191: w/ BTF Tony Eafrati. Sometimes You Just Gotta BTF THROUGH.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:07:41 - BTF Tony Eafrati. 1:59:24 - Questions For Tony. 2:26:28 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:52:19 - 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 191 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  Some nights I wake up drenched in sweat.

• 0:21Jocko Willink?

  I have dreams.

• 0:26Jocko Willink?

  And some people might call them nightmares, but that would not be accurate.

• 0:33Jocko Willink?

  Because I'm not scared and I'm not anxious. I'm actually amped.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  And I'm ready.

• 0:47Jocko Willink?

  And the dream is usually about some bad situation unfolding really quickly. Some operation gone sideways.

• 0:59Jocko Willink?

  And I'm in a building somewhere or in a bunker or in a ravine of some kind. And the enemy is maneuvering.

• 1:10Jocko Willink?

  And they're bringing it.

• 1:13Jocko Willink?

  And I'm with a small group, a squad, maybe six or eight guys. And we're low on ammo. And I'm about out.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  And one of the guys is hit and he's hit bad and we can't move.

• 1:31Jocko Willink?

  And we can't leave.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  And this is it. And the enemy is pressing closer.

• 1:42Jocko Willink?

  And I'm prepping grenades.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  And as I'm prepping grenades, I got my head down because they're laying down fire and the enemy is advancing. And we're killing some of them, but others are getting through. And the enemy fire increases.

• 1:59Jocko Willink?

  And if I'm in a building, I, I hear the door open up. And I can hear them entering the building. And I do a quick assessment. I got three grenades and I got a half a mag left and I got my K bar.

• 2:14Jocko Willink?

  Then I'm ready to get it on.

• 2:18Jocko Willink?

  And I pull the pin on one of the grenades and I roll it down the hallway toward the stairs and it explodes.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  Then I hear RPGs launch.

• 2:31Jocko Willink?

  And one explodes a little distance away, but then the next one explodes on the wall right near me and it knocks me out.

• 2:40Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then I come to and I check for my rifle. I'm grabbing for my rifle, but it's not there. And so I reach for my pistol. But my pistol's gone too.

• 2:50Jocko Willink?

  And then I feel for the rest of my gear. I feel for my knife. I feel for grenades and there's nothing there. All my gear is gone.

• 2:59Jocko Willink?

  I feel for wounds and there's nothing.

• 3:03Jocko Willink?

  And then I realize that I'm okay. That I'm just sweating a lot.

• 3:10Jocko Willink?

  That there's no gear, there's no guns. And I realize that I was asleep and that this was just a dream.

• 3:20Jocko Willink?

  And now I'm laying there in a pool of sweat in my bed. And I'm awake.

• 3:29Jocko Willink?

  And I'm, I'm actually mad because I left my boys hanging there in my dream. And I'm also mad because I don't get that final confrontation with the enemy.

• 3:42Jocko Willink?

  And I'll sit there and close my eyes and I'll try and fall back asleep. I'll try and force myself back in there so I can finish the fight.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  But I can't force myself to fall back asleep, so I lie there in bed.

• 3:58Jocko Willink?

  And I start thinking about what I would have done. I start thinking if there's any mistakes that I made. I start thinking about if how I could have defended that position, where I would have maneuvered to, how I could have maximized damage to the enemy.

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  And then I think about the rest of the guys on the team.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  And I think if I was in that situation,

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  who would I want with me?

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  And this was, this was a common topic in the teams. If you were in a desperate scenario,

• 4:38Jocko Willink?

  with the odds stacked against you, if it was time for the last stand,

• 4:46Jocko Willink?

  for victory or death, who would you want with you?

• 4:54Jocko Willink?

  I have a list of those names.

• 4:58Jocko Willink?

  Those men. A list of the guys I want with me

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  in that most critical of moments.

• 5:10Jocko Willink?

  And when I think about that list, there's always one guy that comes to mind first.

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  A guy that I've

• 5:18Jocko Willink?

  seen perform on the battlefield. Not for an hour, not for a day, or not for a week, but for months on end. This guy would go out on a three-day operation in 120-degree heat with two liters of water, three cans of Copenhagen, and twice as many bullets as anyone else. And as soon as the mission was over, he'd want to go back out again.

• 5:41Jocko Willink?

  This is a guy that can lead and that can follow, a guy that can plan and execute.

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  A guy that never put himself above the good of the mission or above the good of his teammates.

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  And I know without a shred of doubt

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  that he would have rather himself be killed or wounded than watch me be killed or wounded. He would step into the line of fire, take a bullet, or jump on a grenade to protect me or any of our brothers in arms.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  That's the guy I'm talking about.

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  And the other thing is,

• 6:27Jocko Willink?

  I know what he's thinking.

• 6:30Jocko Willink?

  And he knows what I'm thinking. There's no need to even talk. We were raised at the same team by the same people. We don't have to debate or discuss whether we should do this or do that. We look at each other. Give a little nod and we know what we need to do.

• 6:51Jocko Willink?

  So if I have to assault a beach or attack a bunker or storm the gates of hell.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  I want my brother Tony Fraddy by my side.

• 7:05Jocko Willink?

  BTF Tony.

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  Big, tough frog man.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  And that's what he is through and through. And that's what he did for his entire career through eight overseas deployments. He was one of the first guests I had on the podcast. Podcast number 41. If you haven't listened to that podcast, stop and go back and listen to it. But if you had have listened to it. Well,

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  then here we go again with BTF Tony. Tony, welcome back.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's just.

• 7:43Jocko Willink?

  Eight deployments or 10?

• 7:45Speaker 01

  10.

• 7:45Jocko Willink?

  10 deployments.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  No, but well, let's just get back because I didn't want you to get wounded because you're so you're such a monster. I'd have to carry you. It'd be a little better if like I got wounded, it'd be easier.

• 7:57Jocko Willink?

  I could put you in my cargo pocket.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, we're good.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, BTF is great, big tough. I'm not big. I'm not really tired. Whackadoo, you know?

• 8:07Jocko Willink?

  So last time you were on, we kind of just jumped right into like going into the teams and everything and.

• 8:15Jocko Willink?

  Which meant we skipped skipped over a bunch of stuff like, I mean, not a bunch, but I mean, cause like, I know you're gonna put it, well, how'd you grow up? Well, I grew up and then I

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then the Navy and then that's it.

• 8:28Jocko Willink?

  So, so you grew up, you grew up in New England?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, New Hampshire.

• 8:35Jocko Willink?

  And, and did you play sports?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I played hockey and baseball.

• 8:40Jocko Willink?

  Did they issue you a hockey stick when you were born in New Hampshire?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty much, uh, you get one in kindergarten and then, then you, you play street hockey and then you learn how to, you know, like rough up your buddies and then get your ass kicked and then you just keep playing.

• 8:59Jocko Willink?

  Did you play organized hockey?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, I played rec hockey. I played youth hockey all the way up till I was like seventeen.

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  No kidding?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yep. Played all my life, three years old till, I think seventeen.

• 9:13Jocko Willink?

  You kept all your teeth?

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much. I played, uh,

• 9:19Speaker 01

  mites, squirts, bantams and midgets. There's four categories, at least wise. But yeah, I played a lot of hockey and, uh, till I got a little bit older and then, you know, had to work.

• 9:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  So, schoolwork, I wanted a lot of time for it and, and I realized I wasn't gonna be like wicked good. So I just, it was fun, but I was like, yeah, okay, chapter of my life and that's it. But I still love hockey. I love it. You know, big fan.

• 9:47Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, like when I was a kid, we would play like out on lakes, cause I didn't play organized hockey.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  We did that too.

• 9:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:54Jocko Willink?

  We would tape, uh, magazines to our shins, cause we didn't have like the actual gear. So we would just do that. That way, when you get schwacked with a puck or a stick, you're not just done.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  No, but even in the summers, like people my age, your age, everybody knows what I'm talking about. Like Saturday morning when you're little. Your mother would give you breakfast, like, get the hell out, come back at lunch.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  It's not like I went in my room and went in my little computer, we didn't have any of that. So we went like we threw rocks at each other or played baseball in a field or.

• 10:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you see, your mom would say, come home for lunch. My mom would just like say, get out. But then the funny thing is, when, when it was like, oh, it's time to eat, it'd be like, oh, cool. I'm gonna get a Snickers bar and a can of Coke. That's what we ate. That's what I, that's what we ate. It wasn't like, when you need to watch your, your content.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, what the fuck is gluten? It was gluten, like some stuff that floats around in the sky. Like, I don't know what that is. You know, apparently people are allergic to it. I don't fucking know. You know, I always knew about the peanuts and the shellfish and all that shit, but not really, you know. You know, maybe, you know, it's on the table, eat it, that's it. Don't eat, I don't give a shit.

• 11:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I just, the, the things, and even I'll catch myself, you know, with my kids going, you know, you don't wanna drink that soda. And I'm thinking about when I was a kid, just that's, that's all we drank. We didn't drink, first of all, there's no such thing as bottled water.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  No, no, it's still back home, you drink it out of the tap. It's, it's, it's, it's better than Avian or whatever the fuck it is, you know? It's like the best. It's like so good. I fill, I fill up right in the sink and it's still the best.

• 11:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you played hockey and then what, what, when you went to high school, did you guys have a hockey team at your high school?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  No, the next, the next town did, but we didn't have a high school team. They had youth hockey.

• 11:57Jocko Willink?

  So then, did you play anything and did you play any sports in high school?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Just baseball.

• 12:03Jocko Willink?

  Just baseball?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then I, I sucked at it, but I played little league and I played into my like junior high and.

• 12:09Jocko Willink?

  I bet I sucked at baseball more than you, which was a bummer.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  That was pretty coordinated.

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  My dad was like a fanatic about baseball and I was out there going, this is the most boring thing I've ever done in my whole life ever. Like, this is, I could, you know, I was whatever, seven years old.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  But I like, I still.

• 12:27Jocko Willink?

  Stand there.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  I like it because now I watch baseball and.

• 12:30Jocko Willink?

  I know, I get the appeal now, but what I'm saying is when I was seven year old freaking hyperactive youth and my dad's like, you know, this is a great game and you gotta understand the tactics and the, and the, and the strategy behind what's going on.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  You don't care about any of that.

• 12:46Jocko Willink?

  Cause the funnest thing like the funnest sport that I remember playing that I said, oh, this is cool was dodgeball.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause it's violent.

• 12:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're like, oh, huck the balls at the other people. That was fun. It's like highly active.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:02Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  We played rec rec league hockey though, when I was a kid too. And that was all on outdoor rinks.

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Wooden boards and be like 10 blows there and they'd flood it. And then like my uncle was the coach of one of the leagues. And he was terrible. Like he didn't even know how to skate, but and he had no idea about how to play hockey. You just kill them. We'd have checking practice for an hour. Just go out there and check each other. Like, really? You know, I, you know, I didn't, I was like, I mean, I know how to play. I know the rules. I know. And this is what we're doing. I'm like, all right. Just go out there and kill each other.

• 13:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. You and I were talking about the fact that hockey players are getting smaller again now.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:48Jocko Willink?

  There, there was, there was, I guess, and this is, this is, I went and talked to the goals, the San Diego goals. And their coach was explaining to me, cause I, I said, man, the guys are smaller than I expected. Some of them, right? And he says, I, I said, I thought everyone was huge now. And he said, no, cause now what they figured out is these smaller, faster, quicker guys have a, have an advantage that they can exploit maneuverability, just like on the battlefield, you can exploit being able to maneuver. And these smaller, quicker guys can actually maneuver faster than the bigger lumbering guys. Now the, there's position for the bigger guys too.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. You gotta have a mix.

• 14:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's what they're figuring out.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  That's what they're figuring out. So if you were to go back in time, you might be able to, you might be able to hack it now.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  I, I played sports, but my real thing was like hunting and fishing and trapping. And I did all that shit. So that, that kind of took a higher step. Like that's.

• 14:45Jocko Willink?

  That was a press, that's what I like.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Priority for you. I like being out in the woods hunting.

• 14:49Jocko Willink?

  Was your dad in the military?

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Yes. My dad was in the army in sixties, drafted. He wasn't in Vietnam. He went to Germany. He was a helicopter mechanic. Had a blast in the army, you know?

• 15:04Jocko Willink?

  He's over in Germany, like the coolest guy ever.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 15:09Jocko Willink?

  Coolest and richest guy ever.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Right. Cause you know, you're like.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Drink beer and you know, go to work every day and.

• 15:17Jocko Willink?

  And, and did he talk to you about the military at all?

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Well.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  What made you want to join the Navy? Cause you, you join right out of high school?

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I enlisted when I was, uh, let's see.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Six days after I turned seventeen.

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  So I was in delayed entry for a year and then I went six days after I turned eighteen.

• 15:38Jocko Willink?

  What made you want to join the Navy? Because this is the thing, this is the thing that I try and warn people about the Navy. If you want to go in the Navy and be in the SEAL teams, that's cool and everything. If you don't make it in the SEAL teams, your job is not going to be that cool. Oh, I mean, unless you're into that kind of thing, because there's some people that want to work with technology. That's cool. You'll be an IT man in the, in the Navy. Or you want to work with engines and you'll be an engine man, or you want to be a gunner. Like that's cool. If that's what you want to do, but those are industrial type jobs.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're nine to five.

• 16:08Jocko Willink?

  They're industrial jobs. They're not nine to five, but they're industrial jobs. They're trades.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:13Jocko Willink?

  In the Army, like if you don't make it to special forces, or you don't make it to Rangers or in the Marine Corps, if you don't make it to Marsoc, you can still be an infantryman, which means you're still get to.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Get napped or.

• 16:23Jocko Willink?

  Do the machine gun thing, which is pretty much what I think most people when they join the military. Well, I shouldn't say most people. If you're even thinking about special operations, then you want to, you want to be using the machine gun.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. I mean, you want to have a machine gun in everyday life. I mean, it would come in so handy to eliminate a lot of frigging hoss shit like. Hey, you know what? Ah, you're just waiting in traffic. Just get out. Excuse me folks. Well, bubba bubba bubba bubba. Just shoot the light down. Okay, go. It would be so much easier, but I mean, it's legal, but you know.

• 16:56Jocko Willink?

  So you, but you, what did you join the Navy to be? Or did you just be like?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  I wanted to be, I wanted to be a frog man, but it took me a while. It took me a couple of years to go to Bud's.

• 17:06Jocko Willink?

  How did you know about this? What year was this? Like eighty-six?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I knew about the SEAL teams. I wanted to do it, but.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  The, the thing that helped me the most was actually doing like two years in the fleet.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  And yeah, it's two years I could have been a team guy, but for me, I wasn't ready. I wasn't mature enough. So I hadn't, I needed that structure and I learned how the Navy works. And, and for all you people out there and all that. I was stationed in the Philippines for two years. It's not like I was on a boat. I was just drinking and you know, just being a mad man. And of course the SEAL teams were over there, you know, the west coast guys might. Yeah, I mean, I might as well just do that. That's like the best.

• 17:52Jocko Willink?

  So I had a. Ridiculous. You're seventeen years old and you get, you get.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Well, I was eighteen.

• 17:57Jocko Willink?

  You were eighteen stationed in Subic?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  In Subic.

• 18:00Jocko Willink?

  As a what?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Mine man. I was a mine man. So it's like shore duty, you know? But it's like overseas duty. That was the best.

• 18:08Jocko Willink?

  Insane.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  It was the best.

• 18:10Jocko Willink?

  Did they give you, did they give you any kind of like briefing as this eighteen year old kid? Like, okay, you're in the Philippines now. This is what's about to happen.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, they just tell you, cause it's all about, there's all kinds of hookers and that's like the main thing. Back then was hookers and drinking. There was like two hundred and fifty bars in like a, a city block. And you know, I made like two hundred dollars every two weeks. And I always had money.

• 18:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Cause it was like, we'd, we'd go to like hap- happy hour or whatever. In the morning, like Saturday morning at like Tees Tavern.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Or wherever it was on Gordon Avenue. It was like nickel for a beer. So I really like learned, I polished my drinking skills like big time over there. And of course it's a thousand degrees out and it's just like, so much fun.

• 19:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. When I, my first.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  But after two years, you're just like, okay, I mean, come on.

• 19:07Jocko Willink?

  So you actually, you actually had enough of it?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Well, I wanted to get on with, you know, I got, you know, I took my screen task, got orders to Bud's and was like, all right. And back then, now they got this big fucking pipeline and all this.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  I flew in to Coronado on a Friday. Sunday, we had a class up potty, which is you shave your head. There's a keg of beer, you get liquored up and then be idiots and then Monday morning you start. It's day one.

• 19:37Jocko Willink?

  So you checked in on Friday, shaved your head on Sunday?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Day one.

• 19:40Jocko Willink?

  Classed up on Monday?

• 19:42Speaker 01

  That's it. Yep. Here we go.

• 19:43Jocko Willink?

  Did you get rolled?

• 19:44Speaker 01

  I got rolled in the

• 19:48Speaker 01

  uh, second phase, which nobody does. I didn't get hurt. I just wouldn't leave my swim buddy.

• 19:54Jocko Willink?

  What happened?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  My swim buddy, I wouldn't leave him.

• 19:57Jocko Willink?

  On a swim? On like a ti- on like a

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, you can't leave your swim buddy.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Right. So what do you do?

• 20:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you fail.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you just take it in the shitter and and then, and then like the next, my, you know, next class, like I was like me and Bryn, the cheese man, he's dead now.

• 20:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  We're like in the top three swim pairs. So I'm like

• 20:18Jocko Willink?

  My, my, uh, swim buddy.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Can't, you can't leave your swim buddy.

• 20:20Jocko Willink?

  I failed to swim.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  You, you can't, yeah, but you can't leave.

• 20:23Jocko Willink?

  So I go, they, they bring us to the first phase office and I'm standing there with my swim buddy and they're like, all right, and they, there was a, you know, 10 or 12 or 15 pairs failed to swim. So they're asking everyone, like they're calling us in the office, the first phase office by the bell. So me and my swim buddy get called in. We're like number seven to get called in. I couldn't hear what everyone else was saying, but I didn't know what the hell was going on. I was just like scared. I wanted, wanted to make it through this training. So we go in there and so there's something called guiding, which is like the person that when you're swimming in the open ocean, you have to, it's basically steering, but you call it guiding for some reason. You know, you guide, so you make sure you're swimming in the right direction. So they go,

• 21:04Jocko Willink?

  you know, you two, next pair, get in here. So we walk in, I'm standing at attention. He's like, what the hell happened to you two? And my swim buddy points at me and goes, Willink doesn't know how to guide.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 21:18Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, and the guy was a slow swimmer, like that was the problem and he was one of those.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  That was the problem.

• 21:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, but and so I'm standing there just going, damn, I just got just got dined out for something I didn't even do. So I just kept my mouth shut and I was like, I'll do better, right? And then what they did was they split us up and they put us with good swimmers. And then the same thing, like me, me and my new swim buddy on the next swim came in like fifth or seventh or something. I wasn't going to come in first or second because I wasn't fast enough.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  That.

• 21:48Jocko Willink?

  No, because you got some of those fuckers in there that are swimming like seventeen knots.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. Yeah.

• 21:54Jocko Willink?

  But this guy failed again, you know, and it was like, oh, maybe it wasn't willing, because guiding.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, really.

• 22:00Jocko Willink?

  Screwed you over.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  But it was all right, you know, I just had to wait.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Four weeks, five weeks, got back in and it was fine.

• 22:09Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then you, you graduated BUDS. Were you good in the water when you showed up at BUDS?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:18Jocko Willink?

  Did you grow up swimming in lakes in New Hampshire?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  No, it's just something you gotta do. Like, like, how many, how many times was I in the woods with people in the teams who were from? You know.

• 22:29Jocko Willink?

  New York or whatever.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Jacksonville, Florida, or New York City or Chicago, they're like, what the fuck, what, what? Man, it's dark. Like, who would say that? It's dark, it's dark, it's dark, it's night, what the fuck? What do you think we're gonna do? Like, go, you know, just lunch, we're gonna go on lunch and beach and, you know. So it's that's just one of those things you had to do.

• 22:51Jocko Willink?

  There's some people that don't do that very well.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  I know.

• 22:54Jocko Willink?

  I had a guy in my class, like a super stud wrestler from Iowa, but he never went in the water. And dude, he was my swim buddy in, uh, in like the pool phase where they're doing like the stuff in the pool with you.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I loved, I actually liked that.

• 23:09Jocko Willink?

