223: Be Skilled, Capable, and Prepared to Take Care of Yourself and the People Around You. With Pat McNamara.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:07:06 - Pat McNamara. 2:14:59 - Final Thoughts. 2:21:03 - How to Stay on THE PATH. 2:39:07 - 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 223 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  Modern combat is chaotic, intense, and shockingly destructive. In your first battle, you will experience the confusing and often terrifying sights, sounds, smells, and dangers of the battlefield. But you must learn to survive and win despite them.

• 0:32Jocko Willink?

  One, you could face a fierce and relentless enemy. Two, you could be surrounded by destruction and death. Three, your leaders and fellow soldiers may shout urgent commands and warnings. Four, rounds might impact near you. Five, the air could be filled with the smell of explosives and propellant. Six, you might hear the screams of a wounded comrade.

• 1:01Jocko Willink?

  However, even in all this confusion and fear, remember that you are not alone. You are part of a well-trained team backed by the most powerful combined arms force and the most modern technology in the world.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  You must keep faith with your fellow soldiers, remember your training, and do your duty to the best of your ability.

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  If you do, and you uphold your warrior ethos, you can win and return home with honor.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  This is the Soldier's Field Manual. It tells the soldier how to perform the combat skills needed to survive on the battlefield.

• 1:47Jocko Willink?

  All soldiers across branches and components must learn these basic skills. Non-commissioned officers must ensure that their soldiers receive training on and know these vital combat skills.

• 2:10Jocko Willink?

  So, that right there is the opening introduction of the US Army Field Manual 3 TAC 21.75, the Warrior Ethos and Soldier Combat Skills.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  And after that intro, the field manual itself is just filled with these skills, vast skills that are the backbone of being a good soldier.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  Things like this, things like combat casualty care and casualty evacuation, how to work in the desert, in the jungle, in arctic conditions, how to use cover, concealment, and camouflage, how to prepare fighting positions, fighting positions in urban environments, fighting positions in rural environments, immediate actions, fire and movement, fire movement on foot and fire movement in vehicles.

• 3:09Jocko Willink?

  Things like how to move effectively through open areas, how to get past windows, how to maneuver around corners, how to enter a building, clear a room, how to conduct reconnaissance missions, how to shoot a variety of weapons, and not just shoot them, but how do you battle zero those weapons? How do you use reflexive fire? What are your immediate actions on failure of your weapon systems? And of course, there's communications. You gotta learn a bunch of different radios and radio voice procedures. And then on top of that, you got, you got the classic survival,

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  evasion, resistance, escape in the event that you get captured.

• 3:57Jocko Willink?

  What about chemical, biological, and radiological weapons?

• 4:02Jocko Willink?

  How do you face those? How do you, what are the decontamination and treatment procedures for all those? What about mines? What about demolitions? What about breaching procedures?

• 4:13Jocko Willink?

  What about IEDs? How do you identify them? How do you find them? How do you disarm or destroy them?

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  Those are some of the things you need to learn and on top of all that, what about your army values? What about the law of land warfare? The code of conduct? The soldier's creed and the warrior ethos?

• 4:36Jocko Willink?

  This manual is packed.

• 4:41Jocko Willink?

  And that is a lot to learn. It's a lot to track. And quite frankly, what that manual covers is the basics. The fundamentals. That's like the starting point because there are countless skills beyond those fundamentals.

• 4:57Jocko Willink?

  And the longer that a soldier stays on task, the longer he stays operational, the more proficient he becomes at those fundamental skills and then moves on to advanced skills that have tighter standards and more detail and more modalities.

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  And one thing about being a soldier is you never, you never master it. There's, there's too much. There's too many things to know, too many things to understand, too many things to practice, too many things to rehearse, too many things to exercise and too many things to execute.

• 5:33Jocko Willink?

  To be truly good at these.

• 5:38Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you what, these skills, they're not only applicable to soldiers.

• 5:44Jocko Willink?

  They're all applicable to life. They're all useful in life.

• 5:54Jocko Willink?

  And maybe it's because there's so much. Sometimes

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  sometimes people, sometimes soldiers, sometimes servicemen and women, they let those skills slide as time goes on. They become softer. They weaken.

• 6:16Jocko Willink?

  But there are some soldiers and some people that continue to strive, that continue to push, that continue to try become faster and stronger and more skilled and more accurate and more lethal.

