152: Consistent Discipline, Drive, and Sacrifice. The Ethos Of a Marine Raider, with Derek Herrera.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:12 - The life of Derek Herrera. 1:57:22 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:00:06 - Support/How to stay on THE PATH. 2:21:14 - Closing gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 152 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  These are men that would rather die than live with the shame that they didn't offer their last breath in service to the men to their left and to their right in battle.

• 0:26Jocko Willink?

  Each man was shaped through immense trials, personal fortitude and dedication, giving all he had to offer. At times when only the great pride of walking in the path least traveled was there to keep him company.

• 0:46Jocko Willink?

  Through constant discipline, drive and sacrifice, they have risen to the top of their trade and embodied the ethos of the Marine Raider. A man who displays the very pinnacle of soldiery virtue and unwavering loyalty. A man who will never quit or surrender and who will at all times stand ready to sacrifice whatever is needed to accomplish the mission.

• 1:17Jocko Willink?

  They stand as shiny examples of what our nation entrusts its freedom and respect to.

• 1:27Jocko Willink?

  Nothing is more awe inspiring than the look on a fellow operator's face as they are surrounded by death.

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  The casual smile of confidence as they acknowledge that things will be what they'll be.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  And if this is the way we die, then let's do it right and honor our legacy.

• 1:56Jocko Willink?

  When surrounded on all sides, we faced what seemed the inevitability of death.

• 2:06Jocko Willink?

  Not a man before you skipped a beat in their commitment.

• 2:11Jocko Willink?

  All or nothing.

• 2:14Jocko Willink?

  Death or glory.

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  And those are some excerpts from a speech by Marine Raider Gunry Sergeant Brian C. Jaclyn, talking about a mission that he was on. And I think in that speech, he did a great job of explaining the type of man that makes up the Marine Raiders, which is the Marine Corps component of Special Operations. And tonight, we are lucky enough to be sitting with one of those men, a United States Marine, a Special Operations Raider, and a true hero,

• 3:06Jocko Willink?

  Derek Herrera. Derek, welcome, man. Thanks for coming on.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  It's awesome to have you on here, man. I know we got hooked up through some old mutual friends, and I'm glad we did. And I'm glad to sit down and be able to talk to you and and hear a little bit about you and your life and everything that you've done. And as usual, let's start in, uh, let's start in Little Rock, Arkansas.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  Which is where you were born, right?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas.

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  What, like, what was the family doing in Little Rock, Arkansas?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  My father was a pilot in the Air Force.

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  And so he was stationed there. And I was born there in 1984.

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  And and then how long were you guys moving around all the time? Typical military family?

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. So moved about every two or three years. So I lived in Arkansas for about two years, moved to Illinois, I think for a year or two, and then Honduras, for an overseas assignment to Guisei Galpa Honduras in the late 80s, which was pretty interesting.

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  Do you speak Spanish, then?

• 4:13Speaker 01

  No, I did for a while, and then tried to replace it with Arabic and then Pashto. I learned that that's not one of my gifts.

• 4:23Jocko Willink?

  Let's just go with English and get a Terp.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. So knew enough to be tactically conversant, you know, but, um, but no, so.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Lived there for a few years and then my dad moved to Dover, Delaware, was stationed at Dover Air Force Base. He was a C-130 and C-5 pilot and continued to bounce around, but at that time in elementary school, my parents had divorced, so my family still lives in Delaware today. Also had the opportunity to live in Colorado and a few other places, but.

• 4:51Jocko Willink?

  At what, at what age were you when you got sort of like the military bug in your head?

• 4:57Speaker 01

  It was always the family business, so my grandfathers were both in the Air Force for 25 years and 28 years respectively. They were enlisted in the Air Force and my father was in the Air Force for 22 years in active duty.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  How did you not get bit by the Air Force bug?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  It was interesting. So going through high school, I'd always knew I'd wanted to serve in the military and started to get interested in the surface academy option as well. So when I lived in Colorado, actually my dad was, I lived with my dad when he was stationed at the Air Force Academy. So we lived on the Air Force Academy when I was there for seventh and eighth grade and just always was drawn to that line of work and.

• 5:38Jocko Willink?

  The Air Force Academy is, that's a nice environment. I mean, it's a really nice environment. It's beautiful campus and, yeah. And, and your dad was working there and that, it seemed, was that not, I mean, when you say you were thinking about the, the military academies, were you thinking of the Air Force Academy as your primary or?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  No. So after that experience, in ninth grade, I moved back and lived with my mom in high school in Delaware. And my senior year of high school had been playing lacrosse up to that point and, and had the opportunity to go and play for Navy or try to walk on at least and had decent relationship with the coaches there. And so I was applying to Navy and Air Force and. Also wanted to be a Navy SEAL, actually, and so at that time I wanted to go to the Naval Academy. And so as soon as I got in and got accepted there, stopped applying in other places and just decided to go there.

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, right on. When, did you visit the Naval Academy? Do you know what was going on at the Naval Academy?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  I thought I did.

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  The only reason I ask that is because like, I mean, I know I was not the most squared away kid. I was kind of a rebellious kid and even though I loved the military, I think if I would have gone to, and I went to West Point when I was a little kid and that kind of got me fired up.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  You know, I think my dad took me to some kind of game there. I mean, I was really young, like maybe seven or eight or something like that, but it was enough to make me go, yeah, you know, I kind of. But I think if I saw it when I was a little bit older, I don't know, I think I would have just said like, I don't know if I can put up with all that right now.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:13Jocko Willink?

  But you, but you did, you were like, I'm, I'm bring it.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  You know, any seventeen year old young man doesn't always have all the, the right motivations. And you know, you have all the reasons why you go to a place like that. And what I found after I had gone there was that those reasons change once you're there. And so I entered in two thousand two, shortly after September eleventh. It wasn't solely out of patriotic duty and every, you know, and those sorts of things. It was because, you know, I had already gotten in, I'd wanted to play lacrosse there. I was in love with my high school sweetheart from Delaware, who's now still my wife of almost thirteen years. And so those were the reasons why I'd initially, you know, decided to go there.

• 7:56Jocko Willink?

  How did that play? How did you have in your high school sweetheart? How did that play into wanting to go into the Naval Academy because you would be close by?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was about an hour drive away.

• 8:03Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  So she could come and

• 8:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  See me on the weekend and that kind of stuff.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  And so those were some of the initial reasons why I went there, in addition to all the patriotic reasons as well. But what I found when I was there and you're challenged and you're tested is those smaller superficial motivators often fade away. Right? And what you're left with is those reasons why I initially went here aren't going to continue to propel me through the rest of this trial. Right? And so. The motivation and the things that I learned from there at that point was the seniors that we had watched and were led by, who had just graduated were literally going forward and leading Marines and sailors in battle. And we literally watched that on television with, you know, the invasion of Iraq and the

• 8:50Speaker 01

  things going on in Afghanistan and really bought into the entire leadership philosophy and wanted to be a part of that and wanted to be that and follow that example. So those were the reasons why I tried to stay and continue to move forward and become a military officer.

• 9:04Jocko Willink?

  I always, well lately, I've been like apologizing to people because there's actually been a pretty decent number of people that have joined the military because of listening to, you know, all of us and the guys that bring on here talk about their experiences and they just think that sounds pretty cool. And I always say, hey, just don't be mad at me, like the first two weeks that you're going through boot camp or whatever, don't be mad at, because it's just, it's like not, it's going to be a shock to your system when you lose all that freedom that you've had. And, but I totally agree with you in the fact that, like, once you get through that initial shock and you realize that there's a long-term thing going on here and you want to be a part of it, that's, yeah, that's, that's, that's awesome.

• 9:46Jocko Willink?

  And especially for you guys that came in after September 11th, because that's, that's a, I don't know if people can appreciate that, what the difference is between the pre-September 11th and post-September 11th. I mean, pre-September 11th, there was almost, in fact, my first deployment to Iraq, my SEAL platoon had zero combat experience, zero, zero. So no one had any combat experience at all. The most things that anyone had done at that point was doing shipboardings in the Persian Gulf, which are, is not combat experience. It's just a, it's just a fairly administrative operation. And now, every single guy, every single guy in the SEAL teams has combat experience, every

• 10:29Jocko Willink?

  single guy, well, I mean, barring maybe a few outliers, but basically every single guy, you know, the Marine Corps, look at the Marine Corps right now, I mean, it's been, it's been, what, 17 years of fighting? And the combat experience is just so incredible compared to... Prior to September 11th, which it was totally rare to have somebody at a SEAL team that was in the first Gulf War, that was in one of the three platoons that got to do something. And, and what they did, you know, God bless them. They were doing their duty, but it wasn't these big, long sustained combat operations.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's interesting, and I think that's something that, you know, I think about a lot today, especially when we talk about millennials and everything else, and they get a bad rap. But everybody knows what they're joining the military to do, like, and some men and women run into the sound of the gun, right? And some don't. And so the people that continue to stay and like, there was no question of what, what you were doing if you signed up to join the Marine Corps or the SEALs, right? Like.

• 11:25Jocko Willink?

  And then how did that selection process, you said you wanted to possibly go in the SEAL teams? How did that work out that you didn't go in the SEAL teams and you, that's gotta be a tough decision to make.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, uh, sometimes it's made for you, right? So, uh, Naval Academy is a very, very humbling experience. Um, and so as I came out of high school, I was kind of a very talented, young athlete and, you know, uh, was able to get in. Um, but I was also from a small town and, you know, didn't have the humility and, and ownership, uh, needed to be a part of the teams. And, uh, that became readily apparent. You know, I was physically capable, but just wasn't mature enough, honestly. Uh, and wasn't, you know, uh, didn't have that right mindset. So I was thoroughly humbled. And then as I was kind of, you know, coming to the realization of what I wanted to do with my life, what, what now, uh, you know,

• 12:14Speaker 01

  had a mentor of mine who I really respected, uh, who was a Marine major and said, you know, Derek, like, I can help you try to get in the Marine Corps if you're still willing to do that. And that's what you want to do. I think you'd make a great officer. And, um, you know, the Marine Corps that you see at the Naval Academy is not what is the reality, right? Of what the fleet does, because I had a really bad taste for Marines there because all the Marines there were drill instructors and it was their job to mess with you. And, uh, so I was like, man, Marines are dumb. I don't want to be like that. Um, but the more I got to know the reality of what it was like in the fleet and what, what real Marines were doing, uh, decided to pursue it and absolutely loved it. It was the best thing for me.

• 12:53Jocko Willink?

  And did you get, so then you go from there to, from the academy, go to the basic school?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Correct. Yeah. So we go to the basic school. We go for the six months of, of the basic school and with every Marine officer. So every Marine officer, ground, air, everybody goes through that same, uh, process. And then during that time, there's another selection. Uh, and so, you know, literally rank every choice you have from. You know, tanks, supply, logistics, finance, add like one through 21 if you're a ground officer or if you're a pilot, obviously you have a flight contract, you don't have to do that. But you rank it and then they do a quality spread to determine what you get. And so in some cases, pre nine 11, like you said, it was, it was really hard and competitive to become an infantry officer. And then when we were there, it was still pretty competitive until about halfway through

• 13:43Speaker 01

  the course or excuse me, like a month out from the end of the course because manpower came down, it was like we're standing up a new infantry regiment, so.

• 13:51Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so, uh, so I think I would have gotten infantry regardless, but either way, got what I wanted, it was my first choice and that's exactly what I wanted to do and move forward and.

• 14:00Jocko Willink?

  And then where'd you, where'd you go from, from there, where'd you?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  So you stay in Quantico for a three month course called Infantry Officers Course.

• 14:07Jocko Willink?

  Gets on.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  And it's amazing.

• 14:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  One of the best, uh, training experiences there are, and so you learn weapon systems, you learn, you know, all different kinds of basics, small unit tactics, everything you need to be able to lead a rifle platoon, um, in, you know, an infantry battalion.

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't know if you, yeah, you said you listened to the, to the podcast with Jim Webb on it and like his, first of all, and so then you went to a battalion and then you started to work up?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:36Jocko Willink?

  And all that?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:37Jocko Willink?

  Jim Webb went from that school to Vietnam and they like brought him out in the field and dropped him off and said, there's your platoon over there. The guy you're replacing is no longer with us and you're going to go take over that battalion. And he walked up on the side of a hill and said, hey, how you doing? I'm Lieutenant Webb and here's what we're going to do. And, and then that night they got in a big firefight and he called in, you know, combined arms and man, but that school must be, must be an awesome school.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  It's pretty amazing, yeah. And, and by the time we were there, we had. Really phenomenal leaders and instructors who were able to teach us because they were fresh off the battlefield in Iraq and were able to teach us exactly what we were going to do. And so for me, I went into a long workup prior to deploying, but some of our guys were just like what happened to Jim Webb.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  No kidding.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  They had maybe a month or were meeting their platoon at their final exercise as they're stepping off to go to Iraq. And so

• 15:29Jocko Willink?

  That's no joke right there.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  It was, yeah, it was pretty interesting. And so for me, you know, I ended up going to a new battalion that was standing up, First Battalion, Ninth Marines, The Walking Dead, and had about a year roughly to work with my platoon and to train before we ended up deploying to Iraq.

• 15:47Jocko Willink?

  And that was just a standard ground pounder infantry platoon?

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Initially, yes. Yeah. And so we were a standard rifle platoon. And then about two months before deployment, based on the needs of the situation in Ramadi where we were deploying to, the decision was made to actually break us down into smaller training teams and advisory teams. And so my platoon of, you know, roughly 40 Marines and sailors turned into two 12-man teams, which I was in charge of one and my platoon sergeant was in charge of another one. And so the reason they did that was because that was roughly the minimum size required to partner with effectively for these police stations.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  And so at that time, due to the successes of people like yourself and the other people that had fought in Ramadi and turned the tide of the battle, we were consolidating and basically, you know, withdrawing a lot of the combat power. And so we took over for two different infantry battalions at another army unit with just one infantry battalion. So we had the entire AO area of operations for just one battalion. And so I had initially one police station that I was partnered with, you know, as a young lieutenant in a 12-man team. We partnered with an Iraqi colonel and over 800 Iraqi police.

• 17:12Jocko Willink?

  Whereabouts were you?

• 17:14Speaker 01

  We were in a small neighborhood just south of Camp Ramadi called Tamim.

• 17:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay, Tamim.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  And so all of Tamim, we were managing with the police there because the police had done such a good job and taken over that, you know, we were in the backseat almost totally.

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  Just to give everyone a, this is 2008, right?

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 17:32Jocko Willink?

  So the major fighting kind of tapered off in

• 17:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh seven, I mean, early oh seven, they were pretty, it was pretty calm. I know the guys that relieved us, by the time they left, it was very calm in Ramadi. Um, you know, obviously, there's still always going to be a threat, but like Tamim, when we were there, there was, there was a lot, there was really bad, big gnarly IEDs in Tamim when we were there and it was, it was, uh, yeah, it was awful. Some of, some of those Humvees would get hit and it would just be, you know, they'd lose three, four, or five guys at a, at a shot. It was, it was horrible. But, you know, that's awesome. And that's, I always try and explain to people that that in Ramadi, we, we actually won. And you know, you're proof of that when you were over there and you guys were, I'm sure doing out civil affairs and, you know,

• 18:23Jocko Willink?

  that type of thing. Is that basically what you were doing?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were, you know, just really just trying to turn it over, uh, to the police there. And so got to sit on, you know, the weekly shurros and the council meetings and hang out and drink tea with the Colonel. Um, and we tried to try to do operations with them and everything, but they locked the place down. I mean, literally by the time we were there, they had, you know, triple strain concertina wire and checkpoints all around the entire cities. They were controlling the flow of, they prevented the flow of any, you know, any material or any fighters. So that, then they did such a good job that honestly, um, I don't think anybody shot at us, the entire deployment. We had a few different smaller IEDs here and there. We had one major

• 19:03Speaker 01

  incident with a vehicle borne IED that killed a lot of our Iraqi policemen, unfortunately. Um, but none of our Americans were involved or had gotten, gotten injured at that time.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  But they were very well trained, uh, fighting force and, you know, they did good work.