  Breathing stuff on your, so we're doing buddy breathing and this dude is taking the regulator and breathing forty-seven breaths in a row, giving it back to me, I'd take like a breath and a half and he's grabbing.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you're like, dude, relax, yum.

• 23:23Jocko Willink?

  And he still, he still popped to the surface. And yeah, he didn't make it. He didn't make it because he would just freak out in the water. So, yeah, man, I was lucky, you know, up in Maine as a little kid, went in the water all the time.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, the water never freaked me out. I just, I don't know why.

• 23:41Jocko Willink?

  People out, man.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  But that's, that's the whole thing. You have to be competent in the water.

• 23:45Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Like when you're underneath the ship and you're de-rigging and all that and everybody's like right next to each other and you can't see anything.

• 23:53Jocko Willink?

  Just like cords floating around.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  My god, people think like it's all, you watch the movies, they go, they, they show him diving, then all of a sudden they show him climbing the ship like, well, what about all the shit in between? You're missing like the biggest fucking portion. That's terrible. You're under there and it's like

• 24:10Speaker 01

  lines everywhere and the guy's kicking you in the mask and then you gotta deal with that and it's just, it's just fucking terrible.

• 24:17Jocko Willink?

  Dude that's like sinking to the bottom, dragging you down.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  It's like, why is the line? What is all this pressure going this way for? That wasn't the plan. We rehearsed this like forty times.

• 24:27Jocko Willink?

  You can't communicate anything. It's all just.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  And you're just after a while, it's like survival. Like you just gotta not die and then, and then somehow it usually works out.

• 24:40Jocko Willink?

  Next thing you know, you're on the surface and everything is easy.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  And then you gotta go back.

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  I think that's what makes the teams good. I think what makes the teams good is when you have to deal with all that crap of whether it's going over the beach just to do a land warfare op, but you come over the beach or, you know, de-rigging underwater or a combat swimmer op or rigging the boats or whatever. When you add the water and it just makes it.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  It's all a real world up.

• 25:06Jocko Willink?

  So much freaking.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Even in training, it's real world.

• 25:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because you can drown.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can. I mean, but the buds thing, like, yeah, I didn't grow up surfing or any of that stuff. But the other thing is I, I didn't have a plan B. That was easy for me. I never even thought about quitting anything.

• 25:25Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  I mean, it was like, why? There's nothing else to do.

• 25:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  I mean, everything else is just garbage and junk and like, I'm not, no, I have to do this. This is what I have to do. Cause it's like the best.

• 25:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I, I'd never thought about quitting at all. And it was weird. I had a guy in my class that was from the fleet. And he was like, Ben, you don't want to go to the fleet, dude. It's you don't, you not want to go to the fleet and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he quit again.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 25:55Jocko Willink?

  And I just was like, man.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Really? We had these serial quitters that'd come back and come back and like, after a while, you know, give up. Like, you know what's that? The first you don't succeed, try, try again.

• 26:10Jocko Willink?

  How many tries?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  And then quit. No sense to be in a damn pool about it, you know?

• 26:16Speaker 01

  But I just didn't have a plan B, you know?

• 26:20Jocko Willink?

  Did, uh, did you do any of the water stuff when you were in Subic Bay? Did you, did any of the team guys show you like not tying or any of that?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  No, not at all. I did, I did dive though. I got my like paddy license.

• 26:34Jocko Willink?

  There you go. That's good. Cause diving, like when you, I've never done that, but when you go through like the basic, do they do some kind of?

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do like buddy breathing, but it's like the big.

• 26:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the big beautiful reg.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you're like, oh, okay. And then you take your mask off and then blow through, yeah, okay, clear your mask and. Yeah, whatever.

• 26:54Jocko Willink?

  But that's definitely helpful.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  But it was fun. I mean, it was something to do besides drinking all the time. So I did that like one weekend and then, then I was like, yeah, I'm good.

• 27:03Jocko Willink?

  Is that how long it takes to get one of those qualifications?

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you go through some classes, some pool, and then they take you in Subic, like out to Flip Flop Island. It's actually really nice, man.

• 27:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, man, when I got the little card, remember you going through BUDs and you get, well, I don't know if they had this for you.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, they did.

• 27:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I got like a little card that said I was a qualified.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Like I could go rent gear. Yeah, and I don't know where that is. I lost it.

• 27:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but when I had that thing, that thing, I got that and I thought I was the kind of the man, you know? I was like, you know, I would look at it from, you know, be my wallet, look at it like, oh, yeah. You feel like you're James Bond. Yeah, I felt like I was James Bond.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Like, who cares? Whatever.

• 27:49Jocko Willink?

  Not even a thing anymore.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  No, not nothing.

• 27:52Jocko Willink?

  Kind of like when I got issued my first floppy hat.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:55Jocko Willink?

  I thought, yeah, well, here we go.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  I've arrived.

• 27:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm ready to go to Nam.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  I know. I know. It's like, that's like you said last time, like I thought I was going to Vietnam like that day.

• 28:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  I know, but.

• 28:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I still have my first floppy hat.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Oh, of course you do.

• 28:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just keep everything.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  I don't, I didn't keep anything.

• 28:17Jocko Willink?

  You go, you might need it one day. No, I kept my floppy hat.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  I don't have a shadow box. I have a shadow box that someone made me, like the good friends of mine who used to do that for a living, like make coins, made it for me. It's perfect. It's like in my room somewhere. It's like not, I don't know where any of my medals are. I just don't care.

• 28:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  I'm like just such a loser when it comes to that shit.

• 28:39Jocko Willink?

  One time I was in my son's room when he was like, uh, maybe seven or no, he was probably nine or 10 years old and I'm like looking for something. I figured he took it. I'm walking around.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Immediately. Who stole mine?

• 28:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, exactly. All of a sudden I step on something and it's like sharp and I'm like, oh, and it's underneath a pile of my kids clothes. And I like pull it out and it's like a bunch of, a bunch of my medals, you know, the little rack of medals. I'm like, oh, cool. Whatever. Yeah. Leif,

• 29:09Jocko Willink?

  Leif's like, Leif said to me, uh, man, we never got you anything for T U Bruiser. I'm gonna get you something. He's been saying that for like 10 years.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  He's busy. He just had another.

• 29:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's why I don't have, I don't have any kind of nothing. The guys when I retired gave me a big giant trident that's like

• 29:28Speaker 01

  That's pretty cool.

• 29:29Jocko Willink?

  Seven feet tall.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 29:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I just have it in the corner with all my weightlifting bars. I have it in there.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 29:36Jocko Willink?

  Every once in a while, if I, I feel like if I, if someone breaks into my house.

• 29:43Jocko Willink?

  And I wounded him. I'm gonna finish him off with that.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 29:46Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna go get it and just run it. Put one of those things right through their neck.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Well, that, yeah, that'd be good. You should also spear him though, like through the midsection.

• 29:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  And then like get Thor, you know, and then you both can lift up like, that'd be cool.

• 30:04Jocko Willink?

  Be a good picture. Alright, so you get done with Bud's, no factor, whatever, and you show up at Team One. And did you get put into a platoon immediately?

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:15Jocko Willink?

  And it's now, what, nineteen eighty-nine, nineteen ninety?

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 30:20Jocko Willink?

  So is the Gulf War on the horizon yet, or not really? So Kuwait has not been invaded yet, or it has been invaded, but we're not sure we're gonna do it?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  That happened August sixth.

• 30:29Jocko Willink?

  And when did you get to the team?

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Like December.

• 30:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  So it took about nine months.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  So you showed up at the team, there's no war going on?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Well, I had to go through SBI.

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  And then have SQT back there at SBI, still basic in dock, and they just grabbed a bunch of guys and it was actually really squared away at Team One.

• 30:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  You did land warfare, you did demo, all your weapons and shit, patrolling tactics, you did maritime, air, you know, rubber ducks, limp ducks, all that shit.

• 31:00Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  You did, uh, photo intel, like all kinds of stuff.

• 31:05Jocko Willink?

  Infield developing.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I was just talking to this camera guy up in Wyoming, I told him I used to do that, and he goes, wow. But now it's all like digital cameras, you ain't gotta do any of that. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, spent hours and hours doing that. And then a lot of shooting, basic shooting, you know, shot M fourteen till your frigging fingers go.

• 31:29Jocko Willink?

  Cause you were not a man if you didn't carry an M fourteen.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, cause it was like the best gun ever.

• 31:35Jocko Willink?

  My bicep would get bruised from shooting the M fourteen.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:41Jocko Willink?

  Cause, and I know people say, well, cause it'd be like move, like you can't just keep it there the whole time.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Nah, it's like gigantic, and that's why the M fourteen, God bless its soul. Such a great weapon. Remember how many malfunctions you had with it?

• 31:54Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, none.

• 31:55Jocko Willink?

  None.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, ever in the history of ever.

• 31:57Jocko Willink?

  I had one. Somebody else's shell from an M- from an M16 went and like went lodged somehow into my ejector port.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 32:07Jocko Willink?

  In the middle of whatever.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it could happen.

• 32:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so that's one.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:11Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, those things are freaking accurate.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  They didn't, they didn't survive the, uh,

• 32:18Speaker 01

  how do I put it? The rail system, you know? Once, once everything started becoming attachments and shit, they tried to do it and then the gun was like 360 pounds.

• 32:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  So it just, it never really, but back then the M16 was basically a piece of shit.

• 32:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Even the NR727, the CAR 15s, that whole evolution leading up to the M4, they got better and better and better, they're more reliable and, you know, it just makes sense on the battlefield. If you, you got an M4, you got a, you know, 5x6, you're working with the Marines, the Army, you can always go anywhere and get some more ammo. It's like, who has stripped clip frigging 308 ammo?

• 33:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  You know, 762, nobody. You know, do you wink it up to 60? That got to be a wicked pain in the ass. You're like, eh, eh, eh, eh, but it was a great gun. I mean, I still love the thing. You put that front sight on there, Mr.

• 33:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  But as far as optics and night vision, it didn't make the cut. Just.

• 33:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  My take about it, you know?

• 33:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I still have one. That's still like my primary battle rifle.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Oh, it's great. Always gonna work.

• 33:33Jocko Willink?

  Yep. A hundred percent it's gonna work.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  I mean, if shit goes down, chaos in the streets and you're like on a cul-de-sac, you could come out with that. I mean, I'd have a fucking Tommy gun is what I'd have. My fedora on, you're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, just whacking everybody, but you know, you fantasize about stuff. You know, I mean, it's just.

• 33:56Jocko Willink?

  Hey, it's a Tuesday afternoon. What are you gonna do?

• 33:58Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah.

• 33:59Jocko Willink?

  Tommy gun fedora hat. I mean, come on.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Hey, you wanna go to the bar and get liquored up? Yeah, yeah, let me just grab my Tommy gun real quick. What? Yeah.

• 34:12Jocko Willink?

  So SBI. You go through, you learn a bunch of stuff. I had STT is what they called it when I went through.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:20Jocko Willink?

  And then good dudes teaching us that stuff.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Oh, it was great because you still get kinda treated like shit, but you're at, you know, you weren't a new guy. You weren't a BUDS student.

• 34:29Jocko Willink?

  You were, yeah, you were getting treated like a little bit better than a BUDS guy. Then did you get, then you got assigned to a platoon?

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. I got assigned to Alpha Platoon, SEAL Team One.

• 34:40Jocko Willink?

  And so in the old days, Alpha Platoon meant you were riding a boat.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 34:45Jocko Willink?

  ARG Alpha.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  ARG Alpha. I didn't care.

• 34:47Jocko Willink?

  Did you know anything? You're just like.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  No, yeah, whatever. I'm in a platoon. Cool.

• 34:53Jocko Willink?

  How many new guys were in your first platoon?

• 34:55Speaker 01

  We had a few. We had like.

• 34:56Jocko Willink?

  Cause sometimes they used to stack the ARG platoons with more new guys.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  We had.

• 35:00Jocko Willink?

  Cause they just wanted to fill that thing up because no one wanted to do an ARG float.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Wow, we, you know, new guy, I am a new choice.

• 35:06Jocko Willink?

  No, that's what I'm saying. So it'd be like, okay, there's, but just put all the new guys in there.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:11Jocko Willink?

  And let them float. But you got, you had a badass LPO.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  I did. I did. I had a, an LPO leading petty officer who was one of my BUDS instructors.

• 35:22Jocko Willink?

  What was he like as a BUDS instructor?

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Quiet and like mean looking like, kinda like, if you don't do this, you're just a big pussy. You know, or you guys aren't putting out and just, just like.

• 35:41Jocko Willink?

  Cause he was good at everything.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Oh, he was wicked good.

• 35:44Jocko Willink?

  He was good at everything.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Once he became my LPO, like he was good at shooting. He was good at all water stuff. He grew up like somewhere in California and he kayak, he could kayak. He was a really good skydiver.

• 35:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he was just good at everything.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Everything, mountaineering.

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  So respected.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  And freaking nice, man.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a great guy. I'm gonna actually see him here. By the time this podcast airs, probably. I'm gonna visit him, uh, somewhere in the country here and. But, uh, he did, I think, twenty years after that as a state trooper.

• 36:21Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was Alaska, I'm pretty sure, but. He's just, he, he thrived in that environment and he was a good teacher. Like he'd take us and he'd go, okay, guys, here's, here's how you do this. You're like eighty percent correct.

• 36:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  But this is the twenty percent that you suck at and then here's how to get better at it, you know, like Roger that, I mean, he was just a good dude.

• 36:45Jocko Willink?

  The reason I know him is because when he got back from that deployment, he took over CQC or CQB.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:52Jocko Willink?

  At Team One, he was the CQB instructor. So he put me in my first workup through CQB. And he was the first guy that I was looking at, maybe not the first guy, but he might have been. He was the first guy I was looking at going, he's, there's a lot of going on here. There's a lot like.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:09Jocko Willink?

  This isn't just a mechanical thing of you're going through and you're clearing rooms. Like there's, there's, there's thought happening here. There's, there's intentional decisions being made. Like I could see. I could see that with the way he would explain things, I'd be thinking, oh, he, he knows like some more, a lot more than.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:32Jocko Willink?

  Than a lot of us other guys do.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  And he'd explain some little detail. And you'd say, oh, and it would make sense to me, you know, I'd be thinking, wow, that makes a lot of sense.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  And yeah, he'd say stuff like in, you know, room combat shit. He'd say like, well, why are you doing that? I'm like, well, we're done here. We're gonna go there. Well, what about deconfliction? Like, well, what do you mean? Well, you're not the only group within your group assaulting this building or the ship. You're gonna make sure that the other guys. Alright, you know, the first one who actually.

• 38:10Jocko Willink?

  That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  When the blinders come off in the teams, everything's like from land warfare. You know, CQC, whatever you want to call it now. Skydiving, diving, once the blinders come off. And the good, the good people in your life and the teams. Will make the blinders come off and then that's when you start growing as a frogman. Because it's easy, just go, yeah, okay, blah, blah, blah, you know. But you have to, you have to do the basic shit so well and never forget it. But then open your mind up to what it's like shooting. Like front sight, front sight, front sight, then you get exposed to both eyes open. And your front sight is blurry because your target's clear.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Because guess what? When you're shooting paper, front sight, front sight, front sight. That's great. But when you're shooting people. You have to make sure you can shoot them. You have to look at their hands. You can't do that if the target's blurry. So when you transition, I mean, that really opens your eyes. You do years and years of front sight and then you start opening your eyes. And because you have to. And then it all goes away because you're on nods and you got a laser. And then you have to transition because you might be noon, you may have go have to go assault this building.

• 39:26Jocko Willink?

  I remember we were doing a shipboard movement. On the, the, you remember the pier side ship that we used to use all the time? So we were on that ship, we were doing just moving.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Nasty, it was nasty. Seagull shit all over the place.

• 39:40Jocko Willink?

  But we were doing. We were like moving, we'd come up the stern of the ship and then just move as a big group, a big train, like a big. And. He just asked a question, you know, like, well.

• 39:56Jocko Willink?

  What if someone's, you know, shooting at you? And, and everyone was kind of stumped, like the older guys in my platoon were kind of, you know, we'd shoot back or just some dumb answer, you know, like, oh yeah, we would shoot back, but meanwhile, we all die because we're all in the open on a metal ship.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:13Jocko Willink?

  And then he taught us, you know, how to do the little bump.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:17Jocko Willink?

  And, and then I realized, oh, oh, so there's, this isn't, uh, this isn't a recipe. It's not like a, it's not like a recipe. Oh, this is what you do every time.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't.

• 40:29Jocko Willink?

  No, that's, that was probably the guy that made me start thinking, oh, there's different ways to do this.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  He is the guy who made me start thinking.

• 40:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's different ways to do this. There's things that I need to actually think about. I can't just, I can't just follow the, the, the, the, the thing that you've been taught one time and that's how you do it. It's like, no, you actually need to think. And that was the first guy that I said, that I started to realize there's a lot more going on than I was aware of.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely. There's a lot more.

• 41:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, a lot more.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's not just, I mean.

• 41:08Jocko Willink?

  He would sit down at the range and shoot headplates 50 yards like on timer. You know, with his pistol.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:18Jocko Willink?

  Ping.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:19Jocko Willink?

  Over, while we were eating lunch, he's just down there.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  When he had that 45?

• 41:23Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Wicked nice?

• 41:24Jocko Willink?

  Yes. When no one had like really nice weapons like that.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  It was a good one.

• 41:29Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, so that's an awesome LPO to have for your first time around. Damn.

• 41:35Jocko Willink?

  Uh, your old running mate told me a story. You guys were on a bus somewhere on like Liberty. And some guy was running his mouth, some fleet guy was running his mouth and making a bunch of noise. He was all drunk and whatever, getting crazy. And all of a sudden, your LPO just like put him in a chokehold and put him to sleep.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like, there you go, buddy. Just get a little nap in there. You'd be all set.

• 41:57Jocko Willink?

  And what's crazy about that is no one knew what a chokehold, no one knew what a sleeper hold was, really.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  He did.

• 42:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and he's like, knew how to do it.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:06Jocko Willink?

  And knew how to put people to sleep.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 42:08Jocko Willink?

  And then does it.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was the best, man.

• 42:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Still is. He's a great guy.

• 42:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, freaking awesome. Anything else that he, so, so what was that first platoon like? Did you guys, isn't that platoon, the war kicked off while you were in that platoon?

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so August 1st or August 2nd of 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait and everything, blah, blah, blah. So they sent platoons from the Strand, even though they had forward deployed platoons, which them guys were pissed.

• 42:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, they were.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  And so we were on the Ark platoon. We didn't leave till April, and that like officially didn't end. But everything was done by the time we got there. We didn't, we didn't do anything really. The only, the only like real thing I did on that platoon was like a, uh...

• 42:59Jocko Willink?

  Ship boarding?

• 43:00Speaker 01

  No, the, the big 53 helicopters, one went down.

• 43:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Pulled off the ship, killed everybody, and we, we dove on the bodies and pulled them up. But I was with that guy and, you know, he was like, yeah, yeah, here's how we'll do it. Totally cool. But that was it. We didn't get any gunfights or nothing, which is unfortunate. It's like, fuck. Yeah, so we're on a ship most of the time and in the Middle East, we got off and we did training and stuff.

• 43:31Jocko Willink?

  Summertime deployment if you left in April.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:33Jocko Willink?

  So it was, it was 1,000 degrees.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it was terrible. And then, you know, you can't eat enough and all you did was like lift weights and

• 43:44Speaker 01

  and then wait to get back and then...

• 43:45Jocko Willink?

  So you get back from that deployment, you get, you roll into right into your next platoon?

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I got a story about that first one.

• 43:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  In the workup, talk about like attitude adjustments and stuff.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Uh, I kinda fucked up some infraction somewhere. I wasn't late. I just, I didn't have something ready. I don't know what it was, but my chief at the time, he's like, uh, oh yeah, okay. You fucked up. And I'm like, oh, Roger's chief. I didn't really know I fucked up. I'm okay.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  So it's like sixteen hundred, you know? I don't know if it was Friday. No, it was a weekday.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  And he goes out to the grinder with me. I'm like, what's he gonna do? Like punch me? Cause that, in teams, that's kinda like a, you know, still.

• 44:38Jocko Willink?

  It's a thing.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  You know, I wouldn't go crying to HR or whatever that is. We don't have that. It's just like, fucking figure it out, hit each other and be done with it and go back to work. So he's got this bag, this big construction garbage bag, you know?

