#310: Hurry Up and Fail -- Tim Kennedy

Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA https://twitter.com/TimKennedyMMA) is a former UFC http://www.ufc.com middleweight contender who simultaneously served in the US Army as a Green Beret sniper and had tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a three-time winner of the Modern Army Combatives http://www.benning.army.mil/Armor/316thCav/129/Combatives/ tournament, a grueling three-day event that tests mixed martial arts skills among other things. Tim is now a member of the Special Forces wing of the Texas National Guard https://state.nationalguard.com/texas. In his spare time, Tim heads up Sheepdog Response https://sheepdogresponse.com, an organization that trains civilians in self-defense and counter-terrorism skills, and Ranger Up https://rangerup.com/collections/tim-kennedy, a military-themed clothing line. He's shared his martial arts and military expertise on several television shows, including the Spike TV series Deadliest Warrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadliest_Warrior, Hunting Hitler https://www.history.com/shows/hunting-hitler on the History Channel, and in the 2016 indie film Range 15 http://www.range15.com. Tim is currently involved in an unscripted series from Discovery called Hard to Kill http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/discovery-channel-tim-kennedy-hard-to-kill-1202747460/. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by Four Sigmatic http://foursigmatic.com/timtim. I've been drinking this company's mushroom-infused coffees and elixirs for years, and now I've got something new to share: Mushroom Matcha. It's a green tea designed as a coffee alternative, perfect for those of us trying to cut back on caffeine without losing its associated cognitive boost. And for the curious and disgusted: no, it doesn't actually taste like mushrooms. 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• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where it's my job to explore the habits, routines, and life lessons of world-class performers of all different types, from every possible field imaginable. And today, we have a polymath of sorts, who I've been hoping to have on the show for a very, very long time, Tim Kennedy, at Tim Kennedy MMA on the socials, is a former UFC middleweight contender who boasts wins over such stars as Robbie Lawler and Michael Bisping. He is a machine. During his fight career, Kennedy simultaneously served in the US Army as a Green Beret sniper and had tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a three-time winner of the Modern Army Combatives Tournament, effectively blood

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  A grueling three day event that tests mixed martial arts skills, among other things. Kennedy is now a member of the special forces wing of the Texas National Guard. In his spare time, he heads up Sheepdog Response, an organization that trains civilians in self-defense and counterterrorism skills, and arranger up a military-themed clothing line. He's lent his martial arts and military expertise to several television shows, appearing on the Spike TV series The Deadliest Warrior, Hunting Hitler on the History Channel, and in the 2016 indie film Range 15. He is also currently involved in his latest, which is an unscripted series, green-lighted by Discovery, called Hard to Kill, which we discuss.

• 2:51Tim Ferriss?

  And Tim is an intense man, as you will note very, very quickly in this interview. I find him increasingly fascinating as I get to know him, and I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Tim Kennedy. Tim.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  What's up?

• 3:14Tim Ferriss?

  Welcome to the show. So you sent me a photograph en route, or I guess just after arriving here, and you had a gi on, open, and blood running down your face. So where were you and what happened?

• 3:27Speaker 03

  I was not but four miles away from here, and we just had the IBJJF World Jiu-Jitsu Competition this weekend. And so last week, we were doing very sports jiu-jitsu training, getting people ready for the tournament. I hate sports jiu-jitsu. I think sports jiu-jitsu is the abomination to what martial arts is, where like it takes something that's really cool, and then they make it sporty. You know, it's like, oh, let's give some points to do some stupid things, and then people, you know, the mutation that evolve, like how it evolves, it like it loses its balls. And I don't like things that had balls and then no longer have balls. It kind of goes like the emasculated man, and that's what jiu-jitsu has almost become.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  Like, jiu-jitsu to me is like, I'm gonna get in mount or side control, I'm gonna pick your face up, I'm gonna smash it into this cement, and then I'm gonna push your eyes out, and then I'm gonna bite your cheek off. You know, that's jiu-jitsu to me, because you know, that's the origin of it.

• 4:24Tim Ferriss?

  The gentle art.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, the gentle art. And so today, we did combat jujitsu. So just to have a total paradigm shift, just to make people's heads explode. Instead of like talking about, you know, getting four points for back control or getting four points for mount or getting a take down and getting two points, like find a place that you can hold somebody down and then hit them. That's it.

• 4:50Tim Ferriss?

  I was watching a video in prep for this. I think it was from Sheep Dog Response, which we can talk about in a second. But you, you had back control on someone, you're right on top of them, they're all turtled up on the ground. And you sort of wiped your fingers on their eyes. And you're like, okay, yeah, I just took your eyes out. So something along the lines of like, old man jujitsu leads to old men dying or something like that. But there's just such a huge delta between the two.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  I think you have to look at the origin of what things are and then the abomination of what they become. You know, what you see is these really, the genesis of a martial art was they had to learn how to protect themselves. Or they didn't have weapons, so they had to create something to fight the dictators that were killing them. Or there were the samurai that were really good with swords. So then the ninjas came along to use stealth, because if you fight a ninja head on, you're gonna die. So let's create something new. And then over time, that loses what it is. You know, you have to be able to competitively practice something to get good at it. So then you can implement sport.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  And that's what kind of differentiates a lot of these different jujitsu or a lot of these different martial arts. Are just really tiny little rules. Like what's the difference between judo and jujitsu and jujitsu and Greco-Roman wrestling and Greco-Roman wrestling to freestyle wrestling and collegiate wrestling? And so they're very small differences. That's to make them a sport. But if you take those rules away, you get back to what the martial art was, which was how to fight for your life and not get murdered. You know?

• 6:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think it's also misleading when people think of the term martial art and they turn it into some type of performance.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're gonna tell you like body paint and I'm like gonna start. Putting my chest all over this window, I'm like, I'm doing martial arts.

• 6:41Tim Ferriss?

  And it's actually, when you go back to the translation from, say, whether it's like Wushu in Chinese, or any of these, like Bu Jutsu in Japanese, I used to live in Japan, it's actually martial technique that then got translated to art. So it's, it's lost its, uh, some of its impact through a mistranslation in a sense. And when I look at your career, I saw you fight live in some early Strike Force events, when I was living in San Jose. And then became fascinated by your military career, which we'll talk about. Seems like you're very good at game time decisions and acting under pressure. So I wanted to talk about training though, for a second.

• 7:25Tim Ferriss?

  Can you talk about what you say to yourself when you train? And at least my understanding is it begins with hurry up, dot, dot, dot.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, hurry up and fail.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Funny enough, as I send you that picture of me dripping blood out of my face, and like I've, blood already clotted in my mouth, you know, and like, you know, it gets like stuck as it starts congealing, you know, it turns into that gelatin up inside of kind of weird cavities inside of your nose. So if you like cough, like chunks start flying. As I was trying to explain what it means to train, so somebody came up to me at the end of practice today, and they're like, man, I keep, um, getting tired, or I keep quitting, or I had a couple of people that just tapped from the position that I was in, or that they were in. And so hurry up and fail is this mantra of, I want to get to the breaking point of where I can't go on any longer, and I want to stay there.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Cause then the next time I train, that, that wall has moved. I mean, ever so slightly, but it's, it's moved. So then the next time, I can go in and I can get to that point as far, as hard and as fast as I can, and I can stay there. So the next time, it's gonna move. And, and repeat until finally, if you look back months later, you've progressed so far. Today, as I was at Onit Academy, and we did the exact same workout we did two months ago. Same weight. And what two months ago left us on the ground, like, almost heaving in, in nauseous, couldn't stand up, about to throw up. Today, we blew through effortlessly, and Juan, Shane and I looked at each other like...

• 9:05Speaker 03

  What are we supposed to do right now? Because we have an extra 16 minutes because we went through it so fast. So in two months, there was such a clear change of looking back and seeing like, man, I got bigger, I got faster, I got stronger, and I ultimately got harder to kill. So in Jiu Jitsu, it's the exact same. You rush to that breaking point. And by no means do I want to say somebody's going to break me. Because if somebody can break me, I welcome it. I can bring it. I see, I go all over the world to try and find people that can do that. So I can find that point where I'm going to fail. And then the next time I do it, it's going to move. You know?

• 9:39Tim Ferriss?

  So when you then fast forward to an example of

• 9:45Tim Ferriss?

  an environment in which the stakes are a little higher. So I'd love to talk about Hodger Gracie.

• 9:51Tim Ferriss?

  Starting with an R for you non Brazilians out there. I was chatting with mutual acquaintance. Actually, before we get to mutual acquaintance, I owe credit to the person who made the introduction, who is Donald Parks.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  Love that guy.

• 10:04Tim Ferriss?

  Who I went to college with, who used to be a super lightweight, blue belt, that I could throw around because of Judo. Now I can no longer throw him around because he's a black belt. And co owner of a school, which is where you were training today. What's the name of the school?

• 10:15Speaker 03

  Gracie Omata. I think it's, um, it's, Hoiler Gracie is, is, it's in his lineage. So I'm Hoiler Gracie black belt, but Donald Parks and Paulo Brandao are the ones that run the school. And, you know, it is a shark tank of passionate people that love family and martial arts. And that's, uh, that's what that place is.

• 10:36Tim Ferriss?

