426: Sometimes You Just Gotta Put Out a Sign. With Zach Bell (Veteran With A Sign)

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 426 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  Stop asking questions you can Google.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  We always seem to have enough to pay for war, but not enough to cover the cost.

• 0:19Jocko Willink?

  Tinnitus is the real sound of freedom. Reacher is an MP PSYOP.

• 0:29Jocko Willink?

  There might be an easier way to pay for college.

• 0:34Jocko Willink?

  I like my coffee black and my tea in the harbor.

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  Mario is the original pipe hitter.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  I figured you'd like that one, Echo Charles. I do. Leaders shouldn't impose their opinion.

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  Dear Navy, changing uniforms is not a suicide prevention plan.

• 1:01Jocko Willink?

  Drinking in the military made me the real Liver King.

• 1:08Jocko Willink?

  Compression shirts are just dude shapewear.

• 1:15Jocko Willink?

  Wearing gators doesn't make you a SEAL, but writing a book does.

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  I still can't back up without a ground guide. S3 Operations is where dreams go to die.

• 1:33Jocko Willink?

  Try not to get married over leave.

• 1:39Jocko Willink?

  Not all who wander are lost. Except the LT. Perfect PT scores don't make good leaders.

• 1:50Jocko Willink?

  Take Motrin, drink water, change your socks.

• 1:56Jocko Willink?

  You are not your mistakes.

• 2:02Jocko Willink?

  And those right there are some quotes from Zach Bell, who is known as, I would say even better known as Veteran With A Sign. Zach was a Marine Corps Rifleman who served with the 106 Marines and fought with those Marines through two deployments to Helmand Province, including the Battle of Garmser and the Battle of Marja in 2010 in Afghanistan. And he learned a lot of lessons along the way through his experiences. And eventually started to share those lessons that he learned, not through books, not through podcasts, not through videos,

• 2:47Jocko Willink?

  but he started to share those lessons learned through Sharpie pens and pieces of cardboard and holding up signs written on cardboard. And that's how he became known as the Veteran With A Sign. And it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to talk through some of those experiences and lessons learned. So Zach, thanks for joining us.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  I tried to get some of my top Veteran With A Sign quotes.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just want to apologize for the Navy SEAL jokes now.

• 3:27Jocko Willink?

  Navy SEALs deserve jokes. That's no factor.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  You should read the comments. It's a mixed bag. No, it was just, you know, I'm actually impressed by the list. It's robust.

• 3:38Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, and I mean, even though there's some SEALs that haven't written books, I've written enough books to make up for those guys, I think. I think I'm getting there at least.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're leading the way. Yeah, you got that echelon front covered down.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we got that. We got that covered.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  Uh, no, you really do. You do a great job. And the signs that you put up and the... Really, it's the topics that you bring to light through these quotes. Some of them are just funny. Some of them are very serious and I think they're just, they're just powerful and obviously they have made a mark on a lot of people. And they, they transfer a good message to a lot of people. And, and like I said, that message might be just a little bit of humor for the day and it might be, hey, think about what's going on with this particular situation. So we'll get into all that, but let's just, let's just kind of start at the beginning. So where were you born?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  I was born in Memphis, Tennessee.

• 4:33Jocko Willink?

  And what year?

• 4:33Speaker 01

  1987.

• 4:35Jocko Willink?

  1987?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  Dang, okay.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:39Jocko Willink?

  That, that really makes me feel old. That, that does legit.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Where were you in 87?

• 4:44Jocko Willink?

  Cause I graduated high school in 1989.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:47Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, that's, that's pretty wild.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Was that your rock band era?

• 4:52Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah. So no, I was like getting ready to, wait, 87? Oh yeah. I was going to hardcore shows and I was pretty much, yeah, singing in a hardcore band, playing bass too, in a hardcore band, sometimes guitar, very poorly on, on all fronts.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  I feel like you're kind of still in your rock band era, by the way, but side note.

• 5:12Jocko Willink?

  Hey, let's face it, we're still on that get box from time to time. Let's go.

• 5:18Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and where? Memphis?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Memphis, Tennessee, yeah.

• 5:20Jocko Willink?

  And so what was the family scenario growing up?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Um, you know, it wasn't the best. It was, it was complicated to say the least. My, my mom and dad got married when they were really young.

• 5:28Jocko Willink?

  Like how young?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Um, 19, 20, I believe. Uh, my father, uh, struggled with alcoholism his whole life and, uh, he was abusive as well. So, uh, they, they split when I was really young.

• 5:40Jocko Willink?

  Like how young?

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Uh, I think three.

• 5:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  And I don't really have a lot of memories of it.

• 5:45Jocko Willink?

  And was he around after that or was he just gone?

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Just kind of on and off to kind of offset the child support he would have to do. He'd have to pay and, um, you know, my mom did the best she could. Excuse me, did the best she could with me and my brother, but you know, she had been through a lot and, um, you know, it was, it was really hard and, you know, just kind of did the best she could.

• 6:05Jocko Willink?

  So where did you do most of your growing up?

• 6:08Speaker 01

  I mean, uh, I like to, I like to really kind of uh, think of it differently, but I was just kind of mischievous is probably the best way to say it. I was a little bit of a scoundrel. Um, you know, my childhood, it was, is just, I mean, I was a real latchkey kid, kind of left uh, to my own devices a lot. Um.

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  And you said you had a brother?

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Have a little brother, but like.

• 6:29Jocko Willink?

  A little brother?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little brother.

• 6:30Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  And so I was like, you know, I would take care of him and like, like we'd have uncles and stuff in and out, but like, for the most part, like we would do like a lot of, it's this out, so it's a lot of like church league stuff. So like, do vacation Bible schools in the summer and different things like that. And then, you know, just like going to the church or like, kind of moving around. It was kind of weird when I think about it, real kind of Peter Pan-y, if I'm being honest.

• 6:52Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean Peter Pan-y?

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Like, I just kind of felt like I was in charge of myself at way too young of an age. Like, I didn't really have a lot of structure. I didn't really have a lot of people that were like looking out for me. And so like, it was just kind of like, it was my job to get up and go in the morning to like go to the bus stop and you know, and things like that. And then my mom would come home, when she was done with work and like, that's when we would see her and then I would get up in the morning.

• 7:13Jocko Willink?

  What'd your mom do for work?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Just different jobs, real estate and like, and I think she's in financial stuff now and doing different things like that.

• 7:21Jocko Willink?

  So she was just figuring it out?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really, it's really, really hard coming from a, a working class background when there's no,

• 7:32Speaker 01

  there is no path that you're aware of to like break that cycle of a, a lot of its addiction and poverty, to be honest. And um, the only thing that really helps people break that cycle usually is the military. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's legit. I think Jordan Peterson has a speech about it, about how it's the number one thing you can use to change your socioeconomic status.

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  And um, you know, like my grandmother, I remember I was like, I want to go to college and. It's my great grandmother. She grew up during the depression and like jarred and pickled stuff her whole life. Cause like they grew up without food. So like she was like, it will happen again. And um, and I don't blame, I mean, she was prepared. Like she was day one.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  She's right.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was right. She was, she was not wrong. And um, you know, and uh, this is a side note. She would always give us the same, she had so many grandchildren. She gives the same gift every year. And it was underwear and socks. And that was, she's like, just be prepared. You know, you never know. And um, I told her I wanted to go to college and she's like, don't do that. Choose a trade. Choose a trade.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  What year did she tell you that?

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Two thou- not two thousands, nineties. You know, she's like, choose a trade, stick with that.

• 8:40Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome advice, right? That's even more applicable today.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. But she was like, always do something you can do with your hands and always provide for yourself. You know, this is a woman who like gardened her whole life and did all these things like, she used to make us pick blackberries and stuff to make jam out of muscadine jelly. Have you ever had that?

• 8:57Jocko Willink?

  I've not.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  It's like a very specific southern thing.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  And so like that.

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  Would you say muscadine jelly?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, muscadine jelly, yeah.

• 9:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  It's like a grape. Uh, I don't know. I only know it like if it's around like Memphis butts up to Mississippi. So like around there. So.

• 9:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So are you going to, when you get to high school?

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:18Jocko Willink?

  Like are, do you stay in one consistent high school the whole time?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 9:21Jocko Willink?

  What's happening with that?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  So I changed schools every year until my sophomore year.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Because like I said, my, my, my home life is just chaotic. There's, there's no other way around it. My mom was doing a lot of stuff to provide the best she could. She just didn't have the emotional or um, skills to be able to do it. And um, you know, I try to have as much grace as I can looking back on that, but it's just, as a parent, it's something that I don't understand. Cause like, as a parent, you need to really develop a place for your child so they can, you know, thrive, become independent, strong, and then leave, which sucks. Cause that's your whole goal is to make them be strong enough to leave, but, I don't know, it just, it just wasn't the environment I was raised in. So,

• 10:03Speaker 01

  I hopped around a few different schools, high schools, cause I was kind of a troublemaker. I think, I don't know what it was. I was just kind of always.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Doing stuff and I eventually ended up at a very, very small independent Baptist uh private school with a cl- class of twenty eight people and that's where I finished out my high school at.

• 10:22Jocko Willink?

  Were you playing sports or anything?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  I would try, but like honestly, she would, we wouldn't pay dues or stuff or like I was never in a school long enough to be there to be consistent. I did wrestling one summer for a year.

• 10:34Jocko Willink?

  Better than nothing. We'll tell you, you'll tell you that.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Oh, it was, it was, it was great. It was great because like um it taught me, it taught me a lot. Like I remember like cutting weight and stuff like I did it all through eighth grade. Um through um most of my freshman year and uh that was fun.

• 10:52Jocko Willink?

  So how old were you? What, what grade were you in when September eleventh happened?

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Eighth grade.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  And well, do you remember it?

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Very clearly.

• 10:59Jocko Willink?

  What was going on?

• 11:00Speaker 01

  So I was, we were supposed to go to the bus and um so it's central time zone. So it had already happened around the time we were walking to the bus stop. And my mother called and she said, stay home. I don't know what's happening, but you have to stay home. And I was like, okay. And she's like, turn on the TV, just stay home. And so I, I told my brother, like we were literally walking out the door. And um it's like, sit down and I turned on the TV and I could see the one tower burning. And then I saw the second plane make impact live and I was just like, oh, oh my God, like I, I can't. I can't, I can't believe this is happening. And like I just sat there like the rest of the world for forever.

• 11:39Jocko Willink?

  So you're in eighth grade when that happened?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 11:41Jocko Willink?

  What did you think, like in your eighth grade mind, what did you think was gonna happen in the world once you realized that was a terrorist attack?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Um, that's a very, very good question. Um, you guys should stick with this podcasting stuff. No, so what's, what's interesting about that time is the internet's kind of developing then around eighth grade. So like we had a laptop with, I mean a laptop. We had a desk, like a family computer that was used for like work and stuff and to type things on. And so there is that small amount of disruption that's happening with like information and stuff. So the world was becoming smaller, but until that moment, New York was just a place that I'd only seen in movies. I didn't really have that direct connection of like, that's my country. Does that make sense?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Cause I'm just, I was just a kid. And then when I realized that another entity had attacked my country, I just remember being like. This is not gonna stand. Like, I'm not, I'm not, I want to fight. I could just feel it. I like it. It's not that New York wasn't a part of my life before. It's just like, I just, it just seemed almost imaginary to me because it was just outside of my, my realm. And then like, I was like, someone attacked America? No, that's not happening.

• 12:54Jocko Willink?

  So I never really thought through this before. So when the first Gulf War kicked off, I was in the, well, I joined the Navy as that was happening. And so I'm in the Navy when we're massing troops on the border. And we're gonna go to war with Iraq is like what the word is because they had invaded Kuwait. We're gonna go help them. So this is, in my mind, I thought, oh, this is exactly what happened with World War II, you know, like, oh, the Nazis roll into Czechoslovakia, they roll into Poland, we go to war. This is four years of just total destruction of the world.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:26Jocko Willink?

  I thought that's what was about to happen. And the news reports were that there's gonna be forty thousand US casualties in the first forty-eight hours. I remember watching that and I'm like, okay, cool. Like, where? I was kind of, you know, because when you're young, you just want to go to war and everything. So I was kind of like, okay, well, this is gonna be,

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  this is gonna be my life and, and death, most likely. Let's go. And then you found, so that war lasts seventy-two hours. So then when, when nine eleven happens, I was actually in college at the time. I was in the Navy, but I was, I was actively going to college because I'd been commissioned. I didn't have a degree. So when that happened, I thought, oh, I wish I'm gonna miss this. It's gonna be, you know, some strikes will happen. I didn't think that we were gonna do what we did at such a level. I definitely didn't think, oh, this is gonna be here, we're facing two decades worth of war, which is what we were about to do. We're about to do twenty

• 14:22Jocko Willink?

  years of war. And I thought we had, I thought it was gonna be two months, three months, like, maybe, maybe we'd do some targeted strikes. We'd kill a bunch of terrorists with bombs. Maybe like, maybe there'd be some special operations that would happen. I thought I was gonna miss the whole thing.

• 14:39Jocko Willink?

  Which actually, looking back, it sounds like a really good plan. You know, a really good plan, like, hey, we're gonna bomb the shit out of some places that have terrorists in them. And we're gonna keep a closer watch on them and not let them do anything like that again. Seems like a good, pretty good plan, looking back. So it's just interesting. I, I can't imagine if, when I was in eighth grade, if something like that happened. I, I would have thought it would have been World War II, because I even thought the first Gulf War was going to be a significant, at, at a minimum, I thought the first Gulf War was gonna be like Korea or Vietnam. I thought we had three, four years of, of near peer

• 15:17Jocko Willink?

  competition on the battlefield. Like, I thought, hey, it's the Iraqis, they have tanks, they have soldiers, they've got a big army. This is gonna be a war, and it just wasn't, it just wasn't a thing. So, yeah, your perception can be very strange when you're young.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Well, it's, it's interesting you say that. My uncle was in the first Gulf War.

• 15:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  And he was in the Marines, and he, he never really talked about it, but he had, he, he would be like, it was just, he once said a joke, he's like, I was on leave longer than I was in war. And I was like, okay. And so like, I, I, I, I remember thinking that, and I was like, that, that makes sense, but like, even in eighth grade, like, I, I, I just, it was the way people were talking, like, that I, I, I don't, this sounds, probably should, it felt in the moment like it was the Pearl Harbor of the modern era. Because you couldn't, I just remember being like, you couldn't escape it. Like, I would roll to other channels, and they were still talking about it. And then the other things that happened very similarly to Pearl Harbor is like, those aren't french fries, those are freedom fries, like, all these like weird little things.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  You know, the Dixie Chicks got canceled, like Toby Keith did all the stuff he is doing. Where were you when the world stopped turning? Like, all this stuff, like, it just seemed like lights turned on in a house.

• 16:28Jocko Willink?

  And even though I just said hundred percent seemed like Pearl Harbor. I said that too quickly because it seemed like Pearl Harbor, but I thought the response would be some airstrikes, maybe, maybe some quick ground operations, but, but the last time we were at war in, in the first Gulf War, it was 72 hours long. And so I thought to myself, okay, this is gonna be very fast. I was in college. I was like, I'm gonna miss this thing. And I called the officer detailer who is a friend of mine. I said, hey, sir, please get me back to a team. And he said to me, this is gonna last a long time.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Really?

• 17:00Jocko Willink?

  And I didn't believe him. And I said, I'll go to college when I'm old, please. And he said, no, you finish out. And I didn't have much longer to finish out. So I finished out, went to a team and I was in Iraq a few months later. But

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. But I did not think it was gonna be what it was. And, and if you look at it, you know, now that you look at things, now that I'm older, look at things with a more strategic perspective, that the first Gulf War, they had a very clear objective. It was just to get the Iraq, get Iraqis, get the Iraqi government and military out of Kuwait. Did that. And like, okay, we're done. And that was that. When we went into Iraq the second time, it was like, what was the goal? What was the, what was the objective? Well, can you, can you explain that to me? And no one was asking those questions. There was no real clear mission. And so what you end up with is just mission creep over a long extended period of time. And we had the disease of victory because

• 17:56Jocko Willink?

  the first Gulf War was over so quickly and Grenada was over quickly and Panama was over quickly. So I had those things in my brain too, that when, when nine 11 happened, I thought, yeah, this will be, this isn't gonna be, I definitely thought I would have to put money on it. Put, put, put money on two decades worth of war. I never would have guessed that.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  I don't think anybody would have.

• 18:16Jocko Willink?

  Unless I would have added the calculus of bad leadership into the equation, which I didn't understand as well at the time. Now, when things happen, the, the biggest factor in my equation is bad leadership. Like when, when things are happening globally, I just put bad leadership as the biggest number in the equation. It's the most heavily weighted number in the equation is, yeah, we're gonna have leaders that make dumb decisions. And so if you think something's gonna go relatively smoothly, inject bad leadership and then you're gonna get a different outcome than you anticipate.

• 18:57Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a good formula. Yeah. No, no, it makes sense. Yeah.

• 19:01Jocko Willink?

  So did your, did your uncle influence you at all as you, as you started, you know, thinking about the military?

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Well, he did. He had, I mean, he was probably the most consistent male role model, like outside of like Han Solo and Indiana Jones and Doc Holliday in my life. You know, I know both two of them are Harrison Ford characters, but they're different people.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  And he had, I mean, because he, he was my uncle. He came from the same background I did and he went on to, you know, go to med school and stuff. And he was the one who talked to me about the GI Bill and all these things. And like, I can't stress enough. I was just talking to Chris, Chris Craighead about this. Is that the military gets such a bad rap in the sense of like, there is this wild, great adventure that can literally change your family for generations. And it's right ahead of you and you don't have to go to war to do that. But like the, the gift of service that you get, you know, I always say that like, I find the best version of myself in the service of others. And like, you get that when you join the military and then also you can like, go to college, start a family. Like all these things can happen from it.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  But it's just not viewed that way anymore. It's kind of disheartening and.

• 20:12Jocko Willink?

  It's weird too, when you're younger, when someone's younger and like I was 18 when I joined the military. And for the program that I did, it was a six year commitment.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  To go to the teams?

• 20:23Jocko Willink?

  To go, to go, to get a chance to go to Buzz was a six year commitment. So I was like, okay, that's what we're doing. But if you think about that, that's like, what? One third of the time of my life when I was 18 was another six years. It seemed like a long time. It didn't seem like long to me because I was, I was thinking I was going to do 50 years, like as long as you can stay in, that's what I'm doing. But if you're, if you're thinking, oh, I want to get some college money or whatever, but it's going to cost me four years. And the other thing that people miss out on is they think all of the entire time in the military is like bootcamp, which.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:53Jocko Willink?

  It's not.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 20:54Jocko Willink?

  You, after bootcamp, you begin to be treated more like a human. And, and actually substantially more as you, you know, as you're in longer and all that stuff. So your uncle was telling you a little bit about the Marine Corps.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:08Jocko Willink?

  And what did he do in the Marine Corps?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Um, I believe he was motor T.

• 21:11Jocko Willink?

  Just, just getting after that motor.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  He, he went open contract. I mean, it was, I mean, when he went in, it was the days of like, they just kind of stamped you on the arm.

• 21:18Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, when he went in, there, that's what there was.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:22Jocko Willink?

  You were gonna get, you were gonna do what the Marine Corps told you to do. They didn't, they didn't have that adjustment where now you can actually have a little bit more job.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  You can pick a field. That's, that's as narrow as it gets.

• 21:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  And the field's wide and, you know, you can try and influence it, but he was, he was open contract and, you know, he, he went on to become a surgeon, all these different things. And so like, I had seen that firsthand and, you know, um, you know, after nine 11, going into high school and stuff like I, you know, I thought about college, but like, I did a semester at the University of Memphis. It didn't stick. I don't want to brag here, but I had a 1.67 GPA. So.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  You were on the path.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  I was, I was on a path. I was on a path. It just wasn't a good one. It was not a righteous one.

• 22:02Jocko Willink?

  So it was one semester you did.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  That was one semester, um, because I was still, what I, I was like flirting with the idea because I was, I was, this is two, again, so this is now jump cut. We're in 2007. Iraq's really going. You're probably on your like 400,000th mission by that point. And, um, but like what's also happening to my generation is live leak. And all of the videos, all of that stuff is flooding the world. And I was like, that's what you get to do? Like, that's what happens? And it's just like, and then the guy goes, and like a 40 mic, mic comes out and you're like, oh, that's what I want. That's what I want. That's what I want.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, I'm seeing that stuff. And even then, my, my cousin, who was, he was about four years older than me, Mitch Cannon, uh, he was, uh, he had gone to, uh, Fallujah and he was an AAV mechanic. And I believe it was, um, the second push through. And he was like, I was just in a jump seat and then they started losing guys. And then he was stacking on doors. And so he like, and to see him, he had, he had ribbon, he had more ribbons in my drill instructors. I remember this, but he was like big and burly and stood up straight and had a, has a sergeant rank on him. And I was like, dude, there's some, I, you know, you see him, right? You're like, yeah, kinda, I kinda want that, but I had still not committed. I still not committed. So I did a semester, got that 1.67 and then,

• 23:28Speaker 01

  you know, I was like, I, I think it's, I had already gone to the recruiter and they didn't even have to try. I just walked in and said, my name's Zachary Bell. I want to be, a rifleman in the United States Marine Corps. And they go, whoa, buddy. And they, you know, took the Azab, I did well enough to do whatever I wanted. And I was like, oh, three infantry, we're not, we're not messing around. I want to be a rifleman. Put me on the front. Well, you can do, they, you know, they pitch you on like, you can do this. It's kind of whatever, you know, every Marine is a rifleman. That's not, it's not true. It's not saying that every Marine doesn't have rifle training, that there's a difference, but there is the tradecraft associated with being a combat infantry rifleman. And that was my job day in and day out.

• 24:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, there's a big difference between a rifleman and a combat infantry rifleman.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes, there is. Like, cause if, if that, if everyone's a rifleman, then everyone's a mechanic, then everyone's a pilot, then everyone's this and that. But they weren't asking me to fix the helos. You know, they were asking me to locate and close with, and that's what I wanted to do.

• 24:23Jocko Willink?

  So how long did it take you to get processed? And yeah, 2000, so my last deployment was in 2006.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:29Jocko Willink?

  And, and we kinda, we kinda just were a little bit behind, like every single guy in a platoon having a helmet cam and a, and a GoPro and all that. So we didn't have, we didn't have that. We had like a couple of guys that got issued helmet cams for some like experimental things. So, so we didn't really have that. We didn't, we, we just didn't have it. And, but yeah, the following deployments, like you start talking about 2007, and now all of a sudden, every freaking guy had a GoPro attached to his weapon and his helmet, facing two directions. So you started getting some seriously first person observation of what was going down.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  It was incredible. It was incredible. And like, the internet, for all the stuff that has now with regulation, that didn't exist then, which I'm, I don't know how I feel about that, but like, it was like, if you, if you wanted to see something, you went to LiveLeak or like there was e-bombs.

• 25:23Jocko Willink?

  Is LiveLeak still around?

• 25:24Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think it is. Um, I think it's just Twitter now. Like you, you can just go anywhere and see stuff now. But I just remember like typing up stuff like the Battle of Fallujah, the Battle of Ramadi. And you could just see a guy be like, right. And they're just like doing it and it just I was like that's that's what I want that's that's what I wanted and they didn't have to try I so um

• 25:46Jocko Willink?

  How long was it before you shipped out?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Like thirty days from the time I not thirty days um I think when I so I left I officially enlisted in February of two thousand seven so like maybe I was still in college so let's say October is when I committed to the DEP and they like gave me a date and I was like let's do that.

• 26:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you had a pretty good length of time hanging around. Did you do anything for pair? Did you run or anything? Do you pushups or anything like that?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  I mean a little bit. They had like the police and stuff that we're doing, but to be honest, I was I was more concerned with spending time with my girlfriend who would who would later become my wife and you know, she was the one who had actually told me, you know, my wife Christie had told me like from the very beginning that she thought that I could do it. You know, she thought that you know, I could serve in the Marines. A lot of people didn't. A lot of people in my life were like, ah, you're not gonna do it. Because I mean, it is war. People were dying and stuff, but like I couldn't. There was this thing inside me, this fire that was burning that I I literally couldn't deny it. And um I mean, we so we'd actually met through her cousin, right? Her cousin um came home before his deployment to Iraq in two thousand six for his father's fiftieth birthday and I'd known this family for such a long time and they're they're very good people.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  And um it was a surprise for his dad and so I went and picked him up at the airport. And I came in, brought him and they were like, oh, yeah, it's like this big surprise and I look across this room and there's this gorgeous absolute bombshell of a girl. And I go up to Luke and I go, hey, Luke,

• 27:18Speaker 01

  my brother in Christ, I introduce you to every person that's cool. Like, who is that? Like, and he's like, oh, that's my cousin. That's my cousin Christie. She lives in Nashville. And I go, your cousin Christie lives in Nashville. I've known you for quite a long time. We've never talked about your cousin Christie that lives in Nashville. And he goes, well, I don't think you were ready for it. And I go, well, you're probably right. I tell you what, though, I'm gonna marry that girl. And I, and I did.

• 27:41Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:42Jocko Willink?

  How long was it that you knew her or that you were like going out with her before you got married?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  A year, a year.

• 27:47Jocko Willink?

  So were you married before you left in the Marine Corps?

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Um, no, we got engaged, uh, not long after I enlisted and then married after that.

• 27:54Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  But when you know, you know, I don't, you know, we've been married since two thousand and seven, you know? And, um, I don't know, I, I, I don't recommend anything for anybody. I just know that like when I saw her, when, when I was with her, I, I knew I, I always wanted to be the best, I always wanted to be the best version of myself when I was around her. And I was like, that's gotta be what true love is.