• 44:55Speaker 01

  And it's filled with a tangled up flutterboard line.

• 44:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  So for those of you who don't know, a flutterboard line is this, without getting into the whole hydrographic reconnaissance thing, it's parachute cord, you know, line, and it's five hundred yards worth. And it's tangled up like a motherfucker. He goes, I want this in the morning, back on the flutterboard.

• 45:19Jocko Willink?

  Jeez, which is like a big fishing reel.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's gigantic board. It's about that big. It's bigger than like a gigantic pizza that you order. That's the diameter, whatever that is. I don't know. So I go, well, this is perfect, man. I'll just, you know, flake it out like a fish fishing line, then splice, cut it and splice it. And as he's walking, he goes, I'll know if you cut it and splice it. I'm like, fuck. So, you know, I did that for a few minutes and realized, man, this is gonna take all fucking night. So I went to the country store and I got like a six pack of Budweiser. Actually got like a twelve pack. And I'm sitting there and about five o'clock in the morning, I finished it.

• 46:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  And I had, I shined the flutterboard and I put it all, and I put it on the chief's desk. And I sat in the platoon space, you know, with a couple of beers and I kinda like passed out. And about six o'clock, six fifteen, the chief comes in and he's like, hey, I'm like, huh? He goes, smacking you up and I go, you bet. All set, chief. He's like, Roger that?

• 46:29Jocko Willink?

  Good to go.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Good to go. We got shit to do. Let's go. PT, Roger.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Good lesson learned there.

• 46:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I untangled some five fifty cord, uh.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Like.

• 46:42Jocko Willink?

  When it comes off, when it comes off the spool.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Of course it does. That cardboard one when one end disintegrates.

• 46:49Jocko Willink?

  Whoever made that thing has committed a war crime.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Oh, I know.

• 46:53Jocko Willink?

  That thing is just awful.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  It's just terrible.

• 46:56Jocko Willink?

  Ah, check. So you come back from that deployment after being at sea? And now you roll into your second platoon?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:05Jocko Willink?

  Did you get any schools when you came back?

• 47:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 47:07Jocko Willink?

  They're just like.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  They were already halfway through the workup. So it was just like, I did all the stuff, but I didn't have any time to do anything.

• 47:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. Cause the arg platoons were off cycle.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  They were off cycle.

• 47:18Jocko Willink?

  So you were going to get tossed into some, you were lucky then you got tossed into a platoon that was already in their workup?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Good platoon. You know, uh, wasn't much going on back then. Like ninety two? Ninety three, something? When ninety two came back, ninety three.

• 47:36Jocko Willink?

  You deployed to the PI with that platoon?

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 47:39Jocko Willink?

  Or did you deploy to Guam?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Guam had just started.

• 47:42Jocko Willink?

  So that's where you deployed to?

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like nothing there.

• 47:45Jocko Willink?

  I know.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Matter of fact, it was right, it was right in the middle. We

• 47:52Speaker 01

  we, they were just exiting. So we couldn't actually deploy there.

• 47:58Jocko Willink?

  Ah.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  So we went to Guam. But there was nothing in Guam. Like it was.

• 48:04Jocko Willink?

  Cause my first deployment was to Guam and we were like the first guys to go to Guam. A hundred percent like, oh, you are going to Guam.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:14Jocko Willink?

  And the guys that had deployed to the PI before? Were just moping around the barracks.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  I know.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Like I said, I was stationed there. So I'm like, yeah, whatever.

• 48:27Jocko Willink?

  And then was the was the workup standard workup?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:31Jocko Willink?

  Bunch of freaking humping around the desert.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:33Jocko Willink?

  Like the forward leading edge of battle. We had some good guys in trade trading that understood more about war than I did. That's for damn sure.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:45Jocko Willink?

  But it was, you know, there was not much to reflect back on for a lot of guys. The guys had to, if the guys were dealing with Vietnam guys and now.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Well, my first platoon, my LPO they were talking about, he was in Grenada.

• 49:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  With damn that with team six and then my second platoon, the chief was in Grenada too with team six. So I had some redundancy in that like warning. But some of it was like, I don't know.

• 49:16Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it crazy though? And that's like, cause I had my platoon commander, my second platoon was also in Grenada.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

• 49:26Jocko Willink?

  And everyone was, you know, that was sort of the, the, and actually I had my LPO in my second platoon was in the first Gulf War and actually did.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:34Jocko Willink?

  Got in some firefights and.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  LC?

• 49:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And so, so those guys, it was like they knew the unknown to us.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:43Jocko Willink?

  You know, and that was, that's crazy. That there was that little combat experience in the teams back then in the whole military.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the eighties.

• 49:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Was.

• 49:57Jocko Willink?

  And now you go into a SEAL platoon, every single, literally every single guy, unless you are a brand new guy, every single guy has been on a combat deployment or seven.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  You're right, or you know, fifteen, yeah, or whatever.

• 50:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're just.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  There's tons of them that are numb to it. They're like, oh, we're gonna do this deployment now. It's like, we're gonna go somewhere where there's nothing going on. They're like, yeah. Because we always used to have a saying like, if you're in a deployment and you're totally at war, that's great.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  But if you're in a deployment, we're just drinking beer and working out and doing exercises. Drink beer, work out, do exercises. Do that for the boys who can't do that.

• 50:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Cause guess what? It's gonna come full fucking circle. It always does, you know, but.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  We're fortunate. We, we had a. I'm just fortunate, like, the timeframe I was born.

• 50:51Jocko Willink?

  Totally.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  I mean, from. I know everything that happened in the eighties in the world. I went in the service and it was still old school and then. The Y two K and then like, actually, let's, let's, you know, I learned about the industrial revolution in school. I mean, who really gives a fuck? But the, the technology revolution, cell phones, computers, I mean, it's.

• 51:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  It's changed the world.

• 51:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Not just the teams, but everyday life.

• 51:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  And I mean.

• 51:21Jocko Willink?

  That was weird too, cause we got to see.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  And nine eleven.

• 51:24Jocko Willink?

  Do you remember? I mean, when we got to the teams, there was no email.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Of course not.

• 51:27Jocko Willink?

  I mean, there was no email.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  There's no computers.

• 51:29Jocko Willink?

  There was no computers, there's no email. So.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  The copy machines, we had to roll the thing like the Xerox.

• 51:34Jocko Willink?

  My first deployment, my platoon commander and the assistant platoon commander had, each had a computer.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:41Jocko Willink?

  And like, no one knew what they were doing on it.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Cool. They just printed out a gear list.

• 51:45Jocko Willink?

  They weren't even doing anything on it, right? It was just complete. No, there was no use for them whatsoever. And then, you know, you fast forward, I remember uh. Microsoft Word, and it wasn't even Microsoft, it was like some other word processing program. And people started doing what you're talking about.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:02Jocko Willink?

  Print a gear list.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Oh, I had floppy disks.

• 52:05Jocko Willink?

  A drive, you know, and all that stuff. I thought I was.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  But here's a funny thing about that, right? Like, when I went into training. Like after my seventh platoon. They're like. Oh yeah, you, you're gonna be the LPO of this platoon. Over at team five.

• 52:24Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  I'm fast forwarding a little bit, but like, no, no, no, you've done enough. You're going into training. I went, fuck. So then it became trade at, and I was like, point going over there.

• 52:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  So I had to put all the land warfare stuff. On PowerPoint, you know, and, and didn't like do it right, you know, professional and I just, bah. I never had one minute of formal computer training. The Navy never gave me any, I never asked, I just. I didn't know how to turn on the PC, like, I had no idea, I'm like.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  On the side.

• 52:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  And then I I had to I taught myself how to do it.

• 53:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  And PowerPoint, okay, can you put PowerPoint on this? The the guy comes over and does it and I'm like. Asked a few questions and figured it out. What are you gonna do?

• 53:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  You gotta figure it out.

• 53:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  And it's like fucking terrible. I had a lot of, you know, past midnight nights, starting at zero six, just going. You know, and I could I could get up, go to work, do the two mile swim, go run six miles. Whatever the fucking PT was. Throw my body on it, run through the house eight hundred times, then go drink a thousand beers and go to bed at midnight, sleep four hours and I'd be good to go. Eight hour day on the computer. I can barely make it home and I'm like. It kills me. It's terrible. I don't know how the one of these fuckers who sit in cubicles like blow their brains out. After like ten years, you know, the business suit and they're all like overweight and high blood pressure like.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  I I totally can see it. That's no way for a human being.

• 54:04Jocko Willink?

  You you have to get out of the cubicle, man.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Oh, my god. I'm like head butting the mirror.

• 54:10Jocko Willink?

  That was, yeah, being in the teams where you're at a minimum, you worked out in the morning. And at lunchtime, you're gonna go like for a run on the beach.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Or something.

• 54:19Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna go do jujitsu or you're gonna go freaking do rope climbs or something at lunch. And and that's just the way.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:27Jocko Willink?

  Like, think about the fact that when you go, when you're in the teams, you you work out every day.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 54:33Jocko Willink?

  Like, that's just awesome.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Right. And if you're not working out, you're doing everything we do in the teams is working out.

• 54:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  So like, okay, well, I'm not gonna PT. Oh, you're not gonna fucking PT? I'm climbing the ships all day.

• 54:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  You know, if that ain't working out, I don't know what the fuck is, you know?

• 54:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, if you're in one of those jobs where you are staring at a computer all day long or you're sitting inside all time. You gotta, you gotta get up and move.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 55:02Jocko Willink?

  So back to your second platoon or going, what are we forward to your second platoon?

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:08Jocko Willink?

  Was there any major leadership lessons that you learned in your second platoon? And I didn't really ask you that question about your first platoon. When you, because I imagine your LPO must have left such like, not like a, hey, here's four points on how to lead, but you just watched that guy?

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Well, I just, yeah, that

• 55:25Jocko Willink?

  Just emulate him.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  That's, well, the cat you're talking about, uh, I don't know how he was like your OIC.

• 55:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  We know what we're talking about. He's like, just do what that guy does.

• 55:37Jocko Willink?

  Dude.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  And you're, and you're all set.

• 55:39Jocko Willink?

  I, I spent my whole career trying to emulate that guy.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:43Jocko Willink?

  Everything about him. And I did a crappy job, but I did the best I could.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  I did the best I could too, you know, but, uh, my second platoon, uh,

• 55:55Speaker 01

  I don't know, I, we didn't like, there was no major like conflicts, not even close to, we did some exercises, we had a good time, Thailand, Australia, gotten a lot of like bar fights and, you know, I mean, we didn't really, it kind of went by.

• 56:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  And I had a lot of fun and learned, I learned, I don't know.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  I improved on my, my shooting skills.

• 56:25Jocko Willink?

  In your second platoon?

• 56:26Speaker 01

  In my second platoon, not a ton, but a little bit. And I'll get more into that as we go along, but it was all right.

• 56:35Jocko Willink?

  Doing a platoon is that period of time, period of platoons, which I did one deployment to Guam in that time period. But you could see what was happening and what was happening was it was a pretty cookie cutter thing. Like you're going to do your workup, you're going to go on to Guam, you're going to do some exercises, you're going to come home and you're going to do that again. That's actually why I went and did a couple of ARGs because it seemed like

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Different.

• 56:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they, they had a little better chance, it seemed of doing something real. And that's why I did a couple of ARGs with a couple of other guys, but, uh, but yeah, it seemed like it's kind of cookie cutter. Hey, you're going to do your workup, you're going to do, and you're learning stuff, you're getting better at it, but that's about it.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  That is exactly about it. And now that I look back at it, some of the people who were in charge of me, you know, whether they were OICs, LPOs or chiefs.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah hindsight's 2020, but they didn't really do me any favors. They didn't have a lot of forward thinking. And I hate to say it, but some of them are like, wow, let's just get through this deployment and like get through it. This is like my whole life, like I don't care if I ever go home, you know, this is what I do. This is our profession, you know, and and I would hold some animosity towards them and piss me off, basically.

• 57:56Jocko Willink?

  Did it seem to you?

• 57:59Jocko Willink?

  Like it seemed to me, well, as from what you just said. I think that there were some guys in the teams at that time period. That were not thinking at all that we were going to war.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, no.

• 58:13Jocko Willink?

  It was just not.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  They wanted to do this so they could punch that ticket to make rank.

• 58:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but they were, they were not thinking, hey, there's a war on the horizon. Hey, we need to be ready for combat. We need to improve our skills. There was definitely guys in the teams in the nineties that were just. You know, there were some great guys too, obviously, but there was plenty of guys that were, hey. Yep, we're going to go on this deployment. This is what I have to do. Hey, stay out of trouble.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:44Jocko Willink?

  Um, are we going to set up any extra training? No.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  No, we'll just train if we don't have to train, we won't. It's like, well, yeah. Cause if you don't make us train, we're going to go train out in the bars.

• 58:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  And getting big fistfights and break chairs over people's heads and get in trouble. Which I don't know why you get in trouble. I still think like, oh yeah, yeah, okay. Oh, bar fight. Yeah, don't do it again.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  I never got anybody in trouble for that. Like, that would be like, yeah, cool. Don't, no, don't be disrespectful to cops. But, you know, come on.

• 59:20Jocko Willink?

  Lock guys up on an island for six months.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then go, oh, you know, go home and you know, give a what? No, we're not, we're not jobs. That's what taxpayers pay us for to be wild and crazy. So when all that happens, we're like right at home. That's what, that's what we do.

• 59:41Jocko Willink?

  So that, so that platoon, you do, you do its cookie cutter. And then your next, your next platoon after that, were you the LPO of your next platoon after that? You did another platoon.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Well, the second platoon, I gave up the machine gun. And we did that one platoon. And then I became a point man. That's what kind of what I was wanting. That kind of takes the blinders off. And I became a point man. Was I the best point man? No. Was I the best at anything in the teams? No, ever in the history of ever, nothing. But I was decent point man. I'd say it was average. And

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  I did that for the next five platoons. Unless I was in a leadership position. So I did, my third platoon was a point man.

• 1:00:31Jocko Willink?

  Wait, your second platoon was point man or second platoon? Okay, so you gave up machine gun after your first platoon? And now your second platoon point man, third platoon point man? Which means you're getting really good at land nav.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we didn't have GPS.

• 1:00:45Jocko Willink?

  No GPSs. And your pace count is on.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Seven thousand yards in my head. Not like counter, nothing, just, yeah, Roger.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  And I got real good. I was pretty good at land nav anyway, but.

• 1:01:00Jocko Willink?

  When did you go to sniper school?

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  My third platoon.

• 1:01:02Jocko Willink?

  So in your third platoon workup, you go to sniper school. Which sniper school? Was it in NSW sniper school at the time? It must have been in one of the early ones.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was not, not the earliest one. So it was squared away. It was awesome, man. We did like a couple of days of classes. And then we went up to Colinga, California. And that's when my shooting, my long gun shooting just became insane.

• 1:01:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  So, so, all right, you know, sniper school, you know, where's my cool sniper weapons? No. Iron sight M14. For like two weeks straight at a thousand inches. So after a while.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  This is your group.

• 1:01:46Jocko Willink?

  Size of a quarter.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Twenty rounds. This is your group. And then you start shooting for distance, calling wind, still with iron sights, iron sights, iron sights. Finally, they break you into the scope. And they start teaching you how to, you know, Mills. How to range targets. And you didn't have laser range finders. And so when you finally get all that stuff, I mean. You're such a good shooter. I got out of sniper school and my platoon, we did a pistol shoot. Me and my shooting buddy. You know, Z, they're not Z, but that's his initial, ZJ. We smoked everybody. Just because we could shoot. And they just got back from like Rogers, like, yeah, yeah, but.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  And that really, really.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Like, I became a really good long gun shooter. Like, awesome.

• 1:02:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've been shooting archery. And, man, the laser rangefinder, they're freaking crazy.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, they're the best.

• 1:02:50Jocko Willink?

  They compensate for everything. They're crazy.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I bought one. I was like, oh, I'm just gonna buy one. The guy like, he's like, I'm like, which one's the best one? This one. And I was like, okay, cool. It's compensating for angle and.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Just real quick, I was. Two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago. I was an RO, range officer, they call it, but it's a range safety officer. At the Wyoming Rifle Tactical Championship. Up in Wyoming. Some of these rangefinders these guys got are like incredible. And a shout out to them guys, they're some of the best shooters I've ever seen in my life, like in the world.

• 1:03:31Jocko Willink?

  What was the competition?

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  It's called the Wyoming WRTC, Wyoming Rifle Tactical Championship, or. Or WTRC, I can't remember. Excuse me if I fuck it up. That's just the way I am. But it's also a fundraiser for special operations wounded warriors. Some of the best people on the planet, man. Awesome. But some of the heroes, like, holy fuck. You know, but I had this back in the day that has saved me like, I don't know. Seven hundred hours of horse shit in my life, you know, but. Times. But yeah, I became a really good shot.

• 1:04:09Jocko Willink?

  This rangefinder I have has a stabilizer on it too.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:04:12Jocko Willink?

  So you're not like shaking.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, the only thing it doesn't do is like.

• 1:04:16Jocko Willink?

  Pull the trigger.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Give you a blowjob and shoot the gun for you. I mean, it's, it's like crazy.

• 1:04:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. So you started, so that's when you went to sniper school and you did that sniper school was the NSW with the stalking and all that.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was hot. It wasn't easy. Wasn't easy at all.

• 1:04:34Jocko Willink?

  How many people graduated that school?

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  I, I can't remember. There was.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  I wasn't like the, like the top cat, but I think we had a ten.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Maybe fifteen.

• 1:04:50Jocko Willink?

  Man, NSW came out of the gate hardcore on that school.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they did.

• 1:04:55Jocko Willink?

  Like that NSW sniper school.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  It's legit.

• 1:04:57Jocko Willink?

  Freaking legit.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not easy.

• 1:05:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  But I like, I loved it. I mean, I thought it was awesome.

• 1:05:05Jocko Willink?

  So then you go on to deployment with that. Where'd you go? It's another Guam deployment?

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was another

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  insignificant. Not that it wasn't great and everything, but it was no.

• 1:05:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what people have to understand. In the nineties, it was like you're going on deployment. We're on standby for whatever, praying every day that a major theater war would break out.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:05:30Jocko Willink?

  I mean, just hoping, but.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  But one thing we did do is we

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, I gotta backtrack one platoon. We were in Australia working with the SAS. And shooting the shit and we were, we were doing some training and we're doing some shooting. Our guys were doing like really well, like shooting wise. And of course with those cats who are awesome, they're like the best guys ever, you know, just like a bunch of special forces around the world. They're best guys ever. Like, oh yeah, you guys, man, you're shooting the shit out of it, mate. And he goes, well, it's easy for you. And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? You guys grow up playing frigging Cowboys and Army and and I'm like, you know, I never really thought of it.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  He goes, you know, back then they're like, we don't have guns here. They like, don't have guns unless you got a special permit to hunt or you're joining the military or the cops. We don't grow up doing that.

• 1:06:31Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  You know, I'm like, I never thought of it, you know, Christ, BB gun wars when you're kids and

• 1:06:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, God.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  You know, just throwing rocks at you. Let's have a rock fight.

• 1:06:40Jocko Willink?

  What?

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  You know, so anyway.

• 1:06:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you don't think too much about the fact that many of the people that come into the teams or into in the military, they grew up with a rifle.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Or at least shooting. At least comfortable around guns. I mean, I don't see any reason to be afraid of a gun.

• 1:07:01Jocko Willink?

  No, unless you're an idiot.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:03Jocko Willink?

  Then you should be afraid of it.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Jocko Willink?

  Cause you shoot yourself.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  Right, but that and then my third platoon, we like, so we didn't. When I was C's did some stop, you know.

• 1:07:14Jocko Willink?

  And you know, like.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  But people don't realize in them years when there was no wars going on. We did some like ridiculous training stuff.

• 1:07:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  Okay, we're gonna do like this three mile swim and then put your gear on and hump, you know, walk like. I don't know, here to Saskatchewan and then. And then you get a five minute break and then you gotta shoot like seventeen rounds in two seconds and like, really? I mean, how skinny do you want me to be? You know, do like five mile swim, like ten mile run, then two mile swim like.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Dude, right? It takes all day, you know?

• 1:07:58Jocko Willink?

  Doing the monster mashes on Friday.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  I mean, they were fun.

• 1:08:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they were fun, but. Yeah, there and that's the other thing is I have occasionally people ask me, they say something along the lines of. I was in the Marine Corps, I was in the Army, I was in the Navy during the nineties. And didn't do anything and I feel like I didn't do a good job serving my country. And I always say, look, man.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  You served your country.