  And for those of you who don't want staff infections, also very clean school.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Oh, it's one of my favorite things. I'm a huge germaphobe. Not I'm a germaphobe, but like, I'm a crazy clean person. And like you, I walked in today and I could, I could smell bleach. God, I love that smell. You know, it's like, that means. Actually have a huge infection on my leg right now because I was in Florida. I got my leg sliced open on the side of a boat after I smashed a window with a tomahawk. And my leg got infected from it because the water, I'm not sure if you know this, in Miami, is not really clean.

• 11:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right?

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. So like, I'm cutting my leg open so I can scrub it with iodine. So this infection goes away because I also don't like prescriptions.

• 11:13Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Well, I can't leave that and go back to Hodger Gracie immediately. So we'll get to Hodger in due time. So you're in a boat, you smash a window with a tomahawk. What the hell happened?

• 11:23Speaker 03

  The boat was on fire and it was sinking. I didn't want to drown, so I smashed the window. And then I tried to swim out and then the glass in the window cut my leg. And then I got what I think is.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  poop water inside of my cut leg. Was what's the context for that? Um, well, somebody had pooped in the water. I'm sorry, why were you, why was their broken glass tomahawk boat on fire to begin with? Um, we're, we're recreating, um, a commercial fisherman's worst nightmare, which is being on a boat that's on fire, that's sinking. And, uh, you're going to have to make a bunch of decisions at once. Uh, am I going to try to put the fire out? Am I going to try to save the boat? Am I going to start to get my rescue equipment? Am I going to start trying to find my beacon? Am I going to start deploying the boat? The life, the life boat? Um, am I going to get my immersion suit? Am I get like, so you have a whole bunch of really bad options to choose from? And of all those bad options might dictate whether you live or die.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  Um, this is for the TV show that you're Yeah. finishing up. Yep. What's the name of the show? It's called Hard to Kill. Aptly named. Yeah, but not me. It's not, it's not about like me being hard to kill. Um, which I hope I am. Right. You know, the, the, the hard to kill, it's to pay homage to guys and gals that do these jobs that are in freaking sane. Like I imagine we're sitting here talking right now. Some random dude just like started rappelling down the side of this window to clean our window. Like people do that job. That's kind of crazy and they do it when the wind's blowing 30, 40 miles an hour. Right. You're like, we're like that little crane right there, which doesn't have an American flag on it.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  That, that vexes. You don't seem pleased about that. No, that vexes me. I want to go tear that thing down like Hulk style and start throwing those construction guys off until they put up an American flag. Well, they, they got their little brands up there, whatever those are, don't care.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  If you're listening right now and you're in a crane operator, I implore you to please put an American flag on your crane. We want to see it. All right. So, um, I'm looking at a crabbed hamstring.

• 13:27Tim Ferriss?

  This is the most action-packed podcast I've ever done already.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  I'm just gonna drink some more water.

• 13:32Tim Ferriss?

  How did Tim Kennedy pull his hamstring? He was doing a podcast with Tim Ferriss.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  They're really intense. You have intense podcasts.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  So we find these jobs that are super dangerous. And people do them every single day and they embody the spirit of the American people. You know, they do something that provides, that puts food on tables, that put gases in cars, that delivers medications to people in nowhere Alaska. And these are brave, courageous, fearless people that do the jobs every single day. And then we find in that job their worst nightmare. Their worst-case scenario, their worst day. And then I go and I do that. So I learn about the job, I learn about the people, I learn about why they do it. And then ultimately, how they survive or sometimes even perish. And I go and do that thing, which is dumb.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  Which leads me, like, I'm 20 pounds lighter than I normally am and I'm, I have a bunch of jacked-up cuts all over my body right now and I'm trying to march on.

• 14:32Tim Ferriss?

  You seem good at marching on. And I mean, a common thread that occurs to me at least, one thing that fascinates me about people in those situations,

• 14:42Tim Ferriss?

  anyone in very high-pressure situations is the internal monologue, sort of the self-talk. Which I'm gonna use as a segue to Hadja Gracie. So Hadja, for people who don't know who he is, chatting with a second mutual acquaintance, who I'm not sure if he wants to be named or not, we can talk about who he is afterwards. But he said, you could consider Hadja one of the, many people would consider him one of the top five jiu-jitsu competitors of all time. Would you say that's a fair statement?

• 15:09Speaker 03

  I'd put him top three.

• 15:10Tim Ferriss?

  Top three.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  I'd tie him with three other guys.

• 15:13Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Just out of curiosity, who else would be up at the top in your mind?

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Fortunately, Ryan Gordon, right now, is definitely up there. Louvato and without a doubt, I'd have to include...

• 15:34Speaker 03

  New York. I can't even remember his name right now.

• 15:36Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sure somebody from the internet will recognize who. Oh, wait a second. I know who you're talking about. You're talking about Marcelo Garcia.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, Marcelo Garcia. Yeah.

• 15:44Tim Ferriss?

  That was the Marcelatine.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Marcelo Guillotine.

• 15:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  Like, yeah, loose hand, high elbow.

• 15:50Tim Ferriss?

  Marcelo's amazing.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:51Tim Ferriss?

  But Hodger's in there. And you fought Hodger in MMA roles, or under MMA roles. When you're walking out to enter the octagon to fight someone like that, and just to flash forward, I mean, the story as it was retold to me, having seen the footage, but it was retold to me by another high-level jiu-jitsu practitioner, he said, "Not only on the feet did you effectively beat the shit out of Hodger, but on the ground also you were able to do that." So, two questions. When you're walking out, are you saying hurry up and fail to yourself on the way out to the octagon?

• 16:27Speaker 03

  No. On game day, when I'm putting rounds in my magazines, so when you put your body armor on, put your helmet on, do a commo check.

• 16:38Tim Ferriss?

  Do a what check?

• 16:39Speaker 03

  A commo check, like a communication with the radio. On all the different channels, and we have like your primary, secondary, contingent, and emergency channels.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  Then, the very next thing you do is you chamber a round into your pistol, because if you do your rifle first, you'll forget to do your pistol. So you do these things and these pre-mission checks in a very specific order, so you never miss something. So I'm in a gunfight with my rifle, my rifle runs out of ammunition, somebody's charging at me, I go to transition, I forgot to put a round in the chamber. Like, you'd think you'd never do that, but like, you're about to, the helicopter's getting spun up, you know, guys are putting their gear on, you can forget. So you do things very meticulously.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  When I put that round in my chamber of my pistol before I start putting the round in the chamber of my rifle, which is the last thing that I do before I start taking tape off of charges, or, you know, making sure all my grenades are prepped properly. It's like not today. That's what I'm telling myself. Like I can fail all the time in training. I can, I can rush to failure. I can hurry up and fail at every opportunity when I'm getting ready. But when finally bullets are gonna fly, or I'm gonna walk into that octagon, or I'm gonna kick that door in. Not today. Like, not a fucking chance. Are you gonna beat me on that day?

• 17:55Tim Ferriss?

  Is that what you repeat to yourself when you step into the octagon and you're waiting for all the announcing to, to complete, or is there more that goes through your head?

• 18:02Speaker 03

  I'm actually waiting for the first time I make a mistake and somebody thinks that they're gonna do something great. You know, that like I'm gonna get hit the first time. Or in Hodger's case, I shot an inside single on him to put him on his back, which nobody thought in my right mind I would do, and he got my back. Hodger Gracie's best, best position. Hodger Gracie, if he gets on your back, you're going to sleep. Period. I got there and I was like, hell yeah. Do you know what's gonna happen? I'm gonna get out of here. I'm gonna start punching you in the face and think about that what's, that's gonna do to him.

• 18:33Tim Ferriss?

  Psychologically.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Psychologically. I'm in the, he's in the best position that he could possibly be in, the thing that he's the best at. And this little hairy-handed monkey that's in front of him gets out and starts punching him in the face while he has his back. No, he just, that was the end of the fight. I was three minutes into the fight and there was nothing he could do psychologically from that point forward. Because I already beat the thing he did the best.

• 18:55Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 18:56Speaker 03

  So even in my failure, I was like, hell yeah, here I come. You know, like, I wish I had blood dripping out of my mouth and sending him pictures later of it. Cause like, that's, that's the opportunity to really thrive, to grow and to just scare the freaking shit out of somebody.

