199: Pain Makes You Better. With Kirstie Ennis

0:00:00 – Opening 0:03:44 – Kirstie Ennis 1:52:09 – Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:56:43 – Support: How to stay on THE PATH. 2:21:48 – 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 199 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  I have not been on this earth long.

• 0:16Jocko Willink?

  But I've been through more than most would in a lifetime. I served six years in the United States Marine Corps as a helicopter door gunner and airframes mechanic.

• 0:29Jocko Willink?

  On my last deployment to Afghanistan,

• 0:32Jocko Willink?

  I was involved in a helicopter crash. June 23rd, 2012 was a defining moment in my life.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  I suffered a traumatic brain injury, severe facial trauma, a left leg above the knee amputation, damage to my cervical spine, and damage to my upper arms.

• 1:01Jocko Willink?

  I remember screaming with tears rolling down my face when they said they were taking my leg above the knee.

• 1:12Jocko Willink?

  I thought it was all over.

• 1:16Jocko Willink?

  That all of my dreams

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  were turned into nightmares.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  I have it on repeat in my head.

• 1:31Jocko Willink?

  A scream encompassing terror, pain,

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  and fear of what my life might become.

• 1:47Jocko Willink?

  And those are the

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  words and thoughts of a wounded warrior, a Marine Corps Sergeant, a third-generation Marine, whose mother and father were both Marines.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  But in this case, this particular Marine was able to take that fear,

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  that fear of a new life, of a different life, of what life might become with those devastating injuries suffered, and turn that new life into one of overcoming struggle, a life of facing new challenges and a life of leading the way and showing the path for anyone that faces challenges and struggles in any walk of life.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  As this Marine proves, you are never out of the fight. And it is an honor to have this Marine with us on the podcast tonight, a Marine by the name of Kirstie Ennis. Kirstie, welcome to the podcast.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:08Jocko Willink?

  I dug a little deep on your blogs and Facebook to assemble some things because I like to read what people write and because I think that's the best pathway to figure out what they're thinking at that time. And yeah, you've got some pretty, pretty incredible statements on there and I was able to go through them and assemble them. Like I said, let's, let's start off talking about where you came from because I think that's always a good place to start. And, and one thing that you, you, in, in your writings, I found this, which I thought was just, I just had, I just had to bring this up.

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm that guy, you know, they say someday someone's going to go through all your social media stuff and that's me. So here we go. This is what you said about your childhood. I was a jerk as a child. My mom and dad would just love to tell you stories about me dismantling my window alarm to sneak out, disconnecting phone lines so my principal wouldn't call home, or maybe even bringing stink bombs into school. So there's, we're getting an indication, kind of a view into what you were like as a kid. Where was it? Where did all this take place?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Well, so with both my parents being in the Marine Corps, we bounced all over the place. But after my mom and my dad got out, we went back to the Panhandle of Florida. And I spent most of my middle school and high school years there. And I was just an absolute terrorist. I mean, I gave my parents a run for their money. I mean, I look back now and I actually feel really, really bad about it. I'm terrified to have kids of my own because I know payback is going to be a bitch.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  But yeah, I mean, I was just always way too smart for my own good. Like, school was a joke. Athletics were never really hard. I didn't... It wasn't challenged. So, yeah, I was just always up to no good. Nothing, like, malicious. But, yeah, always a little mischievous.

• 4:54Jocko Willink?

  The most malicious thing was stink bombs in school?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay, maybe a little bit more malicious, but we don't know what the statute of limitations is, so we're not gonna go there?

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  What, um... You mentioned athletics a little bit. What sports did you play?

• 5:08Speaker 02

  So, growing up, I did a bunch of team sports. I mean, everything from softball to volleyball and everything in between. Actually, like, a lot of the individual extreme sports that I'm doing now, never even did them as a kid. Everything was obviously very southern and team-related.

• 5:23Jocko Willink?

  So, were you good at... Were you a good athlete?

• 5:26Speaker 02

  I like to think so, yeah. I mean, but again, I never really was challenged. It was just... I was okay with, you know, being good, but not really having to try that hard at it, so...

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  And that was your high school career? I mean, you played sports. At what point did you go from the stink unabomber into saying you're gonna join the Marine Corps?

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, so I actually was done with my high school curriculum by the time I was 15. So, I started doing college classes at, at the time, Pensacola Junior College. And, um, yeah, I got my tier degree and, again...

• 5:59Jocko Willink?

  Were you just hyper-motivated to get done with high school, or...?

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and just bored. I was really bored, and I mean, I'm sure you're familiar with Pensacola. There's, especially the surrounding towns, there's just not a lot there. So, yeah, just wanted to be done with it and get the heck out and never look back.

• 6:15Jocko Willink?

  And then you enlisted, how old were you when you enlisted?

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Seventeen.

• 6:19Jocko Willink?

  Did your parents, so your parents had to sign the paperwork? How did your parents, two Marines, feel about you going in the Marine Corps?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  So my mom was like, good riddance, signed immediately, wanted nothing more to do with me, I was out.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  My dad was pretty pissed, though. He really wanted me to finish that last two years of college before I went off to the Marine Corps. And so he came home, he was, he was working on the pipeline at the time, came home like a bat out of hell and was like, you know, argued with me the whole nine. And I just lied through my teeth and told him that I would do a desk job to get him to sign. I was like, look dude, you can sign the papers now, or you can wait eight months, I'm gonna sign them anyways, myself. So, he finally buckled, he trusted me, which, that was a bad idea when I was seventeen.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  It's so strange when you look back, and, I got, I got a son right now that's sixteen, and I'm thinking, wow. Like, it, you grow up so much between the ages of sixteen, seventeen, and like, even twenty, twenty-two, and then twenty-two, twenty-five, like, y- you don't know a lot when you're seventeen years old. That's the bottom line.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Sure I don't.

• 7:22Jocko Willink?

  But you, I, I mean, I will say this, both your parents being Marines, one thing that's kinda cool is they at least knew what was gonna happen. I mean, if you, if your parents didn't have any experience, they probably would've completely freaked out, but, you at least know what the Marine Corps is, you know that it's, you know that it does what it does, and it does it well. You know, the Marine Corps puts kids from every background, every walk of life, onto the path of being a Marine, which is a squared away thing to be, in my opinion.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 7:56Jocko Willink?

  Well, how much of a shocker was it when you, how much longer was it until you went to bootcamp?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Um, I went a few short months after that. Um, originally, I was gonna try and hold out and, and actually wait a little bit before my eighteenth birthday. Um, but again, I got that little two-year degree, um, from Pensacola Junior College, and had a little bit of free time, started getting in trouble again, so it was just time to leave.

• 8:20Jocko Willink?

  What was the, how was, how much of a shock was it for you checking into bootcamp?

• 8:25Speaker 02

  You know, it's, it's funny, um, I'll tell a quick story about my family, or my parents, because it's my hands-down favorite story, but mom and dad got married at eighteen, lived on Navarre Beach in Florida. Dad joined the Marine Corps right afterwards.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Eight years later, I'm already born. We're living on Twenty Nine Palms um in California. And my mom comes home and tells my dad, you know, I think these female Marines are pretty badass. Dad looks at mom, says, I'll never be married to a female Marine. Mom looks at him, turns around, leaves, gets an age waiver and joins the Marine Corps. So like my earliest memory is actually, you know, my mom walking across the parade deck like.

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  So how old was your mom when she enlisted in the Marine Corps?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Uh, she would have been twenty six, twenty seven.

• 9:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the Marine Corps doesn't take people that are that old. That's like an ancient dinosaur in the Marine Corps.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:13Jocko Willink?

  To go to be going to boot camp.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, in boot camp, they all called her mom.

• 9:17Jocko Willink?

  How long, how long did your dad end up doing in the Marine Corps?

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Um, he was in for nine years.

• 9:21Jocko Willink?

  And then what about your mom?

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Uh, she just did four.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Part of it was a spite thing, I think. And then part of it, uh, you know, she wanted to do it. And I think she would live in regret if she didn't do it. Especially if her husband told her no.

• 9:35Jocko Willink?

  That's the last time he denied her anything. He knew where that was going. So, so you check into the boot in a boot camp. Was it, uh, was it a shock to your system? Did you, you know, with your mom and dad both being in the Marine Corps? Had they kind of given you a heads up? Did you understand what you were getting into? And how much did it still shock you?

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I so I kid you not, like I idolized my parents, you know, I I just loved the fact that they got up every morning, put the uniform on and did something bigger than themselves. So I mean, my favorite movie, I I mean, I got off the bus and watched documentaries on Marine Corps Boot Camp. You know, my Barbies were dressed in dress blues. My my favorite T-shirt was my mom's a US Marine kind of thing. So I was very well educated and versed on what boot camp would consist of. And of course, I heard all the stories from everybody. Um, but I loved boot camp. Um, I made it way harder on myself than I needed to because I was again seventeen years old and just a little shit. You know, they'd say yell and I'd whisper just being, oh, just being a pain. Um, but as far as like the physical aspect of it, you know, I just reminded myself like, I'm getting to play for thirteen weeks. Like,

• 10:38Speaker 02

  where else do you get paid to run and throw grenades and and you know, do the obstacle course?

• 10:44Jocko Willink?

  The um, was there anything that you had trouble with in in Marine Corps Boot Camp?

• 10:49Speaker 02

  I honestly, I just had a, I had an issue, just like I said, breaking down my attitude. My attitude was, you know, I I wanted to say why to everything. And so that was honestly the hard part. Again, it was just, yeah, keeping my head in the right place. Um.

• 11:04Jocko Willink?

  And then how did you end up becoming like, what was the process for you picking your MOS?

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Well, I wanted, again, wanted something just to challenge myself. You know, I didn't want to do supplier admin and I wanted to deploy. When I actually walked out of my class that I was in when I was 17, I very vividly remember looking around this chemistry lab and being like, he won't do it, she can't do it, there's no way in hell, he'll, you know, he'll deploy or any of that. And obviously very terrible and judgmental of me, but I mean, that was the catalyst. I mean, that inspired me to walk out of that chem lab and go to the recruiter's office.

• 11:38Jocko Willink?

  What year was this?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  2008.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you full on knew that you were going to go to on deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan if you got a, some kind of a job that would put you in the field in some way?

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah. And I wanted that. I mean, I, growing up, I would like, for, for a long time, some of my family was like, oh God, she's going to be a social worker. Cause I just always loved, like, I was the bully that beat up the bully. You know, I loved protecting the kids that, you know, couldn't or wouldn't protect themselves. So, yeah, when I went to the recruiter's office, I was like, you just gotta give me something where I, I feel like I'm living that higher purpose or I know exactly without a doubt, you know, what my role in the grand scheme is. Um, so yeah, and I went into the recruiter's office, I was like, throw me whatever you got. Uh, and then of course with the ASVAB, I had the scores to do whatever and I knew nothing about aviation, um, but that's, that's what I went for.

• 12:27Jocko Willink?

  To become a, to become an airframe mechanic?

• 12:30Speaker 02

  That was the first steps, yep.

• 12:31Jocko Willink?

  And where, isn't that school in Pensacola?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  I was looking, you can imagine how much trouble I got in again.

• 12:41Jocko Willink?

  The, what, what were you, do you remember September 11th?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I was in fifth grade, um, Mrs. Todd's class at WH Rhodes in Milton, Florida.

• 12:50Jocko Willink?

  How much understanding did you have of what was happening? Were your parents still in the Marine Corps at the time?

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Uh, no, but my dad was actually working on the outskirts of New York City. And so I remember my mom picking me up, um, and honestly, she was just petrified. Um, she thought she was gonna get, you know, stop law, she thought she was gonna get called back and she didn't know what to do. My dad's working in New York and, you know, we're down in Florida and I just remember laying on the, on the carpet in front of a TV that wasn't even on a stand, um, under this big blue jean blanket. Um, and just sitting there and crying and waiting to hear from my dad and figure out what was going on. So yeah, I mean, obviously very emotional.

• 13:29Jocko Willink?

  And then as you, I mean, going back a little bit, but when you join the Marine Corps, your parents absolutely know that in the Marine Corps, after September 11th, if you were in the Marine Corps, there was a really good chance you were going to Iraq or Afghanistan.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 13:44Jocko Willink?

  And you're, what year was it you enlisted, 2008?

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Jocko Willink?

  So you go to airframe school, how long does that school last?

• 13:53Speaker 02

  It's only a few months really, but it was hard to like get classed up into it. But I was in the A school for like,

• 14:00Speaker 02

  four, like four months down there. And then C school over in New River for a couple of months.

• 14:04Jocko Willink?

  New River what, where's that?

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Um, it's right outside of Lejeune.

• 14:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Um, yeah.

• 14:10Jocko Willink?

  And this is, you know, just for people that don't, for people that don't know too much about the military. I mean, the, the military is a massive organization that basically encompasses all of, everything that happens in the world. So yes, you see Marines flying helicopters, but there's a Marine that knows how to work on that helicopter. There's a Marine that knows how to fix that helicopter. There's a Marine that knows how to fuel that helicopter. There's Marines that know how to work on the electronics in there. The, and then there's people that know how to land it. There's, there's people that do everything. And then there's people that supply the people that are doing all those things with the gear that they need. And there's Marines that are in charge of educating. So there's this whole world inside of the military, inside the Marine Corps.

• 14:53Jocko Willink?

  So, and you have to have it all in order, in order to go forward and fight wars. There has to be all these different logistical support elements and equipment elements. I mean, just, it's just this massive machine. And the Army has the same thing. And the Navy obviously has the same thing with ships and planes and everything else. So, but what's cool is when you join the service, as they used to say when I was a kid, do they still say that? Old Jocko, we joined the service. I always felt like I was in World War II and somebody asked me, hey, how's, how's it been, how's your run in the service going? So when you join the service.

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  When you join the service, they give you some kind of a job and some kind of an education. So that's what you were doing, learning how to work on, on the, on the 53, right? That's what you're, is it specific to the 53?

• 15:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:44Jocko Willink?

  So you're learning specifically how to work on a specific aircraft that is used by the Marine Corps? Called the, what is it, the MH 53? What's, what's the Marine Corps version called?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  CH 53.

• 15:54Jocko Willink?

  The CH 53. Big, awesome bird, powerful, massive bird helicopter that can hold forty Marines. I'm gonna say.

• 16:07Jocko Willink?

  I had to memorize all that stuff at some point. So my, my memory's getting shady, speaking of senior citizen over here. So then where do you get stationed when you get done with these schools?

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Uh, my first education was Miramar, actually.

• 16:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  San Diego. Can't really complain.

• 16:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. A little bit better than 29 Palms?

• 16:25Speaker 02

  A little bit better.

• 16:27Jocko Willink?

  So, and then what's your day to day life when you're, are, are you attached to a squadron? Is, is that what's going on?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. So my first unit, uh, was Heavy Marine Helicopter Squadron 465. Um, and to be totally honest, my, the airframe shop didn't really want me there right off the bat. You know, uh, you know, throwing a female into a shop of all dudes, you're, you're adding a pretty interesting dynamic. So it was really a matter of, yeah, I had to prove myself, how to wear a chip on my shoulder and keep my head down. Again, got into my fair share of trouble as an 18 year old in San Diego. Um, but I worked my way out of that, just to be clear.

• 17:02Jocko Willink?

  When I first got in the Navy and got to San Diego, there was a rule, the drinking age was 21 in California, but the drinking age on base was 18. So like, yeah, you could, there was kids that had never drank before, just wrecking themselves. It was such a disaster. At some point, luckily they changed it. So you're, you're in there, you're the first female, you said, that, that was with this group?

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, in a very, very long time, if ever, but.

• 17:31Jocko Willink?

  And then, I mean, that's when you're a new guy checking in anyways, it's gonna be, you're gonna get, you're gonna get, I guess hazed is the politically incorrect word, right? We're not, cause you're not allowed to haze, but you're gonna get, is razed okay? Is that the same thing? You're gonna get razed, you're gonna get hassled a little bit when you're checking in somewhere. When you check in, are you guys already looking, are you already seeing a deployment ahead of you? So when you check in, are they like, hey, we're going on deployment at this time?

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Right when I got there, I actually consider myself to have been getting lucky because they were just leaving for a Mew. So I lucked out and missed the Mew and got to stick around, stick back, and actually learn my job and become proficient in that. And then when the next cycle came around, half of us went on a Mew and then half of us went to Afghanistan. And I was lucky enough to go to Afghanistan.

• 18:17Jocko Willink?

  And then what was that deployment? When you were heading on that deployment, were you, what was your, what were your nerves like? Were you just like a typical 18-year-old Marine that's just fired up to go and get after it?

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Oh, I was just, yeah, I was so, super excited, honestly. I, um, yeah, I mean, I was just ready to go. I mean, I think my bags were packed weeks in advance. But, and I don't even think the nerves kicked in about any of it up until that, you know, like you're starting to land, you're doing your laps. That's when I got nervous.

• 18:46Jocko Willink?

  Where, where did you, how did you guys get there? How did you guys deploy there?

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Uh, so we came in on a C-130.

• 18:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And the bird, the, your helicopters were already there?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 18:56Jocko Willink?

  And so you were replacing, basically replacing the group?

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Yep, exactly.

• 19:00Jocko Willink?

  And so you show up on the ground. And then what was the day-to-day, what was your, what was your mission there? What were you doing? Day-to-day life?

• 19:08Speaker 02

  My first and second deployments were very different. Uh, the first one was, you know, super rare, like maintenance, maintenance involved. I mean, it was everything, I was usually night shift. Um, but yeah, I mean, it was everything from doing the hydraulics to riveting welding, composite repair, composite repair, you know, battle damage assessments, stuff like that. Um, you know, they trusted me enough to go out and do those jobs by myself, but not really enough to, to go outside of the wire or do anything like that.

• 19:35Jocko Willink?

  What was the op tempo? Like, how often were the birds flying? Were they flying like every single day, all day?