• 1:08:20Jocko Willink?

  You did what your country needed you to do. And when and when it was nineteen ninety-four or nineteen ninety-six and you were in the SEAL teams and the Navy needed you to deploy to wherever and. You go do an exercise with some country like that's what you did. And and we trained and we did.

• 1:08:37Jocko Willink?

  We did establish and maintain standard operating procedures. So all these little things that we do, you know, like they came, they, they, they, somebody had to carry the thread of being able to do this stuff.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:52Jocko Willink?

  For during these time periods. And that's what, that's what we were doing, you know? Make, making sure that this thread, making sure that the knowledge, at least at a minimum level, stayed in place.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And a lot, a lot of it is not even the tactics and stuff. It's the,

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  I don't know. And the SEAL teams, I think the world, the word like phrase, old school, has to always be there. It has to. Like just BTF through everything or that's not an old school thing. Just, just that attitude. Like you gotta, at least every day in a SEAL platoon, SEAL troop, SEAL team, whatever you're talking about, someone's gotta be like,

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  don't be a fucking pussy. Just do it and shut the fuck up.

• 1:09:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Cause if it ain't like that in the most exclusive man's club ever, then, then what, what do you got? You gotta, you got nothing.

• 1:09:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's definitely, you definitely have to maintain that attitude of, hey, we're gonna do, we're gonna do, we're gonna, we're gonna get this done.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:59Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get this done.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  And it's like, cool, man. This is gonna really suck. Yes.

• 1:10:05Jocko Willink?

  Things that are gonna suck real bad.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Cause if you don't do, even if you're operating, you're in a platoon or whatever you're doing, if you're not doing a gut check, like a serious gut check every two months or so, something's wrong. It shouldn't be easy.

• 1:10:21Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  It shouldn't, it should be like, fuck, this is gonna suck. But then when you're doing it, it's, it sucks so bad, it's fun. Cause you, what, you're chums. You're like, yeah, whatever. Everything's good.

• 1:10:32Jocko Willink?

  No one, no one ever says anything about it. You just. Like hmm.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just hmm.

• 1:10:38Jocko Willink?

  Cause you go, cause you think about some of these things that you do. You get in, you jump, you jump into the ocean with a Zodiac. And then you get in the Zodiac and you rig it and it's freezing. And you're in a wet suit that's cold and now you drive from over the horizon. So it's fifteen or twenty miles of driving in a Zodiac.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Against the swell.

• 1:10:59Jocko Willink?

  Against the swells, you're getting beat up. Your ass is chafed. You're, it, the guy next to you is puking. And, and what you're doing is you're getting to a harbor somewhere. So you can then put on your.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  Do the real work.

• 1:11:14Jocko Willink?

  Take your dive rig out of a kit bag. Do like a cursory check on your dive rig to see if it got damaged on the jump. And then you put that thing on, you're freaking, it's all awkward and huge and. And then you roll into the water and then you're underwater for three and a half hours next to some idiot who doesn't know where he is. And you're freezing. When you get in the water, you're freezing, you're hope, you're actually happy when you get in the water.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Cause then you know you're gonna warm up in like two minutes.

• 1:11:44Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're gonna be kicking. And then you get done with that, you come back out, you got, you turn on a I R strobe or an I R strobe. Sometimes a white strobe, cause no one's out there, no, there's no enemy gonna see you, cause you're in the middle of the ocean.

• 1:12:00Jocko Willink?

  And then you get picked up, you climb back in, you're totally exhausted. You have one of those collapsible canteen, like the two core canteen is in the bottom of your kit bag. You pull that thing out, you drink some of that.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  I pull it out, it got punctured. So I just like, I just go, I got nothing.

• 1:12:19Jocko Willink?

  And then you gotta drive another fifteen miles back over the horizon. And, and, and about, you have about seven miles left, the sun starts coming up.

• 1:12:31Jocko Willink?

  And then you get there and then you get loaded into some, some L C U that was beating you out there. So that's the kind of thing, like that's just, that just sucks, man.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, get used to it though, you know.

• 1:12:43Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so that's your, so your third platoon, your fourth platoon, what about your fifth platoon?

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  My fourth, no, my fourth platoon, I was L P O.

• 1:12:51Jocko Willink?

  There you go, you were a second class L P O.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  I was a second class.

• 1:12:54Jocko Willink?

  Think about that, for those of you that don't know what that means, you're a second class petty officer. LPOs are usually supposed to be first classes. And now everyone in a platoon is like a first class.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:07Jocko Willink?

  Back in those days, man, there was E3s, E4s, E5s and then you'd have an LPO. But you were the LPO as an E5.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:13:18Jocko Willink?

  How was that?

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  I loved it, you know.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  My chief was a senior chief. And God rest his soul, Mikey Hinkle died a few years back. But he was one of the, you talk about nice guys.

• 1:13:38Jocko Willink?

  Super nice guy.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  He was like so much fun. He had that Texas draw like, sure. What do you think we ought to do with this shit, Tony? He was just funny, you know? But we had a great platoon. We, again, we didn't, we didn't really do anything. No, made no wars.

• 1:13:58Jocko Willink?

  How'd you like being like actually in charge?

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Oh, I loved it. I loved it. I had a pretty good OIC and AOC and we worked together. We didn't, I wasn't, I'm like, hey, this is how I think we should do it. But, you know, let me know. And there was a couple of E6s in the platoon too. They were newer guys, so they didn't.

• 1:14:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you were the E5 LPO ranking, bossing around or whatever, in charge of guys that were senior to you on paper? Cause they'd come for the free or something like that? And no big deal though?

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  No big deal. Team guys, team guys, we figured it out. But once again, we,

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  we did a lot of drinking and fighting and.

• 1:14:45Jocko Willink?

  Didn't you knock out one of your guys or something?

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's just, that's just stuff that happens in a platoon. I mean. I got yelled at by the XO and I'm like, yeah, whatever. Like, I don't, you know. He was like, don't do that. And I'm like, yeah, okay. But we didn't, we weren't out in town. The cops didn't get involved or anything. We just kind of like, whatever, swept it on the table.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  I was like in the office like I'll do it again right now and he's like no, no, no, I don't care. But, you know, it was alright. Then I left Team One after that. Not because I had to. But I transferred to SEAL Team Five after that.

• 1:15:26Jocko Willink?

  And at that time SEAL Team Five seemed like a la- it seemed like it had a little less stringent.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Oh my god. It was the Wild West. It was, it was 300 feet down the street. And it was like going, yeah, going to the Wild West. And I'll, I'll say this about Team Five, man. At that time, in the 90s, they were full of characters. I mean, fucking characters. I show up for quarters the first morning. I'm in my starched camis with my haircut. My, you could shave in my jungle boots, you know? It's Team One and.

• 1:16:07Jocko Willink?

  Because that's the way Team One was.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  Yep. The quarters is like 7:20. I'm standing there. I'm the only guy on the grinder and it's like 7:16. And then the back gate opens, like coming out of the Drew Carey show back in the 80s, like guys are on skateboards. Nobody's wearing a uniform. I don't give a fuck. And they're like, hey, what's going on? Yeah, blah, blah, blah. What are we doing for PT today? I don't know. Who cares? Just go run and I don't know, hit the gym. Like what the fuck is going on here? Everything was loose. Everybody was wicked cool. So I'm like, but then when I started working with everybody,

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  the square awareness was there and the training department and the platoons, they just proved that you don't need to be like so uniform and standard meh that, and still be good operators. I mean, those guys were the best. I loved being at SEAL Team Five. I loved being at all my teams, but you know, that was, that was fun.

• 1:17:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there was a bunch of guys that migrated from Team One down to.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  So I got in a platoon there and it was another ARG. So this was my fifth platoon and I did an ARG. But we had a great.

• 1:17:23Jocko Willink?

  And did they make you the LPL?

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Oh, no. No, I did three more platoons not being the LPL after that. Yeah.

• 1:17:32Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of an interesting deal. Cause you kinda knew how to run shit.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  I was still an E5.

• 1:17:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  So we did the ARG and, and.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  We, uh, we went overseas. Again, we did like. Some watch. In Kuwait, they still had that thing where guys are doing ISR or whatever. But nothing major. We didn't do anything. But, uh. It sucked. Like I was on another ARG. And I was like, man, this is, this is fucked up. I'm like, I'm getting, you know. I just re-enlisted. I went over like 10 years. So I'm like, okay, I'm committed for 20 now, you know?

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  You know, you can only work out so much and you can only drink so much, you know? It's getting stagnant. But when I came back. They had this, uh.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  That the CAP, the Command and Enforcement Program. So there's 52 E5s at SEAL Team 5. And what they'll do is they'll just, instead of taking a test, they'll just. Make you an E6. And you get paid right away. It was a big, it's kind of a big thing. So out of 52 E5s, I was ranked number one.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  So I got the CAP. So when TD was the CO, I walked in there and we were talking. And it was between me and Diamond. God bless my brother Diamond. He died last year.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  And I go, fuck you. You give it to Diamond. He's got a wife and kid. I'll get it next year or I won't ever get it. So Diamond got it and I was like, yeah. And he bought the B, so what's the difference?

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  So it was all good to go. But I was like. I don't care about rank. I never did. So I did that and, you know, I thought it was cool.

• 1:19:30Jocko Willink?

  That is. That's awesome. What, uh, did you get capped the next year?

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I did.

• 1:19:37Jocko Willink?

  They used to tell me that I got capped my whole career because I did. Because I got capped because I I got capped to E5 and then I got capped to Ensign.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, perfect. Right, because you went into that program.

• 1:19:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  But that that Ari platoon we did, we had a great platoon, like one, two, three, four of those guys are not with us anymore. And not one of them is from a combat thing. You know, natural causes or self inflicted, you know.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  But it was a good, it was a great platoon. We had a lot of fun. We had a lot of terrible times, but you know.

• 1:20:20Jocko Willink?

  You have terrible times, but they're fun when you're with a bunch of people that just are having fun.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  So that platoon, my O P O, I don't know if he's still in V H. I don't know. He was awesome. He, he was great. My, I had two chiefs in that platoon. One like gave up or got fired or something.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  And all this time.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  I had chiefs that gave me some good advice.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  Like my third platoon, J H was the chief. He was in buzz with me. He was a higher rank. So he had kind of a tough go at it when he got to the team. But he turned out to be one of my best platoon chiefs. He was smart, articulate. You know him. He was cool too, you know, just he didn't offer me a lot of advice tactically because we kind of grew up at the same time. So it was, you know, we're both same level, but he was good with the Navy. Like he told me this and that. Taught me shit that I forgot, but it was good to know, you know.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  But a lot of the examples I used as a platoon chief that I drew on were mostly bad. I'd have to say, you know, fifty-one percent of them were what not to do.

• 1:21:41Jocko Willink?

  And you were looking at him at the time saying, no, that's not a good move? Or were you looking at, or did you figure out later that chief wasn't doing a good thing?

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  I remember doing one thing, we're doing this crazy shit boring thing and I'm like, yeah, let's do it again. Fucking, you know, we're not there yet. We're not good at it. And my chief was like, well, yeah, the confident guys are gonna say that. And I'm like, what the fuck? What? Now all of a sudden, there's two groups, like the confident and the non-confident? We're fucking frogmen. What do you, what do you mean, non-confident? What is that? Like, yeah, I'm that way when I look at a fucking computer or something, but like in the teams? Who's, who's not confident?

• 1:22:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is a strange.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like, yeah, okay, I'm never gonna say that ever in the history of ever. Like ever, ever, you know?

• 1:22:27Jocko Willink?

  So then, so then at what point did you, uh, go into training?

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  Oh, I still got a couple of platoons to go here.

• 1:22:33Jocko Willink?

  Damn, bro. So you, so your fifth platoon was the ARC platoon?

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Jocko Willink?

  You stepped down from L, where you, you were not the LPO.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:40Jocko Willink?

  So now you do your sixth platoon?

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:22:43Jocko Willink?

  And what are you doing in the sixth platoon? Point man again?

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Point man, air rep.

• 1:22:47Jocko Willink?

  Point man, air rep.

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:22:50Jocko Willink?

  And that was a spec ops deployment to Guam?

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:22:55Jocko Willink?

  Hammered it out. Get your work out, duh. Get your work up done.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:23:00Jocko Willink?

  Land warfare, CQC.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:23:03Jocko Willink?

  Long humps in the desert.

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  Yep. ORE. Oh, yeah. Big time. By then I knew NII ones so well, like, I was like, yeah, okay.

• 1:23:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  I'm the point man. I'm like, yeah, this is ridiculous.

• 1:23:16Jocko Willink?

  You're doing it with your eyes closed.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  I'm like, hey, you know what, chief? Why don't you just let me carry the machine gun? He's like, why? Cause let the machine gunner be the point man. Let's mix it up. He's like, oh dude, cool. You know, the guy's like, I mean. Well, that was another uneventful year and a half, two years.

• 1:23:35Jocko Willink?

  When did you make, so then did you, what about your seventh platoon?

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Well, I made E6 in my sixth platoon.

• 1:23:42Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  So I was in E6 in my seventh platoon, but I wasn't the LPO again.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  I was, I was the ordinance rep. I went back to ordinance rep, point man.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  You just keep rolling, you know, you just keep rolling.

• 1:23:56Jocko Willink?

  You did keep rolling.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Yep. And, uh, after that one, another, that was Arg Bravo though, we actually.

• 1:24:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  But, you know, we spent like thirty days on the ship.

• 1:24:07Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  Like Korea or something. It was terrible. I remember that because I watched the subway series on the ship back there when the Mets were playing the Yankees.

• 1:24:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  Like, right, I think we ended in two thousand, maybe ninety-nine, two thousand.

• 1:24:25Jocko Willink?

  So you're a first class at this point?

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:24:28Jocko Willink?

  And then you get sent to trade at?

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  I get sent to training cell at.

• 1:24:32Jocko Willink?

  Training cell at team five.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  And after like a couple of months.

• 1:24:35Jocko Willink?

  You did your platoon LPO and then you did four more deployments?

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  Before I was a chief.

• 1:24:46Jocko Willink?

  And then you, then you got signed to training cell?

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:24:49Jocko Willink?

  And then they take training cell and they group it all together into trade at.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Right. So I did like a year in trade, training cell at five.

• 1:24:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  And then when I got orders to trade at, it was for three years. I'm like, wait a minute, I already did a year in training. They're like, ah, we don't give a shit. I'm like, fuck.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  So we stood up trade at and, uh, I was the LPO of land warp there. The whole time I was there.

• 1:25:15Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  And during that, I did get another school though. I went to New Zealand to the tracking course.

• 1:25:23Jocko Willink?

  Oh damn.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  So I learned how to track humans over there. It was, it was a awesome, like not easy course. Met a lot of really good cats from around the world and had a lot of fun.

• 1:25:37Jocko Willink?

  When did, uh, how long had you been at trade at when September eleventh happened?

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  I'm not sure, maybe six months.

• 1:25:47Jocko Willink?

  Six months? And then what? Would you just freak out completely?

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  No, I went to New Zealand. Everybody else went to Afghanistan. I went to New Zealand.

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  Cause I had to go.

• 1:25:57Jocko Willink?

  How long was that course?

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Seven weeks.

• 1:26:01Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with that and now you're freaking out?

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  Well, of course I am. So I come back from that and alright, when am I going? Well, okay, you're gonna go. You're gonna go. And then, like, I didn't. I just kept working at an island, working, working, working. And then when Iraq kicked off, one of my old mass chiefs, like, I need a guy. So he took me and sent me overseas. And that's when you were there.

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  In Iraq.

• 1:26:31Jocko Willink?

  This is when, yeah, you relieved us.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:34Jocko Willink?

  So we, we did like a little turnover or whatever.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  Well, I was working with the Poles.

• 1:26:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But we were working with the Poles. So.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you came in to kind of take over the liaison or whatever position with those guys. And then, which was a good job.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Oh, it was great.

• 1:26:53Jocko Willink?

  You must have been stoked.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  So I was, I was in Baghdad. I was in Al Asad. I was in Mosul. I was back and forth to Bahrain. I really, I was like the in-theater guy. If you wanted something done. I mean, I was walking through these foreign airports with double bags full of machine guns. And just going to like the Brits or whatever country had a plane. Hey, they're like, we can't do that. I'm like, yeah, here, here's a bottle of Scotch. I mean, that's how you got shit done. And then all of a sudden I show up in like Basra and like, okay, I gotta do this for a while. And then I'd be like, alright, now I'm gonna go to Mosul, get a flight there from bribing people with stuff and

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  no orders. And you know, you think it's like, well, you get your orders and you wait for your plane. Nah, it wasn't like that. You just gotta fend for yourself. And I loved it. It was awesome.

• 1:27:47Jocko Willink?

  Then you did that full.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  And I made chief on that deployment.

• 1:27:50Jocko Willink?

  That's when you made chief.

• 1:27:52Speaker 01

  Yep. I squeaked under the thing. I had like nineteen years and.

• 1:27:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, damn.

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  Or eighteen and a half, whatever it was.

• 1:27:59Jocko Willink?

  And then when, when did you find out you were gonna go to Team Three?

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  Uh, right after I made chief.

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Yep. Cause uh, the guy we were talking about called me in his office. He goes, I got you a platoon at Team Three. I'm like, Roger that. Perfect.

• 1:28:15Jocko Willink?

  Were you ever worried you weren't gonna make chief and you'd get?

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:28:19Jocko Willink?

  You figured it would work out?

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it would always work out. I would make it work out. I'd strangle someone before I didn't, you know, it would just, it would just work out. Bodies would disappear, whatever, I don't care. Now, I, I'd take this and I'd be like, alright, here's what's gonna happen. You know, your signature's gonna be on there, or your blood, you know, it's one or the other. It's gonna fucking happen and that's it. Not, I've not been doing this my whole life, just to like, okay, I'll retire and go sit over in the corner like a, you know, no. I'm not gonna do it.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  And then.

• 1:28:56Jocko Willink?

  So then you showed up at team three. I show up at team three and there's tasking a bruiser. We, we talked about that on the.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  We talked about in the last one, but we gotta reiterate, that was so funny, like. Who's this Willink guy? And I'm like, who? Oh, Jaco? They're like. No, it says John Willink, Willink. I'm like. Nah, I don't really know him, kinda know him, and I'm walking away like, oh, like, don't worry, we're good to go. We're all set, we're all set, chum. They're like, no, but, you know, the officer's like, well, what's he like? I'm like.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  He's good to go, that's all you need to know, just stand the fuck by. Don't have any fucking, me, I don't care, I didn't know you my whole life. My, yeah, yeah, whatever, I go, don't have any like loose ends. And they're just like, you know, officers are, they're like, I'm like, what do you mean? I mean, no fucking loose ends, because he's gonna, he'll, he's like a shark in the water, like a smell blood, he'll go.

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Can't show up in a proper uniform? And they're just like, really? What is he like, a uniform Nazi or whatever, you know, and like. No, he's just like, do it right.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  I go, I go, here's, here's an idea. If you do say, hey, what do you think about this Jaco? And he'd go, he'd look at you and go. Well, I thought about like doing it like good. Not like what you're saying, that's just junk. And they're like, oh, fuck, well, of course, you know, then you meet everybody.

• 1:30:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was, uh, that was good.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  That was funny.

• 1:30:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was, uh. Good time. You could tell almost immediately like that we were gonna have a good time.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I, I know, I know.

• 1:30:48Jocko Willink?

  Everyone was kind of there. Everyone was kind of in the game. And yeah, you could tell pretty quick. We're gonna have a good time. And the very first thing we did was land warfare. Which is as it should be. There's a little bit of luck involved with training you get to do first. But you know, we got lucky, you might say, or someone moved the freaking things on the boards over at Trade Hat to make us have land warfare first. But we had land warfare first.

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  You know, there's a lot of guys, teen guys, probably listening to your podcast, the way we shoot the shit here.

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  And I, I gotta think that they're like, yeah, we did this first. I don't remember if we did that first. Like, I remember everything, like everything. But not everything. You know what I mean? Like if you say, uh, like

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  my chum that lives down there in Florida wrote, wrote a book. He's got a memory. Cause I'm like, how the fuck did you remember that? He's like, I used to write stuff down. Now I had a wheel book, just like you did, and I would write stuff down. I go back, I still have them. They make no sense.

• 1:31:57Jocko Willink?