• 19:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. I, the, I, I don't consider myself a fighter at all. Well, not, I mean, I'm not an accomplished fighter in any capacity, but I, I enjoy interacting with people who are very good at combat sports. And you mentioned Marcelo earlier. So I've had a chance to spend time with Marcelo simply because his school in New York City is co-owned with a dear friend of mine named Josh Waitzkin. Who, for those who don't know the name, was the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer, both the book and the movie. So he was formerly considered a chess prodigy. And what they did and continue to do at that school is they videotape training sessions, sparring sessions with Marcelo. And this was also including during his competitive

• 19:54Tim Ferriss?

  career. And people were like, "That's ridiculous. How would you possibly like show your whole hand on video? That's crazy." And all these other people were really secretive. And Marcelo's thinking was like, "That's, that doesn't bother me at all because that's my game." It's like, "If people try to enter my game, like, I'm never gonna lose. I will always win." Like, "Yeah, you want to watch my stuff and try to play that hand? Like, yeah, sure. I would love for you to do that." And he's the sweetest guy ever, so I'm using a tone that he would never use. Who are fighters, past or present, who really impress you? Are there any, they could be well-known, but I'm particularly interested in names that folks might not, might not recognize. It's like the two or three guys in the marquee lights that have really been seen before.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Jeremy Horn. You know, he was an old-school guy, but one of Chuck Liddell's first losses, if not his only loss by submission, was to Jeremy Horn. Yeah, Chuck's a NCAA wrestler.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  The Iceman, you know, like putting everybody's sleep. Just cool, calm, collected, walks out and, you know, you can't take him down. He's just gonna hit you with these bricks for hands. And he gets on top of Jeremy, and Jeremy just holds on to him, puts him in a, had an arm choke in the guard and puts him to sleep. Like, waking Chuck up, like, because he's so unconscious. And that was, he has a really unassuming body shape. You know, they called him Gumby, because he's just, he doesn't look like me. Like, you look at me and you're like, "Ugh, I don't want to fight that ape." You know, like, you look at him and you're like, "Well, you can babysit my kids." You know, like, "Can you

• 21:38Speaker 03

  walk my dog?" So he's one of those guys that was just so disarming. Carlos Condit is another one, where, you know, especially at his prime.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  He looked like the idiot kid next door that you'd want to mow your lawn and house sit. And like clean dog poop out of the back of your house. You're like, he's just such a nice looking, pleasant New Mexico kid. But when that bell rang, it was just pure violence. Everywhere he would elbow in you, spinning kicks, submissions, grappling, it didn't matter where the fight went. He's just gonna fight and there's no, you, you, the only way you can beat him is like just being inches or seconds ahead of him, something for the whole entire duration of the fight.

• 22:29Tim Ferriss?

  Hard to do.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, really hard to do because you're not gonna knock him out, you're not gonna submit him. You just have to out endure him. You know, and when I say endure, I'm not talking like Lance Armstrong on a bicycle. I'm talking like getting punched in the face for 25 minutes. That's a really dumb way to out endure somebody.

• 22:47Tim Ferriss?

  Well, so this.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  Do I put Jacare in that, in that shortlist too of best grapplers?

• 22:54Tim Ferriss?

  The, I think, I don't speak Portuguese, so I think that's the crocodile, isn't it?

• 22:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:58Tim Ferriss?

  Jacare, guy's an animal.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:00Tim Ferriss?

  I, I, I remember hearing stories, I didn't see this personally, but of him in jujitsu tournaments, literally just ripping the arms off, like the fabric arms off of Gee's because of his strength and grip strength. What a beast.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:13Tim Ferriss?

  So that leads me to, to a quote, and if this is a misquote, please correct it, of course, but here we go. Quote, "My entire life revolves around the concept that I want to be the hardest person someone ever tries to kill. If you're going to come and think, oh, I'm gonna kill Tim Kennedy, you might be able to, but it's going to be the nastiest, most evil, disgusting, violent affair that you could ever imagine occurring."

• 23:36Tim Ferriss?

  How do you develop? I'll keep this really broad, but mental toughness and where does that fit in? Or, or what, what mental slash psychological advantages do you have in life or in battle? And how have you developed them?

• 23:52Speaker 03

  I hate, there's so many like metaphors and phrases and little cliches of, you know, it's not the size of the dog, but the size of the fight in the dog.

• 24:03Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  Right? It's not the size of the, the size of the dog in the fight. It's the size of the dog in the fight.

• 24:08Tim Ferriss?

  Or the fight in the dog.

• 24:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. That is developed.

• 24:13Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  You know, so bulls, in the sixties and seventies, they had bucking bulls. They are hard to ride, you know? So then what they started doing in the seventies and eighties, they started finding Mexican fighting bulls. These are mean, nasty bulls, and they were breeding them with the bucking bulls. So the bucking bulls are big, powerful bulls. And then what would happen in the eighties and nineties, what guys used to be able to ride like sixty, seventy, maybe even eighty percent of the time, they'd successfully get their eight seconds. By the eighties, it was down to fifty percent. Right now, it's down to like the twenties and thirties. The bulls are just bigger, they're meaner, and they buck just as hard.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  And the cowboys are not only scared of how hard they're gonna buck, but when they get thrown, that bull is turning around to try and murder that cowboy, because now they're mean. So it can be trained. It can be, in a bull's case, it's actually bred.

• 25:09Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  You know, but in special forces, there's a lot of different special operations units, you know, Navy SEALs and Marine Recon, even, I'll even give a nod to the Air Force with their JTACs, you know, the Army Rangers, Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. In the process, once you get past selection, the next six months to ten months, they pretty much just tear away every level of who you are, of your ego. You know, if we're gonna go like Freudian, they're just stripping away everything down to the most raw element of you as a human. And that you're worthless, that you're, that you can't do anything. And you are so exposed and you're so vulnerable at this point,

• 25:54Speaker 03

  that then they can start building a fresh foundation. And they start putting in the cornerstones of

• 26:03Speaker 03

  Never quitting, of always working hard, of planning relentlessly and strategically looking for every opportunity to never have a fair fight. So, because we feel so vulnerable and we feel so exposed, like, anything could hurt me right now. You know, like, fuck, if you fart on me, I might die. So, I have to have every single advantage strategically. Like, I need to cheat in every way so I never have a fair fight. If I'm like, if I'm gonna go and kick a door in and there's four bad guys in there, cool, I'm gonna have 250 dudes with me. We're all gonna have better guns, we're all gonna have better ammo, we're gonna have better sights, we're gonna have aerial support. You know, while that may not always be an option, that's what we want.

• 26:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Because we never want to fail again. Because we felt so raw and exposed. And that's different from all other special operations. And I think that's why special forces specifically has been so successful and so unheard of, you know, so unremarkable that nobody knows, you know, the quiet professionals, which is our motto, means that we're still successful.

• 27:07Tim Ferriss?

  What was the motto?

• 27:08Speaker 03

  The quiet professionals.

• 27:10Tim Ferriss?

  The quiet professionals.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:12Tim Ferriss?

  Well, let's talk about how the military entered your life. And I don't know the exact timing on this, but it seems like you're, let's start with, and then you can sort of place us, 9/11. So, it seems like your life changed quite dramatically around that time. Could you tell us, who was Tim Kennedy at that point in time?

• 27:31Speaker 03

  We have to.

• 27:33Tim Ferriss?

  And what then happened, starting at 9/11?

• 27:36Speaker 03

  All right. Well, I'm just gonna just tell your story.

• 27:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 27:41Speaker 03

  Mom, if you're listening, please stop. I'm at the pit. We're Chuck trained out.

• 27:46Tim Ferriss?

  Samos.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, Samos Bispo. And I'm training, you know, sweaty, stinky. And this pretty good-looking girl walks in. And I was like... Hey girl, what's going on? She's like, hey, I'm looking for a guy that fought. He was like the fourth or fifth fight that fought a few weekends ago at the WC, the World Extreme Cage Fighting Fight on, I think it was like on Halloween. I was like, oh, I fought that night. And she's like, oh, yeah, I remember you, you look familiar. And like, I totally didn't remember her. And she tells me that um, she tested positive for HIV and that we had a huge orgy that night. And she's trying to contact all of her partners that she's been with in the past few months to have them go get tested that they might have AIDS. That pretty much personifies who I am.

• 28:34Tim Ferriss?

  At the time?

• 28:35Speaker 03

  At the time, yeah. I graduated from high school a few years early, was done with college a couple of years early. You know, like 18, I'm an EMT firefighter. 19, I already had my undergrad. I start grad school, 9/11 happens, I got two girls pregnant. Girls walking into the, like, I'm in just a talented, wasted piece of shit. Like, I'm wasted potential in every single sense of the word.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  And at the time that all of these things are going wrong and I'm having this realization of, I have to do something. I don't know what that is. A bunch of planes start slamming the buildings, you know, to the Pentagon, into the, into the two towers, into some random field in Virginia. And, you know, and I'm just sitting here watching live these things happen and realizing what a waste of a human I am. You know, like, everything was about what jeans am I gonna wear? Or, you know, if I'm gonna bring a good bottle to someplace to impress somebody to, you know, be able to hook up with somebody else.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  And this, it was like, this is horrible, humiliating slap in the face of you're a piece of shit. What are you gonna do now?

• 29:53Tim Ferriss?

  And then what happens?

• 29:54Speaker 03

  So I walk into the recruiter's office and I, I say, put me on the fastest course I possibly can to the worst place I can go. You know?

• 30:04Tim Ferriss?

  All right, so, so you do that. What, what do the people around you think of that decision?

• 30:13Speaker 03

  My mom was scared, my dad was proud, my brother was excited.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  All of my friends were...

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Just like me, so interested in themselves that it didn't matter what I was gonna be doing.

• 30:32Tim Ferriss?

  Right, they were too self-absorbed.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:34Tim Ferriss?

  To really have that much interest.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  Um, my, my dad, he, he wasn't proud yet. Um, he was exhilarated in the sense that I had a chance. You know?

• 30:46Tim Ferriss?

  You'd been given, so in a way you'd been given a second chance.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:49Tim Ferriss?

  Like a reboot opportunity.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  In this case, it was probably my 50th chance.

• 30:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  You know, I, I came, yeah, white privilege is a thing and I had every opportunity to succeed in anything I did.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  You know, I was top 10 in the world when I was 22 years old as a fighter, um, 21 as a fighter. Anything, I could have done anything and, um, and I was just wasting everything. So then at this point, it was my dad finally be like, okay, we, we got another chance, you know? Let's see how this goes.

• 31:20Tim Ferriss?