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Every single day. Um, I mean, oftentimes we'd send out seven or eight flights. Um, and again, you know, you know, birds don't fly out their single ship. So, I mean, you'd have 14 aircraft down and having to like do turnarounds and daily inspections to get them out the next day, or even five, six hours later.

• 19:56Jocko Willink?

  And the Marine Corps usually deploys for six months. Was it a typical kind of six-month deployment?

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Yep, seven.

• 20:02Jocko Willink?

  Seven-month deployment, because there's a little bit on the beginning, a little bit on the end?

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:06Jocko Willink?

  Were you, what was, were you getting sleep?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, I had, I hadn't, it was weird, like, I mean, I by no means were doing any of the things that you guys were doing, and I very much so love the fact that my job was directly supporting the guys in the ground. Like, I had such pride in that, and I knew that if I didn't do my job, then again, like, you guys aren't gonna be able to do your job. Um, so I had a huge pride in that. Um, but I did, I mean, I loved everything about being out there. Um, you know, I loved the, in my mind, simplicity of it, you know? You don't worry about how your hair is gonna look, you don't worry about what you're gonna wear, what you're gonna eat, you know, you just worry about keeping birds up, staying alive, keeping your guys alive, and coming home safe. Um, so to me, it was very routine. I mean, even though your days are varied between, you know,

• 20:52Speaker 02

  what your maintenance schedule or what your flight schedule looks like, it's, I mean, it's pretty friggin straightforward.

• 20:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and, and that's one of the things that I love, always loved about deployment was you all of a sudden, nothing else in the world matters, except for this thing that you're doing. You're doing your job, whatever that job may be, whether it's fixing a helicopter, or going out on patrol. That's what your life is, and like you said, there, there, there are lives at stake. I mean, with your job, you know, everyone's relying on those helicopters. Everyone's relying on those helicopters to, to do what they need to do, to provide extract, insert, helicopter, casualty evacuation. I mean, it's absolutely critical, and every single person that plays a role in making sure that those things do what they're supposed to do. It's like, yeah, it's absolutely critical, and that becomes your whole life, that becomes your whole focus, and it's, it's

• 21:43Jocko Willink?

  it feels good, in my opinion, when you have that much focus and clarity in your life.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I mean, I loved it. I mean, that's why I had three months between deployments, four months between deployments.

• 21:54Jocko Willink?

  So you come home from that first deployment, and what, what gave you, because normally, the Marine Corps takes, what, 12 months to 18 months between deployments for a, a whatever unit? Somehow you end up going, switching to another unit? What happened here?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, towards the end of, well, towards the second half of that first deployment, in May of about 2011, my former gunnerie sergeant reached out to me, he said, "Hey, you know, I want you to come back to Afghanistan with my unit," what do you think? Initially, I was like, get bent dude, there's no way I'm coming back here, like I need a break. Um, but sure enough, got home August 2011, you know, went on leave with the family and then in Jan- or excuse me, in September 2011, was down in K Bay, won't complain about that, uh, with Heavy Marine Helicopter Scraugton 362. Um, and then we were right back in Afghanistan. Yeah, Jan- end of January 2012.

• 22:46Jocko Willink?

  And then what did that deployment look like?

• 22:48Speaker 02

  That's when I actually was able to step up, um, and you know, could be proud of those combat action wings. Um, that's when I was actually, you know, a 50 caliber machine gunner, aerial door gunner. Um, and again, you know, I'm still turning renters and maintaining the aircraft that I'm flying on. But, um, to me, I was, in, in my opinion, um, I was feeling, um, feeling a much bigger purpose. Um, you know, again, the things that you were just rattling off, whether it's, you know, you're sitting there on trap standby, waiting for a medevac to get called in, or an insertion or extraction, you know, you're just, um, in my opinion, it was just way, um, more high speed, low drag.

• 23:22Jocko Willink?

  So you're still doing your maintenance job?

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:24Jocko Willink?

  And then your, your other job is when they launch, some of the times they would need a door gunner and they put you on the 50 cal?

• 23:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I mean, so it's a routine thing. So probably every other day, once every three days I'd be flying.

• 23:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:39Jocko Willink?

  So it was just like here, you're scheduled for flights these days? And, and then what kind of missions were you guys supporting?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  It could be a broad spectrum of things. Yeah. I mean, some days it would be just your generic like, resupplies or you're dropping off mail. Um, and other times, you know, you're doing everything from drug raids to, yeah, I mean, my favorites were the insertions and extractions for sure.

• 24:01Jocko Willink?

  And did, you already knew how to shoot a 50 cal, but did they fam you up further once you started doing it from the helo?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. But I mean, I loved it.

• 24:10Jocko Willink?

  They got you dialed in, yeah, because the 50 caliber is such a beautiful piece of machinery.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Well, it was funny too, well, ah, man, um, When I first decided that I wanted to pick up my wings, like that was even more of a battle than um even just being a maintainer. Like, nobody wants to see a five foot three blonde lady, you know, dragging their knuckles and turning wrenches alongside the dudes and then now she steps up and says she wants to do speed reloads with eighty-five pound cans and they start looking at you a little funny. Um, so again, proving myself all over again, but I mean, I loved it. Like even when you'd go pick up, you know, the boys from one seven or two five or something, they'd just be looking at you so funny with the little blonde ponytail hanging out the back of the flight helmet. I mean, I just, yeah, I loved it.

• 24:52Jocko Willink?

  And then what, so every third day you're going out, the other days you're working? And the missions that you're supporting are, are everything?

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Everything. I mean, we, we would work with the Marines, we'd work with the Australians, we'd work with the Brits, I mean, Georgians, we'd work with everybody.

• 25:07Jocko Willink?

  How, how hot was the AOs that you were working in? Like, what was the threat level? How did you feel? Did you feel, were you ever at a point where like, oh yeah, we know we're gonna, we know we're gonna get contacted? Or was it, the enemy was pretty um tame in the areas you were going into?

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Uh, it was kind of hit and miss. I would go back and forth. I mean, you mentioned fifty-three earlier. I mean, we're a huge bumblebee. I mean, we're a huge target as it is. Um, you know, certain areas, you know, Lashkargah, you know, Musa Kala and all of that, like, sure, those areas, like, for lack of better terms, yeah, I mean, you'd, you'd pucker, like, I mean, it's very real. I mean, other times, you know, going down to Dwyer, not so bad, you know?

• 25:47Jocko Willink?

  And then the, the, did you start feeling any, any like stress or were you like just in the zone?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Well, it's weird. Like, I never really thought about getting hurt, ever. I mean, I don't know if maybe it was a young mentality, but I mean, every day when I'd go pick up my blood shit and, you know, grab, grab the gear and run out to the bird, it was, I mean, crashing or getting shot down or any of those things, like, never even crossed my mind. It was just, I'm gonna go out there and do my job. And quite frankly, I mean, flying over, you know, anywhere, saying in or any of those areas, the green zone, like, Afghanistan is beautiful. Like, if you're not getting shot at, you're not terrified. Like, I mean, I, I loved it. I mean, it's, it's a stunning country. And then even just like the interaction that you get with some of the people, I mean, it's pretty special, um, sometimes.

• 26:38Jocko Willink?

  So then.

• 26:41Jocko Willink?

  You never expected, you never thought about it, you never thought about getting blown out of the sky, you never thought about any of this stuff, and then all of a sudden, let's talk about June 23rd, 2012. So, what type of mission were you going out on?

• 26:54Speaker 02

  So, we were actually doing a resupply, and then we were dropping off three space-available Army medics, and then we were going outbound to do an extraction of Marines. So, a little bit of everything, I mean, that's pretty common. You just bundle it all together and try to meet the schedules that everybody needs. But, I mean, honestly, it should have been fairly routine. So, we were making our way to Nowzad, and there was a little bit of stuff going on, like, we were getting spotlighted, so it's common out in Afghanistan where, basically, they try to bloom out the helicopters the pilots can't see anyways, but they would basically signal to the next stations all the way out to wherever we were going, so they could figure out where we were landing. We were en route to Nowzad, and unfortunately, never made it to Nowzad. We were supposed to be dropping off those three Army medics,

• 27:36Speaker 02

  and everything from ammo to mail and everything in between. And, yeah, the last things that I remember was the pilots, or, excuse me, my tail gunner, calling for power for the pilots to level the nose of the aircraft up, or off, and pilot came over comms and said he wasn't getting the desired outputs, and the next thing you know, we came nose up and then rolled left, and being on the left gun, night vision goggles down, it was weird. I just counted, like, just as, like, normally, like, as a door gunner, you're the eyes and the ears for the pilot, so when you're landing, especially a big piece of machinery like that, it's five, four, three, two, one, mains on deck, and that's all I did, and then we hit the ground. You know, there's a lot more embellished stories out

• 28:21Speaker 02

  there, but, yeah.

• 28:22Jocko Willink?

  And you remember all that stuff?

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I remember. There's a lot that, I was knocked out. The assumption is the barrel of my 50 cal, which obviously sticks way out the side of the helicopter, hit the ground before I did, and came up and through my face, so had some pretty severe damage to my face and then my right frontal lobe, but, yeah, I mean, I was in and out.

• 28:44Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever piece together with the pilots, like, what happened?

• 28:48Speaker 02

  I think, I mean, in my opinion, he just choked. I mean, there wa- there was pressure. I mean, it was, you know, brownout circumstances. We were being spotlighted. There was small arm stuff going on around us. Nothing that was a real threat to us by any means. But, um, you know, actually, my last memory of being in Afghanistan on Camp Bastion, this little makeshift hospital, I won't say his name, but, um, was the pilot. Um, he was sitting by my bedside and just sitting there and crying. And then, um, I found out later that he actually D R R'd. Um, so, I know there's a lot of guilt there. Um, I mean, I've forgiven the situation for sure. But, um, but yeah.

• 29:27Jocko Willink?

  So, the helo crashes and you're knocked out. What's your, what's your first memory of, after being knocked out?

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Um, so everybody, like, my pilots were screaming for my tail gunner, um, who, I mean, I just idolized this dude. Um, and, um, they couldn't find him. They couldn't get a reaction from him at first. So, I started screaming. Like, I'm hearing all of this going on and it's not real. I wasn't in pain. I wasn't in shock. I wasn't crying. It was just like, holy shit, find my tail gunner. Um, and I don't know the details of what exactly happened or how exactly it happened. Um, but he ended up going out the back and hitting the river rocks before we actually hit the ground. Um, I don't know if he was coming off of his gunner's belt to get to one of the three available seats on the other side of the aircraft or what he was doing. Um, but he went out the back and so I just started screaming to get a reaction. Luckily, over time, they got a reaction from him.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  And, uh, like, all of it was just pure freaking chaos. But I remember, like, rolling my tongue around my mouth because I couldn't breathe out of my nose and there were no teeth. Everything was shattered. There was just like a big hole. Um, and then it was just gurgling because, you know, I couldn't breathe out of my nose, couldn't breathe out of my mouth. And one of the Army medics actually crawled all of the, over all of these trials that we had and got in my face. And I remember reading his, you know, his patch. Um, and he was just in my face trying to keep me basically out of shock. Um, and then they called in. This is one of my favorite stories, so I hope Second Battalion Fifth Marines is listening. Um, but they called two five out of Nazad to come out and provide security and, uh, obviously, you know, help with stripping everything down.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  And when they called it in, um, whoever said it, you know, said, you know, the female gunner, dead on impact, um, because they couldn't get a response from me. Long story short, they come out, um, you know, put me in the other aircraft, our lead aircraft, along with, uh, my tail gunner. And the rest of the crew and get us out of there and back to Camp Bastion. Well, long story short, I'll fast forward a little bit. Second Battalion Fifth Marines ended up shooting these pistol rounds underwater. And when they, when that's done, they blew them out into flowers. And they got them back to me in this little wooden case and said for flo- um, flowers that'll never die, just like you. Um, but yeah, I mean, every single one of those dudes now to this day, like they laugh. They're like, we didn't think it was true. They're like bullshit. There's not a female on that aircraft. So.

• 31:46Jocko Willink?

  Was the, whenever I think of a helicopter crashing, I think of it exploding and being on fire. So how did it not, was it, did it survive kind of intact?

• 31:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 31:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so it was just?

• 32:01Speaker 02

  You know, so I actually have a little bit of, um, I, there was a G boss out right outside of Nazan. So I've actually seen what happened when we hit the ground. So when we hit the ground, the transit, transition section came off and of course, like the tail pylon and everything just went flying. Um, the rotors and all of that. Um, but I mean, it wasn't salvageable. I mean, they just took the guns and a couple of other things off of it and then they just blow it up.

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  And you were the worst injury, worst casualty on the helo, right?

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:33Jocko Willink?

  And that's probably because, like you said, you were the door gunner on the?

• 32:37Speaker 02

  On the left side.

• 32:38Jocko Willink?

  On the left side.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  And to be totally honest, probably just because of my size. I mean, my 50 cal on a Gal 21 mount, you know, sits up damn near on my chest on me, so.

• 32:47Jocko Willink?

  You've got some pictures on your, I think it's your Facebook of your face. And it's freaking crazy. I was like, holy, I mean, it is, it's like fully exposed. Like you're, you're, you are hurt bad.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:03Jocko Willink?

  Bad. And, um, so, so what, then what's your next memory? What's your next memory? Did they put you in an induced coma? What'd they do with you?

• 33:11Speaker 02

  No, they didn't give me any, any medicine. Pissed me off. I sat there in so much pain. So I woke back up, um, en route to Camp Bastion. And this dude, Comstock, he was the, the new left door gunner on the other aircraft. He bent down next to me, um. And he just basically told me, he's like, "Don't close your fucking eyes, because you're not gonna open them again." And, um, my tail gunner, uh, my old gunnery sergeant, was actually laying next to me, because we were just laying on the floorboard of the aircraft. And he kept throwing his arm over my face to keep from getting hydraulic and fluid and stuff all in my open wounds and whatnot. And so I'm laying there and I'm like trying not to cry, I'm panicking that like I'm gonna die without seeing my little sister, because I have no idea what's going on.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Like I was numb, I knew I was hurt, but I didn't really, it was weird, I couldn't feel anything. And then I just kept staring at this blue cabin overhead light and thinking I wasn't gonna die without seeing my little sister.

• 34:04Jocko Willink?

  What about your leg? Did you, did you, were you aware that your leg was jacked up?

• 34:08Speaker 02

  I was well aware that my leg was jacked up, because that was, I mean, I was in pain, like, that's the only thing that actually hurt. Um, for whatever reason, like, I could feel that and nothing else. Um, yeah, that was just, that was pretty brutal. Um, but yeah, and then they got me back to Camp Bastion, and I remember thinking, like,

• 34:28Speaker 02

  "That's fucking fine, like, they're just gonna sew me back up, I'm gonna go right back to this, like, we're almost on our way out, we're gonna, you know, go home in August. Um, it's totally fine." And then my gunnery sergeant, the one who asked me to go on that deployment, and my sergeant major at the time, walked in and they were looking at me and they were both crying and just staring at me. I'm like, "Oh shit." Like, "This is, this is not good." Um, and I think that's when the, when I realized, like, I was going home. Um, and yeah, I mean, I was devastated. And I think that was the hardest part of, of any event, was just having to leave everybody behind. I mean, even once I left Camp Bastion, you know, they sent me to Kandahar, Germany, DC, and then I made it back to San Diego. Um, and I'd been, I had just been combat meritoriously promoted to sergeant, and, um...

• 35:14Jocko Willink?

  When you were, when you were getting the, the whole evacuation to Germany, are people meeting with you? Are you, are you starting to get a glimpse or a feeling for what's going on?

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Yes and no. Um...

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Like I, I mean, I knew what was going on. I didn't, I didn't quite understand, obviously, the whole process. But I was pissed off and I wasn't really letting anyone help or explain to me anything. Actually, it didn't really help the situation, sorry mom, but when I was in, it would have either been Germany or Kandahar. They finally let me call home, um, because of course my CEO gets ahold of my parents and, you know, my dad answers the phone, well, eventually I can call home, but I can't talk because there's, you know, there's, there's no jaw or anything. So I'm trying to tell my mom, like, I'm coming home and, um, my mom starts laughing at me and she's like, you know, baby girl, I can't understand you, you must be on some really good drugs. And I get pissed, I'm like, fuck you, mom, and hang up the phone on her. And then I don't talk to anybody, like, I'm that mad, you know?

• 36:11Speaker 02

  And then, you know, they're loading me up, like, I'm pissed off at my mom, I'm angry that I'm leaving my dudes, like, I'm just, I'm just a shit show. Um, and then they load me up to actually, they don't have me induced, they don't have me sedated or anything. They load me up in Germany to send me to DC.

• 36:27Jocko Willink?

  Why don't they have you induced? Or is it because you had brain trauma or something?

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they wouldn't give me anything for pain right off the bat, especially because of the head trauma. Um, but, but yeah, so then from Germany, somebody that was just in a helicopter crash, they don't put him to sleep for a flight from Germany to DC. And so then I'm on this thing, like, they have me strapped down to a gurney, there's a bunch of other dudes with, like, their legs blown off, people sitting on the sides of the aircraft, like, just staring at me as I'm losing my mind. My lungs are sticking together, so I can't breathe. I mean, it was, it was a terrible, terrible journey back, let's put it that way. Um, but I think once I made it to DC, and then, you know, they're carrying us all off on the stretchers and stuff like that, and, you know, there's American flags and supporters and

• 37:10Speaker 02

  people out there, you know, telling you that it's gonna be okay. I think in that moment, like, I realized that I was going to be okay, um, but I still didn't quite, I think I was scared of, of what was going to happen, you know, basically that I wouldn't be able to stay in.

• 37:25Jocko Willink?

  That was the fear?

• 37:27Speaker 02

  That was the fear.

• 37:27Jocko Willink?

  The fear that you couldn't, you wouldn't be able to stay in the Marine Corps?

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 37:30Jocko Willink?

  How long had you been in for at this point?

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Four years.

• 37:34Jocko Willink?

  Just made sergeant.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 37:38Jocko Willink?