  Mine make no sense.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  It says, I got, got grid coordinates, then I got like line through it, and it says other fucking grid. And then roll over next day, uh, get, get guns. Like what?

• 1:32:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  Why would you have to write that down?

• 1:32:14Jocko Willink?

  Mine are like that too. I have, from when we were in Ramadi, I have three, like, uh, I forget what size they are, but maybe, maybe eight by six or something. They fit in your cargo pocket, right? And I carried it all the time. And so I've got all these little boxes with words next to them. And I can kind of remember what some, one thing that's cool is when I would sit through a mission brief, I would write my notes down that I was gonna say to everyone. So I have like, mission, you know, one thirty-four, and it says, You know, tell them to watch, you know, it says, watch that road. Uh, this building is a threat.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:53Jocko Willink?

  And don't forget to check in with this ECP.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:56Jocko Willink?

  You know, like just, just like random stuff that was super important at the time.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  And super emphasized the rules of engagement.

• 1:33:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  You always did that. I thought that was great.

• 1:33:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, um, but so I have these kind of like random notes and what sucks is Leif had the whole hard drive of every op that we did and it was classified secret, obviously. And it was classified secret for no good reason. But you know, when we, we had to turn it in and they took it and it's destroyed or whatever. But that had every op sum, every op, every planning. I mean, everything was on that. And yeah, that's good. The notebooks I have are like your notebooks. It's like some random grid coordinate, some random execution checklist, four lines. And I'm like, and I'll rearrange this.

• 1:33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like so many that can't remember. Yeah. Like all the shit, you know? I, I'd look at the notebooks and usually the, none of them were like full. Some were like three quarters, then I lost it in a pair of bag forever. So I just get another one and I'd be like, I'd write this down like, uh, and I'm thinking, why am I writing this down? Like at what point, like in the middle of the night when I'm on nods and I'm in a gunfight, I'm going to pull this notebook out and go, oh yeah, I hear, no. I'm just going to BTF to someplace where there's nobody shooting at me. And then I'll like figure it out.

• 1:34:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Cause I'm, yeah.

• 1:34:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's why I would be, I wrote down, the notes that I wrote down were all notes that I wrote down so that I was going to tell you guys.

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:29Jocko Willink?

  Like that's, like every, every note I have is a note to you guys. I mean, very, I guess maybe there's a, a third of them that are notes to me that say like, hey, tell the CEO, blah, blah, blah, or tell the brigade commander that, you know, the guys are going to be over here. Like, so there's some notes like that. But I don't have any notes that say, um, I felt, uh, I felt good about this operation and I, you know what I mean?

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  Of course not. I never had any of that shit.

• 1:34:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't have any of that.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  I don't like, like when I actually did sleep, I would like, all right, my gun's good. Okay. I'd lay down. And I would sleep like a baby for those hours, whatever. I slept so good in a war zone. Number one, you're like wicked tired. Number two, it's simple. It's not like life. You get up every day like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. It's fine. And go back. And then get up. Yeah, easy. Not like regular life shit. Terrible.

• 1:35:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's, there's, there's definitely the op tempo of there's just, you constantly have the next thing that you're like, there's no, you never finish on a deployment. You, you like, you don't finish the day. The day just rolls into the next day, into the next day, into the next day. So you're just on this, this amped up cycle of what are we gonna do next? What's going on? And it, this doesn't stop. So when you, when you, when you have a chance to lay down, you're like,

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, you're done.

• 1:36:00Jocko Willink?

  There's a picture of me and Dave Burke that.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  Good deal, Dave.

• 1:36:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Nice reaction time. Uh, but it's me and him. I'm pretty sure it's Cop Falcon. And, you know, he's the commander of Salt Six and I'm the commander of Tasking a Bruiser. And we're up on this rooftop and we're both asleep. It's, it's probably about 10 o'clock in the morning. And it's funny, but I was thinking like, by the time I would get into the field, I'd be so tired.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:32Jocko Willink?

  And, and you know, and that'd be the first time where like, okay, cool. Everyone's on security and I'm gonna go to sleep right now. And it's Dave Burke and me sitting on a rooftop racked out.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  Just done.

• 1:36:44Jocko Willink?

  And just need three hours of sleep.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  I remember that one deployment, that one. I was up on this building and I had a three on one mag and I was looking through this thing. And for some reason, that little section was just me. We didn't have enough people for the whole building, whatever. So that's fine. I could crawl and meet up with the other guys and go downstairs. No big deal. It was like August. And I'm like, fuck, I don't have any water. I don't have any shade, nothing, but I have to stay on the gun. So now I realize this about.

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  Nine in the morning. So the sun goes down at like nine at night. And I go, okay, yeah, I'm breaking my shit down.

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  Kind of.

• 1:37:34Jocko Willink?

  So this is after you've been sitting there for fourteen hours?

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:37Jocko Willink?

  And you have.

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  I crawl back.

• 1:37:39Jocko Willink?

  You have zero fucking water in your system.

• 1:37:41Speaker 01

  Like nothing, nothing. It's like a hundred and twenty degrees. So I'm like, I break out my silver ranger. And I look, cause I know what's going on. My lips are as white as this piece of paper, like just like the chunks. So I'm like going. I'm peeling it off. I'm like.

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  I, you know. I'll be fine, but.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  I literally got like three hours to like die. And I.

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  So I don't say a fucking thing, cause. I wanna be a pussy, you know? But I, I know I got some cokes or something and come to you, you know? I finally I get that like.

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  Cause my throat's like this big, you know, there's like nothing, there's no airway. So I put my rock on, we're exfil and out of the building at night, you know, and it's like.

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  You know, I'm like looking down and holding my field of fire, you know? And I'm the chief, so I, I should be smarter than that. But I'm like. And my vision starts to narrow, cause I like. And I'm like. Fucking snap out of it. And I'm like, now I'm good to go.

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  I get back and after like an hour back at the camp, like, oh shit, I gotta drink some water. You know, and I drank like four quarts of water, like.

• 1:39:09Speaker 01

  And then like six hours later, I was pissing like blue. You know, still, I don't think you can really come back from a dehydration like that, but. It's all those years of like drinking and that just conditions you. So when it's, you know, nailing. So when you get into that spot, it's not so bad. Like, I'm not gonna die. I'm wicked close. No, seriously, like you start, you know, feeling your dizziness and then you just go and it goes away for a while, then it comes back. Cause you can't out, you can't outrun your body. Like, you know what I mean?

• 1:39:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the dehydration will get you.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:49Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's crazy how the, man, you'd see guys at, you'd see guys at the desert, uh, training. They'd go, they'd go tits up. Pretty much if we were doing, when I was a trade at, if, if it was summer and we were doing like a

• 1:40:06Jocko Willink?

  eight, six to eight click insert, by the time extract was going down, there was a decent chance someone was going down.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:15Jocko Willink?

  For real.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and you're talking about completely sober.

• 1:40:19Jocko Willink?

  Usually.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  Hydrated hardcore dudes.

• 1:40:21Jocko Willink?

  Why is it that it was usually on the insert?

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  Cause you're just coming out of the damn air conditioning.

• 1:40:27Jocko Willink?

  Cause that's, now that I think about it, it was almost always on the insert.

• 1:40:30Speaker 01

  Well, one of the things I instituted, and if I'm wrong about this, somebody correct me, but I think I was the first guy to do it. Was when we'd do an immediate action drills.

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  I would walk the guys out and I did fucking thousands of those.

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  And I would pre-plan a guy.

• 1:40:52Speaker 01

  And you kinda could tell, like, we're not gonna shoot back towards the canal kinda shit. But a guy who's on that right flank, if it was perpendicular or parallel, whatever it was. Was the point, man. They would just fall down. With nothing, just fall down and like way there. Guys would be like, contact right, you know, or they start shooting. And they dragged the one with the guy and like. Okay, and then they come back. And usually they did a good job, you know? Like, so what happened? Well, you know, we took contact. This guy went down, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  No, you didn't. Guy just fell down.

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  Well, what do you mean? Like, well, maybe it was a heat casualty. And not to be a dink, kinda to be a dink.

• 1:41:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a little bit. That's how you teach the lesson.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  But it's like, you know, so how do you differentiate? Maybe he gets taken out by someone you don't hear the shot. Well, what are you shooting at? You know, there's no real good answer. Like, you try to take the blinders off.

• 1:41:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, that's one of those things, what you're actually teaching is like, you actually have to think about what's happening.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:42:03Jocko Willink?

  Even an immediate action drill, like, okay, there's an immediate action drill, but you better be, you better think about what's actually going on. Because the, the answers aren't, uh, what's the word? The answers aren't just a rote memory.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  No, there's no answer. It's all a bunch of garbage you gotta decipher and figure out. The only thing that comes close to it in the civilian world is hunting. Yeah, elk hunt this last past year, I killed this gigantic bull elk, me. And two team guys were, there was five team guys there in Wyoming. When I, when I killed my big bull, it was like, the other two guys couldn't carry a gun because they already limited out, they tagged out.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  So we ran it just like an op, and we have, you know, a little PLO. Take off, hand and arm signal comes up, guys are, my chum Crass is like, okay, this big bull elk's going from here to here. And it was so intense, and I tell this to my chums, like,

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I've actually shot some guy in the war, whatever, you know, like yawning, like,

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  hunting elk, I'm like this.

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  They're so like big and majestic and beautiful and like, they will kill you in a minute. And they don't care about you. They're just like, it's like life on steroids. It's so unbelievable. I highly recommend that if you like hunting, you hunt elk, because. It's they're screaming, you know, and they're in the rut and they're battling each other. You can hear the tines. And then the big bull comes out. Fucking incredible.

• 1:43:53Jocko Willink?

  I'm going in September.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:43:56Jocko Willink?

  With a bow.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  It's I've never I'm not a bow hunter.

• 1:43:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  But I don't know where you're going. You're going to Idaho.

• 1:44:03Jocko Willink?

  Going to Utah.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  Utah.

• 1:44:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, to a to a place that.

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  Guy went to high school bow hunts in Utah. He's from this.

• 1:44:10Jocko Willink?

  This this the hunt that I'm going on, I'm going with a it's like a. It's like the the best possible hunt like Andy Andy Stumpf. He said that this hunt, he's like, yeah, this he's like, this hunt is gonna spoil you because it's the best possible.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  No, I love that guy.

• 1:44:27Jocko Willink?

  And even the guy that's taking me, John Dudley, who's a world famous bow hunter and archer. And he's like, yeah, it's good. This is as good as it gets like this. The spot where I'm going is good as it gets. So. Should be freaking awesome.

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  It's it's so badass.

• 1:44:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:42Speaker 01

  You know, and I want I want to home back to New Hampshire because it was that was an October season back to New Hampshire hunted. I hunt with these guys up at a camp. They're just like the best. Everybody's like a character. Killed a lot of deer deer this year, you know. But it's not like that. It's it's.

• 1:45:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, one thing, well, so this guy, John Dudley, was asking me, he's like, it seems like this would be good for guys to get into.

• 1:45:10Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, it's the best.

• 1:45:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, yeah, and for me, so we just did this a three D archery challenge up in Montana. And when we're up there. Look, it's an it's an admin thing, basically. Like you're walking through the woods and then they go, OK, there's the target. And then you you shoot the target there anywhere between thirty and maybe one hundred and twenty yards with a bow, which is far shots. But.

• 1:45:36Jocko Willink?

  For me, I was telling him, I'm like, you know, when I was younger in the teams, we would patrol around the woods.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:44Jocko Willink?

  And that's what you're doing. You're patrolling around the woods. You're trying to be quiet. And like, that's a skill that.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  And the wind.

• 1:45:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the wind. And but like even in the desert, it's different than like when I was, when I, when we would go to Fort Lewis, Washington, or we'd go to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, or like we'd go down to Pan. Did you ever go do one of the, the training trips to Panama? So like patrolling through the woods.

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  Oh, Panama, not Panama City, Panama.

• 1:46:10Jocko Willink?

  No, Panama.

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, jungle. Oh, yeah.

• 1:46:12Jocko Willink?

  So you get that, that, that, uh, skill of walking quietly through the woods and looking at someone else and doing all hand signals and not, and I was saying this to John, I'm like, and you're not talking.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:46:27Jocko Willink?

  Wait, wait, wait, which I know I have a podcast, which is what I do is like, talk a bunch, but I actually, I actually don't love to talk to old people all the time.

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  No, really, really.

• 1:46:39Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  So. Someone with something like J O, Junior House, who would walk up like, hey, what's up? Yeah. Hey, well, hey, Chuck, what do you think about this? And you'd just be like, and just like turn and walk away like,

• 1:46:55Speaker 01

  and the guy'd be like looking at me like, what are you looking at me for? Oh, I just don't want to talk to you. So what? Don't get all butthurt over it. He's got like stuff on his mind like, I'm hungry.

• 1:47:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's kind of cool. I'm looking forward to going out on that hunt in, uh, in September. And I'll report back with how it goes.

• 1:47:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:47:19Jocko Willink?

  Man, there's a no pressure shooting a freaking bow and arrow at.

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:28Jocko Willink?

  It's no joke, dude.

• 1:47:29Speaker 01

  It's no joke.

• 1:47:30Jocko Willink?

  We'll be, we'll be thirty or forty yards away.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:34Jocko Willink?

  Like outside of that, like I, I, I can.

• 1:47:39Jocko Willink?

  loosely hit a target, you know,

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  well, you've been practiced like

• 1:47:42Jocko Willink?

  yeah, I practiced, I practiced, but you don't wanna, you don't wanna have a bad shot.

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  No, but how are you, everything good, like, shooting your bow like fifty yards?

• 1:47:52Jocko Willink?

  I'll hit.

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  All the time, like, you're good to go.

• 1:47:54Jocko Willink?

  I'll hit, yeah.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  Like, see, you're a bad example, like, how can I stand next to you with like a fucking tambourine? And make you like shake because nothing, you'll be like laughing, and you like that, man. When they're, when they're fucking screaming, it's, it's the coolest thing in the fucking world, I swear to God.

• 1:48:13Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. Well, well, I don't know if you wanna get a, if you wanna get a bow and start hunting.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  I'm sure one thing at a time.

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  I don't even know what I'm doing after this podcast, probably going across the street to Buffalo Wild Wings and get all cooned up.

• 1:48:32Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so Bruiser, I mean, you know, like I said, there's a million things to talk about to you, Bruiser. But when you got done with TU Bruiser,

• 1:48:44Jocko Willink?

  what were your, what were your like, looking back on it, not looking back on it now, because now you just look back and everyone like, oh, that was all. But when you were, like, when we got back,

• 1:48:55Jocko Willink?

  two weeks later, what were you, what were you, when you looked back at it from that closer perspective?

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  I, I was kinda lost, like, it's not gonna get any better than that, you know. I, I was in the next troop, I was the, the, the Ops Chief. Then I got fired, I didn't get fired, I get fired because I made Senior Chief.

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  And I was like, well, cool, alright.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  And then I had to go to the Senior List Academy and was like, whatever. And, you know, then I went to Team Seven, and I pretty much got fired, which was fine, I didn't wanna do that anyway, and I was in ranges. And they're like, we need a guy to go do the provincial reconstruction team. I'm like, okay.

• 1:49:52Jocko Willink?

  In Afghanistan.

• 1:49:53Speaker 01

  In Afghanistan. So I went to Afghanistan. Well, I did this workout for like two months at Camp A in Indiana.

• 1:50:00Jocko Willink?

  So this is a, this is a, a mission where you'd be going with, not with like a SEAL platoon, but you're going with some other kind of ad hoc group of people.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Oh, no. It was, I had a SEAL lieutenant commander as the CO.

• 1:50:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  And I was a SEAL senior chief and we were the only SEALs. And I had about a hundred people from the Navy, the Army, the National Guard.

• 1:50:29Jocko Willink?

  So it was.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  And the Air Force.

• 1:50:30Jocko Willink?

  So it was ad hoc.

• 1:50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was, it was like leadership challenge because I'm not used to working like with the regular, but I am used to work with the regimentary because every frogman has to. So it really wasn't that bad. But I had like very, very minimal combat experience. I had a couple of guys like these old crusty guys who were in the South Carolina National Guard. Some guys were in the Rangers. They were awesome, man. Bunch of, they were all like cops or sheriffs or.

• 1:51:05Jocko Willink?

  Dude, they must have loved you.

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Or, uh, or prison guards. You know, and, and National Guard cats. They were frigging awesome. You know, once we got through the language barrier. Cause I'm from New England, you know, they're all from South Carolina. They, they were badass, man. They were like a platoon. Those are just mine, my platoon. You know, and they were frigging great. They, to a, to a guy, every one of them was awesome. I had some reserve CBs who took care of the trucks.

• 1:51:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  I had guys with no combat experience, never even driving these trucks. You know, mortars coming in, they performed magnificently. It was, it was cool. But I, I did a lot of vehicle work with them, you know, immediate action drills. How to deal with downed people, you know, and we got some, we actually got some pretty good training. You know, I learned a few things. I'm not afraid to admit when I learned something from, you know. But we're there like a year, you know, and I broke off for like a month, month and a half and just went back to my SEAL buddies and got after it, got a bunch of gunfights and you know, we'd get mortared all the time. I'd be eating a sandwich and rock Chinese 107s come in like, whatever.

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  But, you know, it was cool.

• 1:52:25Jocko Willink?

  What was, what were you guys actually doing?

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  We'd go into, uh, areas and like,

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  we wouldn't build schools, we wouldn't build bridges, but we'd facilitate it. Go in there and meet with the village elders and say, we need this. Okay.

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  So we'd send up a proposal and then we'd go back, give them money, you know, or, or put it out to bid. And of course that's all garbage. It's just a big like shakedown. All the local politicians just, they're just coming and take the money. And they're like, okay, we'll give you, okay, let's say we give them $50,000 to build a bridge. All right. So the guy wins the bid, his company gets the 50 grand, the politician comes in and takes like 30.

• 1:53:15Jocko Willink?

  And then they build the bridge for $3,000.

• 1:53:18Speaker 01

  No, they come back and they go, we don't have enough to finish. We give them the rest of the money. I, I mean, it's like 20% of the 40%, 30, I don't know what it is. Percentages, all shakedown money that were given to Afghanistan. It's like crazy. But, you know, people think in this country that every other country is like us. Yeah, no.

• 1:53:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, I remember that. I don't know if you remember when we got to Ramadi, the, one of the things that, um, the guys were concerned about was they were like, hey, the, the officers in the Iraqi army are taking the enlist, they're, they're skimming some of the.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Worried about that.

• 1:53:51Jocko Willink?

  And then it was like, you talk to the Iraqi, there's a, yeah, well, he's the boss. Of course he's going to take some of my money. Like, yeah. He's going to take a little skim. That's the way it goes, you know? And we were all thinking, like, like in America?

• 1:54:06Jocko Willink?

  If you heard that, hey, the officer is skimming money off the enlisted guys' paychecks. It'd be like, oh, that guy needs to be crucified.

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:54:14Jocko Willink?

  Over there, they're like, well, yeah, they were like, well, yeah, of course he's taking a little, that's his, he's the boss.

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  It's not like, it's not like people over there go like this. They see it on the like six o'clock news with, you know, uh, whatever chip, you know, she's up there going, oh, today, the scandal was, there's none of that, it's just whatever, it's all wild west, just do whatever. You got big guns, you get all the money.

• 1:54:41Jocko Willink?

  Then you spent that, that year, how many like different villages did you guys go try and?

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:54:47Jocko Willink?

  Like all kinds of them?

• 1:54:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:49Jocko Willink?

  How would you get in there? Were you guys doing patrols in there? Vehicle patrols? Were you flying in?

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  Um, we rarely used air assets. We had, always had air support though. At least standby, but most of the time we drove vehicles. I had some orbit between a dozen and up to like 20 vehicles. And I was usually the vehicle commander. I wasn't overall in charge of the operation.

• 1:55:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  Sometimes I was. But I took these people who've never really been in a military vehicle that much and we were okay. Survived a few ambushes, got blown up a few times, had wreckers with us, refueling tankers. I mean, it was crazy.

• 1:55:32Jocko Willink?

  These were some long transits then?

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Um, a hundred miles, some of them, one way.

• 1:55:38Jocko Willink?

  The IED threat was, was?