• 28:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, you're still, you're still at it with her. So that's a good sign.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's incredible. I don't know why. I, I, maybe she's like, you know, I'm a real DIY project, I think, but, um, yeah. Guys are really laughing about that. Yeah.

• 28:32Jocko Willink?

  So you, you leave for boot camp?

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:35Jocko Willink?

  How's boot camp? Shock? Are you good?

• 28:37Speaker 01

  No, I mean, so like, uh, boot camp stories, I always, I always do like an eye roll and people have them, but like, I found it to be the most hysterical, entertaining time of my life up to that point. What's the language? I don't, can I swear? Say whatever I want.

• 28:54Jocko Willink?

  Of course.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Um, like, I just, the things they would say, I felt like they were stand-up comedians. They'd be like, look at this fucking guy right here. You know, like, and they would tear into people and I would just be like looking ahead. Cause it's, you know, people get too wrapped around the axle of like, they don't, you know, they don't want, you know, recruit welding to fail. Like they, they think that it's, they want you to fail. They don't. They really want you to succeed, but they are trying to push you. Like I had this one guy next to me who was thirty when he enlisted and he, yes, and he, he just got torn up from the floor up all the time. Uh, he was not in the best shape and they, they were on him like a dog on a bone. Like they could.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  I don't want to say his name at all, but or even allude to it, but like they were like, hey, hey, recruit so and so, you you look so fucking gross. You disgust me. I don't even know why anyone would ever be the lord have mercy. This recruit doesn't know either. And like he would just, he would feed into it and he'd go, you, oh my God, you smell like, you smell like death. I tell you what, you're gonna get run over as soon as you get to Iraq, if you even go, you coward. And like just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And like he ate it up, but um, I was in a rare situation where um, you know, I was much lighter than I am now. I was like one, seven, one, ten going in.

• 30:04Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  Did then, did that bring you extra focus?

• 30:08Speaker 01

  The extra focus was they made me a double ration. In boot camp.

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  They feed you more.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  And that was hard. That was actually hard for the first month. And then after that, a part of me like engaged in my head that I didn't know existed, but like when I left boot camp, I was like one forty-five. And like I was eating, I was drinking two glasses of milk every meal, like literally they would give me cake every, every, like every meal and I had to eat it. And so I sat down first.

• 30:32Jocko Willink?

  What do they, how do they explain that to you? What do they say to you?

• 30:35Speaker 01

  And they just look at me and they go, what the fuck?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  You know, they, they were like, what's wrong with you? And I was like, I don't know. I was eighteen. I mean, like I just, I was just kind of like scrawny. I, I don't, I don't know. I was, you know, I had been doing fitness and stuff like that.

• 30:48Jocko Willink?

  Dude, a hundred and seven pounds?

• 30:50Speaker 01

  I mean, I like hundred.

• 30:51Jocko Willink?

  That's like a wrestling weight for guys that are just naturally really small.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  So like.

• 30:56Jocko Willink?

  Humans.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  I, that's really why when I was in like eighth and ninth grade, the wrestling coach had come up to me because like I was, I'm five, five, seven on a good day, you know, and um, like I'm always, at that time, especially I'm leaner in general, right? And so it's like one, seven, one, ten ish. I remember something around there because they were just like looking at me like, oh my God, like I was just lean and um,

• 31:21Speaker 01

  they uh, like, you know, you do like the indo stuff, like you stand over like, so you go through receiving when you get there. And you like get all your stuff and they're like, hey, you know, this, this here is, this here are called, you know, go fasters. They do the, what I, I call it world building when you first get there. Cause they teach you like a pen's not a pen, it's an ink stick. You know, when they do those things, because they're terror, they're terror forming, right? You know, tennis shoes are go fasters. You know, this here is the bulkhead. This here's, you know, the deck, all those things and um, blouse, camis, trousers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I was standing over the thing and like going through medical and they, you know, they give me the shot and they go, how much do you weigh? And I remember I like went in there at like one ten, but I was like one seven by that point. Cause I've been up for a few days and you're not eating. They're like double rat. And I was like, what does that mean?

• 32:05Speaker 01

  And they're like, you eat first and you eat all of it. That's all they said to me. And I was like, okay.

• 32:08Jocko Willink?

  Do they put a sign on you or something?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  I had to wear a tag. I had to wear a tag.

• 32:12Jocko Willink?

  No kidding.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Because the, because every, everyone wants it.

• 32:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Cause most people don't have that problem.

• 32:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Most people, they're, they're cutting. Like my, my thirty year old friend, he, he would have, he would have.

• 32:24Jocko Willink?

  Other end of the spectrum.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  He was the other end of the spectrum.

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, he's like private pile, right?

• 32:28Speaker 01

  No, they call him fat body. They call him gross. Yeah, all of it. You know, this is what they called him. Don't cancel me. This is what they called him, not me. Um, but like.

• 32:36Jocko Willink?

  You are disgusting fat body.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. You make me sick. I don't know why a woman would ever be like literally, and I would just stand there and just be like, and like I broke a few times and I got popped for it, but that's all right. Um, but like, so I would go in there and bootcamp chow hall ladies are ruthless. Like they're like, what do you want recruit? And they just like scoop it and they throw it at you. But I was always the first one that they would see. So I'd have my little tag that I would like put on my blouse and I would put on my button. It was a double rat, you know, bell Z, whatever in my information. And they would look at it and they would like scoop it and they would be very like, I don't know. And so, but it's, it was a race for me. It was a race. Cause I got punished if I didn't finish everything. That was what was worse.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  So, you know, desserts, every, every meal, big glasses of milk, every meal. Whatever entree that I don't remember. And I'm just, I'm literally just picking it up with my one hand. One's down here and I'm just,

• 33:35Speaker 01

  hurry up, hurry up, Belle. Ooh, I bet you like that, don't you, boy? I bet you like that cake, huh? Ooh, and just like, there's, there's for crew. Don't you talk. That's disgusting.

• 33:42Jocko Willink?

  Stronger too? Like?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Everything was happening. It was like I was in a montage for an eighties movie. It was insane. It was literally, it was, I, it was like I learned about nutrition for the first time ever, like. You know, I came in there, I think I did like 12 pull-ups or something like that. Um, by the time I left, I was, you know, the Marine Corps PT test at that time was 20 pull-ups, uh, three mile run, 18 minutes, and then 100 sit-ups. And when I left there, it was either 17 or 18 pull-ups I did, and I got a first class. But, and then my goal after that physically was like, I will get 20 pull-ups. And like, you know, when you're working out and fitness or anything, as you both know, you have these goals and then like, you chase them forever and then when you're not looking, you end up getting them, if that makes sense.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  And it was like the first time I was like, oh, like, I'm, I'm strong, like, and I'm different and like, I'm, I'm bigger. Like, it was, it was, it was insane.

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  So the Marine Corps turned you into a man, straight up. That's what the Marine Corps does. They don't play around.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  I can't recommend it enough, yeah.

• 34:42Jocko Willink?

  So you, you, and this is all at Parris Island, because you're.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Parris Island, yeah.

• 34:46Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you graduate from boot camp?

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yes. So February, what's three months later, uh, May, right? May-ish, right? Something like that, because I remember, I got it, yeah. May-ish, and then they're like, you know, you graduate boot camp, my wife's there.

• 35:02Jocko Willink?

  So you're married now?

• 35:03Speaker 01

  No, not, it's not my wife, it's my, she's my girlfriend. And, um, you know, we, uh, she like sees me and I remember like, she was like, wow, you look different. And I was like, yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Um, but, you know, you get, you get your 10 days of leave, we hung out every bit of it, and then they're like, hey, you're off to the School of Infantry, Camp Geiger, North Carolina. And, uh, you know, I got dressed in my pickle suit, is what we call the, the alphas, you know, the cover and, and, um, went there and went to the School of Infantry. And that's when like all my friends who were like, you know, uh, non-combat jobs or non-infantry jobs, they like went to MCT, which is 21 days of them being in the field. And then I went for like 30 months, basically. I mean, I can't remember how long it is, actually.

• 35:46Jocko Willink?

  And, and when you're at School of Infantry, you're trained to be a rifleman. What's the, what's like the, what's the day-to-day looking like?

• 35:53Speaker 01

  So what happens at first, there's like a receiving week thing, and then you get an introduction to all the different instructors and you take like an aptitude test of some sort. And, uh, the way it works is, you're like in this big like amphitheater and there's these different instructors based on the MOS. So there's O311 Infantry Rifleman, O331 Machine Gunner.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Oh three forty one, uh, mortarmen, um, oh three fifty one assaultmen and uh, there's toe gunners, but they weren't there.

• 36:20Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  And so what they do is they like.

• 36:22Jocko Willink?

  What's the assault man?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  The assaultmen, uh, they had the small and they were like a demos, a demo, uh, expert that would be attached to like.

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  It's mainly a weapons platoon job that they would like attach to like, you know, do shape charges and stuff.

• 36:34Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  So, but it doesn't exist anymore. Um, the toe gunner, I think still exists, I don't know, but the way it works is they're like, all right, which job do you want to pick? You like list or whatever. And then all the like heads of the class will come out and be like, hey, my name's Sergeant so and so, I'm an oh three fifty one. Do you like shooting rockets? Do you like, do you like fucking explosions? I'm your guy. Right? And I was like, oh, that's cool. Oh, three forty one. Hey, my name's those, you know, Sergeant, whatever. I'm an oh three forty one. You like playing spades? You like dropping rounds? Come over here with the mortarmen, we'll have a good time. Right? And then, you know, there's, hey, my name's Sergeant so and so, I'm a machine gunner. And they're look, they look like full backs.

• 37:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're all jacked.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're all like, you like, you like reaching out and taking the beating zoda of the round and touching the enemy, you come over here with a man. And it's just like, everybody's like, oh yeah. And everybody's like riled up and I'll never forget, I can't remember his name, but I wish I did. Let's say his name's Sergeant Johnson. Sergeant Johnson comes up there and he looks around and he goes, takes out a dip, puts a dip in, he goes, you want to be in charge of those dumb asses? You be in oh three eleven, come to my class.

• 37:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  And that's all I wrote down on my paper was oh three eleven and I just gave it to him. And the way I went, not like I had any idea over, but I was like, I'm not giving them an option. So that's, that's what I did.

• 37:49Jocko Willink?

  And how was that school?

• 37:50Speaker 01

  School, I mean, school's great. I mean, but it's like anything else. You don't really learn the trade to get to your unit.

• 37:54Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  But like, you know, you're just doing hikes, like, you know, five K, ten, fifteen, twenty, um, you're trying to learn stuff. You're basically, this is where like the real stuff of like team wedge, squad column, stuff like that starts to come into your mind.

• 38:06Jocko Willink?

  Are you getting opportunities to lead patrols? Are you?

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:10Jocko Willink?

  Are they sometimes like, all right, you're in charge, you're in charge, like at Ranger School, where you get rotated through leadership positions?

• 38:16Speaker 01

  They do, but it's it's not as like formalized as that because it's such a big class. And you don't really even understand what's happening at the moment. Cause you're just like, oh, you're just like trying not to. You're you're only, you're really upset that it's still kinda like boot camp. Right? And you're just trying to not. Mess up and then get to liberty on the weekend. Like that's your whole goal, but like. It's just.

• 38:38Jocko Willink?

  How much liberty would you get? Would you get like Friday night, Saturday night?

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then come back Sunday morning. Yeah, and you're like going out.

• 38:45Jocko Willink?

  What was the freaking trouble level for the boys after boot camp? And then now they're there and now they get liberty on the weekends. They're going out with a fat wallet full of cash. I mean. How they keep guys out of trouble?

• 38:58Speaker 01

  They don't. Like, I mean, like you, you have like a buddy system and. You travel with like your friends and stuff. I mean, a good friend of mine. He went to Winston Salem with a dude in our platoon. Because his fam. This guy said, he's like, come out, my family's got all this stuff or whatever. And they went to Winston Salem and the other marine just didn't come back. And it was his ride back. So like, and he called the, he called the unit was, I mean. SOI was like, hey, I'm stuck. I'm stuck in Winston Salem, North Carolina. I can't come back. Could y'all like not like mark me AWOL or whatever? And his name's Ace and Brian Archer, you could call him Ace. And I was like, Ace, where are you? Like, I'm texting him. I was like, where are you? He's like, I'm stuck here. So and so won't come back. Like, it's a whole thing. And they eventually got him and like they put him away for a little bit.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  And I think they separated him. I don't know what happened, but. Like, that's, that's what would happen. Weird stuff like that, but.

• 39:48Jocko Willink?

  Were you, since you had a girlfriend at the time, were you drinking and stuff or were you just?

• 39:55Jocko Willink?

  You know, there are guys that recognize and. Very few, very few. So you were just wrapped up full on, let's go.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  I mean, like, we're hanging out with the boys and stuff, but like, so what was different is my cousin was still in and he picked me up. And when he showed up, he was like, what? Like, he was a sergeant and he had deployed more than most of the people that were there at that point. And at that time, as in the military, if you deployed, you were. That was, that was currency. If you had a combat action ribbon, that was, didn't really, nobody could touch it.

• 40:25Jocko Willink?

  Is this now oh eight?

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Two, two seven, uh, two thousand seven going into oh eight.

• 40:29Jocko Willink?

  Two thousand seven, yeah. So you still had guys that hadn't deployed yet.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. There was like that weird kind of lull because y'all had just left Iraq and like it was becoming the green zone and all those things were happening. And so, uh, he would pick me up and we would hang out and like my, uh, my girlfriend, my, my wife, girlfriend at the time would like come through and we would just like go to movies and do stuff and like hang out with my friends. And then.

• 40:50Jocko Willink?

  So you were a little bit more chill.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, not as chill as I was when I got to my unit, but yeah, I mean, that's, that's really where like you hang out with the boys a lot and you're doing a lot of that stuff.

• 41:00Jocko Willink?

  Was there anything that was a challenge for you at SOI?

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Um.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  I, I, I don't think so. Uh, because honestly, what I love about the military is how clear and concise it is when you get out of your own way of like, this is the task we have to accomplish. Do that.

• 41:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I always feel that way about the Marine Corps, like, um, and I don't, I, I can speak for SEAL training. SEAL training is freaking crazy. Like in terms of you just having bad luck and everything falls apart.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:33Jocko Willink?

  Like you get hurt, you, it, there's some people that just don't, aren't good in the water. There's some people that sink. There's some people that, that, they just have problems.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:43Jocko Willink?

  And you're untrainable. You're untrainable and you're just not going to make it.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:47Jocko Willink?

  And it seems like the Marine Corps does a much better job of taking someone that's whatever you are, eighteen years old, a hundred and seven pounds.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was light.

• 41:58Jocko Willink?

  And with no training whatsoever and turning that guy into a combat infantry rifleman. That's where, that's what they do. They do it all the time.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  We're the best at it. I agree. You heard it here first. Um, no, it's, I mean, and, and SOI, it's really just about getting you to your unit. Because your unit is where they're really gonna like separate you.

• 42:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Put you in your different companies, your different platoons. You know, if you're not good, they're gonna push you up to battalion. You know, you'll push papers while I'm pushing rounds. You know, that's, that's just the way it goes. But as far as like getting you to the place where like they're creating a product, like they're really, really good about that. And the God's honest truth is it's not that complicated. You're just walking in a circle, dude, you know? Like, I mean, that's all you did. That's all I did. We walked in circles, right? You know, there's different ways we got there, but at the end of the day, checkpoint one, three, five, seven, nine, eleven, or two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve. Like, that's just it. Route one, route two. Like, but you don't even know any of that stuff yet. You're just like. Team Wedge Squad, you're like, you're just like doing the hand signals or like on me and like that's the stuff they're teaching you there.

• 42:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Trying to like really learn stuff that you'll probably carry on.

• 42:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, I had James Webb on the podcast and it was wild because he went like graduated from the academy, went to um, the basic school. And then went to officer infantry school and then I think 12 days of leave.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:15Jocko Willink?

  Got to Vietnam. It got, they pointed, they drove him out or took him out on patrol, pointed up at a ridge and was like, hey, your platoon's up there. He went up there. There was no one to relieve. The guy that he was taking the place of had been wounded and gone. So it was like a platoon sergeant that was running it. And he's in charge now. And that that night they got into like a big contact and he was calling for fire and supporting arms. And I asked him, I was like, I said, were you ready? And he said, yes. Which is freaking impressive. For someone to come out of officer candidate training or, you know, whatever, uh, officer infantry training and then show up. It just be in combat, ready to roll and executing. So the Marine Corps does a damn good job.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  They do. It's the perks of being like, uh, you know, a quarter of the size of the army. We're real reduced. We're small. We're focused. Like it's, the Marine Corps lives and dies off a small unit leadership and building into the aspects that you need to be trained for the job ahead of you and the person needs to be trained. Like it's, you're like always looking down and looking up, right? So you're training to be up and ready for the guys coming to replace you. And it's like that at all levels. You know, I mean, every, every infantry officer we had that came out, especially during that time, they were ridiculous. Especially the Navy guys. There's a few dudes who like wanted to do BUDs or whatever. And I don't know what happened, but they would always come out and they're just like jacked. They're kind of what you want to see as an infantry platoon commander. Like you, the ones that always I didn't like were the lean ones because that means they were just gonna run into.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're gonna run into your, your vomiting, you know, like you're just like, come on, come on, sir. Like, come on, let's not do this. But, um, no, it was, you know, that was, it's, it's all like fun, but like. When I got to, when they came to pick us up and they they showed up in the buses and they're looking around, they go you, whatever, you, whatever. And they looked at me in my group and they go one six, get on the bus. And I was like, okay. And I got on the bus and I had never.

• 45:11Jocko Willink?

  So this is when you graduated?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  This is when we graduate SOI. There's not a lot of pomp and.

• 45:14Jocko Willink?

  Do you get orders? Do you get orders?

• 45:16Speaker 01

  We were, the orders were this group goes to one six, this one goes to eight, this one goes to like whatever, that's as far as it goes. Right? You get told what battalion you're going to. And like, we did a little ceremony. They're like, class, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Get out of here. You get a paper, get out. Cool. Roger that. Um, bus comes by. If some of the like NCOs were tasked with it, who were upset that they were tasked with it, came to pick us up. And then it's, we drove on the Camp Lejeune and I had seen it before, but I'd never seen it. See if that makes sense.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  And then like, we just start doing, you know, we go to CIF, which is, there's a big debate over that. Do you know this?

• 45:51Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  That, um, what do you call it? Where you get your gear? Do you call it CIF or CIF?

• 45:55Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I guess we would just call it supply.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Well, we would call it, so people, every time I say it's called CIF, people are like, it's CIF because that's what the army calls it. You know, central issue facility. And we always called it CIF.

• 46:07Jocko Willink?

  Well, I was saying FOB.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:09Jocko Willink?

  And I said FOB to a Vietnam, uh, SOG guy and he's like, what? It's, it's, I was like FOB and he's like, oh, FOB.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:19Jocko Willink?

  So they didn't call it FOB. So I, now I call it FOB. I'm, I'm on board with the boys.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Did he call you a boot after? He's like.

• 46:25Jocko Willink?

  I am a boot.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  He's like, all right, Jocko, you boot. Yeah.

• 46:30Jocko Willink?

  Those guys were next level.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  For sure. But like, we go there, you get your gear, all that stuff. You get your gas mask.

• 46:36Jocko Willink?

  What does CIF stand for?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Central, uh, issue facility.

• 46:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  But we called it CIF. That's, that's what I was told. I mean, you don't know. Some guys like get in line at CIF. It's where you turn in your gear. It's where you get your gear and you turn in. And they were like, look at, like, whenever you leave, they're like, this, uh, pack's been worn. And you're like, yeah. And they're like, $200, whatever it is. But they give you all the stuff that you never use because you end up buying better stuff, especially during that time. And, um, I just remember they're like, okay, you're going to your unit. And then we go to like the battalion office and the, all my friends, literally all of them, except one other dude. They're like Charlie Bravo Charlie Alpha Bravo Charlie Alpha Bravo Charlie. It's like a draft. The draft of dumb dums is what I called it. So they're like Alpha Bravo and like they hit me Alpha Bravo. All my friends go over there and me and like three other people go to Alpha Company.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  We're dragging our gear and as we're doing it, the Marines had just got back from the field and they're throwing everything they can at us. Catcalling us. It was terrifying. They're like woo boots, hurry the fuck up. Just everything they can as we're just like, you're looking up and you know, these are Camp Lejeune barracks. They, you know, they've just got trauma and mold in them like it. So they're just like screaming at you, hurry up, run. And like it's for like the first week, it was a nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare.

• 47:51Jocko Willink?

  And one six was just coming back from Ramadi.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  They had been back. They had just got back from leave and it was they had, it was worse. They had just got back from leave and they had just got back from the field. So it was their first post leave field op. They're sweaty and they're just like.

• 48:04Jocko Willink?

  Sweaty and pissed.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like animals that have been let loose and your boots, you haven't deployed anywhere and they hate you. So like it's, it's a lot.

• 48:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So when I was in Ramadi was, I was with three, eight for the beginning and then one, six came and took their place. Probably about a month before I left. Yeah. So this was like, they did that. They did their six, seven month tour or whatever. And then came home and yeah, so you were, they were definitely. Rowdy. Definitely rowdy.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  They were rowdy. Two hundred and ten days. That's what they always say. That's what you're down. So it's like seven months, but like they were rowdy and then you're just, you have no idea what's happening. You just see a sea of people. They're all dressed like you, like different versions of you. You know what I'm saying? Like all military people are kind of like, we're all different versions of the same person is what I say. Um, but I'm looking for my team leader. That's all I'm looking for. I'm looking for my team leader. Find Kelly, find Kelly, Lance Corporal Kelly. Where's Lance Corporal Kelly? This guy comes up to me, big dip in. He goes, hey, I'm Lance Corporal Kelly. Don't make my life hard or I'll make yours hard. Good to go? And I was like, good to go Lance Corporal. And he goes. All right. Don't fuck up. And like he was gone. Like he was just gone. Your room is this room. Boom, boom, boom. Went to my room, sat down and just that whole night.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Seniors banging, get out here, Boots. Get out here. Pick this up. Boom, boom, boom. You know, plotting points on a gap and on the plotting points on a map with a gas mask going in the shower, running around. I don't want to use the word hazing. It was

• 49:33Jocko Willink?

  Training.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  There was training that was happening.

• 49:35Jocko Willink?

  Individualized training.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Very individualized. It seemed like it was only like 12 of us. They were getting this individualized training. And it was just like that for a week, but it's just like anything else. Keep your head down. You know? The one thing you don't do is you don't complain. You don't be like, oh, this is you pay your dues, right? And none of it was like weird or like

• 49:55Speaker 01

  inappropriate in a way that like was disrespectful, like to me as a person or derogatory. It was just like, it was just dumb shit. Right? Hey, police call that. You know, and for anyone doesn't know, or most people should know, listen to this. Police call means picking up trash anywhere. You get on the line, pick up trash. So you police call like the area where we go formation. But while you're doing it, all of the seniors are dumping cigarettes and trash behind you as you clean and stuff stuff inside your cargo pockets. And they're like, and then you go turn around and they go, what the fuck? You missed all of this. And then you're like, ah, this will never end. And stuff like that.

• 50:28Jocko Willink?

  So when you're living, so you you move into barracks?

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I lived there for like a month.

• 50:31Jocko Willink?

  Percentage of your company lived in the barracks?

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Almost everyone. Almost everyone who wasn't married. Yeah. And so

• 50:41Jocko Willink?

  So you're talking like there's a hundred guys in there?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  200 roughly. Yeah. 200 animals.

• 50:45Jocko Willink?

  200 guys.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Two, not guys, 200 animals.

• 50:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Three to a room, not not like regular barracks. So there's a bunk bed. There's a bunk bed. There's so the boots on the bottom. There's the top rack. That's like the next senior person. And then there was an individualized rack. That's the most senior person.

• 51:03Jocko Willink?

  Two Marines in her room, one of them a senior. Like it's definitely going down.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Dude, my my friends would tell stuff about like their senior guy just like throwing trash in their bunk, uh, being like, pick it up, boot, pick it up, boot, pick it up, boot. And you're just like, uh.

• 51:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's in a crazy environment.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  It's But I miss it so much. Yeah, yeah. But it's, you know, and it's, by that time, I'd actually proposed to my wife. And so like, they were waiting for all my stuff to switch over. And we had, we'd actually decided to get married and we were gonna have a wedding in November. And so I was like, she was like, it can't be that bad in the barracks. And I showed her once. And like, that was enough for her to be like, never mind.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  You know, she would just always, it was, it was like, I was making her look at the sun. She was just like shocked every time she saw it. You know, she's like, people talk to you like that? And I was like, please don't say anything. Just get in the car. We gotta go. We gotta go. Yeah.

• 51:58Jocko Willink?

  So, at what point do you start? So those guys are coming in, by the way, they were outstanding. They came into Ramadi, did a turnover with three eight and one six was just outstanding. I remember their, their commanding officer, I remember meeting him, just freaking squared away. And you could tell just a pro. So outstanding guys. And then, of course, they, you know, did a bunch of good fighting in Ramadi. So when they come back, when do you start like a workup? When do you start training for deployment? Immediately?