• 19:20Jocko Willink?

  How was it setting the expectations for your nineteen year old Marines? That was, that were, you know, on deployment with you, that were expecting to go get some?

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was interesting. So you gotta, you gotta deal, you know, with the missions that you're, you're given, right? And so, um, The average nineteen-year-old Lance Corporal, or eighteen-year-old Lance Corporal at that time, you know, signed up to join to go fight.

• 19:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  That wasn't our mission, and so we were very cognizant of that, and over the year, the workup, we were well-educated too, so we had direct comms with the teams we were turning over with, over Classified Email Network and those sorts of things, and were able to find out exactly what we'd be going into, and so we were able to manage those expectations appropriately.

• 20:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  And because of that, we were, we were successful, I think. Our teams performed well. You know, they're obviously frustrated at times, you know.

• 20:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. No, I, I would have guys ask me that, you know, guys, once I was, while I was back, when I was still in, but guys would say, you know, how am I supposed to get guys fired up to do this mission when it's all we're gonna be doing is drinking tea? And, you know, I'd say, listen, that's, that's still your mission, and you have to do it to the best of your ability, and get the Iraqi police trained up as, as best you can, and like, you still have to just attack it with everything you've got, regardless of what that mission is, and, and that's, hey, man, that's, that's what, that's what the nation is calling on you to do, is that right there, and so go do it to the best of your ability, and that's, again, you know, that's why I asked you that question, 'cause, believe me, you get these young kids, man, they don't wanna have tea with anybody.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  No, they just wanna shoot their saw. Yeah, and, uh, we're pretty fortunate, and, and we did do some interesting things as well, so, uh, because we had access and placement within the neighborhood, um, to me, it was kind of a, a pretty tightly, you know, packed urban area, and a lot of people would come and go, uh, and so at that time, we had great intelligence networks that would able, were able to help, you know, help us identify if somebody didn't belong, and we were able to work with our, our counterparts to, to try to, you know, intervene before they were able to, uh, cause any issues, and so, we mounted up for a few different, uh, raids,

• 21:34Speaker 01

  which, you know, kept, uh, kept the guys motivated and things, but, um, but, it's kind of a, a good and bad thing, right, that, you know, there was no, no fight going on in that regards, um, good in the sense that, you know... The guys are safe and came back and were able to have a successful deployment and still do something really meaningful for the country, but you know, not as as exciting as they would have wanted because that's, you know, what the 18 year old signs up to join to go do.

• 22:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  You know, volunteers to do.

• 22:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't think too many guys walk in that recruiter's office thinking about, you know, police actions or anything like that.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  No.

• 22:11Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, but that's, but you have to set their expectations correctly. And it sounds like you were able to do that. Now, when you came home from that deployment, you you deployed again, but it was like even more, it was even more on the humanitarian side. So what was that like? Well, tell us about that one.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  It was tough too. So before I had actually deployed again, when I came back, I had such a good experience and learned about Marsoc at that time, the Marine Special Operations Command that did selection in between those two deployments.

• 22:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  And was selected. And so at that time, the criteria to get into Marsoc was you had to do two deployments. And so had to go back and train and then deploy again.

• 22:49Jocko Willink?

  So wait, so the selection like buds for Marsoc? Is that what it is?

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Kind of. It's more, it's, we follow more of a Green Beret Army model. So it's modeled very, very similarly to the Special Forces Assessment Selection Process.

• 23:06Jocko Willink?

  So how long is the the training?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  It's about six weeks. And so you go there and you do, you know, the basic tasks associated with selection, including, you know, hiking a lot and land nav and psychological screenings.

• 23:21Jocko Willink?

  So is it more of like a weeding out or are they actually training you for anything?

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, there's no, I wouldn't say there's really much of training. It's a lot of critical thinking and problem solving and and very similar to the SFS as far as like, you know, here's problem set, ethical problem set, physical problem set, teamwork, and you're continually being evaluated. But that's just. A basic evaluation to just get the shot at going to like, you know, go into our training course. And so then we have a seven month long.

• 23:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I got it. So this first thing that you go through is just selection to see if you're going to be able to go through the real course.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay, got it.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, BUDS doesn't do that. You just show up there and that's what, that's one of the reasons the attrition rate's so high. Maybe if we had them pre, and actually I take that back. Now they do have like a pre, you go to like a pre BUDS and you get prepared for it and all that. But um, so you go to that selection and you get picked up. So you go through that thing and they pick you up, but then you haven't done two deployments. They go, no, you still gotta go on deployment again.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:24Jocko Willink?

  And that deployment ends up being a humanitarian deployment.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  For the most part, yeah. Yeah, definitely. So we did what was called the Marine Expeditionary Unit. And so on the Marine Expeditionary Unit, there are Marines embarked aboard naval vessels. And so there's a battalion, infantry battalion.

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I did two, I did two Mew ARG deployments back in the day. So I was out there with all the, all the boys getting after it. That's how I developed a bunch of, you know, I have a bunch of friends that were in the Marine Corps in recon and force recon from that time from doing ARG deployments. So yeah, we, we got our shipboard time. We used to SEALs don't go, don't really do that too much anymore, but.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  No, no. And yeah, and I think that's a good thing. It was tough. That was, that was pretty tough. You know, so talk about motivating your team to stay motivated through seven months of shaking hands and drinking tea in Iraq. And now it's, hey, stay ready and just train on a ship where, you know, you have no room. You don't have any real ability to train. The gym holds six people and there's three treadmills and. You can't get on the flight deck for, you know, whatever, two hours a day.

• 25:36Jocko Willink?

  What kind of ship were you on?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  So I was on, uh, the LPD nineteen. It was a nice, it was newer ship, so it was nice. Uh, and it was good because we were on the, it was a smaller ship, so we weren't on the major, you know, the big deck with the command deck and so, uh, so it was pretty good and, and I had a great deployment because I was a company executive officer. And so I got to spend very little time on the ship, which is a lot of fun because got to go and, uh, plan all the training. And so, uh, you know, we were bouncing around doing different bilateral training missions with, uh, Israel, Jordan, Oman, uh, train in Kuwait, had some liberty time in Qatar, Bahrain, uh, all of the peaceful countries of Middle East. And so it was, it was good.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  It was a really good experience, um, but, you know, a lot of Marines hated it because they were stuck on the ship. They didn't have the luxury that I did to go and get off the ship and, and train. And so it was a, it was interesting deployment.

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those shipboard deployments are, um, very interesting. They were like, we would do the really dumb stuff. First of all, when, when I was on shipboard deployments, there was no internet. There was nothing, so we, we would, yeah. And I mean, we were just dumb. And so we would watch, we had, you know, a big box full of videotapes. Do you know what those are?

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:52Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Video cassettes. Cause there was no whatever streaming Netflix. So we just had like, I don't know, we probably watched twenty movies, five thousand times each. So that era of movies I'm very familiar with. Okay. But, but yeah. And then it was like, you know, the big joke about SEALs is when you're on a ship is sleep, eat and lift. That's what it stands for is sleep, eat and lift because that's all there is to do. And, but we would, we would PT every day out on the flight deck or somewhere on the ship. And then we would try and set up where we'd go shoot skeet. We brought pallets and pallets worth of skeet. So we'd go on the back, the fantail of the ship and throw skeet and shoot it.

• 27:34Jocko Willink?

  Or we'd sit out there with grenade launchers and launch grenades at the, the trash. So we tried to make it fun, you know? But still there's twenty-four hours in a day and there's not a lot to do on a ship.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:49Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very. Pretty boring. And, um, yeah, and for all the listeners too, the, that was the, the reality, pre nine eleven, before there were all these deployments.

• 27:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  That was, you know, you were just, so the, the mission for the Mew was just to, to be prepared in a crisis, as crisis response force essentially. And so for us, we actually had the opportunity to do one real world, uh, mission responding to the earthquake in Haiti, which was, like you said, uh, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. And so, um, right off the bat, as we were getting underway, uh, that had happened a couple of weeks before we were scheduled to deploy. So we got on and went down and were able to, uh, get involved and help out. And so just flew in with, uh, the company Marines and our company was tasked with just helping provide and establish security for a forward staging base, a logistics area, um, for some of the food and water that they were distributing. So.

• 28:43Jocko Willink?

  How bad was it down there?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Pretty terrible. Uh, it was really, really bad. Uh, we flew in on a helicopter, uh, into the giant dirt field, which, you know, we were bouncing sea wire and, you know, setting up fire plan sketches and everything just to, to get, you know, everything squared away. But the level of poverty was pretty, pretty striking for, uh, for us. I mean, we had, uh, Marines standing post and standing guard and everything. And, you know, you see four homeless kids between the age eight and 12, sleeping with, you know, everything they own and they're, they're sharing one blanket outside the wire, just hanging out, you know? Uh, we see like a fistfight, a drag, knockout, drag down, fistfight between two girls that

• 29:27Speaker 01

  are age, whatever, 12 and 14, over a piece of wood, because firewood is like gold there is they just don't have wood. And so that was really, really eye opening experience for us.

• 29:41Jocko Willink?

  And so what were you guys doing? Were you guys bringing water? Were you bringing medical care? What were you doing?

• 29:45Speaker 01

  So, uh, the UN was administering all the food and water. And so they basically dropped us off and, uh, typical Marine Corps fashion, they said, uh, you know, pack light, you'll only be there for 24 hours before we relieve you. And then, uh, as we get on the bird, they're like, okay, it might be like 48. And, uh, by the time we land, they're like, we're not sure when you're getting out. So, um, so we ended up staying for about nine days in, you know, I had to beg, borrow and steal things there. But our job was just to literally. Make sure that, you know, overnight, they could drop off sixty shipping trailers, ISO containers of food and water, and that people weren't gonna.

• 30:22Jocko Willink?

  Who distributed the food and water?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  It was primarily the UN force there. So I think at that time, it was a lot of, I think it was a primary Brazilian force. And so they would come in in the mornings, load up and go and distribute it. And I know that was different for a lot of other places, but for us, that was, that was the mission that we had, and that was the kind of the way it worked. So it was a very short temporary stint, and then got back on the ships and steamed across the Atlantic.

• 30:46Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then hit all a bunch of exercises and whatnot, like you said, over in the Gulf?

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So unfortunately, we didn't get to do the exercise we'd planned for Israel, because we're in Haiti instead. So we went straight to, I think it was Jordan, where we did infinite moonlight, I think, at that time. And we're able to do some basic patrolling with the Jordanian soldiers. That was kind of cool, actually, because not only is Jordan just an amazing country to be in, but those people that we were training with were some of the same units that were going to fight in Afghanistan.

• 31:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  And so the Jordanians provided a good contingent of forces to go, go forward in Afghanistan. So that was, that was fun. Getting to work with those guys and to train with those guys. And then we trained with Omani soldiers, and that was pretty interesting as well. The thing we learned, which was really interesting, was actual Omanis, there's not, they're a really small population. So they have, at least the units that we were working with had some, some conscripts from Pakistan, essentially Beluchistan. And so the officers spoke Arabic, and they were Omani, but the rest of the platoon was all Beluchi and, you know, spoke. Balucci.

• 32:07Jocko Willink?

  Huh.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  And so it was kind of interesting to see how that worked, but uh.

• 32:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Very capable force, had a good time.

• 32:13Jocko Willink?

  No kidding.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Fighting with those guys and so, yeah.

• 32:17Jocko Willink?

  Modern day conscripts.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I mean, they all volunteered, I mean, they, they, I guess technically concert might not be the right word. They all volunteered to be there and so we talked to another platoon sergeant and he's like, hey.

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  So it's like a way for them to make money and get a better life for themselves.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  So he's like, hey, the deal is, is I've been here for 20 years. I love doing this job and I will send money home back to my family and if I make it to 30, they'll let me bring my family over here.

• 32:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  So he hadn't seen his family in 20 years, but he's, you know, trying to better their law and life by going forward to, you know, live and fight for another country.

• 32:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Which, you know, you can't, can't fault him for that. Like that's, that's what they want to work with.

• 32:52Jocko Willink?

  All right. So you get home, you get home from that deployment and now it's time to go to, what's the, what's the long course of Marsoc? What's that course called?

• 32:59Speaker 01

  It's called individual training course. And so it is uh, pretty similar to other special forces training courses. So.

• 33:08Jocko Willink?

  Where is it?

• 33:08Speaker 01

  It's in Lord North Carolina, Camp Lejeune. Uh, and so we have a small uh, portion of the base there now where we've established the pretty sizable compound. And so I'd say probably 80 to 90% of the Marine Special Operations Command is headquartered there. And then they have a small west coast contingent out here at Camp Pendleton. And so the entire schoolhouse is there. Uh, and that's where every operator goes through training.

• 33:33Jocko Willink?

  And how long is that course?

• 33:35Speaker 01

  It's about seven to eight months.

• 33:36Jocko Willink?

  And what are you doing in that course?

• 33:38Speaker 01

  So that is a course that encompasses all of the basic fundamentals required to join a team and to be an operator. So we do, uh, the first phase is uh, some physical training. Uh, you know, you do some basic fire support, some medical training, you do your SER, uh, your full spectrum SER training there. Uh, and then you move into some basic uh, SR and patrolling to special reconnaissance and basic, you know, uh, reconnaissance skills.

• 34:06Jocko Willink?

  Are guys, this, so this isn't really a selection course then?

• 34:08Speaker 01

  I mean. No, this is a training course.

• 34:10Jocko Willink?

  But, but like.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  But it's pretty high stakes too and guys are quitting or.

• 34:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so guys quit?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, plenty of guys quit.

• 34:16Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 34:17Speaker 01

  It's not easy. Yeah. So we kind of, uh,

• 34:19Jocko Willink?

  It just, it, the, the way, you know, it just seems like if someone was a marine already, and then they made it through that first course, and now they show up at this course, it seems like that's, that's a lot of hoops to jump through to get to there and then quit. That seems kind of a little bit crazy.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, we had some great instructors and, uh, they, uh, they pushed us hard, right? They tried to break us.

• 34:41Jocko Willink?

  What do they do? What is it like the same? Is it like the BUDS type stuff? Be cold, be wet, be tired, be miserable, no sleep? It's just get some of that?

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. For the most part. And kind of a mix of BUDS and SQT, probably mixed together. And so, one of the things that they were able to do with, within MARSAK is to try to take lessons learned and invest practices from all of the other services. And so whether it was, you know, the Q course, or BUDS, or SQT, or OTC, or anything else, the instructors kind of looked at what was going on in other courses and looked at the requirement for marine raiders, uh, coming out the backside. Um, cause some of those guys will graduate and we had guys deploy within a month or two later on hot fills out to go operate. So.

• 35:26Jocko Willink?

  Do they, do they put you through like another like crucible type scenario?

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it kind of makes, uh, it's called Raider Spirit and.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's, that sounds real fun. That's one of those things like, I'm gonna get you with a little bit of that Raider Spirit. Come get some.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And it's, uh, a varying length depending upon the class and the size and the performance. But, uh, at that point, you're trained in, um, your amphib package, your basic small boat handling. Uh, you're trained in, you know, basic reconnaissance and in those principles, all your comms and everything else. So, uh, it's basically a full fit, full mission profile for, you know, including an amphibious insert, which for us was, I think like January.

• 36:09Jocko Willink?

  Get some.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Maybe. And so, uh, and then same thing, you know, limited sleep, limited water, limited food type thing. So, pretty, pretty, uh, intense.

• 36:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. It just seems like a super, uh, the Marine Corps squared away and it, that's, this whole thing sounds like a squared away way to do this. Because if you look at BUDS.

• 36:33Jocko Willink?

