the hotel.

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you got to be in Coronado.

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it was like a little, you know, go over the bridge, boom, your, your day's done, you know. It was like a little Disneyland. Then this kid, he came along and, and was over there too. Diligently doing his homework at three thirty in the afternoon in the shop.

• 1:48:42Jocko Willink?

  All right, so that brings us to Josh.

• 1:48:45Jocko Willink?

  Josh Hall, and so did you, where'd you guys actually live? Did you, you didn't live in Coronado? Okay, so you still, you lived in Spring Valley, but you worked in Coronado? And that meant you spent a bunch of time in Coronado?

• 1:48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, basically, what had happened, I think I was nine when you guys got divorced. Ten, so I stayed at my mom's place in Claremont for two more years. Uh, and then the middle of eighth grade, I'm like, this isn't a good scene. Um, so called him up and he came and got me and that was it. I lived the rest of, we finished out eighth grade in Claremont and then lived in La Mesa, well, Spring Valley.

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:19Speaker 02

  And would go over the bridge together every day and it worked out. I played, I didn't play three seasons of sports, but I played two, played soccer for four years, baseball for two, and then golf for two. So by the time practice was over, he was off work and we'd go home. Yeah, so it was, it was cool, it was tough breaking in, you know, that, I think out of my graduating class, maybe, I want to say up to thirty kids have been. In school together since kindergarten. And so when you're trying the new kid on the block and you know, of course I had long blonde hair and was a surfer and wear Hawaiian shirts all the time. You know, it took, it took about six months to kind of break in and, and make, make friends, but it was great.

• 1:49:58Speaker 02

  Um, I wouldn't trade anything for going there. It was a great school to go to for four years and a couple, three or four families like really brought me in and made me feel welcome. So it was, it was a good move.

• 1:50:08Jocko Willink?

  So what year did you start surfing? How old were you when you started surfing?

• 1:50:12Speaker 02

  Well, really started surfing? I mean, we'd, I'd gone to the beach my whole life. We'd camped at South Carlsbad State Beach every summer. I mean, my grandpa boogied into his eighties, literally like would walk a boogie board down the stairs and get in the water. So I always grew up with it. Um, I have an older half brother that was a big time surfer, but at that time he wasn't the nurturing supportive type. He was the more, I'm gonna take you out and drown you type. So unfortunately I kind of missed an early window to get started, but um, I'd say I really got into it around 14.

• 1:50:42Speaker 02

  End of eighth grade, you know, we're like all boogie boarding, whatever. And then by ninth grade, we got, you know, got into surfing with my friends from, the great thing was is even living in Spring Valley, every weekend my dad would drive us, cause my friends, we all grew up in Claremont, but before high school, um, one of my best friends moved down to PB. And so basically all summer long, that's where we lived all weekend long. That's where we lived. And so, thankfully to this guy, he would drive me from Spring Valley on a Friday afternoon. Well, we'd go home and then drive out and then he would come Sunday night, pick me up.

• 1:51:14Jocko Willink?

  And surf the entire weekend?

• 1:51:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, just, yeah, hang with, hang with friends. And so, yeah, I was like 14, seen, or freshman year of high school, pretty much, which is late now. I mean,

• 1:51:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:25Speaker 02

  Those kids are surfing when they're like three now.

• 1:51:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, now their kids are, now their parents.

• 1:51:28Speaker 02

  They're pro by the time they're 14.

• 1:51:29Jocko Willink?

  Now their parents are pulling them out of school to homeschool when they're six years old.

• 1:51:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:33Jocko Willink?

  So, and, and let's, let's hear about, I mean, how did you start? How did you say to yourself, you know what? I like riding surfboards, but I want to start making them?

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  It really started with ding repair and you know, just I wanted to be a surfer. I mean, we were all surfers. We had a huge group. We were called the Felspar Rat Pack and there was 30 of us every weekend from Mission Bay High, Madison, Claremont, UC. I, you know, I would show up and we would conglomerate at PB every weekend for like four years in a row. It was, it was pretty incredible. And I just, I don't know, I had such an affinity for surfing and in that neighborhood were a lot of people in the surfboard industry. You know, you had, um, Bird Huffman had South Coast, Skip and Hank had Harry Surf Shop and then Joe Roper used to have like his first original shop down there on Felspar.

• 1:52:24Speaker 02

  But so these guys were around all the time. So it just kinda was like, whoa, that guy's making a living building boards, you know? Although they're complete legends and in different ways, but I, that's how it started. I would like take boards home and ding repair and, um, you know, you know, hack on my friends' boards and charge them 20 bucks and.

• 1:52:45Jocko Willink?

  What about the fact that, okay, what years is this?

• 1:52:49Speaker 02

  This would be 90. So I went into high school 94, 95. I graduated in 98, so.

• 1:52:56Jocko Willink?

  So how did you go from being into like what a normal 90s surfer, type of surfer and type of surfboard and type of attitude to being like, okay, you know what? I'm going to actually ride longer boards. I'm going to be more a traditional. Where did that come from?

• 1:53:14Speaker 02

  Um, I, well, to be honest, what really got us sparked in like my group of friends into surfing was Endless Summer 2 had just come out. Like literally, I remember sitting in the third row watching it and he was with me and my friend Joe and it just was like, whoa. And just that kinda sparked, I think, the style of like, that's how we want to surf. Um, I never really, I think to this day, I've never ridden a proper shortboard. I just. You know, and then what he could afford to get me too, you know, my first board was a broken in half guy talking on the longboard that got fixed at Island Surf, you know? And that's what I rode. And so that that was the vehicle. And, you know, I think I got a couple swap meet scores for 50 bucks. Like I remember I had a rocket fish. So I did

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  ride a couple smaller boards, but never a proper shortboard. You know, maybe, I guess I wasn't that, you know, like, I wasn't like a big guy, but I don't know, I just didn't, I liked the flow and just the style parts of it. And then, right after Endless Summer 2, um, our local hero Joel Tudor came out with, I think, his first movie. And then that was like, okay, yeah, that's how we want to try to surf. And I'm still trying to surf like that.

• 1:54:23Jocko Willink?

  Isn't everyone?

• 1:54:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. But yeah, so that was kind of the combo. And, and again, I think it just was being able, you know, Manny down at Island Surf when we were in high school, you know, hooked us up on a board. And that's just how it was. That's how we started. Oh, well, actually too, so I guess I should backtrack. Um, right after that, so I was playing baseball. Started in majors, which was 11 and 12, and then went into pony league and I played two years in high school. Well, my baseball coaches at Claremont owned Diamond Glassing, Bob Bochy. So, and all the kids on the team were like La Jolla Shore script, you know, rusty rippers, right? They're all riding their shortboards. And so that kind of, I was like, oh, okay. And, and just being able to go to a factory back then, you know, they

• 1:55:07Speaker 02

  wouldn't let you look in a room. You couldn't ask a question. They would just be like, get the fuck bail, you know, like, we'll build your board, but don't, you know, like, don't go nosing it around, you know? Um, that's how it happened. Uh, we ordered a Bob, uh, through Bob, uh, Roger Beal shaped me like a two plus one, high pro 90s, perfect 90s longboard. And then, um, my next board, that one broke, broke in half. And then the next board, it was pretty classic. The start of my sophomore year, I broke my leg in soccer and my board, well, broke the board first, then my leg in soccer the next week. So I started the school year out on crutches. Um, that was pretty funny. But, uh, the next two boards I got were, was a Stu Kenson 90s high pro, you know, uh, longboard. And then

• 1:55:51Speaker 02

  Joel's movie came out. And I went, oh, I want a nine, four, round pin, single pin. And so we went back to Bob and Bob's like, yeah, yeah, Stu can shape anything. And what's crazy looking back now is when I went to order that board, Stu was like, hey, come in my room. Check this out. You should get one of these. And it was the first six, six karma model that he had shaped for Joel, right? So that anyways, so that, yeah, that's how that we had that crazy end with, with the Boche's, you know, as a baseball coach, but owner of, you know, one of the biggest glass shops, I think in surfboard history.

• 1:56:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's, and you still, at some point your brain is saying, I just don't want to ride these boards. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna shape these boards.

• 1:56:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:34Jocko Willink?

  What, what, how old were you when you said to yourself, I'm going to shape a board?

• 1:56:37Speaker 02

  I don't know. Sixteen? The, the, okay, so.

• 1:56:41Jocko Willink?

  Do you watch Morning of the Earth or something?

• 1:56:43Speaker 02

  No, no, not, no, I didn't even know about that. It was just, it was more like, well, we, we would watch the shortboard videos, like all the lost videos and, you know, that's what we'd watch, like the, the Taylor Steele stuff, like momentum and focus. Like that's what we watched, but somehow like I ended up just being the longboarder in the group. So did my friend Joe, but um, I think it was just, I wanted, you know, he was a carpenter, so I think I kind of have that in my genes. And I really just wanted an, an excuse to be able to keep surfing as long as possible, you know? And I thought, well, you know, shaping boards might be the way. And um, you know, we, he came down, dropped me off on a Friday or whatever, and, and Skip was out picking up trash.

• 1:57:29Speaker 02

  And, and I was like, Dad, I really want to, you know, maybe I, maybe I could watch him shape a board, right? And so he goes, okay, I'll go ask him. And he gets out and I'm like sliding down my dad's truck. Oh my gosh. Super embarrassed.

• 1:57:40Jocko Willink?

  Tell us about, because you know, obviously not everyone that listens to this podcast surfs and even, even some people that surf, well, no, most people that surf. Tell us about Skip Fry.

• 1:57:51Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, Skip Fry, he is, um, I mean, he's, he's such a legend. It's hard to, I mean, original. Surfer Shaper from San Diego, grew up in Bay Park and went to Hawaii with the Wind and Sea Crew back in the day and really became one of the top surfers in that era and still is. And he, I mean, I, my words aren't going to do him any justice, but he's sort of the, kind of, the, one of the last guys from, say, the golden era, you know, in that, that mid to late 60s that really designed and surfed and tested and, you know, and would go back and redesign and retest and of that era that's still around. He's still doing it. He's 77 and he's more stoked

• 1:58:33Speaker 02

  now. He's changing his fins. Oh, I did, you know, I rode this board with this fin setup. And, I mean, that's the first 10 minutes of any conversation with him, not like, oh, how are the waves? He's like, no, but I rode the, you know, he's just, to see somebody at 77 is stoked as a 14-year-old, that's, that's Skip. I mean, again, I can't, I can't do him any justice as far as what he means to, not just me, but the sport in general. I mean, he really is our compass for...

• 1:59:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, I'm sitting here, as you're sitting here, as you're sitting there, trying, struggling to describe how you would describe Skip and what he means in surfing. You know, I guess, I guess just the word legend, like, he is, he is the legendary Shaper surfer.

• 1:59:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:19Jocko Willink?

  He's sort of the, the pinnacle of what that means. And if you say his name, everyone just goes, oh, yeah, well, that's, that's Skip Fry.

• 1:59:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:28Jocko Willink?

  And, and at some point, so, so, so your dad, you know, Dave, you just said, okay, well, I'll go ask him. I don't care. I'll go talk to him.

• 1:59:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I told him, I says, he's just a man, you know, and, you know, and I, I went up and I said, excuse me, Mr. Fry. And I asked him, I says, hey, can my son watch me shape a board? And he goes, nah, you know, I got, I got burnt by somebody or something like that, you know, and, and took some of his shapes and I don't really do that. But he says, you know what? I'll watch him in the water and just check him out. And then it went from there.

• 2:00:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really was just an organic... Thing, so I was eighteen, San Diego State, I went to state on grant money because my mom wasn't around and he didn't really make that much money, you know, at the time. And so I get this grant check, my freshman fall semester, you know, and I'm going, well, wait, okay, I've already got books, school's paid for it, and I've got that much money left? So I went down, and at that point, you'd walk into Harry's, Donna was at the desk, you'd talk about what you'd want, and she'd go, okay, go to Mitch's here, get this blank, you'd wait for a week, get the blank, go back, and then you'd hopefully talk to Skip, you know, a lot of people Donna would just deal with. But thankfully, Skip came out,

• 2:00:48Speaker 02

  and he's like, well, what do you want? And I go, well, I know your boards are really different from everybody that in the neighborhood that rides them, you know, you can ride a Fry, you probably won't ride other boards. And so I just kind of want an introductory model, you know, what would be a good representation for me to to learn, you know, want to surf your style of boards. And so it was a nine-six egg, two plus one. And anyway, so from when I dropped the blank off until the shape came, it was about three months. And just organically from surfing, again, his shop was on the street that I grew up surfing, so we'd see each other in the water. I, Donna kind of, I, you know, struck up, I mean, a relationship with her, she kind of took me under her wing as like one of her kids, quote unquote,

• 2:01:31Speaker 02

  and, and, and just organically became closer and closer with him to where, finally, I got the call, he goes, hey, you're up, I'm gonna shape your board tomorrow, why don't you come down and we'll go for a surf, and then I'll shape your board and you can watch. And I go, all right. I was like, freaking out, I mean, I'm like, running across campus, right, to get home and like, go home and tell my dad. And so that's, that's what went down. We met at the shop the next day, and he pulled out two of his personal nine-six eggs, and we walked around the corner, down the stairs, all my friends were across the street, sitting on their tailgates like, what? You're getting to ride a Skip's personal? And then, you know, and, and we went out and surfed really fun PB, like, for a couple

• 2:02:14Speaker 02

  hours, like, a really good session. And we went into the room, and I just sat on the toolbox, and It was, I don't know, it felt like it was like 10 hours long, but it probably was only a couple hours. But man, I was jacked. I was so jacked that driving home, I almost fell asleep driving home, you know?

• 2:02:32Jocko Willink?