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I was very, very blessed. I had a really good team leader, Brandon Kelly, took very good care of me. He invested in me. He actually saved his squad leader's life and got an award for it in Ramadi. Was a saw gunner, long shot, short, got hurt, he pulled him out. Like, he was just this guy and like, very thoughtful, very kind to me, treated him with respect. And he like showed me honestly, like good leadership. Took care of me, invested in me and all these things. And from the very beginning, he started teaching me like every bit of the trait. And then I realized I didn't learn anything in SOI. Right? Because everything in SOI in the schoolhouses, they're very doctrinal. It's like on paper and it's flat. But these guys, they had just left Ramadi. And like, that was when I actually started

• 53:13Speaker 01

  to learn that one six had this incredible legacy of being in historic battles, going as far back as Bella Wood and all these different things where you see the French Forte. And like, they've been known for like, just terraforming the earth to the will of the Marine Corps. And I was like, holy shit, I'm in an incredible place. Like, I'm, I'm on the shoulders of giants right now. And it was never lost on me. Never lost on me. Because I, you know, I was a boot, so it was my job to clean the battalion office and stuff. There's a company, company, uh, battalion, uh, master guns. He never wore a Skibby shirt and he loved making fun of lieutenants. That was his whole thing. And, um, he'd always be like, you, he's like, look at some of these things on the wall. Look at this as you're cleaning.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  This is your legacy. Don't, don't fucking embarrass them. That's what he would say as we're cleaning. And so he'd be like, stop. And he'd make us read it and he would just spend time with us. And I was like, wow, this is actually, this is actually like a historic place. I need to like, this wasn't just like a luck of the draw guy. There's a reason, you know, and I need to be respectful of that.

• 54:12Jocko Willink?

  Uh, people are often ask me about culture and size, teams and businesses and organizations, but that's one of the things that I explain is that you've got to share your history.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:22Jocko Willink?

  So that people understand where, where they came from and the Marine Corps does a great, but a lot of the military does a great job with it. The SEAL teams just started doing a good job. They built new SEAL teams and now the SEAL teams have, you can see the heritage on the walls. You can see the pictures from Vietnam, even going back to World War II.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:37Jocko Willink?

  And you understand that there's a heritage and a tradition. And so, but the Marine Corps just has been doing that for so long that they know how to do it really well. And like what you're explaining right now is what I try and explain to people. That's what you're, when you're in a leadership position, that's your job is to make sure that the, the people that come onboard the team, understand the tradition and the history and the roots of where they came from and where this organization came from. And it, it just lifts them up.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:09Jocko Willink?

  And it makes a person want to excel. Like even when I got SEAL Team One, they had the Medal of Honor guys on the quarter deck. And you're like, okay, that, that's the only thing they had on there. Just the Medal of Honor guys. That's it. That's like, that's what we're doing. And so, and that was in the nineties, you know, just a little tiny quarter deck, but you're like, okay, I get it. That's what we're doing. Um, so it's very important and the Marine Corps does a great job of that. So you start this workup. And you're doing exercises?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:36Jocko Willink?

  How's it roll?

• 55:37Speaker 01

  I mean, at that time, we were tasked with the 24th Mew, right? Um, and, uh, the battalion commander, uh, is now Brigadier General Anthony Henderson, one of the most incredible men I've, I've ever known. And, um, you know, a lot was happening in my personal life at that time. Uh, like I said, we'd gotten married and we were planning our, um, our, our wedding, but we had found out that my, my wife had gotten pregnant with our first child. Um, and so like that instantly became everyone's knowledge, even him.

• 56:06Jocko Willink?

  How old were you at this point?

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Uh, nineteen, nineteen, twenty. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know, all these things that they just like, life was just moving so quickly, just moving so radically quickly. And, um, you know, I'd actually had to sit down with him a few times to talk about this stuff. And he like talked to me and like all this stuff. And he's like, well, it's okay. We're going on the 24th Mew. He's like, I'll make sure you make every appointment you can. And like all this stuff. And was very kind to me. And within reason, I, I went as much as I could, but like it was the 24th Mew and you know, it's basically a base, a mobile base, as you know, and, um, like you have all these direct assets and you're just doing like real radical training to prepare for any type of global conflict wherever you're going. And at this, at this time, they're like, you guys are going to

• 56:49Speaker 01

  the Mediterranean. Now I'm a boot in, in a unit with a bunch of guys from Ramadi, they couldn't be happier. They could not be happier. I could not be

• 57:00Jocko Willink?

  Med Cruz.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  I could not be more unhappy. Cause what they're saying to me is like, you're going to be a boot forever. Basically, cause if all that counted at that time was you have to deploy, you have to deploy to a combat zone. The war is still actively going on. I mean, Iraq's kind of, I won't say it's scaling down, but it was like leveling.

• 57:18Jocko Willink?

  2008. I mean, it's 2008 with Sadr City. There's all kinds of stuff still going on.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was, it was, it wasn't as, there wasn't as much focus at, at, at that time in the sense of like, there was at least a plan in place from my perspective. And like, it was seemed like, uh, They understood the routine of it is what I'll say. And so um, I was like, why not go to Iraq? You know, and they're like, no, there's like green zones and there was like too many Marines and not enough missions or whatever. That's what they told us. So I was like, okay. And so we're doing really crazy training, you know, at the time it was called Fort Pickett. I think they re they changed the name of it now. So like, we go there and do like these big 30 day exercises. We're going to the field once a week, um, you know, Monday through Thursday, you know, go into defensive, all these different things. Like you're doing training all the time and it sucks, but I loved it. I absolutely loved it.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Cause you're hanging out with like what will become your best friends and you don't know it at the time, but like you're basically being paid by the government to hang out with your friends.

• 58:17Jocko Willink?

  That's the military.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  It's so, it's so, it's so awesome, especially when you're in a combat job, because like when you're not training or deployed, you know, you know, don't be seen and don't be heard, just go away like, like they always say, no one can hide like an infantry unit in the garrison. Like doors are shut, blinds are shut. Like, don't, don't look, don't ask the questions. We tell you no lies. And, uh, you know, all this is happening and, you know, it just feels good and like all this stuff. So we're coming up on this whole workup. And so by the time, you know, we're getting closer to, um,

• 58:48Jocko Willink?

  So were you supposed to deploy on a ship to the Med?

• 58:49Speaker 01

  We're supposed to deploy on a ship and I was even on a ship for 30 days and it was the worst 30 days of.

• 58:54Jocko Willink?

  I, I did two, uh, amphibious ready group deployments when I was a young SEAL. And both of them, obviously with the Marine Corps, but I did two, that meant I did two workups with the Marine Corps.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:05Jocko Willink?

  With, so we did like freaking beach landings and

• 59:08Speaker 01

  We did that, yeah, yeah.

• 59:09Jocko Willink?

  Everything that you could do.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  The elbows.

• 59:11Jocko Willink?

  And then we lived with them and we lived with the Marines and

• 59:13Speaker 01

  You did?

• 59:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, on the ship, of course. Yeah. Two deployments like that. And, and that's why, you know, that's one of the reasons why I was very, very lucky because if you didn't have that experience in the SEAL teams, you wouldn't understand. How conventional units work. You wouldn't even know what a company was, what a battalion, you just wouldn't know because you're not in it. You're not doing it. You're in some random, like my first deployment was what we used to call spec ops deployment, where you went to, we went to Guam, and then we did exercise from there, but you're just with a bunch of SEALs. And so you're just doing SEAL stuff, and you're not interacting with anybody else. So being forced to interact with the Marine Corps, and I was a radio man, so like I had to figure out all the comms and, and it just taught me so much, and I was so lucky, and I got to

• 59:58Jocko Willink?

  understand the quality of the Marine Corps and how they functioned. And you know, some of the things that we needed to adapt to and be like, oh yeah, the Marine Corps is not going to be doing that. Like, that's not the way they're going to work. So I was very lucky that I got to be able to do that.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  No, I mean, like, the one month we were on a ship, I realized, one, if you don't have a job on a ship, everyone hates you. They all have real jobs. And I was a boot, so I was in the bottom of the coffin rack. And so for perspective, I had a book that I was reading, I can't remember what it was, I want to say it was like, you know, Gates of Fire or something, some required reading I was told to do. But I remember I had to lean the book flat to turn the page, to pull it back up, just to read. And I was like, alright, this is it.

• 1:00:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  You know, ran out of water, and all these things happened, plumbing backs up, and I was just like, okay. And everyone's like, gangway or sickbay, gangway or sickbay. And we're just, you know, we're just dum-dums there eating chow, and being like, this is pretty great. You know, we're being grunts. But I did that for 30 days, we literally left and invaded Onslow Beach, that's what we did, we got off and, you know, a buddy of mine got washed away, almost lost his A barrel on his saw.

• 1:01:06Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was pretty rough. But, um, yeah, the whole time, they're like, you're going to the Mediterranean, we had to do like these emergency drills, where we had to do like a, you know, a stand to, or like be ready to respond to whatever. And it all seemed great until they were like, actually, you're not going to the Mediterranean.

• 1:01:22Jocko Willink?

  When did you find that out?

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  February of 2008.

• 1:01:25Jocko Willink?

  And when was deployment?

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  Uh, February of two thousand, late February two thousand eight.

• 1:01:29Jocko Willink?

  So you found out?

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Actually, yeah, late February, yeah.

• 1:01:32Jocko Willink?

  Basically, like the time, when it was time to start getting ready to leave, that's when you found out?

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Yes, and that was around the, the day, uh, the due date of my, uh, first child, uh, my daughter. So we were on, we were on post, uh, a pre-deployment leave and so we, we were in Nashville, my wife and I.

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  So now you know that you're going to Afghanistan?

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  They had told us like two weeks prior to that.

• 1:01:54Jocko Willink?

  And then you go on leave?

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  Go on leave.

• 1:01:56Jocko Willink?

  How, when did your wife do? Like in a couple of weeks?

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  She was, she, it was very close. It was very close. And so we'd gone to the doctor and he's like, well, you know, it could be any day now. And I was like, uh, we don't, we don't have any day. And so I, you know, you know, by God's grace, miracle stress or whatever, we, we went home and, you know, um, she was taking a bath and then she's like, there's something happening. There's something happening. And, uh, we all got in the car, drove down to the hospital and that, not long after that, I'd become a father. And, uh, I was supposed to be back. I was supposed to be back home and I had to call my platoon sergeant. And I was like, hey, you know, I, I can't come home. I'm not coming home. And I was just like, they're gonna like throw me in the brig.

• 1:02:39Jocko Willink?

  Home being?

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  I can't come back to, I can't go back to base. I can't, I can't come back. You know, I'm, I'm staying here for this, whatever. You wanna put me, you wanna bury me under the brig? I don't care. Like I, I was there and, um, you know, I, you know, as you know, when you become a father, like, uh, women become father, I mean, women become, um, mothers over nine months. I say fathers. I mean, men become fathers in nine seconds. Like right after the baby's born, you're like, I need insurance. I need like savings. I need a good car. We need these, like as soon as I held her, like all my life made sense to me. And I was like, I need to do whatever I can to be with her as much as I can. And, um, my platoon sergeant at the time was, uh,

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Um, he was known for his enthusiasm. He had a real hands-on approach to leadership. If, um, if you can believe that, a little too hands-on when he was on the drill field, but, um, he, uh, he was very like, that's okay. It's fine. And he's like, you'll leave with Charlie Company. And I was like, oh, well, that's, that's cool. And so I was there with my daughter for two days. Um, and then went, went back and, and I left a different company. And went straight to Afghanistan.

• 1:03:52Jocko Willink?

  That was my first kid too. My first kid was born and I left the next day for a six month deployment.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  It was, it was, it was brutal. It was, I was, I mean, like I, it was the first moment where I was like, ah, this life is hard. I'm not, I'm not sure about this, you know, cause as I held her, you know, and you know, she's getting ready to start driving on her own now. And like, I think about her and, you know, how much I love her and her mother and everything. It was just like, ah, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. I, it was the first time I felt, uh, fallible, if that makes sense. So, but until then I was full of like, you know, I came in at like less than a hundred and twenty pounds. I'm, you know, I'm big and I'm bad. I'm a boot. I'm doing all these things, but then that happens and I'm like, oh no, I'm, I'm, I'm a human. And, uh, so yeah, it's, it was, it was tough time and, um,

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  you know, uh, went straight, went to Charlie Company, flew with them. It was kinda weird. Cause like no one knew what to do with me.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  There had been some guys who'd gotten in trouble pre-deployment, a bunch of them, um, like thirty of them across the battalion. They had, um,

• 1:04:56Jocko Willink?

  Were they piss hot or something?

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Yes. I was, I was gonna allude to it, but, uh, yeah, that's exactly what had happened.

• 1:05:01Jocko Willink?

  Thirty dudes?

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Jocko Willink?

  Do you think some of that was inspired by, uh, not wanting to go on this deployment?

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  I don't know exactly. I don't wanna say that maybe, um, but.

• 1:05:12Jocko Willink?

  Cause that's a lot of guys.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  I also don't think you should drug test pre-deployment personally. Like we weren't in a, we weren't in a situation to.

• 1:05:19Jocko Willink?

  That's one way of looking at it.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  I mean, like.

• 1:05:21Jocko Willink?

  It's a very practical way of looking at it.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  Here's a.

• 1:05:24Jocko Willink?

  Very practical way of looking at it.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Here's the thing, you were, you were in charge and a leader and the T and O was, was tight to begin with. There, we weren't, we didn't have a bench, you know, we didn't have a backup roster. So like in the grand scheme of things, if guys are going to do something, and I'm not advocating anything. I just, I, I don't, I don't know, it just.

• 1:05:40Jocko Willink?

  That is an interesting move to, to piss test everyone right before going on a plane.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  We didn't have full platoons.

• 1:05:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Like. You've lost thirty guys.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:51Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:52Jocko Willink?

  I mean, your battalion's what, five hundred and fifty people or something like that?

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Let's, let's say thirty to a platoon, uh, four platoons to accompany, you know, Alpha Bravo Charlie, you know, H and S. Uh, so like, you know, it's not that many people to begin with.

• 1:06:03Jocko Willink?

  I mean, this is like seven percent of personnel or something like that.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  It was.

• 1:06:07Jocko Willink?

  Stab in the dark, but it's, it's a significant portion of people.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  I'd never heard of a unit doing it before, to be honest.

• 1:06:12Jocko Willink?

  What did they piss hot for, like pot?

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  No, no. The, the other substances.

• 1:06:19Jocko Willink?

  Like coke?

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of them, a lot of them, like it was snowing.

• 1:06:24Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  In Camp Lejeune at that time.

• 1:06:27Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  It was, yeah, it was, it was rough.

• 1:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Was there?

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 1:06:30Jocko Willink?

  Was there some kind of a crackdown going on?

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  I, so.

• 1:06:33Jocko Willink?

  Because occasionally like in the SEAL teams, some like there'd be some drug bust and they would test everybody.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I think there was enough incidents to where they, I, I think everyone was doing it that time, but like in general, I had never. I'll put it this way, they didn't do it the next deployment. I'd never heard of them doing that before deployment either. And again, I'm not advocating anything whatsoever. It's just an unusual move. I mean, these guys are getting ready to go to war, like, like I, I, I don't, I don't know. Um, but it was a big deal and I was treated like one of them and I had to tell people, I was like, I, I had a kid. I didn't do drugs. I had a kid. Cause everyone was like, they were like, come here, you fucking, they were like, there was a bunch of them and I was with them because they ended up becoming the remain behind element, right? Um, and so I was, I was like, no, I'm, I'm Belle. I just had a child. Like I just kept, oh, you're fine. Come here. And like they would literally put them on working parties, some of them they processed out others.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  And this is an important thing that I want people to know. What had happened was they, they had, they knew some people had failed, had failed the drug test. And a bunch of these names, there were a few of them, they came to them and they go, Jocko, we know you did this, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just tell us the truth. Just tell us the truth and we'll, we'll make this as minimal as possible. The like three guys who told the truth deployed. They, I don't, I don't know.

• 1:07:52Jocko Willink?

  That's not where I thought that story was going.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  They actually were not, um, not admonished. They were seen as making mistakes. All these things that happened. And they were actually, you know, they finished out their time in the Marine Corps.

• 1:08:02Jocko Willink?

  Good for them.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's always taught me to tell the truth, no matter what. It was the ones who lied. Once you tried to cover up the ones who do those other things, they were done, ad sept done later. Sure. They tell different stories now, but that's not what happened.

• 1:08:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the zero tolerance that the military has for drugs.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Yes, for sure. And I, again, like, it was just, it was just this weird, there were so many like weird moments in my career. But like that manifested into where like I was, we got to Afghanistan. So we're in Kandahar airfield. We're like doing drills. We got like a few weeks to acclimatize and they look at me and my friend and they go, you two in third platoon, you go to second platoon. They, that's how, that's how many people we lost, right? And so I was in this platoon where I was known for an enthusiastic platoon sergeant. And then I went to this other platoon. And my squad leader, his name's Ryan Madden. He comes up to me and he goes, what's your name? And I was like, Sergeant, my name's Lance Corbell. He goes, that's dumb.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  My name's Ryan. Don't call me that during working hours. Sergeant Madden, we're working. Good to go? I was like, yes, Sergeant. He goes, what did I just tell you? Okay. And, um, I went from being someone who was told to do things to someone that was taught to do things.

• 1:09:13Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  And my career literally changed overnight. And it was such a, it was such a jump and like a change. I can imagine it's, it, I don't, I don't know what it can equate to, but like, when I was moving my cot out of the third platoon, like tent area to second platoon, everyone was like, Fucking bell dude, you're going to second, like it was that big of a deal. Can't believe, I didn't say a word. And say a word. Cause like it was, it was like I was getting, I was like getting paroled or something like it was like you, you made it out. Like you made it out. And everything changed after that. Everything changed.

• 1:09:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that when you, people ask me all the time, you know, well, how do you get someone to step up and lead? It's like, treat them as a leader.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Jocko Willink?

  Give them the opportunity. Let them step up and then the, the whole idea of building relationships, trustless and respect, influence, care. You put some trust in somebody like, hey, you, you get it. Like even that little, that little moment where this guy's like, hey, if we're not at work, Ryan's cool.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Jocko Willink?

  That is actually putting trust in you as a Lance Corporal, like, hey, you understand that if we're at work, you're gonna, we're gonna be professional.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:18Jocko Willink?

  If we're not at work, we can be cool. It's a, it's the first little step of, hey, man, I, I trust you to be smart enough to, you know, not abuse the situation. If we're out of work, I'm not wearing my uniform, cool, I'm Ryan. If we're at work, especially the bosses around. You know, yeah, got it. We got it. We good. Yep. It's just giving you a little bit of trust and then you trust him even more. Right there out of the gate, he's giving you respect, you're respecting him even more. That's just how this stuff is supposed to work.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  It, it is, and it was, it was jarring. I mean, it was, it was, it was unlike him, him and my team leader, Mike Kanter, like, you know, Ryan had come from two, five, another, he was a west coast guy, had done all the initial Iraq stuff. And he was like, I always said he was like real California, he's like from the northwest and he's like, what's up dude? And then like, yeah, but like, it was one of the first times some, a sergeant of all people had treated me like a, a normal person. Cause sergeant in the infantry is a big fucking deal. It's hard to get there and like, he's a squad leader, you know, and like he's, he's investing in me. He's teaching me stuff, I'm doing stuff and like, I'm being treated like a person and it was, it was awesome.

• 1:11:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good lessons learned there for people. So then what's your? What's your job now? What's your mission, I should say?

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  So, um, the, the mission of the unit was to insert into a town called Garmser, um, Afghanistan. No one had been there since like 2003, I believe it was, or Afghanistan at that time. And Kandahar Airfield with like the big boardwalk and all that stuff was, you know, scaling up. And all these things were happening and they had that really nice part of the base and the Marines were over when what became the septic tank area. Like literally, and, um, we were just there for three weeks, three, about three weeks, running drills, getting used to the elevation and stuff. And just preparing to go out there, assault the town. It was in the clear hold build era of the war on terror. Like we'd insert into a place, hold it and then build it up and just run operations there.

• 1:12:09Jocko Willink?

  Yep. How did you guys insert?

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Helo.

• 1:12:12Jocko Willink?

  How many, did you, was this a company? Was this a battalion size operation?

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Battalion size element.

• 1:12:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh damn.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. The largest, not, not that one. They would, that was not what they said. That was in Marja, but like they were like, yeah, no one had done it. No one had been there. And so like, it was literally like landing on Tatooine is how I remember it. Like, cause there was nothing.

• 1:12:30Jocko Willink?

  Echo can relate. Echo appreciates your reference.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. The force is strong with this one. I get it. Yeah.

• 1:12:36Jocko Willink?

  For sure. Over here, this guy.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:39Jocko Willink?

  Combat experience, not so much. Star Wars in the game.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  No, no, I was just rewatching episode one the other day. It's an underrated movie. Yeah, I love it.

• 1:12:48Jocko Willink?

  Agreed. That's.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  Underrated.

• 1:12:51Jocko Willink?

  So episode one is not the first one that came out in 1975, right? It's like, it came out later.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  But no.

• 1:12:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Do people watch them in order now, like the proper order that they're supposed to be in?

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  I mean, I do. Um, but like that also like came out around like, you know, the time when I was in middle school like those, but like, you know, it's the story of Anakin Skywalker. And, you know, the path that he walks and how it changes everything. The thing that he loves the most is the thing that hurts him. There's a lot of allusions to it. It's all like Joseph Campbell's stuff too. That's where all of Star Wars comes from. Yeah. The hero's journey. Yeah.

• 1:13:24Jocko Willink?

  There we go.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. The hero's journey, the wizard is Obi-Wan Kenobi. Like it's all, it's all there, dude. It's all there. Um. But no, it was literally like Tatooine.

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you're going into.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was crazy. It was, it was, it was unlike anything I'd ever experienced because like in Kandahar Airfield, there's a Tim Hortons and a Burger King. And that's some people's deployment. Toby Keith even came to see us, you know? Um, he did. And there was a, there was an air raid attack that came in. Um, while he was singing the Taliban song. And so his like attache like ran out underneath him was like, no, no, like put him undercover. And we all started booing because we're animals. Like bring him back, bring him back. And he came back out on stage and finished the Taliban song. While the Taliban were attacking the base.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  It was awesome, man. So, um, like that was there, jump cut. I'm in the middle of nowhere, right? And

• 1:14:17Jocko Willink?

  How clue, you're going in, who's briefing you? Did you have a battalion sized brief?

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we did. You know, we had, the stuff's pushed down. Like I remember we had a terrain model. It was my job as a boot to guard it certain hours of the day. I had to like.

• 1:14:29Jocko Willink?

  Was it the full battalion terrain model for everyone?

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it was, it was huge. It was a big sandbox in the middle of a tent. Um, you know, and like I would look at it and be like, I have no idea. Like it just, you know, unless you're there, like a map is just a map. You know what I'm saying? And, um, you know, but, but again, my squalider at the time, he would start asking me questions about the stuff I was looking at. Not just like, what's that? He's like, tell me what that means. What does that do? What would you do to move through this type of battle space? What, you know, what type of blah, blah, blah? Like literally everything that like was shaping me as a person, as a leader, as an infantryman, he was putting into me. It was a real like a wax on, wax off method.

• 1:15:09Jocko Willink?

  So you go to the big battalion brief, like the whole battalions there or all the guys that are all the, all the.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  That was like company level.

• 1:15:16Jocko Willink?

  Infantry companies, okay.

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the squad leaders, the platoon commanders, they went to those things, but then it like we got company. Yeah. I mean, because just too many people and not enough spaces.

• 1:15:25Jocko Willink?

  And you remember, so the company size brief, that's when you're getting kind of the word.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're passing word down. Here's what we're gonna do. Here are how things are gonna happen. I mean, you know, it doesn't really, I don't wanna say it doesn't matter. It's just, you don't really understand what you're listening to in the moment. And like, my whole job is just to hold security. My whole job is to, like, that's what I'm doing.

• 1:15:46Jocko Willink?

  That's what you're focused on.

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, because at the, you know, when orders are given in the military, it's very, very simple. I always break it down to like, there's a desired end state, the commander's intent, and then the method to which you choose to execute that, right? That's basically it. The desired intent was to win the war. The commander's intent was how they told us to do it. And then what we did was how we got there, right? And so,

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  that was basically it. My job was to hold security and do, make sure my team was taken care of. You know, I was an A gunner. I wasn't a point man. It was just my job to like, be with the first team, make sure everything was good.

• 1:16:20Jocko Willink?

  How built up was this area? Like, what was it? Was it mud huts?

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  Mud, mud huts mainly. And no one had been there for, since the Russians, which was weird. Like, we would hit open areas and there was like a battalion of tanks that had been left in place. Cause when they left, they literally like, left.

• 1:16:38Jocko Willink?

  Gee, that sounds familiar.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  Yes, it does. That's why, you know, it's a place, what is it?

• 1:16:44Jocko Willink?

  The graveyard of empires.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  The graveyard empires. Which is weird, cause like, you would see it and like, some of the, you would see that, but like, they don't have like plasma torches out there, but every now and then you'd see like a door with like a weird like sickle and hammer over it. Or like a piece of metal on a house, like, oh, they just like, cut that out with a torch or something. And, uh, yeah, so like, we landed and then we just started conducting operations, like immediately. And we were so far out there that there was no logistical support. So like, we would just take over a compound, you know, knock holes in the wall. You know, set up post and then just start running and gunning.

• 1:17:19Jocko Willink?

  So would you, were you in a company location in an FOB?

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  Uh, so, um, not yet, but we initially in the clear phase, we were just like platoon sized elements, which is perfect. It is absolutely perfect.

• 1:17:33Jocko Willink?

  And did you methodically move from like one side to the other of the, of the terrain?

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  So we initially landed like the center of the town and just pushed out to like the outskirts into like basically where there was nothing, like literally to there was like roaming herds of camels and stuff like that. And like, it was just flat. And I remember being like, whoa, there's nothing here. And then we would, that was when we got like the order where they reconstructed, the area of operations and moved each unit to where they were going to be the company, you know, Alpha Company here, Bravo Charlie and so forth and so on.