  So, so if you could walk us through sort of what happens in the, in the weeks and months after that? Because I, I'm, I'm very, I mean, I have friends who are both active and at this point certainly, um, now more on the civilian side from military, but I've never experienced it myself.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:36Tim Ferriss?

  What, what happens from that point forward?

• 31:38Speaker 03

  So, you know, it's, it's a, to get to special forces, there's a lot of tests from intelligence chat tests. You know, your, your ASVAB, your GT, your, um, GT test.

• 31:49Tim Ferriss?

  What are those?

• 31:50Speaker 03

  It's your general technical knowledge. So it's, there's high IQ people who can do amazing things on, on questionnaires. And then if you hand them a puzzle, they kind of look at it like, or if you hand them a transmission.

• 32:03Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  And you say, break this transmission down and put it back together. Um, that's just a different type of mind.

• 32:09Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  Um, special forces, they want smart guys that are physically capable, that have a very, very high IQ and, and general technical ability. So there's some tests that when you take the ASVAB, which is kind of the general military intelligence test, that has subcategories that one of which is your, your GT score, your general technical knowledge.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  So make sure your scores are good. You have the proficiency to learn a second language quickly, or you already have a second language, which is required in all special forces. And then you go to basic training as an infantryman. If you finish basic training, you go to airborne school. You finish basic training infantry school and airborne school, then you go to special operations preparation course. And this is the attritor. This is the opportunity for the special forces to get rid of you. This is, um, it's run by senior special forces NCOs. And they, it's their first access to the fresh population of potential candidates that are going to go to selection.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  If you don't pass SOPC, then you don't get to go to selection. If you don't go to selection, then you go to the needs of the army. You can go back to being infantry, or you could go to EOD, or you could do anything else. You just can't be a Green Beret.

• 33:28Tim Ferriss?

  What does EOD stand for?

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Uh, it's

• 33:31Tim Ferriss?

  Or what is it?

• 33:31Speaker 03

  It's getting rid of bombs.

• 33:33Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Guys would go to psychological operations, civil affairs, just kind of any other kind of high-speed, cool job, but you're just never going to be special forces. I think we had, and we got there in April, and they froze guys going to selection in May, June, July, and August, because it was too hot and a bunch of Green Berets keep dying in selection. Well, pre-Green Berets. So they wouldn't let us go. So they had us for four or five months of all of these recruits coming in. And the 500 of us, they sent 91 of us to selection. Everybody else went away.

• 34:11Tim Ferriss?

  Washed out a lot of people.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 34:13Speaker 03

  And of the 91 of us, 88 of us got selected and then went to, when you get selected, that just means you get to go to the Q course, which is somewhere between a year to two years of training to show up on the team and then realize that you know nothing and that you're a piece of shit and that you have everything to learn the day that you walk through the door.

• 34:33Tim Ferriss?

  So when you got into, say, the Q course, what were you best at and what were you worst at? Where did you excel and where were you deficient the most? If you remember.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  They love the gray guy. Like, they always say, be the gray man. Be the man, be the guy. You know, there's 200 people in formation. Be the guy that nobody knows the name of.

• 34:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Um, which means like, if you're going to run a PT test, there's the guy that goes the fastest and the guy that goes the slowest. You want to be the guy that just passes? That nobody knows about. Why is that? Like being so unremarkable is, especially in special operations, it's a, it's a trait that's really hard to find. That, um. Is that for blending in later, for being inconspicuous later? Yeah, and also, we don't want showboaters. Right. You can go to the Navy SEALs. And we don't want failures. Yeah. You know, you can go to the Air Force. Um, or the, so, we want that sweet middle ground. We want the gray man that can do anything, that will always pass.

• 35:32Speaker 03

  And you forget about the moment you take your eyes off him. Yeah. You're like, I'm looking right at you, but where'd you go, man? I know you're right there. Right. Like, you know, you cross the finish line, you're like, alright, great job. What was that dude's name again? Right. That's the guy that we want. Cause that guy's priceless. So were you that guy? I was not that guy. I was the guy that would finish first. Yeah. I was the guy that was. Biceps the size of my chest. Yeah. And competitive shooter, a professional fighter, like.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  They knew, like, they knew who I was. So it took a lot of practice and training and pain to kinda get the gray man mentality. You know, I wanted to be, I want everybody like, oh, look at Tim. You're like, great, look at that guy. He's, be like Tim. But that's just not how it is in that culture. So how do they, how do they beat that out of you? Or how do they? They beat that, like, they, you, you said it. Yeah. They beat it out of you. So if you're in SER school, um, you're talking about being a gray man. Yeah. Like, if you're the tallest. That's, what is that? That's, uh, help me out. Survival, evasion, resistance, escape. Um, it's, it's a month-long torture school where, uh, you wanna be the gray man. If you're not the gray man, you're being beat, you're, like, I'm not,

• 36:47Speaker 03

  you are being beaten. Like phone books, hoses, starvation, cold water, um, locked inside of cages, locked inside of boxes that you can't take a full breath in, locked inside of a box that you can't stand up in, that you can't stretch in, you know, being pissed on, getting, putting a pond that's frozen and making them, making you squat so your tiny little dick and their balls, which are essentially up inside of your stomach, are barely touching and breaking the ice. And you have to stand there in that half squat with the water just playing with what's left of your, you know, tiny penis. And with, with somebody making fun of you while you're doing it. Right. You're like, oh, look at his little dick, you know, and you're like, why are you taller than I am tall? And then they bit you again. So they beat it out of you.

• 37:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  You you'll get good at it.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:35Tim Ferriss?

  I'm trying to think about it. How to segue here.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Mental toughness.

• 37:40Tim Ferriss?

  Now.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  It can be taught.

• 37:41Tim Ferriss?

  When when is it considered graduating from, say, Ranger School? Like, what what is that moment? Where does that come after? That that particular.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  So there's a bunch of phases in the Q course. Um, once you get selected and you start the Q course, you have small unit tactics. So it's learning how to be a guerrilla warfighter. And then from there, you have to learn your job. So you're an 18 Bravo. I'm an 18 Bravo, Special Forces Weapon Sergeant. I have to learn everything about every single foreign weapon. It's like how to assemble and disassemble a Dishka and an American M2. And then AK-47 and M4 and M21 and M14. I need to know all these weapons, how to assemble, how to disassemble. If you put all the parts into a box, I can pick all the parts out and figure out which gun is which and then put them together. I can close my eyes. I can do it with every single American gun. So that if you send me to a country and all we have access to is local indigenous guns.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  It's cool. We're good with these and I know how to work it and how to clean it and how to operate it. So that's my job. Security, the security of my team, also an 18 Bravo skill set. And then from there, you go.

• 38:45Tim Ferriss?

  What does security mean in this context?

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Like, right now, in this room that we're in, where where would I set up early warning? You know, am I going to bribe the bomb that's on the street corner? That's watching the front door or the guy that's at the front desk that let me in here and push the elevator button? Like, is he going to have my direct cellphone line? If I go to Dominican Republic to do a counter human trafficking mission.

• 39:12Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  Who am I bribing? How am I protecting my team? How am I protecting? Or if I'm in country, I'm Afghanistan or from Iraq. Like, what is the outside court on? You know, how, what kind of, if I'm a level all the bushes and then I'm gonna put up high fence? And then I'm gonna have mines in between the high fence and the mid fence? And then from the mid fence to my security positions where I have machine guns positioned with interlocking sectors of fire? So by the time you get to my little hut in the middle, like, it's been a pretty bad fight. You know? I'm supposed to be able to think of all that. Like, I'm a security consultant, but for 12 Special Forces guys. When everybody around us wants to kill us.

• 39:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. Got it.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  So you've done S U T, small unit tactics, guerrilla warfare, you've learned your job. Then you go and you apply it in what in a phase called Robin Sage, which is the coolest phase there is.

• 40:00Tim Ferriss?

  Robin Sage.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  Robin Sage. You go to a country called Pine Land and you are embedded with 11 other special forces guys.

• 40:09Tim Ferriss?

  Now, is that a nickname for a real country or is it a simulation?

• 40:11Speaker 03

  It's a simulation.

• 40:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  And it's very Vietnam era simulation, um, or North Af- or North Iraq pre-war with the Kurds about to fight Saddam. Um, they put you in and they have 100 role players that are your indigenous fighting force, your militia, and you're trying to train them, you're trying to prepare them, you set up a base of operations that they're going to be fighting out of, and you start running operations like military operations to overthrow a government to, um, battle a local other insurgency, a competitive warlord, uh, so that we have a hope of implementing democracy and then help them write a constitution and

• 40:57Speaker 03

  then help them put people into government that can run the country appropriately. And there's very intentional design problems that come up in this phase, but it's a full, you pack your, your rucksack with your food and your water and you jump out of an airplane into the middle of a forest and you link up with the, the local G's and you start conducting this month, two month long exercise. You finish that, you go to SER school, graduate SER school, you finally get to go to being awarded your green beret and then you step into an O D A and they're like, you suck.

• 41:33Tim Ferriss?

  What's an O D A?

• 41:34Speaker 03

  Uh, uh, special forces operation detachment alpha. It's the A team.

• 41:38Tim Ferriss?

  I got it.

• 41:38Speaker 03

  Where the O D A is the A team. And they say, go sit in a corner and, uh, open your eyes, open your ears and shut your mouth and you do that for like a year and then you start get to start work.

• 41:51Tim Ferriss?