• 1:55:40Speaker 01

  It was gigantic. It was gigantic. Like I said, we got blown up a couple of times, but you could tell it was amateur hour. So back then, like I said, back then, we had three big threats. One was your trip wires. Or, uh, your manual, you know, and then you had, um,

• 1:56:06Speaker 01

  Pressure plates? Pressure plates. Victim activated. Yep, so your pressure plates, so the way we count, we, we countered pressure plates is you got the mine rollers. And they're like an eight thousand pound thing that you put in front of either a mat V or a, uh, whatever the other one is. I had my own bat V, it was awesome. But, so you'd roll that in front and of course I had a driver. You know, but you can't just drive with that, you have to counterbalance the, it's weird, you have to learn how to drive it. It's like driving a trailer reverse. Right, you'd have to put eight thou, eight thousand pounds of pressure, whatever it was, maybe I'm wrong. And it would detonate, and if it does detonate,

• 1:56:50Speaker 01

  it's not, it's gonna fuck you up, but it's not gonna flip because you know how explosion works, goes like this. So we had that for the pressure plates for the, uh. So you had some countermeasures for the IEDs? Yeah.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  And you ended up hitting just a couple? Yeah, just a couple.

• 1:57:07Speaker 01

  But around us, guys hit a lot. Yeah. We had to respond, and we got pretty good at like going out, not really being a, a, uh, QRF, but going out and providing support and I, we'd fan out and I'd walk up and talk to who was in charge and like, yeah, what can we do? You know, but, Afghanistan was kinda cool because I really love the terrain. Big mountains, like a couple thousand, you know, eight, that nine thousand feet up, you know? It was pretty cool. It was actually beautiful over there, I don't, Yeah. Could have ski friggin lodges and, you know, it's,

• 1:57:49Speaker 01

  that's northeast Afghanistan, our west's like desert, but, it was cool. And then I came back from that and I put my papers in to retire and I was just like, went back to Nylone, running the boys. But I basically had a great crew. I mean, pipe hitting guys, they just knew what to do. So I, I kinda like get up in the morning, have my coffee. And I hit the gym for a bit, maybe go for a run and then jump in my side by side with my 12 gauge and go shoot rattlesnakes. Then eat lunch and then do that some more, go out to the range, look around, everything good, yep.

• 1:58:32Speaker 01

  Come back to the camp, like watch hockey and drink beer all night. I had it pretty good. But I was like, I gotta get out, I gotta retire. So and that's pretty much it, you know? It was terrible to get out and it's just.

• 1:58:49Speaker 01

  I mean, I did some contract work for a while, that dried up. Then went back to land, you know, landscaping and construction type work and that sucks, but it was cool. What are you gonna do?

• 1:59:04Jocko Willink?

  Now you're retired now, is that right?

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:08Jocko Willink?

  I mean, no, I mean like retire, like.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:59:13Jocko Willink?

  You're not going to work every day right now?

• 1:59:15Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 1:59:16Jocko Willink?

  I guess that's what I mean by retired.

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  Not, not this summer, not yet, so. I'm just kinda like BTFing around.

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's actually kinda cool.

• 1:59:31Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I got some questions.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:59:34Jocko Willink?

  And this is a great first question.

• 1:59:39Jocko Willink?

  It's very serious. In retrospect, what's the dumbest reason you've ever gotten into a bar fight?

• 1:59:53Jocko Willink?

  Probably be easier to figure out the smartest reason you ever got into a bar fight.

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  Well, I'd, I'd have to say.

• 2:00:01Speaker 01

  Far East Rock one night, like, watching Monday Night Football.

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  And the Patriots were losing or something. And someone said, "Oh, you know what? That's, that's cool because, you know, I don't have him in my fantasy football league." And I just went fucking whack and I fucking smacked the guy. I don't know. It was like, it's just terrible. Like, I just, I was pissed and drunk and I don't, you know, that was pretty dumb.

• 2:00:29Jocko Willink?

  But there you go. Sounds like a good one. In 20-plus years in the teams, what situation challenged your leadership the most and how did you work through it?

• 2:00:42Speaker 01

  Um.

• 2:00:45Speaker 01

  I'd probably have to say when, uh,

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  when, when Mark Lee got killed. I'd have to, honestly.

• 2:00:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:00:55Speaker 01

  And, uh, I mean, that's kind of a weird question and I'll get to that, but

• 2:01:03Speaker 01

  I, I had to like shove that fucking shit deep down and not like show it and make sure that it was there for the rest of the guys because the milk's on the floor. Obviously, you gotta find out why it happened so we don't do it again. What the fuck, you know, sometimes there is no answer. But I had to push that shit way down and focus on the tasks at hand, whatever they were the day. I couldn't just go, "Hey, Jaco, and like, I'm a bag of shit. I'll see you in two days." I, you can't do that. So, I mean, I, and I pushed it down before, but that I had to really, really, really push it down. So,

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  that was, that was challenging. I mean, other times, like, leadership. I had guys that get DUIs. We intercepted the mail, hide it from the cops, so they never got DUI. Just take care of it on your own out in town. And I can say that because both the guys did for are dead. So, but I mean, I had no problem like fucking cutting through red tape and but, uh, yeah, that, that was probably the worst.

• 2:02:13Jocko Willink?

  What was your favorite qualification school that you attended while in the teams?

• 2:02:18Speaker 01

  Oh, that's uh, that's easy. It's at Crosswind Sniper School and the Tracking Course.

• 2:02:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was fucking great.

• 2:02:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:26Speaker 01

  Really good.

• 2:02:27Jocko Willink?

  That must have been when you were in that, when you were hunting.

• 2:02:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:31Jocko Willink?

  Man, you must have just been like

• 2:02:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:33Jocko Willink?

  Completely overjoyed.

• 2:02:34Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Yeah, but like tracking elk, if you've never done it.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  It's, you, you don't have to go, you, all you, you look over, especially if there's a little snow. There's like eight billion tracks because they're in a herd. So it's not like you're like, ooh, look at me. I can see it from like 600 yards away. Like, yeah. But there's no snow there because it was just.

• 2:02:58Jocko Willink?

  Do you, when you listen to these podcasts, when I had this guy, uh, Tilt, John Stryker Meyer and his buddy Doug, the Frenchman, Laterno on. They'd be out in Laoster, Cambodia, and there was trackers. There was NVA trackers with dogs. That would be coming after them. They carried as part of their standard loadout. They carried pepper, like dust and, and uh, some other, wow, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, the damn coughing medicine. What is the coughing? What? Tear gas, tear gas powder. They had that. So they, they put that on their trail and they'd hear the dogs like, the dogs would be coming.

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  So then they'd range them.

• 2:03:39Jocko Willink?

  And then all of a sudden they'd start freaking out and then they'd bring up another dog, skip that area. And uh, I said, I said to Tilt, I was like, do you, do you, I said, you must hate dogs. He goes, I hate them.

• 2:03:51Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  But we, we would, we trained on how to defeat them and it's like one way. There's, there's several methods, but I mean, I'm not going to say it on here, like how to defeat them, but it's so simple and it's got like nothing to do with the dog. It's like crazy.

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  It's, it, it, it works too. I, as we did exercises, you know, and like.

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  So I'm asking the cat like, hey mate, you know, are these dogs like they're they're good at like exercises like, oh no mate, they're real dogs, they're gonna bite you? Like fuck, this is gonna suck, I better fucking be good at it and not, you know, going over my notes, okay, what the, you know? And yeah, they were like, police dog, like, yeah, yeah, we're gonna get you. I mean, thank God, I mean, I did it right, but like, holy shit. That's one thing, it was a real world op, like, you know, I got an M16 with blanks.

• 2:04:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:52Speaker 01

  You know, because there's really nothing in New Zealand that can hurt you. Like, there's no poisonous snakes, there's no.

• 2:04:58Jocko Willink?

  New Zealand is freaking awesome.

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  Oh man, it's freaking wonderful, the people are awesome.

• 2:05:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that place is just awesome.

• 2:05:05Speaker 01

  Like Morries, you know, they're like so cool.

• 2:05:09Jocko Willink?

  That's one of the places I went to.

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  They take you in like this, like, okay, yeah.

• 2:05:12Jocko Willink?

  That's one of the places I went to, I was like, ah, this is just awesome, like, I could live there.

• 2:05:17Speaker 01

  Oh, in a minute.

• 2:05:18Jocko Willink?

  In a minute, I could live there. That place is freaking amazing.

• 2:05:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 2:05:23Jocko Willink?

  If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice before joining the teams, what would that be?

• 2:05:38Speaker 01

  I don't know, I don't, I don't think nothing, I wouldn't do it any differently. I liked, I could say, I would have did this, but I'm glad I did stuff like as a knucklehead and had some hard knocks and, no, I, no.

• 2:05:55Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't have done anything differently. Because the good, the bad stuff that I went through, made me better and a good side, you know, that kind of shit, but yeah.

• 2:06:10Jocko Willink?

  That's one of those questions too.

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  It's, you know.

• 2:06:13Jocko Willink?

  This is, there's, there's people that ask, there's, and I, there's people that ask these kind of questions. They're looking for, they're looking for like a one, like a one thing answer of like, you know, if you could tell yourself, here's another, if, if you could go back and tell yourself, your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself? Like it's, or.

• 2:06:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Invest in, uh, you know, what is it?

• 2:06:38Jocko Willink?

  Apple.

• 2:06:38Speaker 01

  Apple or whatever, you know?

• 2:06:40Jocko Willink?

  Another one is, uh, uh, what's the one leadership lesson you, like, there's always that kind of thing. Or, and they ask it about everything, man.

• 2:06:52Speaker 01

  I bet.

• 2:06:52Jocko Willink?

  People ask it about everything. What's the one book you would, what's, they, they ask the same kind of question that they.

• 2:06:59Speaker 01

  And there's never an answer.

• 2:07:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, it's like, what I figured out early on is like, okay, you know, what book? Cool. About face. Somebody asked me that. Somebody, somebody asked me that in the live podcast. And, and like I talk about, I've been talking about about face since I started talking to people in the public. Yeah.

• 2:07:18Speaker 01

  Oh, he's awesome.

• 2:07:19Jocko Willink?

  And so this guy at the live podcast in New York, someone says, if you could recommend one book, and I'm like, is anyone ever answered it? Everyone's like, about face. It was like, clearly the guy was not in the game.

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:07:30Jocko Willink?

  To be asking that question.

• 2:07:31Speaker 01

  Or you could easily say like, remember like Cracked magazine?

• 2:07:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:35Speaker 01

  That was about the same, you know?

• 2:07:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So it's weird. I, I'm not trying to, you know, it's like people want to hear, they want the information to be so distilled down, but it's kind of like this.

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  You gotta do the work.

• 2:07:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's kind of like being in jujitsu and being like, what's the one move you should know in jujitsu? It's like, you know, there actually is not one move. So asking Tony, what the one piece of advice, it's like, man, like where, what is that? Where do you start?

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  Stick to your guns probably is good.

• 2:08:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:05Speaker 01

  Don't, don't give up when you know, don't like get away from your like, and I want to say principles. I hate that word. But, you know, whatever you believe in, like the teams, like for me, it's always like, no. You know, we not, we, you know, you don't do this, you don't do that. Like, if I'm running a crew and everybody wants like more time off and then you kind of give in and, no. No, here's what we're fucking doing. That's it. If you stick to that and there's.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  You can't blow up, you know, disarm a bomb that already went off. So just stick to what you're doing, unless it's so fucked up.

• 2:08:46Jocko Willink?

  Of course.

• 2:08:47Speaker 01

  But.

• 2:08:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, I had this, my, uh, my second platoon commander, the real squared away guy. But we, we did a hydro at Camp Pendleton. And like we went out, it was a freaking nightmare. It was freezing. The waves were huge. We go out, we do it.

• 2:09:06Speaker 01

  It's frogman shit.

• 2:09:07Jocko Willink?

  And then we, we get everything recovered. We come back, we sit there in the Zodiac typing up the freaking the message with the little codes in it for how the beach is. We come back, we get in, we draw them, you know, the cartographer guys draw, take all that information and draw the maps and blah, blah, blah, blah. And we, and then the Marines launch, we freaking, we land the Marines.

• 2:09:29Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 2:09:31Jocko Willink?

  And then the Marines weren't happy with what they did. They weren't happy with the landing. So they go reload. So the next night they're like, okay, we, you guys gonna go do it? We're doing the whole thing again. We're doing everything again.

• 2:09:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:44Jocko Willink?

  So hydro recon, so we go out. And all of us boys were like, you know, we just did the hydro, you know.

• 2:09:51Speaker 01

  Nothing's changed.

• 2:09:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, nothing changed. And that boss, that OIC, he goes.

• 2:09:57Speaker 01

  That's not the point.

• 2:09:58Jocko Willink?

  He goes, he goes, I remember it clear as day because I'll never forget him saying this because I use this quote about a million times with all my guys. He goes, you're right. He goes, hey, guys, you know, we don't have to do the hydro again. But would that be the right thing to do?

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got it.

• 2:10:16Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, get your lead lines, boys. I mean, that's how, right?

• 2:10:20Speaker 01

  Your big, your biggest critic is the guy in the mirror. That's the one you gotta answer to, not anyone else, the guy in the mirror.

• 2:10:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that, that, like, I never forgot that. From then on, from the rest of my life, it's been like, what's the actual right thing to do right now?

• 2:10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:35Jocko Willink?

  What's the actual right thing to do?

• 2:10:36Speaker 01

  It's usually the one that's so fucked up in the hottest way. Yeah.

• 2:10:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's gonna suck.

• 2:10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like everything.

• 2:10:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:43Speaker 01

  Well, I could do this or I could do that. No, which one's hotter?

• 2:10:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:47Speaker 01

  Well, then that's the one that I probably should do. You know, and then nine times out of 10, you're gonna be right.

• 2:10:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:10:54Speaker 01

  Does this suck? This way's easy, but this way sucks. Okay, but that's the one I have to do.

• 2:11:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:02Speaker 01

  But then you, if not, you're just like, I should have did this, but I'm just all weak and stupid. And then you just get all mad and you end up doing that anyway. So might as well just do it and get it over with.

• 2:11:15Jocko Willink?

  Um.

• 2:11:18Jocko Willink?

  As a sniper team leader prepping for deployment, in your opinion, one of the top five things I should drilling my guys on to support combat operations. Limited range time, about one range every other month.

• 2:11:34Speaker 01

  I wouldn't be so concerned about range time. I'd be concerned about environmental shooting, like nighttime, low light, sundown, sunup.

• 2:11:47Speaker 01

  Um, communication between each other, not so much like sniper spotter, like everyone's this. Put yourself in a, in a 360 degree, you know, white side, black side, whatever. And communicate, okay, I got guys all around, how are we doing this? We got too much shit over here, do we need to shift forces?

• 2:12:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you don't need a range to do that.

• 2:12:11Speaker 01

  You don't need a range to do that.

• 2:12:12Jocko Willink?

  You don't even need to carry weapons to do that.

• 2:12:15Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, you obviously have to shoot.

• 2:12:17Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:18Speaker 01

  But, and then cross training, all the other guys on the sniper weapon. Because sometimes you have to take a break and you gotta give somebody else who's not a sniper. Doesn't mean you can't shoot a gun, I mean, it's easy, but do more cross training on it. There's no reason that a non sniper in a SEAL platoon shouldn't have a thousand rounds through whatever weapon system we're using right now. There's no reason, maybe a thousand's a little bit, but at least a couple hundred. There's no reason with that, we're that busy, you know, getting up and going to work and like running around and talking about uniform standards, but we can't, I mean, come on.

• 2:13:02Speaker 01

  We've got all this time, you have, like, no one's shooting at you back here. So you should like maximize that time, you know, and don't get me wrong, you need time off to drink beer and be fraudulent, but job is a job.

• 2:13:18Jocko Willink?

  What did you do to keep Jaco in check?

• 2:13:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, nothing. That's terrible.

• 2:13:26Jocko Willink?

  I don't even know what that question is.

• 2:13:28Speaker 01

  I know, but it's an important question to like, someone who doesn't know you.

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  I don't know, maybe not like destroy everyone in the morning jujitsu sessions. So like when they had to actually do something, I had to yell in their other ear. Cause they had cauliflower ear for getting fucking torqued.

• 2:13:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:00Speaker 01

  Or basically, hey, man, this guy not in our chain of command, who's like working in another department.

• 2:14:08Speaker 01

  He's limited. You don't know him, but I do. He's not, you kind of got to be, not a frogman, but you kind of got to be a little gentle with this guy. Cause he's good at what he does. Just don't go in there and scare him to death. Cause he's just gonna like fade into the shredder room and cry. So, you know, maybe that, but very limited. I don't know what you can do with this fucking guy.

• 2:14:34Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. I think people, and we talked about this last time, it wasn't like, I mean, first of all, you and I were like, if you and I looked at a target, we would come up with a, so we both have a plan. That was like almost the same thing.

• 2:14:50Speaker 01

  You know why? Cause if this paper is the target, like when I look at it, I look at it. There's nothing in my head but that. Look at it. So people go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. No, you look at it. Like really, really look at it and envision.

• 2:15:14Speaker 01

  What, what this high ground here, what's on top of that high ground, is there trees, is there? How can I? Okay, I need to take this section of the, the map. And I need to add the other five. Cause we're coming from here, so I'll add boom, boom, boom, boom. And this, and then egress this way, if this is my any point, so next thing you know, the map's the size of this fucking room. That's how you look at a target. You know, just look, I go, oh yeah, well, I go in here. What? Who says you gotta go in? There's a hundred and fifty ways to do this mission, but you have to look at that target.

• 2:15:48Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:15:49Speaker 01

  And really, really look at it. And then envision it in 3D as you're walking up to it. That's, that, I don't know. I think that's what we do pretty good.

• 2:15:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I.

• 2:16:03Jocko Willink?

  I just always remember like, I'd, you know, some mission, whether it was overseas or no matter what. I'd be like looking at it going, I think it'd probably be good to do it like this. And then you'd be like, why, why don't we do this? And I'm like, yep.

• 2:16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, there may be like. One little difference, but that's, that's minute.

• 2:16:23Jocko Willink?

  Um. I think with BTF Tony, can you share some stories about team guys that influenced you in good and bad ways during the early days in the teams?

• 2:16:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:16:35Jocko Willink?

  I mean, we've been talking about that the whole time. I think one of the reasons I picked that question was because it said in good and bad ways.

• 2:16:42Speaker 01

  Uh, bad ways, I just think not being. Totally, totally one hundred percent team guy. I've seen some guys who were in charge of me that. You know, they just seemed to, at the time, a little more interested and. You know? Just getting through what we were doing and not really. You know, it's like, hey, chief. Two weeks ago, when we were doing this, can I, I wanna bounce my notes off yours, he's like. Well, I don't have any notes, I'm like, hmm, alright.

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  That's terrible.

• 2:17:17Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:17:18Speaker 01

  That's terrible. Why don't you have any notes like? Isn't this like the the pinnacle of your fucking career? Cause for me it was.

• 2:17:25Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:17:26Speaker 01

  And, you know. Yeah, I get it if there was no war going on. But still, isn't that like, that's why I say some of these guys were champions. Like, I I utmost respect, fucking awesome cats. Some of them. They kind of put us behind the power curve when the shit really hit the fan after nine eleven because they were just kind of going through the motions. And they didn't like, before we got into the mobility world. They they'd never. They're like, oh, yeah, we either get dropped off by a helo and hump in or come in by boat. Like, what about vehicles? Well. We don't really do that. What do you mean we don't do that?

• 2:18:08Speaker 01

  How are you gonna get from point A to fucking B, you know? And then once we started doing it, it was a bunch of ketchup.

• 2:18:14Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:18:15Speaker 01

  It took fucking smart guys like TK there to really ramrod the mobility program and and do that kind of shit and. Like, what did you guys think of this? I mean, yeah, why didn't I think of it? I mean, I kind of did, but I was a lonely or low guy trying to learn the ropes, you know, and. I don't think they did us any favors.

• 2:18:38Jocko Willink?

  I didn't think about it. I didn't think about mobility. I wasn't thinking to myself like, oh, cool.

• 2:18:43Speaker 01

  But I but other guys that are that are frogmen or tier one cats were doing it.

• 2:18:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, what I what I. Like, I was still trying to sort out like just.

• 2:18:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, my web year.

• 2:18:54Jocko Willink?

  How to be a good team guy.

• 2:18:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:18:56Jocko Willink?

  But, yeah, looking at, it seems like. Those days, there was there was. It seemed like you would need to, we needed as a community to look at like what could happen.

• 2:19:09Speaker 01

  One one big thing that I was looking at when I was a young team guy. Was I realized a long fucking time ago that. There are no terrorists, really. I mean, I'm wrong about some things on Afghanistan, but there are no real bad guys in the middle of fucking nowhere.