• 6:35Jocko Willink?

  And they never stop aspiring to be their best. And, and those,

• 6:43Jocko Willink?

  those are the true sentinels of freedom.

• 6:50Jocko Willink?

  Who not only strive to be their best, but also pass on their knowledge to others.

• 6:57Jocko Willink?

  That's what they do with their lives. And it's an honor to have one of those sentinels with us here tonight.

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  Retired special forces soldier, tactical shooting instructor, and all around highly skilled and capable combat veteran. Pat McNamara. Pat?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Brother, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.

• 7:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, man. Thanks for coming on. It's a, I know we linked up. I forget how you sent me a message. I sent you a message or something and we, but you finally were able to come out here. And you know, you said, hey, you're going to be around. I'm like, I can make it happen.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  You know, the beauty of the interwebs, right? I, I meet some really great people. I mean outstanding people with great character and all positive attributes. So, and when I meet them like you, for example, all I knew, knew you through is through the interwebs. Never, we've never met in person. But you could siphon through the bullshit and tell whether or not somebody's legit and whether they're, you know, uh, whether they're honorable person, whether they got good work ethic and all that shit. So, um, the people I meet, I'm very fortunate to have met some great, uh, people because of the, uh, the interwebs. And you're one of them. So thank you so much for, uh, making this happen. So.

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  You and I got some things in common. One of them is we both got in the military pretty quick. We also both grew up in New England.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:31Jocko Willink?

  So, let's go, let's go right to the beginning.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  Where this started.

• 8:37Jocko Willink?

  You grew up in Connecticut?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  And, were you a sport, were you an athlete?

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Uh, you know what, I, I, I started out like my early like tweens years, uh, kind of, um, I was an odd kid, man. I was an oddball, you know, I, I was, I was probably, uh, my dad was probably disappointed, but he supported all my oddball shit that I wanted to do. I mean, I had all the sissy hobbies.

• 9:01Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  I was not an athlete. I was, I was, uh, I was the kid who got picked on.

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  No kidding?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I would ride a unicycle.

• 9:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Right. There was a reason for it and there was a time when I went through a metamorphosis and I had, it was like sink or swim type of thing. But, you know, I would, I would, I'd ride a unicycle to school. I drew, I watched birds, I picked flowers, all that stuff. Um, and, um, yeah, I was, I was a big time sissy and then, um, I had a, I had a window of opportunity to get tough. Uh, and I had some mentors, uh, in my neighborhood who pointed me down a road. Uh, and the window of opportunity was,

• 9:49Speaker 01

  it was basically like survival because, uh, I had an older brother who tormented me. I mean, he was a horrible person. Uh, and when he went to prison the first time, I was right at like 15 years old. So, you know, as a teenager, you're, you know, you're growing. You, you have the capacity to really grow and be somebody. And I had neighbors and said, hey, man, what are you gonna do with this time? You have this time. And I didn't even think of it as that. I had no idea what they were talking about. You have this time to, to, to, to prepare for his, uh, re, you know, for, uh, for him to come back home. You have time.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  So, um, yeah, I started wrestling. That was a big thing. And the wrestling turned me around. And my first two years, I sucked, but my second two years, I was, I was badass. My senior year, I could not be beaten. Uh, because I fell in love with it and I would go to the college during the summers and practice with the college students, that kind of thing. And I was lifting weights and, and, uh, you know, running back and forth to work and stuff like that. Uh, so I was able to, uh, like self-govern. I didn't need anybody to drive me because I saw the results. I saw it was happening. I saw the change. Um, got in a couple of street fights. So that, you know, you learn,

• 11:12Speaker 01

  you learn whether or not you could cut the mustard in the neighborhood based on, you know, who's, who's picking a fight with you and how, and what the results are. Whether you're getting your ass beat with humility or you're kicking somebody's ass. Either way, you know, you're learning a lot about yourself.

• 11:30Jocko Willink?

  What'd you do in the street fights? Double leg slam?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Double leg takedown, you know, to a dump, to a headlock, to a couple punches in the face. Yep. Um, exactly.

• 11:41Jocko Willink?

  Those were the, you know, they talk about like the good old days. You, like, you know, in the good old days, we didn't use guns and knives, whatever. Hey, in the good old days, it was just double leg headlock.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  That's right. Double leg.

• 11:55Jocko Willink?