  You don't even have real guns, most of Bud's. You don't even have rifles. You're carrying, you're literally carrying a boat paddle. They kind of make that your weapon because you can't lose it and you can't put it down, all this stuff, but it's a boat paddle. I mean, you're just, you're so, you're just so young and untrained, you know, you just have no skills. And so there's no, it's just, and they teach, you know, when you get to land warfare, you teach, you learn some basic diving, but the diving that you learn is just so, so just, just easy, like, looking back on it's just the easiest possible things you could possibly do diving. And the same thing with the land warfare pieces, like, they're telling you, hey, walk this far.

• 37:16Jocko Willink?

  And like, they're telling you exactly where to go. It's not even, it's barely, you do land nav, but it's barely land nav. And it's, and it's good because, you know, it weeds out a lot of people, but then you have to go through, like you said, SQT, which comes afterwards. And that's where you start learning, okay, this is real land nav. Okay, this is real shooting. Okay, this is, you know, actual room entries. And then you get to a SEAL team where you go through more training. But it seems like, that's why I was kind of, I guess I was kind of surprised that guys that had been through enough stuff already would get to that and still be like, ah, you know, I don't want to do this. That seems crazy to me.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a gut check. I mean, and that's one of the things that is interesting, you know, Bud's does a good job of weeding people out up front. And so you have a pretty high quality care, you know, as far as the intangibles, the ethical and character principles. And then for us, you know, it's kind of, I would say more on a sustained.

• 38:15Jocko Willink?

  Sustained beat down.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, we started, I think we started the course with like 50 or 60 guys and 13 of the original guys finished.

• 38:25Jocko Willink?

  No kidding.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  That's changed a lot since then. So we've grown up a lot since then. And, and just like Bud's has, right? Like,

• 38:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  You know,

• 38:31Jocko Willink?

  I bet back in the day, those, those new Marsoc instructors were like, no one's getting through my course.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and rightfully so. But the cool thing about it now, I see both sides of the token, but the cool thing about it now is that. We want more guy, we need more guys.

• 38:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  We don't want to lower the standards.

• 38:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  So why don't we just be smarter about it, right? Like if we do a better job of selecting guys or get more guys starting or whatever else, right? Like if the output is a trained operator and we need, need these guys, then.

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  Was there any part of that training that you thought was hard?

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of it was.

• 39:05Jocko Willink?

  Was there anything that you were in jeopardy on where?

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Actually, yeah, so same thing, right? So hum, you know, Naval Academy was humbling, being in the Marine Corps has been humbling. And at that point, I was a pretty humble guy. Um, and so I did really well throughout the majority of training. And, uh, so in the last phase.

• 39:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, feeling good about yourself.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  I was okay, but I said, you know, so we were doing the unconventional warfare package very similar to, uh, very similar to, uh, what the Greenbays do with their final exercise and infiling with the G-force and everything else. And so was doing well and then, uh, had a bad meeting where somebody thought I came off a little bit arrogant with our G-force commander and everything. And so then they just kind of, you know, put the spotlight on me and, you know, put me, put me on the bubble, right? Cause like you fail anything and you're done. And so, you know, that was one of the scarier times, right? Cause I had committed years of my life to be able to be doing this successfully. And then in a moment, you know, if I can't figure out how to make this guy like me or this G-force commander, you know, execute this mission with me, like I'm on the bubble, right?

• 40:12Speaker 01

  And I think, you know, some of it's instructors messing around, but they're, they're just testing you, right? Like, you know, see.

• 40:17Jocko Willink?

  How are you gonna handle it?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Deal with failure, right? Cause if you've been successful thus far in a, a good number of things, uh, let's push him beyond his limit. Let's break him and see what happens, right? And, and I don't know if that was exactly the case I didn't see behind the curtain, but I survived.

• 40:30Jocko Willink?

  I failed something called pool competency.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 40:34Jocko Willink?

  And I failed pool competency, which is they put, they put your dive rig on, which is an old school dive rig with a. With an inhalation and an exhalation tube and it's this this old thing from like the sixties or seventies or something Aqua Lung and you have to do all this stuff that they tell you to do underwater and they're they're slapping you around and smashing you and ripping your mask off and ripping your regulator out and all this stuff and you have to stay calm and you have to go through all these procedures and when I went through it was a 30 minute evolution and the first time I did it my instructor who ended up working for me in the future he was a well he was a first class at the time but he became a warrant officer

• 41:17Jocko Willink?

  but he's a UDT Vietnam guy an awesome guy but he failed me and yeah so I failed and years later I talked to him and I was like hey you remember putting me through pool comp he said yeah I was just messing with you and I'm like bro you almost ruined my life what are you talking about you're just mad he goes no I knew you'd do fine next time but same thing like it was a test of let's just see how this guy does but what we did over the weekend me and a couple buddies that were that had also failed we went in the dip tank which was just a square metal box that was filled with water and we pool comped each other this I don't even I can't even believe we did this it was probably the most unsafe thing I did or one of the top unsafe things I did was we drowned each

• 42:02Jocko Willink?

  other and trashed each other getting ready and we did it to each other over and over again until we were like there's no way we're gonna fail and so that's what we did like there's four of us or something we just spent the weekend in the I don't even I can't even believe they let us do that they just gave us dive gear and so you're just gonna play with a dive gear cool we're in the dip tank like idiots Different time right? Yeah yeah but it is humbling and it's one of those things you know there's no worse feeling for me than that feeling of like oh if I fail this this is this is like my whole life dream done and destroyed so yeah they make they play those they play those games with you and I think they have to play those games with you because you're gonna fail in other situations once you get to the to the teams you know you want it you

• 42:47Jocko Willink?

  do want to see how people are gonna deal with failure and they would do things like that in BUDs where you know They would, there would be seven people that would pass a swim. And everyone else is a failure and they, you know, tell us, they'd line us all up. And make every single, make a hundred guys sign a chit that we were loser failures on the swim. And if they fail, if we fail again, we're going to be dropped from training. I don't think that was actually true. I don't know, but it didn't, looking back at the time, I believe. At the time I was like, oh my God. So they do a good job of that psychological warfare on you. In that training.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And actually before that too, that, you know, another pretty intense phase. So we did the CQB, initial CQB phase, uh, prior to that too. And so that one was, same thing, that was pretty high stakes, pretty high, you know, high stress.

• 43:36Jocko Willink?

  Did you mess up?

• 43:38Speaker 01

  No, I, I was, I was okay there. Yeah. I didn't have any issues.

• 43:41Jocko Willink?

  You throw any rounds? You shoot any hostages?

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Nah.

• 43:45Jocko Willink?

  I shot a hostage one time. Yeah. I shot a hostage just in training, but yeah, obviously just in training. But this guy, they had a target set up. You know, those, those, they look like watercolor painting targets. That, so they're different characters and you could take little, you could take the person's hand and you could paste over like a pistol or a cell phone or a badge or a whatever. So I come into this room and it's, it's kind of dusk and this was, this was back in the day. So we didn't even use night vision. This is just like day, you know, we're just shooting with our eyesight, our regular eyesight. And I come in and there's a guy and I look at his hands and I see like a dark pipe pointed at me. And I drilled this dude, you know, two to the chest, one to the head.

• 44:29Jocko Willink?

  Gets, and we get done with the run and the instructor, he comes out and he's like, he's holding the target in his hands. And he's like, he's like, hey, Jocko, look at this. And I was like, check. And he goes, what do you see? And uh, and what it was, was it was allegedly, it was a rolled up newspaper that he was pointing at the, at the, at you, you know, at me. And it looked like the barrel of a gun. And I, and I, I looked at the instructor, I was like, hey, bro, if I come into a room and someone's doing that, they're gonna die. I'm sorry, man, you can't do that. Cause the guy looks all jacked. He's this guy, this guy with the green shirt, I'm gonna find one of these and post it, cause I'm

• 45:12Jocko Willink?

  sure you can find him. It's the guy with the green shirt, super thick neck and looks all hostile and aggressive. And he's pointing this pipe at me. And I drilled him. And I got in trouble. That was my, you know, I had whatever, had to run a tire or something like that. But um, that was when I was in the teams. That was, you know, hey, yeah, horrible. And you do, you know, even, even though I was like, hey, I'll do that anyways. But inside, and you know, even though I was like, man, that, you know, you gotta be better than that. And that was, that was jacked up for me to do that. And so I had to check hands more carefully and be more patient in taking that shot to make sure what I'm looking at is what I'm looking at. So yeah, failure is a good teacher and it's very humbling. And then, so do you guys have like a full on graduation ceremony from that?

• 45:57Jocko Willink?

  Do you get a pin? Do you get that, that new raider pin?

• 46:00Speaker 01

  They do now. Yeah, we didn't have one at the time. So we've, we've grown up. We weren't called Raiders and we didn't have a pin. So we just got a little certificate and handshake and sent on our way.

• 46:10Jocko Willink?

  And then you went to where?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Uh, and then I was, uh, signed to Camp Pendleton, California. So I moved out here with my wife and joined First Marine Raider Battalion. And

• 46:20Jocko Willink?

  And that was your first time being out at Pendleton?

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah.

• 46:22Jocko Willink?

  How you like Pendleton?

• 46:23Speaker 01

  I love it. It's awesome. Still live here. Uh, didn't make it far, even though my wife's family, all our family is still in Delaware. So we, uh, we love it here. Hope to never leave.

• 46:33Jocko Willink?

  It's Pendleton is, is awesome training ground. I mean, really awesome training ground.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, it's great. Great place to train. Uh, we did a lot of our training there and, uh, typical places out in the desert, you know, like Fort Irwin and a couple of other places. But yeah, it's, it's good and it's massive. I had no idea how big it was, but just huge.

• 46:55Jocko Willink?

  And then how long was that work up for?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  We had, so I arrived in August and I was in the, the three shop in the operations section, uh, before I went to a team for about two months. And then we deployed in May, so about nine months that I was with the team, they had done their, the workup cycle, I think, was probably similar to, you know, what the SEAL teams had done, where it's, you know, you come back, you go back and immediately guys are shotgunned out to schools, individual training, and then come back to collective training and then deploy. So I had gotten there right when everyone was trickling back in from a lot of the individual schools that they were going to.

• 47:32Jocko Willink?

  And then how big is the team that you take over?

• 47:35Speaker 01

  We had 20 total with attachments, and so each team is about 14, or not about exactly 14. So there's, you know, small headquarters element and then two foreman elements, two corpsmen, you know, medics. And then we plus up with our intel assets and EOD and got in country, got some dog handlers and some other stuff as well with our team.

• 48:03Jocko Willink?

  And then, and that, when you say got in country, this is, this is you deployed to Afghanistan?

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:08Jocko Willink?

  And now it's 2012?

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah, 2012. So I'd gotten out of training in 2011 and then deployed in May of 2012.

• 48:18Jocko Willink?

  And then what was that, when you were going into that deployment, what was the atmosphere in Afghanistan at that time?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  The atmosphere was different, depending upon the region you were in, very, very different. So where we were going was highly kinetic, bad guys running around all over the place, just kill or be killed, and focusing a lot on security and combat operations. And so there were two mission sets that our teams would, would perform. Either they would be doing a program called Village Stability Operations, which is what we were doing, or they would be assigned to a Commando Kandak Battalion, which is more like Afghanistan's version of, you know, Ranger Regiment or anything else. And so when we deployed, we deployed with a company. So we had three Marine teams. One of our teams took over a Commando mission,

• 49:10Speaker 01

  and then the other two were doing Village Stability Operations. And then as we deployed, we took over a couple of SEAL units and a Green Beret team as well that reported to our, our company headquarters as well. So specifically for our team where we went, we were in very, very primitive rural area in the middle of the Helmand Province, right in the Green Zone, and So the

• 49:35Jocko Willink?

  Which green zone means something different in Afghanistan than it did in Iraq. Green zone in Iraq was uh an area in Baghdad, actually, that was that was controlled and safe and and all good to go for Americans and there was, you know, other people living there and whatnot. It is a safe zone and the green zone in Afghanistan is not that.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  No, no. So the green zone in Afghanistan literally is uh due to vegetation. And so the green zone, Afghanistan is mostly arid or desert climate and uh there's very little uh green areas or good farmland essentially. And I think it was in the sixties, uh I think it was uh the USAID or another international development agency built another canal off of the Helmand River. And so in between those two waterways was good farmland because uh farmers there would, you know, cut out canals and everything else to grow crops. And so this was like one of the only green areas in the entire country. Um so that's what they they mean in the Afghanistan version of the green zone.

• 50:41Jocko Willink?

  And since there's vegetation is also cover and concealment for fighters, for enemy fighters.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so where we were, it was it was tough because guys would use those canals to sneak up and it was very undulating or hilly terrain. Um I would consider and when I try to explain it to most people too, I consider it more more similar to trench warfare than just desert open warfare where you can see other people. Um people are very able to, especially with some of the the urban structures there as well. Uh some of the enemy fighters would be able to to creep up and and, you know, try to get the drop on you and get close to your position.

• 51:21Jocko Willink?

  So these, so you were doing VSO, the Village Stability Operations. And what did that, what did, kind of what was your standard VSO mission look like? What was that deal?

• 51:34Speaker 01

  So for the VSO mission, we had three lines of effort. So the first was to establish security. And the second was to try to revive economic development. And then the third was to link political governance. So the three lines of effort, security, development, governance, for political governance. Couldn't really focus on economic development or political governance if the villagers didn't have security. And so, one of the first things that we did, and we took over a pretty capable force, because people had been doing this mission a lot before us in this region, they would train and equip a small police force called the Afghan Local Police. And so, the idea was, was if you take people in these small communities that are from there, train

• 52:19Speaker 01

  them, pay them to provide security, that they would be more effective at providing security than any Americans would be, which is, in most cases, very true. And so, we took over this site, and we had about, I think, probably 100 or more Afghans that were on our payrolls to help go and provide security for the area. And so, that was primarily what we focused on, because we were still trying to train them, get them to a place where they could provide security for themselves.

• 52:49Jocko Willink?

  So, is this multiple villages in like, an area that you're providing security for, that these Afghans are providing security, or is it like, one big, you know, like, larger village?

• 52:59Speaker 01

  For us, it was just one village. And it wasn't even, I mean, it wasn't even that big, honestly. So, we literally, as far as operational areas and things, I think ours was a few kilometers, max. So, we were, yeah, because-

• 53:14Jocko Willink?

  Super focused.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Where we were was essentially a minefield. We were right in the middle of this contested region, prime poppy-growing area. So, Taliban wanted it, and the farmers would grow poppy, and that was their economic, you know, that was their payday, their paychecks. And so, very complex problem to try to change. And so, we-

• 53:39Jocko Willink?

  So, did you live in the villages? Did you live there?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:42Jocko Willink?

  So, you took over some houses or whatever, and then you set up your base of operations, and you lived there?

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Essentially, yeah. We took, basically- We weren't able to really take over any houses, uh, cause all the houses that run occupied were all full of IEDs. So the TTP and basically what we had done at that time was, uh, wherever we were going to set up, we would bulldoze and just build structures on our own, you know, HESCO barriers, but it was very primitive. We had no, no running water, just living in a dust bowl, essentially. Um, get some towers up for security and then that was pretty much it.

• 54:16Jocko Willink?

  And there's how many of you out in this remote location?

• 54:20Speaker 01

  We ended up having two sites and so we had mutually supporting positions within our team. And I think we had probably 60 Americans. So we had our 20 guys and then we actually had a trailer platoon of army infantry, uh, guys out there as well. And so they would help provide security and stand post and, and allow us to go out and do missions.

• 54:41Jocko Willink?

  So now you get into doing missions and what, what does that look like? You're going out, you, you, you have to take people, you have to move people, you have to go and meet people. Like what was the kind of standard, um, when you, when you say mission to execute from those little forward operating bases? What was kind of the standard mission that you would execute?