  So you get to start work. At what point? So I was doing some reading and, uh, again, correct me if I'm wrong here, but so I, I'm the guy who wants to gra- once you graduated Ranger School, place that starves you and denies you sleep for over two months, took a fight six days later in the I F L.

• 42:09Tim Ferriss?

  Why would you do such a thing?

• 42:10Speaker 03

  I'm stupid.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  I think we have a reoccurring theme here, right? Where it's like, God, you're just a dumb person. Like, you're a smart person, Tim, like, and then across the table, there's like this other person that's super stupid.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  I mean, it seems to have worked for you so far. Hurry up and fail. Yeah. Right, like, I graduated from Ranger School as honor grad, uh, which is of the four, 500 people that that went, the two, 300 that graduated, there's three that are selected, one, um, for the NCOs, one for the officers, and one as an overall, as the best Rangers of that class.

• 42:52Speaker 03

  So I graduate, I actually fought in the Army Combatives Tournament, which is one of, I think, the most grueling, unknown tournaments in the world. I fought that the Friday, Saturday, Sunday. What is it? It is a, it's a three-day tournament. You weigh in on Thursday, Friday, it's all grappling. Who, is it, is it, is it, who are the contestants? The contestants? Where are they from? Combat arms of all branches of service. So Navy SEALs, Green Berets, Army Rangers, 101st Airborne, 82nd Airborne, infantrymen, you know, like, marine, anybody that kicks ass for a living can come and fight in the Combatives Tournament.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  The unknown kumite of the military. Yeah. So first day is all grappling, or so you, it's like, it's like a grappling tournament. If you win that day, you go to the next day, which is- Are the rules sports jujitsu? Are they different? Similar to sports jujitsu. Um, there's no pulling guard. You can slam, you can knock out people, um- With a slam. With a slam or a throw.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  So very combat-focused grappling. You win that, you move to the next day, which is Pancrase rules, which is limited striking. You can kick to the head, open palm to the head, closed fist to the body, knees to the body, and then grappling. All submissions are in. If you win that day, then you move into the third day, which is full MMA rules, and it's like a UFC fight, um, but you're in your uniform. So you're still fighting in- Oh, right, in your gear. In your gear the whole time. Are there any rule differences between the MMA rules, per se, and this tournament and regular MMA rules? They're, no, they're pretty similar. To to like UFC.

• 44:38Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  UFC rules.

• 44:40Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. More so than like a pride. So you're not allowed to kick on the ground.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  No.

• 44:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 03

  So that was the day I went to Ranger School. I weighed in on Thursday. I fought Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

• 44:52Speaker 03

  Won my third Army Combatants Tournament and the only person ever win it three times. And then Sunday night, I checked into Ranger School. I went to Ranger School, graduated honor grad.

• 45:03Tim Ferriss?

  How much later was that?

• 45:04Speaker 03

  The same day.

• 45:05Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, okay, I got it. Okay.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, like finished Sunday from the Combatants Tournament, um, iced my hands and then checked into Ranger School that same day and started Ranger School that Sunday night. Two and a half months later, I graduate from Ranger School, honor grad, and then eight days later, so I'm finding Dante Rivera in the UFC or in the IFL. So.

• 45:27Tim Ferriss?

  Now, did you, did you?

• 45:29Speaker 03

  You say like that's really dumb.

• 45:31Tim Ferriss?

  But but did you go into that that particular fight? Did you commit to that fight? Because you wanted to win? Because you wanted to see if it was possible to do such a thing after the experience of Ranger School? Did you just commit so long ago that you're like, oh shit, here it is? I guess I'm pre-committed. Why? Why do? Yeah. I mean, aside from you're saying stupid, but there I know you're not a stupid guy. I mean, so what's the? What was the thought process? What were you hoping to get out of that?

• 45:57Speaker 03

  Like, right now. If somebody kicked in the front door of this room.

• 46:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 03

  And ten Mexican cartel guys run in, sicarios with their masks pulled over. What do you think I would do?

• 46:11Tim Ferriss?

  What do I think you would do?

• 46:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:13Tim Ferriss?

  I think you'd probably go straight for it.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  For sure. All right. I'm tearing out eyes. I'm biting out cheeks. You know, I'm taking this glass. Right here and it's going through the first dude's eye. I'm gonna take that stand right there and I'm using it as a baseball bat. I'm gonna make it a choke point right there by the hallway. You know, where it's like we're in Thermopylae.

• 46:28Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  And and see if if you guys can get past us like the 300.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  That's just the spirit of the fight. And I think you have to test the spirit of the fight. Um, when I graduated from Ranger School, then I got the call a couple of days later. Could you fight in the IFL, which was a new promotion that was, you know, on Fox? I knew I was going to already be heading to combat. And the reason I had to go to Ranger School was I had just gotten back from Iraq. And my boss, John McPhee, the Sheriff of Baghdad, um, he told me I was a, I was a piece of shit. And he said that I had no business being in a unit like the one that we were in, because we were in a very special unit within special forces.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  And that I, I didn't have the leadership and I didn't have the experience and I didn't have the military bearing to, to be in that unit. And that I could maybe get a chance if I went to honor, if I went to Ranger School and I graduated on a grad. I knew I was going to be heading back to combat, so I not only needed to prove to him that I was a good leader, but I was also tough enough and I deserved to be there.

• 47:39Tim Ferriss?

  Why, just if I can pause for a second, why, why did he say that? What were, I mean, with, with the degree to which you're comfortable disclosing, I mean, what, what happened that would lead him to, to say that?

• 47:49Speaker 03

  There's a lot of little things. Um, we're on a, a night where we're trying to kill one of the most evil dudes in all of the war. We went to war for 16 years, uh, Zarqawi. Um, remember the deck of cards?

• 48:03Tim Ferriss?

  I do, yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, like he was an ace. He's a bad dude. He, he had strung up Americans from bridges and set them on fire. You know, he drug dudes down the road strapped behind a car that he had stolen from the Americans. He was notorious for posing with pictures with Americans, dead Americans in front of him, holding their guns, like he was a African trophy hunter. Um, even the movie Americans, The American Sniper with Chris Kyle, he was, Chris Kyle was going after his henchmen, like lower level guys. My unit was going after him.

• 48:33Tim Ferriss?

  Zarqawi.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, going specifically after Zarqawi. And there, there were nights where we're supposed to have eight helicopters. So the whole assault force is going to be going, right? And then air or the mechanic or something came up and we only had six. So my team sergeant's like, all right, here's the new load plan. Um, Tim, you're not going to go.

• 48:55Speaker 03

  Little check on my ego, you know, like that, that sucks. Why can't, I'm, I'm, I'm faster, I'm stronger, I'm, I'm, I'm definitely the, the juggernaut of the team, you know, like I'm out shooting you guys on the range right now. Um, I'm out fighting you guys every morning and training. Um, like, why, why am I not going like, like a little petulant child, you know, like a spoiled bitch, brat, redheaded idiot.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  Retrospectively looking like that's what I sounded like. You're like, no, John, why can't I go? So there was lots of little tiny things that I did there. Um, that he was giving me a chance to, to prove, okay, got it. When you guys get back, I'm gonna have all your gear clean. Everything's gonna be ready to go. Um, so you can drop your gear off and go straight to bed and get some sleep after a long night of gunfighting. Um, but instead I'm bitching that I don't get to go. Like a bunch of examples like that. I could, I could probably tell you 10.

• 49:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 49:49Speaker 03

  Or the, the spirit of me, I just want to be in the fight.

• 49:52Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  But it's a team.

• 49:55Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Right? Um, like we're only as good as our weakest link and, and I'm being the weakest link, you know?

• 50:04Tim Ferriss?

  How much of the?

• 50:05Speaker 03

  And we're getting exposed here.

• 50:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, no. I mean, if I, I'm fascinated.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  I told you, I'll tell you whatever.

• 50:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I've been.

• 50:11Speaker 03

  And then you're gonna hold it against me and everybody's gonna be like, they're gonna be friends with that guy.

• 50:14Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not gonna hold it against you, but ha, so as a, looking back then, how much of those instances, right? So you're not part of the load plan. Do you think it's because you weren't qualified to be part of the load plan versus? I want to see how Tim responds.

• 50:30Speaker 03

  Both.

• 50:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 03

  I'm sure it was both. I mean, there were times where I know he specifically put me on a load plan that I didn't need to be on just to see how I'd perform. And the very next day wouldn't put me, you know, like, okay, I'm not gonna put you on the heli, helicopter assault force to half. I'm gonna put you on the GAF, the ground assault force. And I was like, I don't want to be on the ground assault, you know, like, how about you shut your face, you go out to that M250 cal machine gun, you start doing the headspace and timing, making sure it's clean, making sure all the ammo stacked perfectly. So when you're on it and if you get in a gunfight, everything's gonna go so perfectly for you, but instead you're bitching.

• 51:00Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  You know, and I know he did that.

• 51:03Tim Ferriss?

  So then he gives you the kind of verbal report card that you described. And you have this IFL coming up and you feel like you need to show

• 51:13Tim Ferriss?

  what?

• 51:14Speaker 03

  Um, I think I needed to show myself, um, that.

• 51:20Speaker 03

  That that that that spirit of the fight. So I come back. I not only graduated as honor grad, I also get the leadership award, which is like the thing I wanted the most to like. So all of Ranger school is okay, you're you're the best leader of this whole entire class. But I get to I get back to the team. I got a little bit more military bearing. I got my Ranger tab on here sewn with white thread because I graduated during winter. Like we walked through snow, which which only rarely happens. So like feeling pretty awesome. But I haven't lost my fight. Like I kind of wanted to show them that I'm I'm still that same. I'm still that same bulldog. You know, I'm still that same pit bull.