  That's what a street fight was. There wasn't any of this jujitsu or Muay Thai. No, double leg headlock punches to the face.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  I tell you, you had a real advantage if you knew a little bit of fight, you know, back then, because

• 12:11Speaker 01

  you know, back then, I think fight training was, you know, taekwondo or stuff like that. You know, it was karate. Um, yeah, there was no like Muay Thai and jujitsu and stuff. So if you were wrestling. Uh, yeah, you had a big advantage on the street.

• 12:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there was a, there was a guy when I was a new guy at SEAL Team One, there was like a guy that had a reputation of being a fighter because he was some kind of, some kind of karate guy or something like that. And this is, this is the nineties, right? This isn't that long ago, but it's before UFC One. So people kind of thought, well, you know, if you did karate, man, I don't, you know, like, I mean, you know, and, and there was a little inter platoon scrap between the karate kid, we'll say, and the kid that was a wrestler.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:57Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and a good wrestler, like a state champ wrestler.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably midwesterner or something.

• 13:01Jocko Willink?

  And he, you know, it was exactly what, what happened in the fight? The karate kid got in his karate stance and, uh, wrestler did a double leg slam headlock punch.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:09Jocko Willink?

  And everyone's like, dang. And, and what's crazy is now that I'm thinking about it, even back then, it was kind of like, well, that must've just been, you know, a, a fluke. That the kar- that the karate kid didn't do whatever, uh, demock and kill him on the spot.

• 13:28Jocko Willink?

  So, so, uh, so wrestling was, uh, huge, huge for you?

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, big. Yeah, massive. So that really, that changed, that changed me, uh, in every, every way, you know, both physically and mentally. Uh, it just, and it, it's so funny because I talk a lot, a lot, I talk about it a lot with different special op guys. And one of the big common denominators is most of them were wrestlers in high school, you know, or, or a really big percentage of them were wrestlers in high school. Cause I think it, that's the one sport where even though you're on a team, you know, you're not relying on a team or you, you, you're representing a team and you're earning points for your team. And you have to be a team player, but you have to be self-driven too.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  You know, you have, if you want to be the best, you have to think, well, I need to do a thousand reps of this thing. I need to get my grip strength better. I need better balance. I need to do more sprints. I need, you know, to, um, um, uh, increase my shoulder strength, whatever it is. You know, you have to, you have to be very introspective. Unlike, you know, cause I played other sports and, and there's some, there's some common ground with them too, but. But with the wrestling, you know, you're mono, we mono with another dude for that six minutes in time and man, that's a long freaking six minutes if it goes six minutes. Holy shit.

• 14:54Jocko Willink?

  You know what else is and um, there's another big thing, a big psychological thing and my son just, just wrapped up his season and you know what? The season didn't end how he wanted it to end.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:07Jocko Willink?

  And his coach, who's a great guy, uh, came up to me and, and he, you know, I was just standing there, you know, I was bummed out, but I'm not like super emotional about the thing, but his coach comes up and says, I said, yeah, it's a bad day. And he goes, yeah, it's a bad day to have a bad day. And I said, yeah. And he goes, wrestling very rarely ends the way you want it to.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:30Jocko Willink?

  And if you think about that, you know, you go into a 64 man bracket, there's one person that that day ends the way they wanted it to or two days. And then guess what? That person's going to the next tournament.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:41Jocko Willink?

  And what are the chances that, so really, and when you get done with the season, if you're the champion for the season, guess what? That means you've got another season coming up and eventually, eventually you're not going to be happy with the outcome. Right? That's what's going to happen. So what's, what I love about it is, you know, especially like you're saying, your freshman, sophomore year, you're just getting beat down.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:01Jocko Willink?

  And so many kids I see in the wrestling program, they, that first year, you know, if they're getting beat down because they've never wrestled before, they can't take it.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:08Jocko Willink?

  And they quit it and they quit. But people that are tough and they, they look at themselves and say, well, I at least see how I can get myself better.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  How did it work out when your brother got home?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  It, it, it turned out really, really well.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  He, I was upstairs, uh, at the top of the stairwell and I was in the bathroom. I was taking a dump.

• 16:31Jocko Willink?

  Was he in juvie or was?

• 16:33Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Yeah, he was in the big, he was state. He was, yeah, he went to the, he went to the Penn, state Penn.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  I'll, I'll think about the name because you'll remember it. You'll know the, the name of the town and everything. It'll, it'll hit me. But he came upstairs and, uh, basically kicked the bathroom door open and I'm sitting down. I'm sitting down taking a dump.