  Were your parents waiting for you when you got to DC?

• 37:40Speaker 02

  No, they were waiting for me in San Diego. Um, so it was hard for them to decide, you know, of course, both Marines being, or both parents being Marines, not a ton of money floating around my family. So they, you know, we needed to wait to figure out if I was going to be a polytrauma in DC or a polytrauma in San Diego. Um, so as soon as we got word that I was going to go to San Diego, that's when they like, sold everything in the house. You know, we loaded up in the car or they loaded up in the car and they made it out to San Diego.

• 38:05Jocko Willink?

  Did they actually sell their house?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  No, they sold everything in it. Literally everything in it.

• 38:11Jocko Willink?

  And where were, were they down in Florida still?

• 38:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:14Jocko Willink?

  So they sold everything that they had in Florida. Well, how long were you in DC for?

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Not too long. I mean, I maybe a handful of days, four or five days.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  And then straight to Balboa?

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 38:24Jocko Willink?

  And what are you thinking at this point in terms of your level of your injuries? Have you seen yourself, have you seen yourself in a mirror yet? Cause if I would have seen the picture that you posted, that would have, that would have like hit me pretty damn hard.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Well, so that's actually why they took those pictures. So it was actually really cute when, when I got wheeled.

• 38:39Jocko Willink?

  This doesn't sound cute, actually. I don't know what's cute about this, but.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  You had a hole in your face. No, um, so when they wheeled me in, uh, again, this little makeshift hospital tent, um, there was a, actually a British plastic surgeon that was volunteering her time, this little sweet, she was old, like an old lady. And she looked at everybody in there and was like, no one touch her. I'm sewing her back up. So it was, you know, as far as my face goes. Um, and so she took those pictures. And when I finally came to, after she sewed my face up initially, she was like, I don't want you to freak out when you see this. Like, this is what we started with. Um, and so that's where those pictures actually came from.

• 39:17Jocko Willink?

  Dang, no, that's, they're savage.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:22Jocko Willink?

  But, so you saw those pretty quickly?

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 39:25Jocko Willink?

  But then you got to see she did a damn good job.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it's like a miracle. She was a miracle worker, this little lady.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  I'm just, I'm so thankful a corpsman didn't touch me. My chin would be near my eyes.

• 39:34Jocko Willink?

  You would have had a, an E3 corpsman. Yeah, that would have been, that would have not been good. No, no offense to E3 corpsman. They're doing their best, but you know, obviously as some experienced, uh, plastic surgeon's going to do a better job.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was, yeah, that was rough.

• 39:48Jocko Willink?

  So, so that's good. How about your leg? What are you feeling in your leg?

• 39:53Speaker 02

  So my leg I knew was a bad deal from the get-go. So they, nobody would touch it. No one overseas would even, was willing to mess with it.

• 40:01Jocko Willink?

  What had happened to it?

• 40:02Speaker 02

  So when. So when we hit the ground, there's a bone in the middle of your foot called a talus. It snapped and shot everything up. So damaged the heel and up through like my tib fib and everything.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Something, I don't, I don't know what it was. I mean, obviously I have steel toe boots that we fly in and all of that. But yeah, something was underneath it with enough force that it broke everything upward and pushed everything up.

• 40:27Jocko Willink?

  And it's, what does it look like on the outside? Is it like a compound fracture? Or is it all internal damage?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Um, no, I mean, it was all internal damage. I mean, everything, I mean, there was no, from my leg, there was no blood.

• 40:41Jocko Willink?

  Did it seem, cause it seems to me that that would, like if I had that happen, like, oh, it hurts a lot, but it's all there. There's no blood. I'm gonna be good. That would be my opinion. Cause I'm kind of, uh, I always think I'm gonna survive everything.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I hear ya. No, like, well, I think what worried me was, like I said, the fact that everybody was looking at it and being like, uh, we're not gonna do anything about it. And nobody did anything about it for like a week, 10 days. Um, and then finally someone came in and said, well, this is what your deal is, um, because of the damage that has been caused. You've disrupted all of the blood flow to those bones. So those bones are gonna have vascularosis and they're all gonna die. And I opted for the doctors to not cut it off right away. Um, I told them like, look, let's fix my spine. Let's fix my face. Let's fix my fucking brain. Um, and then we can worry about my leg and.

• 41:31Jocko Willink?

  So the, the, let's go through that order. The face, they sew you up, did a great job with that. Your brain. So you got knocked out. You got, I mean, you got wailed on. Your head got wailed on in this accident. What do you, are you getting headaches? Is your memory, like what were, what were the symptoms that you noticed out of the gate?

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Um, the biggest thing right, I mean, currently the biggest thing is still my memory. Like, I mean, I have solid chunks of it and I've like made a really conscious effort. And thank God for again, my mom, my sister and my dad for really working with, working with me for that stuff. But um for a while, I mean, it was, I mean, everything, the biggest thing was being able to control my mood. Um, I had a real issue with mood stabilization. There was just like a constant anxiety, no matter what, and then I couldn't sleep. Um, so of course, all of those things together on top of like word recognition and word retrieval and being able to communicate effectively with doctors or your parents or friends, like what you need, that was the hardest part. Um, and then like, I don't know if you've ever been down to Valboa, but I mean, they have this whole building for their patients to live. Um, and

• 42:35Speaker 02

  so I lived in, I mean, it was just like a little bedroom, like a little tiny condo thing, but I could go into the bathroom and just not know what the hell was going on. Like, I had to be reminded that if I'm in the bathroom, I'm taking a shower, brushing my teeth, washing my hands. Um, so like I had to have a very specific routine to be able to like get all pistons firing.

• 42:58Jocko Willink?

  Is that, did you, did you notice progress over time?

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  So you, could you see the progress? I guess is what I'm asking. Or were you just like, what is this not getting any better?

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Uh, the first year, I really, really struggled, uh, because you get frustrated. You compare yourself to how you were, uh, you know, whether that's physically, mentally or emotionally, like it's just, if it's not one thing, it's another. Um, so I was, the first year was really, really difficult, but you know, once I made it over that hump, I mean, I'm pretty proud to say that it's been like, I've tried like hell. I've given this, everything that I have. Um, that it's been like on a constant upswing at this point. Um, I mean, I still go to speech therapy to this day, but I mean, that helps with everything from cognitive to again, just the, the verbal stuff too. Um, but I mean, it's, it's work.

• 43:47Jocko Willink?

  How about the cervical spine? What, what, like what was the, were you feeling numbness in your body parts or anything like that? Like I had, I had neck surgery because I, I hurt my spine. And like I had, woke up one day and I, in the middle of the night, I couldn't move my right arm. Like it would not move, which is a really scary thing. And you know, eventually it all came back, but what, what was your cervical spine injury? Did you break vertebrae?

• 44:10Speaker 02

  So there was hairline fractures in my C2, C3 and C4. And then just from the So like being in the aircraft, there are these, I mean, there are tethers. I mean, they go around your rib cage and tether you to the floorboard so you don't go flying anywhere should a helicopter crash or something happen. And so when we hit the ground, it was like the helicopter went one way and I went the other. And so it kinda just like, I guess be severe whiplash.

• 44:34Jocko Willink?

  Mega whiplash.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  And so then my C2, C3, and C4 did what's called stepping. So they were basically, that's exact, one was out of place, put it that way.

• 44:47Jocko Willink?

  But it didn't, did it affect your spinal cord at all?

• 44:49Speaker 02

  No. No. I, I left.

• 44:52Jocko Willink?

  That's a game of millimeters right there, too.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  And I, that was scary. Let me just put it that way. And I mean, I, I didn't know what to do in that moment either, because now you're playing with, again, no offense to military medicine, I'm super thankful that I am where I am today, but now you're looking at the situation where it's like, is it that bad to fix it? You know, do you let them go in and do surgery, or do you let it heal on its own? Do you live your life in a C spine for the next year or two? And so, yeah, I mean, that's just a huge gamble with all of it.

• 45:20Jocko Willink?

  So what call did you make?

• 45:21Speaker 02

  I lived in a C spine for a long time.

• 45:23Jocko Willink?

  So you lived in the dang, that big thing that you wear around your neck?

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. So, yeah, you're not turning it and you're not moving your shoulders up and down, you're doing nothing. Yeah. And then, you know, obviously, damage to the arms, the head trauma also like messed up the backside of my right eye. Of course, your eardrums are gonna get blown out and all that good stuff in a helicopter crash, but the hardest part for me, my, you know, I think all too often people look at me like, oh, God, she's missing her left leg, that has to be terrible. But the reality is, if I didn't keep my head and my heart in the right place, then nothing else was going to get better. So fixing, fixing my brain and fixing what I had going on emotionally, that was the hard part.

• 46:04Jocko Willink?

  So you're in the hospital for like, I mean, how long are you in the hospital for?

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Two years.

• 46:10Jocko Willink?

  Two years?

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 46:11Jocko Willink?

  From 2012

• 46:13Speaker 02

  To 14.

• 46:13Jocko Willink?

  To 2014.

• 46:17Jocko Willink?

  When you're, when you're going through, one of the things that you talked about is you're going through your anniversary, is it called an anniversary, your alive day, a year after. And you got to a point where you're like, I don't know if I can do this.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, so I think my, my doctors and my leadership, if you will, um, I had a lot of people come into my hospital room and sit there and tell me, I wanted to go to the drill field so bad, so freaking bad. Um, so I had all of these people coming, I even had the CG of, um,

• 46:56Speaker 02

  MCRD come over and say, you're going to be the first drill instructor that's, you know, an amputee and you're going to go right back into the fight and this, that and the other. And on one hand, like I use that to really push myself physically to get better, but on the other hand, like I think it misled, misled me quite a bit. So when I got word after my, um, second med board that I was unfit for duty, um, due to the injuries, um, I lost it. Like, that's when I knew that I had one more shot at staying in the Marine Corps and it wasn't going to ever be to fly again. It was going to be the desk job that I really didn't want, you know, from the get go. Um, and even still, I mean, that wasn't even promised. So I, I don't know, like dealing with the injuries and specifically my leg that's not getting better.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Obviously still processing a ton of stuff, um, and then finding out that this, the one thing that I really loved at that point in time, um, my purpose. I was now getting pulled out from underneath my feet. Um, yeah, I mean, I guess you, you have to hit rock bottom, you know, to be able to rebuild everything and I truly did.

• 48:01Jocko Willink?

  You got a couple of things in here that,

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  that you wrote about, just like your, your, your mom, your dad. He said, my dad's been one of my best friends and biggest fans since day one. He's given me tough love af- I needed after injury, but also motivated me in ways to continue creating and chasing dreams. I'm alive and well, thanks to my family. I appreciate you being as stubborn as I am, dad. You, you, uh, talk about your mom. He said, my mom used to look at me sitting in my wheelchair and say, do it your damn self.

• 48:34Jocko Willink?

  That right there has got to be for a parent and I got four kids but the temptation for parents always is to try and just take, give your kids everything that you can to help them. And that I've said many times actually hurts your kid and here's an example, not of a child but of your mom talking to a twenty whatever three year old woman. And saying you gotta do this yourself.

• 49:01Jocko Willink?

  That has to leave a mark.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I am, I mean, I'm not a parent, so I don't, I don't totally get that, you know, that side of things, but I mean. My dad. Again, one of the things, I mean. I'll get into the nitty gritty of it because I'm transparent, but so on June twenty third, two thousand twelve, like, if you're gonna kill yourself, you're not gonna, you're not gonna tell anybody. You're just gonna go off and do it. And so I went down to the Blythe River and had some friends with me because we're gonna celebrate and all this stuff and then. I decided that I'm over it, like I, I don't want to be doing it anymore. Do what I need to do and I'm gonna walk myself out into the Blythe River and draw myself disappear and no one's gonna have to deal with.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Deal with me or my problems, I'm not gonna be a burden anymore.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  Long story short, I'm lucky that I woke up the next day. Surrounded by people that did save me and

• 49:59Speaker 02

  my dad came to me and crying, my dad doesn't cry, my dad's this big tattoo dude that's semi scary sometimes. And he said, you've got to be shitting me, you know, the enemy couldn't kill you, you made it home. Now you're gonna do it for him and that's the moment I realized that I was being selfish. It's the moment that I realized that I had a lot more to live for and that I had a lot to be grateful for. So. Then I decided that I was gonna turn my life around. But I mean, I, I don't know. What that's like for my dad, especially like. He's always been hard on me. He's always been the one to really set those standards for me. I mean, pun intended, like, he's the reason that I hold, you know, he holds my foot to the fire for me. Uh, and even to this day, like,

• 50:42Speaker 02

  he doesn't do interviews, you know, I'm constantly like doing media stuff here and there, but, you know, one day he was asked, you know, you know, are you proud of your daughter? And he's like, well, yeah, I'm proud of her. But the moment she stops paying it forward, she deserves to have it all taken away. And I have lived my life like that, you know, those little one liners that sometimes look at my dad and I'm like, oh, like, thanks. But you know, like I hang on to those. Um, I mean, he really is. He's the one that holds me accountable like through and through, through all of it. Uh, and then my mom, God love her, toughest lady I know, cause again, even like raising me. Well, um, but then for her to like, I mean, I could see it, even those moments when she's telling me to do it myself, like there's tears in her eyes. Like she wants to do it for me, but she knows the moment that she steps in and,

• 51:25Speaker 02

  and you know, coddles the situation. I'm not going to be independent, you know, I'm not going to move past these inju- past these injuries and live a healthy, happy life. So I mean, I, I can't imagine the, the internal like turmoil that you go through. And it's a battle.

• 51:38Jocko Willink?

  And for you to go through this, like, actual one hundred and eighty degree transition from, I don't want to live anymore, to, I want to live the best life I possibly can. Uh, how, how long did that transition take? This is like a couple of days that you went, got there? Is it your, when your dad said those words to you, you just said, you know what? I'm wrong. And I need to get on the right path.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  That's it. He said, I mean, I think, I think in that moment, I,

• 52:11Speaker 02

  for whatever reason, I mean, I'll, I'll never understand it, but for whatever reason, at that time, God spared me twice. And I'm not even a religious person, but God spared me twice. So obviously there's a reason that I'm, I'm still here. Somebody, something kept me here. And then the dude that I, you know, respected and admire the most coming to me and saying that, like, I mean, that just destroyed me. I mean, as if, as if I couldn't get any lower, you know, him saying that I was like, you know what? You, you decide. Like I can't control the helicopter crash. I can't control what this crazy vicious world threw at me. I, I can't control that, but what I can control is how I'm going to respond. Um, and it is, I mean, I'm, I wholeheartedly believe it's a choice.

• 52:55Jocko Willink?

  When you were, not to dwell on this subject too long, but you know, a lot of people that listen to this podcast are people that served and people that end up in some rough spots. When you were descending into that place mentally, how long did that take? I mean, is it something that you woke up one day and said, I'm sick of this? Or is it was like just the grind that beat you down over time? You said, look, this is, this is just not worth it right now.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  It was the grind. I mean, it's not, I mean, it's not an instant thing. I mean, like, again, don't get me wrong. I'm not the person that walked around and talked about it like, you know, I wasn't screaming for attention. I was just gonna go and do it.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  But I mean, it was just one of those things where it felt like nothing was ever getting better. You know, it was just digging this hole, digging this grave, you know, deeper and deeper.

• 53:44Jocko Willink?

  You know, I asked you about the progress of your injury. That was like actually a really personal question for me because I'm the type of person, if I notice point zero zero one percent improvement in something, I'm like, oh, there you go. See, this is gonna get better. And when I don't have that happening, that, that's, that's like, when I don't have that happening, I, it's like, when I don't notice any improvement, I, I start feeling like, oh, no, like it's, I'm on the wrong path right now. This is not gonna get better. It's kind of like how I felt with, with my neck. My neck got jacked up. All of a sudden I can't move my arm. All of a sudden, you know, I'm going, it's gonna get better. It's gonna get better. It's gonna get better. And it's not getting better.

• 54:24Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, that, that's the, the grind thing of like, hey, this is, this is getting worse and it's not gonna get better. And for me, like now, when I look at like, I never recovered the strength that I have in my, in my right tricep and my right pack. Like I got some of it back, but not all of it. And it's okay. At some point I just was like, okay, cool. That's the way it is. And I think that happens to people where you have to, you have to look at the situation and say, well, it's what you just said. Listen, I can't control that. I can't control what happened. I mean, you can't control what happened. This helicopter crash, what happened, happened. What am I going to do now? And I got that, I was actually getting some, uh, social media responses about, just someone

• 55:09Jocko Willink?

  was talking about, so me and my buddy Leif, who I was on the SEAL Teams with, we wrote a book called Extreme Ownership. And it's like, you take ownership of everything in your world, right? And there's people that will say, Oh, if you get cancer, how are you gonna take ownership of that? How is that? Cause yeah, when something goes wrong, it's my fault. That's, that's the way I look at things, right? When something goes wrong, it's my fault. That's the way I look at everything. If something's not going the way it should be, it's my fault. So, how do you take ownership? If you get, if you get cancer? Like, how do you take ownership of that? And the answer is, you don't take ownership for getting cancer. That's not, that's not, but you take ownership for how you're gonna react to it. You take ownership for your response. You can't take ownership, look, the Hilo crashed.

• 55:53Jocko Willink?

  What, for whatever reason, it could be a million different things that that Hilo crashed, the Hilo crashed. You, okay, what do you do? You can't take ownership of that crash. What you take ownership of is your response to that, your response to your injuries. And that's, to me, is the most powerful thing that a person has. Because that gives you some level of control over circumstances that are truly beyond your control.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Yep, I mean, I've said it from, pretty much since June 23rd, uh, 2013. You know, the right actions follow the right perspectives. I mean, I could sit here and I could bitch about everything that I've lost. I could bitch about, you know, a lost memory, a lost leg, a lost military career, a lost years of my life, you know, to the hospital and to recovery, or I can look at what I've gained. Had this not happened, I wouldn't be sitting here with you. I wouldn't be doing the things that I'm doing. I wouldn't be living this very different purpose on a totally different platform than I was before. Um, so I can take it with a grain of salt, look at it as a blessing and a curse, one that I, a curse that I wouldn't wish on anyone, my own worst enemy. And then, you know, I can just keep going on about my day. It's just, that's it.