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the, the missions varied, but for the most part, uh, and I was only there for about two months, uh, before I'd gotten injured and came back. But, um, the team we took over for had done a really good job and they had some very challenging human, uh, dynamics within the AO. Um, they were getting attacked multiple times a day. So, uh, when we got there, we tried to do whatever we could to, to proactively prevent that from happening. And so the standard practice that we would do is, uh, we'd go outside ambush patrols, uh, try to find guys who were coming to kill us and kill them before they got

• 55:43Speaker 01

  us. So, uh, to do that is not an insignificant task, especially when you're going through a minefield. Uh, and so the TTPs that we kind of used at that time was we would go into the cover of darkness, uh, which would allow us time to slowly and methodically get to wherever we wanted to go, uh, take over a compound or a building, um, and then just stay there all day and observe and see what happened. And then that next night usually exfil under the cover of darkness again. And the main, main reason we did that was because... A lot of the IEDs that were out and set up were in positions where, there were just so

• 56:25Speaker 01

  many of them, and they were in positions that were advantageous and would be, you know, observed by the enemy. And so if an entire compound had a few different IEDs in it, and we started to realize that, hey, we can't go in these compounds, or we can't go near them, because if there's nobody in it, most of the time they have IEDs, the enemy would then wait until we were in a position and just fire a few shots at us, trying to drive us into those positions and things. And so, just in general, we just preferred to operate at night, because they didn't have night vision capabilities, they weren't able to shoot at us at night, and we would be able to take our time and move very slowly and methodically through the IED threat that we encountered. And so that's

• 57:07Speaker 01

  how we were able to try to mitigate that. And that was, you know, how we would usually conduct those missions.

• 57:14Jocko Willink?

  And then, there, how often would you actually get contact once you were out set up in an ambush position?

• 57:20Speaker 01

  I think, almost, almost 100% of the time. Felt like that at least. And so, we wouldn't go out every day, so we'd stagger these, and obviously with the operational, you know, the number of people that we had, we're trying to maximize the bank for our buck, and to be very efficient with that, while also running other operations and trying to build the police force and other types of, you know, lines of operation. And so, we'd go probably every few days.

• 57:51Jocko Willink?

  So this is a very aggressive VSO mission?

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:55Jocko Willink?

  I mean, this is a lot more aggressive than I was thinking.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  The term that was thrown around by some of the guys was Smash Mouth, VSO. And so, if you look at the entire landscape of Afghanistan from the highest levels of command and everything, there were, you know, green, yellow, and red areas. And if you looked at that based on enemy activity or friendliness to coalition forces... The traditional model for VSO was, hey, put them in yellow areas that, you know, were likely to be successful.

• 58:26Jocko Willink?

  We can make some progress.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Not in red areas, right, where people will just fight to the death and, you know, there's no chance of this happening. And so

• 58:36Speaker 01

  different people have different thoughts of what's green, yellow and red. And so we ended up there and that was our mission and we tried to make the most of it. So, but yeah, very different. And so that, and we even had teams, other Marines were out in the West in Herat Province, uh, which was very different than the Helmand Province. And so out in Herat Province, guys are, you know, walking around with just a pistol and driving on motorbikes and, you know, drinking tea and hanging out, no helmets, like, you know, not getting shot at. Very, very, very different experience than, than where we were.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  And that, that was great because, you know, we're just glad different places of, you know, different portions of the country were, were successful.

• 59:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  With that mission set. And I think to a large degree, most of the, the special operations units that conducted that mission were very successful.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  And for us, you know, it's debatable how successful we were, but that was a very different environment.

• 59:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know there were guys that were going over to do it and they would ask me about, you know, what do you think of this? We're going to do this village stability thing. And I was like, oh, you're going to go out in the middle of, you know, Indian country with your platoon? That's going to be an awesome mission. Like, it's going to be great. Go get some. Go do, do a good job. I mean, that's just a, it's a cool mission. It's just to be out there on your own. I mean, how much oversight did you have out there?

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Not much. I mean, and that was, that was one of the coolest things was having the freedom to go and, and execute. And so, you know, whether or not it was, you know, destined for success, based on what the situation was, we were going to do the best we could to, to make it success. And we had a lot of resources to do that, whether it was, you know, the intelligence assets that we had at our disposal. Uh, you know, as a captain in the Marine Corps had assets that were like more than a Mew commander, right? Uh, and same thing for CAS and, and air support.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  ROE was a bit restrictive for conventional forces. And for us, you know, we were able to, as long as we met certain criteria and, and, you know, able to justify it, we're able to drop CAS where we needed to, um, you know, which was very different. And so we did the best we could and made the most of it.

• 1:00:47Jocko Willink?

  And then you're a couple of months into deployment and that's when you got wounded?

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Jocko Willink?

  And what happened on that op?

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we were starting to have some successes with the security bubble that we were establishing. And so we pushed a little bit further from our base to try to see where we thought there would be enemy activity. And so we went about, I think, maybe a click and a half on foot from our base and found ourselves in Indian country, essentially. So we occupied a compound on the cover of darkness and shortly after the sun rose, immediately started seeing heavy activity around us and started getting engaged from multiple directions with different weapon systems.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  And so shortly after that happened, there were three Marines on the rooftop of the compound that we're in. We had the rest of the Marines down, surrounded, protected, to be protected by the rest of the compound walls. So most of the construction in Afghanistan is mud, mud huts.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  And despite not having running water, electricity, or anything, they were able to build these massive fortifications around each house. And so the walls would protect you, but you can't see anything. So you also don't have situational awareness on what's going on. And so as the commander, as the leader of the patrol, swapped out with Brian Jacklin, who was on the rooftop at that time, to try to get awareness. And so started observing different things going on and, you know, as I was up there, an enemy fighter had engaged us from our flank. And so myself and another Marine on the rooftop were shot. A third Marine was able to roll off without getting shot. And so immediately a bullet went into my shoulder and into my spine. And so I just felt a pulsing sensation in my back and kind of slumped over,

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  saw Ricky, who was the sergeant to my left. He had been shot through the neck and was face down on the rooftop.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Tried to triage myself, pick myself up and realized that nothing below my chest was working. And so immediately got on the radio, called my guys, told them that I'd been hit and that Ricky had been hit. And they sprung into action. And so took the initiative to return fire, gain fire superiority and triage us and continue to fight.

• 1:03:10Jocko Willink?

  And how long did that last?

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  It's a long time.

• 1:03:14Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you're out there in the middle of nowhere and you're in a really hostile situation. How long did it take to get assets there?

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Assets were pretty timely, but it was also a very chaotic situation. So at that time, we had 10 Americans out on the mission. We had 10 of our Afghan partnered force with us. And so now we're down to eight Americans, two are critically wounded. We had to pull guns off the line as well to treat us. So our medic immediately started treating Ricky and I. Another Marine started treating me as well, so that leaves six. Brian Jaclyn immediately got on the radio and started to try to

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  call in for medevac and air support. At that same moment, Murphy's Law kicked in as well and the satcom antenna came down. So our satcom antenna came down. So we're now, Brian was relaying through our main position, all the information that was going on. And so it became pretty chaotic and it took about, I think 30 minutes or so before the medevac helicopters were able to come in and get us out.

• 1:04:29Jocko Willink?

  Man, and how bad, what was the, what was the other guy's name that was hit?

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Ricky. Ricky, yeah.

• 1:04:36Jocko Willink?

  So he got shot in the neck, like what, what was that all about?

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, we all thought he was dead. And turns out he was very, very, very lucky. So missed everything important in his neck, missed his windpipe, missed his spine. He was unconscious for a while and we were both off the rooftop and our medic started working on him, trying to bring him back to life while another Marine was trying to keep me stable. And so.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Put some click clot and different clotting agents in his neck and all of a sudden Rick kinda woke up and made like a zombie moan and was like uh and was like blinking and stuff and so turned out fine and luckily today he's you know he's left the service but he just he's about to graduate from college he's into bodybuilding and you know he's doing great which is awesome. And so at that time he was pretty stable and I started to take it a little bit of a turn for the worse because the bullet that went in my shoulder had also kinda punctured one of my lungs and so I started to have blood pooling in my uh the left side of my chest cavity and so uh guys were trying to get us out of there.

• 1:05:44Jocko Willink?

  Were you conscious?

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  I was, yeah. Yeah, for the most part until towards towards the end where I started to to fade a little bit.

• 1:05:52Jocko Willink?

  And then did you did you eventually just did you pass out that they hit you with morphine? What'd they what'd they do?

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  I didn't get any drugs until I don't think I got any drugs until I got on the helicopter. And then while I was on the helicopter passed out and woke up in a hospital in Afghanistan. But I do remember the event and so I remember making the radio call to my teammates while I was on the rooftop remember getting pulled down remember talking to Hafiz, one of the Marines who was working on me, talking him through a needle D. Uh as he was giving me a needle D trying to tell him and talk to him and stuff and he said uh you know he said some said some interesting things while I was there too and you know.

• 1:06:35Jocko Willink?

  So just to give people a little bit of a visual on that a needle decompression is when you're when somebody is gonna take a what like a 14 gauge needle or something like that and jam it in between your ribs into your lung cavity to allow some pressure out. And you had to talk him through that?

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  He knew what he was doing but I was just you know just trying to encourage him in different things and so at that time I was also trying to relay information to help them find the bad guys you know find who they were trying to uh return fire for or against and so uh was talking them on trying to talk them on initially and then after that was just trying to talk to him to make sure make you know.

• 1:07:16Jocko Willink?

  And then the helicopters set down in your compound?

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  No, they couldn't so that was a big challenge and so uh what happened and what Brian Jacqueline was awarded the Navy Cross for and a lot of other guys who all risked their lives to save ours. Did was they had to call in helicopters out into an open field despite being under fire. And so they prepped the area with as much air support as they could, called in the bird and the bird landed. Brian blew a breach in the compound wall through smoke. And then literally what he said was, if you get hit on the way to the chopper, jump in, follow me and led the way. And without hesitation, the other guys carried us out into the open. And I'm

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  not a small guy, you know, I'm 200 pounds of, you know, barrel chested freedom fighter, just like most of us with a lot of kit on too. And so those guys carrying us out there, we're in a poleless litter. And so to carry us, it takes four guys and they can't return fire. They can't pick up their weapon and engage the enemy. So they're totally exposed and without hesitation, ran out there and doing the bullet dance, dodging bullets, trying to get us on the bird and get us out of there. And I'm alive today because of that. And so that for me, what I tell people when I talk about this is, is one of the best days of my life. And so, you know, it was one of the worst days of my life too, because I, you

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  know, suffered this spinal cord injury and was paralyzed from the chest down for however long that may be. But it was one of the best days of my life because a team that I was fortunate enough to lead, a team that I was fortunate enough to be a part of, displayed the highest levels of selflessness and sacrifice and courage on the battlefield. And just to witness that and to be a part of that, you know, is something I'll never forget and something I'll be proud of for the rest of my life. So.

• 1:09:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And if, in case anyone missed it, the, the opening for this was actually, those are, those are Gunnery Sergeant Jaclyn's words that he, that he gave during a speech. And I thought they were just so, they were just awesome words. So I figured I'd share them with some people. And obviously the rest of the guys, you know, a bunch of kickass guys that, like you said, I mean, just incredible heroism across the board from, from your team. You now, and by the way, and actually, and Jaclyn mentioned this in his speech as well, there were some SEALs, like you said, I guess it was the guys that were under you, the guys from SEAL Team Three that came in.

• 1:09:55Jocko Willink?

  And I actually talked to one of those guys today, because I knew, you know, because you were coming on and I just, it was, I talked to him with Dan Crenshaw, and, and I just told him, you know, I said, hey, I'm talking to Derek today, and he's like, oh, that's awesome. And it was just cool. It was just cool to hear the praise coming from Jaclyn, and that's exactly the same thing that Dan Crenshaw said. He's like, yeah, those guys were awesome. That's just, that's, you know, I said, I go, you were on that mission, right? And he goes, he goes, oh, yeah. He goes, those guys were awesome. That's what he said. And it was cool to hear Jaclyn saying the same thing. And, you know, a lot of times people get,

• 1:10:32Jocko Willink?

  I guess people get caught up in whatever it is, inter-service rivalry, and I actually literally have zero of that. Especially after my deployment to Ramadi, I have zero inter-service rivalry of any kind. Like, if you're on the battlefield and you have an American flag on your uniform, you are my brother. And it was awesome to hear that feedback from both those guys.

• 1:10:57Jocko Willink?

  You, you wake up in a hospital, and you're in Afghanistan?

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, I wake up in Camp Bastion.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  Doctor's there, and he's like, hey, Captain, you got shot, and you may, you know, you're paralyzed and you may never walk again. I just kind of stare at him and say, yeah, I know. I kind of had this awkward stare off, like, hey, had anybody told my wife yet? He's like, no. He just kind of stares at me, and I'm like, go get me a goddamn phone.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Yeah, got it. And so, brings over the phone, and I wake my wife up in the middle of the night.

• 1:11:40Jocko Willink?

  So you knew immediately?

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  I knew, yeah, I knew that that was the case, literally the second I got shot, you know, because I tried to pick myself up and.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  It's hard to understand if you, you've never experienced it, but you know, if just your body is numb and nothing works, then you know, you know, and so like totally knew that that was the case and didn't know how long it would last, but I knew that that was what the issue was. And so, um, called my wife and woke her up, told her, you know, hey, I've been shot, paralyzed, I may never walk again, I'm coming home. And so that was a pretty tough time and you know, pretty tough phone call to make, but uh, through it all, we're just really happy that I was able to make that phone call, you know, because a lot of guys don't get to do that. And so then moved on, um, got evac to Germany, spent

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  a couple of days there. They didn't do anything. Uh, for my condition, just kind of waited transport back to Bethesda, uh, where I checked in and, and, uh, met my wife and family and they started to do some other surgeries, remove the bullet from my spine and some other, uh, other things. And so our guys at that time too, were, they, uh, they stayed put in the compound and fought for the rest of the day. Um, repelled a few different enemy assaults. And then, as you mentioned, the SEAL team, uh, that had come in to be the quick reactionary force for them, uh, came in at night and Jaclyn did the, the turnover with them. Um, they came in to kind of reinforce the area and do some, some battle damage

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  assessment. Uh, and then that's when Dan had gotten injured. And so, um, so the guys had gotten out and you know, the rest of our guys made it out of that day without, without any further injuries. Uh, and so was in Bethesda and started my recovery process there with, with my wife by my side and moving forward.

• 1:13:35Jocko Willink?

  And that recovery process is, uh, I heard you say in one of your other, uh, videos that you have out there, you're just talking about the new normal. Like, okay, this is the new normal. This is what it is, and I'm going forward.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. The doctors were pretty noncommittal. So when I was there, they didn't say, you'll never walk again. They didn't say, you know, what you can or can't do. They said, you know, hey, you have a spinal cord injury. It's very severe. It's very, you know, it's a big deal, but if you recover function, you know, the research shows that it might happen in the first two years, most likely. And so that was good, uh, in some ways and bad in other ways. It was good because it left me, uh, the opportunity to change, you know, to, to control my mindset and to say, hey, like, so what? I'm gonna get up in, in six weeks and go run a marathon or, or whatever. Um, the challenge with that, though, was that was a little bit,

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  that was good for me to get through those initial stages, but it was also naive of me to not let the reality sink in. And so, you know, when that didn't happen in six weeks and I didn't walk and I wasn't gaining control or function of anything below my chest, that's when it started to get real and like was really challenging for me to deal with, uh, because I didn't, you know, it was out of my control, the level of, you know, the permanence of my injury.

• 1:14:58Jocko Willink?

  And then what, what, was there anything that helped you get through that transition of when you, all of a sudden, six weeks goes by and, and you, you, the reality starts to hit you that made you say, okay, here's what I'm gonna do?