  And you hadn't shaped a board at this point?

• 2:02:35Speaker 02

  We, okay, so the summer after my senior year, I just was like, I'm gonna go for it. And he let me build a proper sized shaping room in the garage. So I'd worked, there's a wall in Coronado across from the golf course that I spent all summer working with a master bricklayer. And so I made good money. And so we put it into a shaping room and literally split the garage in half. I had an eight by 16 by eight, right? So a proper, even by today's standards, a proper room. And so I had that prior to, you know, I knew, the board was coming from Skip. And so that was built, I got to watch that. And I think the very next week I got a blank and went for it, you know?

• 2:03:15Speaker 02

  And then of course butchered it. I don't even think that one got glassed, but yeah. I actually think we tried to thin it out with a router. Imagine how many passes with a half inch router, you know, I mean. Didn't know. See, back then there was no. I didn't have a planer then. All the old guys were like, piss off, Graham. Like, I'm not telling you what I, how to do that or what tool to use or like figure it out.

• 2:03:39Jocko Willink?

  And there's no YouTube at this point to go and just watch everyone shape boards.

• 2:03:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you really were just literally on your own. And yeah, so we butchered that first blank and then got to watch Skip shape that egg. And then I went back, went, okay, and had a little more, you know, with the leftover money from the, from building that wall, I bought a planer and slowly started. He got me a block plane and a sure form, right? So kind of just real slowly put the pieces together like, okay, I can at least thin this thing out and not, you know? But, and then so with, with, that was 98. Uh, fall of 98, spring of 99. And so for like the next two and a half, three years, like every day was surfing with Skip and watching him, like, that's just what went down. Like I'd just go and hang out. Well, he wouldn't even say anything to me and I'd just hang out

• 2:04:28Speaker 02

  in the corner of the room, you know, and I'd do errands for Donna or I'd watch the shop if they had to go to a lunch meeting or whatever. And, um, yeah, that was a real, real special time to be able to do that.

• 2:04:41Jocko Willink?

  Of every person that would have wanted to be in that position, what do you think it was that he saw in you that said, you know what?

• 2:04:51Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 2:04:52Jocko Willink?

  I'm good with this kid.

• 2:04:54Speaker 02

  I don't know. Attitude. I have no idea. Yeah, I really don't know because there's been dozens of other people that have probably tried to put themselves in that same position. I don't know. I think part of it was maybe having Donna be like, yeah, this is a good kid. You know, he's one of my kids. There's another guy, Ryan Levinson, that she kind of gave the same title to. And so we were around a lot and I think slowly, you know, I would, you know, Skip saw who I was and my demeanor and that type of thing and how stoked I was, of course. I mean, how could you not be? But so, yeah, I don't know. Um, I don't know. Look where we're at now. It's blowing my mind.

• 2:05:33Jocko Willink?

  At what point did he let you take a pass with the planer?

• 2:05:38Speaker 02

  Well, you know what? I haven't. I didn't. I didn't in his room. Um, but the way just going and watching and talking and having him show me this, I would go home and literally repeat that step, you know? So it was kind of like, it wasn't until later on that we started kind of building. We filled maybe 10 or 12 boards together where, you know, thin one out and template it and he'll finish it or vice versa. Um, but yeah, those early years, it just was like studying, watching. I don't know if that's just how I grew up. Like, that's how I started playing golf because I'd watch golf on the, on the weekends with my grandma all the time. And then I'd go out and hack dirt all over the middle of the street. But then, you know, just like by watching and doing, watching and doing, I don't know.

• 2:06:23Speaker 02

  So that's kind of how that came about.

• 2:06:26Jocko Willink?

  And then what was the growth of from you butchering blanks to you selling a blank for, or selling a board that you shaped for, to break even? And then to eventually make, you know,

• 2:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:40Jocko Willink?

  10 bucks, 30 bucks, 50 bucks?

• 2:06:42Speaker 02

  I mean, so yeah, I shaped, the first board I shaped was a nine, five long board. Um, and then the second one was a rocket fish. And then that whole crew that I grew up with at the beach, like, oh, you're building boards? Like, well, yeah, I want to. I'll build you one, you know, just charge you half the blank cost. And so if it's a longboard, blanks are a hundred bucks, charge you 50 bucks. And then, you know, Roper, Joe Roper had his ding repair down on Marina Boulevard and he would glass them. In fact, that was really cool too. When Skip shaped that board, he goes, "Okay, you can take it over to Joe's." Cause he would always take it to the glasser, right? So that was really cool. So Joe glassed my first fry and my first board I ever shaped. So that's pretty, kind of a cool little story there.

• 2:07:24Speaker 02

  But yeah, Joe would do that. And he still does it. He still glasses, um, kids like my, like, like me now, building their first, second, third, 10th board. And he's glassing them still. It's really cool. Yeah.

• 2:07:35Jocko Willink?

  So then, then it just started escalating. And you started actually where someone outside of your crew says, "Hey, I wouldn't mind one of those boards too." And now you can charge him the full price of a blank instead of half of it.

• 2:07:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I guess kind of, I mean, so there was sort of a, um, I went to Spain for my fourth year of school, right? For a year, well, 11 months. And so I didn't do any shaping, of course, and hardly any surfing. So there's a number of boards out there. I think I want to say there's about 75 boards that were shaped prior to that. I mean, I was doing one a month, maybe, you know, or maybe two a month most. And then that was what we called the Spring Valley New Era, or excuse me, the, all my, the numbers were SV1, right? Spring Valley, which is classic, cause here we are in PB, but I'm shaping them in Spring Valley. Anyways, so then when I came back, it was SVNE, like Spring Valley New Era. And that, I was like, "Yeah, I really want to do this." But I also wanted to finish school.

• 2:08:32Speaker 02

  Um, I got a degree in Spanish Lit from San Diego State. While I was studying in Spain, a friend came over and then-

• 2:08:38Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any kind of plans, like to, what, to do anything with that degree?

• 2:08:44Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah. Um, so my best friend-

• 2:08:46Jocko Willink?

  So at some point, you're gonna be a normal person.

• 2:08:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, in my head, I'm thinking, "Wow, teachers have 180 days a year off? That's sick." Right? So that kind of was the plan. I went in for international business and they go, "Look, it's gonna take you seven years to get out of here." And I'm like, "Well, I don't want to be in college seven years." So I went in with a high level of Spanish that I went right into upper division Spanish there. So I knew I could graduate quicker with a Spanish degree than trying to go, excuse me, uh, international business. So that's, but when I went to Spain, my whole world got turned into the wine business, cause a friend of mine had graduated. And I'm like, "What are you doing over here?" He's like, "We traveled for a month together. It was pretty amazing." And, uh- He goes, oh, be a wine importer. And so our Spanish teacher from high school was like,

• 2:09:31Speaker 02

  okay, well, his name was Tom. Tom, you put it together and I'll give you guys a little bit of backing and see what happens. And so I came back for my year, the company got formed, he had gotten all the license and literally a month before I graduated, two containers of wine landed in San Diego. And it was like, he was like, well, you ready to sell some wine? And we didn't know anything about anything. We just knew that we had wine and we had to go sell it. So I did that for three years and I call it my MBA in real life, you know, because it was gnarly. Everything I'd gone through by the time I was 23 was like what most people go through corporate wise. I mean, we had corporate dissolutions, you know,

• 2:10:11Speaker 02

  $500 an hour lawyers, all that stuff. And I had to learn QuickBooks because I had to take care of all the accounting and all the money and write all the checks. And so that's kind of what thrust me right into like being sort of a bit, I mean, I was a business owner, I was 50% of the business. And it was do this or like fail, you know, but still living at home, right? I'd graduated, still living at home, not getting paid. So it wasn't like it was going, but it wasn't real. Like the numbers weren't real. We're like selling cases of wine, paying rent, we might get out 200 bucks, you know? So it was a very brutally like difficult time to be 22, 23 and completely struggling and completely

• 2:10:56Speaker 02

  broke for three years.

• 2:10:57Jocko Willink?

  And you're still shaping?

• 2:10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So the shaping room was still in the garage. So again, I would do one a month, maybe two a month, surfing, not as much as I used to because now this is like a sink or swim type of deal here with the wine business. So a lot of, I mean, we're long hours, you know, and brutal and not getting paid like, or maybe paid one month and then not paid for two months. And you know, and then partnership with investor struggles and you know, where I don't even talk to him anymore, you know, the bit that my old business partner, thankfully, my friendship with um our teacher is still super tight. He's like my best friend and uh that survived. But the the real world experience I got out of that, all the contacts and cold calling.

• 2:11:42Speaker 02

  I mean, we went from zero to one hundred and eighty-five accounts in a year. I don't know how to anything about wine yet. You know, I went, I learned a lot quick, but just that daily brutal cold call, cold knock, hey, and they're like, who are you? You know, all the old guys that have been in it for thirty years, like, who the fuck are you guys like? But we, it was unique because we were the importer distributor. So we kind of had a position of like, like, well, you guys get to go to Spain? Like, yeah, we were in Spain. You know, my partner just went to Chile to get the wine. So it was legit, but we were like these young kids, you know, like, pretty, that was, it was, that was a gnarly three years. And I came out of that pretty spun out.

• 2:12:19Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then at the end of that, it just, did it go under? Did it?

• 2:12:22Speaker 02

  Basically, my partner got married and then he got, he got pregnant and

• 2:12:29Jocko Willink?

  Cheated.

• 2:12:30Speaker 02

  Well, you know what I mean. They got pregnant. Um, and I'm just like, are you, what? How? Like, I'm living at home, not getting paid. You're like, getting ready to have a kid. So what had happened is he got, he went and got a real job working for another importer of produce. And then so he's like, I want out. I'll let, it's yours. I was like, no, no, I don't, I'm like, I want out, dude, like, you know, and so we worked it out. Um, he, he moved on. I consolidated um a distributor friend of mine, Jerry Hart, saved my ass, let me put my wine in his warehouse so I could get out of a twenty-five-hundred-dollar-a-month lease. Props to Jerry. Still see him around. He's still in the wine business. Um, legend

• 2:13:10Speaker 02

  of a human. Uh, and then I remember I was at a, and the whole time I'm surfing for PB Surf Club, I'm doing the Coalition Contest, and I'm walking, having this last talk with my ex-business partner about, I'm like, look, I want out, man. I'm done. And so we made, we kind of made an agreement. And I remember I was in the parking lot at Malibu, and that's when I decided, I'm like, I'm over this. And I called him, like, done. And so Jerry helped me get out of it.

• 2:13:35Jocko Willink?

  Malibu helped made you see the light.

• 2:13:37Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 2:13:39Speaker 02

  And Jerry worked with me and we got all the wine into his place and he helped sell it off. And I did the full, I had to go back to the lawyer and pay for the dissolution agreement, all that stuff. And walked away and that was like the end of 2005. So it was only about two and a half years, almost three years. And then after that I was done, I was burnt. I go, I'm gonna go back in the restaurant, because I worked tables. That place in Quigs is which is now, what's it called, Wonderland down there. Yeah, so I worked there. Great crew back then. And so I went back and I go, hey, would you guys mind? Now I have some wine industry experience. So now it's like,

• 2:14:18Speaker 02

  yeah, yeah, come on in. And so they took me right back in and for six months I just did that. I just, I worked there.

• 2:14:27Speaker 02

  And I also worked at the Wine Vault Bistro down on India Street because Chris would always taste our wines and give us tasty notes, whether he hated it or liked it, right? And he had just opened up a restaurant. So I went down and helped them almost for about a year and a half after I started Josh Hall Surfboards officially in July of 2006. And after the wine I sat, I called Skip and Don, we had dinner, I go, look guys, like, you know, you've obviously seen the history of the last three years, whatever, going, I want to build boards. I'm gonna go for it. And they both gave me their blessings. They said, whatever we can do to help support you, you know, you have our support and go for it. And so that's what kind of put it on full blast.

• 2:15:09Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then what did that look like? What did full support from Skip and Donna Frye look like?

• 2:15:13Speaker 02

  Well, just like they're, they were there, you know, they weren't bombed on the fact that, you know, and they, they, obviously, besides those first couple of custom boards, Skip had started shaping everything I rode. And then I had access to his quiver. So his boards shaped how I surfed. And in my head I go, well, hmm, that's funny. Not many other people shape boards like this. Might be a good idea to maybe pay attention and start. So the boards I were building, although bricks compared to now, were in that style and they knew that. So a lot of the models, it's like, I'm not gonna learn one thing and then go, oh, I'm gonna go over here and recreate a wheel. And so I've just tried to take what those initial formative years and with how I surf and other influences,

• 2:15:56Speaker 02

  put together what we've got. But it was just, it was good for me to know that they had my back, you know. Anything I needed, I mean, support wise or...

• 2:16:06Speaker 02

  I mean, Skip and I were still surfing together all the time. He's taken me, you know, he took me to Malibu for the first time, Swamis, Cliffs, San, like he, really, it wasn't just the board thing. It was wind, tide, weather, swell direction, interval, this reef, that reef. Cause I'd have windows at school. Hey Skip, I got two hours. And he'd go, uh, go here. You know, and sure enough, I'd show up at a right place and get waves. So it was more, more schooly than just the board stuff.

• 2:16:32Jocko Willink?

  Then what was the escalation looking like in terms of going from where, you know, you start Josh Hall Surfboards to where, I mean, you know, obviously when you start it off, you gotta sell some of the boards. You gotta get some of them, one or two or three, and then eventually the word gets out there. And, you know, how long does it take before you go, before you're actually have a full-time job shaping boards?