• 51:58Tim Ferriss?

  I still have the things you liked.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, like that. I haven't changed as a person. And I'm like, who who's this Dante Rivera? You know, Henzo Gracie, brown or black belts that, you know, is undefeated. Neat. I'm gonna I'm gonna pound him into oblivion. And I'll come back to the team on Monday and start getting ready to get go to Afghanistan.

• 52:16Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So you've been starved, denied sleep for two months. You take this fight. You go into the fight. What happens?

• 52:22Speaker 03

  Um, I pound him into oblivion. He he he quit. He he tapped from strikes. I put him in every single position and I for around and a half, I just punched him in the face from our feet, from the ground, picked him up, put on the back of his head. And when guys graduate Ranger School, a lot of guys don't walk for for for months. Like their legs are so destroyed. They're so malnourished. They're so sleep deprived deprived. The inside of their legs are so chaffed and rubbed raw. Like they don't they'll actually get in the military, you get a like a medical

• 53:03Speaker 03

  release, where you don't have to show up for PT test, or any physical activity, physical training in the morning, because they know you're so jacked up. And they'll give you that for months after Ranger School. So I wanted to go into a fight a week and a half after graduating Ranger School and scare the living crap out of everyone.

• 53:27Tim Ferriss?

  And you did?

• 53:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:30Tim Ferriss?

  A couple of questions that I think are tangentially related, but I was actually very curious to talk about a few things. Briefly, walkout music. What have you used and why?

• 53:43Speaker 03

  I used to walk out to like the funnest, most disarming song I possibly could. Like, "Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to make me cry?" And I'd sing it to him as I was walking out. I was like pointing at him, you know, it was like, um, and I get in the ring, I'm still pointing at it, you know, like maybe batting my eyes, maybe blowing him kisses, you know, like just, just to mess with him.

• 54:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  Um, and I do a bunch of different songs like that all the time. And then my friend, Nick Pomashano from Ranger Up, he is like, "Hey man, do you know the origin of the song Rooster?"

• 54:22Tim Ferriss?

  Alice in Chains?

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I was like, "Yeah, right. It's like, uh, the rooster." He's like, "It's a, it's about a machine gunner in Vietnam." You know, he's written, writing to his dad, who was in Vietnam and would carry the M60 machine gun for the 101st. And I was like, "No. Are you serious?" Like the, you know, the forgotten war with the forgotten soldiers, the most, the time when the American people were so disenchanted with what the military was doing, fighting for freedom, trying to destroy communism. And I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna walk out to this every day." So the, the la, the last half of my career, I would always walk out to that song, "The Rooster." And as a, as a homage or a tribute

• 55:04Speaker 03

  to, um, not just Vietnam, not just POWs, not just machine gunners, not just infantrymen, but like everybody, everywhere that's ever fought in a fight to, for something that's bigger and greater than them with no thanks and no appreciation. You know, that. Cause I wasn't there fighting for me. I was there fighting for everybody else besides me at that point.

• 55:31Tim Ferriss?

  And we were chatting a little bit before hitting record today, and I asked you what would be, what would make this a successful interview, right? Looking back a few months from now. And I might get the exact words wrong. You said it'd be, it'd be nice if people would stop dying. He talked about helping people become harder to kill.

• 55:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:50Tim Ferriss?

  So how, how, how do people listening, how would you suggest to people listening who maybe, let's assume they're in not couch potato shape, 150 pounds of weight, but that they have, they're non-athletes who are in reasonable shape, but have no military experience, haven't been exposed to any maybe real, what they would consider physical hardship in a long time. How does someone like that, if they think to themselves, I would like to become harder to kill? What would your program or recommendations look like for them?

• 56:24Speaker 03

  The hardest things about me trying to inspire or encourage people to train is they look at me and they're like, that guy's freaking savage. You know, he's a special forces sniper, Ranger qualified, Green Beret, that's been to combat 12 times, fought in the UFC, ranked top 10 in the world. He's a black belt in a handful of martial arts. But I'm the exact same person as every, as the other 7 billion people on the planet, right? Like, I didn't grow up with any kryptonite in the fridge, you know, like, there's nothing that is different about me any, in any way, shape or form. I just work, you know, I just, and I'm just fighting, at this point, I'm fighting for not even 1% to get 1% better. I'm fighting for like percentages of a percent, you know, like incrementally,

• 57:09Speaker 03

  like decimals, like the tiniest little bits, just for that much of improvement. Like, I long for the day where I would get dramatically faster in a month, that if I was 20% body fat.

• 57:23Speaker 03

  I could be eighteen percent body fat. Freaking cool that would be if I right now, if I could just lose two percent body fat.

• 57:28Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning you're envious of the people who have more as a sort of percentage to gain if they started doing things in terms of training and so on.

• 57:35Speaker 03

  But you just said it.

• 57:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Speaker 03

  If they just started doing things. That's it. All you have to do is start. Sort of like everybody. So where do I start, man? Anything you could get up if you if you don't walk around, if you haven't gotten up and walked around your block a couple of times, do that. If you haven't Googled where the closest martial art gym is, whether it's Judo, whether it's Jiu Jitsu, or it's Muay Thai, whether it's wrestling, doesn't matter. If you haven't done it, try it. You know, if if you've never gone to the shooting range and shot, give it a whirl. If you've been eating fried food for like three meals of three dinners out of the week, try two. You know, like just anything will make you just that much better. And then those little tiny decisions start building on top of each other.

• 58:17Speaker 03

  And then sooner or later, you look back and you you don't even recognize the person that you are. There's such this beautiful change where like, oh, my God, I can I can see my dick. You know, like I can see my feet or my wife for the first time in five years. I saw her look at me when I got up and I walked out of the room and not like looked at me like, thank God that guy's getting up and leaving, but like, God damn, that guy look good.

• 58:41Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  You know, like, when was the last time in some people's lives that they felt that way about the person they've been living with for 10 years?

• 58:48Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 58:49Speaker 03

  You know, like, make that girl fall in love with you again. You know, and press the fuck out of her. You know, when was the last time that you picked up both your kids and like ran to the play gym with them hoisted on your shoulders and like put one up on the other one, the other ones, you're holding the hand, you hand them on the play gym like that's some massive masculine shit.

• 59:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  You're just playing with your kids on a play gym.

• 59:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 59:07Speaker 03

  You know, but there's this opportunities and there's so many of them for us just to embrace our potential, which is usually, I mean, you know more about it better than almost anyone on the planet because you've pushed that limit so many times in so many different ways, both intellectually and physically, like, there's so much unrealized potential. Back to me at 21 years old, little piece of shit, self-absorbed, ethnocentric prick. Unrealized potential.

• 59:38Speaker 03

  There's like 120, 140 million Americans right now that just have total unrealized potential. Like, just go, just go.

• 59:48Tim Ferriss?

  Get started.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Just start.

• 59:50Tim Ferriss?

  So if they wanted to, for instance, develop on top of the, some of the physical training, the ABC, like the ABCs, the basic literacy of survival, let's say they live in an urban environment, what might those be? I mean, taking a two or three day CPR class, EMT stuff, you mentioned active shooter defense, which I think is particularly relevant in some respects, but what would some of those ABCs be if someone's like, you know what, I really want to spend, let's say, a weekend, like every weekend for the next eight weeks, amassing some of these, some of these skills?

• 1:00:25Speaker 03

  I mean, I'll just say A and B. A is keep the blood in the good guys. And B is let the blood out of the bad guys. That's it. Right? If they're innocent people, they're cops, they're firefighters, they're schoolchildren, a bunch of people dancing at a nightclub, and somebody comes in and starts trying to shoot people, we want to keep the blood inside of those people. Right? Those, the blood, we don't only have so, a finite amount of it. Blood stays in the body of the good people. And then the bad guys, you want all the blood in them, out of them, in whatever way you can. I don't care if that's a knife, I don't care if that's a gun, I don't care if that's a brick, I don't care if that's a bottle, that person needs to stop hurting people.

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  So, yeah, that might be CPR, that might be learning how to put on a tourniquet, that might be learning how to prevent it from happening entirely, which is situational awareness. My, my good friend Shane and I, when we go out to eat here in Austin, we almost play games, biometrics and atmospherics, where, where we're sitting in a restaurant, we look at everybody in the room, the first thing we do is, is identify potential threats in our threat assessments, and then we figure out where the guns are in the room. Who's the guy that is wearing the come and take it shirt, right? That has the fanny pack, or that has that bulge on his right hip, or that has that appendix carrier, which is like, dude, that guy is not Dirk Diggler, he is not that big, there's something in the front of his pants.