• 1:18:05Jocko Willink?

  How was the clearance? Um, what were you running into?

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  It was okay. It wasn't really that bad, to be honest. Um, it was dynamic, but we were attached to a M U. So we have direct support from air artillery and everything. So like, immediately, immediately, immediately. Like I once saw a little bird just, just like do a gun, just to come down to a gun run on like two, two or three guys. Like it is not overkill. It was just direct immediate asset support. You know, and it took some time and we were like running underneath artillery rounds. They would like call in, you know, danger close, which I found out what that was. And then we would go through and clear after, you know, like.

• 1:18:41Jocko Willink?

  So this was freaking kinetic then?

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  It was very kinetic. It was very kinetic, but like the difference, um, in my first point and second deployment is like in Garmser, uh, we, we had superiority in the battle space the entire time, the entire time. Like we were always, we were always pushing the enemy as opposed to them pushing against us. And no one had been there in so long, they were looking back on it. They're probably just waiting to see what we would do. Cause we were developing, you know, SOPs on, on the fly as it was happening, you know, going through and, you know, we'd come across like different little, you know, caches of like, you know, ID materials or weapons and different things like that. And so we would just set up these, um, platoon sized elements and we would use those platoon.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  Patrol bases until we eventually consolidated into two company bases. One was called Apache North and one was called Apache South. And so two platoons there, like three actually.

• 1:19:33Jocko Willink?

  How bad were the IEDs?

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  There's just not that many there. There's just not that many there.

• 1:19:37Jocko Willink?

  Cause the transition really hadn't taken place yet. I mean, it was coming.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:41Jocko Willink?

  But the, they learned a lot. The, the Afghan Taliban learned a lot from what happened in Iraq. And the Iraqis learned from freaking Hamas and the Iranians, how to, how to do that.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:55Jocko Willink?

  And how, what an effective weapon, an IED was, whether it was a roadside bomb, whether it was anti-personnel. But this was during the escalation phase where, yeah, like for you guys to, how was the casualties?

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Um, we, we took some, we, we lost some guys. One of the, uh, the sniper teams, one of the guys who was attached to us for a long time. We, we lost him. Um, you know, there was, the, the main threat was the enemy just ambushing you or, or setting up some type of positions for you. Um, there's a very famous photo that was taken of, um, a marine, the marine's getting shot and he's ducking down. You probably seen it, the rounds coming over. He just has a skivvy shirt on his rifle. He was, um, Bill B is his name. And that was actually the place where that happened. So the enemy was shooting at us from this field for a long time. And, um, you know, myself and my squad leader were actually behind a wall when RPG hit it and it blew us back and messed me up pretty bad and him too.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  But we didn't know at the time how indestructible the, the walls were. And, you know, thankfully it was, but, you know, he didn't know that at the time. He actually shielded me with his body. Um, and something I've never forgotten. And, um, but this area had been giving us trouble for a while. And we knew they were trying to bait us to cross this, this open space, right? And, uh, we ended up crossing it and there was just these, uh, machine gun, uh, positions set up that you couldn't see until you were on top of them. They had set them up just for that. And that was the type of stuff that would happen. And, you know, we lost a marine that way.

• 1:21:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  Others through like IEDs and stuff, but like there's, there's not a lot of roads. We were doing air supply. You know, airdrop resupply, like there's one road and like, we just, we weren't near it. I can't stress how far and away we were from everything. It was, it was weird.

• 1:21:43Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take you to get the initial clearance done?

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Maybe a month is what it felt like, a month or so. I mean, you know, from the time that I left home, I didn't call home for like 90 days. And I was on a sat phone, you know? And, uh, you know, we weren't Navy SEALs, so we all didn't have one. So it was, it was, uh, I'm sorry. It was one for per platoon and, um, not one, one for the company, actually. And, uh, that, that was when we had established our patrol bases by that point, just a platoon sized ones. And, um, but that was like halfway through the deployment, basically.

• 1:22:18Jocko Willink?

  So halfway through you, you had, you had established your platoon sized patrol bases?

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then they consolidated the battle space into a company sized patrol base, well, two company patrol bases. Cause the AO shifted again. So what, what had happened, what was happening was that one six was transitioning the battle space over to a British unit that was gonna backfill us. But they were half the size we were. They were like out of New Delhi, I believe it was.

• 1:22:44Jocko Willink?

  So they needed to, so you guys needed to be a little bit more aggressive and, and you know, when I read about the history of this, they talked about there was a lot of activity down south.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:22:54Jocko Willink?

  In the south area. So you needed to kind of push down south?

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  Yes. That's where we were. We were Apache South. Yeah. It was, it was dynamic. It was dynamic. I don't know what else to say. Like it was, but it, it didn't feel as dangerous as it, as maybe I should have thought it was, but like, again, we had like something happened, you know, air artillery, you know, instantly, close air support.

• 1:23:15Jocko Willink?

  And how was the civilian populace you were interacting with?

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  There was, they were pretty cool for the most part. Like, I mean, they just don't care. I mean, I can't stress how little they're unfazed by war. When we pushed out one time, we went out, like we do like, like once a month or so, we do like a long range, like sweeping patrol. To really just kind of break up the AO and to stir up whatever was moving. And, um, we saw this guy, he couldn't have had more than four fingers on both of his hands. And he looked at us and he goes, I'm not scared of you, white boy. I was killing Russians before you were born. And I was like, good to go, sir. Good to go. Yeah. Good to go. Yeah. You're you win. And he was like, kid, get out of here. Like, he was like, get out of here.

• 1:23:55Jocko Willink?

  He said white boy?

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  That's what he said. That's what it translated to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, he'd been making bombs, you know, since, you know, Jesus left Jerusalem. He wasn't scared of anybody. So, um, and he came out to meet us like he was really, he was like bowed up at us and just literally both of his hands, missing fingers. A little too much, you know, ammonia and nitrate here and there, I guess. So. But like the rest of them were pretty cool. The jingle trucks were fine as long as we didn't slow them down. I mean, I just.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  I always think about like how weird it was to see us. Like, that was something I think about. Like, you're just like living your life normally. And then you see like a bunch of dudes patrolling. Like, that's weird. See them? They took over Tom's house. They just like kicked him out and paid him a paid him a ton of money and now they live there. Yeah. But, um, you know, we we did that, you know, and, um, uh, I mean, I don't, I went to a wedding. I've never told this story publicly. Yeah. Um, so.

• 1:24:49Jocko Willink?

  Like an Afghan wedding?

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:24:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  It was a night patrol. Um, so it was a night patrol and, uh, we had been begun rotating out different stuff. And again, thanks to Ryan and and Mike, I was moved in different positions and Ryan actually started training us like we were team leaders and squad leaders. He would on the job training, start being like, like, this is what you need to do. What do we do, Zach? And like to a point to where like at one point, he's like, I'm not going to make the decision. You have to make it. And, um, again, he I owe so much to him and I'll never be able to repay that. But.

• 1:25:24Jocko Willink?

  What was his his position in your platoon?

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  It was my squad leader. So he was in charge of three fire teams and he reported up to the platoon commander.

• 1:25:31Jocko Willink?

  And he let you kind of role play?

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, he wasn't, it was like, literally, I won't say he was holding my hand, but he's like, Zach, what are we doing? What checkpoint?

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  He wouldn't let you make a freaking catastrophic call or anything.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:25:43Jocko Willink?

  But he's letting you make decisions.

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  Every decision. Like, it was, it was scary. It was scary. I'm not gonna lie. It was absolutely scary. Um, but after you do it a few times, you're like, okay. You know, I I can do this, but one of the, it was my turn to be a point man is what it came down to.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  And um, we had gotten chatter that they were moving materials to this village. Let's go out and see what's happening. Go through the village. Looking around, you know, NVGs, we had 14s, they're weird too. You can't really tell what's happening. You either choose near or far distance and I remember I could see like some flames and I could see a lot of, a lot of bodies. And he's like, I'm like, we're holding up and everyone can see it too. You're just like, you can hear little whispers and stuff. Excuse me. And uh, he's like, what's going on? And I was like, I don't know. And I was like, what am I gonna do? And he's like, well, we're gonna find out. And then he grabs my shoulder, right? Cause we'd always, I don't like people do the tap or stuff like we always did. Grab, grab, go, right? Release.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  And we stack on the door and then we could hear him, we're getting closer. We get up on the door, stack on it, grab, grab, go. Boom, kick open the door, I roll left, he rolls right. And then we look around and right as I do, I just see like 14 people sitting down in a rug. And I see steam from food and rice and all this stuff. And I go, oh my God. And then he goes to the right and like, we're all in there looking around. Very quickly, we, you know, we establish security, make sure everything's good and safe. And we look around and you know, there's some loose translation. We find out that they're having a wedding. Did you have a TERP with you? Yes. Did you have Afghan forces with you, police or anything like that? This is prior to that. This is prior to that. Prior to that. Um, and they're like, it's a wedding, it's a wedding.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  And so like, we're sitting around and they're like, hey, and the, the father starts laying out a, a mat for us. And it puts a big old pile of meat and it puts a big old pile of rice. And it'd been a while since I'd eaten something that wasn't government made. And so we're all, we're all sitting there and I look at, I look at him and they show us how to eat it. And he goes, like, he like, looks at him and he goes, you grab, you grab the meat and you grab the rice and boom. That's how you do it. Boom, like you, you make a hand spoon is basically what it was. And uh, I like look around and Ryan goes, you only live once. And he grabs the meat and he grabs the rice and we all do it, right? And it was delicious. I don't know what meat it was. I know the rice was rice. I don't know what meat, what the protein was.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  And um, you know, we just crashed a wedding, we left. Thank you so much. Good.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  Jump cut. We have to go straight from post, uh, straight from patrol to post and Ryan's walking around checking on us as he's supposed to do as a squad leader and he's like, hey, how you doing?

• 1:28:24Jocko Willink?

  How's your gut?

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  How's your stomach feeling? And I go, not good. And then, see, uh, yeah, SOG, SOG, this is post one. Like all of us got sick. We all vomited. We all had to get a shot and, uh, we all went down for 24 hours after that. Like the, the squad was unmovable. But yeah.

• 1:28:42Jocko Willink?

  I never ate anything, bro. I never ate anything.

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  You wouldn't have eaten if you gone to wedding?

• 1:28:46Jocko Willink?

  No, 100% zero, zero chance.

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 1:28:48Jocko Willink?

  Zero chance.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  You only live once.

• 1:28:50Jocko Willink?

  I, I, no, I'm, I'm telling you like zero chance I'm eating any of that.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:54Jocko Willink?

  Food, zero percent. I barely will go to a, like a restaurant that I don't know. I only go to three restaurants.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  What are they?

• 1:29:02Jocko Willink?

  Well, here in San Diego, it's like, there's a place called Raglan.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:29:05Jocko Willink?

  Which I go to a lot. There was a place called Fiddler's Green, which shut down. So that one's kind of off the books now. Island Prime, you know where Enrique works?

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. He works there. Jiu Jitsu guy.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  Fiddler's Green was the name of a patrol base we went to.

• 1:29:20Jocko Willink?

  Well, there's a whole story behind Fiddler's Green.

• 1:29:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:22Jocko Willink?

  And then, eh, there's probably one other restaurant that I go to. Well, off mall, mall shop across the street. Yeah. So there you go. Classic mall shop. But me walking into a random Afghan wedding and thinking I'm going to eat their food, it ain't happening.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I was there for hearts and minds.

• 1:29:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  So we were trying to win the population over.

• 1:29:41Jocko Willink?

  Yep. I did, I would purposely, you know, I would have got my assistant between commander and be like, hey, get up here on this rice and meat, whatever it is. Get in there, make friends, bro. That's on you.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  That's the perks of leadership right there. But no, we, I mean, like after that, the kind of, the, the deployment kind of came to like, uh, you know, a rap. There wasn't, wasn't really much left to it. I mean, we were just handed over the battle space to the Brits.

• 1:30:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And even, even as they report that, like, you know, you guys, you guys actually transitioned with the Brits to like civil operations. Now you're doing civil affairs.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:11Jocko Willink?

  You're helping them bit rebuild.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  We did that the whole time. The whole time we were doing battle damage assessment, repaying them. And boy, they were, they were throwing out numbers. You'd show up and be like, what about this wall? And you're like, what wall? And they would like knock a hole in it and they're like, that one. You're like, you're just counting them off. Sure, whatever. You know, we're already here, you know?

• 1:30:29Jocko Willink?

  Giving him some of that monopoly money.

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Yes, that's, they loved it. And they were like, yeah, dude, you killed like 12 goats. And you're like, but I thought you were a cow farmer. I was until you killed all my goats. So like, it's just stuff like that. But, um, you know, the, saw the Brits, I was fascinated by them endlessly. They would, they would like roll out in shorts and stuff and like barely any gear and be like, oh, come on, mate, you know, queen of country. And I was like, alright. And, you know, I even, um, you know, we went to that, the base where Prince Harry was. They said he was there. It looked like him. I don't, I don't know. We watched Iron Man together is what I think happened. Cause the whole base came together to watch a bootleg Iron Man in Afghanistan, which is, which is funny, cause it's about Afghanistan.

• 1:31:13Jocko Willink?

  I haven't seen it.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  You haven't seen Iron Man?

• 1:31:16Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Sorry, I didn't mean to give it away. It's about a guy who.

• 1:31:20Jocko Willink?

  Spoiler alert.

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  Spoiler alert.

• 1:31:22Jocko Willink?

  Spoiler alert. I'm not gonna see Iron Man. How you like them apples? Uh, yeah, the Brits, you know, my experience with working with the Brits, which has happened quite a few times over the years. They're just freaking professionals. They're just so professional with everything. So outstanding. And then, so how much time did you, you were, you were in like Kandahar for the first three weeks?

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:42Jocko Willink?

  Boom, in the field.

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  Yep. Whole time.

• 1:31:44Jocko Willink?

  The whole time.

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:45Jocko Willink?

  Come back to, how long you in Kandahar? For like a week and then you go home?

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  A week and you go home. Yeah. You go through, uh, Kurdistan is where we would transition to. Is how? Air Force Base.

• 1:31:53Jocko Willink?

  And how's your transition to coming home?

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Ooh, um, it was a lot. It's, um.

• 1:31:58Jocko Willink?

  You got a six month, seven month old baby?

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Seven month old child.

• 1:32:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  That was, it was awesome. That was, that was like the coolest feeling in the world. Honestly, just being there, being to see her, my wife. And like, I'll never forget that. The only thing I don't understand is we like arrived in the dead of night, like the Taliban were gonna find us, which is weird, cause we didn't like meet up in a parking lot. We met at the base. So like, I was always like, we could have showed up in like a decent time.

• 1:32:22Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean like the, when you flew home?

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  When we flew home and there's like an arrival, like celebration where you come out and you go turning your weapons to the armory.

• 1:32:30Jocko Willink?

  And it was like 10 o'clock at night or something?

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  No, it's like 2 o'clock in the morning.

• 1:32:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh, but that's just the way the flight scheduled.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  I blame it on Marine Corps scheduling because like, I mean, we're booking it. It's not like, you know, United had other Marine Corps flights that day. But like, it always felt like we had to sneak in to get to get under the radar. I just didn't understand it. But, you know, I come back and, you know, after that, I'm officially not a boot. And on top of that, I'm a husband and a father. And now it's time to do the next workup, like, very, very quickly. At that time during the Marine Corps, almost immediately, they take the short timers and they're like, go away. They get removed from any leadership role, any responsibility. They put them in like a platoon usually, or they just, they all go to one squad. And then, you know, now it's my turn. And Ryan came to me and he

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  goes, I want you to be my first team leader. And I was like, okay, I can do it.

• 1:33:23Jocko Willink?

  And he's gonna stay as squad leader?

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had come over from, he had been on the drill field. He was a PMI, which is like a range coach. And he, he had left there. And this is where he was, he had actually re enlisted in Afghanistan.

• 1:33:40Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  With an OP-4 contract, which is funny.

• 1:33:43Jocko Willink?

  What's an OP-4 contract?

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  So the contract was basically, he had to stay into a Victor unit, a deployable unit. And there was a bonus incentive based off of that.

• 1:33:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Love. Yeah. It was those George Bush years. That bonus was hefty, hefty.

• 1:33:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, it's also in the middle of a war. I don't know what the bonuses are creeping back up again right now, because they can't get anyone to join, or they're having a hard time.

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I imagine so. But this was, this was an annual salary they had. And I was just like, whoa. And, yeah, this is cool.

• 1:34:11Jocko Willink?

  So how were you when the next round of boots showed up? And now you're an old guy with a combat action ribbon?

• 1:34:18Speaker 01

  I was very kind. I was very caring. No, I mean, I tried to, I tried to always do the things like, you know, because it was such a shift. I went from a platoon with like a drill instructor mentality to working with Ryan and them in second platoon. I just tried to. You know, I try to say funny things. It's kind of what I do now still, I guess. And as I look on it, like I'd be like, hey, if you still remember the Warriors breakfast from boot camp, get over here. You know, police call this. I was never like degrading. That was never my thing. I don't find that to be useful. I mean, because ultimately you're going to rely on each other in combat. There's no point to that. And I would just try to teach them and invest in them the way people had it done with me. But I was just glad to not have to do, you know, dumb shit. dumb shit. Yeah. Like, the first time you clean out a laundry room in a barracks and you're like, I don't live here.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  Like, you're like, what are these animals doing? Like, there was, there would be times where Marines would be doing their laundry drunk and just vomit in the washer. Like, that was a very common thing. Yeah, that's just awesome. Yeah. Yeah, like, That's just outstanding. It's just a bunch of dudes, man. I mean, like, what do you, it's just a bunch of dudes being bros. That's, that's what it's like in an infantry barracks. Yeah. Like, alright, I'm gonna tell the story. Like, one guy, one guy, I was working duty, right? I imagine everyone knows what duty is, but in case they don't, in a barracks, there is an NCO, a non-commissioned officer, and an A-duty NCO, they're assigned to just watch the barracks. Their job to basically be like a hall monitor. What is, what is it called in college? An RA, a resident assistant, like where they live there and they're like, here are the rules. There you go. Echo, confirmed? Yeah. Okay. Confirmed. Were you a RA, Echo Charles?

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  No. Okay. Shit. Right. Crazy. Okay. Yeah. But one of, one of these guys, he's a machine gunner. His name is Chad. Chad, Chad, machine gunners are wild. They're, they're wild dudes in general, right? Chad would, he would, he would love to have a good time. And every now and then Chad would become Super Chad. And he would, he would drunkenly draw an S on his chest backwards because he would do it wrong in the mirror. And then he would tie his poncho liner to himself. And the worst thing you would want to see is one of your very best friends become their alter ego as you're like, Chad, please. And he's like, Super Chad. And he's running around the barracks in silkies, just out of his mind. And you're just like, come on, dude, just get to the thing. Please, I don't want to, I'm already going to be up for a day, please.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  And it's like that every single day. And we were tame. We were tame. My wife picked me up once, weapons company, so it's just a whole company of weapons dudes. She picked me up and a guy jumped off the third deck balcony onto some mattresses he had set up and combat rolled out of it. She goes, what's happening? I go, we're leaving, we're leaving. I don't, I don't come on babe, we gotta go. She goes, he okay? And I was like, who knows?

• 1:36:56Jocko Willink?

  Try and keep a minimum safe distance for your wife when she would roll in, would you like, hey, meet me on this intersection over here?

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. They're a bunch of, yeah, I mean, like, you know, it's just, they were fine and they were, everyone was respectful and stuff, but like, it's just a bunch of dudes. And if somebody says something like it's on dude, like, hey, watch yourself and you know, um, but like, it's, it's crazy. It's not, people say it's like a frat house. I think frat houses are tame compared to like super Chad and things like that, but I mean, these are also your very best friends. So it's, it's just, I don't know. It's fun.

• 1:37:29Jocko Willink?

  There's always this tinge to I that.

• 1:37:32Speaker 01

  Don't do that in the teams. You'll have super teams or whatever.

• 1:37:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh dude, we got all kinds of freaking knuckleheads. You're looking at one of them, by the way, you know, so.

• 1:37:41Jocko Willink?

  There's always that tinge of like, well, you know, we could die.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? Like, we could die. So we're gonna live and we're gonna live a lot, especially Friday night, Saturday night, like we're gonna live. We're gonna make sure we're gonna, we're gonna be ready, but we're gonna, we're gonna live real good.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, we, we would leave, we would, you know, um, at that time.

• 1:38:00Jocko Willink?

  Somebody texts super Chad. We have a scenario.

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  No, yeah, I mean, he's gonna love that I said this to you too. Um, cause I have a photo of him and I just took a photo of him and like trying to calm him down and no one's home. And he has a backward S on his chest, but um, like, uh, the barracks would either be hot, too hot or too cold. And like all my friends would be like, let's go to Belle's house. And so we would like have these crazy, one year we had a luau. So like all my friends from the company, it's legendary, would come over and we had like a themed party at my house. And it was just like, I came to work the next day and the company first sergeant was like, hey doggone bell, I heard you had a doggone luau at the house. And I was just like, yes, I did first sergeant, everyone's fine. He goes, next time let, let a first sergeant know. And I was like, oh, okay. We're like that. I know. Hey.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  But like, we would live because especially after coming back from war. You understand so much more about life, so much more about the precious reality of time. And like you're you're stuck with they're they're here, they're they're right here forever. You know, and um, all of them and like my wife always says that they're like her. Her little brothers, you know, and they're they're the uncles to my children. That's what they call uncles, you know, Uncle Ace, you know, Uncle whoever like that's who they they refer to Uncle Luke, all of them. And um, it's just such a special bond, but it's it's crazy looking back on it like I I have a desk if I could, you know, go back, I'd be like, yeah, one barracks night, it would be so much fun.

• 1:39:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. Um, so now you do another workup.

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:32Jocko Willink?

  And now you're a little bit more seasoned.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:39:35Jocko Willink?

  How's that going? All good?

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  It's going really great, actually. Um, yeah, they told us we're going to Iraq for thirty days at that point. Excuse me. And um, like, hey, you're going to Iraq thirty days. And I was like, thirty days.

• 1:39:48Jocko Willink?

  Wait, in thirty days or you're gonna go there for?

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  For like thirty days.

• 1:39:51Jocko Willink?

  Was it like to shut down or something?

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  Shut down bases. They were like, you're shutting down bases. And I was like, thirty, I'll do Iraq. I'll get fat in Iraq. I don't care. Give me a gym, give me a chow hall, give me wifi. Let's go, dude. Let's go. And they're like, as we get close to it, they're like, hey, it might be sixty days. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. You know?

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Cause now Iraq, this is two thousand, are we in two thousand ten yet?

• 1:40:12Speaker 01

  Two thousand nine.

• 1:40:12Jocko Willink?

  Two thousand nine.

• 1:40:13Speaker 01

  Two thousand eight.

• 1:40:13Jocko Willink?

  Iraq has really settled down by two thousand nine.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, there's nothing. There's it's lights, you know, it's just like people were like, it's magical. I remember I would see photos of people in Iraq and they had like clean camis and I was like, bro, they're fine. They're fine.

• 1:40:27Jocko Willink?

  Leif deployed with SEAL Team One and they had one casualty there and it was a vehicle flip over.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  That type of stuff was happening. There was a guy who died from like a forklift accident, like it was, you know, non combat stuff and it's horrible anytime life is lost, but like you're looking at from my perspective. Am I going to conduct combat operations? No, that was what we've done. And so we had wanted to have another child and you know, we found out my wife was pregnant again and it was awesome. I was like, yeah, cool. This is great. I'm gonna be a dad again. And um, everything was going great until. You know, President Obama at the time went to West Point in November of 2009. And that day they go, hey, the president's going to announce a troop surge in Afghanistan. You're going to a town called Marjah. You have two weeks. And like, I remember when they told me.

• 1:41:17Jocko Willink?

  Was this, how, how long had you been home for?

• 1:41:20Speaker 01

  The whole year. I've been home since October of 2008.

• 1:41:22Jocko Willink?

  So you had completed your whole workup.

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  Whole workup was done.

• 1:41:25Jocko Willink?

  Deployable, because occasionally like people get deployed out of sync and they just have to leave early or whatever.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, at that time, that stuff had kind of gone by the wayside and it's not really exist anymore. It wasn't like senior guys had done that in Iraq, but this, this wasn't that.

• 1:41:38Jocko Willink?

  So you had a full workup, you're ready to go to Iraq, shut things down, be a logistics crew.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:43Jocko Willink?

  And hold security on some stuff.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  Exactly what it was, holding security.

• 1:41:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, all good. And now you find out you're, how, how long till you go on deployment?

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  We had three weeks from the time they told us. I know that because of how much I got gouged on every, you know, storage unit and everything under the sun. Cause all of 1-6 had was just being told to do that. And there were other units too, but it was, it was 1-6 that was being told. So it was, my, my heart broke.

• 1:42:07Jocko Willink?

  How good was your intel on Marjah at the time?

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  No one really knew about it. No one really talked about it. The only thing we knew at that time, and we would find out later, it was, it was perceived as the last Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province.

• 1:42:19Jocko Willink?

  Did you find that out? Like, did you Google it?

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  I started, so when I started transitioning to like a leadership role and stuff, like I started to make the military my job and that was because of Ryan. He, he once told me, he's like, not everyone gets to reenlist. When it comes time, you need to be in the driver's seat. People submit packages and people will get asked to submit packages, but not everyone, even when they submit a package, gets asked to do it. Make sure you have the ability and you get asked to do it. Treat this like a job. And so I did. So I had, I was like constantly studying, looking up stuff, trying to understand things wherever I could. And at that time I had even done a workup as a team leader for a few months because he went off to squad leader school. Um, excuse me, I done a workup as a squad leader because he went off to squad leader school. So I'm being a team leader.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  And I was running it, like I ran ranges, we did training, all, all this crazy stuff. So I was like, I'm, I'm learning, I'm learning, I'm learning. Cause when time comes, I want to have all the power to make that decision and.