• 2:16:57Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's, it's pretty, it's funny because, so when I got back from that Spain trip, Skip had moved to where he's at now, and his neighbor is Chris Christensen, famous, super famous shaper. And so we became friends. And when I came back, so my senior year, I worked for him, just doing shop rat stuff, sweeping up, cleaning the shaping room, trash, packing boards, right? Well, when this wine thing came about, there was a guy, Jeff McCallum, who's now also a super famous shaper. He came into town, went to San Diego State, and he would, he worked at a surf shop on Garnet, and he grew up surfing Crystal Pier. And so I go, hey man, like, would you ever want to work at a surf shop? And I kinda knew, like, he

• 2:17:38Speaker 02

  was like into the board thing. And he goes, yeah. And so I said, okay, well, call, call this guy. And so he's kinda took my position at Chris's, and he got really into it. He was, you know, Chris let him shape at night in his room, and then glass and do, and so he took everything. I'm building all these things, start to finish. And, and that lasted up until my fallout with the wine thing started coming. Jeff goes, hey, I'm gonna, I'm looking for a space. Would you want a room, rent a room from me? I go, yeah. And so we found a place over off Hancock Street, 2006, July 4th, we both shaped our first boards. And that's how it started. So it was kind of a cool, like, I got him into Chris, but then he gave me the opportunity to leave Spring Valley, right? I was living in PB at the time. And,

• 2:18:22Speaker 02

  and that was it. But as far as getting busy, Uh, it wasn't till like probably 2010. I mean, I, I worked at, I worked at three or four different restaurants. I actually worked this, I tried to work a summer at the Dell as like a valet greeter at the, the Beach Village. But it was like eight hour shifts till three in the morning and then I'd wake up, you know, from not sleeping. But yeah, it was, it was tough. As soon as I think I'd be busy enough to go, I can pay rent and, you know, all my stuff. Yeah, right. I'd go in the hole. Okay, I gotta get some catering. I did catering jobs because it was quick, big money. So it took, it took a lot of pieces. And then, um, I went to New York in 2009 for the Surf Film Festival there.

• 2:19:06Speaker 02

  And I met my friend Sancho, who was big surfer in the Basque Country of, of Spain. Also family owns one of the most massive wineries in Rioja. So we hit it off like right away, you know, speak in Spanish. And he was like, yeah, well, why don't you try to come over? You know, I have some friends that have small shops. Maybe you could come over and, and shape some boards. So that was the, uh, fall. I left my, the day, the October 20th, my birthday is the 22nd. And I spent six weeks and I traveled, found him and his family's winery, did that. He took me up to the Basque Country and introduced me a couple of people. Um, I built some boards there. I went down to Portugal and built like five or six boards at a factory down there. So it was like, oh, okay.

• 2:19:48Speaker 02

  This has potential. Next summer I went back for eight weeks. Summer after that I did 10 weeks. So that, that helped. Once, because that was extra income, the euro was super strong. So it kind of helped. And I was paying rent at my place here, right? But I just, and yeah, so since 2010, it's just been on a slow growth pattern. You know, I didn't come out with any marketing plans or, I mean, the main thing was just try to shape a decent board.

• 2:20:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say your, your marketing plan is to make really good boards.

• 2:20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Um, and I was thankful to work with some of the best glass shops too, which helps because it makes it look pretty. But man, I'd give money back on my first thousand. Maybe I shouldn't say that, but yeah, still trying to figure it out, you know?

• 2:20:32Jocko Willink?

  Those have the, what is it, a sentimental value?

• 2:20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I still get hit up, hey, I got number thirty-eight.

• 2:20:39Jocko Willink?

  And you're like, oh, I'm sorry.

• 2:20:40Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:20:41Speaker 01

  This was his first logo.

• 2:20:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so that, so that was a real cool story there. It's like, it's kelp around a JH with like,

• 2:20:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.

• 2:20:51Speaker 02

  Blue water in the background. And that was my friend's wife, who's a watercolor artist, and, and I was like, she's like, because I first, I don't know, thirty or forty boards didn't have any logos, right?

• 2:21:00Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:21:00Speaker 02

  Um, because it wasn't like you could just go to Kinko's and have them print up rice paper, however you did it. And she's like, oh, I, I drew this logo, I was thinking about you and your vibe and your energy, right? And she came up with that the first time, and it, you know, bitchin', sits on a board nice, and, and so we ran with that for, I don't know, probably twelve, thirteen hundred boards as the first logo. It's more since, you know.

• 2:21:23Jocko Willink?

  Do you know, you know how many boards you've shaped now?

• 2:21:25Speaker 02

  Uh, I'm just about at forty-two hundred, right around that, that number. Yeah, I, I, I don't have every one documented, you know, but I know the numbers that I did in Spring Valley, the ones I did at the first factory with Jeff, um, and then I moved, actually, in two thousand nine, I moved to where Skip was at. There's still four or five other shapers in there, and, so I remember the numbers, but I don't have it like to the actual board. You know, I know, I think it's Harbor, I think Harbor has every board ever shaped documented. Like, you can, hey, I got this seven, eight with this number, and they can look it up, and it pops up.

• 2:22:02Jocko Willink?

  Tell you where it came from.

• 2:22:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, who shaped it, or, yeah, so, but, um, yeah, around forty-two hundred, so not that many people, I don't know if people think I've shaped more or less, I don't know.

• 2:22:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:12Speaker 02

  Feels like a lot, because a lot of what I do is big volume boards, you know?

• 2:22:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:15Speaker 02

  Long boards and

• 2:22:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:16Speaker 02

  Big boards, but you get four of them out of a twelve footer, four short.

• 2:22:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's one of the things where people ask a lot about. Mentorship, right? They say, oh, what, and for me, I never really had like the mentorship that you get from Skip or that you've gotten from Skip and that you continue to get from Skip. That's like the most pure, solid, well-rounded mentorship. I, I never got like anyone in the, in the SEAL teams that was just giving me all that, you know, everything. And I, I don't say that in a negative way. I mean, there's plenty of guys that helped me out and I learned a ton, but I always had to kind of pick from like, hey, this guy would teach me about this and then someone else would teach me about something else. But I think just the, the idea of like how

• 2:23:02Jocko Willink?

  you approached Skip, who's, you know, not exactly a guy that, that is looking to bring on a bunch of people to mentor. I mean, I'd say anything but that really.

• 2:23:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:12Jocko Willink?

  Um, and yet you ended up in a position where you get to absorb as much knowledge as you can possibly get from them. And, you know, that's endless, you know, infinite amount of information. But, um, actually I think it was Joel, I think Joel was telling me that he could be like, he'd like look at the weather and he'd be like, oh, you need to go here at 2:30 in the afternoon and it's going to be good for about 48 minutes. Like that kind of thing. He said it's his knowledge of the water, the wind, the tides.

• 2:23:40Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that's, so I'd be at state coming down with my board, my car, hey Skip, where, you know, I've got two hours, where, you know, I'll go here. And sure enough, you know, um, and then just surfing with them. And we'd go down and do the cliffs runs. That, those are like some of the most amazing sessions ever, you know? We've had a couple of birthday sessions, my birthday in October, decent sized Sal Swells on our, you know, 10, six and 11 foot boards going eight down and three up. And it's amazing. Yeah. It's hard. You don't see people, you don't really see many people doing that much anymore, you know? It's just, yeah. I hope Skip gets back down there this winter though.

• 2:24:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think just again, that's like almost advice is like what the, the approach you took was, hey, be humble, be persistent, um, you know, show up. Absorb, don't run your mouth, you know, you weren't like, hey, can you be my mentor? Hey, can you be my mentor? Hey, can you be my, it's like, you know, hey, do you mind if I just sit over here and just watch?

• 2:24:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:42Jocko Willink?

  Like, and you prove that over time.

• 2:24:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:45Jocko Willink?

  Hey, and, and then he's probably watching you surf and he's watching you. I'm sure you were bringing in boards and going, hey, what do you think of this?

• 2:24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:52Jocko Willink?

  Probably having a chuckle at some of them and then at least being able to say, hey, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's gonna get you, get you where you wanna be.

• 2:24:58Speaker 02

  You know, fin templates or where to put the fins and all that stuff. I mean, I still get nervous to ask him for stuff. I mean, we're like tight and it's still, I go, hey, Skip, um, what do you, what do you think about? You know, and, and that's the other thing, he's so giving, he's like, he, he'll give it all away. You know what I mean? He really is this most humble giving person.

• 2:25:18Jocko Willink?

  When, uh, when I was, uh, let's see, I guess it was maybe 10, you know, maybe a little bit longer that years ago. But, um, you know, my son surfs and he's, he, he loves surfing and he's been surfing since he was a little kid.

• 2:25:30Speaker 02

  Oh, I remember, I got a story.

• 2:25:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:25:33Speaker 02

  Couple.

• 2:25:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, we, we would see occasionally, we'd see Skip.

• 2:25:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:37Jocko Willink?

  And, um, and, you know, I'd tell like, hey, that's Skip Frye over there. That's, he, and he, you know, my son would kinda like paddle over, look at him, you know? And he'd be on, at this time, he used to ride this red foamy.

• 2:25:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:49Jocko Willink?

  Uh, it was, I forget, but it was, it was, it was like as nice of a foamy as you could get. But, you know, he was eight years old and, and I would take him out on big days. I mean, he would surf every swell, but, um, but then, you know, I was still in the Navy.

• 2:26:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:26:04Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, he really wanted a skip and he wanted to skip bad. And, you know, I was a dad, um, in the Navy with no money. And, uh, how am I gonna get my son a skip? Cause they cost a lot of money. And eventually I got, I got a guy up in like Dana Point and I found it on Craigslist. And he had the most absolutely destroyed skip that you've ever seen, like an eight oh winner egg. And it was 300 bucks. So you know what kinda condition it was in for 300 bucks? It was in awful condition. I drove up there in my van. I paid this guy 300 bucks and that was, uh, that was Santa Claus.

• 2:26:46Jocko Willink?

  Brought, Santa Claus brought Skip Frye to, uh, my son. And we still have that board and he's like, I'm never getting rid of this board.

• 2:26:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26:53Jocko Willink?

  But, yeah.

• 2:26:54Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 2:26:55Jocko Willink?

  Pretty sweet.

• 2:26:55Speaker 02

  That's funny, your, your story about your son. I'll never forget, it was North Garbage and surfed there a lot, you know, growing up. And it was a decent sized day and I, you know, you know, caught a wave and I'm going through and, and, and I see you and your kid like just in like the danger zone. And this, this is before it got really crowded with, you know, kind of the beginner surfers. This is still a crew back then holding it down. And, and I'm like, hey, man, you're gonna get your kid hurt out here. And like this, like, like 55 barrel drum like sits up and just looks at me. And I go, oh, I was like, I know that look. And I'm like, oh, sorry, alright. And then I'm like, man, this guy's just gonna get his, and it was, it was Thor. I mean, it was that winner.

• 2:27:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:39Speaker 02

  I'm like, man. And then, and then the next winner taking off in the front of your house and here it's to see him just getting shoved in in front of me. I'm like, that guy again? God. And then I'm like, oh, sorry, yeah. You know, yeah, I remember those. I was, I was cracking up once we became, once, you know, we reconnected and I was like, that was that guy, man. I was like totally hassling. That's so cool.

• 2:28:02Jocko Willink?

  Like. There was no, there was definitely people, yeah, cause he was so young and I'd have him out on man days.

• 2:28:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:08Jocko Willink?

  You know, like straight man days where there's no, there's no kids out.

• 2:28:11Speaker 02

  No, I know. It's just like yelling, you're gonna hurt your kid, man.

• 2:28:15Jocko Willink?

  I'd always be chuckling, hey, maybe, we'll see.

• 2:28:19Speaker 02

  Oh, man, I just, and now like looking back, it's just, that was classic.

• 2:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:24Speaker 02

  Good times though, your kid's turned into a good, good boy, good kid.

• 2:28:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's, um, he surfs a lot, I know that.

• 2:28:30Speaker 02

  I remember doing that.

• 2:28:33Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so what's the, uh, what's, you know, where are you guys at right now? What's kind of, what's the status of Josh Hall Surfboards at this moment?

• 2:28:41Speaker 02

  Okay, so, let's go from 2010, um, spent a big summer over in the Bass Country, just surfing and shaping and, and, and then coming back, I'd moved into the complex where Skip was at. Uh, Bob Mitson's in there and Michael Miller and Jim Ellington and, at the time, and, um, all legend guys. And, uh, I would just, I would just shape, shape, shape. Okay, I'm going on another trip. Shape, shape, shape, going on another trip.

• 2:29:09Speaker 02

  And just slowly building. You know, I got a website. I'm on my third website now. And so that helped. People could at least see models and I had one guy, a Japanese guy at that time selling mostly customs. He lived here, but he'd sell them and ship them. And then we parted ways. It's been six years ago and because I've seen Chris's model, Chris had a great distributorship in Japan. I was like, I want that, man, because it's like consistent boards every month, you know, 10, 15, 20, 30, who knows what you know, numbers he was doing. But I was like, that's how you make it. You know, you gotta get a distributor. So we parted ways. I went to Japan for the Green Room Festival, which is like a music, art, surf themed

• 2:29:54Speaker 02

  festival and had a couple of contacts here in California that were Japanese surfers. And so they sort of fished around like, hey, you know, Josh Hall's coming to Japan, wants to get a distributor to start, you know, doing some real business, not just, hey, I got 10 custom orders this month. Sweet. Oh, I don't have anything now for the next two weeks, like something consistent. And that's who I found, holy smoke, who's my distributor now, Sioshi. And we're just September was six years. So and that's been great. Not a ton of boards, but consistent. And so that, once that happened, then it was like, okay, breather. Let's get caught up on some debt here so I can breathe. And then, and then slowly go, you know, shop in New York, started selling my boards quite a bit.