• 2:19:30Speaker 01

  There's gonna be buildings, there's gonna, it's gonna be, it's not gonna be urban combat and then out in the middle, land warfare in the middle of nowhere. It's gonna be a mix. And as soon as we got rid of the subguns and started carrying long guns for a close quarter battle, that's, that's one of the styles.

• 2:19:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:49Speaker 01

  And it was alw- it was always gonna be a mix, whether you're coming over the beach,

• 2:19:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:19:53Speaker 01

  you're coming in.

• 2:19:54Jocko Willink?

  Even going on to a ship.

• 2:19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 2:19:57Jocko Willink?

  Because people were, some people wanna stick with subguns because you're going on a ship.

• 2:20:01Speaker 01

  And I love the subguns.

• 2:20:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, for sure.

• 2:20:03Speaker 01

  They're awesome.

• 2:20:04Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:20:05Speaker 01

  But at a hundred yard fantail shot.

• 2:20:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:08Speaker 01

  Or a hundred and fifty.

• 2:20:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you got, you could have some issues.

• 2:20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, big issues.

• 2:20:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:16Jocko Willink?

  At what point in your career did you start to feel competent in operating? Killing the enemy and making sure your brothers came home with you. Did you start to feel like you could do it every day and be successful?

• 2:20:26Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I always felt that way.

• 2:20:29Jocko Willink?

  How many platoons did it take before you started feeling competent?

• 2:20:33Speaker 01

  Uh, like one. I mean, I always felt like I was good to go.

• 2:20:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:37Speaker 01

  I could do this, I can fan- I fantasize about, I, I'll admit it, I, I couldn't wait to kill anybody, you know, I loved it. Cause that's your job, like.

• 2:20:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:48Speaker 01

  And it was, it was kind of a letdown, like, it was, you know, you think like in the movies and all, you train so much, it's like bang, alright, on to the next one. But, I felt it right away. It's not that, that was never the issue. The issue's always been confident as a leader. That took a while. It wasn't immediate. It took, it took me a while.

• 2:21:11Jocko Willink?

  How good were you as a, as an LPO when you were in E5?

• 2:21:14Speaker 01

  I thought I was pretty good, but.

• 2:21:16Jocko Willink?

  When you look back on it?

• 2:21:18Speaker 01

  No, I was okay because we didn't have a lot of,

• 2:21:24Speaker 01

  I, I, I was basically really good at the basics.

• 2:21:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and see, I always felt like, once I got done with a job, I would wanna go back and do it again and I'd feel like I would do it so awesome and you don't get to do that.

• 2:21:36Speaker 01

  Right, you don't, you don't.

• 2:21:39Jocko Willink?

  I did a platoon commander, I was like, um, and I, you know, I did fine.

• 2:21:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:43Jocko Willink?

  But like as soon as I got done, I was like, I should've done this, I should've done that. As a TU commander, I got done, I was like, I should've done this, I should've done that, just wanna do better.

• 2:21:51Speaker 01

  Well, absolutely. I mean, the LPO thing, when you're a peacetime LPO and. I don't know. I was always mixing it up and everybody seemed to like me. I mean, they didn't bitch too much. Couple of guys did, but it was all good. You can't do everything. All the team guys under your frigging belt. There's gonna be guys go, he was a fucking asshole and he just fucking did this was stupid. Of course, there's gonna be that, you know, but I think for the most part.

• 2:22:22Speaker 01

  I mean, I did alright. Tried to, I mean, I could have done better, like telling people how, oh, you know, you're doing good and, you know, it's all okay. No. I'm glad I was a dick kinda with stuff.

• 2:22:40Jocko Willink?

  But when you say that.

• 2:22:42Speaker 01

  Not a dick, but a professional dick.

• 2:22:44Jocko Willink?

  You say that like, and Leif pointed me this out to me the other day. And Key remembered it. It's funny because I had just written about it. What I wrote about was like, if a platoon at Land Warfare was doing good. I wouldn't say like, this is when I was in trade at, I wouldn't say, hey, you guys kicked ass. As a task unit, I wouldn't say, hey, you guys, I'd say, hey, Bill. You and your fire team did a good job holding down the black side of that target. And hey, Mike, when you grabbed that other guy and you flanked those dudes on the hill, that was awesome. Cause, but I would never just say collectively, everyone did awesome because then what happens is they all fall apart.

• 2:23:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:23:29Jocko Willink?

  And that's what kinda what you did too. You used to, if somebody, if somebody did something good. You would tell them they did good.

• 2:23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:37Jocko Willink?

  If, you wouldn't be like, hey, everyone did great.

• 2:23:40Speaker 01

  No, of course not.

• 2:23:43Jocko Willink?

  Cause the chances of that.

• 2:23:44Speaker 01

  That's like false, like, oh, you know, everything we did was amazing. This is amazing. Everything's amazing. That's so fucking stupid. I hate that. Like you did your job. Like what do you want? Fucking medal? Now here's your medal. Here's an MRE. Go over there and be stupid. Go get your shit ready. We got another off. And besides, you know, it's not like I talk down everybody. These are my brothers. It's like, yeah, man, that was cool. That's about the best team guy compliment you get.

• 2:24:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:16Speaker 01

  Hey, that one alright. Yeah. Good job. Yeah, okay.

• 2:24:19Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 2:24:19Speaker 01

  That's that, yeah. On to the next thing. Guy's like, yeah, I gotta go to the head, but whatever. It's like, no big deal.

• 2:24:28Jocko Willink?

  Last question. Do you still smile when you hear standby to get some?

• 2:24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, come on. It's like you know it's gonna happen. And, you know, and after a while, it's like, fuck yeah. Yeah, bring it. You know, it's like that cat there, uh, when, uh, Ted Williams, Ted Williams, Teddy Ballgame. I mean, he was hitting 402 and he had a two-game series. And they're like, man, you're hitting over 400. Just don't play.

• 2:25:09Speaker 01

  You know, you're the only guy who's ever hit over 400. He's like, fuck that. And he went like, three for five and he went to like 406, 407. And he risked it all because, yeah, I'm, I'm playing. And mind you, this is a guy who took time off to fly jets in Korea or Viet, or World War II and Korea. I mean, like, yeah. What, what are we gonna do? Like, okay, we gotta, we're going home in a week. We're not gonna do this up. Fuck you, we're not gonna do this up. You know, then, you know, we go home.

• 2:25:42Speaker 01

  I mean, what if you'd have died right before you? So what? That's why I'm here. I mean, if that happens, it happens. Who gives a fuck? I mean, it's what it is, right?

• 2:25:52Jocko Willink?

  That is what it is.

• 2:25:53Speaker 01

  Teams and shit. That, that trumps everything. It's like, teams and shit. Okay, I'm a team guy, that's it. Alright, done.

• 2:26:02Jocko Willink?

  Yes, indeed.

• 2:26:04Speaker 01

  Good to see you, brother. Good to see you, brother.

• 2:26:08Jocko Willink?

  Right on, man.

• 2:26:08Speaker 01

  You too, Akil. Good to see you, man.

• 2:26:12Jocko Willink?

  Freaking awesome to have you back on.

• 2:26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm glad I could, man.

• 2:26:16Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, hopefully I'll see you up in Maine. If you can swing by.

• 2:26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:21Jocko Willink?

  That'd be cool. I'm sure a bunch of people are gonna wanna meet you up there.

• 2:26:24Speaker 01

  I already told one of my cats back home. He's like, "Oh, I'll fucking drive the Harley down there. I'm all set."

• 2:26:31Jocko Willink?

  Echo.

• 2:26:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:26:33Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of standing by to get some. What do you got? How can we be more prepared to get some? As they say.

• 2:26:41Speaker 02

  Many ways. Well, one way, as we always say, is jujitsu. Tony knows a little bit about that as well. When you do jujitsu, we need gis, right? Unless you're doing no gi, but we recommend gi and no gi. So when you get a gi, where do we get them?

• 2:26:59Jocko Willink?

  Origin. So this is, so Tony's from New England and, you know, Tony and I were talking yesterday. And man, if you grew up in New England, then you saw the economy get just annihilated.

• 2:27:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:27:12Jocko Willink?

  And whether it was the, the factories that were shutting down, the textile factories that were shutting down, the clothing manufacturers, the shoe manufacturers, all these, the paper manufacturers.

• 2:27:24Speaker 01

  Back home, yep.

• 2:27:25Jocko Willink?

  Got shut down. And, you know, it's one of those things that when I, when I talk to companies and they say, "Well, you know, you were dealing with, you were dealing with life and death." And we're not. And I say, "Yeah, but you're dealing with people's livelihoods." And what, as, as, as a, as a mom, as a dad, your livelihood is how, that's your life. That is your life. And so if you grew up in New England and, and New England's not the only place, because it's all over America, when you manufacturing got taken away and sent overseas, it's a nightmare. You go up to these towns and there's no work. Not that people don't wanna work, believe me, they're New Englanders. They wanna work. And I keep saying New Englanders, because

• 2:28:08Speaker 01

  But it's everywhere.

• 2:28:09Jocko Willink?

  But it's everywhere. Americans wanna work. And so, you know, with Origin, and when you come up and see the factory, you know, we got

• 2:28:18Jocko Willink?

  forty-five or fifty folks now employed in Farmington, which is awesome.

• 2:28:25Speaker 01

  Maine.

• 2:28:25Jocko Willink?

  Yep, Farmington, Maine. And, you know, it's like Are they employees? Yeah, yeah, they're employees because they're working there. But you know what they are? They're part of what we're doing. Yeah, they're part of something. They're part of something. They're the ones that are actually making the gear, making the jiu-jitsu keys, making the jeans. We started making jeans. I'll get you some jeans when we get up there. Boots, we're making boots. I'll get you some boots when we get up there. Perfect. Like, we got folks that have been out of work for 14 years. They're fucking stoked to be getting after it. Stoked to be back. They want nothing more than to come in and, and get on those machines, make the boots, make the jeans. We, we just started printing T- like, we're doing everything. We're doing everything.

• 2:29:10Jocko Willink?

  So I'll bring you up there if you guys come. And if you can't make it up then, you can come up whenever you want. You got an open pass to go to the factory in Maine and, and check it out and see, you know, it's, it's just a beautiful thing to go up there and see a, a town that's, and this is just the starting point, man. Yeah. And people, people can think I'm, you know, dreaming. I'm not. Like, we're gonna build this thing. It is gonna be massive. We're gonna bring back manufacturing to America and there's no one's gonna stop us. That's what's gonna happen. Exactly. No one. So if you need something like that, if you need a gi, if you need a rash guard, get it from originmaine.com. If you need a pair of jeans, go on there and get them.

• 2:29:54Jocko Willink?

  Somebody said, "These jeans are expensive." And I said, "You know what I said? You're right. You're right. They are too expensive." Right now, they're, they're not at a price point we want to get them down to. But as we build more and grow more, we'll be able to get those expenses down, but we have to start somewhere. Yeah. We can't obviously give them away. No, you gotta pay the people. Yeah, we got, we gotta pay the workers. So we're getting there. We will build this and there's nothing's gonna stop us. Yeah, I don't think they're that expensive anyway. Well, well, they're cheaper, they're, they're more expensive than a pair of mass-produced jeans from China. Yeah. In a sweatshop where they're playing, where they're paying their employees. Right. Literally 50 cents a day. So yes, are jeans more expensive than?

• 2:30:39Jocko Willink?

  They fucking last, so whatever. They're a hundred bucks. Whatever. You buy two pairs, it's a hundred bucks. So anyways, that's the deal. And if you think that's-

• 2:30:51Jocko Willink?

  If you think a hundred bucks is too much, hey, man, I get it. Save up. Save up, get yourself a pair of No, really. Get yourself a pair of jeans made in China. Yep. That are made in a sweatshop where, you know, some, the corporate, the corporation's gonna make all the money and none of it's gonna come back here to America. So, alright, sorry, I'm getting a little crazy right now, but Respect. Buy my fucking jeans.

• 2:31:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, if you don't buy jeans, there's other stuff too, which is also good news. So what, supplements, so important supplements to keep you in the game, joint warfare, krill oil, which I had an experience and didn't even know it. When I went to Hawaii.

• 2:31:30Jocko Willink?

  You went off the

• 2:31:31Speaker 02

  I went off, didn't even realize it, you know, the kind you just sort of

• 2:31:34Jocko Willink?

  You went off and

• 2:31:35Speaker 02

  Off the krill oil and joint warfare. And here's the weird thing, my elbow, I always

• 2:31:39Jocko Willink?

  That's an amateur move.

• 2:31:40Speaker 02

  Bro, it is, you're correct, yeah, it was amateur, but and I didn't even realize it till I got home. So I go, you know, and I was lifting, I was working out.

• 2:31:48Jocko Willink?

  Ten nineties?

• 2:31:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, elbow.

• 2:31:49Jocko Willink?

  I had it so bad, this one.

• 2:31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, but yeah, if you go on the joint warfare and krill oil, okay, if you don't have some, I'll give you some, it's good. Takes like, I guess, depends on who you are, it took me like six days for it to like really start to go away.

• 2:32:05Jocko Willink?

  Couple of days more than a cortisone shot though.

• 2:32:07Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:32:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, right? It takes like two and a half days. You will feel it. Like you go and read the, um, the reviews of joint warfare and there's people that are saying, "Oh, I couldn't do, I couldn't, I couldn't lift my whatever, you know, I couldn't swing my hammer, whatever, I'm back in the game." Mobility.

• 2:32:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:32:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so

• 2:32:25Speaker 02

  Completely true.

• 2:32:26Jocko Willink?

  It's legit.

• 2:32:26Speaker 02

  So I come back and I'm like, okay, let me get, you know, back into life. I was like, man, I wasn't lifting that hard in Hawaii and not as often either. So I'm like, why is my elbow kind of bothering me? I'm like, oh my gosh, totally hit me. I was like, dang, yet another instance of me playing myself, but proof, you see what I'm saying?

• 2:32:43Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:32:44Speaker 02

  Anyway, so yeah, stay on that joint warfare and the krill oil, there is also discipline. Good deal, Dave's on the discipline, uh, train big time. I'm with him on that train. Pretty much every day, pretty much daily.

• 2:32:57Jocko Willink?

  Daily discipline.

• 2:32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, in all things, and this is

• 2:33:00Jocko Willink?

  This is

• 2:33:01Speaker 02

  Yet another one, yes. Also milk, if you want additional protein, in the form of a dessert, by the way. One of the best desserts out there.

• 2:33:09Jocko Willink?

  No, I never would have thought, what I'll do is make a dessert. That's, that's got protein. I wouldn't think that, because it doesn't seem like it's a possible feasible thing.

• 2:33:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:19Jocko Willink?

  But then it turns out to be, yes, it is one.

• 2:33:21Speaker 02

  That's, yep.

• 2:33:22Speaker 01

  I know Giaco a long time, and one of his favorite sayings is not actually a saying, he's just like talking to you, because you're next to him, going,

• 2:33:31Speaker 01

  fucking starving right now, like, always starving, like, every, like, okay, we know, we ate like, an hour and a half ago. Fucking so hungry, like, really?

• 2:33:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, now he goes on all these crazy fasts, right? Intermittent fasting and whatnot.

• 2:33:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, get some milk.

• 2:33:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:55Jocko Willink?

  Tastes good. Get some tea, some Jocko White tea, and that'll, and don't forget about the Warrior Kid milk.

• 2:34:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:03Jocko Willink?

  Which I think is the game changer.

• 2:34:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:06Speaker 01

  Hey, there's gonna be guys from back home, a lot of guys watch podcasts, but can you just go over the

• 2:34:14Speaker 01

  dot com again, whatever it is?

• 2:34:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:34:16Speaker 01

  Origin.

• 2:34:16Speaker 02

  Origin.

• 2:34:17Jocko Willink?

  Origin.

• 2:34:17Speaker 02

  Maine.

• 2:34:19Jocko Willink?

  Dot com.

• 2:34:19Speaker 02

  Maine as in the state.

• 2:34:21Speaker 01

  Right, M A I N E.

• 2:34:22Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:34:22Speaker 02

  Yep. Yeah, origin Maine dot com, so we get all this stuff. Also, Giaco has a store, it's called Giaco Store. Of course, you know, he's super creative with the names and whatnot.

• 2:34:33Speaker 01

  Put a lot of thought into it.

• 2:34:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, it's good, turned out good. Um, anyway, that's where you can get

• 2:34:38Jocko Willink?

  That's

• 2:34:39Speaker 02

  shirts.

• 2:34:39Jocko Willink?

  Uh, who was it? It was, I think Flynn Cochran.

• 2:34:46Jocko Willink?

  He was, he was saying that the original Jaco product was, cause I used to give like a brief, the leadership brief to the, to the guys that were starting. And he's like, they, they called that the Jaco brief. And I didn't think about it. I was like, oh yeah, that's like the original.

• 2:35:02Speaker 02

  The original Jaco product.

• 2:35:03Jocko Willink?

  Product. And then, so I can't be just blamed on lack of creativity from my part. Well, yeah, you can. I guess I can.

• 2:35:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, full on, hundred percent, actually. Yeah. And also you gotta ask the question, did Flynn come up with that after?

• 2:35:19Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:35:19Speaker 02

  Jocko podcast?

• 2:35:20Jocko Willink?

  No. It was, it was, and then Mike Sorelli, same thing. Like, oh, this is the Jaco brief.

• 2:35:26Speaker 02

  You know what though? When you kind of think about it, what do you call it? Like phonetically or whatever? I don't know if that's the correct word, but like when you say Jaco, it's kind of matches, you know? Like Jaco store, Jaco brief. It's not like, it's like, you know, you know.

• 2:35:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The whole reason speaking, you know, that story that you just told about me being hungry? The reason this whole thing started with Jaco is because when I was on Tim Ferriss's podcast, I fasted that day and he was like, well, you know, we've been talking for a long time. You know, maybe we should go get something to eat. And I went Jaco hungry.

• 2:36:01Jocko Willink?

  Like I was just joking, you know? But then.

• 2:36:04Speaker 02

  But not really.

• 2:36:04Jocko Willink?

  But then like a little while later, it was, oh, we're gonna have a podcast. And I was like, okay, Jocko podcast. Almost like I'm a knucklehead, right?

• 2:36:11Speaker 02

  Or almost, yeah.

• 2:36:13Jocko Willink?

  I actually am another, so we're gonna go Jocko podcast. That was the original.

• 2:36:18Speaker 02

  But it sounds good though. Unless, unless it's start, unless it's like, if you're gonna name something like that starts with an O, that's when it wouldn't really work. Like if it was like a O, ocean, Jaco ocean. Even that kind of sounds good, I guess.

• 2:36:33Jocko Willink?

  Now I need to take over an ocean somewhere.

• 2:36:35Speaker 02

  Well, you know, hypothetically, you understand what I'm saying. Unless Jaco stores where you can get shirts, discipline equals freedom. Boom. More rash cards on there too, by the way.

• 2:36:44Jocko Willink?

  Which are, which are origin rash cards, by the way, made in America. Jaco taco.

• 2:36:50Speaker 02

  Jaco sea. No, no, that works.

• 2:36:51Jocko Willink?

  Ooh, that would be good.

• 2:36:52Speaker 02

  Jaco taco. Oh, yeah. There's a place I'm quite called Paco's Taco.

• 2:36:57Jocko Willink?

  Shop.

• 2:36:57Speaker 02

  You know?

• 2:36:58Jocko Willink?

  That would be, that would be. So I need to start a taco shop. Well, why not?

• 2:37:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:37:02Jocko Willink?

  Might as well.

• 2:37:03Speaker 02

  Obviously. Geez.

• 2:37:05Jocko Willink?

  We'll have to talk to George. Ain't none around here in San Diego. Farfan.

• 2:37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Huh.

• 2:37:10Jocko Willink?

  I can't find one taco shop around here in San Diego. When my oldest daughter, who's at college now, my oldest daughter comes home and she'll like fly home and she will stop at a taco shop. Oh, yeah. On the way home from the airport. Best Conny Asada ever. Oh, Coach, looking forward to seeing you. You gonna be home in 10 minutes? And he's like, no, no, no, I'll be home in a half an hour because I'm going to get a taco. Well, absolutely. Going to get a California burrito. Oh, I had like three of them in the last four days.

• 2:37:37Speaker 02

  Can't make.

• 2:37:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so good. You just can't change that. Alright, so cool.