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was bad for about, I think, probably first four to six months.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  And the reason why, the reason why it was probably the lowest point, actually, definitely the lowest point, was, uh, August 10th of 2012, so about two months after I'd got injured. I had transferred to a VA facility in Tampa, Florida, uh, because that was a major spinal cord injury clinic. And so, the military DOD side doesn't have spinal cord injury recovery. They have it all in the VA. So, uh, it was just me in the VA with my wife. We relocated there. And on that day, actually, that was the day that three other Marines in our company from a different team were killed in an insider attack in Sangin. And so Captain Matthew Manukian, Gunnery Sergeant Ryan Jeskey, and Staff Sergeant Sky Moat,

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  were all three guys that weren't in my team, but they were friends of mine that were killed and weren't coming home. And so it was hard to deal with that. It was hard because I was still in the hospital. I couldn't go to any of the funerals. And then it was, continued to be hard after that because it just reinforced the fact that my guys were out there, vulnerable, and I wasn't there to lead them. And that was my job, and I felt like I was failing them every day, you know? And so although my wife was there with me throughout this recovery process, it was lonely, you know? Everything you do in the militaries and teams, you're always, from day one, boot camp, you have a buddy for everything. And now, this was the first time in the military when I'm alone. And, you know, without any control over the outcome of what would happen to my guys.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  And so that was tough. That was like, definitely, definitely the toughest part of the recovery process. And so luckily, I was able to fly back to California and see them touchdown in December. All the guys made it back safe and sound. And then that was really when I was able to start to put the pieces back together and go forward and move on with my life.

• 1:17:05Jocko Willink?

  What did that look like, picking up the pieces and putting them back together? And the reason I'm asking this is just because, you know, I'm looking at where you're at right now, and if there's any buddy that could be listening that could say, "Okay, let me hear what he did, so I can emulate that."

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, uh, the key things, there's a couple of things that I did that I think are very similar to some of the stuff that you've talked about before. And one is mission and purpose. And so recovering in a hospital, sitting there by yourself, wasn't the mission that I signed up for. And so as soon as I possibly could, I was back at work. And so I was back in the ops section in January, you know, as a future operations officer, trying to do PowerPoints and slides and all the other stuff that, you know, that officers are tasked to do. And it was great because nobody else wanted to do that stuff, so. I was happy to take it on and do it.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  And so being around the team, providing something meaningful for them and having an impact was more important for my psyche than anything else. Other two things I've kind of looked at were like very stoic philosophy, stoic mindset, and realizing that, you know, some things are out of my control. But I do have control over the way I choose to react to things, the way I choose to move forward with my life, and that I have opportunities. Opportunities that guys like Matt, Ryan, and Sky don't have. And so for me to squander that, for me not to take advantage of every day and move forward in a way that they would be proud of, is a complete waste. And so that makes it really easy to stop feeling sorry for yourself and to keep pushing

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  and to keep doing whatever you want to do. And so those were the two things I think that every day, even to this day, continue to push me forward is like, you know, setting out on the mission and the vision that I want to achieve and the purpose for my life. And taking advantage of every day because, you know, it's an opportunity. I have something that every day I wake up, I can go and create or do or build or make something meaningful. And to not take advantage of that is to squander an opportunity that any one of those guys would love to have. So it makes it real simple and easy for me to do.

• 1:19:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man, brother. Yeah, that's awesome, man. That's awesome. That's an awesome attitude. How long did you stay? How long did you keep working in the Marine Corps for?

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  I stayed for about another two years after that. So Marine Corps is pretty cool. They have some programs in place for guys that are injured in the line of duty where you can stay in essentially as long as you want, as long as you keep getting promoted and keep contributing. And so for me, I didn't pursue those longer-term programs.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Because I started to find some other opportunities that I was was as passionate about and wanted to pursue outside the military. And so I continued to work for about two years as a staff officer, working with first, you know, the operations section as we were transitioning and trying to assign new mission sets and supporting all those different types of operation, operational planning efforts. And I'd gone back to business school part-time to try to learn about business and to go get more education. And then I became really passionate about a new opportunity in medical technology and medical research and thought that that was where my next big impact would be.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  And so, decided to officially retire from the military in November of 2014 and have been out since then.

• 1:20:49Jocko Willink?

  And what was the, what was the new opportunity and where did that lead?

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  So, the opportunity that arose was to start a company and try to address issues and unmet needs associated with spinal cord injury. And so, I learned firsthand how many challenges and how many issues there are, in addition to just being in a wheelchair, that a lot of people don't see. And so, everything from bowels, bladder management, sexual function, physical, you know, training, osteo, like bone density and muscle mass, there's so many different things that are challenges that are unmet needs of the people like me and the patient population of which I'm a part of. And so, the idea and the company that we started is called Spinal Singularity and that's what we're working to solve. And so, our first product, the first thing we're working on, which is in clinical studies

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  now, is a smart catheter for bladder management. And so, allows people to push a button and empty their bladder, which is currently, you know, much more advanced and much more useful and functional than the current method of management. And so, that's what we've been working on for the past, past few years.

• 1:21:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's, um, as I was kind of reading about the stuff that you've been working on and, and even on that item right there.

• 1:22:07Jocko Willink?

  He reminded me of when uh, when my buddy Jody Middick came down to be on the podcast and he's, you know, he's a double amputee and but you know, I would see pictures of him walking around and he would do like, he did some big race up in Canada. I forget what the race was called. The amazing. The amazing race and he would do all this like really, you know, badass stuff that I would think, hey, you know, it's, it's all good. And, and um, when he came down here, um, I think it might've been the second time he came down here. It was the second time he came down here and we like hung out more because, you know, he came down for a little bit more time and we were a little bit tighter. But um, he, well, first of all, I got him a hotel room and he called me and he said, hey, I'm not going to stay at that hotel

• 1:22:52Jocko Willink?

  cause uh, they don't have uh, you know, handicap stuff there. And I was like, kinda, I was like, okay, yeah, man, cool, you know, whatever. But in my mind, I was kinda thinking to myself, like, why, why does he need that? Cause I see him walking around and he's running the damn amazing race, right? And so I asked him, I was like, well, you know, like later, I didn't ask him on the phone. I said, yeah, cool, whatever you want. And then later I, I talked to him, I was like, why do you, you know, why do you need that? I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I was just honestly asking. And he was like, yeah, well, you know, like at night, I mean, I, I take my legs off and I gotta crawl around and if I gotta pull myself up on the toilet, I gotta pull myself in the shower and like if there's not handles and stuff, uh, you know, it sucks.

• 1:23:33Jocko Willink?

  And so that was like part one of this story. Part two was we, he wanted to walk around San Diego and you know, see where I lived and go to the ocean and all this kinda stuff. And so we did that. And we had gone um, to the midway aircraft carrier and walked around there and then we walked downtown and then we walked, we were, then we went to where I live and we were kinda like walking in the beach area. And I could see he was kinda like slowing down. I could see his face getting a little bit, you know, like, like a little bit of, uh, a little bit of strain in his face. And he's like, hey man, let me sit down for a minute. And then he'd sit down and we'd talk a little bit. Then he'd say, okay, let's go. And then he'd say, let's sit down. And finally he's like, hey man, can we just go back to your house?

• 1:24:16Jocko Willink?

  Like, my legs are really hurting. And you know, like, yeah, guess what? You're, you're putting all that pressure on, on their stumps and, and it wears away the skin. And it's, it's, you know, it's, it's hard and it sucks. And, um, I guess, so that's part number two. And what these two things reinforced to me is, you know what, like, there's so much going on that we, that I don't see that, that, because, you know, I hadn't been injured like that. There's so many things going on that like, oh, you know, he's doing okay. It's like, yeah, he's doing okay. You're seeing him for like two hours, three hours. He's living like that 24 hours a day. And he's got all these things to contend with that haven't even remotely crossed my mind.

• 1:25:00Jocko Willink?

  And so when I, when I saw the, yeah, I mean, straight up, the first time I ever, it ever entered my mind, how you take a piss, how you would take a piss, the first time it ever entered my mind when I was researching what your medical devices are. And I was like, you know, how, how ignorant am I, you know, to be sitting here and that never even thought of that? And then that's one of all these other problems that you have to contend with on a daily basis. And it's, uh, you know, it's a daily, it's a daily struggle. And you know, something, something Jim Webb brought up as well. Um, he, he was talking about different types of courage. And he brought up something called daily courage. And he's talked about one of his friends that was wounded.

• 1:25:43Jocko Willink?

  And he's like, every day, it takes him 20 minutes to get out of bed. It takes him 15 minutes to get here. And, you know, to the other side of his room, he's like, that's daily courage that he has to show. And I'm thinking to myself, yep. And, you know, it just makes me feel like there's so much, there's so much more that, you know, you go through on a daily basis that we and me, I completely take for granted, completely take it for granted. And so for me to sit here and talk to you and, and realize, you know, how hard it is for you on a daily basis, the things you have to go through. And then to hear you say like, yeah, but I'm glad I'm here, unlike my brothers who didn't come home.

• 1:26:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't think anyone has any excuses, really. None. So, um, yeah.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Totally agree. Yeah. And uh, it just makes you to be that much more uh, creative with your mindset, right? Like, you look at all the challenges, but you gotta also look at the opportunities, right? So, I can sprint through airports much faster than you can without gaining any stress. I got good parking most of the time. You know, uh, so you just gotta make up time where you can, right? It takes me a little bit longer to get off the airplane, but I'll kill you on the straightaways. Any day. And so, uh, you know, you just gotta take, take the go to bed.

• 1:27:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  So, but, you know, it's, it's, you don't have a choice.

• 1:27:10Jocko Willink?

  So that was the, um, that was the, you, you, you got your MBA? At, as, is that why you were still in, you weren't, you got your MBA? Or did you get out?

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  No, I, I, I got out about halfway through. So I did the part-time program at UCLA. It's an executive MBA, so it's on the weekends.

• 1:27:27Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Every other weekend. And so, as I was leaving the military, so I did the first year, I was still full on active duty and then retired shortly into the second year. Uh, took another job at another medical device startup to get some experience. And then as soon as I graduated, started full-time. Uh, working on spinal singularity in my company. And so, um, one of the experiences too, that was really cool, that, uh, I had as part of that retirement, as I think about it now, was, uh, being able to use and be involved in as a user exoskeleton technology. And so there's robotic exoskeleton technology that allows paraplegics to stand and walk. And so, um, because of

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  a lot of generous donors and the Marine Raider Foundation, uh, I was able to be, to use that device and to obtain that device, um, even before FDA approval. And so, I had a really, really, uh, great setup within our, our battalion headquarters and our office. And so, we had a physical therapist downstairs. My office was upstairs. It was fully accessible, which is not like most buildings in the military. And so I was able to use this device to stand and walk and to do therapy. And, uh, when I retired, I was able to use that device and not use my wheelchair at all. To leave on my own two feet, which was a goal that I'd set for myself. And so. That was great, but it still didn't address a lot of these other unmet needs that we had

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  for the community. And so that was what inspired me to try to move forward on my own path and start my own company and build this product to solve these issues. So, yeah, so very thankful for all the donors and the foundation to help support that. And I was also very fortunate. So, like you said, a lot of other people had gone before me. And so one of my classmates at the Naval Academy, a guy named Matt Lampert, got to First Marine Raider Battalion about two years before I did because he was on the quick cycle of deployments. And in 2010, he was a bilateral MPT above the knee as I was going through the training pipeline. And so I went up and saw him in Bethesda in the hospital and just checked in with him

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  real briefly as he was coming back and starting his rehab. And, you know, this is maybe a week after he'd gotten off the battlefield or less. And he says, you know, like, so what are you gonna do? And he's like, I'm gonna go back. Like, go back to California? He's like, no, I'm going back to Afghanistan. I was like, okay, gotcha. And I'm thinking, like, man, how's he gonna do that? And sure enough, as I graduated from training, he was my company executive officer who checked me in. And then we deployed again. So when I had gotten injured and deployed, he was there as their company XO. And then after my friend Matt had gotten killed, he went down and took over his team as a bilateral MPT above the knees. And so, you know, he had come back, he had done that, he had trodden

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  that path. And so for me, you know, going back and recovering, our building was accessible, you know, it's wheelchair accessible, there was a lot of other things. And then just that example that he said as well was really helpful and inspiring for me to follow. And so, yeah, so really, really fortunate in the rehab environment, especially because of all the assets that SOCOM has. And so if I'd been in the grunts... Been a totally, totally different story for how the recovery would have gone. You know, my entire command was super supportive of, of me coming back and working and doing this. And whatever you need, whatever you want, you want to go to ops, like, sure, let's do it. Giddy up. And so, um, yeah, so it was a good place to recover.

• 1:30:58Jocko Willink?

  When you hear about, like, when you say broadly, like, if I was a grunt, I would have gotten that kind of support. I mean, I get that because, you know, in the SEAL teams, we have the same thing, like, like, people will rally around and make stuff happen. Um, is there any organizations that you know of that sort of support, like, the, the frontline soldier, marine, that gets, that gets catastrophically wounded?

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, uh, there's a lot of different nonprofits out there. Semper Five Fund is a big one. Um, there's a lot of different groups that support them. And, and, and it's different. It's not that they don't have the assets. Um, it's just the location of those assets. And so, an infantry battalion has a very different operational mission and leeway than a special operations battalion. Um, and so, for all of the guys that were injured in the conventional forces, when they come back, they're immediately sent to wounded warrior battalion at the hospital. And so, their job is now, show up to your appointments and do your rehab until you get separated from the military.

• 1:31:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  That's a very different way to recover with a bunch of other people who are injured or on their way out or whatever else versus, you know, and, and without an operational purpose than what I was able to do, and I was very fortunate to do, where I went back to an operational role within the battalion. And I was the only injured, or one of the only injured guys, you know, recovering around normal people because I wanted to be like that.

• 1:32:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I don't know if you, uh, ever heard of a guy named Jake Schick, but he was on here and he, he told his story. And that's like, that's what it was. He was there, he was just like, his job was just to kind of recover. But you could see, and, and talking to him, he, he would have loved to have had some kind of a, a... Higher purpose than just that, which eventually he made, he made it for himself. He made his own organization to, you know, help wounded vets and, and help suicide prevention with 22kill. But yeah, so I think that would have, that's a, that's a good comparison. You know, just from hearing him tell his story about, you know, what his recovery was like. And it was, it was geared towards, okay, you're going to do this until you get out of the Marine Corps.

• 1:33:05Jocko Willink?

  I guarantee, you know, you talk to Jake Schick for three minutes and you're going to realize if, if you could have told him, hey, we want you to do this for the Marine Corps, he would have been all over it. He would have gone and done anything, you know, because he's a badass. Uh, but, but yeah, no, that's a, that's a good point. And that's, uh, you, well, you've, you heard me say it because you kind of, uh, referenced it a little bit, you know, I always tell guys they need to find a new mission. Whatever that new mission is, you've got to find a new mission. You can't be sitting around with no mission, man. You've had a mission for, for, for whatever, eight years, seven years, 20 years, however long it's been. You had a, you had a mission, you had a goal and if that goes away, you, you got to find a new one. And it doesn't really matter what it is. I mean, pick something good, right?

• 1:33:48Jocko Willink?

  I mean, your mission shouldn't be, shouldn't involve whiskey. But pick something positive and something good to move in the right direction. How, how is spinal singularity doing right now? Like what's the, what's the status?

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  We're doing really well. So, uh, it's been a good three years. Um, I learned a ton and just the fact that we're still in business today is, is pretty amazing. Uh, because I had zero experience, right? I had no clue what I was doing. Because I had no experience, the medical device industry, I had no network. Um, and so the first year was a lot of, a lot of faith, a lot of ups and downs, right? Uh, just like starting any business, but especially in the medical device industry. Uh, I learned a ton and then was fortunate enough to find people to bring in that, that are experienced and that I trust. And so, um, we've raised money from investors, we've raised, uh, you know, money from grants and non-dilutive sources. Um, and where we're at now, we have a small team of, of six employees in, in San Clemente.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  And, uh, we're running a large clinical study across the US right now. And so we have sites all over, everywhere from Minnesota, New Jersey to, you know, uh, all over, Southern California and Arizona. And we're, those sites are actively enrolling people interested in, in supporting our trial.