• 2:30:38Speaker 02

  And then just doing that. Then I'd go to Europe each summer and bang out, you know, 40, 50 boards. And so I kind of had to go all over to get kind of a consistent base, but um.

• 2:30:50Jocko Willink?

  Was there a tipping point where your boards sort of elevated to the status that they are now? Where they went from like, hey, a surfboard to like, oh, that's a Josh Hall?

• 2:31:00Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe other people could say that better than than me. I just still try to shape a better board than I did yesterday. And I don't. I mean, again, I've been real fortunate to work with the best glass shops in San Diego, which helps. And thankfully, they worked with me. And that kinda helped, and I think with the consistency, I think the people seeing the consistency, like, whoa, Josh is doing this in Japan, he's doing that. Maybe that's helped create and going in, I used to go to New York twice a year for the Fish Fry event in May, then I'd go back in September for the Film Festival. So I think just the moving around and maybe that helped create sort of that, like, whoa, those boards are New York, or I don't know.

• 2:31:45Speaker 02

  I think somebody else might be able to answer that.

• 2:31:47Jocko Willink?

  Well, I mean, the other obvious huge thing is you're like, you're just quite frankly known as Skip Fry's protege, and that's what people think, like, oh, maybe I can't get a Skip Fry because I don't have that much money, or I don't have that much time, or I just can't make it happen. But, man, I can get a Josh Hall, and that's a huge part of it, too. I mean, obviously, right?

• 2:32:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's, I guess I should say that, like, that's like the first thing, right? And that's like, the, without, that goes without saying, and just his support, you know?

• 2:32:17Jocko Willink?

  It didn't go without saying for, I mean, you can't just show up, oh, yeah, I'm gonna shape boards like, like Skip Fry does, you know, you can't, that just doesn't, that, that's not gonna work.

• 2:32:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:25Jocko Willink?

  You gotta, you gotta earn that, and, you know, just because the board, oh, it looks like it might be like it, no, it's gotta, it's gotta, it's gotta have a little bit more depth than that.

• 2:32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:33Jocko Willink?

  And so, I think, at some point...

• 2:32:34Speaker 02

  And surfing. I mean, I surf.

• 2:32:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.

• 2:32:37Speaker 02

  Skip told me in the beginning, he goes, look, if you wanna do this as a career or a hobby, like, if you wanna surf, just worry about shape and don't try to do everything yourself. And there's craftsmen out there that do it, and I, hats off to them. I mean, I think I've built five or six boards, maybe start to finish, in my whole time building boards. So the guys that do that, I mean, that's hard work. I mean, you might be able to do four or six boards a week like that if you're laminating, finning, sanding, you know, all that polishing, I mean, that's tough, so... I guess I I just wanted to surf and then build boards.

• 2:33:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you gotta have all those skill sets, cuz none of those things are easy.

• 2:33:14Speaker 02

  No, and I tell you what, well, we'll get to where the position I'm at now, but there is a severe lack of talent in the pool right now.

• 2:33:23Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 2:33:23Speaker 02

  Um, most of my crew now that um is working for me, they've been building boards longer than I've been alive.

• 2:33:30Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:33:30Speaker 02

  And if one of them goes down, like, we're up shit creek. And so, and it's really, and that's something that's changed with the, with, like you said earlier, with YouTube and the internet, like, a kid that wants to shape a board now can go, da, da, da, da, oh, I can buy a package? Oh, sweet, I don't even have to think about it. And they can go online and watch this guy shape or watch that guy shape. So now it's not where, sort of, you know, you had to pay dues. Back, like, when I wanted to learn, like, you had, again, packing boards and sweeping up the shaping room, and then maybe a little hot coat here, and then you might try to sand here, but it was like baby steps, you know, cuz it was um having to learn from the ground up. And now, the big shift is everybody just goes straight to the top.

• 2:34:11Speaker 02

  They don't wanna mess with resin or sand boards and get fiberglass in their pores and, you know, it's, it's a, and it's so hard. And that's the one thing, people, what makes a quality board? It's like, everything makes a quality board. And, you know, the sander's gotta re-sand it to my shape based on how good his hot coat was set up and how clean the fin cut. I mean, so to, I, I don't take it for granted because I get around enough to see other boards that are out there, but then when I come back to our shop, it's like, okay, yeah, I can see the difference in quality. And it's, and it's, it's funny, it's only been three and a half years now with the shop, which, well, I'll get to that story, but um what we're, what the crew, what we try

• 2:34:51Speaker 02

  to like fix now are like minute little things compared to three years ago when we started. And, and, and again, you know, it takes adjustment to the room you're in, it takes the, you know, the light, whatever, it takes time to gel and um the teams. Going pretty good. Um, yeah.

• 2:35:09Jocko Willink?

  And so right now, it's?

• 2:35:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so three and a half years ago, again, Jeff McCallum, he left that one factory in, um, uh, back in 2009. And then that's when I went and shaped in a, in a garage in that same complex that Skip's in. Um, he goes, hey, man, and he'd had this shop for five years. Hey, I'm gonna get out of this and, you know, the owner or whatever. I, you know, it's something had gone down and end of his lease, he goes, I'm gonna go try and buy a building. So would you enter, would you want to maybe take this over? And I was like, fuck, okay, well, and my business partner, Dave, he and I have been talking for maybe six or seven years and how he, he's obsessed with surfing, but he comes from like the finance world, you know? And I've known him for 20 years, PB Surf Club member, Surfing the Point, Bird Rock and all that stuff.

• 2:35:55Speaker 02

  And we'd surf shores and we'd always talk about business, but I didn't, we didn't know how he would fit like inside Josh Hall Surfboards. And then I told him this opportunity came up, maybe to take over a, a small glass shop just down the street from where I was at. And he goes, huh. So he started thinking, he comes back the next day, he goes, okay, let's do this. Let's start a new company. We're 50 50, 50 liability, everything, investment, you know, and I go, profit, all that stuff. He go, I go, sure, but here's how it's gonna be set up. I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing, which is traveling around, surfing and shaping. I will make it so that you guys have foam every week. And he goes, okay. And so he's run the shop, he's a, he's actually, uh, he's involved in, um, he does all the hot coating

• 2:36:38Speaker 02

  on the decks and the resin loops and he pays the guys, he orders stuff and he basically, he runs it. I just make sure that there's foam there organized, hopefully by Tuesday at noon every week. Cause that's when we start, start batches. But, uh, so that, so Jeff had given me a year to kind of like suss it out. Cause there's no, I can't just go hire somebody to laminate color tint jobs, you know, I can't go. So we started putting the word out, started with my Sander Wade, who was working at Diamond Glassing. And who's also a Fry guy. And so we've always gotten along and he goes, well, I know of one. So he kind of put us onto a laminator and then I knew a guy that could sand and also do fins.

• 2:37:19Speaker 02

  And then we had a polisher that I had worked with back when I worked at Chris in like oh three. Alfredo was still around. And so we just kind of put it together and it's funny looking back now is we'll do fifteen packs. And we could barely do six back then, like six was a big week. Four, I think we did four packs the first couple of months. So. And then in that time, you know, diamond glassing shut down and we picked up the glossor polisher there and also the fin laminator guy. John that puts the fins on. So it's really become this like real tight crew. And again, legends beyond me. I mean, these guys have been building boards for forty plus years. I just happen to be the kid that's giving them foam, you know, so really super thankful and Dave runs a super tight ship.

• 2:38:03Speaker 02

  You know, there's not, there's no money in glassing. So if we can squeak out twenty bucks a board, that's what we're doing.

• 2:38:10Speaker 02

  So we're trying to change it though, but slowly. Everybody needs to do it together, right? Every shaper, every glass shop needs to work together and hey, like eight people touch that thing and they're making ten bucks an hour? Come on, you know, so we're trying to, trying to elevate and you know, everybody kind of talks and oh yeah, well. My wholesale on this board's this now. Oh, okay. You know, it's tough. It's right now. There's, there's. A group of us taking, you know, quality and prices. So everybody can actually make a living or hope to up and then. You know, there's still guys that they give their work away and I'm like.

• 2:38:47Speaker 02

  What do you charge more? You're worth more. You've built boards for, you know, this guy, this guy and for thirty five years. Like, come on, don't be. Cause they're scared. They think, oh, if I up my price, I'm not, I'm not going to have any orders. But you gotta kind of trust in it. And like we came out swinging. Like I remember when we started in oh six, it's like, no. This is my minimum. Here it is. And it's just slowly gone up from there, you know?

• 2:39:10Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, it's the classic, I mean, you're doing something in America, you're building something in America. You're building the highest quality thing that you can build.

• 2:39:19Speaker 02

  With what we've, yeah, with what we can, with what we're allowed to, you know, chemical wise and stuff, it's getting pretty tight in California.

• 2:39:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:27Speaker 02

  But, you know, we've got all the permits and we're doing it right, so.

• 2:39:30Jocko Willink?

  And all that stuff costs money, a lot of money.

• 2:39:33Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:39:34Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's part of what, that's part of the American dream. It's what you fought for.

• 2:39:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:39Jocko Willink?

  It's what you fought for, Dave, for us to have these opportunities to go out there and, and live in this country and.

• 2:39:46Speaker 01

  Proud of this guy.

• 2:39:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love this guy for dragging my ass to the beach every weekend. Come on, man.

• 2:39:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:52Speaker 02

  Um, actually today, I think we're, we, uh, we're moving into the suite next to us. Um, I need a bigger shaping room and a little. I've been building some stock boards and putting them on the website and, uh, that's actually proved to be nice because it's like, oh, you've sold a board and you didn't. You were surfing, you know, so that's been cool. So we're gonna kind of have a nice, you know, wall front where we can at least display the boards properly and, and take good pictures and that way guys are more informed and such. Try to work on the blog. I haven't blogged in a long time, but I used to be super into it.

• 2:40:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, now you're too busy surfing and shaping.

• 2:40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that was the point.

• 2:40:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, listen, we, we've been at it for a while and, um, I don't want to, I don't want to keep you guys up here much longer. I think our air conditioning. I may have failed to turn it on. It's getting warm.

• 2:40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's probably eighty degrees out and I'm in a long black tee.

• 2:40:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 2:40:44Speaker 02

  All good.

• 2:40:45Jocko Willink?

  I just, you know, so it's joshhallsurfboards.com is where, is where they can find you.

• 2:40:52Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:40:52Jocko Willink?

  On Instagram, you're Josh Hall Surfboards. On Facebook, you're Josh Hall Surfboards. Do you have Twitter?

• 2:40:58Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 2:40:58Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:40:59Speaker 02

  No, I barely have enough time to keep up with those three things, let alone.

• 2:41:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but, uh, and, uh, you know, we were talking earlier, I'm hoping to get some, I want to put some Josh Hall. Custom T-shirts on the Jaco's store and get them out there. So maybe we can hook something like that would be cool. I'm sure people would be stoked to support an American craftsman.

• 2:41:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:24Jocko Willink?

  On the day to day, even if they live in Iowa where they don't surf, but they work hard like, you know, like good Americans do. But um, you guys got any, you got any closing thoughts, Dave?

• 2:41:35Speaker 02

  We gotta talk about archery.

• 2:41:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:41:39Speaker 02

  My newest obsession.

• 2:41:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're obsessed with archery.

• 2:41:42Speaker 02

  Oh geez Louise.

• 2:41:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, thanks to this guy. So his brother was an elk, or is an elk, or used to be. And I got a little bow when I was 10, little compound bow and a 3D target and I go blast arrows into that thing. And, and then they kinda hadn't talked in a long time and through, I guess it was listening to Joe Rogan's podcast and then, who else? And I had some other friends. And well, so my fiancee Tori's, she's grown up shooting bows and guns and both her sisters and of course her dad. So he's like, um, well, you know, my, uh, my friend Bob owns Performance Archery.

• 2:42:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:42:21Speaker 02

  And I was like, wait, that's the one from, from Joe's podcast. And I was like, okay. So he just made the introduction and went up there and, and Bob's a surfer. So I just like, well, how, how cool is this, you know? And, and, uh, went up and, and kinda started to geek out online. There's a lot of info out there. John Dudley and stuff he puts out is insane. And so I kinda was geeking out and, and, uh, went up and Bob just, he set me up. And man, I've been shooting arrows every day since.

• 2:42:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll definitely have to get after that, uh, range, which I haven't been to, the one up by Balboa.

• 2:42:56Speaker 02

  Balboa Park. It's right underneath the Cabrillo Bridge.

• 2:42:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:59Speaker 02

  I mean, you drive by it every day. You wouldn't even know it's there.

• 2:43:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So we'll go up and hit that.

• 2:43:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. We should. It'll be fun.

• 2:43:04Jocko Willink?

  And, and I got some other trips planned. We're hopefully, uh, going, as they say, get after it.

• 2:43:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we'll do it.

• 2:43:13Speaker 02

  Cool, man. That'd be fun.

• 2:43:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, but anything else?

• 2:43:18Speaker 01

  No, not really. I, you know, enjoyed this, I guess. Pretty much. No, I did. Yeah.

• 2:43:24Speaker 02

  You did good, Dad.

• 2:43:25Jocko Willink?

  No, great to hear you and it's, it's an honor to have you on and, and I'm telling you.

• 2:43:30Speaker 01

  Glad I met you guys.

• 2:43:31Jocko Willink?

  People will learn a ton from, from what you said and from your experiences and what it looked like from your perspective. Uh, it's, it's awesome. It's an, it's an honor to have here, you here.

• 2:43:41Speaker 01

  Just the truth.

• 2:43:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and then, I mean, Josh, just to see, you know, what you've taken from your dad and how you've turned that into a business and you've found your way, you know, different people are out there and they're, and they're doing different things and, and, you know, I appreciate your service and, uh, I appreciate you sharing the stoke worldwide.