• 57:00Jocko Willink?

  At what point, so, so now, you're two years in the hospital. So, 2014, you get out of the hospital and you start living, do you, is that when you get medically retired?

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. May 2014.

• 57:13Jocko Willink?

  May 2014, you get out, and what do you do when you get out? What's your, wha- what do you, what do you move into? Are you liv- you're living in San Diego at this time?

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Yep. Yeah.

• 57:22Jocko Willink?

  Living in OB?

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  No, so there is two, like, so, I mean, I gotta, growing up, again, the academic thing and the, the athletic thing. I didn't struggle with it and now I find myself in this position getting out of the ring core I'm like I'm not the same person that I knew physically and I'm definitely not the same person I knew mentally um but I really wanted to finish my first masters and while I was still in the doctors looked at me and they were like there's no way that we're gonna approve you for tuition assistance or any of this like you're gonna fail your classes there's no way.

• 57:54Jocko Willink?

  Are you serious?

• 57:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, well so I went to my speech therapist and said hey can you download this program read my goal onto my computer I'm gonna figure this out like I'm gonna finish this last year my masters um ended up getting that masters in psychology um with a C average so barely but I was like determined to prove those doctors wrong and um every single one of them kept telling me like if you don't use it you're gonna lose it like you have to continue training and rewiring your brain so then I just I didn't stop I just kept going to school like the moment that I got out just kept going and um obviously use this post an 11 GI bill and then sort of racking up scholarships and so I did school like wholeheartedly.

• 58:32Jocko Willink?

  So this is 2014 you get out of the hospital and you're like diving into school hardcore.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 58:37Jocko Willink?

  You keep talking about going to speech therapy and I've been listening really intently trying to figure out why you need speech therapy and I have found nothing so far super articulate you know nailing every word pronouncing pronouncing everything awesome so what was like your lowest point for speech was it because the damage had been done to your jaw was it your brain damage or was it just both and how bad was it was there a point where you you know you where you weren't able to carry on a conversation?

• 59:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so in the very beginning.

• 59:09Jocko Willink?

  Cause let's face it right now you're doing a damn good job.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Thank you no so in the very beginning it really was it was be it was getting my brain to fire to be able to express myself to again to retrieve the words that I was actually looking for now it's more of like nerve and all of that the trauma like the physical trauma now it's like I was trying not to point it out but like Rs and S's I'll try to avoid that um but yeah.

• 59:34Jocko Willink?

  You just said both of them perfectly.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  The sound they make um but yeah like actually when I was trying to say rewiring just now had there's a lot of effort into that but yeah um but so like the head trauma that was that was one thing that I really focused on and then um around that time I actually started competing in snowboarding.

• 59:54Jocko Willink?

  So you got your bad leg.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Bad brain.

• 59:58Jocko Willink?

  You got your bad leg, bad brain. Good band, by the way. And you, and you decided it's cool, like, look, we're gonna start snowboarding, which you're from Florida.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes.

• 1:00:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay, where'd that come from?

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Go on, yeah. Um, no, so I, there was an organization that came into my hospital room when I was actually still living at the hospital, um, and still active duty. And they came in, they just said, how do you feel about learning a winter sport? And this was in the end of 2013. And I was just like, you know what? Anything, just get me out of the hospital. Well, again, me being me, um, my doctors cleared me to sit ski. But then when I show up in Breckenridge, Colorado, no one asks me for, you know, a medical clearance or anything. And I'm like, well, shit, snowboarding looks cool. I'm gonna try that one instead. And I ended up picking it up really quickly and I loved it. Um, you know, it's just one of those things that reminds you of your independence and resiliency. And, you know, no one can do it for you. So then I just kept with it.

• 1:00:54Jocko Willink?

  And what was it like on your bad leg?

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  I mean, it was painful. I mean, and I had a, I have, I had like a little of this weird Kevlar, like carbon fiber contraption that

• 1:01:03Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  basically took all of the weight off of my lower limb and put it all onto my knee at the time. So, I mean, I had a little bit of help, but I mean, it was, I mean, it was painful, but it was worth it. I mean, I, I mean, I wasn't stopping. I mean, I was still dealing with surgeries. I mean, gosh, I was having a surgery once every eight to 12 weeks and then having the recovery. And so, I mean, I would sneak away from Balboa and go to Big Bear.

• 1:01:28Jocko Willink?

  You have issues.

• 1:01:31Jocko Willink?

  Do you, were most of those surgeries on your leg or were they on everything?

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, my leg. So between, between my leg and my face, that's where the majority of them came from, but 44 now.

• 1:01:43Jocko Willink?

  They told you out of the gate that a bunch of your bones were gonna die in your leg and they were right. And, and

• 1:01:55Jocko Willink?

  At some point, like, um, you're, you're, are they giving you the prediction like, hey, this isn't, this isn't gonna last?

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  Yep. I mean, toward the end of my efforts, if you will, um, I mean, they were coming in, they're like, this is a Christopher Columbus surgery at this point. Like, we're gonna go in and we're gonna try and do, whether it was bone crafting, or nerve decompression, or whatever, it was like, we don't even know what we're gonna find anymore. Um, and finally, I came to terms with it, and said, you know what, you can have it.

• 1:02:21Jocko Willink?

  Wa-was that before or after you did the walk in England?

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  So my walk was my send-off to my leg.

• 1:02:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  That was...

• 1:02:27Jocko Willink?

  So, so you decided, I got this bad leg, I got brain damage, I got everything else going on, but I'm gonna go walk a thousand miles?

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:37Jocko Willink?

  In the United Kingdom?

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:38Jocko Willink?

  How, how'd that come about?

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  Um, so, actually, there was a couple of, um, older Marines that was, that were, was working for an organization called Bob Bujah Foundation, and they heard about this event called Walking With The Wounded, that, you know, they've done everything from the North Pole and the South Pole, and it was kind of just like this pilot idea, um, and they were just looking for people stupid enough to walk a thousand miles, and sure enough, one of them's me. Um, but no, so they came up and they're just like, hey, we're thinking about sponsoring this event that's going to raise money for American and British soldiers that are dealing with specifically, brain injuries, head trauma, and, um, you know, invisible injuries of all sorts. And in the moment, I was just like, you know what? The leg's coming off anyways, I don't care if I trash it, um, so, let's do this thousand

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  miles, and then, literally, seven days after I got home, they cut my leg off.

• 1:03:29Jocko Willink?

  The thousand miles that you walked, you were with, at some point, you were with Prince Harry?

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:35Jocko Willink?

  And he's a legit dude.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  He is a legit dude. I will give him that.

• 1:03:38Jocko Willink?

  Like, I mean, the...

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  I won't give him any other compliments.

• 1:03:40Jocko Willink?

  I mean, he, he, well, he's at least legit that he, you know, he, he served. I mean, he, he fought in Afghanistan. I don't know if he, was he in Iraq? I don't, I don't know if he's in Iraq.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Just Afghanistan.

• 1:03:50Jocko Willink?

  But, yeah, and there's some pretty cool stuff of him. There's a cool, there's a cool little video, someone's interviewing him, and then, like, the alarm sounds and he runs off to go get some.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:58Jocko Willink?

  And, and so that was cool, and, and you had some, some interaction with him?

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, so, my personal spin on that thousand miles, like, of course, I was over there to raise awareness and, and fundraise, but I made twenty-five memorial dog tags for Marines who either never came home, or they killed themselves when we got back home. And I carried each one for forty miles with a poem and left them all across England, Scotland and Wales with the intention that a stranger would find them and honor our fallen. You know, we shed blood together, we deserve to heal or, you know, mend wounds together, if you will. And he actually helped me lay a few of my dog tags and then I left the final one with him at Buckingham Palace and then on what's their Veterans Day, he carried it to the cenotaph for me. So again, he really is a great dude, his heart's in the right place for sure.

• 1:04:45Jocko Willink?

  And that was one of your friends TJ, is that the final dog tag?

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  So actually, that's a pretty sad story, actually. So there was two gentlemen that were in the hospital with me, they were blown up ten days before I got hurt. So they were with 1-7 and of course, you know, me being the 53 unit, we were doing, constantly doing stuff with those guys, you know, insertions and extractions and stuff. And the two gentlemen that were with 1-7, you know, we went through all of our recoveries together and TJ was actually one of, was the guy that passed away when they lost their legs. So I didn't, I never knew him, he was never really a friend, it was more so for them. And his, yeah, his wife.

• 1:05:29Jocko Willink?

  So then you get done with that, walking a thousand miles, and you come back to San Diego and pre-planned, you get back and you're like, okay, this, this, my, my foot is gonna die and let's move forward, let's get rid of it. There's a, a, um, like a video, like mini documentary about you. It's done by Cosmopolitan, which is some kind of a magazine.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a weird fit for me, but yeah.

• 1:06:09Jocko Willink?

  Anyways, I watched this video and man, there's, there's a video of you and you're walking on the beach and you're barefoot, walking on the beach, you're walking on Ocean Beach, by the way, and there's the pier in the background and you're like saying, yeah, you know, I'm walking on the beach because I'm not gonna be able to do this anymore, I'm not gonna be able to feel the sand on my, on my foot anymore.

• 1:06:35Jocko Willink?

  That has got to be the hardest decision that you've had to make it. I mean, for a person, right? Like, you have at least this... Like, I mean, I surf and like, I live by the beach. I love the ocean and walking barefoot on the sand is like totally a thing that is real. Like, it's the best thing. And I'm sitting there thinking, you'd been living in OB at the time and crazy that you're sitting there saying, "Yep, I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk on the sand for the last time right now. This is it. This is the last time I get to feel the sand between my toes. It's the last time I get to wade around in this water."

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  It was one of those things where it's like, it's your quality of life.

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  I was living a life that I, you know, I wasn't happy with as far as like, living a life of constant recovery and pain, a lot of drugs. I mean, I'd be lying if I told you I was like sober when I did the thousand mile walk. There was a lot of medication involved in that. But, you know, like, it's just one of those things. I was ready to close that chapter and just move forward. You know, there's, there's a lot of things that I wanted to do with my life or that I am doing and still want to do with my life.

• 1:07:53Jocko Willink?

  And the thing is also important to note is they were gonna, they were gonna take your foot, your shin, leave your tib fib, which I can't fully express this, but I do know from friends that have had above the knee and below the knee amputation. The difference between above the knee amputation and below the knee amputation is absolutely massive. The amount of articulation that you have in your knee is just, it is incredible compared to when you lose your knee.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'll never bitch about being an amputee. I'm thankful that I'm alive, but I would do anything to get my knee back.

• 1:08:38Jocko Willink?

  Well, the initial surgery, they, they do what they said they're gonna do. They, whatever, midway up your calf or somewhere, they leave, they leave enough knee. And this was right around, was this right around Thanksgiving?

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:08:52Jocko Willink?

  So, right around Thanksgiving, you get this initial surgery. And for you, it's gonna be liberating because you're not gonna have to worry about this pain. You can get the, the feet that will work better than your foot. That's what it boils down to. I guess that's when I was talking about like all this stuff about the sand and getting all crazy with that. The bottom line is, you were thinking, hey, that's a great feeling, but I'm actually be able to be better off with, you know, with, um, with the, the different varieties of prosthetic feet and ankles and all the stuff that they can give you. I mean, there's many people that have deployed after they've gotten, you know, a, a below the knee surgery. I don't know how many people have above, but there, I'm sure there has been some, but it's a lot different.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:09:38Jocko Willink?

  It's a lot different. And, um, so you get that surgery and it was, it was, I guess it was a bad surgery. There was a, there was an infection is what happens.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, again, won't go too far into that one, but that, yeah, that was definitely some malpractice on that one.

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  But, uh, yeah, instead of using staples, they use stitches. They never put a wound back on. There was a number of things. I was turned away from the emergency room three times and they're telling me that it was fine. Um, and then finally, you know, I mean, it was bad. I mean, it was really, really bad. Um, and, uh, they finally, there was actually, um, a doctor from Scripps that was like filling in for one of the doctors down in the ER at Paboa. And she saw my leg and she was like, oh, hell no. Like take everybody, like, don't even put her in x-rays. Like take everybody out of the OR. Like I'm going in with her. And they ended up cutting out the, um, half of my knee. They left my patella. Um, and then they went back in and they said that that wasn't enough.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  Um, and they took out my patella and made it an above the knee. So they, um, guillotine cut my, my femur.

• 1:10:51Jocko Willink?

  Here's a note from you. December 20th, 2015. I am awake and out of surgery for today. I lost a lot of muscle due to infection. Unless I have a Christmas miracle, they'll be taking my knee tomorrow. These are the times it's easy to give up. December 23rd, 2015, update. The infection almost killed me. It was eating the muscles in my leg. They saved my life, plain and simple. I am an above-the-knee amputee, but I am healthier now. Still fighting the infection and more surgery. 10 a.m., which could make me a hip dysartic.

• 1:11:35Jocko Willink?

  Which could be worse, but nothing I can't beat. They're, they are trying their best. Said they've never seen anything so bad as to what was going on in my leg. I know I can beat this. I just hope they don't have to go too high on this limb. Mentally and emotionally, this is the hardest thing I've ever dealt with. I am terrified.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  Yep. When they came in and said that they might take my hip, I didn't want them to wake me back up. Like, "Do not bring me out of that surgery room. Keep me asleep." You take, I mean, God love, kudos to anybody that's sitting in a bucket and has to live their life as a hip dysartic. Yeah, that news was, was awful. And, yeah. I didn't think I was gonna have the courage to keep going. I didn't want to keep going at that point, but, yeah. In the beginning of that, when you were reading it, I was sitting here thinking, "God, I was full of shit." I'm just telling everybody, like, "It's gonna be okay."

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  But I'm, I'm glad that I at least finished that with "I'm terrified" because it's honest. It's true.

• 1:12:51Jocko Willink?

  December 24th, 2015. So this is the next, the next day. Christmas Eve, I am, I am alive, so I am happy. I received nothing but good news about my leg and it looks great. Being an above the knee amputee will be challenging at first and all I can say is bring it on.

• 1:13:11Jocko Willink?

  On another note, I am very sick and will be for quite some time. They found three bacterial infections, including MRSA. They also found bud clots in my arm. They put a PICC line in. This is a life threatening matter, so I'll need to lay low for a while. Please keep praying. I got this. We got this.

• 1:13:43Jocko Willink?

  Craziness.

• 1:13:48Jocko Willink?

  Your parents were living here at this time?

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:13:51Jocko Willink?

  So you, who were you with?

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  I was living with my boyfriend at the time, actually. My mom, my mom was like living with us and so she was around, but it was, it was the craziest thing. Like, we all knew my leg was just, I mean, it was rotting for lack of, I mean, that's just what it was doing. And so like my mom would go with me to ER, we'd get turned away, we'd get turned away. And my boyfriend at the time had gone back to Florida to drive with my little sister out. Cause it was, you know, coming up on the holidays and stuff. And when he was in Florida with her.

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  They're like, you need to get your family here because we don't know if you're going to pull through this one. And so my dad's flying in from, you know, being on the pipeline, they're rushing, like driving across the country. You know, through the night to be able to get back. Yeah, I mean, it was, it was bad.

• 1:14:48Jocko Willink?

  So you eventually recover from this? I mean, good lord. Eventually, how long does it take to fight off these triple bacteria infections and whatnot?

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  Um, so I ended up getting out of the hospital. It would have been very late January, early February. So I was there for at least another month, five, six weeks.

• 1:15:10Jocko Willink?

  And during that five, six weeks, is that when you started doing rehab to like get fitted for a prosthetic? Did that happen that fast?

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  Um, so they actually started fitting me when my staples came out. So yeah, so it would have been probably the week before I got out of the hospital. And then I hit the ground running with that.

• 1:15:29Jocko Willink?

  Which is no big surprise at this point.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  I was like, I want my leg and I want to get the frick out of here. So.

• 1:15:35Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then what, what happens then? So, so now what was that rehab process? Like you're trying to learn to walk again and all this stuff?

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, so you're supposed to go to physical therapy and go to gait training and you know, sit it like six, sit through like six weeks worth of like training on this leg, learning how to walk. Um, they let me go after two weeks. Uh, so I took my leg off after two weeks and just like, I mean, this is, this is it. Um, and I mean, I actually have these videos of my mom watching me for, walk for the first time. And of course it was very emotional and, and whatnot, but it was like, it didn't skip a beat. And he gave me two weeks and I was, I was going to figure it out.

• 1:16:11Jocko Willink?

  And then where'd you go when you got released from the hospital? Did you stay in San Diego?

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I stayed in San Diego for quite some time. Um, and then I ended up going up to Temecula for a little while. Um, and then bouncing back and forth, got back on my snowboard. And so I was spending the winters in Colorado and back here in California.

• 1:16:29Jocko Willink?

  What is it like snowboarding now?

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  Oh, it is weird. Um, no, it's, I don't know. It's, I mean, I don't know any, like I can't remember what it's like anymore to like, snowboard with two legs or a busted up leg. Um. I don't know. I mean, it's again, like I just got back on my board and just rode. Um, I mean, of course I wiped out and I hurt quite a bit, but.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  But yeah, I've got some, you know, again, just didn't skip a beat.

• 1:16:56Jocko Willink?

  And at this point, like, okay, so that cosmopolitan uh video was made around this time, right? So there's you, you're starting to get some kind of notoriety. Is that the right word? Wait, is notoriety bad?

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  No, I don't know. I know.

• 1:17:12Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. You seem like the type of person that wouldn't want to be called famous, but you're starting to get some,

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:17:17Jocko Willink?

  some recognition, right? People are starting to start to hear what you you've gone through and start to be interested in the story. Right? So this is all happening too at this time.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:27Jocko Willink?