• 16:53Jocko Willink?

  That's like out of a movie.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:55Jocko Willink?

  It's like the ultimate bully move.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. And I'm intimidated and I'm, and I'm, now I'm embarrassed too, because I got my pants around my ankles. And I said, hey, get, you know, get the hell out of here. And he's, he turns, I could tell he's stoned out of his mind. And he's got his fist in my face, you know, one of those, say I won't, say I won't. And I pull my pants up and I said, you won't. And I freaking just straight right, just straight overhand, right bam. And it went almost through his face and he went down the stairs. And then what did I do? I followed him downstairs. He got up, double leg takedown, headlock and punch him.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  And, and my parents were sitting in the kitchen. And um, they crossed their legs and just watched it happen. They were like, it's about time this guy, this is up and coming. So I hear, you know, this is karma. They didn't do a thing. So I got, you know, those blix in and I told them goodbye and boogied out the door. Cause I was going out. And was that your senior year? That was my junior year. Yep. At what point did you start looking at the, at the military? Uh, that year. Yep. I, I knew I, so it, yeah, junior year. Uh, 16, 17 is when I knew I had to, uh, I had to do that. And I had no idea what anything was with the military.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  So it's funny because when I went to the recruiters, I didn't tell my dad and I went to all the recruiters. I had no, I had no, I had no preference. It wasn't like I had allegiance because you know, somebody's dad was in the Marine Corps forever, or, or wore the army colors or anything like that. I didn't care. I just wanted, I wanted to be a tough guy. So I went to each one of the recruiters and, and the vetting process was who could fast track me? Who could put me on a road to badassery the fastest?

• 18:49Speaker 01

  I wanted to fast track the badassery. So at the time, the army had the best answer. Uh, because they had two programs. They had Rangers. Uh, and then they had the SF baby program, 18 x-ray. So um, I signed up for that and I went home and told my dad, my dad was like, he was a little put off because I didn't tell him. He said, hey, we're going, we're going back there, but I'm bringing my lawyer. Because I don't want this guy to fuck you. And sure as shit, man, when I went back with the lawyer, he was doing some scrambling with the paperwork. Yeah, he was, he was changing some numbers or digits around or whatever. So I'm so glad that my dad hooked me up like that, you know, uh, because it could have gone really bad.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  I mean, mostly, I mean, it's, it's so funny. It's, it's so funny because I look at that career and it, and you have to be so lucky, you know, with this. And I tell all the, all these guys who, uh, you know, contact me on the interwebs and stuff. They say, hey, I want to be a CEO, I want to be a force recount, all this stuff. And, and, and it's hard to explain to them the amount, not only how, how tenacious you have to be, but the amount of luck involved in that road. I say, guys, this is, it's, it's, it's a good road to take. It's a bumpy road. There's no shortcuts. But it's a well, uh, it's a road worth taking. But damn, man, I mean, because the amount of times I failed

• 20:14Speaker 01

  throughout my 22 year career, I could write a book just on failures, you know, and the amount of shit that I failed and had to go back and do again. The injuries and the recoveries and the surgeries and another failure, another failure, another failure. And I mean, and, and it's easy, it's, it's pretty easy to go, well, I failed that one. So I'm probably just not cut out for that thing. But with most special ops guys, they don't stop at one thing. They don't like, for, for instance, become airborne ranger and say, well, this is it. This is pinnacle. I'm peeking out here. Uh, I'm going to just accept this. I mean, it's a great career path.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  But most of them say, what's the next step? You know, what's the next step? Let me go and see if I could, uh, you know, go to Halo school. Let me go to combat dive school. Let me, uh, go to SF course. Let me try out for selection and go to the unit. You know, for most of them, they want to keep progressing and progressing and progressing. So the opportunity in the, and the, um, not the opportunity, but the chance, the chances of failure become greater and greater because, you know, you're volunteering over and over and over. So whenever I talk to young kids and they want to be, you know,

• 21:31Speaker 01

  They have it. They have it in their mind. I want to be a SEAL. I'm like, that's great, but just understand, you know, I'm all about it. And, and, and, you know, if you've got a good, if you've got a good, but it's, the hard part for me is to tell them, there's a lot of luck involved.