• 2:43:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. Slide the glide. Oh, I just want to say I, I, I was real fortunate. Besides him and Skip, I've, I've had a lot of good mentor, life coach people in my life. So that's been a big, big deal. I've, I've have friends that don't have that and now that we're getting to close to 40, you can see it, you know, and so I just shout out to those people, you know. Had a lot, lot of help extracurricularly to get through it all and here we are.

• 2:44:24Jocko Willink?

  Right on. And, and I'll tell you what, for everyone, you can see, I mean, Josh is a great example and, you know, like I was talking about earlier, if you're in a position where you can reach down and you can give somebody a hand, if you can give someone some help and you can say, hey, kid, come this way, or hey, kid, go that way, you know, you can have a huge impact, a huge impact on their life and getting them pointed in the right direction.

• 2:44:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a, that's, it's kind of too bad people keep that inside them and don't share it. You know, their, their experience over their skills. I know. But you gotta, you gotta share it.

• 2:44:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you gotta listen.

• 2:44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:00Speaker 02

  That's my grandpa. He was like, I don't care if you disagree, you gotta listen to somebody because they might have something that you don't. Or maybe they put it in a way you didn't think of. So you can grow from that.

• 2:45:10Jocko Willink?

  I, I guess to your point, whereas I just said, hey, if you're out there and you're in a more senior position, reach down and help people out. And if you're one of the young bucks out there, then like Josh just said, open your ears and have a listen because people got some good information for you and they can point you in the right direction. So you don't have to learn the lessons the hard way.

• 2:45:29Speaker 02

  There you go. Yep.

• 2:45:32Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on, guys.

• 2:45:34Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:45:34Jocko Willink?

  Appreciate it.

• 2:45:35Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:45:35Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, we'll see you in the water.

• 2:45:37Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:45:41Jocko Willink?

  Alright, at this point, our guests Dave and Josh Hall have exited the building and awesome to talk to them and wrapping it up there, you know, talking about

• 2:45:58Jocko Willink?

  sharing what you know

• 2:46:00Speaker 03

  Yeah

• 2:46:00Jocko Willink?

  with other people. And I think it's a good opportunity for you Echo Charles to share, you know, with us

• 2:46:07Speaker 03

  What I know?

• 2:46:08Jocko Willink?

  Yes, what you know.

• 2:46:09Speaker 03

  Alright, I know this, when we start jiu-jitsu, I know what kind of gi we're gonna get.

• 2:46:14Speaker 03

  So, okay, well, uh, we won't dilly-dally, how about that?

• 2:46:20Jocko Willink?

  I'm not pro dilly-dally.

• 2:46:22Speaker 03

  You know, I'm not gonna make that leap quite yet. How about this, I'll try not to dilly-dally.

• 2:46:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:46:27Speaker 03

  But, start talking about jiu-jitsu, all these things, it's very dilly-dally prone, prone?

• 2:46:33Jocko Willink?

  Scenarios?

• 2:46:34Speaker 03

  Scenarios, subject matter, yes. Anyway, people starting jiu-jitsu, people already in jiu-jitsu, people doing jiu-jitsu for 15 years. Here's the gi you get, Origin. Why? Not only is it made for jiu-jitsu, it's made in the USA, all of them, boom. Best gis by far, many different selections. Go to originmaine.com. They got some new stuff out too, by the way. Denim.

• 2:46:59Jocko Willink?

  Coming. It's not out yet.

• 2:47:01Speaker 03

  Well, you know.

• 2:47:02Jocko Willink?

  Well, by the time whoever you are in the world, listening to this, could be, could be out, could be fully out.

• 2:47:07Speaker 03

  I saw the picture on, online, so to me, in my head, it's, it's just a matter of time before it's on, on me, my body habitus. Just learned that word.

• 2:47:17Jocko Willink?

  Did you just say body habitus?

• 2:47:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:47:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:47:19Speaker 03

  I misused it slightly, but I'm, I'm practicing. Anyway, also, they got t-shirts and hoodies, joggers, rash guards, yes, for the no-gi jiu-jitsu. Um, or, you know, when you're not doing jiu-jitsu, when you're resting, on rest days.

• 2:47:35Speaker 03

  That are kinda cold joggers sweatsuit.

• 2:47:38Jocko Willink?

  When people ask can I do workout and do jiu jitsu on the same day? This is a complete yes, yes, you can. And I'll tell you this, I think you can do jiu jitsu every day. And if you can't do jiu jitsu every day because you're physically impaired from doing it because the impact of the jiu jitsu itself.

• 2:47:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:47:59Jocko Willink?

  You're you're not training jiu jitsu correctly.

• 2:48:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, what too hard is what you're saying.

• 2:48:04Jocko Willink?

  Too hard, you're using too much strength, you're using too much muscles.

• 2:48:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:48:07Jocko Willink?

  If you can't train jiu jitsu every day, you're going too hard. I'm not saying you might not be sore.

• 2:48:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:48:13Jocko Willink?

  Cause you probably will be. You may be, I should say. If I do a bunch of hard rounds, the next day, um, I can feel it, right? But I'm not sore like I can't work out. I'm sore like, oh, I'm definitely trained hard yesterday.

• 2:48:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:48:27Jocko Willink?

  A good way.

• 2:48:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:48:29Jocko Willink?

  If you're training to the point so hard, so psycho that you can't train? That means you're you're going too hard, you're using too much uh strength, so you should relax.

• 2:48:40Speaker 03

  Yes. I agree. Well, unless you're training with you, which you, since you can never train with yourself, you don't know this, but speaking from experience, so I trained, I haven't trained hard in really a long time. Train with you and you know what? I wouldn't even say we were really going hard.

• 2:48:59Jocko Willink?

  No, I definitely wasn't going hard.

• 2:49:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:49:01Jocko Willink?

  At all.

• 2:49:01Speaker 03

  Well, you know, whatever I said, there there were times where I sensed a a a sense of urgency a few times. Anyway, my neck hurt.

• 2:49:11Speaker 03

  My neck hurt real bad, but it was like right up until the it the threshold of not being able to like work out. That's what it is. So, yeah, it was just, it was soreness. It wasn't, I wasn't hurt. I wasn't injured. I was hurting.

• 2:49:23Jocko Willink?

  And this is just from resisting chokes?

• 2:49:25Speaker 03

  Resisting the chokes, yes. That's exactly what it was. And I knew too.

• 2:49:28Jocko Willink?

  Trying to resist the chokes.

• 2:49:32Jocko Willink?

  Sorry.

• 2:49:33Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:49:34Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 2:49:34Speaker 03

  Nonetheless.

• 2:49:36Jocko Willink?

  That's an ego driven statement.

• 2:49:37Speaker 03

  No, I was, I was.

• 2:49:38Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no.

• 2:49:39Speaker 03

  Oh, you.

• 2:49:39Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that was a little ego creeping out.

• 2:49:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:49:42Jocko Willink?

  Like, I want you to know that I choked you.

• 2:49:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:49:45Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's just ego. I shouldn't like, yeah, well, you know, you did a good job.

• 2:49:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:49:48Jocko Willink?

  Which is what I normally.

• 2:49:49Speaker 03

  Showed some heart out there.

• 2:49:51Jocko Willink?

  Hey, you did a good job, you know?

• 2:49:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:49:52Jocko Willink?

  Felt tight. Felt tight. Felt good.

• 2:49:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Thanks, bro. Anyway, nonetheless, yes, work out and do jujitsu. I agree with that, actually. Here's the thing, though. People's training philosophies differ. They differ.

• 2:50:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, true.

• 2:50:09Speaker 03

  So like, some people, their training philosophy, hey, get the most out of your training.

• 2:50:13Jocko Willink?

  Good point.

• 2:50:13Speaker 03

  You know?

• 2:50:13Jocko Willink?

  Good point.

• 2:50:14Speaker 03

  But these are typically, and I tried to kind of compartmentalize or kind of break it down to myself, right? Where, in my opinion, and this is just from my, my personal view, like, I shouldn't, like, yeah, I shouldn't be like super sore, or I shouldn't be like unhappy to train jujitsu, you know?

• 2:50:34Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 2:50:35Speaker 03

  I shouldn't be like.

• 2:50:36Jocko Willink?

  From jujitsu?

• 2:50:38Speaker 03

  From jujitsu, yeah.

• 2:50:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Do you, when you check steel, do you get sore to the point where you're like, oh? Like, I mean, I imagine if you do chest day.

• 2:50:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:50:47Jocko Willink?

  Then you're not going to be fired up to do chest day the next day.

• 2:50:51Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 2:50:52Jocko Willink?

  Right. So that's, that's okay.

• 2:50:53Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, that's different.

• 2:50:54Jocko Willink?

  But a hard chest day is not going to interfere with your jujitsu day, ever.

• 2:50:59Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:51:00Jocko Willink?

  There are times, like, let's say I've done a bunch of traveling, hadn't done a lot of squatting.

• 2:51:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:51:05Jocko Willink?

  And then I go, squat.

• 2:51:08Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:51:09Jocko Willink?

  My, sometimes my legs, I'll get the doms.

• 2:51:11Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:51:12Jocko Willink?

  And it won't, it won't stop my jujitsu training. However, it is a noticeable factor that I have to contend with.

• 2:51:20Speaker 03

  I would agree with that, yeah.

• 2:51:21Jocko Willink?

  That does happen.

• 2:51:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:51:23Jocko Willink?

  But the opposite shouldn't happen, which is, I trained jujitsu and now I feel like I can't work out because I'm so sore in this particular body part. Can you get your elbow straightened out a little extra? Yes, you can. Does that interfere sometimes? Yes, it does.

• 2:51:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. And those are, that's like an anomaly. That's not a, not a planned part of training. You know, to get your elbow straightened out and kind of slightly. Micro injury situation or and this is only if that's the plan. So if you're like, hey, I'm gonna train Jiu Jitsu Monday, no Jiu Jitsu Tuesday, I'm gonna lift Tuesday instead, you know, like some people, they have that plan, you know, where you're not gonna do a two day scenario. Then yeah, don't train, don't train twice a day or twice in a row.

• 2:52:10Jocko Willink?

  I don't agree.

• 2:52:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I dig it. But you should never be in what I was thinking of, you should, it should never be like this hard, like grind to the point where you're unhappy. You know, like no one, no one should be unhappy training.

• 2:52:23Jocko Willink?

  Occasionally, yes, you should. You should be like, you know what? I don't feel like doing this. I'm doing it anyways.

• 2:52:26Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 2:52:27Jocko Willink?

  That's fine. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. Every time you feel like, uh, maybe I don't wanna train today, doesn't mean you get to not train. Right. No, you train anyways, especially in Jiu Jitsu. Because in Jiu Jitsu, if you're like, every time you don't necessarily feel a hundred percent like training, then you're not gonna train when you should be training. Yeah. Most of the time, you're gonna get something out of it. If you, maybe instead of doing 12 six-minute rounds, you say, you know what, I'm gonna do some movement, I'm gonna get four rounds in, maybe do that instead. Yeah. Cause you're feeling, cause you do have to, one thing I am aware of is if you're tired, your percentage of getting injured goes up. If you don't wanna be in there, your percentage of getting injured goes up because

• 2:53:09Jocko Willink?

  you're being lazy and weak and and those are the type of situations you you get hurt in.

• 2:53:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:53:15Jocko Willink?

  When you're not paying attention.

• 2:53:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's exactly what I was thinking, that whole thing where, where, you know, I was kinda going in circles with the thing where it's like, you should never like be unhappy or not wanna train, you know, kinda scenario. But I, and then I kinda was like, wait, but there are those times where it's like, that's kinda part of Jiu Jitsu, that like the adversity element is part of it. And but here's the thing, when you train that adversity element, you're like, you kinda, you wanna do that. It's like, in, it's like invited adversity kinda thing, you know, just like how you just said, where it's like, hey, if you're, I don't know, so or whatever situation and you don't wanna go 10, 12 rounds. So just get some movement and go four rounds. Boom, you just went to that voluntary, you know. Place into in your jujitsu. See what I'm saying?

• 2:54:02Speaker 03

  So it should unless then on top of that, it depends on who you are.

• 2:54:06Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean voluntary place?

• 2:54:08Speaker 03

  Okay, so if you're like, hey, like, okay, here's a different scenario then. If you're a competitor, you're like, this is my, my goal is to be a competitor. Now that's a whole different scenario where especially if you have a coach and training partners and all this other stuff. Oh, there's gonna be days where you hate it. You literally do not. You literally would choose to not be there. Literally like, I'm not gonna be here today. But then you have these external elements, including your goal. Your coaches, training partners, like all these things who have the same goals or whatever. So there's kind of like a bigger picture there. So you have to endure that like, hey, I don't want to be here. I don't like jujitsu. You ever heard, you ever felt that before? I don't even like jujitsu right now. Like, why am I doing this?

• 2:54:52Jocko Willink?

  No, occasionally I'll joke about it, but I don't actually feel it.

• 2:54:56Speaker 03

  When I was competing and I had like a competition like goal, like I would feel that sometimes, yeah. Like, this is dumb. Like, why, why am I even doing this? Yeah, like a little baby. Anyway, it's different. The scenario is different. Anyway, nonetheless, back to the gi.

• 2:55:09Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of scenarios, I thought this is a no dilly-dally scenario.

• 2:55:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know.

• 2:55:13Jocko Willink?

  Because that was just a dally right there.

• 2:55:16Speaker 03

  We got a little tangent.

• 2:55:17Jocko Willink?

  That was like thirteen minutes.

• 2:55:19Speaker 03

  Nonetheless, back to the gi, you get the origin gi, you get origin rash guards. That's what you do. No question. No question. Also supplement. So when you are sore, see, you don't have to be that sore.

• 2:55:30Jocko Willink?

  Be less.

• 2:55:30Speaker 03

  You can be less sore, yes. I, I know this firsthand.