  Which is, which is weird.

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  It is very, very weird. You know, I'm not like, when I think of any of the things that I've done now at this point, it's like, you don't want to be celebrated. You don't want the attention for doing what you want to do and living your life how you want to live it. Like, I wasn't doing anything miraculous. I'm just like, I want to live, you know, I want to move forward with my life. I want to be here for my family. And then even now, it's, I just like helping people. So I keep helping people. I mean, so yeah.

• 1:17:50Jocko Willink?

  So you get the cosmopolitan thing. You're, you go and you, you go and do a job as a stunt woman in a movie? What's that all about?

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  Um, just filling voids, you know, adrenaline seeking, I guess, trying to fill that.

• 1:18:06Jocko Willink?

  What did you do as a stunt woman?

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  Um, so everything from car crashes to explosions to pyro.

• 1:18:11Jocko Willink?

  Did anyone notify you that this may jar your head?

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  There was a couple of times, um, but yeah, no, it was just one of those things.

• 1:18:20Jocko Willink?

  You're like, I'll crank up the speech therapy and just do more stunts.

• 1:18:24Speaker 02

  That's it. Yeah. All makes sense.

• 1:18:26Jocko Willink?

  Check. Did you, uh, what? You were in a movie with Mark Wahlberg? Is that right?

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the biggest one. It's a Patriots Day.

• 1:18:34Jocko Willink?

  And what do you do in that movie?

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Get blown up.

• 1:18:37Jocko Willink?

  You're like, I got experience at this. Check this out.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, get blown up, get carried around on stretchers, lose a limb, fall out of a wheelchair at once at one point. A bunch of different scenes, but yeah.

• 1:18:48Jocko Willink?

  Um, okay. So, so you got that going on. You got the, the People Magazine Body Image Hero?

• 1:18:56Jocko Willink?

  Which is what? What does that mean?

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  Well, when I was in this whole process, I mean, even from the get-go with the face, like the injuries to my face, um, you know, I didn't, and the doctor selling me all of this stuff about my leg, I didn't really care if I was going to be able to get up and run again or any of that, like as a young woman, you know, all I cared about was who's looking at me differently? Can I wear heels? Can I wear a dress? Is anybody gonna find me attractive enough to have a family one day? Like, really worried about the self-esteem stuff. Um, and so like, moving forward, I just decided that I was gonna own my differences, that I was gonna like be proud of the scars that I wore because they told my stories. They like, I mean, in my, in my opinion, they made me look pretty tough too. But, um, but no, like I wanted to show people that it was okay to embrace.

• 1:19:38Jocko Willink?

  Get street cred.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, but that's like, I just wanted to show people that it was okay, you know, like you don't have to be the cookie cutter, you know, definition of what beautiful is. Um, and I don't want to say the cheesy like, you know, beauty comes from within, but I like, I wanted to show people that it was, I mean, it was beautiful to be strong. It was, you know, it was beautiful to have drive and have will and, and to, to not fail. I mean, to give it your all.

• 1:20:05Jocko Willink?

  And so that, that's, that's what the, the People Magazine thinks of what they interview you and take a bunch of pictures of you.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:12Jocko Willink?

  And all that. And now, again, I'm just, I'm just kind of have to trace the fact that people are starting to follow you and, and recognize that you're a, um, that you have a, a very interesting story and inspiring story.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Jocko Willink?

  As these things are happening. Because the reason I kind of have to say that is because then you like do other things at the same time, like getting stunt women and getting crashed and blown up and stuff like that. And at some point, you got your master's degree in business administration.

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:20:41Jocko Willink?

  Right? And this is still just to prove to people that you can still mentally go.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  Yes, eh, yes, but on the other, on the other side of that too, like even right now, when I, when I do eventually finish this doctorate, like I'm terrified of what I'm gonna do with that time. I'm like, oh my God, I, I love structure.

• 1:20:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you, you mumbled filling the void. The other, like, like a couple of minutes ago, you're like, I'm filling the void. So what you're saying is you have to be busy. You, you have to have something to focus on, something to do.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:21:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay, that starts to explain some things.

• 1:21:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:21:14Jocko Willink?

  Because at some point, you decided that you were going to put another thing on your list of things to get done, and it's climb the seven summits.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  So, uh, the highest peak on each of the seven continents. Um, uh, it was one of the things that hasn't been done by a, a female above the knee amputee. I can't speak for the men. Um, but yeah, I decided that I, I needed something, you know, I lost the 2016 snowboarding season due to the last, um, revision surgery to my amputated side. And so I was like, well, I can't do any high impact sports, so what else can I do in the mountains? And.

• 1:21:52Jocko Willink?

  You might wanna check with me on your ideas, because I think mountaineering is not a high impact sport.

• 1:21:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, we might have to set up a little coaching situation here. Cause I'm not sure. So, so check it out. So the idea, you get the idea, you must've just said, okay, what can I do that's super, super hard?

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:12Jocko Willink?

  Um, you start with Kilimanjaro, is that the first one?

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:22:15Jocko Willink?

  And how'd that go?

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  Uh, it was, it was amazing. Actually, it was insane, because we were up and down in four and a half days, which Kilimanjaro stands 19,341 feet. So for me to make my way up and make it my way back down that quickly was, was out of control. Um, but it was one of those things where it was, I mean, it, in a sick way, like, just like I was addicted to school, I started getting addicted to that suffering. Because like you suffer and you're miserable for days on end, but then once you make it to your goal, it's that much sweeter. And so, I mean, it was just, I don't know, like a hu- a weird hunger for more that I wasn't really like finding anywhere else. And then, I mean, I, we ended up raising like a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for clean water, for the East Tanzanians with that climb. So now it's like, I have the personal side of things,

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  and then I have this other purpose that I was already, you know, felt like I was missing by not having in the Marine Corps. Um, and then from there, that's when everything took off.

• 1:23:10Jocko Willink?

  So which one came next?

• 1:23:11Speaker 02

  Karstens.

• 1:23:13Jocko Willink?

  And Karstens, I was looking at that one, this is in Indonesia. How tall is it?

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  Uh, just over sixteen thousand feet.

• 1:23:20Jocko Willink?

  And it looked to me like the getting there was half the battle.

• 1:23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so honestly, I mean, Kersen is an interesting mountain because it's notorious for being the most hostile um, and technical, um, and ver- well, really versatile, but I mean, it's a seventy-two mile trek into the base of this rock face. Um, so, so, yeah, it's just, I mean, it's honestly-

• 1:23:39Jocko Willink?

  Low impact, right there. Has a low impact scenario. Seventy-two miles.

• 1:23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, but I mean, even just getting out there and, I mean, the people that you encounter, the Donny and the Mooney tribes, like, I mean, I mean, that was just an experience in itself. I mean, the local indigenous tribes came through and like ransacked and destroyed all of our camps and stole our passports while we're like up at fifteen thousand feet watching them.

• 1:24:04Jocko Willink?

  Didn't they teach you in the Marine Corps to set security on some stuff? You gotta leave, leave, leave a little couple of people back to set security on that stuff.

• 1:24:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Jocko Willink?

  So it's, it's seventy-two mile hike in.

• 1:24:13Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:24:14Jocko Willink?

  Now, some of my friends that are amputees, it's not like your, your prosthetic just is this clean, easy fit and it's all good to go. That thing, that thing gets all kinds of issues. I was thinking about it. I sweat a lot. If I was wearing the prosthetic that you have, they would, they would have to put drain holes on the bottom of it. Do they have drain holes?

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  Nope, but they need them.

• 1:24:38Jocko Willink?

  I would need drain holes, because I would fill that thing up with sweat.

• 1:24:42Speaker 02

  We'll go back, I'll send you a link later to my Everest hike mini documentary, and I'm in a tank top when everybody else is in like these big puffy summit suits. I run so hot now that I'm missing my leg, and so I feel your pain on that.

• 1:24:53Jocko Willink?

  So you're, you're doing these law- you do that, and you make it to the, to the top of Karstens, right?

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:24:59Jocko Willink?

  Um, you launch, at some point, I guess you'd wanted to put your business administrative degree to work, so you launched a t-shirt company-

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:25:08Jocko Willink?

  Called Head Case. What inspired that?

• 1:25:12Speaker 02

  Um, well, so I'm an avid hunter. I believe in the things that I consume, they need to be, they need to die at my hands. Um, I don't like eating things that are bred to die. So was really involved in the outdoor industry as far as mountain hunting and the likes of that nature. And I, if you walked into my house now, like it is full of taxidermy, specifically skulls. Um, and so there you have it. So a lot of it was, um, joining forces with my buddy Nevada who carves skulls for a living now. Um, and using his artwork and, and skulls, you know, the head case and the outdoors.

• 1:25:43Jocko Willink?

  When you, at what point did you, did you grow up as a hunter?

• 1:25:47Speaker 02

  No, I mean, we did little stuff, you know, whitetail and, and hogs and stuff like that growing up, but none of the stuff that I'm doing now.

• 1:25:53Jocko Willink?

  And when did that start? In this whole freaking crazy scenario you've got unfolding.

• 1:26:00Speaker 02

  You know, I, so we were talking about like loss and gain earlier. And again, my biggest perspective, like biggest gain has been my perspective on life. And so I started to appreciate, started to appreciate just the cycle. Um, and so that's when I really started to look into, okay, well, what's going on in the outdoors? What am I actually putting into my body, A? And then also just, um, you know, conservation efforts and, um, and then, yeah, being able to provide for my family, like in the most natural way possible.

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, hunting is not about death. It's about living.

• 1:26:32Jocko Willink?

  What, what you, when did you go on your first hunt?

• 1:26:35Speaker 02

  Oh, man, growing up?

• 1:26:36Jocko Willink?

  No, no, like your, your more recent hunting career.

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  Um, probably two thousand thirteen.

• 1:26:43Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you got right, right into it.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  Two thousand fourteen, somewhere in there, yeah.

• 1:26:47Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, if anyone doesn't know, hunting is not easy. And you, I mean, it involves, it involves, that's why when you talk about a seventy-two, um, mile hike in, I mean, hunt, uh, hunting takes a lot of, I, I just went on a hunt and I think we were averaging like, I think we averaged like ten, ten or twelve miles a day. It's like eight to twelve miles a day, you know, that you're putting out up and down hills and it's, it's hard work. And I'm doing, I'm out there doing it with two legs, by the way. So, okay, so you start your T-shirt thing and then you go for your first little kind of

• 1:27:27Jocko Willink?

  little, what would you call it, little recon, a little recon of Everest, base camp?

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:27:33Jocko Willink?

  That was just, let's get a look at this thing, let's see what's up.

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:27:38Jocko Willink?

  How inspiring was that? Were you like, ah?

• 1:27:42Speaker 02

  Exactly like that, actually.

• 1:27:44Jocko Willink?

  Right, I can imagine that would be, if you have that in your mind and you get there and you're at the bottom, you're like, let's do this.

• 1:27:50Speaker 02

  Yes, and I was losing it. I mean, I mean, obviously just very emotional altogether, but you know, there's several, like, there's hooting and hollering and several F-bombs and tears and, you know, everything. But no, I mean, the moment, like, three days into the actual, like, base camp trek, I saw Everest for the first time and I just knew, like, that's it, I'm gonna do it.

• 1:28:10Jocko Willink?

  And so, so that was just getting, getting a feel for it?

• 1:28:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:14Jocko Willink?

  Getting to know people, getting to kind of see how the system would run? Who'd you go, like, what, how'd you get on that trip?

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  Um, so actually.

• 1:28:21Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're not like walking down to the, the travel, what are those people called?

• 1:28:26Speaker 02

  Travel agent?

• 1:28:26Jocko Willink?

  Travel agent going, yeah, book me to base camp, one way.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  So actually, this chick by the name of Haley Webb that I met on my thousand mile walk, um, she's, she was the local mountain guide over there and she hit me up out of nowhere and was just like, hey, I'm gonna, you know, guide a, a base camp trek, um, to Everest, do you wanna come? And I'm like, well, actually, yes, because I needed to decide if I'm gonna climb from the north side or the south side, um, you know, down the road. And so, yeah, I mean, I went down there and absolutely fell in love with Nepal and the people and just their way of life and their culture.

• 1:28:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you get done with that, at some point you open a hair salon?

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  Yes, here in Oceanside, or a little ways up in Oceanside.

• 1:29:06Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Is that still there?

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's doing really well. Um, well, so, so a little backstory to all of these random little things that I'm doing.

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cause you are doing some random stuff at this point.

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, look, I can barely brush my own hair. No, so when I woke up in the hospital in 2015, I looked around the room and told myself that whoever was in that hospital room with me, that they would never work for anybody else ever again. That like, if they were willing to sacrifice their time, you know, their personal lives for me to make sure that I was okay, that, no, you know, I was gonna help them live out their dreams, um, they helped keep me alive. So, uh, my best friend Christine. Is actually my business partner in that. Um, so she's the head honcho down there. I'm just the CFO slash investor.

• 1:29:45Jocko Willink?

  So if we're, if we're an O side.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 1:29:48Jocko Willink?

  And we need a haircut, where do we go?

• 1:29:50Speaker 02

  Chapter one hair and body lab.

• 1:29:52Jocko Willink?

  Chapter one hair and body lab. Do you give high and tights there?

• 1:29:56Speaker 02

  No, they won't do it.

• 1:29:57Jocko Willink?

  Damn it. What about all the Marines? See, earlier you said like, was it three, five? You said, I hope three, five is listening to this?

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  Two, five.

• 1:30:03Jocko Willink?

  You, you said, I hope two, five. And in my mind, two, five is listening to this. Once, there are so many Marines listening to this right now. That if you don't get a pair of clippers at, at, at the place up in Oceanside, you know, let's, let's make it happen. Okay. So you get that going on. And then February, you start, you go back to climbing. So November was you went to Everest Base Camp Trek. You do the hair salon thing. February, you go to.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  Ecuador, Coto Paxi.

• 1:30:35Jocko Willink?

  You go to Ecuador for Coto Paxi.

• 1:30:40Jocko Willink?

  And this is a summit attempt.

• 1:30:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:30:43Jocko Willink?

  But you didn't make it.

• 1:30:44Speaker 02

  Nope. Well, yeah, I turned around at like 18,500.

• 1:30:48Jocko Willink?

  And what's, what is it? How much further did you have to go?

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  Oh, another 1,500 vertical.

• 1:30:56Jocko Willink?

  What was it?

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  Uh, just altitude and moving slow. Uh, my climbing partner had a headache. Um, we were about to hit this like really long traverse section and like with my prosthetic, if the high side is on my left side or my prosthetic side, I cannot move well. So with her being lightheaded, having a headache and me already being a little unsteady in the feet, it just was, didn't make sense.

• 1:31:18Jocko Willink?

  You had to make a smart call.

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:31:20Jocko Willink?

  And you kind of talked about that in some of your blogs, just about like making a good decision, which the mountains are littered with bodies of people that get summit fever and they're going to go for it and they don't make it.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that's one of those things where it's like, if someone's climbing with me and something happened, like I wouldn't be able to live with myself. Um, so yeah, I mean, the mountain's not going anywhere. And if that one does, there's going to be another one. So.

• 1:31:45Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with that one, some lessons learned, and then you go to, then you go to try Denali?

• 1:31:51Speaker 02

  Yep. Denali is a mean, mean mountain. Um, yeah, so, um, go out to Denali and spend literally a month, the whole entire month of June 2018 on Denali, and we made it up to 14,000 feet. We're pinned for 17 days, no going up, no going down. We were scalping food and fuel from people as they were like making their way down. We were trying to be stubborn and ride out this terrible, terrible, I mean, what would really be a cycle?

• 1:32:17Jocko Willink?

  Seventeen days?

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  Seventeen days. And like you would sleep for 90 minutes and you get out of your tent for 90 minutes and dig your tent out. And then go back to sleep. And that's all you can do.

• 1:32:28Jocko Willink?

  For 17 days?

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  Seventeen days.

• 1:32:30Jocko Willink?

  Do you, do, do your, does your body a trite so bad in 17 days? Like I think about like, I work out all the time, but occasionally, okay, so here's an example. We just had an event called the muster in Denver, Colorado. If I would have known you, you would have been there, it would have been awesome. So like during that week, it's kind of hard to do my normal workout routine. It's a little bit lighter than normal. And then from that, I came home for one day. I got one workout and then I went hunting in Utah. And I didn't work out there other than humping up and down. But I can imagine if all you're doing is sitting in a tent and then getting out every 90 minutes and digging out. And then if you think at the end of that, you're gonna have to go and walk up that freaking mountain.

• 1:33:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that seems like a.

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean, your body just atrophies anyways. But of course, being at altitude, like you're just, you're just withering away as it is. And up there, limited food, limited supplies, like you're not gonna sit there and just be shoveling all sorts of stuff on your face. So. But it was hard. And then out there in Denali, like you can't just go for a hike or any of that. Like there are so many crevasses that everything that you have to do, you have to have your technical gear, be on a rope. So I mean, you're literally confined to your tent and to a very, very small, like little living space.

• 1:33:45Jocko Willink?

  What was the avalanche threat?

• 1:33:47Speaker 02

  Um, well, luckily we were far enough from any slabs that I mean, we're really just kind of hanging out there. At that point, you're just worried about being buried alive because you slept too long.

• 1:33:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay, knowing, I don't know you well, but at least sitting through this podcast and realizing that you need to be doing something at all times, what, what the hell was your mindset after day 12?

• 1:34:05Speaker 02

  Oh, I was terrible. I honestly, any climb, like the hardest part for me is tent time. Like I cannot sit still. And so, yeah, I mean,

• 1:34:12Jocko Willink?

  Do you bring anything with you? Do you bring a book? Do you whatever?

• 1:34:16Speaker 02

  Yes and no. So on Denali, it's illegal to have any Sherpas or any help, um, because it's part of the National Park Service. So, I mean, you have to drag a 50 pound sled and carry a 50 pound pack.

• 1:34:25Jocko Willink?