• 2:37:44Speaker 02

  Jaco Ocean, Jaco's Tacos and Jaco Store, of course, like we were saying, shirts, rash cards, hoodies, hats, you know, all kinds of stuff you want to represent while you're on the path. Boom. Good place to do so. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. If you're into it. If you're into subscribing, super easy. But yeah, on Google Play, Stitcher, iTunes, you know.

• 2:38:08Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about the Warrior Kid Podcast for the children. Stories, not just questions, but stories from Uncle Jake about how Uncle Jake got his values in life. What made him say, "I should be prepared"? You know what I know how? I tell a story. Uncle Jake goes on a little, on a little, there's, there's a little rowboat and Uncle Jake and his buddy, when he's eight years old, go out on the rowboat. And while they're out in the rowboat, he says, ah, you know, we're not, we don't need life jackets because, you know, we're just gonna go, we're just gonna paddle around here. So they're out in the rowboat and they're clowning around or whatever, let go of the oars for a second. They both slip out through the, uh, through the oar locks.

• 2:38:52Jocko Willink?

  And there's a wind blowing. So within five seconds, they're, they're gone from the, and they're in the middle of the lake. Yep. And they have to drift all the way to the other side. And then borrow some, but you know, there was that moment where things were bad. Yep. So that's when Uncle Jake learned you need to always be prepared for things to go down. That's an actual story too, by the way. That really happened. That really happened to me. So there you go. Stories from Uncle Jake on the Warrior Kid Podcast. So.

• 2:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Get some of that.

• 2:39:26Speaker 02

  Also, speaking of warrior kids, it's a warrior kid that I know. Heard of myth, it's not a myth, it's real. Name is Aiden. Making warrior kids, not warrior kids soap, Jaco soap. He's the warrior kid.

• 2:39:39Jocko Willink?

  Now we got Jaco soap too.

• 2:39:42Speaker 02

  Jaco soap, and that sounds good too, Jaco soap. There's also trooper soap, by the way. Which is like another, what do you call flavor, if you will. Soap's not flavors, right?

• 2:39:51Jocko Willink?

  Don't eat it, clean with it. Use it to wash up and to help you stay clean.

• 2:39:57Speaker 02

  Yes, very good.

• 2:39:58Speaker 01

  It smells like nothing. It smells like war.

• 2:40:01Speaker 02

  Actually, it smells pretty good, to be honest with you.

• 2:40:04Jocko Willink?

  Hey, that would be awesome to make.

• 2:40:06Speaker 01

  It smells like war.

• 2:40:07Jocko Willink?

  It smelled like cordite or whatever.

• 2:40:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:40:09Jocko Willink?

  That'd be so good.

• 2:40:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it smells like napalm. Victory in the morning.

• 2:40:16Speaker 02

  Well, Jaco white tea tastes like victory.

• 2:40:19Jocko Willink?

  That's true, good point.

• 2:40:20Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, you know, when you say it should smell like war, that kind sort of made me think of how you and Lathan. Actually, all you guys would tell us how war smells like gunpowder and sewage.

• 2:40:29Speaker 01

  Terrible. That's actually the terrible idea.

• 2:40:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:40:33Jocko Willink?

  Can it smell like the range? The range smells good. You know what doesn't smell good? Diesel fumes in the back of a Sea Fox.

• 2:40:40Speaker 01

  No, or when you're in a Hilo and refueling.

• 2:40:45Speaker 01

  Like in the air, in-flight refueling.

• 2:40:48Jocko Willink?

  I don't think I've ever done that.

• 2:40:49Speaker 01

  It's effing terrible.

• 2:40:51Jocko Willink?

  There's just diesel everywhere.

• 2:40:52Speaker 01

  It's just like, eh.

• 2:40:55Speaker 01

  It's just like, eh. And I don't like ever get sick with that stuff, but I was like.

• 2:41:00Jocko Willink?

  I've gotten.

• 2:41:01Speaker 01

  You get high.

• 2:41:02Jocko Willink?

  I got seasick two times. Once was in the back of the Sea Fox, fell asleep with the diesel fumes. And the next one was in an LCU. I was downstairs in a raging storm. Waterproofing the radios in the engine room, just diesel and rocking all over the place. I came up and started yakking. And the BMC that was running the LCU was hanging his head over the side yakking. So I was like, all right, I'm cleared hot.

• 2:41:24Speaker 02

  Technically, is that getting seasick though, if it's from the diesel fumes?

• 2:41:30Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 2:41:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:31Speaker 01

  I never did it. So yeah, you got seasick.

• 2:41:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, see?

• 2:41:35Speaker 01

  It never happened to me.

• 2:41:35Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:41:36Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 2:41:38Speaker 02

  Nonetheless, uh, the, the, the scent aroma of, uh, the trooper soap and the Jaco soap is pretty good.

• 2:41:47Speaker 01

  Ah, okay.

• 2:41:47Speaker 02

  And very functional, by the way.

• 2:41:49Jocko Willink?

  You were still talking about that?

• 2:41:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. It's very important. I mean, we could talk about the diesel fuel fumes, seasickness somewhere if you guys want.

• 2:41:57Jocko Willink?

  True. Alright, I'll take the hit nicely.

• 2:41:59Speaker 02

  No, no, I'm.

• 2:42:00Jocko Willink?

  Point taken.

• 2:42:00Speaker 02

  Up to you, bro. Up to you.

• 2:42:03Jocko Willink?

  Doing, doing a good job.

• 2:42:04Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 2:42:05Jocko Willink?

  I'll take the hit.

• 2:42:05Speaker 02

  Also, we have a YouTube channel. BTF Tony into YouTube or what?

• 2:42:10Speaker 01

  Not really, but.

• 2:42:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I would, I'd be surprised if you were, but you can get addicted to various videos. Nonetheless, we have a YouTube channel with good videos, video version of this podcast, excerpts, enhanced excerpts.

• 2:42:22Jocko Willink?

  Enhanced means that Echo puts all these effects in them like a.

• 2:42:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I gotta watch that.

• 2:42:30Speaker 02

  And music.

• 2:42:30Speaker 01

  Explosions.

• 2:42:32Jocko Willink?

  Things are on fire.

• 2:42:34Speaker 02

  I'll show you one after this. It's good.

• 2:42:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:42:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. But yeah, YouTube channel, Jocko Podcast. Boom. Also, Psychological Warfare.

• 2:42:42Jocko Willink?

  Psychological Warfare, yeah.

• 2:42:45Speaker 02

  What is that, bro?

• 2:42:45Jocko Willink?

  It's an.

• 2:42:46Speaker 02

  Cause you always get mad at me explaining it, even though I have the best explanation.

• 2:42:50Jocko Willink?

  Here's, here's a psychological. If you ask for an alarm clock, which is kind of where this started, if you're, if you're asking for an alarm clock that has me telling you to get up, there's where you get it. Psychological Warfare, it's on iTunes, it's on Google Play, it's on MP3. It actually started when Echo asked me a question about something. And I was like, here's the answer. And then he was like, I'm gonna record that. And then we just.

• 2:43:15Speaker 01

  One from there. That's cool.

• 2:43:16Speaker 02

  The question was.

• 2:43:17Jocko Willink?

  What was the original question?

• 2:43:19Speaker 02

  The original question, and it was with me was with workouts. So like when I work out or when I plan a workout and I just really don't feel like it. And you know, that's a common thing. Like, oh, you just do it anyway. You don't be a BTF through it, right? So I'm thinking, man, I wish I was better at BTF. In through it. See what I'm saying?

• 2:43:37Speaker 01

  I wish I was too lately.

• 2:43:39Speaker 02

  I know, bro. See, it's a real thing. So I'm like, I want, you know, cause I can imagine, you know, Jock will just be tear through it. So I'm like, but what do you like say, you know, like what, what goes on in your mind? Do you just not think about it at all? And you just sort of automatically do it? Or do you say something? Or I don't know, like what, what is it? You know, what's the message?

• 2:43:54Speaker 01

  I, I like two weeks ago, I turned 51 and I'm like,

• 2:44:00Speaker 01

  actually made it past 50.

• 2:44:04Speaker 01

  You're gonna fucking be, it's gotta do something right.

• 2:44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, and especially when you think you're gonna not make it to 30.

• 2:44:11Speaker 02

  No, for sure.

• 2:44:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I'm like, mm hmm. I don't know.

• 2:44:15Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 2:44:15Speaker 01

  It doesn't get any, the old, every day you get older, it gets terrible.

• 2:44:21Speaker 01

  You wake up and you're like, oh, what is this now?

• 2:44:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:44:25Speaker 01

  Like here, like what's this?

• 2:44:27Jocko Willink?

  I realize, you, you know how, uh, I've said, one of the things I noticed about getting older is, and I don't notice that much, and I don't admit that I don't notice it either. So even if I was in a ton of pain, I wouldn't tell anyone.

• 2:44:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:44:42Jocko Willink?

  But one of the things that I have admitted is that my first couple of rounds of jujitsu, I'm, I'm, I wa, I use a couple of rounds of warm up now. Like even if, especially, especially if I'm going with Dean and Andy. So Andy didn't used to be in this bracket. He's in there now. So here's the other thing I've noticed. I, I once my, cause I couldn't run when I hurt my knee. And so now that my knee is like getting better, I can run again, not, you know, crazy. But what I noticed is same thing, if the first, like the first half mile that I run, I just, I, I must look like a, a person that's just never run before.

• 2:45:27Jocko Willink?

  And then the longer I run.

• 2:45:29Speaker 01

  What do you mean the first half? Like you run more than a half a mile?

• 2:45:32Speaker 02

  You know, like.

• 2:45:33Speaker 01

  What are you doing?

• 2:45:34Jocko Willink?

  When I'm coming home and I'm, once I'm warmed up, I'm like, oh yeah, cool, cool. And that's one thing that sucks is when you were young, you just didn't have to do anything and you'd show up to it. You didn't do anything for three months and then you show up at a team, they're like, hey, we're doing a nine mile run today. You'd be like, cool, just go out and do it and fine. Now you're like, mm, the first, first half mile.

• 2:45:56Speaker 01

  You got a flat tire like what running the shit.

• 2:46:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:01Speaker 01

  Terrible.

• 2:46:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, if you want a, um, visual version of little things to keep you on the path, then go to flipsidecanvas.com Dakota Meyer, he's got a company there again, made in America, made right in Austin, Texas, making cool artwork. I'm trying to think of a better word for that because I don't like saying artwork.

• 2:46:26Speaker 02

  You don't match.

• 2:46:27Jocko Willink?

  I know.

• 2:46:28Speaker 02

  Saying artwork.

• 2:46:28Jocko Willink?

  It is artwork. I know, but is there a better word?

• 2:46:32Speaker 02

  I don't know. No, I think it's artwork.

• 2:46:35Speaker 01

  Visual inspirational shit.

• 2:46:37Speaker 02

  I don't know inspirational might be worse.

• 2:46:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:39Speaker 02

  Inspirational, I mean, as far as Jocko saying it, I dig it. It's inspirational stuff factually.

• 2:46:44Jocko Willink?

  Not really my thing.

• 2:46:45Speaker 02

  For lack of a better term.

• 2:46:47Jocko Willink?

  Flipsidecanvas.com for whatever you want to call it.

• 2:46:50Speaker 01

  You hang it on your walls.

• 2:46:52Jocko Willink?

  You, yeah, you know why he named it that? Because the last thing he said to, uh, one of his, one of his teammates in Afghanistan was, all right, man, we'll see you on the flip side. And everyone on his team died, including that guy. And so he's like, that's what this is. That's what the name of the company came from, man. So support Dakota and his company, flipsidecanvas.com. He's making all kinds of goo- cool.

• 2:47:17Jocko Willink?

  Graphics.

• 2:47:18Speaker 02

  Some graphics on there, but that's not the end product.

• 2:47:23Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to think of something eventually. Maybe I'll make up a word for it like Molk.

• 2:47:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe.

• 2:47:28Jocko Willink?

  In fact, I think I'm gonna do that. Do that. Think about it. Watch this.

• 2:47:32Speaker 02

  Jocko Canvas.

• 2:47:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:33Speaker 02

  That doesn't match.

• 2:47:34Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:47:35Speaker 02

  And the last, also on it. So on it.com slash Jocko. This is where you can get workout gear. There's some cool, do you have sandbag?

• 2:47:42Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Did you watch my, uh, little clip I put out? My edit?

• 2:47:48Speaker 02

  The time lapse one?

• 2:47:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:50Speaker 02

  I did, I didn't pay Max attention, so you got sandbags on there, is what you're saying?

• 2:47:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:54Speaker 02

  Okay. Cause I was on.

• 2:47:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:47:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:57Jocko Willink?

  By the way, that band that I clipped out there, it's called Life's Blood. It's an old school hardcore band from upstate New York. That's from an old seven inch that Elgin James sent me, cause we, we, there was a great band, they're a great band. They're, the, the lead singer is now a cop somewhere in Atlanta or something. But anyways, that's Life's Blood. I don't know where you can find it, but.

• 2:48:21Speaker 02

  That's the music on that video.

• 2:48:23Jocko Willink?

  That I edited in there.

• 2:48:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, Jock was editing now, by the way.

• 2:48:27Jocko Willink?

  Ooh, I'm gonna take Echo's job from him.

• 2:48:29Speaker 01

  That's friggin' dangerous, isn't it?

• 2:48:31Speaker 02

  Well, maybe I'll take over Ashland Front, maybe do the briefings on that.

• 2:48:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, let's see.

• 2:48:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe, I will.

• 2:48:35Jocko Willink?

  Check, so.

• 2:48:37Speaker 02

  Anyway, what I was trying to say about the sandbags is when I was getting stuff.

• 2:48:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:43Speaker 02

  From Onnit, I saw the sandbags, I was like, I'm gonna get this. I don't have a sandbag routine yet.

• 2:48:47Jocko Willink?

  For those of you that were wondering what I was doing with this sandbag, I pick it up, throw it over my shoulder, turn around, pick it up, throw it over my shoulder. Do it over and over again.

• 2:48:54Speaker 02

  How big is it?

• 2:48:55Jocko Willink?

  I don't even know.

• 2:48:55Speaker 02

  Or how heavy or whatever?

• 2:48:56Jocko Willink?

  Just, I don't know. Uh, my son, when he came home from wrestling camp, and he was like, you know, kind of, kind of walking around the house, you know?

• 2:49:05Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 2:49:05Jocko Willink?

  He did two weeks of wrestling, the really good wrestling camp called J-Rob. 14 day intensive wrestling camp, awesome camp, and they, they, they, they put these guys through the wringer. It's wake up in the morning, conditioning, breakfast, wrestling, lunch, wrestling, dinner, conditioning. And they do that for 14 days straight. To graduate, you have to, the last thing you do is a 12 mile run. So like, it's, and you're all beat down when you're doing that. So yeah, uh, when he came home from that, you know? He was kind of bowing up a little bit.

• 2:49:43Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, that'd been perfect.

• 2:49:44Jocko Willink?

  He was bowing up and I said, oh, you wanna do a little workout?

• 2:49:46Speaker 02

  Oh, you wanna?

• 2:49:47Jocko Willink?

  Handing him the sandbag, and I was like, yeah, do this, this, this, and this. He didn't like that sandbag.

• 2:49:52Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 2:49:54Speaker 02

  Alright, well, I'm gonna take another look at that, cause I think I am gonna get this in.

• 2:49:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you should definitely get one.

• 2:49:58Speaker 02

  Also, yes, kettlebells on there, that's where all my kettlebells are from, and yeah, a lot of good stuff on there. Go there, Onnit.com slash Jocko.

• 2:50:06Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I wrote a bunch of books. Way the Warrior Kid, Warrior Kid 2, Mark's Mission, Warrior Kid 3, Where There's a Will, Mikey and the Dragons. And Discipline and Freedom Field Manual, Extreme Ownership and the Academy Leadership. These are a bunch of books I wrote. If you like what we're talking about here, if you're an adult, get the adult books. If you're a kid, get the kids book. If you have kids, get them the kids books. And you might want to check out the kids books even if you're an adult.

• 2:50:35Speaker 01

  Yes, I agree.

• 2:50:37Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go. Echelon Front, that's our leadership consultancy. And what we do is solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. It's what we do all day, every day. EF Online, this is leadership training, online, interactive, and puts you on the spot, asks you questions. When you, when you become a leader, or when you're gonna become a leader, you're not gonna learn everything in one shot. And just like an arm lock, you don't learn it one time and now you're good. You have to practice. And that's what EFOnline.com will allow you to do. We got the muster next muster coming

• 2:51:16Jocko Willink?

  up, September 19th and 20th in Denver. And then December 4th and 5th in Sydney, Australia. ExtremeOwnership.com for details. If you want to come, sign up right now because otherwise it's gonna sell out. They've all sold out. And of course, we got EF Overwatch, where we're taking proven spec ops leaders and combat aviation leaders and placing them into companies in the civilian sector that need one thing more than anything else to win, and that is they need leaders. And if you don't feel like we've talked for long enough and you want to talk to us more, you can find us on the interwebs. Tony is at FrogmanNH164.

• 2:52:00Jocko Willink?

  Do you think you know your password?

• 2:52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got it somewhere.

• 2:52:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. People are gonna want to like, ask you questions.

• 2:52:07Speaker 01

  And then you can be like, mm. Yeah, 99% of it's gonna be, mm.

• 2:52:14Jocko Willink?

  That's 99% of my texts back and forth with Tony is.

• 2:52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's ridiculous. You guys should see it. If I, if you link up with me and we're talking, and you're like, Jaco, what were you guys talking about? I'll be like, yeah, yeah, check this, because I don't really erase anything with that. Here's Jaco's text.

• 2:54:47Jocko Willink?

  That'd be sick.

• 2:54:48Speaker 01

  I'll, I'll ask him.

• 2:54:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, ask him. And, uh, yeah, man, we'll do it again.

• 2:54:54Speaker 01

  We'll see you in Maine.

• 2:54:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we'll see you in Maine. Thanks for coming back. Thanks for, man, thanks for everything you did.

• 2:55:01Speaker 01

  Thank you, brother.

• 2:55:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, holding that thread that I was talking about earlier, that thread through the years when there was no war going on. There's plenty of people that, you know, they did their job and they went on their deployments or whatever. You were freaking toeing the line, man. You were toeing the line and, and keeping that knowledge base, improving that knowledge base. That's what you did to, so that when we got to war, we were ready. So thanks for doing that.

• 2:55:31Speaker 01

  Oh, my pleasure.

• 2:55:33Jocko Willink?

  For the teams. Thanks for everything you did for Bruiser, of course. And as far as I'm concerned, you're actually the model of the American fighting man.

• 2:55:43Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:55:44Jocko Willink?

  You're the motherfucker that went up against the Japanese and the Nazis and said, you know what? We don't care what kind of warrior culture that you have. We got something else. We're Americans and we're about to fuck you up.

• 2:55:58Speaker 01

  That's right. We got something that none of you other countries have. And I'm gonna go, what? Like, fucking John Wayne. If you can produce anyone a quarter as good as that man, then I'll maybe listen to you. We have fucking John Wayne. Best guy ever in the history of ever. You don't mind, you know, if you mind yourself to him in everyday life, then you got nothing to worry about. What would John Wayne do? He'd either go yes, no, or punch you.

• 2:56:28Jocko Willink?

  Good options.

• 2:56:29Speaker 01

  And then he'd have a bunch of whiskey and then, you know, shoot a bunch of people and get on his horse and go have a steak. And smoke like twen- two hundred cigarettes.

• 2:56:38Jocko Willink?

  Good plan.

• 2:56:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:56:40Jocko Willink?

  Big plan. Hey, uh, awesome. Everyone else, all the other veterans out there that have served. Thanks for what you've done, those that are serving right now. Thanks for what you continue to do to our police and law enforcement and firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, BP, Border Patrol, correctional officers, Secret Service, all the first responders out there. Thank you for your service here at home. And to everyone else out there.

• 2:57:12Jocko Willink?

  You know,

• 2:57:14Jocko Willink?

  you're gonna make mistakes. You're not gonna be perfect. Things are gonna go wrong. And when things go wrong, it's pretty easy just to say, you know what, I'm gonna stand down, or I'm gonna take a knee, or I'm gonna give up. And you can do that.

• 2:57:32Jocko Willink?

  Or you can do what Tony would do, which is grab your gear.

• 2:57:38Jocko Willink?

  Grab a knife. And BTF until you get things back on track. And that's what I recommend you do. So until next time, this is BTF Tony, and Echo, and Jaco. Out.