• 2:55:34Jocko Willink?

  Joint warfare.

• 2:55:35Speaker 03

  Joint warfare and krill oil. Take them both. That's, that's the, the, the double.

• 2:55:39Jocko Willink?

  The double whammy.

• 2:55:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. So you don't have to be that sore.

• 2:55:43Jocko Willink?

  Discipline. You can take that. Maybe if you're not feeling, I will vouch for this. On a day where you're like, well, I don't know, maybe I only do three rounds, but I'm gonna make myself go in there. By the way, I'm gonna drink three scoops of discipline before I go. How many rounds do you end up doing? Nine.

• 2:56:03Jocko Willink?

  So I will vouch for that. That is a factual thing that will happen.

• 2:56:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:56:09Jocko Willink?

  You don't feel like it. I will mix up, um, you know, I'll mix up a lick. Ah, you know what? I don't really feel like going, but I'm just gonna go because I have to. Because that's the discipline. So then I mix up three scoops of discipline.

• 2:56:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:56:21Jocko Willink?

  Twenty minutes before I leave my house.

• 2:56:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:56:24Jocko Willink?

  I'm drinking on the way. I kind of drink it, get here and all of a sudden I get out on the mat. Third, second round, it kicks in and I'm like, you know, get another round, get another round.

• 2:56:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:56:34Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:56:35Speaker 03

  Uh, coincidentally, the other day when we trained.

• 2:56:38Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:56:39Speaker 03

  We haven't trained in a long time. I've been out.

• 2:56:41Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep.

• 2:56:42Speaker 03

  We trained. That wasn't the plan. The plan was not to train.

• 2:56:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:56:45Speaker 03

  It was just to record for me anyway. It's not like I planned not to train. I didn't plan to train. I was gonna record, boom, go home. That's the, that's the routine. That's the scenario. But I did take strangely enough, two scoops of discipline before I came in and I'm not joking. I totally did.

• 2:57:02Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then you couldn't resist. And I was like, are you gonna train or what?

• 2:57:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I couldn't. Yeah, because the thing is all of like, you know, the, the post-recording plans, they're all still there. You know, and you're like, hey, let's train. It's like noon at that time. So other people are here, you know, there's the buzz, you know, the buzz of training in the air that was going on. The two scoops, you know, the buzz of that is going and you're like, hey, let's train. I don't have any clothes to train, by the way. So you know what I do? I go downstairs, buy a towel.

• 2:57:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:30Speaker 03

  First hour after, bought one. Uh.

• 2:57:33Jocko Willink?

  Borrowed shorts.

• 2:57:34Speaker 03

  I went to buy shorts, but there was no, none in my size for sale. Um, and I just used the shirt that I recorded with.

• 2:57:40Jocko Willink?

  Skinny knees shorts?

• 2:57:41Speaker 03

  Well, they did actually because I went and saw Noah Oliver was there, who's a smaller guy than me. So obviously his shorts are smaller. So only ones available, I wore his shorts. And you know, he's one of these trendy guys. So they're kind of shorter shorts and striped and maybe like half a size too small or whatever.

• 2:57:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:59Speaker 03

  Boom, whatever. No factor.

• 2:58:01Jocko Willink?

  I was really unintimidated by your shorts and that skinny knees.

• 2:58:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, my whole, my whole thing. Anyway, the point is when you take this two scoops of discipline, yes, it does push you into those. Either more rounds or just rounds when you didn't even plan on doing rounds like in my scenario.

• 2:58:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, um, uh, hey, there's also, we just made, uh, discipline go. It's a, it's a go pill. It's got discipline. Sometimes you don't have time to drink the entire, uh, discipline. You don't have time to mix it. You gotta get a little expedient hit.

• 2:58:35Speaker 03

  When you're on the go.

• 2:58:36Jocko Willink?

  A little hitter on the go.

• 2:58:38Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 2:58:38Jocko Willink?

  So you can just pop some of the discipline go pills, little, little nootropic action. A little bit of caffeine, get your, get that, get that little bit going, get you a little bit going.

• 2:58:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:58:48Jocko Willink?

  So that's that, that's out now too.

• 2:58:50Speaker 03

  And then after you do the jujitsu, then what? You gotta recover, right? Boom, milk, milk train, get right on it. Milk train additional protein along with your protein that you eat with your food. Exactly, right? The steak and boom, you're good to go. Milk can be used as, or it should be used as a dessert. I'm just gonna say it. There you go.

• 2:59:10Jocko Willink?

  It can be used to a dessert. It can be used as a dessert.

• 2:59:14Speaker 03

  My whole thing on, on, on team.

• 2:59:16Jocko Willink?

  But the thing is, what you're failing to remember is it can also be used to replace whatever you were going to eat.

• 2:59:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, like a meal replacement.

• 2:59:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like breakfast, milk and dinner. What I have for, what I have for lunch, I didn't have lunch, I just have milk.

• 2:59:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:59:30Jocko Willink?

  And what? I'm not only satiated, I'm full and I gotta, I got like the happy palates.

• 2:59:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:59:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, cause I tasted something good.

• 2:59:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I, okay, I'll, I'll go ahead and agree. I, I don't like the word satiated, you know?

• 2:59:45Jocko Willink?

  What does that mean?

• 2:59:46Speaker 03

  It means what you think it means, like, yeah, like you're.

• 2:59:48Jocko Willink?

  Like, well, I don't, no, I mean, what does it mean that you don't like the word satiated?

• 2:59:52Speaker 03

  It sounds kinda like weird.

• 2:59:57Speaker 03

  So although I wouldn't use those terms, I will agree with you kind of.

• 3:00:00Jocko Willink?

  Did you say full?

• 3:00:01Speaker 03

  Recommended dessert. That's my recommendation. Boom, there it is. Anyway.

• 3:00:07Speaker 03

  Molk, that's it. How many, uh, what flavors now? Well, you're always coming out with a new flavor. I think the darkness actually darkness, dark choc- is it dark chocolate?

• 3:00:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:16Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. Good, cuz you can kinda taste the extra chocolate.

• 3:00:20Jocko Willink?

  Also, Warrior Kid Molk's cuz your kid is getting fed, uh, garbage that's trying, they're trying, the world is trying to make your kid weak.

• 3:00:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:00:28Jocko Willink?

  And out of shape, and you want your kid to be strong and powerful. So, you give them mulk. What do you give them for dessert? Molk? What do you give them? That's what you give them. They don't want ice cream anymore. They know, your kid knows ice cream makes them weak. They know that. And if they don't know that, they should, you should tell them. So, let them know that Warrior Kid Molk, it tastes delicious, and yet, it's good for you.

• 3:00:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:00:52Jocko Willink?

  So, get some of that.

• 3:00:53Speaker 03

  The, so Ha- Halloween just recently was passed, or came, or whatever. We just finished Halloween.

• 3:01:00Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 3:01:00Speaker 03

  Right. So, I contemplated just giving mulk out instead of candy.

• 3:01:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:06Speaker 03

  But then you gotta mix it, you gotta put little cups and all this stuff, and then I don't really have any.

• 3:01:10Jocko Willink?

  Dave Burke.

• 3:01:11Speaker 03

  Good deal, Dave.

• 3:01:11Jocko Willink?

  Emailed me, or he, we were, we were talking, and he says, "My goal next year is that you have

• 3:01:21Jocko Willink?

  mulk, kid, Warrior Kid Mulk in packets that we can give out for Halloween." He said, "It's just, there's the only, that's the only way it should be."

• 3:01:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, actually, that makes sense.

• 3:01:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the only way it should be.

• 3:01:30Speaker 03

  You know how you like-

• 3:01:31Jocko Willink?

  Little kid should be on the mulk train everywhere.

• 3:01:33Speaker 03

  I agree. You say that they-

• 3:01:34Jocko Willink?

  You think that, you know how there's like, right now, you can flip on the news and you can see like obesity in America?

• 3:01:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:01:39Jocko Willink?

  If everyone just gets on the mulk train, will it just be like, "America's now yoked."

• 3:01:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably, yeah.

• 3:01:46Jocko Willink?

  "Children of America are now yoked."

• 3:01:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:01:48Jocko Willink?

  What happened? They're tracing it back to a strange podcast that talked about a, a, a formula that they called mulk. And the children, they started to drink it. And now, the children of America are yoked.

• 3:02:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, the propaganda. Did it. Well, actually, that's good because you say like, "Oh, yeah, that the industry, uh, is making your kids weak," or whatever, is trying to make your kids weak.

• 3:02:10Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:02:11Speaker 03

  But here's the thing, that is true.

• 3:02:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know.

• 3:02:13Speaker 03

  Here's what they're doing.

• 3:02:14Jocko Willink?

  No, they advertise, they make little cartoony advertisements to eat this sugar.

• 3:02:19Speaker 03

  Bruh, yeah, it's, you know, as, as an informed- Or in my case quasi-informed adult and you kinda can you can kinda sit back and watch the commercials like I see what they did there I wonder why they chose that

• 3:02:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:32Speaker 03

  Commercial to to market their thing and a lot of their brother's question marks everywhere these these commercials nowadays anyway yeah when you get like a Snickers bar right bro Snickers satisfies you like basically saying hey if you're hungry eat this Snickers man it's good it's good it might as well just be good for you cuz it has peanuts in it like bro there's like there's chocolate and caramel shit you know like these things are not good for you but anyway so they're like saying this they're like hey this satisfying you this is this is what you need when you're hungry they're straight up making you ache straight up that's like you it's hard to argue even that that's their

• 3:03:09Jocko Willink?

  Here's the deal though we can't we can't just blame you can't blame the food right you can't it's not allowed

• 3:03:17Speaker 03

  I'm not blaming the food.

• 3:03:18Jocko Willink?

  You have to blame yourself now at a certain age your kids are eating what you put in the fridge if you put weakness in the fridge they're gonna eat weakness if you put strength in the fridge they're gonna get strong if you put milk in the fridge they're gonna get yoked.

• 3:03:32Speaker 03

  Yep, there you go so the choice is pretty obvious in my opinion also stay on the path while representing get a shirt at Jaco's store Jaco's store.com that's where it is so you get a shirt discipline equals freedom the shirt that Jaco always wears every single day of his life is his life victory MMA and fitness black one boom a lot of cool stuff on there in my opinion represent the path if you like something get something this hoodie's on there as well rash guards more rash guards for jujitsu or anything

• 3:04:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:08Speaker 03

  Or surfing.

• 3:04:09Jocko Willink?

  Leif Babin made a comment

• 3:04:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:04:13Jocko Willink?

  On Instagram on the origin Instagram feed

• 3:04:17Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 3:04:18Jocko Willink?

  They put a picture of Pete put a picture of me. Pete and Be Little in New York City.

• 3:04:26Speaker 03

  Saw that one.

• 3:04:27Jocko Willink?

  And Leif made some comment about my trucker's hat.

• 3:04:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:04:31Jocko Willink?

  Something about like, you know, the nineties called and wants their hat back. I actually didn't even realize. That's how I was just completely out of touch. In my mind, this wasn't even a topic.

• 3:04:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:04:43Jocko Willink?

  Like my, my hat was something from the nineties. That wasn't even, that thought never, never crossed my mind.

• 3:04:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well.

• 3:04:51Jocko Willink?

  Is that strange?

• 3:04:52Speaker 03

  Technically, Leif Babin is not correct. If he was doing what I think he might have been doing. I didn't see that comment, so I don't know. Nor did I talk to Leif about it yet. So I don't know currently, but this is my guess. He was referencing the fact that trucker hats were trucker hats and then they kind of went out. They weren't really a style. And then, you know, their whole retro phenomenon where like a

• 3:05:15Jocko Willink?

  Brought them back.

• 3:05:16Speaker 03

  Style emerges from some, you know, thing. So when

• 3:05:19Jocko Willink?

  From the distant past.

• 3:05:20Speaker 03

  Sure. Yeah. So when the trucker hat came back as a style, it was not in the nineties, if I'm not mistaken. It was like after two thousand.

• 3:05:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:05:30Speaker 03

  I'm pretty sure.

• 3:05:31Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, because I only wore truckers.

• 3:05:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, see, well, yeah.

• 3:05:34Jocko Willink?

  I, I must say, I think I had some Flex Fits along the way.

• 3:05:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, Flex Fit. Well.

• 3:05:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:41Speaker 03

  Good news about both of those scenarios is we have trucker hats on jocko store.com and Flex Fit. Represent discipline equals freedom on your head in whatever way you want. Retro, nineties, eighties, two thousands, twenty eighteen, whenever you like, however you like.

• 3:05:58Jocko Willink?

  You can get the Def Court hat.

• 3:06:00Speaker 03

  Yes, you can. That's the hat he was talking about.

• 3:06:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, because I was wearing the Def Court hat, which apparently is now a nineties hat.

• 3:06:05Speaker 03

  No, yeah, you know what I think? And I'm gonna ask him to confirm, but I think he was just mad. You had the Def Court hat. He didn't.

• 3:06:14Speaker 03

  Trying to find a, find a way to be pissed.

• 3:06:16Jocko Willink?

  He's lashing out.

• 3:06:17Speaker 03

  By his own terminology, or with his own terminology, he was drinking the Haterade.

• 3:06:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, did Leif Babin busted drinking the Haterade?

• 3:06:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. Anyway, yeah, some cool stuff on there. Again, jocko store.com if you want to represent on the path. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already on iTunes and Stitcher and Google Play and all these podcast places. Wherever you listen to the podcast, go subscribe if you have not already. Also on YouTube.

• 3:06:44Speaker 03

  We have a YouTube channel.

• 3:06:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we do. That's where the videos are posted.

• 3:06:48Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 3:06:49Jocko Willink?