• 1:43:13Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:15Jocko Willink?

  So you go on deployment and you end up, uh, you're rolling into Operation Mash Tarek. Am I saying that right?

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  I, I think I didn't even know that. I didn't even know that name till we got back. It's Marja.

• 1:43:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So it's, it's Marja.

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  And this is, there's a lot of stuff going on. Like you said, it's the surge. So now it's the surge happening. They had done the surge in Iraq. It kinda worked.

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. That was the theory that it would work here.

• 1:43:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it, it worked. It kinda worked in, in Iraq. If we wouldn't have totally left, it would have worked really well, but we completely left. But at that time they were like, oh yeah, it worked. Like we sent more troops over there. We got into the seize clear hold build deal going on.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:43:56Jocko Willink?

  We, you know, did more interaction with the local governmental officials to get them squared away. So there's a bunch of things that went well. So now they take that, they pick it up and they bring it over and up. Now we're going to do this in Afghanistan.

• 1:44:10Jocko Willink?

  I, I know like General McChrystal, General McChrystal, one of the things he said was, uh, basically we got a government in a box. We, we like have the Afghans we're going to use. We're going to insert them once we take over and the rules of engagement. One of the things I heard to describe the rules of engagement was courageous restraint, which is a, a very positive way of spinning up the way the rules of engagement are, meaning it's going to take courage to do what we're asking you to do.

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  Sounds like something a general would say.

• 1:44:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that sounds like something a general would say.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  Things were different out there on the front. I can tell you that right now.

• 1:44:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, that, that's what this is all about.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:44:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, the, I have a leadership company called Echelon Front.

• 1:44:55Speaker 01

  Yes, you do.

• 1:44:55Jocko Willink?

  And the reason the company's called Echelon Front is because it's leadership from the front.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:45:01Jocko Willink?

  What is happening on the front? Not leadership from back in the rear, from the rear echelon motherfuckers, but the front. So, in the rear courageous restraint. Sounds pretty good. Till you're getting freaking shot at.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sounds super cool until you until that happens.

• 1:45:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So.

• 1:45:21Speaker 01

  I don't know what he was talking about. Just so we're just so we're clear. I want this on the record. That was not what happened. Yeah.

• 1:45:26Jocko Willink?

  So when you land, what's it do when you land? Do you? How's that briefing happen? How are you hearing about it? How's this operation kind of take shape in for you? What are you now a?

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  A Lance Corporal Team Leader.

• 1:45:38Jocko Willink?

  What's it look like from your perspective?

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, for me, there was so much that was happening personally. I mean, my wife was pregnant with our second child and like we had left abruptly and the, you know, all of the stress and strain at the last minute really, really worried me. You know, like we left.

• 1:45:55Jocko Willink?

  How pregnant is she? She do while you're on deployment or no?

• 1:45:57Speaker 01

  She would go on to have our child about a month later. And like, I, I mean, I'll tell you, yeah, she was very pregnant. Third trimester, a few weeks out.

• 1:46:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  Like, there's a photo of me like kissing her, her pregnant stomach. I guess she's holding our, our, our daughter.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  And like, I was just. Yeah, I was just. I was, I was, I was there. I was doing my job, but like, I was just like, I, as I, I remember giving her like kissing my unborn child, being like, I don't know if I can do this for 20 years. That was, that was just a real time thought. And, um. You know? We get there and from the very beginning, I knew that this was different. When we left, there was FOB Dwyer. When I got there, there was a guy giving us like a Red Barrel brief and telling me a wifi password because it was now called Camp Dwyer. And in that year, the military industrial complex had moved right to that part of Afghanistan. And I was like, what is happening?

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  This is like a big place with tents and child halls and steak and lobster on Sunday and all this stuff. And there was so much more media attention, so much more assets. And intentional, um, coverage of this that it, it made me uncomfortable from the jump. Like, they're like, you're working with the Afghans now. We were the first ones to do it. They brought out like the Afghan commander. They brought up like the Afghan dude. Like, we were the first unit to do that that I knew of. And like. We were just immediately, hey, you're going to town called Marja. Here's the thing. You know, it's a Taliban stronghold. Um, the reason we come to find out why is because how much cultivation of poppy, which is opium and heroin that comes from there. And so that's their money source. That's, that's their fuel for the terrorism that they're going to conduct everywhere. And so we wanted to take that from them.

• 1:47:37Jocko Willink?

  So as you're rolling in, this is a ma- this is a big operation. Is it, is it?

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  The largest Hilo-born assault since Vietnam is what they would tell us every day. Every day.

• 1:47:47Jocko Willink?

  Four thousand Americans are going in.

• 1:47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:50Jocko Willink?

  So what was the force structure? So you had your battalion?

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:54Jocko Willink?

  Actually, I shouldn't have asked you that question because I looked at the force structure yesterday. I was like reading about this battle and it's just a ma- It's massive. It's massive. It's four thousand. It's like almost a full brigade.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, one six took Marja. There was a unit, I think it's two six, I believe, or three six, I can't remember. They were to the north and there was an army like strike team somewhere. They were to the south, but one six itself inserted into Marja.

• 1:48:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and plus you had Brits.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  Brits were around, yeah.

• 1:48:21Jocko Willink?

  Something like fifteen hundred Brits and they had some other Brits for reinforcements and twenty-five hundred Afghans.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:48:27Jocko Willink?

  That was rolling into this thing.

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:30Jocko Willink?

  Um, going back to that question I asked you, so now, are you getting, are you still getting like the main source of information for you is company level briefs?

• 1:48:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what the Marine Corps does best is like keeping it focused on their lane and like Ryan was like involving me more and like planning and stuff and treating me more like him. Like a, I don't want to say, um, I can't think of the right word right now. He was like talking to me more deliberately about things were happening, like the tone, everything was just the way everyone was moving was so different from the very beginning. I was like, this is, this is gonna be wild.

• 1:49:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because when you start doing this size of operation, this is, this is gonna be some kind of historical operation, most likely. Look, you could have gone there and they're just like, everyone folds over and you take the town, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But if there's gonna be any level of fighting, you have that many troops on the ground, this is a historical operation that the Marine Corps is gonna learn lessons from, they're gonna pass on, like this is a big deal.

• 1:49:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:49:23Jocko Willink?

  And you knew that.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I could tell by the way we were being covered. There was news people everywhere. There was people talking about it. You know, this is being, like I would call my wife home because we were still on the big bases. She'd be like, they're talking about this every day.

• 1:49:33Jocko Willink?

  They're talking about going into Marja on the news. She knows it.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  Everyone knew about it. Marja, like there's like a meme, it's like Marja, Marja, Marja. And it's like, I'm a Marja Marine. And it's like, look, no one cares, right? That's, that's like how it felt, but because it was like literally happening, like there's clips I've been able to pull and like things together. I mean, the, the most famous thing that happened is the speech that Gunnery Sergeant Brian Walgren gave 14 years ago to the day yesterday to Alpha Company Marines. It was just our company alone. He was there, he was our company Gunnery Sergeant. You guys should have like, you would love each other, like he's incredible. He'd had, so he came to us in AP Hill. And I was actually, to go back, I was actually the training squad leader.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  And everyone had failed this squad exercise and I was bottom of the ninth. No one liked my plan. I'm the Lance Corporal Squad Leader. I shouldn't even be in this spot. Ryan's not there. I came up with a plan. And I was like, here's what we should do. This is how we should maneuver, put, I moved all my, I moved my sawgunners to the top of the hill, provided fire superiority. Suppressing fire while my maneuver element was able to go through and clear an objective.

• 1:50:43Jocko Willink?

  Cover and move. I like that.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  Cover and move.

• 1:50:46Speaker 01

  Um, so I do it, I execute. Use the pop up to signal all of it. I'm doing stuff that everyone's telling me not to do. I do it and I hear this, this roar, this rumble. He goes, Marine, who is your squad leader? And I go, that's me. And he goes, god damn it, that just made my dick move. And I go, do I have to do it again? He goes, no, you're the only one who doesn't. You're going to brief all the fucking idiots who failed. And I looked around every other squad leader, it was a sergeant and everyone but me. I had to like, be like, I put two sawgunners on the hill and they did this. And he goes, are you a Lance Corporal? And I go, yes, Gunnery Sergeant. He goes, god damn it, I love the Marine Corps. And then like he gave this big speech. So he was like known for these like real rah rah moments.

• 1:51:27Speaker 01

  But um, he, so he gives this speech, the John Glenn speech, and it's all the Marines of Alpha Company.

• 1:51:32Jocko Willink?

  It's funny too, like when he's giving that speech, he's like, have I given you this speech? If I give it, if I've given you this guy's a John Glenn speech, like he has these things queued up.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:39Jocko Willink?

  He's ready.

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  Well, and he's, he is the most, most Marine ever, like he. He took stuff out of the Connex box that he knew he didn't need and put in stacks of Red Bulls. Just the mini eight ounce ones because they're easier to, they're easier to drink in a dynamic environment is what he once told me. And then he would smoke small, short cowboy killers. He didn't want to give away his position to the enemy. So he's ripping butt, smoking, you know, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee. All it's, it's, it's all real. It's all real and he's one of, one of the greatest leaders ever. He, he would go on to save my life many times. Like I, I literally love Brian Walgreen. And um, like, so he would, uh, he gave the speech and like, we're there and that whole day we had been getting speeches from everyone.

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  And I don't know if they did this during your time, but like a general comes out like, this might sound disrespectful or rude or whatever, but I don't want to hear a general's opinions. Like I don't want to, like, cause we're in formation for like an hour and he's like, Marines, you're gonna go forth and do war like you're trained to do. And then a Colonel comes out and then a Lieutenant Colonel, like, so that's what he's talking about in the speech. He's like, I've heard these speeches all day. And then like, even as I watch the video every year as I do, I can feel myself and I can see my dumb self actually as I'm like, this is such a crazy moment in my life that happened and someone caught it and I'm so grateful for it. But I'll honestly never forget it. And little did I know that that moment has now transcended to a point to where it's used in recruiting offices, ROTC,

• 1:53:08Speaker 01

  all these different things to this day. Every, every time I put it up, people will tell me all this stuff, but like,

• 1:53:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's on YouTube. It's on your Instagram, Veteran, the at Veteran with a sign. You can watch it because you just posted, because it's, you know, this is like 14 years ago, almost to the day that we're sitting here today.

• 1:53:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And um, it's, it's crazy because as soon as he wraps it, an hour later, we're on a bird. Like we, because we had so much gear, they were like trying to get us transpo, but we couldn't do it. So we walked across an unfinished field and got on the birds. And the, we had so much weight, we actually threw water bottles away on the flight line just to, so the birds could lift off. And then boom, straight to Marja.

• 1:53:43Jocko Willink?

  And where, where were, where was your platoon going? What was your, what was your objective?

• 1:53:47Speaker 01

  We were in the center pushing out. That was Alpha Company's objective to like land into the area and push out. I mean, as I, as I remember it best I can, you know, um, but we were just supposed to land there and then push. That's the same thing we've done before, like the battle space would get reorganized according to whatever, you know, the battalion commander, it's all fit at that time, company here, wherever we were, but like Alpha and Bravo, Charlie was to the south, I remember that, but Alpha and Bravo like pushed in and just were supposed to push out through the battle space and seize and clear.

• 1:54:17Jocko Willink?

  And this was a big, I mean, like you guys had Apaches, you guys had Predators, um. So you're flying in, what are you, what are you anticipating as you're flying in as a, how old are you now, 22?

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  22, seasoned a little bit more. I've got an M4 203.

• 1:54:30Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:54:31Jocko Willink?

  Get some.

• 1:54:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's my favorite weapon.

• 1:54:33Jocko Willink?

  How many grenades did you have with you?

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  Oh, 13, one in the gun, six on each side. So here's what I would do. I would rock six, six on each side of my belt, dump pouches, one in the gun. And then six mags on me, maybe, but the one thing I know about the 203 is if you put one out, out in the open, it, people get their heads down and lie to move out of the danger zone. So contact front, boom, we'll figure it out. It's like literally my method, cause people, they're so loud, they don't know the casualty rating is not that big, but it's so like

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  they're like, oh no, and you're like, yeah, that's bad. So, but, um.

• 1:55:07Jocko Willink?

  Let us, let us think for a second.

• 1:55:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's literally, it's literally just a tactical pause, right? And so like, you know, they had told us it was going to be bad, IDs everywhere. There was going to be a part of a town that a SOF unit had supposedly come through and they had given contact everywhere as well. Come to find out, they just leveled that whole section, like they literally called in an airstrike there and leveled it. Um, and we were carrying APOBs, actually, we had

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  I don't know what the right word is, but we had, we had tied and like duct taped two by fours, like so we were carrying them over our shoulders with our combat load um, of APOBs, just so we could clear what we thought would be like ID laden areas. And it was a nightmare. They're not, those were not made to be carried. They became smaller then, but they were not made to be carried. So an APOP is a, you know, it's a minefield clearing device. It's a rocket up front. It shoots grenades off to the side to clear, you know, a dangerous area.

• 1:56:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And they would normally be brought on a vehicle.

• 1:56:05Speaker 01

  Yes. Not, and the vehicle in this case was Marines. So, yeah.

• 1:56:09Jocko Willink?

  So as you get on the ground, how's it go down? What's the resistance when you hit?

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  Um, they, I mean, they're so smart at this point. They knew we were coming. We had dropped flyers. We had dropped pamphlets. We had, you know, done radio broadcasts, all the stuff that we could do. It'd be like, hey, leave. And, um, honestly, the locals were waiting. We saw them like as they were leaving like, okay, whatever. And then as the birds started lifting off, it starts happening. You know, they're just looking for us, just hitting us with pop shots, waiting till we get to cover and then start attacking that place. And, you know, they knew exactly what we were gonna do every step of the way. And, uh, the initial clear phase wasn't,

• 1:56:49Speaker 01

  it was not as dynamic as the rest of the deployment.

• 1:56:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's almost like what the, I forget which island it was when the Marines landed. I forget which island it was off the top of my head, but the Marines landed at one of the island campaigns and the, the enemy didn't do anything for, the Japanese didn't do anything. They let them get in there and let them kind of get settled. So.

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  That's kind of the way it felt. To be honest, I mean, like we would have like elements and stuff. And I knew some of the guys on like the state teams and they would like reach out and pop a few guys who were like dropping, you know, materials or whatever, and different stuff like that. Like we, we had pretty good, you know, battle superiority for a while. And, you know, our company was pushed in position that we were rearranged to like the center of, of the town.

• 1:57:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:31Speaker 01

  Basically.

• 1:57:32Jocko Willink?

  The way, the way the history of the battle reads, it's like, it basically day one or, you know, day two, everyone reaches their objectives. It's like, that's what happens.

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  We was quick. I'm, I was covered. I was literally covered in sweat. All of us were like, we, we walked so much. It didn't seem like it made sense to me. And like you can see it now on some of the photos I have. And thankfully my wife had told me to take my little silver like Nikon, but like all of us are just like, emaciated, pale, and you can't eat enough to save your life there. And just pushing and pushing and pushing, shooting, pushing, shooting, pushing, shooting, pushing. Take a building, hold it, shoot, shoot, make a plan, report, uh, report up, make a plan, move to the next building.

• 1:58:11Jocko Willink?

  There was a incident where some civilians got killed by a by a High Mars artillery rocket. And it was like a big deal, right? Because it was 12 civilians killed. 10 of them, I think, were from the same family.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  I think that was Bravo Company.

• 1:58:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so this hit the news and, you know, General McChrystal apologized and kind of banned the use of High Mars from there on out. It was, yeah, it was another turn of events where, I don't know if you guys were impacted by that.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  No, no, I mean, we weren't. And I should say, if it wasn't Bravo Company, I don't know who it was. I'm just trying to remember this to the best of my knowledge, recall this to the best of my knowledge. But like, I mean, they would do things like they would take over buildings and, you know, they would be like, there's civilians in here. But like, you don't know that or not. Obviously, you would find, or they would say something happened after the fact. But I mean, that's all kind of a hindsight 2020 thing. And in general, they were smart enough to know that we were going to believe whatever they said. Or they knew we were listening to their ICOM chatter, so you couldn't trust them. And so I'm not saying any of that was true or not true. It's just like, you don't know, right?

• 1:59:23Speaker 01

  And so we were always conscious of the civilians and everything because, you know, as soon as we got through, as soon as we got to our objectives, we started going through and doing a battle damage assessment. And that's what we did for like a month afterwards, just going around, how many people live here? What's your family's name? What's the damage done? Here's the form you got to give to the civil affairs person. They'll cut you a check.

• 1:59:42Jocko Willink?

  In Ramadi, we had the Haditha Dam story or the Haditha story had just broken. And so like you could see the Marines were very concerned about what they were doing because there was so much scrutiny on because of what had happened in Haditha or allegedly happened in Haditha. So I, and I, you know, we had the same thing happen. Like if there was civilian casualties in Ramadi, it would be definitely turn up the the volume of, or I guess turn up the intensity of scrutiny of what's happening. Make sure everyone's doing the right thing. So if you have 12 civilians killed in an operation where everyone's got their eyes on it anyways, like that's just going to be a bit of a gut check.

• 2:00:21Speaker 01

  And it was, I mean, there was, there were so many people everywhere documenting it. They went on to make a documentary about it called The Battle of Marja that Ben Johnson, you know, and some of the guys at Vice had made, like there was news there every single day, people covering.

• 2:00:34Jocko Willink?

  Have you watched that documentary? How was it?

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  I thought it was actually an accurate portrayal. You know?

• 2:00:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:39Speaker 01

  It only highlighted one company, um, which is Bravo Company. And Ben, you know, he's, he was, he, uh, he had told me he'd been in war since the nineties. You know, covering like, you know, stuff in Africa and things like that. It was very, very good guy. Ben Anderson, not Johnson, Ben Anderson. And, um, like, I feel like it shows everything that had happened as much as you can. Um, it's just, this is something I still struggle with and I don't know if I ever will find peace on it. Is it's really hard to have this moment in my life that's so publicly consumed. And, um,

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  dissected, you know, by, especially by people who weren't there or who haven't done a version of this.

• 2:01:25Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:01:26Speaker 01

  And so it's, it's like a, it's, it's like a, I don't want to say it's like a wound that never heals, but it's, it's just kind of like a, a thing that's hard sometimes. Because everyone who has like a negative opinion on it, I don't really care what they have to say because they've never done anything about it. Or they say they would do something differently and I don't, I don't want to hear that. Uh, you weren't there, you don't know. You know, we're making the best decision with the stuff we had at the time, but like it's this thing that's become like a larger than just my deployment. It's something that, you know, went on to become a marketing campaign for the Marine Corps. Went on to become something that people talk about. And it's, it's hard to make peace with that legacy sometimes. At least I haven't.

• 2:02:02Jocko Willink?

  What's like, what's the negative press or whatever?

• 2:02:06Speaker 01

  I mean, it's just, uh, you know, um, like, you know, people say stuff these days like, ah, you know, sorry you lost your friends for lies or things like that. Like people will say stuff like that. And again, I don't really care about what trolls say. You know more about that than anyone or anyone online knows about that, but like, I just don't understand. Um,

• 2:02:28Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 2:02:33Speaker 01

  I don't really know how I feel about it still. Cause it it took so much for me. You know, it it took it took some Marines for me, you know, and it.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, some of some of them didn't come home there and then some of them. You know, some of we lost when we came home and.

• 2:02:53Speaker 01

  It's it's hard. It's it's really hard. I'm I'm sorry. I just.

• 2:03:00Speaker 01

  Only the dad have seen the end of war and.

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  It's weird to see my life on on such a public display the way it is. I I don't I just just that one thing. You know, everything else I've kind of finely tuned and created to where I am now, but like.

• 2:03:18Speaker 01

  You know, when I think about the things that I've had to work through from that moment in particular, it's just hard. I don't I don't know. I'm sorry. Does that make? Does that make sense?

• 2:03:26Jocko Willink?

  No, it does. Um, cause you're.

• 2:03:31Jocko Willink?

  If I was to try and translate that, it's like you have your interpretation.

• 2:03:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:37Jocko Willink?

  And then you have all these other people with their interpretations that are maybe at odds or battling with or agree and disagree. With certain parts of what you actually saw and lived through and it's can be hard to reconcile those things.

• 2:03:52Jocko Willink?

  Of how do you or let me rephrase that. How do you reconcile those things? And, you know, I I'll tell you for me, it's sort of like I know what I did and what I saw and that's kind of. And I and I also known that I didn't see everything.

• 2:04:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:09Jocko Willink?

  That I didn't that different people saw different things and just like. Different people have different perspectives of what happened and so. You know, my mind is just sort of like, yeah, there's I had my experience and other people had their experiences and. They're gonna be there, of course, they're gonna be a little bit different and people that weren't actually there at all. They can kind of say what they want. It's not, their perspective doesn't have a whole lot of weight with me.

• 2:04:37Speaker 01

  No, and I'm getting to that place now. It's just, it's just been hard and, and you know, especially because like I'm in this position now to where like I try to be an advocate, advocate for all those, especially who didn't make it home, you know, and the ones we've lost when we came home about this work, you know, because like, um, if you don't dig in to invest in yourself and to find out what happened, it's, it's just a slow attrition of your soul, in my opinion. Um, because, you know, everyone that says they're not different after war is a liar or they need help because you should be different after war. You should, if you're like, I'm fine and like, you're really fine, then you, you need to talk to someone because otherwise if those experiences haven't changed you or shaped you, then you're just not being honest to that experience.

• 2:05:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the way I look at that kind of thing is like, um, oh, oh, you, you get sad when you think about the friends you lost. That's totally normal.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  It is normal.

• 2:05:27Jocko Willink?

  And it's okay. So, yeah, if you were like, oh, I lost my friends and I don't care, I'm moving on, that you're right. That would be weird. You probably, yeah, but most guys, unfortunately, they think, well, I'm sad when I, I feel, I feel sad that I lost friends. And they think there's something wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. You know, you get, you, uh, your Memorial Day, Memorial Day is really hard for me. Yeah, of course.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  It should be.

• 2:05:52Jocko Willink?

  Lost a bunch of friends. Yep. That's the way it is. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. That's okay. And again, for me, that's, at some point I realized that, oh, actually I can tell you when I realized it. I was doing a podcast with a guy who had served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and he was a enlisted guy in World War II and they became an officer in Korea and then he was served in Vietnam and we were just talking, we, we got all the way to Vietnam and he was an Italian commander in Vietnam and I, I said, you know, we were talking what they were doing and what missions they were doing and et cetera. And I, I started asking him about casualties and he started getting choked up.

• 2:06:34Jocko Willink?

  And I thought to myself, oh, this is normal. The guy's been out of Vietnam War for 60 years and he's thinking about the guys that he lost. And he's getting choked up. This is what it is. This is, this is normal and it's okay. And that's when I, I, that, that actually helped me out a lot. And I, as soon as I processed, I didn't process it at the time. I kinda did process it at the time, I was saying. Cause I was surprised. You know, you're talking to a guy that had lost guys in his battalion 60 years prior. And you think, oh, okay. What I thought to myself was, I'm always gonna feel like this. And that's perfectly fine. The guy had a normal life. I mean, he got done with his career in the army, carried on with the career in the civilian sector.

• 2:07:20Jocko Willink?

  After he retired from the army. So it's like, okay, yep. Oh, you feel bad that you lost your friends? Yep, totally normal.

• 2:07:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. What is it they say? Grief is just love with no place to go? That's what I think about. This is all very new. I've, I've been think, I've been able to do a lot of like really deep, deep dive therapies on this. You know, I did. I did the retreat through vets, you know, they were able to help me out, uh, you know, went south of order.

• 2:07:43Jocko Willink?

  For like ayahuasca?

• 2:07:44Speaker 01

  I began in DMT, you know, it really helped me to, you know, kinda put stuff in place. And, um, you know, it's just. It's just tough. I, I don't know. Cause like we as a culture especially, and it all comes from, it all comes from this. When I. When I went on my first deployment, we came back, there were guys that said they were messed up and they couldn't do anything and they didn't feel good. And the way we cast them out as cowards.

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  Weak and less than, because at that time, if you weren't deployable, you weren't useful. And if you're a coward, you don't wanna do it, you're nothing to us. Get out, leave, we hate you, you're done, go away. That's stuck. That's stuck with, I think it's stuck with a whole generation of dudes. Um, because like you start to view that, that.

• 2:08:28Speaker 01

  That desire for help is weakness because if you're non-deployable, then you're not promotable. You're not promotable, then you're done. They had ways of not calling it that, but you know, six months not promotable, your career's dead. You're done. That's a wrap. See you around later. Adios, goodbye. And I think it stuck. It definitely stuck with me way longer than it ever should have. You know, because the thing that made me good as an infantryman was the thing that hurt me the most. I could put stuff in my pack and I carried a long way to a point where that pack got too heavy. And then it started to hurt everything around me. So I had to work on that.

• 2:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's another thing I learned from the book about face by Hackworth. He talks about the fact, he's like, yeah, some guys, great guys, and they could do anything. And at a certain point, their cup, he said, everyone's got a cup and that people have different sized cups. And when they get overfilled, that they can't do it anymore. And he said, it's nothing against them. It's like, if I was mad at you because you were, how tall are you?

• 2:09:20Speaker 01

  Five, seven.

• 2:09:21Jocko Willink?

  Like, if I was mad at you because you weren't six foot.