  So you're not bringing any books?

• 1:34:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:34:27Jocko Willink?

  I hear that.

• 1:34:28Speaker 02

  No. Um, so, yeah, I mean, we built an igloo at one point, but, no.

• 1:34:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So then you get, eventually you get weathered off that climb?

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, so we had a very short weather window. We ended up making it up to, again, 18,200, 300. Same climbing partner that I was actually on Cotopaxi with. Um, I was moving a little bit slow up this section called the Autobahn. Um, and, you know, the weather was rolling in quick. She wasn't feeling too hot. Just, you know, it just wasn't going to happen then. So I made the call to, to turn around and come down.

• 1:35:01Jocko Willink?

  So you, so now the next thing that you're looking at is the opportunity to do Everest again? That, that's where you were at? So you come, to come down from Denali and now it's, now it's Everest go time?

• 1:35:11Speaker 02

  Yes and no. So I did Elbrus, the highest point in Europe, over in Russia.

• 1:35:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:35:16Speaker 02

  So I did Denali in June 2018, or attempted it in June 2018. Elbrus, the highest point in Europe, um, in September 2018. And then I went down to South America and Argentina, January 2019. Crushed that one. So then I decided I was ready for Everest.

• 1:35:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Now you decide you're ready for Everest. Is there still, is that because you've been hiking in the mountains so much? You've been doing so much that you're feeling like your conditioning is good? Or is it like? Is it like when you fight in MMA or you run a triathlon where when you get done, you go, okay, I had to recover a little bit?

• 1:35:49Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I mean, it is, but like for me especially, I mean, for any mountaineer, it's like building blocks. Like each of these mountains, A, humbles you, but then teaches you something different. So whether, you know, Kilimanjaro, for example, was my first real exposure to endurance, so to speak, you know, especially at altitude. Karstens was super technical, so that's a totally different skillset. Denali, winter camping, glacier travel. Elbrus, patience for myself and people. Um, Aconcagua, it's the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas.

• 1:36:17Jocko Willink?

  You brushed over that one pretty quick, didn't you?

• 1:36:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, what, Elbrus?

• 1:36:19Jocko Willink?

  No, patience for people?

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  People, oh, yeah. Yeah, I was, yeah. Um, working on it still. Um, and then, yeah, Aconcagua is known as the mountain of death. It's the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas and down in Argentina. And, um, that one really taught me just how my body's going to react to, to that kind of altitude, to big mountains.

• 1:36:39Jocko Willink?

  And how did it react?

• 1:36:41Speaker 02

  Totally fine. It's weird. So I run super hot, um, all because of losing the leg. Um, and then I don't, right now, knock on wood, I don't really suffer from any like altitude side effects. Like I don't have the headaches. I don't have a hard time breathing. Um, so once I confirmed that, I was like, all right, let's go. Um, the only, the only issue that really ever kind of comes up is my residual limb swells inside of the carbon fiber socket. So that can be kind of risky.

• 1:37:10Jocko Willink?

  And that can be risky because you won't be able to get it off?

• 1:37:13Speaker 02

  Cut off circulation.

• 1:37:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you cut off circulation?

• 1:37:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:17Jocko Willink?

  And then, then you have a real problem?

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:37:21Jocko Willink?

  Okay, did you have to do any more prep? So, so are you, when you, when you're now looking at Everest, you're doing, you're feeling like you're in pretty good shape for it physically?

• 1:37:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:37:32Jocko Willink?

  And then it's, okay, let's get all my gear together, which now you know pretty well, because you've done these other climbs, you're feeling like your gear list is pretty straightforward?

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:42Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:37:44Jocko Willink?

  Let's talk a little bit about Everest. So you get to, you get there, you get to base camp. What's, what's that like? How freaking pumped are you at this point?

• 1:37:53Speaker 02

  I was jazzed. I mean, well, and it was crazy too, just because, I mean, obviously, you know, I've been out there already. So, I mean, I'm, all of these memories are coming back up. And I mean, you were just in total awe of walking out in the Himalayas. Like, you do not matter. Nothing about you matters out there. So like, I mean, it's, it's a whirlwind when you're first cruising in, um, to Everest Base Camp and, and just into the Khumbu region of Nepal. Um, but like making it into base camp, it was interesting because there were so many people like waiting for me there. Like so many people, either they saw me on the base camp track, they've been watching my story or whatever. Like, they were just so stoked to have me there. Um, and that just meant so much to me because it was like, you know what? I knew this was big. In my mind, this is big, but not as big as like what everybody else thinks it is, I guess. Um,

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  like it made me realize that I was impacting a lot more people. Um, and then of course there was like the naysayer and from, you know, from time to time that would tell me, oh, you're not going to make it above camp two as an above the NEAMPT. And of course that just fuels my fire. Um, but no, I mean, base camp's a special place just because it's like this huge, obviously tense city, but there are people from all over the world with the same common goal of getting to the highest point in the world. Um,

• 1:39:04Jocko Willink?

  How long, how long, how many days were you at base camp for?

• 1:39:07Speaker 02

  Um, geez, so would have been two or three weeks.

• 1:39:12Jocko Willink?

  So it's like two or three weeks at base camp. And then, did you do those little excursions where you go up for a little bit and come back down?

• 1:39:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:19Jocko Willink?

  To kind of acclimate?

• 1:39:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, so, um, so there's the Khumbu Icefall, which is realistically probably the most dangerous part of Everest, at least as far as climbing goes. Um, and it's just because the ground's constantly shifting, obviously, I mean, the name tells you all like ice falls, there's avalanches. It's just crazy. Um, and so we would go up there and we'd like test my prosthetics and the ladders. We'd, um, you know, obviously go across, you know, move along the fixed lines. We went up to camp one and we, you know, came all the way back down. Um, and after doing that, um, I actually made the, um, decision that I wasn't going to come below camp one, um, again. Um, so climb high and slip low a couple of times. And then finally,

• 1:40:04Speaker 02

  my team left me at camp one and everybody else went back down. And I stayed at, I stayed at camp one for above 20,000 feet for almost four weeks.

• 1:40:13Jocko Willink?

  And your decision to do that was just to get better acclimated, or?

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  To avoid the Kumbua's fall.

• 1:40:18Jocko Willink?

  Or you just?

• 1:40:19Speaker 02

  Cause I can't move fast through that stuff.

• 1:40:20Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:40:21Speaker 02

  And then, yeah, I just, I knew that going up and down through that, like, that's just another variable and more risk. I know for a fact that I can withstand 20,000 feet. Um, so it was really just kind of, you know, weighing the pros and cons of both. Um, in my opinion, like, again, if something happened to me when I'm sitting in the middle of this valley at 20,000 feet, then it's just me. I mean, I was out there by myself in a tent. There's no one. Um, but if I was in the Kumbu and there's my team and then another 20 people who are also like doing the same thing and, and something happens and, I don't know, that's just a huge cross to bear. So I'd rather be solo and something happened than go back through the Kumbu.

• 1:41:00Jocko Willink?

  How many people are on your team?

• 1:41:02Speaker 02

  So we had two locals, um, my buddies Rob and Chris, and then a couple of, or excuse me, two Americans, Rob and Chris, then two locals.

• 1:41:10Jocko Willink?

  That's the team right there. Who are Rob and Chris?

• 1:41:14Speaker 02

  So Chris is actually, um, a dude that's climbed with me a few times. He actually did Albury's in Akankago with me. And then Rob, man, he's a stud. Um, he, he was, um, my cinematographer for Denali. And then I decided that he's just, I mean, he's a mountain goat. So I was like, you know, I want you to be a part of my team, obviously, because you can handle things when it hits the fan. But also, like, you're gonna film this for me. So.

• 1:41:39Jocko Willink?

  At what point, so, so you get to Camp Two, you spend four weeks, or no, it was Camp One you spent four weeks at?

• 1:41:46Speaker 02

  I just spent, um, four weeks above 20,000 feet.

• 1:41:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay, got it. And, and then at what point is the decision point, like, okay, it's our, our go time?

• 1:41:54Speaker 02

  So, um, it would have been, we get word, like, I mean, it's all a weather game out there. So we get word that there's a, a really nice weather window. I mean, it's long, there's only a cloud in the sky, the wind's perfect. And then we get word that about 250 of the 330 climbers are going to be trying for that same weather window. And, um, I just went back and I thought about things and my biggest fear on when I'm climbing isn't dying. You know, my biggest fear is getting frostbite and losing more of my, you know, already very short limb. Um, so I sat there and I reflected and said, you know what, I can't get stuck in that line. A, because like what happens if my climbing partners run out of oxygen?

• 1:42:38Speaker 02

  There are no options. There's no going up or down. Like, I run the risk of losing one, you know, somebody that I care deeply about. Obviously, there's the risk of frostbite. Uh, I run warm. I have an elevated heart rate because of my injuries. So, I'm using more oxygen. Like, there was just too much. There's, there was too much to like, deal with other people. And not only that, but what happens if I get stuck behind somebody too? Um, in my world, like, if you're on my team and we're climbing together, like, you go at my pace. And some days, I haul ass. Some days, I'm moving a little bit slower because of my leg. Um, so, um, me and the team decided that we were gonna do what's called threading the neater, needle, and go for a much shorter weather window. And, um, we didn't even know if the ropes were gonna be fixed at the top.

• 1:43:20Jocko Willink?

  So, this is prior to this big window? You guys said, well, there's a shorter window that's gonna last however many days, and we're gonna go for it then?

• 1:43:27Speaker 02

  Yep. We decided that we're gonna go... We were, we were one of the first teams to, to push, so.

• 1:43:33Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then... So, you go up from Camp 2 to Camp 3, and then you stay at Camp 3? How long do you stay there for?

• 1:43:42Speaker 02

  Just a night.

• 1:43:43Jocko Willink?

  And then Camp 3 to Camp 4, another night?

• 1:43:45Speaker 02

  Yep. And then you sleep for like, 3 hours at Camp 4, and then you push to the summit.

• 1:43:50Jocko Willink?

  So, it goes Camp 4, Camp 5, you just...

• 1:43:53Speaker 02

  There's no Camp 5.

• 1:43:54Jocko Willink?

  There's no Camp 5? Camp 6, no Camp 6? So, you went from, straight from Camp 4 to... And you guys made it to Hillary Step?

• 1:44:05Speaker 02

  Yep. So, so, we made it, this is so sad. We made it to 200 meters away from the summit. Okay, I should be really freaking proud, actually, like, I should say that a little more enthusiastically. Um, but, yeah, no, I mean, we made it to the South Summit. Um, so, I'm obviously super proud of that, but, yeah, it was a little disheartening to see it. Throw a rock at it.

• 1:44:29Jocko Willink?

  And that's, um, yeah, I mean, when you look at those pictures, when you see... And Hillary's step has changed, I think, in 2015. It changed from like, this big, kinda, well, like a... 10 meter, like 12 meter, something rock and now it's like a little bit, it looks like it, something happened to it.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:47Jocko Willink?

  An earthquake or something. And so, but that's where you guys made it to. And once again, you faced with this tough decision to make of like, do we press and go?

• 1:44:59Jocko Willink?

  And it's a huge risk. I had a friend that tried to climb Everest and he was a total stud. And he was like, I mean, a total stud. And he was like, yeah, you know, every step is a freaking nightmare. Like it is so hard, it's like you can't describe how hard it is.

• 1:45:21Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:45:22Jocko Willink?

  Cause people think, hey, you were 200 meters, come on.

• 1:45:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, right. Yep. No, I mean, well, it was bizarre too. Um, so actually like at the moment when we were going to turn around or we did turn around, um, I was above everybody by, I don't know, 20 yards maybe. Um, and so the local Sherpa actually made his way up to me at the anchor and said, they're out of oxygen. You and I can keep going up to the summit. Um, you know, or we can turn around. And so I'm like, I'm looking at them.

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  Our entire like summit push was rough. I mean, it was, it was just total insanity. And I just remember looking at them and both of them having this look of just exhaustion and just fear. I'm like, no, I'm not doing this. Like there's, that doesn't mean that much to me, you know?

• 1:46:13Jocko Willink?

  Would they have sat there and waited for you to come back because they don't have a Sherpa? Or they just turn around and go?

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  They would just turn around and go, but that's even, I mean, that's even more dangerous too.

• 1:46:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:21Speaker 02

  Cause then what, now you have no oxygen and I have, you don't even know how to get down.

• 1:46:24Jocko Willink?

  This is a bad situation.

• 1:46:26Speaker 02

  And so, and not only that, but like, why would I only go up with one Sherpa that I don't really even know? You know, so it's like, I was just, and it was so strange too. And like, I think about this all the time because if you would have seen my reaction to turn around on Denali, I was pissed. Like I practically shoved this camera back in Rob's face. I'm like angry that, you know, that it's all falling apart and then.

• 1:46:47Jocko Willink?

  That's after 17 days of sitting there.

• 1:46:48Speaker 02

  That's also true. I'm starved.

• 1:46:53Speaker 02

  But then, I mean, this time like I just looked down at Rob and was like, no. Like I'm, I was at total peace with the situation. I mean, don't get me wrong, like I would have loved to summit, but I just. And I also wouldn't have felt right. Like, I mean, I have been through so much with those two dudes for two months at this point on Everest.

• 1:47:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, later.

• 1:47:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, see ya. I'm gonna go summit now. Yeah, I mean, like, I just couldn't, I couldn't do it. Um, but yeah.

• 1:47:17Jocko Willink?

  Then, and coming down is not, it's not like once you turn around, okay, now we're good.

• 1:47:21Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 1:47:21Jocko Willink?

  Once you turn her down, it's a still a nightmare.

• 1:47:24Speaker 02

  That's where everyone dies is on the way down. Cause they, they, like you said earlier, they get summit fever and they exhaust everything that they have to get up to the top. And they just lay down and go to sleep on the, on the way down. They're done. Um, and it was, I mean, for, especially for me, like with the prosthetic. Like going up, I have a technique. I mean, it is tons of right leg lunges and tricep dips and I mean, it's, it's intense, but on the way down, there's no technique. It's just forward momentum. Like the best thing that I can do for myself is know how to fall down. Um, so yeah, I mean.

• 1:47:54Jocko Willink?

  Cause you fall a lot when you're coming down?

• 1:47:56Speaker 02

  I mean, I better know how to fall.

• 1:47:58Jocko Willink?

  The stunt woman training days off when you're coming down?

• 1:48:02Speaker 02

  At least I better know how to catch myself.

• 1:48:04Jocko Willink?

  Do you, do you change legs for coming down?

• 1:48:06Speaker 02

  No, I don't.

• 1:48:07Jocko Willink?

  And is that because it's impractical? Is that because it doesn't make any difference?

• 1:48:11Speaker 02

  Doesn't make any difference? No. Yeah. I mean, so the, actually the only thing out there right now for people like me are the, for us to be able to climb the way that I'm climbing is the feet that I make, I make them myself. So there's not many options to change them anyways.

• 1:48:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And you get down, you're at peace with the decision?

• 1:48:32Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:33Jocko Willink?

  How long did the weather hold for?

• 1:48:35Speaker 02

  Oh, quite some time, actually, for days.

• 1:48:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:48:39Speaker 02

  I mean, which was, of course, I mean, that's sad for me, um, cause I'm sitting here watching these people go up, but I mean, your bodies are so trashed after being at, you know, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight thousand feet for so long, like, and if you're out of oxygen, you're out of oxygen, like, at that point. You're pretty much tapped. Um, and so, I mean, even after we made it back down to base camp, I mean, coming down like through camp three and two, like I'm, I was so at peace with everything because I'm watching these zoos of people come up.

• 1:49:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:07Speaker 02

  I mean, hundreds of people. And in that moment, I was like, you know what? You did the right thing. You're not one of the ants. You're not one of the minions. Like you were safe. You were smart. I mean, don't get me wrong. Like when I got back down to base camp, it definitely was like, do you have to need to do another attempt? Like what's up? But I mean, just the weather wasn't going to hold out anyway. So.

• 1:49:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the image is coming back from the Everest this year of the lines of people has been crazy to see.

• 1:49:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:32Jocko Willink?

  Literally, the entire like ridge to the summit is one-way traffic jam.

• 1:49:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. And to me, that's not what mountaineering is, you know, like, in my opinion, like that totally discredits what it, what all it should be. Um, you know, it, I'm, I'm glad that I was out there with me and my thoughts and literally two other people. Okay, four, counting the Sherpa, but.

• 1:49:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're right. You, you've covered all this in really good detail on your, on your blog, which is, which is cool. Uh, you get done. You come back, you acclimate. At what point did you go back and, and go to Cotopaxi again?

• 1:50:10Speaker 02

  Uh, last month.

• 1:50:11Jocko Willink?

  So you just did that.

• 1:50:15Jocko Willink?

  And this time?

• 1:50:16Speaker 02

  Oh, successful.

• 1:50:17Jocko Willink?

  Successful. You got up there and

• 1:50:22Jocko Willink?

  now you're here. What, what did you come to San Diego for? Cause we've been trying to do this podcast for a while. And finally, and I was, I, I looked at your, uh, social media because I, I didn't know why you were coming out here. And then I put two and two together with your social media. I realized why you're coming out here.

• 1:50:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:38Jocko Willink?

  So why are you here for?

• 1:50:39Speaker 02

  Um, I'm actually only in San Diego. Very briefly, I am headed down to Mexico to race the Nora 500.

• 1:50:46Jocko Willink?

  Explain what the Nora 500 is.

• 1:50:48Speaker 02

  Um, it is, um, pretty extreme off-road race. Um, and we're actually, I'm me and a sweet friend of mine are actually racing, um, a rebuilt, um, flyer vehicle, a military vehicle. It's like, um, a light strike vehicle.

• 1:51:02Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 1:51:03Speaker 02

  It's pretty sweet.

• 1:51:04Jocko Willink?

  500 miles. What kind of support do you get on that?

• 1:51:06Speaker 02

  Um, very none.

• 1:51:09Jocko Willink?

  So it's what?