  You can see Dave Hall, you can see Josh Hall, you can see what everyone looks like, you can see what Echo Charles looks like. You get a comment about the size of Echo Charles' arms. And about how Echo Charles does not look like his voice.

• 3:07:05Speaker 03

  That guy sounds, yeah.

• 3:07:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:06Speaker 03

  Okay. Yeah, cool.

• 3:07:08Jocko Willink?

  There's at least one person on every one of our videos that says Echo is looking jacked. I think the only reason that Echo posts these videos is so that he can read through all those comments and see someone says Echo looks jerked.

• 3:07:23Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 3:07:25Jocko Willink?

  Look at that.

• 3:07:25Speaker 03

  Anyway.

• 3:07:26Jocko Willink?

  He's so guilty.

• 3:07:27Speaker 03

  Also Warrior Kid Podcast, don't forget.

• 3:07:30Jocko Willink?

  Yes, Warrior Kid Podcast, that is also out there and should have some more of those rolling out.

• 3:07:40Jocko Willink?

  Let your kid listen to Warrior Kid Podcast and if you need to ask questions for Uncle Jake, you can do it through my social media and I will pass those questions on to Uncle Jake himself and get the answers for you also the Warrior Kid Soap from IrishOaksRanch.com. Actual Warrior Kid.

• 3:07:56Speaker 03

  Is it called Warrior Kid Soap or Jaco Soap?

• 3:07:58Jocko Willink?

  It's called Jaco Soap.

• 3:08:00Speaker 03

  From a Warrior Kid name it.

• 3:08:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, from a Warrior Kid name it, yeah. I'm just calling it Warrior Kid, I just call it Warrior Kid Soap.

• 3:08:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:08:07Jocko Willink?

  Well, it kind of is.

• 3:08:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:08:08Jocko Willink?

  Cause he's out there getting after it.

• 3:08:09Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 3:08:11Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent American made in a, at a whole new level. So.

• 3:08:17Speaker 03

  From the beginning.

• 3:08:18Jocko Willink?

  IrishOaksRanch.com. Also Psychological Warfare, that's the little album with tracks where I will tell you why you should or should not carry out something that you know you should or should not carry out. And we are working on the next Psychological Warfare album and we'll let you know when it is out. So you can get some of that. And if you have suggestions, recommendations, if you want to know how you should do something.

• 3:08:48Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 3:08:48Jocko Willink?

  Or not do something.

• 3:08:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, refrain.

• 3:08:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, let, let me know and we'll see if it makes the cut.

• 3:08:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, makes sense. There's a lot of them out there, man.

• 3:08:57Jocko Willink?

  Cause some people are like, hey, can you, can you do a track about not putting croutons in your salad?

• 3:09:03Speaker 03

  It's kind of a specific one.

• 3:09:05Jocko Willink?

  No, cause if it's that specific, even though that's might be a little broader than you think. Them croutons taste good and we know they're not good for us.

• 3:09:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:09:12Jocko Willink?

  But you're like, have you like, you're like, ah, you know, it's just a few croutons. So it's no big deal.

• 3:09:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:09:17Jocko Willink?

  Just a little bit of croutons, but then you, if you were to assemble your croutons.

• 3:09:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:09:21Jocko Willink?

  In a, on the plate, you probably got a slice of bread there.

• 3:09:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. Ah, yeah, that's true.

• 3:09:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Then you, then you realize, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm off the path. I didn't even admit it to myself. Told myself a little lie.

• 3:09:32Speaker 03

  Well, what about like, man, you gotta go, but that's like one of those specific ones, like ketchup too. How much sugar is in ketchup?

• 3:09:38Jocko Willink?

  A lot.

• 3:09:39Speaker 03

  You know, people that put ketchup.

• 3:09:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:09:40Speaker 03

  Or even when you, when you go through, um, you know, the burger place.

• 3:09:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:44Speaker 03

  Grass fed, hopefully. Um, and you were like, hey, do you want the meal? Oh, I need a psychological warfare for that.

• 3:09:50Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:09:51Speaker 03

  Think about it.

• 3:09:52Jocko Willink?

  No meal slash no upsize.

• 3:09:55Speaker 03

  No upsize.

• 3:09:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Cause they're like, you want supersized that?

• 3:10:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, the supersized only comes with the meal. So, cause you can't just supersize a burger unless you had an extra pad.

• 3:10:06Jocko Willink?

  I'm always like, hey, well, I was, give me three patties on that thing.

• 3:10:09Speaker 03

  But there's nothing wrong with that. I'll do that too. Like if I didn't, if I'm fasting or didn't eat that much or whatever, and then I get it like a hard workout.

• 3:10:16Jocko Willink?

  How much better, how much better does food take, taste after you fasted? For 24 hours, 48 hours and 72 hours.

• 3:10:23Speaker 03

  I would say 25 to 35% better.

• 3:10:25Jocko Willink?

  How much better does it feel to eat when you know that you've just earned it?

• 3:10:32Speaker 03

  That feels better. Yeah.

• 3:10:33Jocko Willink?

  What percentage?

• 3:10:34Speaker 03

  Significant.

• 3:10:36Speaker 03

  50%.

• 3:10:37Jocko Willink?

  Just, just to get that feeling, it's worth fasting.

• 3:10:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:10:41Jocko Willink?

  Just to feel how good it feels to be like, I totally earned this. I haven't eaten anything in 48 hours. I'm going to just get this burger on right now.

• 3:10:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. And they're like.

• 3:10:51Jocko Willink?

  I'm not recommending you break the fast with the burger. Cause that might not be smart, especially if you're having fries with it.

• 3:10:56Speaker 03

  No fries. That's the thing. You don't, but it's weird. I've not eaten fries and I like fries.

• 3:11:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 3:11:03Speaker 03

  Fries are good.

• 3:11:04Jocko Willink?

  You hold the line on the fries.

• 3:11:05Speaker 03

  I have been for the past like one year, I would say.

• 3:11:07Jocko Willink?

  Dang. I had just had some fries.

• 3:11:10Speaker 03

  See, well, some of us are on the path and you know, some of us aren't. It's all good, Brad. You're the man. Have your fries, but if you're having weaknesses or moments of weakness for fries, that's another thing.

• 3:11:22Jocko Willink?

  Maybe that should be, maybe that should be an album.

• 3:11:27Speaker 03

  No, I'm just saying it's in the same category as the croutons. See what I'm saying? I'm not saying no, I'm not saying yes. I'm saying that's a specified category.

• 3:11:33Jocko Willink?

  I don't know that there's any, like with croutons, like, oh, you know, but I'm having a salad. There's a whole rationalization that takes place there. Fries, there's no rationalization. You're just like, I'm straight up eating fries right now.

• 3:11:43Speaker 03

  You're right.

• 3:11:44Jocko Willink?

  That's just straight up wrong. Except for they taste good. Really good.

• 3:11:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:11:50Jocko Willink?

  I, I respect the fact that you don't eat fries for one year. Good job.

• 3:11:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:11:54Jocko Willink?

  If you weren't drinking Mountain Dews, Cokes, I'd have more, but it's okay.

• 3:11:59Speaker 03

  Well, you know, first things or, or baby steps, right? One step at a time.

• 3:12:04Jocko Willink?

  I think Pete Roberts. He, he's like, uh,

• 3:12:11Jocko Willink?

  he's an enabler. He's a food enabler.

• 3:12:14Speaker 03

  Oh, for, okay.

• 3:12:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Cause I'll be with Pete and Pete's just like, you know, he just get after it. He just gets after it and I'm with him and I'm like, well, you know what? He's the one that had, he's, he's the one that inspired the whole cake scenario that went down when I was in Arizona. I was just in New York with him and it's like, we, I'm like, look, I'm not eating cake. That's not happening. It's like a whole thing. It's just principle. I'm not eating cake. So he orders like a sundae. No, he orders this, this crazy milkshake that had whipped cream. Quote, for the table, right? You ever have somebody that for the table? It's like, I'm like, and I was like, well, I'll have a little bit. I'll have a little bit. Next thing you know, it's just cake everywhere from ice cream.

• 3:12:55Speaker 03

  All right. Well, hey, that's good.

• 3:12:56Jocko Willink?

  Pete Roberts, enabler.

• 3:12:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. So now, cause that probably like caught you.

• 3:13:01Jocko Willink?

  And this is what, this is what, you know, it did. And it's like, oh, you know, it's like, oh, we're just here. Haven't seen Pete. We're talking business, blah, blah, blah. Here's a shake and this is what pissed me off because you get done with the shake. Like we got this shake and he was kind of like a table for the, you get done with it and I said, I, I, no kidding. Would rather have drank a milk than that thing. And because, not just because it's better for you, because the milk actually tastes better than that thing. It's too much, man.

• 3:13:29Speaker 03

  When was the last time you had like a regular like milkshake?

• 3:13:32Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I don't know, probably, probably a month or two.

• 3:13:35Speaker 03

  Okay, so I had a, a regular milkshake and I was hungry too.

• 3:13:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:13:39Speaker 03

  Like, I was like, oh, this milkshake. And it was from Jack in the Box, this Oreo cookie shake.

• 3:13:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:13:45Speaker 03

  And, wow.

• 3:13:46Jocko Willink?

  Too much, too much, though.

• 3:13:47Speaker 03

  Exactly, that, that's my point. So, I, I drink some, the first like two, three, four, five, six hits, you're like, oh, this is a good shake. And then you're like, well, I don't want to waste it, you know, so you kind of push yourself to, yeah, exactly. And then you finish it and you're like, man, I can't finish this. Like, it's not, it, you know, the, what do you call diminishing returns? You know, after about halfway down. And I'm like, you're like, Ben, you don't even feel good. But try drink a milkshake, and I drink the big one too, the double, sometimes triple scoop, in the big thirty ounce thing. Bro, you get halfway, you're like, more, you just want more. Like, you shower through the whole thing, it's good, yeah. So even the experience of it going down is better than a, than a sugary scenario. See what I'm saying? So milk all the way.

• 3:14:26Speaker 03

  Also, what I failed to mention last time, maybe the time before, is when we buy, when we get the books that we cover on this podcast. And when we sometimes have the privilege of having the actual author in this room with us. I listed them on the website, jockopodcast.com, book section. Actually, you did say that, actually, last time. Oh, but yeah, I got them listed right there, boom. So you don't have to go searching or try to remember, hey, what episode was this book? Or what book was on that episode? I got it listed right there, boom, click right through there, take it to Amazon, one day, boom.

• 3:15:00Jocko Willink?

  You got it.

• 3:15:01Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 3:15:02Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it works.

• 3:15:03Speaker 03

  Also, to vary up your workout, you need some rings. If you don't have rings for your home gym, a lot of people getting their home gym now, I see it online.

• 3:15:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:13Speaker 03

  My neighbor, we went trick or treating, so I see his garage is open.

• 3:15:18Jocko Willink?

  Got a little scenario going on.

• 3:15:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, just like, you know how people convert their whole garage?

• 3:15:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:22Speaker 03

  Which I think is a bold yet good, it's a good move.

• 3:15:25Jocko Willink?

  In California, it's real easy to do that. In other parts of the country, you need that garage for vehicles. In California, not happening.

• 3:15:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I mean, and that's really, that's kind of the point, where it's, it's kind of like, that's a, what do you call, like a specific decision that you see someone made, they're like, what's more important?

• 3:15:47Speaker 03

  Housing my vehicles.

• 3:15:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:49Speaker 03

  The family vehicles, by the way.

• 3:15:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:51Speaker 03

  Or creating a gym.

• 3:15:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in California, what I'm saying is in California, that's not a big sacrifice.

• 3:15:57Speaker 03

  Not as big, yeah.

• 3:15:58Jocko Willink?

  In Iowa, that's a big sacrifice. When that, when that dude converts his gym, I mean, his garage to a gym in Iowa, it's like, hey, guess what?

• 3:16:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:16:05Jocko Willink?

  In February?

• 3:16:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:16:07Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna be sitting in a freezing car that's negative twenty degrees for at least eighteen minutes every morning.

• 3:16:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:16:13Jocko Willink?

  But you know what? I'm gonna get my, I'm gonna get my workout in.

• 3:16:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. Exactly right. So, when you're getting your rings, get them from Onnit. They have the best rings that I've seen. Granted, I, I don't have that much rings experience, but the ones I got are dope. Um, get, uh, kettlebells on there. To me, the artistic ones are the best. That's my opinion. And that's Jaco's opinion, too.

• 3:16:38Jocko Willink?

  No, it's actually not.

• 3:16:39Speaker 03

  Are debatably. Debatably.

• 3:16:41Jocko Willink?

  I do have an opinion that you should, if you need to drink something other than milk.

• 3:16:47Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:16:48Jocko Willink?

  Or you're, you don't need milk at that time, you can drink Jaco White Tea. Jaco White Tea, you can get it in cans from Amazon Prime, so you have to pay shipping.

• 3:17:00Jocko Willink?

  Or you can get the tea bags. And they, it tastes delicious. And more important, most important, it guarantees you an eight thousand pound deadlift, so you should do that. Also got some books. We got Way of the Warrior Kid and Mark's Mission. Uh, appreciate everybody getting those and giving them to kids. I get awesome feedback from around the world. Kids getting on the path. If you read this book and you will say to yourself, I guarantee you'll say to yourself, I wish I had this book when I was a kid.

• 3:17:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:17:37Jocko Willink?

  Every single person that reads that book goes, I wish I had this book when I was a kid. You should just have a little preconceived idea that when you get done with it, you're gonna say, I wish I had this book when I was a kid. So, what you can do, like we just talked about with Dave Hall and Josh Hall, what you can do, you wanna help out a kid? Go on Amazon, go to your local bookseller and get that book and give it to a kid. Bring it to their classroom, whatever. It's gonna help kids out and it's gonna help kids out a lot. Speaking of giving. If you wanna give the gift of discipline to someone that you know, get him the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. I wrote it, but you know what? I wrote it and I read it.