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  And then we start making assumptions about who's in the room. The two people are sitting together that kind of are awkwardly interacting. Okay, is this their first date? Is this a business meeting? Um, is the first time that they've ever been alone? Or are they married and they're not supposed to be, uh, they're not married to each other. You know, for the first time, and we start making these assumptions. And then we develop another skill set, which is I go up and I start chatting these people up. I'm like, hey, what's going on? Is that your truck out there? Man, I love those rims, you know, like, and in a disarming way, start eliciting very passively information out of them to confirm or to prove us right or wrong in kind of the assumptions that we've made thus far. So it's developing two things simultaneously. But that's, that is the first

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  element of, of being safe is being aware of your surroundings. You know, knowing where I'm going to run, knowing where the out is, where the exit is, where my car is parked, um, where a threat is going to come from. What's the most likely course of action? What's the most dangerous course of action? If I'm at a taco place, you know, it's going to, the most dangerous course of action is somebody coming and setting a bomb off. The most likely course of action is just somebody coming up and be like, hey, give me the money in the register, you know, but I need to think about what the different degrees are of, of what the threats possibly could be. And then like my kids never know that all this, um, maybe they have a clue. They're smart, but they, um, they never think about this stuff. They just know that they're safe, you know, that I, that I have a way to get out, you

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  know, like the, the backpack that's, that's right here next to me that has a gun in it that has two tourniquets and it has a IFAC in it, you know, like

• 1:03:22Tim Ferriss?

  What's an IFAC?

• 1:03:23Speaker 03

  An individual first aid kit. So even all of us right here, like I have enough stuff. If all of you guys got shot to plug your wounds, like in my backpack right here and a good gun with an extra magazine.

• 1:03:35Tim Ferriss?

  What type of gun? Just out of curiosity.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  There's a Glock 43, but I got good frangible rounds and a couple of extra magazines. It's would be all right. It's tricked out though. Good sights, good trigger, good barrel.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  Because I don't want to fight fair because I want to cheat in every way.

• 1:03:50Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it makes me think of, I think I'm getting this right. I think it's, uh, Hackworth. That makes sense, right? That's a real name.

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  It sounds like a real name.

• 1:03:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly.

• 1:04:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think my, my favorite fight in the world would be the dudes laying on his bed asleep. And, uh,

• 1:04:09Tim Ferriss?

  There it is.

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  Right, right behind me.

• 1:04:13Tim Ferriss?

  Just in case I make any odd moves. So what are, um, do you find it, what is your, your emotional state when you're doing these types of checks? Is it playful? Is it serious? Is it stressful?

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  No, it's living. It's freedom. It's, it's freeing. Um, so like I have this huge level of awareness, right? Where it's, it's kind of like I'm a radar, like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And when I see something that's off, so in the, in the military, everything's uniform, right? Everybody wears the same thing. Everybody dresses the same. Everybody makes their bed the same. And that's so when you look at something that is off, your eye catches it right away. That's why everything's uniform in the military. Do you know that?

• 1:04:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Speaker 03

  So it's, it's easier to see when something's wrong.

• 1:05:02Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, makes perfect sense. Yeah, right. Makes perfect sense.

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  So have you ever done like work counterfeiting stuff?

• 1:05:07Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sorry?

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  Counterfeiting, so like if, if, um, if I was trying to find the easiest way to find a counterfeit bill is to put it with a whole bunch of bills that I know are good. So your eye's like, well, that, that one looks-

• 1:05:17Tim Ferriss?

  That's the one thing that sticks out.

• 1:05:18Speaker 03

  That one looks weird.

• 1:05:19Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:05:20Speaker 03

  You know, the color's off or the, the dimensions aren't right, or the paper doesn't feel right. Or compared to these other hundred bills, this one, that one's wrong.

• 1:05:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Speaker 03

  So it's the exact same. Well, what, what you have to do is you have to train your mind what normal is. So like in Austin, we're in South Bay. I kind of, as you know, like we've got a little bit more traffic. We're talking about it. That is a very casual way of being situationally aware. That's setting up the sample of what is normal. So then when something is off, when something's weird, when something's just a little bit awry, my eye goes from awareness to assessing. I start looking specifically at that thing, that guy that's wearing the white Muslim prayer robes that's sweating. Like everybody else, you know, they're, they're holding beers or like, hey, here, let's do a selfie. Okay, let's hashtag South by Southwest.

• 1:06:09Speaker 03

  You're like, that's normal. We know that's normal, even though unfortunately that's normal.

• 1:06:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:15Speaker 03

  That one thing looks off and we can see that very clearly because we know what normal is for this, for what's happening around us. So the first thing is kind of be learning about cultures, learning about the areas that you're living, the, the demographics, the socioeconomic classes, um, the races that should be there. And I do that to everywhere I go. You know, like I, I just came from-

• 1:06:39Speaker 03

  Ocala, Florida, like that was the last place that I was in. And I know that percentages of races, who should be there with the, what kinds of cars people should drive. You know, that it's 73% white and of the remaining 27%, half of them are Mexican. And then the, the, the other remaining like 13, 12% are split between black and Asian.

• 1:07:05Tim Ferriss?

  Where do you get that information? It's not like the state department stuff?

• 1:07:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's on the census.

• 1:07:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:10Speaker 03

  I mean, that's all available online and it's like one little search and that's just, just a couple of quick little numbers so that you can kind of wrap your head around. But if I go to Walmart, I'm going to have a different crowd than if I go to Target. Right? Two different people shop there, different social classes, different types of cars are supposed to be parked there. But in the parking lot, where am I going to find the drugs? Where am I going to find the guy that has the guns? Um, the guy that's parked in the back trying to get a blowjob? The guy that's parked around the side of the building where there's no lights and maybe a camera that's busted because he's about to do a drug deal? So just knowing kind of like how people work. Um, so, okay, I'm not going to park there.

• 1:07:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  I'm going to park here. Uh, you know, just really simple stuff. So then when I see it's freeing, all of that stuff happens so effortlessly now that now it's just like, I'm just at lunch with my buddy Shane and we're just talking, we're just talking shit about people.

• 1:07:58Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:07:59Speaker 03

  You know?

• 1:07:59Tim Ferriss?

  And it just happens.

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  It just happens.

• 1:08:01Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you re-enlist? Uh, in the special forces, the date I have is April 16th, 2017.

• 1:08:14Tim Ferriss?

  Why'd you re-enlist?

• 1:08:17Speaker 03

  Man, I don't like losing fights.

• 1:08:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I imagine.

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've lost a few.

• 1:08:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Speaker 03

  And, uh,

• 1:08:24Tim Ferriss?

  Some close ones too.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  They, uh, I mean,

• 1:08:29Speaker 03

  They like a thorn, like a burr in the back of my neck, you know, like there's always just irritating that I hope to the day I die that they they irritate me.

• 1:08:41Speaker 03

  And we're losing a war. You know, I we I fought in places like Ramadi and um Sadr City and Baghdad and Fallujah. And those were cities that like good friends of mine got hurt in and um and I I was fighting next to Iraqis that wanted freedom so badly, you know, they wanted to have a chance at just living, you know, Muslims, Christians, didn't matter, just just give us a chance, you know, and all of us are fighting together for that chance. And then

• 1:09:16Speaker 03

  all those cities that we fought and that we won ISIS comes in because of policies, because of presidents, because of secretaries of defenses and bad decisions, bad war planning, and we lose ground. And like, I can't explain to you how bad that hurts guys like me to see things that they fought for and they bled for and they got blown up in um just giving back to a an enemy that's even more evil than the evil that we won it from. Right. You know, like I'll I'll take ten Saddam's over an ISIS. And um and I see Mad Dog Mattis is uh is coming back

• 1:09:55Speaker 03

  as Secretary of Defense and um I see not just him, but other people being put into positions of authority within my chain of command that believe in winning. Um, and I like winning, you know, as much as I don't like losing, I really like winning. And this was gonna be a chance for us to be winning again. Um, you know, in a year, what was the ground that ISIS has had, they have lost 99% of it in one year. That's winning. What do you attribute that to? To kicking ass. Like, it's plain and simple. If if you if you take a bunch of pit bulls and you put them in cages and then you let chihuahuas out, like, they're never gonna go and and you're supposed to be catching

• 1:10:39Speaker 03

  wild boars, um, that chihuahua is never gonna do anything, right? It's gonna maybe it's gonna bark and it's gonna run back. But if you open those cages, there's only one thing those pit bulls know how to do is is this kick ass. And that's all that happened was like, okay, we're gonna go.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  I saw that you killed some of our Green Berets in southeast Afghanistan. Cool, we're gonna drop the biggest bomb that's not nuclear that we have on our arsenal on top of you. You know, which is what we did. It's like, oh, you killed some Green Berets in Niger. Neat. We're gonna fly in 800 shooters and wipe all of Bukhara, Al Qaeda and ISIS off of the map entirely in your country. You know, it's like, oh, you had Fallujah, Sadr City, Ramadi.

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  Not only are we gonna take them back, but we're gonna take them back and we're gonna put conservative Muslim leaders in there that are so far from fanatic radicals that girls get to go back to school. I mean, the things that would just irritate radicals so bad.

• 1:11:38Speaker 03

  They have freedom again. And so what I attribute it to is giving giving the guys that know what they're supposed to do, the opportunity to do it. That's it.

• 1:11:50Tim Ferriss?

  How old are you? You have two kids?

• 1:11:52Speaker 03

  I have three.

• 1:11:53Tim Ferriss?

  You have three. How old are your kids?

• 1:11:54Speaker 03

  Nah, 16, 15 and two.

• 1:11:56Tim Ferriss?

  What do you say to them, if, I don't know if you're, I don't know the nature of the reenlistment in your activities, but if, if you're going to be at risk, how do you explain the decision and so on to them?

• 1:12:12Speaker 03

  I'm at risk. I'm deploying two times in the next year.