• 1:51:10Speaker 02

  We have a pick crew, which is really one dude and a fuel truck that can kind of chase us down. But if you break down, I mean, you're going to be stuck there for hours. So.

• 1:51:17Jocko Willink?

  So you better hope your machine's running good.

• 1:51:19Speaker 02

  Yes, correct.

• 1:51:20Jocko Willink?

  And that's the next.

• 1:51:23Jocko Willink?

  Damn adventure on your list is that?

• 1:51:28Jocko Willink?

  How long does it take to get that done?

• 1:51:29Speaker 02

  Only two days. I mean, you race them and it's a consistent thing. So you'll you'll race two days. I'll be back in San Diego on Sunday, back in Colorado Sunday night to hustle and work my tail off. And yeah.

• 1:51:41Jocko Willink?

  What are you working your tail off when you get back?

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  Everything from speaking gigs to the real estate team that I do with my mom. I'm opening a CrossFit gym up here in Vista. Dabbling with a bunch, but I'm gonna work my work until Thanksgiving and I'm gonna take some time off.

• 1:51:56Jocko Willink?

  Heck. So those are the thing that you've got on on on the schedule right now. Opening a gym, real estate, ski season is gonna start.

• 1:52:05Speaker 02

  Yes, and I can't wait.

• 1:52:06Jocko Willink?

  So you'll be up there. Where do you usually snowboard at?

• 1:52:09Speaker 02

  Um, all over, like the Roaringford Valley. So Aspen, Snowmass.

• 1:52:14Jocko Willink?

  And you live up in that area as well, right?

• 1:52:16Speaker 02

  Yes, very lucky.

• 1:52:17Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, I mean, so we're kind of up to date right now. I wanted I wanted to cover one more little chunk of writing before we actually close it out, because you got some really cool writing.

• 1:52:32Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:52:33Jocko Willink?

  So here we go. I had joined the Marine Corps to serve people. Then at a mere 23 years old, I was looking to repurpose myself. Now at 27 years old, I'm still serving people just in a different capacity. Nothing about my injuries has been easy. But what I'm thankful for, regardless of the pain and grief, are the people and experiences that have come my way. Four years ago, I was petrified of what my life may become. Now I couldn't be more proud. I fought for it. I worked for it harder than you can ever dream of. But I didn't get here alone. Family, friends, believers, everyone who was there from the start. Thank you.

• 1:53:14Jocko Willink?

  Appreciate all of your days. Even when you're riding in the rain. In the beginning of my recovery, I struggled a lot. And it made me a bitter and sometimes mean person. How disabled do I have to make myself feel before I give up? How much easier would this be had I done it on two legs?

• 1:53:38Jocko Willink?

  My heart hurt in a way that then I couldn't even tell when I was hurting the people around me. Family included. Not that it's an excuse, but know that if I caused you any pain. I'm sorry. I am not perfect, nor will I claim to be. Realistically, none of us ever will be.

• 1:54:02Jocko Willink?

  It's all about the progress over perfection and taking steps in the right direction. The last couple of years, I've been working on me as a whole. I've been focusing on the person I want to be and recognizing a lot about the person I was. I've tried to surround myself with people who wish the best for others and build them up, not break them down. I've stepped away from the toxic people that had a negative hold on me.

• 1:54:31Jocko Willink?

  If someone has wronged you, forgive them. Unshackle yourself from that pain. I started living my life for others, not for myself, and life is so much sweeter that way.

• 1:54:48Jocko Willink?

  The truth is, I'm doing more now than I ever did on two legs. I've been surrounded by people who keep me inspired and keep me looking onward and upward. Now,

• 1:55:02Jocko Willink?

  I can't stop.

• 1:55:05Jocko Willink?

  I have suffered loss, that's no secret. But look at all I've gained. How the low points, had the low points in my life not happened, I would not have had the amazing friendships or experiences I do.

• 1:55:21Jocko Willink?

  I'm thankful for the highs and the lows.

• 1:55:26Jocko Willink?

  Life has a funny way of putting us exactly where we are meant to be.

• 1:55:36Jocko Willink?

  Well, Kirstie, I think that it seems that you have been put exactly where you are supposed to be on this path, living this amazing life and inspiring so many other people. Where can people find you?

• 1:55:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, everyone can follow along on, of course, social media, Facebook and Instagram, just my name, Kirstianis. But if you're interested in any of these blogs or the writing, they're all up on my foundation's website, so kristianisfoundation.org.

• 1:56:06Jocko Willink?

  Are you sure it's not kristianisfoundation.com?

• 1:56:10Speaker 02

  It's both.

• 1:56:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Just checking. So, you know, one of those. Awesome. Awesome. So you are, you know, really cool stuff that you post on that. The detailed description of your climbing are really, really cool. Is that documentary posted that you were talking about?

• 1:56:27Speaker 02

  Not yet.

• 1:56:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So we'll be waiting for that.

• 1:56:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:56:31Jocko Willink?

  Let me know so I can repost it. No, awesome. Just awesome to talk to you. I know that we, we try and stay on the path around here, you know, the path, the righteous path.

• 1:56:42Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:56:43Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, speaking of the righteous path.

• 1:56:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:47Jocko Willink?

  Kirstie, leading from the front, what can we do ourselves to kind of move down the path? You know, broadly speaking.

• 1:56:53Speaker 01

  Plenty, plenty of stuff. But first.

• 1:56:57Jocko Willink?

  There it is.

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  But first. Well, you know, like throughout the story, you know, there's little pockets of maybe like, oh, wait, well, you know, small details. So you said the pilot was DOR. What does DOR mean?

• 1:57:10Jocko Willink?

  Drop-on request.

• 1:57:12Speaker 01

  Oh, damn.

• 1:57:13Jocko Willink?

  Meaning I don't want to do this anymore.

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  Damn. Okay. Yeah. Also, I thought, you know, that you mentioned like how you'd have like challenges with your memory, like just going to the bathroom, like, hey, why am I here kind of thing?

• 1:57:26Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  You ever watched the movie Memento?

• 1:57:28Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness, no, but you were the second person to tell me that in two days.

• 1:57:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you should definitely watch that movie. It's very cool.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's the guy, you know what it's about then, it's about this guy, Leonard. He doesn't like to be called Lanny. Anyway, he has short term memory loss, right? So he can't make new memories. He has long term and so he can do like habitual stuff, you know, stuff that I guess he uses a different part of your brain. So like habitual stuff, driving a car, like that kind of stuff he can do. And he has his long term memory, like he knows about his wife and his, who he is and stuff. But he can't, he basically, he goes to the bathroom like, why am I here?

• 1:58:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:02Speaker 01

  So he has all these tattoos, kind of like you, except his are like notes, you know?

• 1:58:08Jocko Willink?

  Note to self.

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they're everywhere, you know? And then he takes these Polaroids of the people. So it's like, oh yeah, I know you, you know?

• 1:58:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  And it's really good and it goes backwards. The movie goes backwards, so you don't, it's like you follow along with him, you know?

• 1:58:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  So it's like, oh, how did he get there? And you didn't know, you know? He'll just wake up in the room with an empty bottle and be like, I don't feel strong. And he's like naked, you know, like that kind. Then you're like, oh, how did that happen? You know, it's good. Yeah. That's what it reminded me of, the whole bathroom thing. But as far as the path goes, we're doing jujitsu.

• 1:58:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:45Speaker 01

  That's usually where it all starts.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  Do you ever train in jujitsu?

• 1:58:48Speaker 02

  I have.

• 1:58:48Speaker 01

  That doesn't surprise me because isn't it interesting?

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  You snowboard. I don't, I don't know how to snowboard and these may or may not apply to you because you're, you're different, I think. But I don't know how to snowboard. I probably couldn't climb. I can barely climb my driveway. We were talking about Everest and all these things. I don't have a hair salon.

• 1:59:11Speaker 02

  You don't say?

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  Many reasons. And I have two legs, you know, and I, I don't know. It seems like, you know, like when you say, okay, it, it depends on how you react to like all these things. It's like your reaction is like you chose to go for like these huge reactions. It's not like this weird, impossible thing, you know? It's like, if you have everything kind of in front of you, you're less likely to, to have that big reaction, you know?

• 1:59:39Jocko Willink?

  You mean if everything, if something was easy for you to achieve, you'd have less of a

• 1:59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:43Jocko Willink?

  probability of trying to make it happen?

• 1:59:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then at the, and then kind of as a, and it kind of, I guess with you, like you were kind of always like that, right?

• 1:59:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  Like you're like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make things happen in this maybe extraordinary way.

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  You know, good or bad, or you know, mischievous or whatever, like you can, you kind of started with that. So I guess in the big picture kind of makes sense, you know, but then from the outside, you kind of look in. But yeah, like, you know how you say, or we've talked about this before, where if you're handed everything, you know, like you won't go.

• 2:00:20Jocko Willink?

  Case in point, what are the chances that you would be attempting to summit Everest if you got out of the Marine Corps after six years? And you know what I mean? Like, it's just you, you have these challenges. And because it's like, because they're hard and even harder than normal, that you want to do them even more.

• 2:00:39Speaker 02

  Yes, no, exactly.

• 2:00:40Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of what you're saying?

• 2:00:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:42Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's you like, I'm, I'm like an obnoxiously competitive person, but not necessarily with other people. It's just, I look at what I did yesterday and I say, okay, well, what can I do a little bit more? Whether that's something physical or mental or whatever. But then also, like, honestly, I mean, I'm not the fastest person out there. I struggle my way up. I'm not perfect out in the mountains or anything that I'm doing. But I really do, I hope that there's somebody out there watching me and they say to hell with Kirstie, I can do it better than her. And then I hope that they try. I mean, that's what it's about, you know, like, I want somebody to see it. Do it.

• 2:01:14Speaker 01

  Kind of goes to show. Also, you talk better than me too, by the way. So there's that.

• 2:01:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Multiple brain damage, speech therapy.

• 2:01:25Speaker 01

  Nothing happened to my jaw.

• 2:01:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  Way better than me. So like I said, it goes to show. Anyway, jujitsu. Oh, you've done jujitsu too. So there you go too.

• 2:01:33Jocko Willink?

  So are you currently doing jujitsu?

• 2:01:35Speaker 02

  No, I was training for a little bit and then I really fell in love with MMA and then just boxing.

• 2:01:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're good with all the above, actually. We just like, we just like it that you scrap.

• 2:01:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:01:46Jocko Willink?

  Fighting in general is good.

• 2:01:48Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think when I started training as when I realized like, I'm an angry little person and it's good to get it out. I've got a mean elbow. I'm just saying, sharp elbows.

• 2:01:59Jocko Willink?

  That's good.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Well, these are all elements of the path. Included on the past, so as far as jujitsu goes, if you do gi, you need a gi. If you do gi.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, which you should.

• 2:02:09Speaker 01

  Go hand in hand. I think you should. You can do one or the other, I guess, but ideally gi, no gi.

• 2:02:15Jocko Willink?

  Both. What he's trying to get to is we have a company. We make jujitsu gis, we make rash guards, we make t-shirts.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:02:23Jocko Willink?

  And we make them all in America, which is awesome. From the dirt to the shirt.

• 2:02:28Speaker 01

  From the dirt to the shirt. From the cotton to the.

• 2:02:31Jocko Willink?

  From the seed to the bee.

• 2:02:34Jocko Willink?

  All made in Maine. And we're actually making jeans too. We're making, yeah.

• 2:02:39Speaker 01

  American denim, they're dope too. Yeah. Jocko doesn't like fashion or fashion.

• 2:02:45Jocko Willink?

  I think you're right. They're both.

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  I was gonna say aesthetic, uh, like that's why you didn't know about Cosmopolitan. So, uh, Cosmopolitan, it's like the, if you think magazines, what do you think? People, Time?

• 2:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Jujitsu magazine?

• 2:03:03Speaker 01

  And Jujitsu magazine, yes. But.

• 2:03:06Jocko Willink?

  Does anyone read magazines anymore? No, that's why they're out there making videos.

• 2:03:09Speaker 01

  Cosmopolitan.com.

• 2:03:10Jocko Willink?

  They're out there making videos.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:12Jocko Willink?

  Cause they know no one's reading a magazine.

• 2:03:14Speaker 01

  It's, well, it's on the website.

• 2:03:15Jocko Willink?

  You know what? I will tell you, I used to be a sucker for, I'm talking maybe even, even up to eight years ago. If I was in the airport, I'd like walk through this shop and see like a magazine, right? I don't know if it was a gun magazine, I don't know if it was a car magazine, I don't know if it was a outdoor magazine. But like one of those magazines, I'd say, oh, you know, I got a flight, hey, I'll read this magazine. Eight years ago, I may have bought, I, I, I would, I would, there was a 70% chance that I'd see a magazine. It'd look kinda cool and I'd get the magazine. Right now, there is a 0% chance that I'm getting a paper magazine. 0% chance.

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess one, what do you call it? Those people who like they learn, they yearn for the past. What is that? What is that kind of person?

• 2:04:02Jocko Willink?

  A person that yearns for the past.

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  Anyway, there's a, there's a word for that kind of person. Anyway, so maybe that part of me maybe still likes.

• 2:04:09Jocko Willink?

  Get you to that speech therapy.

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  See my word, uh, recollection. See, I can't. You understand what I'm saying. Anyway, the people who are nostalgic like that, they like the physical magazine. I was one of those people. But here's the thing, which I mean, um, you probably realize is you have your phone. So like.

• 2:04:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

• 2:04:27Speaker 01

  Cosmopolitan.com. You can read, you know, all the stuff that you read or whatever. With that is what I'm saying. You don't need the physical magazine anymore. Then you gotta lug around a physical magazine. You're done with it.

• 2:04:38Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying. That's why I'm saying no one's reading a magazine anymore. Even me, and I used to buy them. Sixty percent chance.

• 2:04:43Speaker 01

  That's why though. But that's still, but that doesn't explain.

• 2:04:47Jocko Willink?

  Do you get magazines?

• 2:04:48Speaker 02

  No. I do the back, uh, cookbooks.

• 2:04:51Jocko Willink?

  But that's not a magazine though. Oh, it is a magazine. There's a cook. We call it, we call a cookbook magazine, um.

• 2:04:56Speaker 02

  A cook magazine?

• 2:04:57Jocko Willink?

  Cook magazine?

• 2:04:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, like a magazine. Yeah, like. No, no, it's about cooking.

• 2:05:01Jocko Willink?

  You like to cook?

• 2:05:02Speaker 02

  I do, yes.

• 2:05:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, your eyes lit up right there.

• 2:05:05Speaker 02

  I love to cook.

• 2:05:06Jocko Willink?

  Do you love to eat?

• 2:05:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:05:08Jocko Willink?

  Both?

• 2:05:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:05:11Jocko Willink?

  I love to eat. I, and I do, it's not that I don't love to cook or even really like to do it. I just maybe not that great at it.

• 2:05:20Speaker 01

  You make a good salad. That's good.

• 2:05:22Jocko Willink?

  I can make a good salad. Yeah. Funny. I can make a good steak. So anyways, Origin USA, OriginMaine.com if you want any of this stuff. We also have supplements. You've been drinking some Jocka, Jocka White Tea over there?

• 2:05:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm a fan.

• 2:05:37Jocko Willink?

  What's your verdict?

• 2:05:38Speaker 02

  No, I'm a fan. I think it's great.

• 2:05:39Jocko Willink?

  You got a big smile on your face.

• 2:05:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:41Jocko Willink?

  More than you had earlier. I think it, I think it not only is to give you an eight thousand pound deadlift, it will make you smile.

• 2:05:47Speaker 01

  Well, in a way it kind of is misleading because when you look at the can, there's no like hibiscus or pomegranate, like fruity label imagery. Yes.

• 2:05:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, we're not gonna.

• 2:05:58Speaker 02

  It looks pretty intense.

• 2:05:59Speaker 01

  It's tactical. It looks kind of tactical. You see what I'm saying? But then when you drink it, certified organic going in, very light, very refreshing. You see what I'm saying? So it's like a thing. So like when you drink it, you're, you're pleasantly surprised, I think on a subconscious level.

• 2:06:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So we got a bunch of different things. And one thing I do have to say is we got, um, so I, I make this little drink. It's called Discipline and there's a powder form and we just came out with a, a powder form that's called Jocko. But do you like, do you like Arnold Palmer's?

• 2:06:26Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:06:27Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So I'm, I like, I love them. So I made that right there. It's called Jaco Palmer.

• 2:06:32Speaker 02

  That's hilarious.

• 2:06:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, and we're gonna see how long we get away with it for. But um, yeah, so anyways,

• 2:06:39Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 2:06:40Jocko Willink?

  It tastes so good. It tastes like the best Arnold Palmer that you get from, you know, the restaurant Arnold Palmer's? When they do a good job.

• 2:06:48Speaker 02

  Oh, a good job.

• 2:06:49Jocko Willink?

  And you go, oh, you say I want an Arnold Palmer and they, they just, they just do a good job. And you're like, yes. This is kind of what it's like. So anyways, that's available and a bunch of other supplements. Molk, joint warfare.

• 2:07:02Speaker 01

  Krill.

• 2:07:03Jocko Willink?

  Krill oil, super krill oil.

• 2:07:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:06Jocko Willink?

  Warrior kid milk. Warrior kid milk for when your kids need something good to eat. And instead of giving them level nine Cheetos.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:19Jocko Willink?

  No, don't get them that. So yeah, you can get that.

• 2:07:21Speaker 01

  Yep, all in.

• 2:07:22Jocko Willink?

  Origin Maine.

• 2:07:22Speaker 01

  Maine.

• 2:07:23Jocko Willink?

  Dot com.

• 2:07:25Speaker 01

  It should be and dot org apparently, because you know, actually that's smart. When you do the dot org and the dot com. So and you know, when you go on GoDaddy and they tell you, hey, you want to buy the dot org, the dot net, the dot.

• 2:07:36Jocko Willink?

  Dot TV.