• 3:18:20Jocko Willink?

  Why? Cause I need to stay on the path myself. If I would've had the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual sitting next to me, if it was me, Pete Roberts, and the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, I might not have gotten some of that shake right there that he put in front of me. I've been like, no. That's a lie. That whole, you just brought a glass of lies to this table.

• 3:18:40Speaker 03

  Well, that's good, cause you didn't know Pete was like that. We should've known, because remember when we were over there? Yeah, like he was giving us like this baklava and all this delicious stuff. And so we should've known, but I think it kinda crept up on you. Like if you would've known, like going into the scenario, you'd be like, oh, I'm on the lookout for your thing. You could've dodged it, but.

• 3:19:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and Pete, you know Pete's like a sick athlete, you know what I mean? Like, I mean, he played football and he could basketball and set all kinds of records in lacrosse. So he's just like an athletic guy. And he probably, you know, when it was in high school, just eating everything in sight, cause he's big. And he's trying to be yoked, so he's just eating everything. And now he's, whatever he is, thirty whatever years old. And he's just got that menu in his hand like a criminal.

• 3:19:32Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, good times. So if you're hanging around Pete Roberts or someone else, that's an enabler, that makes you feel like it's okay, that's gonna bring you down the sorrow, the path of sorrow. What's the swamps?

• 3:19:46Speaker 03

  Slippery slope. Oh, yeah, the swamps of sadness.

• 3:19:49Jocko Willink?

  The swamps of sadness, the slippery slope of horror. If you're around that person, if you got the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, you can kinda like deflect their weakness with it. I was just out there naked, naked and afraid. Just getting, Pete's ordering up sundaes and tiramisu. So I just spent two days with Pete, no, three days with Pete. No, three nights with Pete, I should say. Was it three? Was it two? Anyways, every night, there's a dessert scenario. Next time, I've got to bring the field manual with me, just to deflect.

• 3:20:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, man, actually, the more I think about that.

• 3:20:27Jocko Willink?

  He's friendly, too.

• 3:20:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna say, bro, cuz he's, it's not like he's some jerk guy out of shape, doesn't have no capability, and he's like, hey, eat this. That's easy to be like, bro, I don't wanna be like you.

• 3:20:37Jocko Willink?

  He's luring you in. He's luring you in with like the smiles, and we're having a good time, and everything's fun. And he's like, you know, well, let's just, would you, do you want dessert? No one asks me that. Pete Roberts is the only person in the world that goes, are you, are you gonna get some dessert? No one asks me that. People don't say, hey, Jaco, you, you wanna see the dessert menu? They don't ask me that. Pete Roberts is like, hey, hey, waiter, can we get the dessert menu over here for this guy right here? He's just enabling.

• 3:21:02Speaker 03

  So you don't have any training dealing with that kinda scenario?

• 3:21:05Jocko Willink?

  That's right. You know what I need? Psychological warfare. I'm gonna make an album for Pete Roberts.

• 3:21:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 3:21:11Jocko Willink?

  And it's, you know where he gets it from? His mom is cooking baklava. His wife, she, she puts candy out in front of him. She just gets after it.

• 3:21:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:21:23Jocko Willink?

  He'll tell me, he'll send me a picture of like a bucket full of, a bucket full of Snickers. It'd be like, hey, I'm on the path right now, this is what my wife does to me.

• 3:21:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:21:32Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 3:21:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:21:33Jocko Willink?

  There's a whole, a whole, a whole, uh, uh, situation folded up there.

• 3:21:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, you gotta watch out for this guy.

• 3:21:41Jocko Willink?

  The Dismingle's Freedom Field Manual, that is gonna help you in those situations. And if you need the audio tracks, it's not on audible.com, whatever. It's on, it's on Amazon Music, iTunes, Google Play. That's that. Extreme Ownership, that's the book about leadership I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. That is the lessons learned in combat and how you can utilize those same principles for combat leadership. You can use them in your business and in your life. And then the follow-on to that book is called The Dichotomy of Leadership. It will teach you the hardest part of leadership, which is learning how to balance between the dichotomies that are pulling you in opposite directions.

• 3:22:26Jocko Willink?

  This is the biggest problem we see. We work with leaders all the time. And this is the biggest problem that we see with leaders. They don't know how to balance the dichotomy of leadership. So if you are a leader, and you, things aren't going the way you want them to go, The likely reason that that's happening is because you're out of balance. If you want to learn that balance, that will make you a much more effective leader. You want to find an ineffective leader, you go talk to a leader and you find one that's that's in balance, that too far in one direction to the other, derails them, derails the team. You want to get back on track, get the dichotomy of leadership. Also, Mikey and the Dragons. Uh, here's the deal. Uh, speaking of extreme ownership, guess, guess what I didn't do?

• 3:23:11Jocko Willink?

  I didn't order enough books. No, I didn't order enough books. Let me, let me, let me go ahead and expand on that. I didn't order enough books of Mikey and the Dragons at all. I didn't, I didn't at all. I, as you pointed out last time, oh, oh, I used to give my publisher a hassle and say they didn't get it.

• 3:23:31Speaker 03

  They're so conservative.

• 3:23:32Jocko Willink?

  Guess what? Guess who else didn't get it, apparently?

• 3:23:35Speaker 03

  Well.

• 3:23:35Jocko Willink?

  Me.

• 3:23:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, then again, look, I don't blame you. It, I, I, we just found out that it's just not that easy to predict, you know?

• 3:23:42Jocko Willink?

  No, actually, I will not make this mistake again. Okay, so there it is. What did I do? Did I say, well, it's because the printer's slow or well, we're not sure? No, you know what? My fault. Here's what I'm doing. We're running, we're doing, I've done, I've done, initiated two more runs. I'm printing a bunch of books. Um, this is the good news. The good news is, well, okay, the bad news is,

• 3:24:10Jocko Willink?

  it's going to take a little bit of time. And depending on when you order, there's, there might be a little hesitation. The good news is, these are still, I'm running the exact same, I'm running the first edition. This is it. We're just running first edition. I'm going to run it for a while, so if you still want that first edition, order now. And let me tell you what, order now. Order now. Why? Because if everyone orders right now and it's a bigger number than what I predicted, which it could possibly be, I need to know that as soon as possible. So. If you want to get the book, Mikey and the Dragons, please order it ASAP and we're gonna, my goal is that everybody has it as soon as possible.

• 3:24:52Jocko Willink?

  Definitely want to get it to everyone by Christmas because I know everyone wants to get this book for their kids for Christmas.

• 3:24:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:24:57Jocko Willink?

  Book review, Echo Charles.

• 3:24:59Speaker 03

  Excellent, because yeah, so I mentioned this before, that's like, okay, it's a good one, sure. We're gonna get over our fears, which is good, it's real effective, by the way, of that.

• 3:25:10Jocko Willink?

  Meaning that the theme of the book, Mikey and the Dragons, is how to overcome your fears.

• 3:25:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the theme, but I'll tell you this, that book is a fun book, it's like fun. It's like, because it rhymes and like all this stuff or whatever, and you know, part of this is me. Because, okay, so I'm reading Way the Warrior Kid, Mark's Mission, the second time around, right? Second time around, I read it before, you know all the words, so I start getting into it. Turn on the theatrics with the kids, right? They like that, whatever. So you read this Mikey and the Dragons one, now you've got some rhymes in there. And it's like, with Mark's Mission, I'm reading like a chapter, maybe two chapters a night. That's kind of it, that's a routine before bed. This one, you read the whole thing.

• 3:25:50Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:25:50Speaker 03

  Straight up, plus they don't want you to stop anyway, because it's like one, you know.

• 3:25:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, turn on the theatrics with the rhyming and stuff, yeah, outstanding, fun, super fun to do. Like, as far as an activity, like with your kids, reading to them, you know? There's something added there with all the rhyming and stuff.

• 3:26:08Jocko Willink?

  John Bozak, who drew the art, and he didn't have a copy yet. And when I was in New York, I saw him, I brought a copy for him. And he's got a good, I don't know what, I don't know what the term for this laugh is, but he's got this laugh that he does, almost like a victory laugh, I don't even know if that's a thing. He does like a laugh where he's so happy that he can't really contain it. So I give him the book, it's still on the plastic, these books are individually wrapped in plastic, shrink wrap. And so I give it to him, he like slowly opens it up, because you can still, you can see through the shrink wrap. But he's doing this laugh, this, I try and imitate it, he's like.

• 3:26:50Jocko Willink?

  And then he's going through each individual page because the coloring is beautiful. He said that, he said that years ago, he said five years ago, it wouldn't be possible to do what we did in terms of matching the color that he originally drew. The color that he actually used, getting it to match perfectly with the book, he said that is not possible five years ago. Well, it's not possible that we did it that fast. Because we did it, it came out exactly the color it's supposed to be. Normally, if it was five years ago, you had to print one and go like, okay, make this, bring more indigo in or whatever. I need more crimson or whatever. And, and we didn't have to do any of that. It's like boom, it's been printed.

• 3:27:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, guess what? It's completely correct. And the drawings are beautiful. They're amazing. In fact, what we are going to do, and I talked to John about this, some of those pictures are so gorgeous. We're gonna make posters that have these images on them.

• 3:27:51Speaker 03

  Makes sense, yeah.

• 3:27:52Jocko Willink?

  And tha- tha- that way kids can put them in their room.

• 3:27:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:27:55Jocko Willink?

  And that picture of the prince walking into the forest with, I mean, come on. Who doesn't want that? That is just everything. He's going to face the darkness. He's confident, he's moving forward. He knows he's scared, but he's still going forward. You put that picture up on your kid's wall, up on your wall. That's what I'm talking about. So I need, that image, that image right there, that needs to be big. And we just need to get it out there.

• 3:28:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:28:25Jocko Willink?

  So, if you want Mikey and the Dragons, then please order it now so that I know, so that I can get it to you as quickly as possible. And I apologize that it's gonna take longer. That is my fault for underestimating how fired up you all would be in ordering that book. I apologize. And what I'm doing to correct it is ordering enough, it's kinda like the tea. When the tea came out, we didn't order enough tea. And so I ordered more, and then that still wasn't enough. And then I, I said to Emily, I said, we need to order enough tea that we never run out again.

• 3:29:02Jocko Willink?

  We haven't run out again yet. I'm not saying it'll never happen, but we're at least in a really good spot. So same thing, Mikey and the Dragons, if you want it, order it. Echelon Front, that is my leadership consultancy and what we do with that is we solve problems through leadership. That's what we do. Whatever problem you're having with your team or your organization, it's a leadership problem. So it's me, it's Leif Babin, it's JP Denell, it's Dave Burke, Flynn Cochran, Mike Sorelli, and Mike Byema. Go to echelonfront.com for details. The musters in 2019, they are coming. One's gonna be in Chicago, one's gonna be in Denver, it's gonna be

• 3:29:40Jocko Willink?

  spring in Chicago, it's gonna be fall in Denver. Every other muster has sold out. I had friends, friends, contact me and say, "Hey, uh, just figured out, we're gonna come to the muster, you know, um, I just got four people and I just, you know, let me know when I should arrive." And I'm like, "It's sold out." And they're like, "Huh, yeah." And I go, "No, like, you can't come. There's, there's, it's done. There's no more place to go in. You cannot come." And so if you're saying that to people you know, that's problematic. So that means they sell out, this is gonna sell

• 3:30:20Jocko Willink?

  out. And so keep an eye, we haven't locked down the dates yet, but extremeownership.com is what you can look and get it. EF Overwatch, if you're a business and you need experienced, trained leaders inside your organization that understand the principles of extreme ownership and combat leadership, if you're a business like that, go to EFOverwatch.com. We have our peers, people we're connected to, that are from special operations, that are from combat aviation, and we are bringing them into the civilian sector to help companies and

• 3:31:00Jocko Willink?

  businesses lead and win. And if you want to keep discussing and talking about all these things with us, we are available on, on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on

• 3:31:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. First of all, Dave Hall, he's off the grid. He's not, you're not going to connect with him on social media because he's in Hawaii cruising super hard. God bless him. And Josh Hall, though, Josh Hall, Josh Hall Surfboards on Instagram, Josh Hall Surfboards on Facebook. Check out what he posts, beautiful pictures of his boards. You can see what he's doing in the world, traveling, surfing, shaping. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks once again to Dave Hall for his service to the country and for coming onto the podcast,

• 3:31:58Jocko Willink?

  sharing his stories and his lessons from war and from life. And to Josh, also thanks to him for coming on. Thanks for spreading that, for spreading that aloha, that aloha and that stoke wherever, wherever he goes. And keeping the roots of surfing planted deep. That's awesome. And it's much appreciated. And it's great to see an American company like yours continue to grow. And to the police, to military, to law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, correctional officers, border patrol, all you all.

• 3:32:35Jocko Willink?

  All you, all you first responders, all you military personnel, thanks for protecting our way of life here and abroad. Thanks for protecting us and our ability to do this podcast, to do jujitsu, to go out and surf and live our lives. Thank you all for your service and sacrifice. And to everyone else that is listening, no matter what it is that you choose to do, no matter what that thing is, whether you're going to go into the military, whether you're going to start a business, whether you're going to work for someone, no matter what you're going to do, put everything that you've got into it.

• 3:33:18Jocko Willink?

  Do it to the best of your ability, whether you're assaulting a building on the battlefield, or whether you're shaping a board in the shed. Whatever it is you decide to do.

• 3:33:32Jocko Willink?

  Pour your soul. Pour your soul in.

• 3:33:38Jocko Willink?

  And get after it. And until next time. This is Echo and Jaco. Out.