• 21:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I thought you were going to say there's no shortcuts and there's no guarantees.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  That's, that's it too. Yeah. Just like that road. There's no shortcuts on that road.

• 21:58Jocko Willink?

  Yep. That's why one thing that I, I pretty much, one thing I try not to do is say, yep, you should do it.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 22:08Jocko Willink?

  Because, and, and the worst thing about the Navy and going for the SEAL teams is, look, if that's the kind of lifestyle you want to live, you want to carry a machine gun, that's great, right? If you don't make it in the SEAL teams, then you're not carrying a machine gun.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:23Jocko Willink?

  At all.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:23Jocko Willink?

  Hey, if you don't make it through SF, or you don't make it as a Ranger, or you don't make it to force recon, you can still be a grunt, which is awesome.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:29Jocko Willink?

  And that's what you want to do. I've wanted to be a grunt since I was born. So, so when I joined the Navy, I never thought about that. I didn't even recognize that. I was too dumb. But it's, it's no guarantee. There's no shortcut. And man, yeah, it takes luck. You, you land wrong on a jump, you, you know, get hurt for, in, in the basic SEAL training, there's something called rock portage, where there's big waves, you're landing boats in these giant rocky area. And it's no, it's too easy just to step off a rock, wave hits, your knee's blown out.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:04Jocko Willink?

  Two years of recovery, you put on weight, you're fat, you're out of shape, you know, you go back, you get stress fractures, you're done. I mean, that happens all the time.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:12Jocko Willink?

  It happens all the time.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  I was, I was a toad jumper. My second jump, I was 18 years old. 18 years old. I was a freaking toad jumper. I got towed all the way across Friar Drop Zone. Pulled my bicep into my forearm, broke my ribs, dislocated shoulder, concussion. I mean, I was jacked up and I had just joined. That was my first failure. That was number one. And that set me back, bro.

• 23:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Getting in that airplane again?

• 23:38Jocko Willink?

  Was that, what number jump was that for you?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Number two. So I had, I still had three left, or three or four, whatever it is, in jump school.

• 23:46Jocko Willink?

  So toad jumper is?

• 23:50Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's just a nightmare.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:53Jocko Willink?

  And they brief it all the time. I've never even, I've never seen one.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:56Jocko Willink?

  Um, they brief it all the time. So talk us through, talk us through being a tow jumper.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Well, for, I mean, for people who don't know, you know, when you start out a jump career, that's how you start with a, with static line. So the static line is hooked to an inboard cable inside the aircraft. And when you jump out of the airplane, you hit the, at the, um, uh, the end of the static line and it deploys your chute. It pulls the chute out and subsequently, you know, the chute inflates and you float to the ground straight down. It's a round chute. There's not a lot of skill involved.

• 24:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the key part is that, that once that static line pulls the chute out, it lets go.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  They're not, they're not connected.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:37Jocko Willink?

  So it just pulls the chute out. The chute is now inflated and the static line stays with the aircraft.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Stays with the aircraft. Yep. So, and there's many different ways.

• 24:45Jocko Willink?

  Right. That's what's supposed to happen. There's a lot of different ways you could

• 24:48Speaker 01

  become a tow jumper. One is it's a, it's a fault of the rigger. So the rigger did something and there's a knot somewhere within the, um, uh, uh, you know, the, the lines of the canopy or what have you. So those are pretty rare. Um, another more common one is a fault of the jumper. You know, so the jumper does something wrong. You know, he, uh, he doesn't hand it to the, uh, to, to the, uh, to the safety the right way, his static line. Because as you're, as you're going down, you know, uh, uh, the aircraft toward the door, you've

• 25:29Speaker 01

  got the static line in your hand and the last step before you exit is to hand it to the safety, the jump master. And he collects it up and he, you know, pushes him away, uh, from the jumper. So it's, uh, it's, it's, it's all very well rehearsed and it's choreographed and it, there's a lot of theater too. It looks cool. Um, so I must have just like chucked it at him and it got away from him and it went like under my reserve and around my arm. So I am ha- not even halfway. I'm at the beginning of the stick. Uh, double doors, C one thirty. I'm at the beginning of the stick. I go out and instant