• 1:35:01Jocko Willink?

  And then how long does that trial need to last before it gets approval?

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  Uh, so the goal is to have approval, um, Internationally next year and then hopefully by the end of the year, uh, we can have FDA approval for the product as well. Uh, we aren't a hundred percent certain that that's happening, but that's, uh, that's the goal and hopefully we can collect the data we need as quickly as possible to, to accomplish that.

• 1:35:20Jocko Willink?

  And then do you have your next device in mind after this one goes live?

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  Got ideas. Yeah, but, uh, I'm always, I've always been like a versatile guy, not like the, you know, execution, like the hundred percent, I'm the zero to 90% guy, not the 90 to 100%.

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  Somebody else gotta bring it home.

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  Guy. And so I know that. So everybody else that we were, you know, everybody else in our team now are like the 90 to 100% guys. And so, um, I'm trying to be more like them and not even think about it. Cause if, if this doesn't work.

• 1:35:47Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  You know, there is no business, right? Like we've put all of our, you know, this is what we raised money to do, you know, we haven't, we don't, we can't knowingly devote a minute of time to anything else until this is successful.

• 1:36:00Jocko Willink?

  So you'll get.

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  And then with that, then we can kind of go back to drawing more things, but.

• 1:36:03Jocko Willink?

  And once it's approved here, then it just, then it's just selling it, selling it and getting it out there and it's going into the, yeah, into the world. And then what about the, uh, what about the Marine Raider Foundation, which is another thing you're involved with?

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, um, after I was injured, I was very ignorant to the realities of the way things work and what the needs would be, uh, for me. And so, um, a lot of nonprofits out there do all kinds of great work and different things as a Marine Raider, uh, in this situation without knowing anything, you know, I didn't want to talk to anybody. I, I was very hesitant to reach out for help to anybody. Um, and so as these things arose, you know, one of the guys who is or was, is an employee of the organization now, and so was a currently an active duty Raider at that time was like, Hey man, like we're starting this nonprofit to help guys. Like if you need anything, just say, say so. And so I was like, all

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  right, cool. Um, and so they helped pay for my wife to move out to Tampa so she could be there for my recovery, helped, uh, you know, get her car out there so she could drive around and help transport me around to different things. Um, they helped us raise money for the exoskeleton because it was still not covered by insurance or the VA. It was still experimental at that time. Um, and helped do all of these things. And so, you know, my wife and I are eternally grateful for all the support we received from them. And so as soon as I got out of the military. That organization said, hey, do you want to be a board member? Do you want to help? And I was like, yes, absolutely. And so that was 2014. And so I've been on the board since then. And I think it was 2015, I took over as the board president. And so I've been trying to devote

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  my spare time to help that organization. But the missions that we serve and ultimately what we do at the foundation is just to support unmet needs of the community and their families. And so the government's really good at supporting injured veterans and they have so many different programs that help people, but every situation is unique. And so Congress isn't going to change a law to appropriate money for you to not do something that doesn't fall into the black and white letter of the law. And that's fine. But that's where we step in and are able to help things, help people and, you know, take the stress off of them in their times of need.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  So have four real major areas. One is support to the Marine Raiders. Another is family resiliency. Third one is tragedy assistance and survivor support. And then the last one is Raider Legacy and Preservation. And so obviously, the Raider support and the family support are pretty broad ways to work. And they can be anything from, you know, just anything under the sun that that will help Marines and their families. Tragedy assistance, survivor support, even though, you know, we're engaged in varying levels of combat, there's still guys out there putting their lives on the line every day. And that's evidenced by a recent training incident that we had about two years ago, less than two years ago, in 2017, there was

• 1:39:08Speaker 01

  a C-130 crash that claimed the lives of seven Marine Raiders. And then two years before that, a helicopter crash in another training mission out off the coast of Florida that took another lives of another seven guys. And so. Being able to support their their families and family members that had had survived those incidences is a big part of the mission that we we fulfill and then Raider Legacy and Preservation just

• 1:39:35Jocko Willink?

  Can I say one thing you you hit on this a little bit but I'm just gonna expand a little bit so people can kinda understand when you talked about like Congress isn't gonna change a law to give a family that what they need at a certain time because it's too specific or whatever and the reality is let's say a kid you know needs a new bicycle and there's there's you know the dad can't go and get it because he's wounded he's in the hospital like that's the kinda things that the foundation can do go out buy the bike get it built and deliver you know like little things like that that really matter and it can be bigger things too like you said like moving a family helping to pay for the movement of a family helping to redeck you know get furniture for the new apartment whatever it is

• 1:40:17Jocko Willink?

  there's no law that takes care of those situations but these types of organizations do that and it and it does have a big deal but it has a huge impact for those for those families that are there and believe me when those families are in those tough situations these little things to be able to not have them think about it not have them think about hey the the the cost of a flight to fly you know dad out to come and visit his son or whatever any any of those little things they don't seem like a big deal but they're a huge deal when families are going through these traumatic times

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  Yeah yeah another example when my friend Matt was killed and his family went to go pick him up at Dover one of the last you know things that his mother wanted was her whole family to fly home with him and the government only pay for the father and mother I think it was and so the other two brothers and some other family friends they wanted to all be on the same plane that was one thing that she wanted you know and she didn't want anything else she said hey I want us all to be on the same plane going home while we're we're grieving with my son

• 1:41:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah no that's

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  And so instead of having to deal with that and the insanity of it you know just tell her hey we got your flight for you like get on the plane you're good

• 1:41:31Jocko Willink?

  Perfect example

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  Such a small seemingly small gesture but with a timely injection of support can have a really Lifelong impact on on people and so those are some of the the different experiences and I can go on and on about different ways that we've been able to help people but bottom line is is guys are going out doing these different things and and for them to be able to go forward and and to to fight with a happy heart they want to know their families are taken care of on the backside and the community will support them and so that's that's literally it is we just you know we're 513 that raises money to support the community members in their time of need.

• 1:42:08Jocko Willink?

  And then the last one is legacy.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:42:11Jocko Willink?

  Which is legit because you guys I mean you guys kind of are saving the legacy of the original World War Two Raiders, right?

• 1:42:19Speaker 01

  Yes, we're trying to and so.

• 1:42:22Jocko Willink?

  Can you explain how that how you guys adopted the name because it's it's awesome?

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  It's a good history so so the Marine Raiders, the World War Two Marine Raiders were one of the first special operations units formed period and they were formed in World War Two and their mission was to conduct enemy deeper connoissements essentially prior to invasions in the Pacific and so these guys would mount up in rubber boats they were the first ones to do submarine lockouts and you know and some of the things that they did were just insane even by today's standards and so these guys were very well trained and basically provided the lineage of of who we who we are today and so those that group and then other members also joined the OSS at that time which was the precursor

• 1:43:13Speaker 01

  to the CIA there was a lot of Marines at that that unit as well and those are the two kind of units that we draw our lineage from as as the Marine Special Operations Units today and so these guys were disbanded in I think 1946 after they came back or maybe it was even 1945 after the war and so we've been very active in connecting with these guys they have an association that actually Colonel Kozinski is is in charge of now he's the president of the Marine Raider Association.

• 1:43:44Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  Which is a social organization not not a non not as not a 513 and so a lot of these guys are still alive today World War Two veterans and so we get to go and meet with them and talk with them and hear these stories of these amazing missions they did and and conducting you know month long patrols behind enemy lines you know sabotaging the Japanese and and different.

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  Different battles. And so these guys were very, very vocal and outspoken to different leadership within the Marine Corps as they're all, you know, in their 90s and passing away. They said, hey, one way to honor our legacy is to have a Marine Raider, you know, have a Marine Raider unit today. And that went over terribly with any leadership because if you don't know, there's, there's a pretty strong culture in brainwashing done within the Marine Corps. And it's from day one, there's only one title that matters. It's that you're a Marine. It's one or a zero. You're a Marine. You are elite. No one is special or everyone, everyone is special and no one is special.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  You know, you're all replaceable, but you're all special, which is the weirdest conundrum, but all of us believe it. And at the highest levels, a title of any unit, you know, that thinks you're special, you know, is against the entire culture. And so since formation, since the Marine Special Operations Command was officially formed in 2006 from the Force Reconnaissance Units, overnight they became the Marine Special Operations Command. So literally changed the guide on at a ceremony and then they're officially SOCOM assets. There was this undercurrent, this push from the lowest levels and guys were really strongly pushing this.

• 1:45:38Speaker 01

  And so the Raider symbol, the Raider logo from World War II is a, you know, a shield with the Southern Cross and a skull and a dagger in it. And so, or excuse me, the dagger's not there. We have the dagger for some of our units now. Just the skull and the Southern Cross. And so guys would wear patches and patches are another thing with the Marine Corps. Oh, I know. Beards, anything that is not in strict adherence with the uniform policy is not tolerated. And so, you know, that's a quick way to get, get hammered, right? It's just like, you're not special. What do you think you're doing? This isn't authorized, all that kind of stuff. Whereas the Army's like, you know, Army gets out.

• 1:46:16Jocko Willink?

  Hey bro, I'm in the SEAL Teams, man.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  You get more points for flair, right?

• 1:46:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  So you guys aren't as bad.

• 1:46:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so embarrassing.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  Expected to have like, to look cool, right? Within the Marine Corps, it was this consistent undercurrent pushing and pushing and pushing into those patches. And then it became tattoos. So guys would get the Raider emblem just tattooed on their chest and then not wear a Skivvy shirt. So you just would see, so like, you know, you're going into your first sergeant and they're like, "Wears your Skivvy shirt, devil dog?" "What's Skivvy shirt? I don't need a Skivvy shirt." And so it wasn't official until, I think it was about two years ago, a year and a half ago. After a decade of insurgency.

• 1:46:58Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  From the units that, uh, that we have a name and I think it's directly attributed to, uh, Alden McRaven, actually. So within SOCOM, um, he's a really smart guy, a phenomenal commander, obviously. And, uh, he gets marketing and branding and just the basic, you know, title, right? Like you've earned the title of Marine and within the special operations community, you're in the title of SEAL and Green Beret. And so he said, "Hey, my, one of my last things I want to do, like, I want to work with the command of the Marine Corps. I want you guys to get a title."

• 1:47:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, and it's, it's, it's not even about marketing and branding, it's about heritage and unit pride. I mean, what, what more awesome thing than to take and keep alive that tradition from World War II of those guys in the service and the sacrifice that they had? It's, it's badass, man. It's awesome. It's awesome.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And as part of that too, you know, there's just like everything growing up, right? Like, we're growing up as an organization, so we're new to SOCOM, so we're, we're trying to figure out as quickly as we can. Uh, so we'd have our, you know, military special occupational specialty code. So that took a while till we had.

• 1:48:05Jocko Willink?

  So can guys stay in the Raiders now for their whole career?

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:48:08Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause initially when they started, it wasn't the case, right? It was like, "Well, we'll let SOCOM use you guys, but then we want to use you too." So every five years, you're coming back to the fleet and you're going to be in a infantry company or rifle platoon and stuff. And they were like,

• 1:48:23Jocko Willink?

  When I first joined the Navy, I've talked about this before. When I first joined the Navy, the Marines didn't have names on their uniforms. Because they didn't need them. Cause your name was Lance Corporal. Your name was Staff Sergeant, and that's it. It was legit. I always had a lot of respect for that, but of course now they have them. But I always thought that. But that shows you, there's like a slow, you know, there's a slow change in the Marine Corps. I'm sure some people would say that it's not good, but uh, yeah, it just is. It's just the Marine Corps.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  Big green weenie. Yeah, here it comes again. Yeah, it's uh, it's good. And so, so we have an MOS. Guys can stick around. We have a name. We have a badge now. We have a, like a, you know, it's like you guys have the Trident. We have a War Eagle. I think some of the guys are wearing it. Which is like a big eagle and a giant sword. And uh, so.

• 1:49:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, the cool thing, the cool, the cool thing about the Marine Raiders and about the Marine Special Operations is if you're in the Navy and you're in the SEAL Teams, like you have nothing, there's no cross, there's almost no crossover. There's almost no, there's one, there's 3% crossover from the US Navy to a SEAL Team in terms of your skills, right? You're a guy driving a ship or working a big 16 inch gun or working on a missile technology. That's what you do in the Navy. The SEAL Teams, you're in a field with a machine gun. There's zero crossover. And that's horrible.

• 1:50:00Jocko Willink?

  And in the Marine Corps, it's like, oh, you're an infantryman that totally, I mean, every skill is applicable. And that is such an advantage to the Marine Corps. And it's such an advantage to the Raiders because you get guys that have fundamental infantry skills when they roll in. We have to teach guys infantry skills. Once we've taught them sort of fundamental special operations type small unit tactics, then we have to teach them conventional, more, more conventional movements. Just to get them up to speed. Cause you gotta know those things. If you're out working with 140 Iraqi soldiers, you can't, that's, that's not a small unit anymore. You know, you gotta, you gotta think a little bit differently. So you guys have that, that advantage. And that's an awesome.

• 1:50:44Jocko Willink?

  An awesome thing. I mean, I remember the guys used to kind of complain about it when I was friends with a bunch of force recon guys. In the day, they would always complain about going to B billets. Like, hey, I gotta go. Well, not a B billet, but they have to go back to an infantry platoon. And I would always think to myself, man, I'd go to infantry platoon. Are you kidding me? Like, it's awesome. It's awesome. And so I think that's a, that's an advantage. So if there's any young ones out there that are thinking about your future, think about the Marine Corps, because you get that full spectrum of kind of land warfare. You get the amphibious side too, but you get the full spectrum of infantry. And, and that's awesome. And you don't, you, it's hard to get that in the SEAL teams.

• 1:51:26Jocko Willink?

  You get it over time, but I got, I'll tell you where I got it from. I got it from working with Marines on our deployments. And I got to see what a company movement looked like. And that's where I learned it from. Thank God. Cause by the time I was older and in Iraq, working with the Army Marine Corps, I kind of had at least some semblance of knowledge about it.

• 1:51:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. And, and one of the good things about that as well for us as an organization is, we don't have street this off, right? There's a period of time. And so, you know, like, you get to assess people. And one of the best assessments you can make for future performance is the past performance. And so if you've already got two to four years of observation in the Marine Corps, if you couldn't hack it in infantry platoon, then you don't really, deserve to try out or make it to the special operations committee. But those lessons learned, you're absolutely right. It's, it's exactly the same stuff. So if you, you know, like for all those young motivators out there that want to become a Marine or become a Marsoc, like first, first step is just become a Marine.

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  Be good, great Marine at whatever you do. You be in infantry, like, be great. Like be the best rifleman you could be, be the best mortar man, machine gunner, whatever else.

• 1:52:31Jocko Willink?

  Do they take any MOS?

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:52:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So that's awesome. So you don't have to worry about what your MOS is. You won't get withheld.

• 1:52:38Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's becoming more and more competitive. And, and if you're smart, obviously, I mean, I always tell people just to go in infantry or reconnaissance units. Cause you know, if you want to be a raider and you want to go do those sorts of things, those skillsets are much more applicable. And it's better to learn them early and become a master of those as opposed to a master of admin or supply or anything else. So.

• 1:53:02Jocko Willink?

  What's MOS? Military operational specialty?

• 1:53:07Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:53:07Jocko Willink?

  Occupational specialty, military, so it's like what your job is.

• 1:53:10Speaker 01

  Oh, gotcha.

• 1:53:11Jocko Willink?

  You can be a rifleman, you can be a machine gunner, you can be a mortarman, but you can also be a mechanic. You can be an IT guy and you can be, I mean, there's Marines that are do every job, you know? Every job that you can have, and the same thing in the army, it's the same thing in the Navy, you know? And so that's why it it used to be in the Navy, you had to have certain ratings if you were gonna go in the SEAL Teams.

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:53:33Jocko Willink?

  And so I was wondering if they did the same thing, like we only take guys from infantry. Um.