• 2:09:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:24Jocko Willink?

  I can't hold that against you. That's just what you, that's just the way you are. It's and, and different people are different ways. And if Hackworth is saying that, after being in, in Korea and Vietnam, like you go, okay, this guy understands this situation. And so that's for me, another thing that helped me out was, oh yeah, the guy's just got a smaller cup and needs a break.

• 2:09:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:47Jocko Willink?

  And that's something I, I learned from Dick Winters is guys, if their cup starts getting close, you gotta get them out of the, out of the combat for a little while and give them a little rest. Because they can empty out that cup on their own. But if it overflows, man, there's, there's water everywhere and it's a disaster. So you gotta get the guys, which unfortunately, what you're talking about, if you got a guy that says, hey, I can't do this right now, you say, okay, cool. We, you know, we need somebody to train Marines. We need somebody to work over here. You can work on the range. You give them some kind of downtime.

• 2:10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:23Jocko Willink?

  And they can adjust. But if you say, oh, you're a coward. Well, that's, yeah, that's definitely, that's definitely not gonna help because now they think there's something wrong with them. Well, there's nothing wrong with them. They just need a little break because humans are not really meant to do this for extended period of time. And over and over again, you're just not really meant for it. Are you meant to, you know, get four of your friends together and go kill the woolly mammoth or whatever? As cavemen? Yeah, you're meant to do that. We're scared. Yeah, we got meat for two months. Right? We're good. But we're not meant to just get exposed to that over and over again. Your friends are getting killed. You're scared of getting blown up and dying. You got all the pressure from the system itself. Of are you making the right decisions at the right time? So you add all that stuff up?

• 2:11:06Jocko Willink?

  That can make a person break if you're not careful.

• 2:11:10Speaker 01

  Well, and and for me, and personally, just to go back like prior to the mission launch, um, I'd had this. Uh, my, my wife was still was I so. Prior to finding out my second daughter been born, all my friends were trying to get word, right? And we didn't have a phone or anything. And, uh, we were probing the security sector prior to the launch in Namibia, and I took out these French reporters. And Ryan assigned them to me and he's like, they're your responsibility. And I was like, please, Lord, no. He's like, they're yours. And I was like, okay, we went out and contact and they drop, they go flat, they go flat like two crepes instantly. They're like, no, no. And I'm like, come on, dude, we gotta go, we gotta go. And he's like, no, Miss you are we not going? And I was like, you're not going? Like, you need to go, you're gonna die.

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  No, no, no, we are scared. And I was like, I get it. You're French, but you gotta go, we gotta leave. And so like, and he goes, no, no, no, no, no. And that's why I grabbed him by the back of his flag and I was like, move. And like, as I'm doing it, I'm like popping off rounds and we go back, we get to the patrol base and everything. You know, and he gets back and he goes, Miss you have saved my life and I'm so grateful for you and all that stuff. And I go, oh, that's really, really cool. Um, and you know, glad I was able to do that. And he goes, you ever need anything from me or the associate de press? You let me know. And I go, actually, I need something from you. My wife is pregnant with my second child and I'm trying to find out if she's giving birth to our daughter. I know you're from the Associated Press and I imagine they sent you out here with a cell phone. Will you please let me borrow that cell phone so I can call home and see if my daughter's born?

• 2:12:33Speaker 01

  It won't be long to be a quick thing and I'll get right back to you. And he goes, uh, regretfully, I do not have a cell phone. And I was like, what do you, what do you mean? He goes, enough of his own phone. So they sent you out here without a cell phone? And he goes, we. Okay, well, here's the deal, Jock. Either you're gonna give me that cellphone, or I swear to God, I'm gonna take your ass back out there and I'm gonna leave you and no one's gonna stop me, no one's ever gonna find you. And by this time, all my Marines are there and they're looking at him and they're cracking knuckles and they're like, "We'll do it, we'll do it in a heartbeat, dude. We don't care, USA, USA." And he opens up his flak and he looks at me, hands me the phone and he goes, "Amayaka's country code is 01." And I grabbed it and I go, "You're goddamn right it is." And so, I went and I called my wife and I found out my daughter was born and all these

• 2:13:18Speaker 01

  things and immediately after, as I handed the phone back to him, explosions were going off. And then like, those moments are sealed in my brain. And, jump cut, months later, we're now in Marja and that's happening every single day. Every single day that's happening. And I just, I can feel it. I can feel the pressure, I can feel the danger. We didn't do security patrols, we didn't do contact patrols, we did combat patrols. That's how I, that's how they're briefed to me and that's how I briefed them. And as the spring offensive started happening, they started cultivating the poppy and everything else, we, um, my platoon, um, we, we lost a Marine, we lost a Marine in our platoon. And, um, you know, he was, he was a really good kid. He was the best, one of the best Marines I've ever met in my entire life.

• 2:14:03Speaker 01

  And, um, when, when we lost, when we lost Phillip, I, I don't, I don't think any of us were ever prepared for anything like that. And, you know, it, uh, nobody did anything wrong, nobody made any mistakes, it was just what happened. And, um, we, after that had happened, there was a reorganization of the platoon. There was a reorganization of the entire company not long after that, because we had to break up different platoons, we had to make them smaller to stretch ourselves out across the battle space. And, um, First Sergeant and the CO, they sat down, they talked to us and they had talked

• 2:14:47Speaker 01

  to me and they said, "Zach, do you want to do this?" And I said, "I'll do it, I'll, I'll take, I'll take those Marines, I'll, I'll lead them." Because in addition to Phillip, um, well, the squad leader as well was injured, but he was, he was injured in the incident as well. So we were down a squad leader and down a Marine and our platoon was hurting. And they asked me if I could do it and I said, I'll do it or die trying. And that's what I did the remainder of the deployment. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, hands down, hands down the hardest thing I've ever done. You know, everyone was hurt. Everyone was scared. And it was just my job to. Hey, we gotta go. And so.

• 2:15:30Speaker 01

  By the time that had happened, I had started to make the decision that I wasn't going to do this anymore. You know, um.

• 2:15:38Speaker 01

  We lost him and then we we literally had to just continue the mission we had until. You know, we were there until July, something to the twentieth, something like that. And we were we were doing ops twice a day then. Every day and they were not stopping. They were not stopping. It got more and more dangerous. One of my Marines got injured. You know, he was in a truck, a ricochet hit him. You know. We didn't, we didn't know a bullet had hit him, actually, and it hit the MVG plate and he was talking to me as, you know, he was in my hands. They pulled him out of the truck. You know, Gunnery Sergeant Brian Walker and actually showed up. To come, he had turned a logistical supply train unbeknownst to the battalion. I'll say this publicly. He had turned it to a mobile section.

• 2:16:20Speaker 01

  But he had come, originally, he's like, it's a, it was a logistics train, but he had turned his. His company platoon, he had turned it to a mobile section. And, um, you know, he came there and. He, you know, he had provided a casamax. We were able to get him out of there and, um. He was actually, uh. He had snapped me out of it when I was, I was, you know, trying to get the blood off my hands, you know, trying to.

• 2:16:45Speaker 01

  Figure out what to do next and. It was just. You know, that's the stuff I think about when people are, you know, asking what it was like or how it was. It's just those moments of. You know, until then I had been in positions of of uh influence, but when I was in a position of leadership. That's what I really understood the burden of command. Because no one knows what it's like when you give an opinion, but when you got to make a decision, turn left or turn right, that's when everything changes. And it changed for me. And so when they came to me and. You know. They're like, Zach, do you want to reenlist? And it was the same day. One of my friends lost both of his legs and went on to become a Paralympic sled hockey player and win a gold medal. But at the time, I I thought I'd lost another friend. I was like, no, I don't want to reenlist. I want to go home. I want to be a, I want to be a husband and a father.

• 2:17:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that um that they they officially declared that operation over in December.

• 2:17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:43Jocko Willink?

  December 7th um and and it it got worse the whole time like you were saying like.

• 2:17:49Speaker 01

  Literally like we did a rip the guy two guys died in the rip.

• 2:17:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:52Speaker 01

  One of the guys I took on, one of the guys I took out, his name was Lieutenant Zimmerman. He didn't make it much longer after that. Again, nobody was doing anything wrong. It's a game of numbers and it's a game of math. You do more patrols, there's just a higher chance of risk every time. It's just literally the more chance there is for variability, the higher the risk is. And they that was the unit that replaced us and I mean, by that time, they had all the money from all the opium and they were they were just making bombs and things every day.

• 2:18:24Jocko Willink?

  So now you're going home.

• 2:18:25Speaker 01

  Going.

• 2:18:26Jocko Willink?

  When was your reenlistment supposed to happen? When when was your E O S?

• 2:18:29Speaker 01

  Uh, so uh, February 11th to 2011.

• 2:18:35Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they offered me a package. They're like, hey, you can do this. You can get like 30 grand. You got to deploy again. I remember just sitting in a tent, smoking a cigarette. I was like, not a chance. It's like my first Sergeant even came to me and he was um he had actually been there with my friend Luke when he got injured and uh, he he told me he hated me. He hated me. I was kind of I don't know if you've gathered, I'm I'm a scoundrel. I was a scoundrel then. Like I had long, I had a low reg. We called a Navy SEAL reg. Is that what you guys call it? I thought I was whatever, like he once brought me out and said.

• 2:19:09Jocko Willink?

  Wait, is a low reg referring to your haircut?

• 2:19:11Speaker 01

  That was what I had, a low reg. So it was barely long on the top, barely faded on the sides. He once brought me in front of the company and said, Marines, you get a haircut this weekend. Don't look like goddamn Bill. Like, we think he's a fucking movie star or something like, so I would do the high end slide. It would go up and I'd slick it to the side and put it in the back. But um, he once told me, he's like, I I hated you, Bill. He's like, but now I, he's like, you're not bad. You don't need to do this anymore. That's what he told me. He told me, he's like, you're a husband, you're a father. He's like, don't do this anymore. Don't miss your family's life. He's like, go home. I'm proud of you. And then like.

• 2:19:43Jocko Willink?

  That's legit.

• 2:19:44Speaker 01

  He's like, Staff Sergeant Dean's gonna come in here. He's gonna tell you some bullshit. Don't fucking fall for it. And like, he he left. I was like, God, that's I had so so many great leaders in my life. You know, contrary to my life prior to that, I had these people that like really cared and taught me so much. And like, there's just these moments that stick with me and. So when we came, we came back in July, my wife's like, what do you want to do? And I was like, I want to go to college. Let's go back home. Let's go move to Nashville, Tennessee, where she's from and let's, let's start there. Let's do, let's do that. And that's what we did. We packed the car. You know, a 26 foot. Trailer, I put everything in there and we left, we left Camp Lejeune and the four of us and onto our great adventure.

• 2:20:26Jocko Willink?

  How did it feel last time taking off your uniform and saying goodbye to the boys?

• 2:20:29Speaker 01

  It broke my heart. You know, those are the only family I ever really had. There still are, but like you, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't the first one to leave, but I was a lot, I was like close to the last.

• 2:20:42Speaker 01

  You know, it's, it's tough because. Your, your concern is who's going to look out for them? No one will love them or look out for them the way you will and.

• 2:20:51Speaker 01

  You know, it's. It sucks. I don't, I don't know. I.

• 2:20:57Speaker 01

  I still think about it. I always wondered what would happen if I would have stayed in, you know, that, that shift. I wanted to be an officer is what I was going to do. I didn't. I didn't know you had to go to college and stuff like that. I didn't know that. I thought they'd just go. You son, you know, I thought they'd just come here and you know, and then a nobleman, you know, he like. He does like a secret handshake and you're like, and you like level up and you're like, oh no. And.

• 2:21:22Jocko Willink?

  The war is big enough and bad enough. That does happen. It's called a battlefield commission. Get some.

• 2:21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wasn't the last one in 1967 or something like that?

• 2:21:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't, there hasn't been one since NOM. I'm almost sure.

• 2:21:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was in NOM. I think it was the last one, but I was, you know. I feel like there was more than enough stuff that happened, not with me, but just anyone. I kind of wanted to see it happen, but.

• 2:21:42Speaker 01

  I just, you know, I, because I wanted a longer career, a higher quality of life, more family time. Those are the things I was looking at. Cause my goal was to try and stay with the infantry if I stayed in, but I wasn't going to be able to stay enlisted. Like you just can't run that, you can't run that, that long. And. You know, but I just, I wanted to go to college and know what my family had ever done that. And I wanted to be the first and. The GI Bill, they're talking a lot about it and how it had changed and all this stuff. You get like a housing allowance. And I was like, okay, let's, let's, let's, let's see if that dog hunts and. It, it, you know, off to college I go. So. But before we did that, actually, the craziest thing of all is.

• 2:22:21Speaker 01

  I want, I desperately wanted to be a dad and a father so much that thirty days after I got back from Afghanistan, I'm in Disney World with my wife and two children. And it's funny because when I'm in the sun, my hair gets really, really, really blonde. And so it's still blonde from Afghanistan. But like I'm posing with like Tinker Bell and Mickey Mouse. And so it's the most jarring like thirty day journey ever me being like, smile. And like just trying to be a dad again, but that's all I wanted. It's all I've ever wanted. Be a husband and a father. It's the best title I've ever had, those two. But we did that. We went home and then we started trying to, you know, build a life together.

• 2:22:59Jocko Willink?

  So it's going to college. What'd you get your degree in?

• 2:23:01Speaker 01

  Um, a few things. Uh, at first it was rough. I, um, the GI Bill is good and it's great. Two thousand and eleven, education wasn't where it needs to be with like VA certifying officials and things like that. So I had to bounce around a few schools until I found one that stuck, you know, there was only one school that accepted at that time. It was a Middle Tennessee State and I did like a year there and it was like an hour away from where we lived. And so

• 2:23:26Speaker 01

  I eventually like moved over, um, to, uh, a different, uh, a community college and, um, was there for a year. And then I was able to go to a small private, uh, Christian university based out of Nashville called Lipscomb. And that's where I graduated the bachelor's.

• 2:23:40Jocko Willink?

  And that was all on the GI Bill?

• 2:23:42Speaker 01

  On the GI Bill. I got a bachelor's and a master's. I got a bachelor's with the GI Bill. And then with Voc Rehab, I was able to get a master's.

• 2:23:48Jocko Willink?

  What Voc Rehab?

• 2:23:50Speaker 01

  Vocational rehabilitation is a program that the VA has designed where they can give veterans, if they qualify for extra education, job experience or training in order to get the things they need to succeed in the career field. And at that time, the position I was in, I needed a higher level graduate level degree. So I took my proposal to my case manager and everyone should look into this. And then they approved it and I was able to get my master's.

• 2:24:13Jocko Willink?

  What were you, how are you paying for your family at this time? Like, how are you buying diapers and freaking?

• 2:24:17Speaker 01

  Oh, I was working a ton of jobs.

• 2:24:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're just working on the side.

• 2:24:21Speaker 01

  So the first job I had, uh, after the Marine Corps, I couldn't find a job anywhere. Like, I literally went to a hotel and applied for a security job. And they said I was unqualified for any role of security and, uh, had a real veteran moment, to say the least, in the parking, uh, as I left. And I was like, what do you mean? I'm not qualified for it. Six months ago, I was in Afghanistan, God's most arsery environment, but I can't, what, check Titan, the Tennessee Titans into this hotel before the game day? She's like, oh, well, and it was just a whole thing, right? Uh, but I couldn't find a job anywhere. And, um, I had done like jobs before all this, like working in hospitals, because they always have jobs. And they pay really well. And so I applied at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. And I decided to work there as a medical receptionist.

• 2:25:04Speaker 01

  It's the only job I get. No one else was hiring. No one cared. And I got that job while also working construction with my father-in-law as a day laborer, but once a week, he would let me go apply to jobs. And so for three years is what I did. I would get up and go to school, like eight to 12. Then I would, you know, um, get some lunch and then I would sleep in my car. For like a few hours and then from like three to five, I would work out. And then from five to seven, I would drive from school to work and then I would work seven PM to seven AM. And then Tuesday morning, my day was done. And then I would rinse and repeat for three years. That's what I did. When, so.

• 2:25:45Jocko Willink?

  Marine Corps sounded like maybe wasn't too bad.

• 2:25:48Speaker 01

  There was a real moment where I was like,

• 2:25:52Speaker 01

  Afghanistan wasn't that bad. But like, it, it taught me a lot of things. One, um, no one cares about your military experience and that's fine. It's not that it's bad, but it doesn't mean that it puts you on a leg up. Two, there's literally nothing I can't do. Or won't do to provide for my family. I didn't blink. I didn't even, most of the people I worked with didn't even know I was in the Marines like at all. Like the internet was new then. Instagram was new then and only a few of my friends I worked with like around Veterans Day saw photos of me like in Afghanistan. And then they started telling everyone that the guy, I'm sure they thought I was crazy or something. So I was just a dude with weird, weird tattoos.

• 2:26:31Speaker 01

  And work, working a job that elderly women, for the most part worked, which is not a bad, but I was the only one as a medical receptionist. And they're like, hey, is this you? And it's like me with a grenade launcher. And I'm like, yeah, it's me. They're like, why are you here? And I was like, well, because you don't care about me. Like, no, it's just like, it's the only job I can get and I'm, I'm grateful. I'm able to do my schoolwork at night. I got all A's through college because of that and it was hard, but I, I didn't blink. And I did that until I was able to get a job working at a nonprofit, helping veterans. And then they kept transitioning that into for-profit healthcare and just grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, push.

• 2:27:06Jocko Willink?

  So you end up with regular jobs, like?

• 2:27:09Speaker 01

  Eventually, but like the first job, but for the first three years, that's what I was doing.

• 2:27:12Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So after those three years, you graduate from college now?

• 2:27:15Speaker 01

  I got my bachelor's and then I did an adult degree program to get my masters, which meant I would go to college on like Tuesdays and Thursdays.

• 2:27:21Jocko Willink?

  What'd you get your degrees in? These two degrees?

• 2:27:23Speaker 01

  So the bachelor's I got in psychology because at that time they were trying to add like an upper level graduate psychology program, but like industrial organizational psychology. But by the time I graduated, that program wasn't ready yet. And a buddy of mine told me to apply for the MBA program and I was like, I did. And I got into it. So I was like, all right, let's do that.

• 2:27:42Jocko Willink?

  So you have your MBA?

• 2:27:43Speaker 01

  Yes, I do. A master's in business.

• 2:27:45Jocko Willink?

  And then what was your first like, what was your career gonna be?

• 2:27:49Speaker 01

  Um, and so Nashville, the two biggest industries are music and healthcare. It's the healthcare capital of the world. And, uh, so there's all these like-

• 2:27:56Jocko Willink?

  And your guitar skills weren't up to par?

• 2:27:57Speaker 01

  I mean, I know G C E minor and D.

• 2:28:00Jocko Willink?

  That's all you need.

• 2:28:01Speaker 01

  Hey, yeah. You can play every song in a church off that. Almost all country songs are those scores too.

• 2:28:08Speaker 01

  This is where me and you cut.

• 2:28:11Speaker 01

  I've seen the one you and Tulsi, but I'm not as good as either one of you. And she's incredible, but um, no, I um, you know, I just want to do a healthcare job. It's kind of what everyone tells you to do. There's it's very lucrative. It's always going to be around, blah, blah, blah. And um, you know, I just did that. I worked in for profit and nonprofit healthcare. So I started with the nonprofit veterans organization and I moved into.

• 2:28:33Jocko Willink?

  And what are you actually doing?

• 2:28:34Speaker 01

  Uh, the first job. The first job I started out was like um, a community relations manager is like a nonprofit. So it's like my job to partner with veterans organizations and to see how our organization could work with them. Right? And it's called Centerstone Military Services. It wasn't called that at the time, but we had, you know, on person, I mean, that online and in person counseling. And we would partner with people like Team Rubicon, Mission Continues, Semper Five, like things like that. And then we were instead of like creating a program that they have, we just partner. Right? And then I moved into like um, a different role at a company that didn't exist much longer after that in 2016. Um, where I was like a strategic sales manager.

• 2:29:15Speaker 01

  So it was my job where I managed like 50 um, healthcare solutions and I would match them to community based hospitals all over the nation. Like one thing is a charge master. It's the machine that decides how a patient's charged, put those into small places, find the charges that the systems are using aren't finding. And then do things like that or you know, patient repayment options, all those different things to try and increase revenue of these very, very small facilities that honestly are keeping a lot of these towns alive.

• 2:29:42Jocko Willink?

  And you wrote some articles too for like New York Times articles and stuff like that?

• 2:29:46Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I did.

• 2:29:46Jocko Willink?

  So how'd you get into that?

• 2:29:48Speaker 01

  Um, a good friend of mine, uh, Thomas Mitchell Gibbonsneff, um, who I served with and we were in bootcamp together. He was at, after he got out, he was in Bravo Company, then he got in stay and became a stay team leader. But he had started writing for War on the Rocks at Georgetown and then he got a job at a little known publication called the New York Times. And um, I'd always been like, I love your writing. And he's like, well, you should do it. I was like, I'm not, you know, I'm just a redneck, you know, I'm not a guy. And uh, he's like, just try it idiot. I was like, okay, and I did. And I submitted it and that's the secret of life. I I submitted it and they took it.

• 2:30:25Speaker 01

  And then I kept writing and I liked it. I liked the creative. I love the creative. And um, just kept writing and kept writing and kept writing and they kept taking them, you know, and um, that was a part of the uh, at war blog. And um, it was a really cool like creative outlet that while I'm like wearing like, you know, dress socks and pocket squares, I'm over here like talking about deployments or, you know, and at that time it was a creative outlet I was used, using to try and like stay connected to all my friends who you know, in 2011, I lost my first friend to suicide and uh, I would, I just started to notice that it was something that was starting to reverberate in my community.

• 2:31:01Jocko Willink?

  How'd you hear about it?

• 2:31:03Speaker 01

  Um, I was going to buy a car that day and uh, I was in the passenger seat of my car with my wife and a friend of mine called me and it was the first call I ever got like that. And we just pulled over and just started bawling, both of us, you know?

• 2:31:17Speaker 01

  Marco had, um, you know, he had uh, he had lost his battle. And, you know, that was the first one, but it wasn't the last.

• 2:31:27Speaker 01

  Just, it just, I don't know, it's, it's darkness, it's pain, it's hurt, it's there. People pretend like it's not, but if you don't deal with it, if you're not ready, if you're not preparing, if you're not training, it comes for you. If you don't have those reps in, you, Lord only knows what'll happen. And um, you know, he had been injured and he was trying to go back in the Marine Corps at one point and um, he had like kind of waived his VA rights, so when he tried to go back in, they took back his VA benefits. Um, cause you can't have those and go back in and then he lost access to care and then it was quick.

• 2:32:04Speaker 01

  And like that's happening in the background of my life constantly. Like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And that was the first one. And then after that, I knew how the calls were. I know how they are when my phone rings. I can tell. My body knows before my mind does every single time, every single time. I don't know how, but did I do? And, you know, it just, it just kept happening. So I was like, maybe I can like, put some attention towards just maybe if I write, maybe if I do something. And you know, when I was with the nonprofit, I became known as like the veteran guy that everyone would call, hey, I need this, I need that, we know about this, we know about that. And so I'd match my friends to organizations, resources, things that could help them, Semper Five Fund, Travis Mannion Foundation. Anything out there that can help them reconnect and find the community. That's what I was pushing out there.

• 2:32:48Jocko Willink?

  And what made you get out a magic marker and a piece of cardboard for the first time?

• 2:32:55Speaker 01

  I was reading a book called I was um no I was um the last article I wrote for the uh New York Times was in two thousand eighteen. They made um it's called the Marines of Marja. And it was a choose your own adventure book and if you turn left you would shoot.

• 2:33:14Jocko Willink?

  This was a a New York Times article or this was a book?

• 2:33:17Speaker 01

  This is a book that was released and it's called the Marines of Marja. I still have one copy of it. I'll send you a photo of it if you want to see it, but. And it was like choose your own adventure, turn left, do you engage the two enemy snipers? Or do you turn right and sneak around them?

• 2:33:31Jocko Willink?

  Was it a kid's book?

• 2:33:32Speaker 01

  It's a kid's book, yeah. Um spoiler alert, I know you might not watch it or read it, but like if you engage the enemy snipers ends up being two civilians, you commit a war crime and that's what you did. And then I was like, well, I wrote an article about how I don't think we should do that. It's really hard. I'm trying to. You know, I'm trying to talk about this moment in time to my family and you've really kind of made this into something that it's not. And the reaction to that was they pulled the books off the line. They issued a full apology and. And uh they reevaluated the whole thing like they had a full rebuttal and they contacted the New York Times and apologized for everything. And it was like, wow, there is some power in the written word. And um I that again stuck with me, you know?

• 2:34:14Speaker 01

  And so I was just at home with my wife and my children during uh the pandemic, which I know was very, very hard for so many people and I'll never minimize that, but without a doubt, it was some of the best time of my life.

• 2:34:26Speaker 01

  With my family, I had been traveling and doing things for so long and um that I hadn't really been able to be connected to my family. And I hadn't been home continuously for that amount of time. We made a fort downstairs. We watched Justin Bieber's TV show like we did hobbies, we hung out, I put an inflatable. Thing in the living room for like a little bounce house for them. It was awesome. It was awesome. And um and then I started looking online and I was like, it's been a while since I've done something creative. And I saw these pages. It was like a dog with a sign, a CrossFitter with a sign, a Jocko with a sign, like. Something it was just like whatever. And I was like, I've got cardboard, you know, like.

• 2:35:06Jocko Willink?

  Got a Sharpie.