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  Like one time really, really, really soon. And like, I'm glad we got to sit down and chat because I'm gonna be gone for like the next year.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  They know that this is what I was made to do and they love it when I get to do it. They're proud of me in the sense that

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  if they walk onto a military base with me, everybody is walking up to say, to shake my hand. It's, it's different than being in Austin where people want to come up and take selfies. It's like, they want to come up and shake my hand because they know what I've done and they know what I'm gonna do. And that makes them proud. A 15 and 16 year old girl, you know, like, that's awesome. A two year old is just like, I have poop in my pants.

• 1:13:00Tim Ferriss?

  Different conversation.

• 1:13:03Speaker 03

  But he, you know, is he gonna understand dad being gone for six months? No, you know, he's gonna be pissed. He's gonna take it out on my wife. My girls are gonna, they're gonna be pissed.

• 1:13:19Speaker 03

  But they also know that.

• 1:13:22Speaker 03

  I would rather be fighting that there than in front of their school. Yeah. I've tracked down guys that were riding down the street on motorcycles, throwing acid on little girls that were walking to school. Cause they didn't think girls should go to school. Um, I want that to happen nowhere on the planet. And in the places that it does, I want to go there and stop it from happening. Like, I don't want that to be here. You know, that, that's on a rise in, in the UK right now. It's, it's increased by almost a thousand percent. As people trying to prevent girls from going to school, specifically with acid. You know, like, okay, send me to the UK. I can fix this. You're not gonna like how I'm gonna do it, but uh, I can fix it.

• 1:14:06Tim Ferriss?

  How do you, how do you think about risk? Uh, and maybe that's not the right word, but you get deployed, ostensibly something bad could happen to you. Uh, how do you, how do you think about that yourself?

• 1:14:20Speaker 03

  When we're stripped down, you go all the way back to the most raw, exposed version of that special forces soldier. And they start building those cornerstones in the, in the foundation. We are risk averse. We are trying to set ourself up for success in every imaginable way. So that we, that we can't fail. And when, if and when things start failing, um, there's so much training and there's so much rehearsal. And there's so much practice and there's so much strategy and there's so much preparation that, that quote of, I'm gonna be the hardest person somebody ever tries to kill. Imagine fighting 12 of me. You know, or 24 of me.

• 1:15:04Speaker 03

  You know, 36 of me.

• 1:15:06Tim Ferriss?

  No thanks.

• 1:15:07Speaker 03

  You know, with an AC 130 flying over us and an F-16 and a couple of Patches on standby. You know, like, you're not gonna deal with one of me. You're gonna deal with me and all of my friends that have been born and bred to do this one thing. Which is give people a chance to fight for their freedom. You don't wanna fuck with us. We really like that freedom thing.

• 1:15:33Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have a contingency plan for if something happens to you?

• 1:15:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:37Tim Ferriss?

  You do?

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. Like my family will be very well off, probably better financially. But more, I mean, like my, all the guys that we're with, they know, I mean, these are horrible conversations to have. And things that, you know, I don't want my family to know, but if I break my back or if I'm so badly burnt. To what degree are they going to try to save me? That's a conversation we have, you know, like, maybe don't put me on that bird. Maybe just let me die right here, you know? But that's a conversation for me and my friends.

• 1:16:16Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:16:16Speaker 03

  You know, I've had dudes be like, all right, listen, all I want you to do is take my cell phone, smash it on the ground. Go take my laptop, smash that on the ground and then make my shirt, make sure my body goes to my wife. Which is funny, but like, these are conversations that we have and everybody's is different. You know, but as a team, you know, sure as shit, I'm going to make sure I do. Like I'm not only going to smash his laptop, I'm probably going to microwave it and then I'm going to throw it in the ocean.

• 1:16:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:16:45Speaker 03

  You know, or the river or, you know, the tigers. So, yes, we have contingencies.

• 1:16:52Tim Ferriss?

  If you could put one word, question, short message, anything on a billboard, just to get it out to millions or billions of people. Metaphorically speaking, what might you put on such a billboard?

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  One word?

• 1:17:09Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, it could be one word, it could be a sentence, it could be a question, it could be anything, it could be a long quote that you like, it could be anything.

• 1:17:16Speaker 03

  I just want people to work. Like we're, we're in a society of, a culture of entitlement, where it's like, everybody wants the fast, easy, quick fix for everything. You know, like, oh, I'm sick, give me a prescription, you know, like, I'm, I'm fat. Give me that quick, easy diet. I'm not successful at work, just give me that promotion, even though I deserve it. Like, everything is just on the far side of hard work. So that's what I put. Everything you want is on the far side of of work. You know, like freedom. The only place freedom exists is on the far side of hard work. The only place success exists financially, sexually, um, relationships emotionally, it's it's on the far side of work.

• 1:18:00Speaker 03

  Like if you you want a good marriage, fucking work for it. You know, you want to have amazing sex? Cool, work for it, you know, like unless unless you're this fictional character and you're like, well, I don't even know the movies like Dirt Dirt Diggler, right?

• 1:18:11Tim Ferriss?

  Dirt Diggler.

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  Was that based on a real guy like? Was he even good at sex? Like, I don't know, but I guess I'll tell you what. Somebody that really wants and is committed to being good at it is gonna be good at it.

• 1:18:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:21Speaker 03

  You know, and like that goes for everything. Success. Sleep. Even sleep. Like you want good sleep? Earn it. Go work for it. You know, like put your iPad away. Go eat a good, healthy dinner, work hard all day long for 12 hours and play with your kids and sweat and fuck your wife. You know, give her 15 orgasms so you fall over into bed and you're just passed out for eight hours. That's some good sleep right there. You know, like so. On the far side of hard work.

• 1:18:49Tim Ferriss?

  Everything you want is on the far side of hard work.

• 1:18:51Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:53Tim Ferriss?

  We could keep going for hours and hours and hours, and I think that we might, I was gonna say we should do a round two, but it might be a year from now. Uh. I'm okay with that. Uh.

• 1:19:03Speaker 03

  I'll be like a pretty, when I come back from combat.

• 1:19:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  Cause like you're such a like right now, we're like having these nice, essential conversations, but we're we're kind of getting philosophically.

• 1:19:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15Speaker 03

  Projecting what what would be doing or billboards of inspiration. Um. Like I'll come, I'll be a raw asshole in a year from now after being overseas for, you know.

• 1:19:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  Open invitation, I'll talk.

• 1:19:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, different conversation.

• 1:19:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably.

• 1:19:31Tim Ferriss?

  But, um, where can people? Learn more about you? What would you like them to check out? And where can they do that?

• 1:19:39Speaker 03

  Um, freedom's awesome, so.

• 1:19:43Speaker 03

  Believe in it and go vote for it. I'll just, and then you can find me, Tim Kennedy MMA is me for everything. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Um, I try to get like on there a lot. I'm pretty exposed. So if you're, if you wanna, like, this is not a, um,

• 1:20:02Speaker 03

  you'll get a very honest conversation out of me.

• 1:20:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Speaker 03

  In, in every, in every, in every way, probably to, uh, too much of a degree.

• 1:20:15Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any, any websites you'd like people to take a look at, or anything you'd like people to look up?

• 1:20:19Speaker 03

  Uh, Sheepdog Response is, is, you know, our motto is, is make you harder to kill.

• 1:20:26Speaker 03

  And, uh, we're trying to make people, you know, the, the A and the B, keeping blood in the good and letting blood out of the bad. We're trying to be, teach people how to do that. Ranger Up is one of my companies. Um, we make satire, military shirts and jeans and, woobie shoes. I mean, they're, they're, I'm an entrepreneur like you, you know, but it's, uh, nah, just, just go, go work for freedom. You know, I work, I'll, I'll work for my companies. I'll work for my wealth. I'll work for my everything. I'll work for my freedom. You know, you go work for yours.

• 1:20:56Tim Ferriss?

  Take it. Tim, thank you so much for taking the time. And everybody listening, everybody watching, uh, we'll provide links to everything we've talked about as per usual, in the show notes, so tim.blog/podcast for this episode, every other episode. And until next time, A, work hard. It matters. And thank you for listening and thank you for watching. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share

• 1:21:38Tim Ferriss?

  the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the, uh, the world of the esoteric. I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

• 1:22:20Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by wordpress.com. I love WordPress. I have used it for so many years. It's my go-to platform for blogging and creating websites. I use wordpress.com for everything, every day. My site, tim.blog is built on it. The websites for my books, including Tools of Titans, Tribe of Mentors, it's all on wordpress.com. And the founder, Matt Mullenweg, one of my close friends, has appeared on this show many times. Just search Matt Mullenweg, Tequila Ferris for quite an exciting time. Whether you're looking to create a personal blog, a business site, or both, you can make a really big impact right out of the box when you build on wordpress.com. And you'll be in good company. It's used

• 1:23:02Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:23:46Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:24:26Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:25:09Tim Ferriss?

  Their matcha blend in particular includes the amino acid L-theanine, which helps to provide a, let's call it balanced boost of energy without the jitters. It also includes the adaptogen astralagus, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, which may help with overall stress tolerance. And for those of you who are wondering, no, the products don't taste like mushrooms. If they say mushroom coffee, for instance, another product that I use doesn't taste like mushrooms, it tastes like coffee. But you get the nutritional benefits of some of these special ingredients. So the products don't taste like mushrooms and are enjoyable. I offer them to my house guests and use them myself, and I don't particularly want to drink anything that tastes like mushrooms.

• 1:25:52Tim Ferriss?

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