• 2:07:36Speaker 01

  Dot whatever, dot biz, you know, all this stuff or whatever. You say yes. If you have a good name, you say yes to all of those. That's a good strategy.

• 2:07:44Jocko Willink?

  See.

• 2:07:45Speaker 01

  Way ahead of the game. I like it.

• 2:07:47Jocko Willink?

  They're just getting.

• 2:07:48Speaker 01

  And then the last origin Maine dot com. That's the go to. That's where you can get this good stuff.

• 2:07:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  Also, we have a store. It's called Jaco Store. See, you're probably gonna kind of figure out real quick. Yeah, you know, it's and so Jaco Palmer is not a genius name.

• 2:08:06Jocko Willink?

  Kind of, a little bit.

• 2:08:08Speaker 01

  It's a name as a result of lack of genius.

• 2:08:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  You're like Arnold Palmer.

• 2:08:12Jocko Willink?

  There's genius in simplicity, bro. There's genius in simplicity. Give me some credit.

• 2:08:17Speaker 01

  Actually, that is true. Nonetheless, so if Jaco wants an online store, what's he gonna call it?

• 2:08:22Jocko Willink?

  Bottom line is I'm so unoriginal that I just, with, starting with this podcast, I just said, we'll just call it Jocko Podcast. And now it's like, sort of, this is everything. So.

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  Hey, we need an online store. What should we call it?

• 2:08:33Jocko Willink?

  Really dumb doing that too.

• 2:08:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 2:08:34Jocko Willink?

  Because now you look back, if, if like, four years ago.

• 2:08:40Jocko Willink?

  Someone would have said, okay, you're gonna name all your stuff Jaco. I would have been like, no, that's dumb.

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:46Jocko Willink?

  But it didn't happen like that. It happened like a little bit at a time. You know, next thing you know, you've got Jaco Publishing.

• 2:08:52Speaker 01

  What?

• 2:08:53Jocko Willink?

  How did that even happen?

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  The thing is, big picture, long game, it does make sense. It's actually smart. I think you, the genius in simplicity, I think this applies here. So nonetheless, JacoStore.com is where you can get your shirts and rash guards, tank to all these stuff while you're representing on the path. Discipline equals freedom.

• 2:09:12Jocko Willink?

  There's, I haven't really talked about this too much, but a guy, okay, so we got a T-shirt that says discipline equals freedom in it. I don't want to say it's iconic, but there's only one place in the world that you can get this T-shirt. This dude just got arrested in somewhere and his mugshot is him. He's wearing a discipline equals freedom T-shirt. And he's sporting this thing and what he did was apparently there was some kind of altercation and he beat up two people and then dropped them off somewhere.

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  Like at their house. Because what, I think they were like rugby players or something like that. Here's the thing. So when he, when I saw that article, you sent me that article, it wasn't as much, it was his court appearance.

• 2:09:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so he proactively went to court. It wasn't like he got rolled up and then they just. No, he's in court. This is what he decided to wear to court. He's representing on the path.

• 2:10:02Speaker 01

  On the path.

• 2:10:03Jocko Willink?

  We're curious, because, because a lot of people were like, oh, he's not on the path. Obviously, he's getting arrested and rolled up. You were kind of like, no, no, no, read, read a little bit more.

• 2:10:10Speaker 01

  I said, hey, we all represent the path in our own way and this guy's no different. So basically, as far as the article goes, what I got from it was, okay, him and his other friends who he probably found annoying at the time, they were drinking.

• 2:10:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:28Speaker 01

  Some argument ensued in the car. He beat them both up real bad. I don't know if it was in the car or before they got in the car.

• 2:10:36Jocko Willink?

  A little bit like, if either you're friends, you can't beat them up real bad. Wait, wait, what does real bad even consist of?

• 2:10:42Speaker 01

  Well, they said, they, well, okay, and then the guys who got beat up, they were saying, oh, I'm like. life threatening injuries or maybe their lawyer or somebody was saying, oh my gosh, I'm critical. And then the, the medical professionals, they're like, the whatever they got, they got beat up. They, they caught a beat down from the discipline equals freedom guy. That's what happened. Okay. Acting annoying and drunk. That's what happened. Then he dropped them off at their house.

• 2:11:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay. At this point, I will not issue an approved or disapproved. I'm remaining neutral at this time until further evidence comes forth and I can make a decision whether these actions were approved or disapproved.

• 2:11:19Speaker 01

  Agree, agree. But like I say, we all represent that in our own way. Nonetheless, he got that shirt, whether this means anything or not to us, even though it does. He got it from jocko store.com. That's where you can get, and it's not just.

• 2:11:34Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of crazy, isn't it?

• 2:11:35Speaker 01

  There's other ones.

• 2:11:36Jocko Willink?

  Is this because a little while ago in UFC, there was a guy wearing the shirt and like a bunch of people all there. So now we're sort of, this is headline news.

• 2:11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Your main, my brother texts me, he's like, hey, your mainstream now, you know?

• 2:11:49Jocko Willink?

  Listen to this. Speaking of tangents, so my uncles were both used car salesmen. And there was a crime that happened in the town where one of my uncles was a used car salesman. And at the crime scene, it was close to his used car lot. And in the picture that they took of the crime scene, in the background, you could see the sign for his, you know, Vic's used cars. You could see in the background in the sign on the front page. And my uncle, because my uncles are hilarious, they cut it out, they sent it to my mom. And he, my uncle cut out the picture, sent it to my mom and said, I told you I would make it big time.

• 2:12:34Jocko Willink?

  And here I am on the front page. So there you go. So we kind of, you know, it's, it's not nothing.

• 2:12:41Speaker 01

  We made the, it's not nothing. Yes. Yeah. We made the news. Uh, we're in criminal justice, you know?

• 2:12:47Jocko Willink?

  Justice. There you go. It's just, it's just all happening. All right. Real quick, uh, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't subscribe to this podcast, Echo doesn't think you subscribe to it at this point. Prove Echo wrong by subscribing to it. Don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcasts. That's for your. It's for your children and if you're a parent, it's very, very useful. Don't tell anyone. Don't tell your kids that. You want to keep your kids thinking that this is like a little bit unrelated to your thought process.

• 2:13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:16Jocko Willink?

  Cause that way they don't do the little rebel thing like some people sitting at this table right now. Which is actually all of us. Yeah. So check that out. Don't forget about the Warrior Kids Soap. IrishOaksRanch.com. Young Aiden making soap from goat milk. All natural so that everyone in the world can stay clean.

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  Stay clean. We also have a YouTube channel. You want to see?

• 2:13:43Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of staying clean, hold on. Can I say something?

• 2:13:46Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 2:13:47Jocko Willink?

  Before, we were, we were waiting for you downstairs and the front desk girl at the gym. So the studio is at the gym. For those of you don't know this, got a victory, a gym called Victory MMA in San Diego, California. The studio is in the gym. We were downstairs. We were waiting for Kirstie to show up. And the front desk girl goes, hey Jaco, I got a phone call. Someone wants to know where to train jujitsu in the city. In some city and I'm not going to say it in case of whatever, you know.

• 2:14:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:14:15Jocko Willink?

  Privacy act or whatever. So he says, she, he says, the front desk girl says, what should I tell him? And I said, well, here, give me the phone. And I like pulled up and I go, hey, man, what's going on? And he's like, Jaco. And I was like, hey, bro, what's happening? I hear you're looking to train jujitsu in your city. And I pulled out Google Maps. I was like, hey, there's a cool place here. There's a bunch of good places. Yeah, you're good to go. And he's like, he's like, hey, man.

• 2:14:41Jocko Willink?

  He goes, I was on crystal meth for seven years.

• 2:14:45Speaker 02

  Jesus.

• 2:14:45Jocko Willink?

  He goes, I started listening to your podcast. I'm clean.

• 2:14:50Jocko Willink?

  My family's back in order. My job is back in order. Please keep doing what you're doing. I'm starting to train jujitsu. And I was like, bro. So you, I'll keep doing what I'm doing. You stay on the path and stay clean. So right on to you out there. You know who you are. Now, I'm not saying if you call Victory MMA and Fitness that I'm gonna answer because I'm not. That's probably the first time I've talked on the phone here in a year.

• 2:15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:16Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:15:16Speaker 01

  Also, that's not to be confused with you using Trooper soap or Jaco soap gonna rehabilitate your drug situation.

• 2:15:25Jocko Willink?

  It will not help your crystal methamphetamine habit.

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  It might, but that's not the claim.

• 2:15:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. You can't claim it, but there's little triggers that you could have that could make you wanna stay clean.

• 2:15:34Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:15:34Jocko Willink?

  Maybe, maybe that soap, goat soap is one of them. You could be super stoked with that. Psychological warfare, you can get that from iTunes, Google Play. If, if you need that little, uh, couple of words to maybe get you on the path. And don't forget that we have a YouTube channel.

• 2:15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:51Jocko Willink?

  So now, now you can say what you're.

• 2:15:52Speaker 01

  If you want, I was gonna say, or I was saying, if you want to see what Kirstie looks like.

• 2:15:57Jocko Willink?

  Hey, before, before you check and see what Kirstie looks like now, first you should go and see, where's that picture posted of you with your freaking face?

• 2:16:07Speaker 02

  It's on Instagram and Facebook.

• 2:16:08Jocko Willink?

  Ripped open.

• 2:16:10Speaker 02

  Yep. Could fit my fist with the lower right side of my face.

• 2:16:13Jocko Willink?

  You can see, is that teeth you can see in there? You can see like white stuff.

• 2:16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's two little teeth. Like my jaw was shattered and just unhinged. So it's just gonna like hang in there.

• 2:16:22Speaker 01

  Is it the kind picture on Instagram, the kind where it's like blurred out with the eyeball with the, with the crossover it where you gotta click on it?

• 2:16:29Jocko Willink?

  I would guess it is.

• 2:16:30Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I don't think they got me yet.

• 2:16:32Jocko Willink?

  I bet if you repost it, if you repost it, you'll be like, they'll, they'll, they'll, what's that called? Blur it out?

• 2:16:38Speaker 01

  Like a censor for approval, something. Yeah, dang. Do it. Well, yeah, then now you can see what she currently looks like in black and white, by the way, but I'm just saying, you know?

• 2:16:48Jocko Willink?

  In black and white.

• 2:16:49Speaker 01

  It's available on the YouTube channel.

• 2:16:52Jocko Willink?

  When people meet me, they go, oh, you're in color. That's one thing they say. And you know what else they say to me? You're shorter than I thought you would be.

• 2:17:01Speaker 02

  I get that all the time, do you?

• 2:17:02Jocko Willink?

  I'm 5'11". And, and they're like, oh, you're not as tall. Well, I shouldn't say everyone says that to me, but like, I would say 10% of people. So you get that from time to time. Say, you're a lot shorter than I thought you were gonna be. And I say, oh, cool.

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  They say that about you too?

• 2:17:17Speaker 02

  Oh, all the time.

• 2:17:18Speaker 01

  That's, that's interesting, because you know what people tell me? You're way bigger and way this than I thought, you know? But that's obvious, yeah, for obvious reasons.

• 2:17:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer, Dakota was just on Joe Rogan, by the way. Pretty, pretty awesome to hear that. And we have a little company of his called flipsidecanvas.com, selling artwork. If you want to do something, like some saying of yours, if you want to put it out there to the world, we'll talk to Dakota, we'll make it happen. And by the way, I told Dakota, you know who Dakota is, right?

• 2:17:52Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:17:52Jocko Willink?

  I told Dakota that I was talking to you today, and he told me to tell you, oh, he said, tell her she's a, he said, man, he said, tell her she's a badass. I said, I'll let her know, man, I'll let her know. So Dakota Meyer, badass of all badasses, says, you are a badass. So check out flipsidecanvas.com if you want to get that out. I've written a bunch of books. The latest book coming out, January 2020, is called Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. It is available for pre-order at this time, if you want to get the first edition. If you don't care, and you just want to roll up to me in a year with the third edition, and, and have me belittle you, and make fun of you for not showing any commitment to the cause,

• 2:18:38Jocko Willink?

  cool, do that. Wait, if you want to get in the game big time, and you want to have the, the trump card of books.

• 2:18:47Speaker 01

  Sir.

• 2:18:48Jocko Willink?

  Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. So you get that Way to Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3. Available now. Teaching young kids what, what not just young kids should know, but what everyone should know. So get those books, Mikey and the Dragons for the little kids, the littler kids. A lot of people think it's the best children's book ever written. That's the feedback that I'm getting.

• 2:19:14Speaker 01

  I see how that could be, for sure.

• 2:19:16Jocko Willink?

  So you may want to judge for yourself, Mikey and the Dragons. I tend to agree with them.

• 2:19:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:19:22Jocko Willink?

  For the little kids. Uh, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, we got Extreme Ownership, we got Dichotomy of Leadership. All those books about how to lead and win. In your life and leading. The team that you work with. We got Echelon Front, which is my leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details, EF Online, get the same training. Interactive, online. EFOnline.com, we got the muster coming up in Sydney, Australia. By the way. Have you ever been to Australia?

• 2:19:54Speaker 02

  I have.

• 2:19:55Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you love Australia?

• 2:19:57Speaker 02

  I loved it.

• 2:19:57Jocko Willink?

  Where were you in Australia?

• 2:19:59Speaker 02

  Brisbane.

• 2:19:59Jocko Willink?

  I went to Brizzy too. I, I was, it was so awesome.

• 2:20:06Speaker 02

  I loved it.

• 2:20:07Jocko Willink?

  It was so awesome. And so we're doing a big event down there and um, definitely looking forward to it. It's in Sydney, it's December 4th and 5th. Here's the thing, some people think, oh, it's not going to sell out. If you're thinking that, you're not correct. You're not correct because every event that we've done has sold out. Some people have said, well, are you going to go to Brisbane? Are you going to go to Perth? The answer is no. We are not a rock band on tour. We're not hitting every city in Australia, we're not, we're not even hitting every city in America. We're doing, we do one or two, this is probably, we probably won't go back to Australia for. Five years. That's one of my guesses right now. We probably won't go back to Australia for five years because we'll do Europe, then we'll do Asia.

• 2:20:52Jocko Willink?

  So I guess, you see what I'm saying? So if you, if you're, if you're in Australia, or you're in New Zealand, or you're somewhere in that area of the world and you want to come to muster, come to the one that is taking place. December 4th and 5th. We also have EF Overwatch for. Veterans that are looking to be placed into companies that need leadership, go to efoverwatch.com. And on top of all that, if you just feel like you haven't gotten enough right now, you haven't gotten enough of me, if you haven't got enough of Echo, you haven't gotten enough of Kirstie yet, cool, this conversation will continue on the social media interwebs,

• 2:21:37Jocko Willink?

  on Twitter, on Instagram, and on that.

• 2:21:44Jocko Willink?

  Kirstie is, first of all, kirstyennisfoundation.org and .com.

• 2:21:51Speaker 02

  Nailed it.

• 2:21:52Jocko Willink?

  Kirstie Instagram, kirsty underscore ennis, Twitter, Kirstie ennis, and it's K-I-R-S-T-I-E and then N-S-E-N-N-I-S, and then Facebook, at Kirstie ennis, and Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. Echo, do you have anything else?

• 2:22:11Speaker 01

  No, sir. No, ma'am. Good to see you. Good to meet you.

• 2:22:14Speaker 02

  Likewise. Thanks for having me.

• 2:22:16Jocko Willink?

  Kirstie, any closing thoughts from you?

• 2:22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I just want people to realize that me climbing all of these big, you know, ridiculous mountains all over the world, it's, it's more than it just being about me. Um, you know, I'm doing it for the people that need to hope, you know, somebody that needs inspiration, or even just the nonbelievers really waiting for me to prove them wrong. Um, and even more so like I'm doing this with heart and passion and purpose. And, you know, even for example, like when I was out in Everest, me and my organization helped, um, establish the first ever wheelchair program over in Nepal for 25 amputee orphans, you know, and we were just down in Ecuador. We actually had seven amputees standing on top of Cotapaxi. So, you know, this really is, it's, it's just about paying it forward and, and helping, you know, get the adaptive community into the outdoors and, and hopefully encouraging,

• 2:23:04Speaker 02

  you know, other people regardless of whatever your adversity that you're facing, you know, to go outside and, you know, and find what really sets your heart on fire.

• 2:23:12Jocko Willink?

  It's been a legit honor to, to sit down with you, to meet with you, and I definitely, absolutely thank you for coming on the show. I know it's a, I know it's a scary time commitment, especially when I tell you it's, it might be, you know, we've done podcasts that are four or five hours long. But, so it's awesome, and, and it's awesome for me to have the opportunity to share your story. It's an honor to be able to do that. So, thank you for coming on. More important than that, thank you for your service and your sacrifice in the Marine Corps.

• 2:23:44Jocko Willink?

  On top of that, thank you for your continued service today with what you're doing with your foundation.

• 2:23:51Jocko Willink?

  And on top of that, but what you do every day to show the rest of us the path. And set an example for, for everybody. So, thank you for all that and the rest of the service members out there. Worldwide. Currently serving or who have served. Thank you for your service and your sacrifice and thanks for keeping us free and here at home to our police. Law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all the first responders that there are. Thank you for keeping us safe on the home front and to everyone else out there.

• 2:24:38Jocko Willink?

  We all suffer losses.

• 2:24:42Jocko Willink?

  We all are going to have highs and lows in our lives. We can all be petrified of what the future may hold. And we can all have setbacks and doubts and pain.

• 2:24:59Jocko Willink?

  That's what's gonna happen in life.

• 2:25:04Jocko Willink?

  But if you can look at someone like Kirstie and you can follow her lead.

• 2:25:13Jocko Willink?

  And you fight for it and you work for it and you work through it, those losses and those setbacks and that pain. Will make you better.

• 2:25:25Jocko Willink?

  So as Kirstie said. Appreciate the days.

• 2:25:31Jocko Willink?

  Every day. And get on the path and stay on the path by getting out there. And getting after it. And until next time. This is Kirstie Ennis and Echo and Jaco. Out.