• 2:35:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I believe in Sharpies. Yeah. Yeah. And I wish there was a better origin story like a piece of cardboard spoke to me or something. But like, I was just, you know, I thought it was funny. I'm just fascinated by language and culture in the military. We say things and they don't. They don't have the meaning, the way we say them, or the spelling is different, you know, a pogue is a P O G and stuff like that. You know, we have acronyms for stuff that doesn't need to exist and we do for things that don't like it's all the stuff. And I just started writing on them. And I started in March of 2020. The first one was. Drink water, take Motrin. No, take Motrin, drink water and change your socks. And I was like. Cure for COVID. And I was like. I was like, I'm Shane Gillis, you know, I'm just the king of comedy right now. I'm, I'm revolutionizing this platform.

• 2:35:54Speaker 01

  And I took the photo and click. And I was like, all right, that's it. I made the character like the idea of the person is he's a. He's a veteran with a sign, but he refers himself as a warfighter, you know, and he wears. Like a hat and sunglasses and he talks like this, you know, this is all like who it is, who he is in my mind. It's like me turned all the way up, turned to 11. You know what I'm saying?

• 2:36:14Jocko Willink?

  Like Super Chat.

• 2:36:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, Super Chat. I loved, I love that. Yeah. And.

• 2:36:21Speaker 01

  And like, I just kept doing it, just kept doing it, kept doing it, kept doing it. And no one got it for a long, long time. They probably still don't get, I don't get it.

• 2:36:31Jocko Willink?

  But I, I think everybody in the military freaking gets it ASAP.

• 2:36:35Speaker 01

  They did not. They did not. At first, there was a lot of attention on my body and my bad tattoos. That was, that was like. You know, it was like Jocko, one, two, three. Why does he wear the same thing every time? Why does he, you know, what's his tattoos? This is dumb, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like. And it kept going, it kept going, it kept going until like. Um, eventually there was one that I put up that said, bring back Captain Crozier. Um, he was the commander of the ship who got relieved when he was like my, my ship, all my sailors have COVID. And the White House was like, no, you don't. And he's like, we, we do. We have the most COVID on the ship. Can you please help us? And they're like, no, you don't. And he's like, please. And then he leaked all that stuff to the news outlets.

• 2:37:15Speaker 01

  And then there's the iconic video of him getting relieved of command and the ship's just humming and just, they're all like, Captain Crozier, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I put up the video. I mean, I put the post that said, bring back Captain Crozier. And that was, that was one, that one got out and this, um, this sailor who went on to win state of the year, Sierra, she shared it. And then people shared it. And then what happened after that is it activated like all, all my old posts. And then all my old posts got loved. Like it just started just windfalling and just, just going and going and going and going. To a point to where I was like, I need to turn notifications off on my phone. This is, this is just so much input. This is so radical. It's constant. Likes, comments, likes, follows, boom, boom, boom.

• 2:37:59Speaker 01

  And, you know, since that moment, I've just been trying to keep it on the tracks and trying to like be a good advocate for the community. And like, yeah, there's been moments like I remember when, I remember when you followed me. That was, that was a big deal. I told, dude, I told a lot of people, I told a lot of, dude, I remember, I remember when Tulsi followed me. Tulsi followed me and she's like, hey, I want to make a sign. Can I make one? I go, ma'am, you can do whatever you want. Like you're, you're one of my heroes. Are you, are you kidding me? T? Of course you can. Yeah. And she put a sign up.

• 2:38:29Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. I would have to like, I don't even understand, or I don't think too much. I don't see a bunch of stuff. So I forget like following you. I forget what triggered that or whatever. There must've been some.

• 2:38:41Speaker 01

  I trolled you.

• 2:38:43Jocko Willink?

  What'd you do?

• 2:38:45Speaker 01

  Well, first off, I was experimenting with the platform and I don't, I don't feel like this table is big enough for me to have this conversation with you. There's way too much distance. I mean, wait, you're way too close. I need more distance, but, um, I had made the Navy SEAL joke about, and a few of the SEALs I know, like Eddie, I know Sean Mastin, you know, I know, I know the Latrelles and they're like, they're fine. I'm like, guys, I make fun of me too. Like we're all open source. It's not derogatory. It's just a little joke, right? You know, how do you know I was in the infantry? Just wait, I'll tell you, you know what I'm saying? It's the same thing. And like, I said something, it was just me in black and white and I'm holding up a sign that says good. And I was like, everyone let Jocko know. And then they tagged you so many times that he just wrote something and I was just like, holy shit.

• 2:39:32Speaker 01

  What is happening? You know, and like, it was just this thing where like, it shifted from like jokes and memes to like, oh, I might need to be careful here. What is my goal? And it was pushing back to my goal of like, now that you're here, look at this, get some help. Hey, you're a veteran looking for some, some way to plug into the community? Check out Travis Mannion Foundation. They're doing great things all over the country. Making sure people are connected to the community and being advocates for change. Or what about this organization, Vets, that helps veterans with psychedelic treatment? Semper Fi Fund, Gary Sneeze Fund. The list goes on and on and on and on. But I can't, I can't talk about that. That's my message. If you talk about the same thing over and over, you'll get, suppress isn't the right word. It just won't reverberate. It just won't be out there.

• 2:40:16Speaker 01

  So it's mixed in there, kind of like three card Monte, and it's the ace, you know, where's the ace? And I'm mixing it up. It's a meme. It's a joke. It's whatever. That's the ace. That's the thing I'm trying to pull you back to.

• 2:40:28Jocko Willink?

  And so what has this turned into? Like, it's got, it's kind of like, I see other people with signs on your page. What's that all about?

• 2:40:37Speaker 01

  Anyone who can do it can do it. If anyone who wants to have a message, I want to be a part of it. It can't just be me. I want it to be everyone. I want to open sources. You know, like I said, like Tulsi's done it. A lot of influencers have done it. People I know have done it. I'm gonna have to, I want you to do it. Will you do it?

• 2:40:51Jocko Willink?

  I probably won't hold a book cardboard sign with a magic marker writing on it, but I'm sure we can figure something out.

• 2:40:57Speaker 01

  That's a yes. You heard it here on Jocko's. He said yes. Uh, thanks, man. Let me see one of these knives real quick. Um, no, um. Well, no. So the idea is that the warfighter, the veteran with a sign is anyone. It's anyone who wants to say something. I've expanded it beyond just like veterans. I want cops, police to say it. Like, the California Highway Patrol sends me stuff. They're like, stop speeding and, you know, stop texting and driving. I'm like, okay, cool. I'm like, I'll upload that.

• 2:41:22Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 2:41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, you know, I just want it to be a message and like, to me, I'm experimenting with the platform in the sense of. Like, uh, I want it to be something where it's not just the word, but also maybe your outfits are part of the message, or maybe the background's part of the message. Like, you know, recently, um, I went to SHOT Show and the NSSF reached out to me and they're like, "We're doing a push for mental health. We want you to come out and do it." And I was like, "Done. I'm in." And so it's just me at SHOT Show, holding up cardboard signs, talking about their, you know, their mental health push. And it's just things like that. And so I'm trying to be that disruptor to where I can normalize the military experience and, you know, and be a good advocate for mental health and stuff.

• 2:42:07Jocko Willink?

  One thing I like about it, remember old Twitter, Echo Charles, where you can only have 140 characters?

• 2:42:13Speaker 01

  Well, wasn't it like 70?

• 2:42:15Jocko Willink?

  No, it was 140. Then it became 280.

• 2:42:17Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 2:42:18Jocko Willink?

  And then now you can do whatever you want.

• 2:42:20Speaker 01

  Okay, alright.

• 2:42:21Jocko Willink?

  Elon just got crazy.

• 2:42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, which there was, there's an argument for that as well. But there was something about 140 characters that was kinda cool.

• 2:42:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:30Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 2:42:30Jocko Willink?

  And what I like about the, what you do is, I don't know how many words you can put, it's like-

• 2:42:36Speaker 01

  20 is the most.

• 2:42:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:37Speaker 01

  And my hand cramps and I'm just like, I hate the way it looks. I try to go 12 to 15.

• 2:42:42Jocko Willink?

  So, so that's pretty cool. When you've gotta be concise with your message, concise enough that you can get it on a piece of cardboard, that easily. And it's working, man, because people are reading those things, myself included.

• 2:42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's fun to work with the, the platform and, and the thing. And so I've changed it into what I'm doing to get like multiple images where it's like a flip book. It's called a carousel is what the type of post is, where you go slide one, slide two, slide three. And so that's I'm expanding on. But like, I noticed there was a gap in the conversations that I wanted to have and the things that I was saying. So like, I was like, "Well, I'm in my 30s, I'm a veteran, time to start a podcast." Like, that's literally like where it's like expanded into because like, I've noticed this community. You like that?

• 2:43:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, well, it's, it just becomes like, I wanted to have like a deeper connection, um, and to really, like, you're just limited. I was just limited in what I was able to say.

• 2:43:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:40Speaker 01

  Like, um, like-

• 2:43:44Speaker 01

  One of the things I say, and it was hard to expand on, and so I've tried to constantly expand on it now is like, post-traumatic stress disorder to me is when you come to the realization that the memory of who you were is better than the reality that you are. And when that happens, it's almost impossible not to hate yourself. Because you remember who you were before the trauma, before the event. And then you see where you are afterwards, the wreckage, the damage, whatever you want to call it. When you see that, it hurts. And the only way to really kind of undo that, in my opinion, is to talk about it and to normalize it, not in a way where it's like traumatic towards an individual or other people listening, but you really just gotta kind of humanize the whole thing. You know, you know what I'm saying? And um,

• 2:44:28Speaker 01

  I saw how limited I was with that and like more of my connections to these types of expansions of this universe, whatever you want to call it. It was just kind of limited to like DMs and stuff from like me connecting people to resources. And so I was like, let's push this in a different way. And so I, I just started a podcast on it because I, I'm loquacious, I guess, I just want to talk.

• 2:44:50Jocko Willink?

  And this is, this is the after-action podcast, right?

• 2:44:53Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:44:54Jocko Willink?

  And how's it going? You like it?

• 2:44:56Speaker 01

  I like it. People trust me with their stories and it's hard. It's, it's very, very hard. You know, in Nashville, there was a, an incident with a, a school shooter and I was able to connect to both the off, all the officers there, but the two in particular that, that, that took the shooter down. And one of them is a fellow Marine, Michael Colazo. And we became friends and over the course of however, a year, I, you know, we, we still, we hang out all the time and he, I've always texted and stuff, but like, he's like, I want to tell this story. And I was like, oh, okay. You know, and I was like, I'll help you. I'll push you, not push you. I'll, I'll help find a place where you can feel comfortable telling your story. And got connected to a few people and he, he just didn't feel comfortable about it.

• 2:45:40Speaker 01

  And then eventually he just sat down. He goes, why don't we do it? And I go, I'm, I've, I've never done this. I don't know how it'll go, you know? And he's like, well, I want to do it. And he trusted me with it. And so we did, we tell, we sat down and we told that story and. You know, it's taught me a lot about myself and others and, you know, and people trust me in the moment because I try to take a light-hearted approach and a humanizing approach to the things that we've been through and the people that I've talked to and everyone that's been a part of it, someone that's had a very big impact on my life. And, you know, it takes time, obviously, as you know, but like, I learned so much from it. Like, every time I get up, I'm like, man, that was, that was cool. Like, the opposite of what I'm doing to y'all, like, I'm taking from y'all, but like, well, no, because like,

• 2:46:25Speaker 01

  Gunny, Brian Walgren told me this, the most important thing we have in life is time. And when someone gives that to you, you cherish that, you understand that, you respect it. Because you can never give it back, but they gave it to you.

• 2:46:37Speaker 01

  So I try to do that.

• 2:46:40Jocko Willink?

  Does that get us up to speed? Is that where we're at right now?

• 2:46:43Speaker 01

  Kinda. I still can't believe I'm here. I still can't believe, I literally can't believe I'm here. I literally can't believe I'm here, you know, because it's, it's just, it's, no one more than me is fascinated by the fact that 14 years ago I was in Marja and then jump cut, COVID happens, I'm like, you know, just writing a joke about Navy SEALs. Oh, yeah, Navy SEALs write books. And I'm sitting across from one of the most well-known Navy SEALs ever. You, Charlie Sheen, Dick Marcinko, you're the most well-known Navy SEALs ever. And, you know, and, sorry. And like now we're here to a place where we're talking about this and like, I just, um, you know, I, there was a moment where I wanted to quit, all of it, all of it, and it's when,

• 2:47:31Speaker 01

  you know, it was in, it was in June of 2020 when my, my best friend took his life. Mike, Mike took his life and, um,

• 2:47:42Speaker 01

  I was like, what am I doing?

• 2:47:46Speaker 01

  You know? If that happens, what am I doing? What is this for? Am I ever gonna affect change? And, um,

• 2:47:57Speaker 01

  he knew everything I was doing, he knew everything I was, I could have helped him with and all the stuff that was available to him. And to be honest, if anyone could have got a green light to where I'll put pressure on relationships that might hurt them to save him, wouldn't have blinked. And he knew that.

• 2:48:13Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, he just, he, he, he, um,

• 2:48:21Speaker 01

  He wasn't able to come home and you know, after Marja, he was just never the same. And

• 2:48:29Speaker 01

  when I think about why I still do this stuff now, why I push so hard.

• 2:48:36Speaker 01

  I think about fighting for him, right? I think about what I need to do to make sure that I don't put anyone in the ground next to him. That's why I keep going. That's literally it. I'm tired. I would really love to like, kind of fall back and get into like a statesman position to be like, I used to be on the internet. That was cool back then. Now I'm just, I'm just a dad. I'm just a cheer dad. I'm just a husband. I'm just a father. You know, I don't have any promo codes. I'm not here to, you know, I'm just a guy, but I feel I feel like it's my final mission to fight.

• 2:49:12Speaker 01

  To fight to make sure that people know they're worth it. And so that's, that's literally it. That's what keeps me going. And um, you know, he's, he's a person that was so important to me that when I got the when I found out I was coming here, I would have called him. I would have called him. Just be like, hey, guess what? He has this thick Boston accent. Be like, what's up kid? You know, talks like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon is what he sounded like. And uh, you know, that's why I'm still doing this stuff now. Because I feel like I'm in this place of I'm in this place where I'm supposed to be the one to to show that there is, there is uh, there is peace beyond the battlefield and that it's worth it. And that you're worth fighting for.

• 2:49:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're spreading that message, man. Um.

• 2:50:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. VeteranWithASign.com. That's where people can find you. You're, you're on Instagram and Facebook at VeteranWithASign. You're not on Twitter.

• 2:50:11Speaker 01

  I am, but that's my name. I haven't made like a veteran with a sign brand. It's just Zachary E. Bell.

• 2:50:16Jocko Willink?

  I would recommend you do that, you know, just in case, man, you gotta, you know.

• 2:50:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, cover the bases. I'm on TikTok. Are you on TikTok?

• 2:50:23Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:50:24Speaker 01

  Ah, you will be soon.

• 2:50:26Jocko Willink?

  Uh, there's someone that, there's someone that like takes my stuff.

• 2:50:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:30Jocko Willink?

  That I know, that takes my stuff and reposts it and repurposes it.

• 2:50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:34Jocko Willink?

  Uh, through TikTok.

• 2:50:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:37Jocko Willink?

  But that, but I don't actually have it like for myself.

• 2:50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:41Jocko Willink?

  And you know, you were asking me like, do I actually do all my social media? And the answer is yes, I do it all. So I can't really do that with TikTok because it's such a invasive, um, uh, platform or whatever, app.

• 2:50:53Speaker 01

  It's porous is what, is what, if you just say a few words in it, you'll see whatever you want to see and they'll serve up ads to you. It's very, very porous. It's security is what I'll say. Leaky. Yeah.

• 2:51:06Jocko Willink?

  But right on, man. Uh, Echo Charles.

• 2:51:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, just.

• 2:51:09Jocko Willink?

  You got any questions?

• 2:51:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:51:10Speaker 01

  Please.

• 2:51:10Speaker 02

  With the, um, just with the signs and stuff because.

• 2:51:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:13Speaker 02

  I've seen a few of them. And did you see the jujitsu one before?

• 2:51:16Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:51:17Speaker 02

  Okay. So there's a jujitsu one.

• 2:51:18Jocko Willink?

  Guy with a sign?

• 2:51:19Speaker 01

  His name, his name's Ian Funk, grappler with a sign.

• 2:51:22Speaker 02

  Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's.

• 2:51:23Jocko Willink?

  All know each other, kind of.

• 2:51:24Speaker 01

  He's a, he's a marine, so he's a marine corps, he's a marine corps veteran. Everyone should check out grappler with a sign. He says some of the best stuff ever. I, I did jujitsu for many years. I had a, I had a reconstructive nose surgery and then all the, I wasn't able to get into it. Me and Echo were talking about this earlier, like, I wasn't able to work, wasn't able to work out for like three months and then six months before I could roll. And COVID happened and I need to go back to it, but I'm terrified of breaking my nose again. Cause I was, I had sleep apnea because of it. It was bad, but, um, Ian's a great guy. Um, grappler with the sign. I love what he talks about because like they're so motivational and like, he's somewhere in California.

• 2:52:00Jocko Willink?

  Are they inside jokes too?

• 2:52:01Speaker 02

  Yes. So that, so that's the whole thing. And I was, and I do have a question a little bit, just to kind of confirm, but yeah. So at first, and I'm so actually I'm going to have to admit it to you. I like you a lot. So I'll be honest.

• 2:52:12Speaker 01

  Okay, go ahead.

• 2:52:12Speaker 02

  I kind of got you mixed up with him.

• 2:52:14Speaker 01

  That's fine.

• 2:52:15Speaker 02

  So, yeah, cause it was, but it's, you're right. Grappler with a sign.

• 2:52:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:18Speaker 02

  So anyway, but it's.

• 2:52:19Jocko Willink?

  You just figured that out like right now?

• 2:52:20Speaker 02

  No, no, no, before, before, like a few days ago.

• 2:52:22Speaker 01

  You saw both of our abs and you're like, yeah, yeah. It wasn't, I mean, it wasn't that funny.

• 2:52:27Speaker 02

  But that's the whole premise, right? Is the signs are funny. It's like, it's almost like, but there's an actual format to it, right? Like you can't just say anything that's funny. It has to fit that with the sign thing, almost as if to say. Hey, I don't know who needs to hear this and has a slight tinge of obviousness to it almost. You know, kind of like some people might not know this or might be ignoring this message kind of a thing. You know, and there's a few different, different kind of like, do you have a format that you're like?

• 2:52:55Speaker 01

  Man, you're breaking it, you're breaking this down Barney style, as they say, yeah, so the, everything I do is like with a wink and a smile, right?

• 2:53:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:01Speaker 01

  So every Navy SEAL writes a book, yeah, wink, smile, yeah, you know, um. It's all in that like, cause it has to engage and be something that's like. Shareable.

• 2:53:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, like so.

• 2:53:12Speaker 01

  Cause when people share stuff, they're trying to say something like, I feel this way, Echo feels this way, blank.

• 2:53:17Speaker 02

  So it has to, it's, it's almost like it's so powerfully relatable.

• 2:53:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:53:21Speaker 02

  Like where it's like.

• 2:53:22Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna break it down for you.

• 2:53:23Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:53:23Jocko Willink?

  It's a handwritten meme.

• 2:53:26Speaker 01

  Stop, stop, cut this part. Yes, that's exactly what it is. Yes.

• 2:53:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:53:30Speaker 01

  Yes, so the way to.

• 2:53:31Jocko Willink?

  Handwritten meme.

• 2:53:31Speaker 01

  The way to create virility, viral nature is to make a meme and so it is a handwritten meme and the term is evergreen content, meaning I can make it 24/7, 365. It'll have application to it. There are a few like standouts, like holiday stuff, like I'll put up every Christmas, every, uh. It's a list of all the Christmas episodes from the office, stuff like that, you know? Veterans Day, Marine Corps Birthday, you know, national holidays, you know what I'm saying? Those things I'll put up, but like, yeah, it is a handwritten meme. That's really what it is.

• 2:54:01Jocko Willink?

  And really, if you think about this, cause I think of a lot of the veteran with a sign, a lot of things that you put up on a sign. Would be the kind of stuff like if you went in the, in the freaking head on a ship.

• 2:54:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:54:13Jocko Willink?

  Like someone would write that shit on the freaking mirror or on the freaking, you know, stall wall or something like that.

• 2:54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:20Jocko Willink?

  It's the kind of stuff that would go on a bathroom wall in the military specifically, or in a jujitsu gym, like. The kind of stuff where someone would write that kind of grappler with a sign.

• 2:54:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:30Jocko Willink?

  So it and what if you think about what those are, those are the kind of things that they're one liners from like a conversation where somebody says something and everybody knows kind of that they're right.

• 2:54:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:54:43Jocko Willink?

  And it could be that they're right and they're funny. It could also be that they're right and we need to think about this more.

• 2:54:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54:48Jocko Willink?

  So it's it's a really cool format for communication.

• 2:54:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:54:52Speaker 01

  Y'all should talk. Y'all should talk to him. Like, he's he's such a good dude. Like.

• 2:54:55Jocko Willink?

  And he was in the Marine Corps?

• 2:54:56Speaker 01

  He was in the Marine Corps. He was in the Marines. It's funny. His bio says, I'm not veteran with a sign, but I am a veteran with a sign.

• 2:55:03Jocko Willink?

  Even that right there, man.

• 2:55:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I love these get his flowers right now because he's he's such a dude. But yeah, it's like he has. What was the one about, you know, uh, remember when you were a white belt? I think is one of his. And I was like, yeah, dude, like, cause like, you know, as you get, we're all jujitsu guys here. I mean, but y'all are. I did it for a while. I don't take claim to it anymore. But like, there is a moment when you're like pure white belt mode and then like you settle down and you're like, oh, okay, there's, this is chess, not checkers, right? You know, yeah, we gotta settle down instead of being like armbar, armbar, armbar. Like you're just hunting armbars forever.

• 2:55:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:55:36Speaker 01

  Instead, you're like, understanding the art, the gentle arts of the of the smother.

• 2:55:40Speaker 02

  His best. No, well, he has a lot of good ones, but one that I've that I always remember is just, and it has to do with the whole format of it. And it just, it's just a big sign. It's the one actually I got turned on to him from. It said, you're the restaurant?

• 2:55:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, damn.

• 2:55:55Speaker 02

  It's so funny. Because, bro, I'm telling you, like, okay, how many restaurant, you know, it's, it's not obvious when you're the restaurant all the time. But every once in a while, if someone points it out, you're like, wait a second, bro, I'm the restaurant in this room right here, you know, kind of a thing. Anyway, it really landed down. He's good.

• 2:56:13Speaker 01

  I love what he does. And he's even done things to like, change the format as Instagram like prioritizes videos. So like now he'll slide in and put on sunglasses and then hold the sign up. And I'm like. I'm like, hell yeah. Like I liked it. I like that because like, you know, there's, there's plenty of content and stuff to go around. I just liked it. Again, I'm trying to be an advocate for my community and he's a part of my communities. We're all a part of that community too, that he's advocating for. But like, again, like, he's taking something that's kind of scary, a jujitsu community, which is like combat grapplers and making it like fun and a, you know, like, lowering the barrier to entry. That way more people understand it and more people understand it and they'll want to connect to it. And like, that's what I'm trying to do as well. He's just doing it for his in the best way. Grappling with a sign. Check it out.

• 2:56:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's good to meet you.

• 2:56:58Speaker 01

  Oh dude, I, I love this.

• 2:57:00Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Right on. Zach, any closing thoughts, man?

• 2:57:04Speaker 01

  No, I, I, I just want to say again, thank you both so much for having me here. It's, it's an honor and a privilege and, you know, um, if anyone else is out there looking for hope or needs any help, just know that you should stay because you're worth fighting for.

• 2:57:18Jocko Willink?

  Right on, man. That's a, that's an awesome message and thanks for, thanks for joining us. Thanks for flying all the way out here and sharing your experiences and your lessons learned. Obviously thanks for your service in the Marine Corps.

• 2:57:28Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:57:29Jocko Willink?

  Um, you and your, you and your fellow Marines absolutely upheld the proud fighting tradition of the Marine Corps. And, you know, finally, thanks for what you're doing today and continuing to help veterans get through what they went through. It's appreciated, bro. Thank you.

• 2:57:49Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Zach Bell has left the building.

• 2:57:53Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 2:57:54Jocko Willink?

  Good thing to think about. There's a law of combat leadership. Keep things simple, simple, clear, concise communication. And you can see, that's what Zach Bell is out there doing. Simple, clear, concise communication that lands.

• 2:58:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58:13Jocko Willink?

  And those messages resonate, help connect people with people, also help keep people on the path.

• 2:58:22Speaker 01

  So here's a, here's one additional, maybe the main one. It's like the nugget of value for, for veteran with a sign.

• 2:58:33Speaker 02

  And just that whole idea. So it's like, again, remember how I was trying to analyze it like, what's, what's up with this thing? Why is this so catchy? Why do I want to see the next one? The next one, the next one, right? Cause they're relatable.

• 2:58:43Jocko Willink?

  Totally in the game.

• 2:58:44Speaker 02

  But here, so here's.

• 2:58:45Jocko Willink?

  With the people with the sign.

• 2:58:46Speaker 02

  But, oh yeah, big time. And this is why. Because you know, and maybe not every single one is like this, but the one of them, you know, after a few of them, you're going to be like, okay, cool. And you're going to get this. Where, you know, we go through life, you know, we're on auto a lot of the time. Sometimes we're making our cool little pivots and decisions and making things happen for sure. But every once in a while, you get this small little nugget. It's almost like in passing. Get this little nugget. It's like a little reminder. Or a little like, hey, like a little like, hey, wake up real quick. And like a little heads up. And that's what those do sometimes. And it works and it lasts. You know what I'm saying?