• 26:10Speaker 01

  fire through my whole body, instant. I go, I hit the end of the static line and I feel my whole body just jerk and go with the aircraft. I was lucky that the static line was under my reserve and not just around the arm. Because that would, you know, my arm would have just come off, bro, you know? But uh, so it's under the reserve around the arm. So there was some friction there with the static line around the equipment. Uh, the rest of it was around my arm. And I remember I had the whereabouts to look up the length of the static line. And I could see jumpers coming over the top of me. But this wasn't, now, don't get me wrong. This was not me

• 26:55Speaker 01

  beat, I was scared shitless. You know, I was looking up going, oh my god. You know, this, this is, I was horrified. It was, you know, a moment of horror. Um, and over, over, over, I could see jumpers jumping over me and I'm going, what in the hell? You know, the training said, you know, put your hands on your reserve and wait to get pulled in and all this stuff and, and, um, and I'm not remembering any, because I can't do this. I can't put my

• 27:22Jocko Willink?

  Cause your arm is too jacked up.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Arms up, yeah.

• 27:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, is your arm like tangled in the static line?

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. Now, and, and most of the tension is around the reserve. Uh, but some, and I keep hitting the airplane. So thankfully, I hit

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  Cause you, just so everyone knows, because you're in a hundred and thirty, hundred and forty mile an hour wind.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:40Jocko Willink?

  That's what's, that's what's tossing you around.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  So I'm getting slammed up against the aircraft. And, um, thankfully, I get slammed hard enough and it comes loose. So I, you know, fall into the static line, boom, chute deploys. Had, had that not happened, there's no way I would have had the whereabouts pull up my reserve. No freaking way. Cause I was already, you know, shocky. You know, the body is amazing. You know, when you reach, you know, pain level ten. The body would compensate, you know, and says, let's take care of you and put you into some shock here. So, you know, so you don't feel that bad. But I remember being very, very uncomfortable under canopy and I was groaning and moaning just,

• 28:21Speaker 01

  you know, just moaning and groaning. And I was all the way at the end of Friar. Now, I was supposed to be like way up at the leading edge. I was all the way at the end. I mean, right like at the wood line. Uh, and I hit the ground and I land on that side. Boom, right on those ribs and all that soft shit right on that arm. Now to add insult to injury. I'm laying there and I'm going, uh, you know, I'm just an 18 year old punky kid, bro. You know, I've done nothing but basic training and A I T. To add insult to injury, I'm laying there on the ground and a breeze comes in. My shooting blades, my shooting blades and it starts dragging me across Friar drop zone.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  And I'm getting drug, boom, boom, boom. And I could hear, you know, the black hats. So the instructors out there would sit, uh, would stand on these platforms with bull horns. And they were, you know, placed throughout this massive, what's Friar drop zone? Like a two minute drop zone or something gigantic. It's massive. And I could hear one of these black hat instructors yelling at me, get up leg, you over there getting drug, release one of your canopy, canopy release assemblies now leg. And I'm going, oh my God, I better do what he says because I'm going to get in trouble. So I do that. I reach up and pop, pop one of my cable loop type canopy release assemblies. And, um, and I'm scared. I'm scared because I think I'm going to get in trouble.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  You know, because, because I'm hurt and, and I didn't get permission to get hurt. This is the first time I was ever injured, injured, injured in my life. You know, real injury. Uh, I packed all my shit up. You know, I packed all that crap up into that kit bag, threw it on my back and I remember being really, really scared because there was no signal from my head to my arm. You know, there was no transmission to make it move, to make it work. Um, and then I remember feeling my face and feeling blood. That was superficial, but you know, I hit, the cut was superficial, but I hit hard, you know, against the aircraft. Boom, boom, boom,

• 30:24Speaker 01

  over and over. Um, so I, I, I got all my shit and I pack it up and I, I bring it all into the turn in area and the black hats are scanning the crowd because they know that somebody's fucked up. They saw it and they're scanning the crowd and I'm going, oh my God. And a buddy comes up to my, to me, he goes, hey, bro, you look bad. Cause I was, I guess just ash and white, you know, and I'm dry hevy and stuff. And, and I look, I look at my arm and he could see that it was the old school BDUs, uh, like gen one BDUs. I had rope burns around. And I go, yeah, man, I'm hurt really bad. I don't, I don't feel good. And he said, let me help you with that. And he unbuttoned my blouse and he looked and