• 1:53:41Jocko Willink?

  Last thing I'll ask you about, cuz I know we've been here for a while. You got two, you got two sons? And how's that going?

• 1:53:47Speaker 01

  It's awesome.

• 1:53:48Jocko Willink?

  How old are they?

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  They're awesome. They're almost sixteen months old or sixteen, yeah, sixteen months old.

• 1:53:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you're just in the full get some stage?

• 1:53:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, my wife is awesome, so they can do a few things, so they can run. They can yell and they can throw things. So when I come home, I just know that like she's been just getting, you know? Run around, getting thrown at, you know, yelled at, cried, you know, diapers, like the whole thing, so.

• 1:54:17Jocko Willink?

  And they're twins?

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're giants too.

• 1:54:20Jocko Willink?

  He's got a twin brother.

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  Nice, too. Yeah, they're giants, they're huge.

• 1:54:23Jocko Willink?

  Isn't there like psychological things to watch out for with twins?

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  Like what?

• 1:54:28Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, aren't they like hyper competitive?

• 1:54:30Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I think so, in a way.

• 1:54:34Jocko Willink?

  Let me give you one piece of advice. I don't even, I don't, not a twin, he's a twin. Get your kids training jujitsu when they're really young, because if you have a twin brother or even a brother that's close in age, you're gonna be really good at jujitsu because you have a natural training partner you train with all the time. They're the same size as you and there's some kids out there that are just sick and it's because they have twins. I mean, I'm not just, I'm not trying to take away from them, but it's a huge advantage if you've got a twin brother. They should be grappling a lot.

• 1:55:07Speaker 01

  I fully intend on that, so that's one thing we didn't talk about, but I love jujitsu. So I, uh, I got involved when I was a senior in high school, it just became like a.

• 1:55:17Jocko Willink?

  In jujitsu?

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. Did you wrestle?

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  I did a little bit of wrestling and then I played mostly football and lacrosse and, uh, one of the guys, I was a lifeguard too, and so one of the guys that came to my pool, uh, he was a, like a correctional officer and got hooked up with. Some guys up in Philadelphia and started training. So it was like me, him and a couple of other guys training in like a church gym. And so trained there and then went to the Naval Academy. One of the things that I did too was try to start a jujitsu club, grappling club there. Cause it was, it was just coming up, right? It was like 2002, 2003, 2004. And so trained and then did, uh, did boxing, did a little MMA and um, had a couple of fights and then like when I graduated, became a Marine and was married, it was like, put that on hold because I don't have time, but yeah, absolutely.

• 1:56:03Jocko Willink?

  I'm married. I got four kids. I didn't put it on hold. I got after it.

• 1:56:07Speaker 02

  I don't know, Brad. You can hear boxing, fighting MMA fights. I don't know, Brad. That's a lot.

• 1:56:11Jocko Willink?

  I always have guys go, well, you know, I, once I had kids, I got two kids and then they kind of give me the look, the look for approval from me. And my answer is I got four kids.

• 1:56:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get some.

• 1:56:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Are you training anymore?

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  I'm not. No, no, I haven't. So I, I, uh, I trained a little bit in the Marine Corps. You know, we did some combatants and stuff and I did all that, but um, just focused on trying to be a great infantry officer and so did that and.

• 1:56:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. I got a friend Max. You know Max? Max is paralyzed. Um, chest down? I would say, yeah, yeah. He trains. Yeah, he trains.

• 1:56:46Speaker 01

  Has to come down and hook up with him sometime.

• 1:56:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's, he's, his grip has gotten a lot stronger.

• 1:56:52Jocko Willink?

  When I came in now, he's all tight. You know, his grip is super strong now, but um.

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 1:56:58Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, yeah. No, jujitsu is, uh, is good and with your twin boys, it's going to be real good. Um, yeah, man. Look, I, I, we've been, we've been at it for a while and uh, man, just, just awesome. Awesome to hear you and talk to you. Uh, where, where can people find you? So where should they look? Twitter?

• 1:57:22Speaker 01

  I'm on, on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, the usual, uh, Twitter, all that stuff.

• 1:57:29Jocko Willink?

  Derek, Derek Herrera. That's

• 1:57:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, derekhera.com

• 1:57:33Jocko Willink?

  And there's two Rs in a row in Herrera and there's a third, so there's

• 1:57:37Speaker 01

  Herrera

• 1:57:38Jocko Willink?

  A total of three Rs in there

• 1:57:40Speaker 01

  Herrera

• 1:57:41Jocko Willink?

  Herrera, yeah

• 1:57:42Speaker 02

  But only one in your first name, right?

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, just D-R-E-K-H-E-R-E-R-A dot com And so, that's a website, uh, I haven't updated the blog in a while, I've been focused on, on work and just doing that And so, SpinalSingularity.com has some of the other stuff we're doing, but, um, Facebook, Instagram, all the stuff's public I don't put anything out that's not, you know, that's not private and, uh, really easy to find me, so I try to answer all the emails and messages and whatever else, if anybody sends me notes, so, not hard to, to track me down

• 1:58:12Jocko Willink?

  Awesome, man. And, uh, and, and MarineRaterFoundation.org And can people find out how to donate on there?

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  Yep, yeah, if you go to that website, at the top, there's a donate button, it says donate now And, uh, they'll take you to a link, you can mail checks, you can sign up for credit card, PayPal, whatever, whatever you do Um, there's also some contact information too, so if you can't, can't give financially and you want to give time There's volunteer, you know, opportunities for different events and things, but, um, uh, yeah, that's a great way to get involved

• 1:58:42Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. You got any, um, any closing thoughts?

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, thanks for having me, it's a pleasure to be here and, and share, uh, my story with you Um, I'm not here doing this to seek the limelight for anything, I'm doing it to try to be a good ambassador of the guys that are continuing to go forth And put their, their lives on the line on a daily basis, um, who can't talk about what they do or advocate for themselves Um, a lot of people to thank, my wife in particular, has been there for me every step of the way Um, the foundation, the Marine Raider Foundation and all the people associated with, with the organization Uh, my team, who saved my life and wouldn't be here without them And, uh, you know, all the guys that are out there continue to lay it down on a daily basis

• 1:59:24Jocko Willink?

  Awesome, man. Well, like I said, it's, it's been an honor to sit here and, and talk to you and hear your story and What you've been through and your sacrifice, even beyond what you did in the Marine Corps, what you're still doing Building your business and with, uh, with the foundation and Most important, I think, is just to set this incredible example to this day

• 1:59:50Jocko Willink?

  Of what it means to never surrender, of what it means to never quit and what it means to never give up regardless of the challenge that you're facing, man. That's awesome. So I appreciate the example you set for me and for everyone. And thanks for coming on and, and sharing it a little bit. Thank you. Pleasure's all mine. Awesome.

• 2:00:13Jocko Willink?

  And Derek has left the building, obviously. Awesome to have him on and hear about his story. So Echo?

• 2:00:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:00:28Jocko Willink?

  If somebody wants to support this podcast, how can they do it?

• 2:00:31Speaker 02

  Anyways, we will, well, actually, and I was, I meant to kind of, I didn't want to interrupt, but you know, the, what, what do you call it? The something D, the decompression?

• 2:00:42Jocko Willink?

  Needle down decompression, yeah.

• 2:00:45Speaker 02

  I guess I should ask him that, but is that like, can you feel that? You know, like when, you know, when it goes in?

• 2:00:51Jocko Willink?

  They're sticking a damn needle into your, through your rib cage and into your lungs. Yeah.

• 2:00:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Remember?

• 2:00:59Jocko Willink?

  Do you want to see if you can feel it? I'll stick a needle through your chest right now.

• 2:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no, no. I, it, remember that movie Three Kings? When they did that? Mark Wahlberg?

• 2:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Yes. No.

• 2:01:09Speaker 02

  They did that. I'm pretty sure.

• 2:01:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  Anyway, all right. You don't want to talk about that?

• 2:01:15Jocko Willink?

  I didn't see that movie.

• 2:01:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. All right. Cool. Anyway, yes. How can we support, how can we support ourselves? That's the question. First way is to stay on the path, keep working out, keep eating healthy. That's the hardest one.

• 2:01:30Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:31Speaker 02

  Me and Derek were talking on a side note, like eating healthy is kind of the hardest part about this whole staying on the path thing.

• 2:01:36Jocko Willink?

  Good, could be, yeah.

• 2:01:38Speaker 02

  I think because it's like the, well, then again, the working out can, it depends on who you are. Either way, you want to stay on the path. One of those elements of the path is required now is jujitsu.

• 2:01:50Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 2:01:50Speaker 02

  You agree, right?

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:01:52Speaker 02

  I thought you would. Anyway, when you do Jujutsu, you're gonna need a gi. Go to originmaine.com. Get whatever gi you want. Doesn't matter the color. Well, no, no, no. Check with your instructor.

• 2:02:00Jocko Willink?

  Check with your instructor.

• 2:02:00Speaker 02

  Getting ahead of myself.

• 2:02:01Jocko Willink?

  And check with your personal moral compass.

• 2:02:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, wait.

• 2:02:05Jocko Willink?

  If you get a gi that's not white.

• 2:02:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, what? So what do you mean?

• 2:02:09Jocko Willink?

  Tradish.

• 2:02:10Speaker 02

  The tradish, like, yeah.

• 2:02:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, Pete consciously tries to, like, usurp my personality. Like, he always, he won't give me a white gi. He only gives me a blue gi, a black gi, or whatever gi. He wants to try and break me out of this tradish.

• 2:02:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:29Jocko Willink?

  Which he's successfully done, because now I have all different colored gees.

• 2:02:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go. But I wouldn't say that violates your moral situation. That's more of a style thing.

• 2:02:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay, which violates my morals.

• 2:02:41Speaker 02

  So, yeah, a little bit, huh? Either way, yeah, so yeah.

• 2:02:44Jocko Willink?

  But, but, but I guess I can, I can claim a small victory, because I can be like, oh, I don't care what color it is.

• 2:02:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:02:50Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 2:02:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 2:02:52Jocko Willink?

  Little, little moral victory back in my direction.

• 2:02:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's not like, not like you're sitting around being like, hey, maybe I should grab a green gi.

• 2:02:58Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:02:58Speaker 02

  Because that'd make me, like, that'd be awesome.

• 2:03:00Jocko Willink?

  I'm just opening the package from Pete going, oh, he's got me a blue gi, whatever.

• 2:03:05Speaker 02

  It's dope. I'll wear it. Cool. Thanks, Pete. You're the man. Oh, so yeah, get a gi, man, whatever color you want. After you check with the instructor and your moral compass.

• 2:03:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:15Speaker 02

  Like, I guess. Also, rash guards.

• 2:03:19Jocko Willink?

  Biggest selling gi color is? Do you know?

• 2:03:22Speaker 02

  White.

• 2:03:22Jocko Willink?

  Nope.

• 2:03:23Speaker 02

  Black?

• 2:03:23Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:03:24Speaker 02

  Dang.

• 2:03:25Jocko Willink?

  Come on, we had this conversation. We had that conversation with Pete. Everybody wants to be a ninja. Everybody wanted to be a ninja when they were little.

• 2:03:30Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't know you were saying that's the most selling. I thought that that was like.

• 2:03:33Jocko Willink?

  Everybody wants to be a ninja.

• 2:03:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:35Jocko Willink?

  And the gi, the ninjas had a black gees, apparently.

• 2:03:38Speaker 02

  I don't think ninjas had gees. They had something else.

• 2:03:42Jocko Willink?

  Little special shoes with the toe.

• 2:03:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, the tai chi shoes. There were tai chi shoes.

• 2:03:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, check.

• 2:03:48Speaker 02

  Either way.

• 2:03:48Jocko Willink?

  Rash guards. You can also get rash guards for no gi or for whatever kind of activity. You can get t-shirts there, and you can get supplements.

• 2:03:57Speaker 02

  Jaco stuff.

• 2:03:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, those supplements. Joint warfare for your joints, krill oil for your all-around.

• 2:04:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 2:04:06Jocko Willink?

  Discipline.

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:08Jocko Willink?

  Get you, get you in the zone, which JP sent me a text. And he's like, how are you still saying Dave Burke is the rep?

• 2:04:16Speaker 02

  Oh, you're mad.

• 2:04:17Jocko Willink?

  For discipline. He's more, cause JP's more disciplined.

• 2:04:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:21Jocko Willink?

  And he's on Discipline Go.

• 2:04:23Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, that, that kinda in a way opens up a.

• 2:04:25Jocko Willink?

  The Go pill, the Discipline Go pill. And he's all, he sent a picture of, uh, some like super high speed thing. And he's like, this is me on Discipline Go.

• 2:04:39Speaker 02

  So JP is what he called jockeying for Discipline Go representative position.

• 2:04:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And he thinks Dave Burke, cause Dave Burke is sort of the OG Discipline Player.

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  Good deal, dude.

• 2:04:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:52Speaker 02

  He is. Well, let's face it, Dave Burke, he's, he's gonna be perfect regardless because he's such a like boom, high achiever. Dude from day one, you know, so, you know, JP's a loose cannon. So he can be the representative. Well, he can be a loose cannon. He's not a loose cannon. He can be the representative of Discipline Go because he's disciplined, but he go, he goes.

• 2:05:12Jocko Willink?

  No, the funny, I think the funny thing, you don't mean loose cannon. What you mean to say about JP is JP's fired up.

• 2:05:18Speaker 02

  He's fired up, yeah.

• 2:05:19Jocko Willink?

  And what's funny is JP doesn't need no discipline. That's why he's not the best representative. Cause I'm like JP. Where are you gonna get more in the game? He's in the game.

• 2:05:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, yeah, you need to.

• 2:05:31Jocko Willink?

  So, so JP, well, we'll just give him, uh, mutual supports, supporting assets behind the discipline. So yeah, you get discipline. You can also get Molk, mint chocolate, peanut butter, chocolate, vanilla gorilla, which is supposedly named after Leif Babbin, from what I understand.

• 2:05:51Speaker 02

  Dig it.

• 2:05:52Jocko Willink?

  And the darkness. And then the Warrior Kid, Molk, strawberry and chocolate. Try those out, even if you're an adult. I hate to say it, but I was thinking about this. Have you ever as an adult drank a strawberry quick? Yes, you have. I have, big time. Well, now we don't have to do that anymore.

• 2:06:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:11Jocko Willink?

  Cause now you can get something that's literally completely healthy.

• 2:06:15Speaker 02

  What was the one, there was like, that wasn't quick that they tried to skew or angle is healthy, right? That was some, it was like some other one, some other chocolate.

• 2:06:23Jocko Willink?

  I never heard of that.

• 2:06:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I forget it had vitamin, nonetheless, yeah, the working monk, that's gonna be, that's the one.

• 2:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Ovaltine, they might try and skew.

• 2:06:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the one.

• 2:06:32Jocko Willink?

  Come on, go look at the ingredients and then compare that to, to Molk.

• 2:06:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:37Jocko Willink?

  You know what that stuff has in it? A bunch of sugar. You know what Molk has in it? Molk.

• 2:06:43Jocko Willink?

  Direct from Molk cows.

• 2:06:44Speaker 02

  Way different, man. I dig it.

• 2:06:46Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, get all that stuff from OriginMaine.com.

• 2:06:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Also, if you want to represent Jaco as a store, everybody, Christmas is coming up.

• 2:06:58Speaker 02

  This is what I'm doing. I'm gonna activate. It's funny, cause I'm saying it like this is new thing. This is like such an old thing. A gift card.

• 2:07:08Speaker 02

  A gift card on JacoStore.com. So it's like, you know how like, okay, your brother, or whoever, or cousin is like in the game.

• 2:07:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I have a brother.

• 2:07:17Speaker 02

  Well, you know, whatever, your cousin, whoever, and they're in the game. They want, you know, and you say, hey, you know what? I can't pick out what I want for you from here. You just pick out what you want. Boom, there you go. Gift card. Boom. Nonetheless.