• 2:59:23Jocko Willink?

  Little perspective. I think it's a, it makes you reexamine a little perspective. Or reignites the knowledge of a particular thing.

• 2:59:33Speaker 02

  Reignites the knowledge. Yeah.

• 2:59:35Jocko Willink?

  You're like, yeah, that's a good point.

• 2:59:37Speaker 02

  That is a good.

• 2:59:38Jocko Willink?

  And it's also interesting that you can get humor.

• 2:59:42Jocko Willink?

  And you can get.

• 2:59:46Jocko Willink?

  Pondering. You can get other emotions, we'll say.

• 2:59:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:59:51Jocko Willink?

  It's not all just, oh, this is funny. Cause you can read some of them and you can say, oh yeah, that makes me think. Oh yeah, that makes me remember. Oh yeah, that makes me sad. Using a positive way.

• 3:00:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00:03Jocko Willink?

  Like, positive way of being sad.

• 3:00:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00:06Jocko Willink?

  Positive way of remembering. So that's what we're doing. Zach Bell, out there.

• 3:00:12Jocko Willink?

  Keeping people on the path. Speaking of the path.

• 3:00:16Jocko Willink?

  If you're on the path, you're probably working out. I hope, look, let me rephrase that. You're working out. We're working out. That's what we're doing. When we work out, we need fuel. We recommend Jocko Fuel. Now, you were telling me. Before we started recording today, that you had drifted off the path in one specific way and you started to feel it.

• 3:00:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Joint warfare.

• 3:00:38Jocko Willink?

  Joint warfare.

• 3:00:38Speaker 02

  It is, and look, we're not.

• 3:00:41Jocko Willink?

  How many times you gotta learn this lesson?

• 3:00:42Speaker 02

  Bro, I know, right? Here's the thing. I did, you, you asked that question, kinda like, kinda teasing or whatever. But it's, that's even as a micro scolding right there. Like, that's warranted because it is. It's like, I'm not learning the lesson, you know? Like, where you get on it, okay, our problem, hey, we're rolling, good, you know, joints, all this, going hard. And still, you're kinda good. You get off it and it, because it doesn't happen right away, you know, a month, two months, maybe you hit it hard. And then boom, you're back in the hurt locker as far as like the joints and you're like, oh, oh, and then you kinda, it's almost like you forget that you're off it. That's my, that's my experience.

• 3:01:18Jocko Willink?

  I need to make a sign for you. That says, take your joint warfare, son. Cause that's the deal.

• 3:01:24Speaker 02

  Hey, we're back on it, but I did, and actually I took this advice that you gave me years ago, by the way. And I'm finally taking it where I just staged the actual joint warfare into my morning thing, which successfully I achieved the morning routine of creatine and hydrate in the morning, every single morning with a cup of water, by the way. That's right there.

• 3:01:43Jocko Willink?

  That's way more complicated, by the way.

• 3:01:45Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah.

• 3:01:46Jocko Willink?

  Then just three joint warfare?

• 3:01:49Speaker 02

  It's true. I put the whole bottle right there. It's just part of the little lineup, see what I'm saying?

• 3:01:52Jocko Willink?

  Where did you keep it before? This doesn't even make sense to me.

• 3:01:54Speaker 02

  Okay, not that we need to go too deep into it, but we will.

• 3:01:57Jocko Willink?

  Like, there's no possible way in my mind, I could want to do something like take joint warfare and not stage it within eight inches of my toothbrush.

• 3:02:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, that makes sense. And that's what I do now. You're right, and I get it, but when you really think of the reality of my routine, it makes sense, not that it's right, but it makes more sense than not. So that is, real quick. I sleep upstairs.

• 3:02:25Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:02:26Speaker 02

  All that stuff is downstairs in what we call a pantry.

• 3:02:30Jocko Willink?

  Wait, you don't keep joint warfare and super krill in your bathroom where you brush your teeth?

• 3:02:36Speaker 02

  Uh oh. It's always been in the pantry. I'm not the only one who takes this stuff.

• 3:02:40Jocko Willink?

  There's a whole bunch of adjustments.

• 3:02:44Jocko Willink?

  Like, your mind is not functioning properly. I hate to say this.

• 3:02:47Speaker 02

  Look, I just haven't evaluated the system in a, in a way that's ultimately conducive to where we want to be. I get it. It's, it's there now for sure. Everything was in the pantry is what I'm saying. Everything. Even because I don't take everything every day. When, you know, when the stuff gets.

• 3:03:00Jocko Willink?

  You want to keep milk in the, in the pantry? That's cool.

• 3:03:03Speaker 02

  It is in the pantry.

• 3:03:04Jocko Willink?

  Because, yeah, it should be because that's food. That's when you're hungry.

• 3:03:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:03:08Jocko Willink?

  But you don't have joint warfare or super krill.

• 3:03:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:03:12Jocko Willink?

  Or time war when you're hungry.

• 3:03:14Speaker 02

  I would be interested to see how many people have joint warfare and or krill oil in the pantry and not in the bathroom or wherever you, you know.

• 3:03:21Jocko Willink?

  It's a low number, bro. People are smarter than this.

• 3:03:25Speaker 02

  You might be right.

• 3:03:25Jocko Willink?

  And that might have been a kind of a backhand.

• 3:03:27Speaker 02

  Hey, well, it doesn't even matter now because I'm one of those people now. So boom, it's all in the lineup in the thing. Boom. Good to go.

• 3:03:33Jocko Willink?

  GTG.

• 3:03:33Speaker 02

  So, yeah, we're all good to go.

• 3:03:35Jocko Willink?

  All right. Yep. Hey, if you want to get some joint warfare so you can roll, work out, lift, train, and not feel like you're 8,000 years old, get yourself some joint warfare. Get some time war too, by the way.

• 3:03:47Speaker 02

  Are we still doing the 100 burpees thing? Or is that kind of like?

• 3:03:50Jocko Willink?

  We did it.

• 3:03:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:03:52Jocko Willink?

  Listen, I have not been consistent with it, but it is now 100% part of my jam.

• 3:03:58Speaker 02

  Okay, sweet.

• 3:03:59Jocko Willink?

  Like, like, it is, it is in the, it's in the mix. It's in the mix. So, like, today, I didn't do it yet. I mean, I lifted, of course, but I didn't do it yet, but it's in the mix. It's in the thing. So, does it need to be? Do I need? Maybe I need to. Maybe it just needs to be. That's the protocol.

• 3:04:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:04:18Jocko Willink?

  You know, just daily. And I'll tell you what, I have a, a hill that I sprint. It's in the middle of my, so when I go for a run, there's a hill that I sprint.

• 3:04:25Speaker 02

  In the middle of the running course.

• 3:04:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I'm running, you know, it's like a few miles of running. It's the daily run, right? But there's a, a hill, good little hill. Nothing major, but it's steep. You know, it's kind of that kind of hill. And.

• 3:04:40Jocko Willink?

  When you run it, you know, I always hit the timer at the bottom. So I kind of just know how hard I'm putting out. And sometimes it'll take, you know, 56 seconds, 54 seconds. But when you're doing good, you can get in, you know, you're down to 49, you're down to 48. And so I just, you know, I've been on the road a bunch. So I hadn't run that course. But during def reset, I was doing that 100 burpees every day regardless.

• 3:05:03Jocko Willink?

  And I just did the run. Did the hill. Forty two seconds.

• 3:05:08Speaker 02

  Oh, better.

• 3:05:08Jocko Willink?

  Better than normal.

• 3:05:10Speaker 02

  The burpees helped the running.

• 3:05:11Jocko Willink?

  Burpees definitely helped the run without as much running as normal. So, so that when I did, I actually was mentally prepared. For. Like a 58 second, you know, like a bad time because I hadn't been running because I've been on the road.

• 3:05:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:05:27Jocko Willink?

  The burpees.

• 3:05:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:05:28Jocko Willink?

  Burpees came through.

• 3:05:29Speaker 02

  Like little, like it's like a supplementation.

• 3:05:31Jocko Willink?

  I actually knew a guy who was in the SEAL teams. He was one of my instructors. And you know what an eight count bodybuilder is?

• 3:05:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:05:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So he said that he was on a submarine for like three months. As a SEAL. And he did. Some crazy number. Something like a thousand eight count bodybuilders a day.

• 3:05:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, damn.

• 3:05:53Jocko Willink?

  And when he got off, he was the fastest he'd ever been.

• 3:05:56Speaker 02

  For real?

• 3:05:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So I think, I think I hit a similar scenario.

• 3:06:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's weird that every once in a while you can stumble upon those routines that helps like these other routines, you know?

• 3:06:09Jocko Willink?

  And the mental benefit. That I learned. From doing a hundred burpees regardless of anything else. And pushing. You know? I really, it was just a daily exercise of turning your mind off and going hard. Which is, which is two different things that you need to learn how to do simultaneously. Turn off your mind and go hard at the same time. If you want to get better at that. Do a hundred burpees a day. As fast as you can.

• 3:06:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:06:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, we hit the stopwatch and then go.

• 3:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:06:40Jocko Willink?

  It's a thing.

• 3:06:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:06:41Jocko Willink?

  It'll help you out.

• 3:06:42Speaker 02

  It's yeah, it's so true. A hundred, that's like such a good standard for that because it's like it's not going to kill you like it's not a death defying. You know, little routine, but it's not nothing, bro. When you go out there, you gotta get your mind right.

• 3:06:55Jocko Willink?

  Go hard, yeah.

• 3:06:56Speaker 02

  To kind of thing. It's not nothing. So yes, you're correct. Um, here's another one to throw in there just for the mix. I know people like little routines. This one's anywhere between 10 and 15 minutes and.

• 3:07:07Jocko Willink?

  A little long, but go ahead.

• 3:07:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you do need.

• 3:07:10Jocko Willink?

  It's a little 15 minutes is is a little bit harder to throw in just into the mix. I'm just saying 10 minutes.

• 3:07:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:07:15Jocko Willink?

  You can throw in the mix. Seven minutes and 30 seconds for a hundred burpees. That's in the mix real easy.

• 3:07:19Speaker 02

  So this is different than the hundred burpees. It's so, you know, I do a little met con. Sometimes it takes six minutes, seven minutes or whatever. So what I did was I combined it the same met con. I just do more reps. So I just do four of these, right? So you know, there's rep sets, rounds. So you got clean and jerk. With 60% of your body weight. So in my case, that is one, I do dumbbells. I do two 60 pound dumbbells.

• 3:07:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:07:48Speaker 02

  Right? And then I go straight from there to jumping jacks, straight from jumping jacks to burpees.

• 3:07:55Jocko Willink?

  How many jumping jacks are you doing?

• 3:07:58Speaker 02

  Um, okay.

• 3:07:59Jocko Willink?

  Are you doing it for time or what?

• 3:08:00Speaker 02

  No, no, yeah, kind of both. So, so jumping jacks and then burpees and then sit ups, right? Like, kind of like.

• 3:08:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:08:06Speaker 02

  Okay. So those four exercises, right? So for the, for the clean and jerk, 10. Jumping jacks, 30.

• 3:08:14Jocko Willink?

  For a count?

• 3:08:16Speaker 02

  No, regular, one, two. Yeah. No, not, not the four count, just regular.

• 3:08:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:08:21Speaker 02

  So 10 clean and jerks, 30 jumping jacks, 10 burpees.

• 3:08:28Speaker 02

  20 sit-ups, no one holding your feet or nothing like that. You know, the kind of like as if you're playing like butterfly guard, sit-up guard or something like that. So boom, that's it. That's one round. You do four rounds of that with under one minute rest. That's the thing. You don't want to go over a minute rest. The faster the better, for sure. But you don't want to go one minute rest, bro. That's a good one. It's like right on the edge where it's like when you're feeling like really, really, really, really good, you can go like, you can do it all. But if you're like, kind of slacking, you're like at a minute or, you know, kind of a thing. But it's solid. That one's a good one. Try that one.

• 3:09:05Jocko Willink?

  There you go. You've got a couple of options out there. And if you need to rebuild yourself when you're done, get some milk protein. Get yourself some hydrate. Hydrate's so good. Hydrate's another thing that'll satisfy your sweet tooth, straight up.

• 3:09:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like a drink. Oh, yeah. It's like a soft drink.

• 3:09:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a soft drink. But it's going to replace the sweat that you have. It's got, it's got vitamin C in there. So that's what we're doing. Check it out. JacoFuel.com. Get what you need. Also, you can go to Wawa, you can go to Vitamin Shop GNC, Afees, Military Commissaries, Hanaford, Dash Stores, Wakefern, ShopRite, HEB, down in Tejas, Meyer, Harris Teeter, Lifetime, Lifetime Fitness, that is, Shields, and, and look, small gyms. You got a small gym? Or if you go to a small gym, or you go to a big gym. I mean, let's face it, Lifetime Fitness, have you ever been to one of those?

• 3:09:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have.

• 3:10:00Jocko Willink?

  They're freaking monstrous, monstrous gyms. Or maybe you go to a CrossFit gym. Hey, wherever you go, ask them if they can get some JacoFuel in there to help you out on your path. Email [email protected]. That's what we're doing. Also, you're gonna need some gear on your journey. Get some American-made gear. Don't support slavery.

• 3:10:22Jocko Willink?

  You know what's weird is if you if you went to a thousand people and said, does anyone here support slavery? In America, you'd get zero hands going up.

• 3:10:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:10:32Jocko Willink?

  And yet, what are they doing with their dollar bills? A lot of people unknowingly, sometimes even knowingly, and sometimes you kind of shrug your shoulders like, well, what can I do?

• 3:10:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10:42Jocko Willink?

  You know, well, hey, do you support slavery? No. Well, where do you spend your money? Oh, it's on a bunch of stuff that's made in China. Oh, so you do support slavery. And you may shrug your shoulders like, well, what am I supposed to do? I'll tell you what you're supposed to do. OriginUSA.com. That's what you're supposed to do. You go to OriginUSA.com and you order something that's made in America. Where the cotton was grown in America. Where the rivets on the jeans were made in America. Where the zipper is made in America. Where the Velcro is made in America. Where everything's made in America. And then it's sewn together in America.

• 3:11:15Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. OriginUSA.com. Get boots, get jeans. And we're getting dialed, man. We we've brought on board, there's something called a pattern maker. When you make clothing. This is a critical role.

• 3:11:32Speaker 02

  So what is that? The pattern, what is the pattern? It's like the panels.

• 3:11:35Jocko Willink?

  Yes, the panels of whatever the thing is. But imagine, I mean, it's, we take it for granted, right?

• 3:11:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:11:40Jocko Willink?

  Like, oh, it's just a t-shirt, just a pair of jeans, just a pair of pants. You just take it for granted. You don't actually think about the geometry of how that thing curves around someone's body.

• 3:11:49Speaker 02

  And it's a huge difference.

• 3:11:50Jocko Willink?

  And it's a huge difference. So we've got pattern. We we, some of these big companies, iconic. Formerly American made companies. That now make their stuff in China. Even though they're iconic American brands, they make their stuff in China now. But they still, the knowledge is here in America for how to set up the patterns. So guess what we did? We hired them. They're with us now. They walked away from the disgusting.

• 3:12:23Jocko Willink?

  Businesses that they were forced to be at because they didn't have a choice. Now they have a choice. You know what they want to do? They want to make stuff in America. These are people that come from the background. These are people that grew up in this industry and they had to watch factories get moved overseas. And so finally, they have an option. They have an option. And so we've got the best people in the world with so much experience, so much experience. They like, look at your jeans when they're like, oh, they're like, they know what's up. Yeah. So that's what we're doing. OriginUSA.com. We got everything you need. Jiu Jitsu Gi's jeans, boots, hoodies, hunt gear, t-shirts, got a jean jacket. Did you see my jean jacket?

• 3:13:02Speaker 02

  I did. Yes. Respect.

• 3:13:04Jocko Willink?

  What's up now? What's up now?

• 3:13:06Speaker 02

  You looked right at home in that jean jacket, man.

• 3:13:09Jocko Willink?

  Come on. So, OriginUSA.com. Check it out.

• 3:13:12Speaker 02

  Yep. Also, Jocko's a store called Jocko Store. Discipline equals freedom. That's a for real, for real thing. You want to represent t-shirts, hats, hoodies, that kind of stuff. That's where you go. JacoStore.com. Also, we have the Shirt Locker on Jocko Store. That's a new shirt, new design every month. Little subscription scenario. I got a good one coming.

• 3:13:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you do? What's the, give us the general, this general background?

• 3:13:37Speaker 02

  So, this idea that you said or referred to donuts as sugar coated lies.

• 3:13:47Speaker 02

  So that one was a hard one to kind of like reconcile. Like, I'm not gonna, well, you know, we're here, here at Jocko Store. It's kind of hard to pull off, okay, I'm gonna make a donut with a Ghostbusters X through it and you know, like, I don't know.

• 3:14:01Jocko Willink?

  Some real obvious choices you could have made.

• 3:14:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, and I don't know.

• 3:14:03Jocko Willink?

  I'm assuming you didn't go obvious.

• 3:14:05Speaker 02

  We didn't do that one. No.

• 3:14:06Jocko Willink?

  You stepped it up.

• 3:14:06Speaker 02

  Because I, look, I see, bro, when we go to these monsters and stuff like that, bro, I see mass representation and people looking good. Like sure, they're cool, they're clever, they got layers, but the designs actually look good. For real. Like when you're wearing the thing. So think about this. You know, the, okay, when you seen me wearing the Sog shirt, for example, the Sog support shirt. I was not in Sog, you know that about me.

• 3:14:31Jocko Willink?

  Neither was I. I wouldn't wear a Sog shirt, I wasn't in Sog.

• 3:14:33Speaker 02

  You can't.

• 3:14:34Jocko Willink?

  But do I support Sog? You're damn right I do.

• 3:14:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we have one of the early short locker shirts is a Sog support shirt. When you seen it, you were like, that's kinda dope. How could you not? Now, there's certain designs that look good maybe on paper or look good in your head or seem whatever, but when they put it on shirt, you put it on your, on your person, as it were. It doesn't match, right? So I don't know if I could see someone like kinda representing a big donut with an X through, I don't know, maybe, I don't know, I could be wrong, but it just didn't seem, seem, that was not obvious to me, but I think I got something.

• 3:15:09Jocko Willink?

  That's the difference, man. That's, that's like the third measure right there.

• 3:15:14Speaker 02

  Anyway, anyway, it's called the short locker, it's on jocko store.com. So yeah, check that out, you might get it.

• 3:15:21Jocko Willink?

  Also primalbeef.com, coloradocraftbeef.com. These are two places that are

• 3:15:29Jocko Willink?

  giving you steak. Well, they're not giving it to you, you gotta pay for it, but you're gonna get paid back.

• 3:15:34Speaker 02

  It's worth it.

• 3:15:35Jocko Willink?

  In taste, in health, and in supporting awesome American brands. Coloradocraftbeef.com or primalbeef.com. Great people, great companies, great freaking steak. That's what we're doing. Subscribe to the podcast, you guys know that, and Jocko Underground. Check that out, jacoun underground.com. Also, we have a YouTube channel. Check it out. Um, like, click and subscribe.

• 3:16:02Speaker 02

  But.

• 3:16:02Jocko Willink?

  We don't really, like, was that what we were doing?

• 3:16:05Speaker 02

  Do what you dig, but yeah, subscribe for sure.

• 3:16:08Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe!

• 3:16:08Speaker 02

  Um, uh, we might be doing, actually, we think.

• 3:16:10Jocko Willink?

  How often does someone hear like, click and subscribe that they go, oh, I'm gonna like this, I'm gonna click it, I'm gonna subscribe it. How often does that happen?

• 3:16:16Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, if you're not a kid.

• 3:16:17Jocko Willink?

  And you can go next level to like. What is it? Uh, notifications. Turn on notifications. There's a whole bunch of layers.

• 3:16:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I think it's like.

• 3:16:25Jocko Willink?

  Pretty soon it's gonna be, hey, click here to have Elon put a neural link in your brain so the YouTube things come right into your head.

• 3:16:33Speaker 02

  It actually works with like new internet users and kids. Cause like my one when I went through that stint of allowing my daughter to be on electronics, it's not anymore, thankfully. But nonetheless, she was on there and this is one of the reasons where she would like, she would like stuff.

• 3:16:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 3:16:51Speaker 02

  You know, cause it says, hey, it's, cause it really makes it when I try to look at it objectively. But it's kinda makes you feel like, oh yeah, that's what we're doing, by the way. Like, yeah, like, like, click and so, or it's like, share.

• 3:17:03Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I'm the hard, I'm the hardest person to like convey to do stuff.

• 3:17:07Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, cause you're you, and I get it, man, of course. But I'm saying, you know, new, new users. They'll be like, oh, okay, I guess, I guess that's what we're sort of doing on here, you know, kind of thing. Anyway. Sure.

• 3:17:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, hey, look, we have a YouTube channel. Hey, if you don't want to subscribe to it, don't.

• 3:17:22Speaker 02

  Don't have to.

• 3:17:23Jocko Willink?

  Don't like it, don't subscribe to it. But at least check it out, get some info if you need it.

• 3:17:28Speaker 02

  Yes. And we, we will be coming out with the Jocko Shorts channel, like a separate channel for shorts.

• 3:17:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 3:17:36Speaker 02

  It won't be only like all the shorts, but like it'll be a separate.

• 3:17:39Jocko Willink?

  Is this a separate, um, like a separate, uh, entire YouTube channel? Or is it just like a playlist inside of YouTube?

• 3:17:46Speaker 02

  Right now it's a playlist, but it'll be a separate channel.

• 3:17:49Jocko Willink?

  Lucky.

• 3:17:49Speaker 02

  From, from what I understand, it's like, you know, it's a different watching experience or whatever. Anyway, it was recommended to me to do that. So be on the lookout for that.

• 3:17:58Jocko Willink?

  Look, when you all ask us for something and it makes sense, and then we get asked it for it a lot, we'll, we'll try and hook it up. And apparently that's what's going down.

• 3:18:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:18:06Jocko Willink?

  So we're gonna make a YouTube Shorts.

• 3:18:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:09Jocko Willink?

  Channel.

• 3:18:09Speaker 02

  Jocko Podcast Shorts. That's something like that. So be on the lookout.

• 3:18:13Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, right on. Check that out. Also, Jocko Fuel has a YouTube channel. Also, Origin USA has a YouTube channel. And you can find out what's going on in all these worlds. Psychological Warfare, flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Books, I've written a bunch of books. You all know the deal. A bunch of adult books about leadership and kids book, kids books. About how to be awesome in life. So if you know kids, get those kids these books, Where the Warrior Kid series, also Mike and the Dragons. Check out all my books. Yeah, there you go. I've written a bunch of them, as we pointed out with Zach. It's a Navy SEAL

• 3:18:53Jocko Willink?

  thing to do, write books, apparently. And Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. If you need help inside your business or organization, go to Extreme Ownership, or sorry, go to echelonfront.com. And then if you want to do an online training, go to extremeownership.com, learn how to lead in business and life. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization, really helping out veterans. I've seen it with my own eyes, providing them medical services that they would not get through the VA, through

• 3:19:37Jocko Willink?

  the traditional system. If you want to support, or you want to donate, or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org, also HeroesAndHorses.org. We got Micah Fink taking veterans up into the wilderness. And then finally Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. Check that one out as well. And if you want to connect with us, Zach, he's on the interwebs. He's at VeteranWithASign.com. He's also got Facebook and Instagram, @VeteranWithASign.

• 3:20:08Jocko Willink?

  And he's got a podcast that he talked about briefly, which is called The After Action Podcast. So if you want to connect with Zach, that's how you do it. And if you want to connect with me and Echo, you can do that, too. I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful, because it is a psychotic zone that you're entering, that is literally designed to destroy your time. Destroy it. Give you nothing in return. Gives you nothing back. You're nothing. You invest time, look, you invest time trying to play guitar, you're going to get good at guitar. You're able to sit around the campfire and kick out some jams. You invest time into writing, you're going

• 3:20:53Jocko Willink?

  to end up with documentation of the things that you wanted to express in the world. You invest time into just about anything. You invest time in working out, you're gonna get stronger. You invest time in running, you're gonna get faster. You invest time in jiu-jitsu, you're gonna benefit in so many multitude of ways. But if you invest your time into social media, you know what you're gonna get back? Nothing. Not getting anything back, nothing. In fact, you're gonna be a little bit, a little bit deeply nauseated by what you did. And, and, and it's gonna make you feel bad. And the only thing that's gonna make you feel a little bit better is if you do it a little bit more.

• 3:21:37Jocko Willink?

  It's a vicious circle. It's called the algorithm. We're against it. So if you wanna talk to us, man, write us a letter. Send it to my gym. That'd be a better, much better way.

• 3:21:49Jocko Willink?

  And thanks, of course, to those of our military personnel out there. And I guess tonight, especially to the Marine Corps. And a solemn salute to those that gave their lives in the Battle of Marja. We will not forget your sacrifice. And thanks as well to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all other first responders. Thank you for your service, keeping us safe here on the home front. And everyone else out there.

• 3:22:26Jocko Willink?

  You, you might feel like you're alone.

• 3:22:30Jocko Willink?

  You might feel like you're alone sometimes.

• 3:22:33Jocko Willink?

  But you're not. There are other people who have gone through or are going through the same thing as you, or something close, or something worse.

• 3:22:47Jocko Willink?

  And if you need some help, reach out. If you need some help, put out a sign.

• 3:22:56Jocko Willink?

  Someone will answer.

• 3:22:58Jocko Willink?

  And also, you might not need help. But if you see someone else with a sign, maybe you're the one with the answer.

• 3:23:10Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.