• 31:06Speaker 01

  that's when I threw up because now I'm looking at this arm and there was, it wasn't open, but it was like translucent, the skin and there was no bicep and he kept pulling it down and boom, there it was in my forearm, you know, and, uh, um, so the black hats see that and they come running over you, the guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the medevac already took off with some dude with a broken femur. The bird already took off. So they had to bus me back on one of these bluebird buses, school buses, all the way to Martin Army Hospital. And then to add more insult to injury, this is 1983. So there's a bunch of dudes in there with grenade injuries, like real jump injuries, you know, and the hospital's filled with these dudes, man, with Rangers and guys from 82nd who have

• 31:50Speaker 01

  like real combat jump injuries. And I'm here with this toe jumper, school 45th company, duffel bag, drag, you know, injury. I was like, oh my God, this sucks so bad. That was beginning of, I mean, I had, but, but there was a lot of times like that, you know, in my, in my, like I said, I could write a book on, on, on how many times of, I have failed, but they're funny stories. I try to make it, I try to make it interesting and, and funny.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  How did you, just to rewind a little bit, what did you do to get ready? What did you know about special forces training and what did you do to get ready prior to going in?

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't have, I had, oh, prior to going in. So I was wrestling, I was lifting weights, I was doing a lot of hiking, you know, like camping and stuff like that.

• 32:39Jocko Willink?

  And is that because you knew like pumping was part of it?

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yep, I knew that they were woodsmen and stuff like that. I had a buddy who was, uh, he was, I was a Boy Scout. Um, I had a buddy who was an Eagle Scout and knew all the mountaineering stuff. He was really good and, um, uh, we would go up and do ropes and rappelling and all that, you know? It's also good for fear management when you're a kid, you know, rappelling off the side of a cliff is great. Stuff to help compartmentalize those, you know, fears of heights and things like that. But I, I did a lot of woods running, you know, and just, I, I think for me it was therapeutic and it was more about uh, mental preparation than physical preparation. Physically, I was pretty freaking strong. I was, I was very fit. I was a very fit teenager.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  You know, in my, my latter teen years, seventeen, eighteen years old. I was very self-driven. I wanted to be fit. I saw that, you know, that I looked cool too, you know? And, uh, that's a freaking motivator, bro. When you're seventeen and eighteen and when you got a physique. It's like, yep, I'm gonna, I need to, I need to work out more because damn, this shit looks good.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Getting jacked.

• 33:54Jocko Willink?

  Jacked, yep. Yeah, now when you got in, what was the shock to your system like day two of boot camp?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Uh, so regular boot camp, that was, that was scary as hell. I, I love it how,

• 34:11Speaker 01

  how, you know, it's all theater.

• 34:13Jocko Willink?

  But you don't know that.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  No, you have no idea. But here's the thing too, um, day two, it was actual day two.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  See, they had the, the rules weren't in place yet in nineteen eighty-three where there, there, there came a point where drill sergeants couldn't, uh, physically abuse you.

• 34:35Jocko Willink?

  They couldn't hit you, yeah.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  That point hadn't happened yet.

• 34:39Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  And I watched a drill sergeant right hook or a dude who, you know, made a move at him. Uh, in formation, you know, one of my peers, private, nothing, E zero. Uh, and he was at parade rest and the drill sergeant was yelling at him and they were both size for size. You know, they both looked like badasses. I remember looking at this, this punky kid in this drill sergeant. They both looked like badasses and the kid, you know, made a jump boom and wham out of nowhere. I mean, hook right to the freaking jaw, timber, boom, just dropped. And I went, holy, that was the scariest thing I ever saw. I'd never seen that in my life before, you know, like that.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  I mean, I saw some street fights, but that, you know, mono we mono, that, that fearless guy and that hook was so freaking fast. Uh, and then seeing that guy just timber was, yeah, I was, I was pretty scared.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  I know, I know that when people listen to podcasts and they'll send me a message and be like, hey, I just joined. I just joined the army. I just joined the Marine Corps. I just joined the Navy. And I always say, listen, the first two weeks, you're saying thank you right now, the first two weeks, you're going to be like hating. You're going to wish you never listened to this podcast because it's such a shock to your system to have every freedom that you have as a human being, every sense of individuality and every sense of privacy, which is like three, some of the three primary things that we value, they're all gone.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  They're gone. It's a great, it's a great culture shock. I love the way they do it, you know? I love it. The culture shock is, is real, you know, and if you're not used to it, you know, just some punky kid who is badass on the wrestling team and then you, you know, then your heads get shaved off and then you, you look the same as everybody else. And then, you know, you're sleep deprived, sleep deprived. What is that? You know? And you, you have the time limit to eat and all, you know, and then the constant freaking yelling and screaming in your face. Yeah, they, I think they do, they did well with the infantry basic training when I went in. And as I could recall it now, I, I say kudos to those guys who were, who were able to run it like that.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  I mean, once again, all theater, you know, when I. Look back, if I were to go right now through it, I'd be like, yeah, whatever. I'll play your game. I know you're not gonna do anything to me. It's just gonna suck, that's all.