• 2:07:30Jocko Willink?

  You know what? I'm leaving this completely in your hands. You know why? I don't give gifts. I don't like gifts. Gift cards just aren't a thing for me. I've never given anyone a gift card ever.

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:39Jocko Willink?

  And so that's gonna be your deal over there on your side of the tribe.

• 2:07:42Speaker 02

  Bro, that's exactly what I was thinking when I was making it. So I was like, fucking, this goes against kinda Jaco's thing. So you know what I'm gonna do? On the gift card, uh, virtual representation, I'm gonna put your face right in the middle of it. Boom. So that's what I did. So there you go. In honor, so it's kinda like, yeah, it's a gift card, but it's kinda from Jaco. Since you don't give gifts, boom. Nah, you do.

• 2:08:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:08:03Speaker 02

  There you go. Anyway, on there, there's some good shirts. You wanna represent discipline equals freedom? You know, any kinda, how should I say, philosophy of the path. Some good stuff on there. Some rash guards as well. And hoodies, tank tops. I know, it's winter. I dig it. But if you're in Honolulu, Pearl Harbor, wherever.

• 2:08:23Speaker 02

  You can still represent the tank top this time of year. Um, but yeah, a lot of good stuff on there. Jaco story.

• 2:08:28Jocko Willink?

  Definitely.

• 2:08:30Speaker 02

  Definitely stuff to the core.

• 2:08:33Jocko Willink?

  Flag.

• 2:08:34Speaker 02

  Also subscribe to subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already on Stitcher, iTunes, Google Play and

• 2:08:44Speaker 02

  Spotify. I don't listen to Spotify. I barely know what it is, but I hear good things and you know, I we're on there and you know what?

• 2:08:52Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't Spotify play like mixed tapes kind of? Is that the theory behind it?

• 2:08:56Speaker 02

  I don't know, man.

• 2:08:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't know either, but you can get the podcast there is what we're saying.

• 2:09:01Speaker 02

  You can. Yeah.

• 2:09:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, you can ask Alexa for the podcast.

• 2:09:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Alex. Okay. And don't be confused with that. I think we went over this before. Cause some people think that it's in Alexa. It's not Alexa. That's like saying, I have, it's not an iPhone. It's a Siri. No, Siri is the, the, the girl inside. Alexa is the girl inside the device called Amazon Echo.

• 2:09:24Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:09:24Speaker 02

  Layers. Anyway, yeah. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already and leave a review if you're in the mood.

• 2:09:30Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcast, which I just posted a new one last week and got a lot of really cool, uh, feedback on that one. And

• 2:09:41Jocko Willink?

  yeah, I think once people got that one, cause I don't talk about it. I don't post very much about it, but anyways, a bunch of people, a bunch of people downloaded like all of them. Yeah. Cause they're, they're cool and they're good. Um, I believe the word is conversation starters with your children. That's what a lot of people said, like, oh, I, I finally had the conversation that I needed to have with my kids about.

• 2:10:07Jocko Willink?

  Well, in that case Warrior Kid Podcast number 19 about making good decisions.

• 2:10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:13Jocko Willink?

  And making bad decisions. And how if you make some bad decisions along the way, you could ruin everything.

• 2:10:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, totally. And you, what's interesting about that one too, is I have the supreme luxury of being able to listen to all these while they happen, right? These podcasts, but on top of that, if I have a specific question for myself, I can just ask you.

• 2:10:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:33Speaker 02

  But like, even though I might already kind of know the answer, but when you deal with kids, you can't just deliver certain information the same way you would as an adult or like your friends. So I'm like, man, how do I approach this specific situation? And the way that and the way you do it in Warrior Kid is the same way like you you kind of tell it to me or whatever. It's that alleviates so much stress when like when you need to approach your kids with this kind of stuff.

• 2:11:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, one thing that everyone says is this is what I try and tell my kids, they don't listen to me, which is

• 2:11:07Speaker 02

  Exactly what I'm talking about.

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  They they listen to Uncle Jake, they don't listen to me, they listen to Uncle Jake.

• 2:11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:12Jocko Willink?

  Let Uncle Jake tell them what's what.

• 2:11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:14Jocko Willink?

  Uncle Jake speaks the truth and they and they accept it from Uncle Jake.

• 2:11:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:18Jocko Willink?

  Oddly enough.

• 2:11:20Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Also, YouTube, if you like, if you are interested in the video version of this podcast, you want to see what Jaco looks like. You want to see what Derek looks like. You want to see what I look like if that's your thing.

• 2:11:32Jocko Willink?

  If you haven't seen the two minute trailer for the Mikey and the Dragons book, you can get that on YouTube, which by the way, is epic. And I don't use that term lightly.

• 2:11:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:43Jocko Willink?

  Echo sent me the for approval text with that video in it. And I watched it and I wrote back, this is the best video I've ever seen in my entire life.

• 2:11:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:56Jocko Willink?

  All caps.

• 2:11:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, good.

• 2:11:59Jocko Willink?

  And then I went and read YouTube comments. So far, no one has said Echo is jacked because you're not in the video.

• 2:12:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:04Jocko Willink?

  Which is which is supremely cool.

• 2:12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:07Jocko Willink?

  But no, what's cool is people are are saying about a two minute video, a cartoon video about a kid's book. People are saying that they got tears in their eyes, that they got chills. It's a legit video.

• 2:12:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:18Jocko Willink?

  It's awesome. So yeah, you can get that if you go to the YouTube channel. And then while you're doing that, you can subscribe to it too, to the YouTube channel.

• 2:12:28Speaker 02

  If you want.

• 2:12:30Jocko Willink?

  Get the the big, you know, subscriptions.

• 2:12:35Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:12:35Jocko Willink?

  And then you can also you can get you can get Psychological Warfare from iTunes, Google Play, MP3, whatever. And that's me telling you to do the right thing and making you do it.

• 2:12:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:46Jocko Willink?

  So just give it a shot.

• 2:12:47Speaker 02

  Help you through it. It's true. Also, when you want to vary up your workout, you want to add kettlebells to your workout, get Onnit kettlebells. Go to Onnit.com slash Jaco. Some good stuff on there, workout stuff, a lot of good stuff on there. Good information too, by the way. So go on there, Onnit.com slash Jaco.

• 2:13:04Jocko Willink?

  Jaco White Tea.

• 2:13:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:13:08Jocko Willink?

  Tastes delicious. And is very good for you. And it gives you an eight thousand pound deadlift. So give that one a try. Also got some books. We got, um. Mikey and the Dragons. Okay. Update. I am printing them as fast as I can. There's a bunch of printers that are printing new copies of Mikey and the Dragons. Some of them have already been shipped. They'll be going to Amazon. We are gonna be cutting it close right now. Actually, we should be good. People that are ordering, well, it's gonna be cutting close depending on when you exactly order, whether it gets to you by Christmas or not. But the faster you order, the better chance you will have of getting it before Christmas. I apologize that I did not order enough books.

• 2:13:49Jocko Willink?

  To be printed and that is my fault and I should have done better. And as Sarah Armstrong pointed out to me. She's like, oh yeah. Well, you know why? You didn't order enough books because you thought, oh, well, Sarah will get a book and Andrew Paul will get a book and Iris will get a book. And then everyone posts what they got. Andrew got 20 copies. Sarah got 10 copies. Iris got 10 copies. So everyone's buying multiple copies. Cause it's the ultimate Christmas gift for anyone between the ages of zero. And 10. Or 12. Anyways, Mikey and the Dragons, order it as quick as you can and we will try and get it to you by Christmas. If not, hey, uh, what's the next holiday? After Christmas?

• 2:14:27Speaker 02

  New Year's.

• 2:14:27Jocko Willink?

  New Year's. Okay. Maybe they'll get a new year's gift. New Year's gift and or what's after that? Easter?

• 2:14:33Speaker 02

  Well, technically.

• 2:14:34Jocko Willink?

  The Easter bunny?

• 2:14:35Speaker 02

  Valentine's Day.

• 2:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, well.

• 2:14:37Speaker 02

  Technically, hey, you said holiday.

• 2:14:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay. You get Valentine's Day gift for your children, I guess. Do you sure? Do that?

• 2:14:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:44Jocko Willink?

  And if not, you know, just get it for them.

• 2:14:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it's a good one. That's a fun one. That you mentioned that video. And the goal there was to kinda send, try to capture what it's like, like reading, you know, when you read a book, it goes on in your head.

• 2:14:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:59Speaker 02

  And so you capture what's going on in that book in your head and how you're reading it to your kid. You kind of capture that in a little summary. That's what it was. I think you did because that's really how I felt when I read that book to my daughter.

• 2:15:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:11Speaker 02

  It's good.

• 2:15:11Jocko Willink?

  Do you do voices when you'd read that book? Let me hear the king voice.

• 2:15:16Jocko Willink?

  Come on, man.

• 2:15:17Speaker 02

  Sorry. I'm not gonna do it.

• 2:15:17Jocko Willink?

  You heard mine. To my son.

• 2:15:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, cuz it really is. But that's classified.

• 2:15:21Jocko Willink?

  You gotta at least, just give us a to my son.

• 2:15:25Speaker 02

  To my son.

• 2:15:28Jocko Willink?

  That was awful.

• 2:15:29Speaker 02

  I know, bro. You put me on the spot. It sounds way better when I read it to her.

• 2:15:32Jocko Willink?

  Dude.

• 2:15:33Speaker 02

  Understand that.

• 2:15:34Jocko Willink?

  Wow. I all of a sudden, I feel like a voice actor over here compared to that one.

• 2:15:39Speaker 02

  You kinda are.

• 2:15:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, gosh.

• 2:15:41Speaker 02

  Hey, moving on. Yeah. Mike and the Dragons, awesome book. Also, Way of the Warrior Kid.

• 2:15:46Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:15:47Speaker 02

  One and two.

• 2:15:48Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:15:49Speaker 02

  From Wimpy to Warrior Kid.

• 2:15:51Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:15:52Speaker 02

  And then Mark's Mission. That's number one, number two. Also, important, critical books. I personally think, or the one that my daughter requests me to read again and again and again is part two, Mark's Mission. I think she really likes Nathan. Nathan James. She likes that idea of that irritating person, you know, because that's how kids are. They always talk and, you know.

• 2:16:17Jocko Willink?

  Wait until she meets Danny Reinhardt.

• 2:16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:20Jocko Willink?

  Danny Reinhardt, book three. I'm in the process of writing right now. Ten chapters deep. Danny Reinhardt shows up. So, yeah, she'll, she'll like Danny Reinhardt, even though my youngest daughter, when I, when she found out about the character Danny Reinhardt and who he was, and now she goes, Danny Reinhardt. Because the character, he's like, good at everything.

• 2:16:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:42Jocko Willink?

  That's the, the premise of Warrior Kid Three. The, there's no bully.

• 2:16:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:16:46Jocko Willink?

  Per se. There's actually a kid that's a good kid. He's good at jujitsu. He's good at pull ups. He's good at running. He's good at everything. And he's nice. And that rubs Mark the wrong way because all of a sudden, he's got someone that he's jealous of. It's hitting his ego. And what's that guy's name? His name is Danny Reinhardt. How awesome is that? So like, what if I told my daughter that? She was like, Danny Reinhardt. And she says, oh, she says, what did Danny Reinhardt do today?

• 2:17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, well, you kinda can anticipate that your son or daughter that you're reading it to, or the person reading the, you know, if, if they're of reading age, they're gonna like Danny Reinhardt.

• 2:17:24Jocko Willink?

  They are, but they're, I don't know. They're gonna, they might, they might side with Mark a little bit. Because you can hear Mark's getting annoyed because Danny just, he'll, he does this. He taps, he'll tap someone out and say like, oh, you know, I must've got lucky. He's one of those kind of guys. Well, like he beats him in a running race and he's like, oh yeah, you know, I was, I was feeling pretty good today. I guess. He's one of those guys. He won't take credit for anything, which is, and, and since it already bothers Mark that he lost. He's like, what did he say that?

• 2:17:51Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. And plus we all been on the mission since, you know, be since before Mark could even do pull ups. We've been with him the whole time, you know?

• 2:17:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:17:59Speaker 02

  And so we're feeling his pain with him. So now this guy Danny, he hasn't felt any pain.

• 2:18:03Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:18:03Speaker 02

  Nah, forget that.

• 2:18:04Jocko Willink?

  Danny's just naturally good at everything.

• 2:18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, screw that guy.

• 2:18:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's Danny Reinhardt and that's going to be coming out in the spring. Hopefully if I finish it in time, but which I will. Uh, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. You can get that book too. That's another book that you can get for the holiday seasons. Let's just say that.

• 2:18:21Speaker 02

  Agree.

• 2:18:22Jocko Willink?

  If it, it might kind of mess up, like jam up someone's new year a little bit. If they try and get on the path, like for Christmas.

• 2:18:30Speaker 02

  Like what? Pre-New Year's resolutions scenario?

• 2:18:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Oh, maybe they, maybe they use that to kick off the new year's resolution. They get a little def core.

• 2:18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. But here's the thing though. It, I think you might even say it in that book. Maybe.

• 2:18:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:18:44Speaker 02

  Maybe not. Where you're like, no new year's resolutions.

• 2:18:47Jocko Willink?

  Today. Now.

• 2:18:47Speaker 02

  Right now. Yeah.

• 2:18:48Jocko Willink?

  I've said that many times and I believe it to this moment.

• 2:18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:52Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, that's the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. The, the audio version of that is not on Audible. It is on, it's an MP3 thing. iTunes, Amazon Music, Google Play. Extreme Ownership. That's the first leadership I wrote, book I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. We followed that up with the dichotomy of leadership, which is possibly better. Anyways, um, you should check it out. It will teach you how to pragmatically apply the policies put forth in extreme ownership into your world.

• 2:19:31Jocko Willink?

  We also have a leadership consultant company. We solve problems through leadership. That's what we do. It's me, Leif Babin, JP Denell, Dave Burke, Flynn Cochran, Mike Sorelli, Mike Byma. And if you want to find out about that, go to Echelonfront.com. We will come out and work with your company and get your leadership aligned. Also, we got the muster in 2019. There's going to be one in Chicago. There's going to be one in Denver. And if you want to come to the muster, they've all sold out. So if you want to come, try and register early, extremeownership.com. And we have EF Overwatch, which connects Spec

• 2:20:09Jocko Willink?

  Ops vets and aviation, combat aviation vets with companies that need leaders, tried and tested leaders. And any you Marsoc Raiders out there that have gotten out, hit it up at EFOverwatch.com and we can get you connected to a job where you will be in a leadership position in the civilian sector. Again, that's EFOverwatch.com. If you want to hang with us still after this on the interwebs, first of all, Derek, like I said, he left, but Twitter, Derek Herrera, Instagram, Derek underscore Herrera, Facebook, Derek Herrera, Derek Herrera

• 2:20:53Jocko Willink?

  dot com. And also the Marine Raider Foundation. Again, he talked about all the things that the Marine Raider Foundation does. And if you want to go to that, the link is Marine Raider Foundation dot org. And then of course, if you want to talk with Echo and myself on Twitter, on Instagram, or on Facebook, D. Boha. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to all our military personnel out there holding the line. We can do what we do because you are doing what you do and we will never forget

• 2:21:34Jocko Willink?

  that. And special thanks to the Marine Raiders for your legacy of bravery that will never be forgotten. And obviously Derek Herrera for his service, his sacrifice, and like I said to him, the incredible example that he sets. Thanks to police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, correctional officers, Border Patrol, all first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe here at home. And the rest of you that are out there listening.

• 2:22:14Jocko Willink?

  I know things don't always go the way we want them to go.

• 2:22:19Jocko Willink?

  But I think just listening to Derek today, I think there's no doubt that that is the attitude you take. You don't focus on what is wrong. You focus on what is right. You don't focus on what you can't do. You focus on what you can do. You're thankful that you have these opportunities that so many didn't get. And you take that attitude and then you go out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco out.