• 37:03Jocko Willink?

  I'm thinking though, eighty-three, too. You had a bunch of Vietnam guys, so never mind.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Still had, not only.

• 37:08Jocko Willink?

  Grenada, but damn, you guys had a lot of, I mean, I still had Nam guys in when I got to the teams. But, you know, it had been twenty years.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:17Jocko Willink?

  So, there was a lot of guys that retired at twenty, a lot of guys that just got out after whatever. They did two or three tours in Vietnam. But, for you in eighty-three, man, it was just.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were, they were, as a matter of fact, when I, even when I went to the SF course, they were, they were thick.

• 37:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Vietnam vets going through the SF course.

• 37:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Going through it.

• 37:37Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were thick. And then when I got to a team in first group, you know, my team sergeant was a one-seventy-third guy, you know, in Vietnam. And, and they were, they were a dime a dozen. I mean, you had all of the command were Vietnam. If they were NCOs, you know, they were Vietnam vets. If they were E-sevens and above, they were all Vietnam vets.

• 37:58Jocko Willink?

  So how long did it take you to recover from the toe jumper scenario?

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Toe jumper happened in October, and I finished jump school a couple of months later in, end of February.

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  So you recovered and then went back to ju- jump school?

• 38:16Speaker 01

  No, no, that's when I ended jump school. Yes, I recovered and finished jump school end of February-ish, something like that.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  Pretty quick recovery.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:22Jocko Willink?

  And you had to get bicep surgery, right?

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. And it was a mess because I split the bicep in half. It wasn't like it separated from the tendon. It split the bicep in half. So they had to salvage it. So it was about as big as, the way it explained to me is as big as round as a pencil.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  So you could imagine the amount of strength that you lose, you know? And you don't know how much you rely on a bicep when it's, when it has to work in compound with other muscles, for instance, doing pull-ups. Because when I got to the Q course, so now you're starting all the freaking screaming and yelling and sleep deprivation and food deprivation all over again. All over. You just finished it, but now you're doing more of it. Now you're back to being.

• 39:04Jocko Willink?

  So you went straight from jump school to Q course?

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Yep. Matter of fact, but, yep, right to, and I started the Q course on my nineteenth birthday. Yep. March fif- yesterday was my birthday. March fifth, nineteen eighty-four, I started the Q course. And, or March fourth.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  And uh

• 39:27Speaker 01

  in can't recall first phase when they weren't screaming and yelling at you, you're doing classes, patrolling and land nav and survival and all this stuff. Uh, and you were able to get a hot A, one hot meal a day if you could do 10 pull ups with your kid on and climb the rope with your kid on. And most everybody was doing that. I wasn't doing it because I had no bicep. And then now this hurt my pride because I'm fit, you know? I mean, I was a pull up master, but I just finished all these months in hospital too. I hadn't done any PT. Uh, nothing, you know? Uh, so I had to get, I had to get back into shape while I was getting back into shape.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  You know, during the training process, I had to, I had to get into shape. Uh, cause I was getting those hot rations and I, I did, it took a while, but I got those things.

• 40:20Jocko Willink?

  And how long is a Q course?

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Uh, for me? It was a long time. It was uh, it, it, it, some of it depends on what your MOS is, like your second phase. And I don't know how they run it now as far as like phases go. So there's a first phase, which is all the basic skills, your land nav, your survival, your uh, patrolling. Uh, all your repelling, all, all that stuff, you know? And um, and getting yelled at and you know, the first phase just sucks, just, just a big suck fest and there's classes in between sucking. Uh, second phase depends on what your specialty is, you know, so uh.

• 40:58Jocko Willink?

  And you were a echo, right?

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Well, I started as weapons guy.

• 41:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Yep. So I went to the Q courses weapons. I had later reclass as an echo, as a communicator. Yep. Uh, and then a third phase, which is, you know, big field exercise and uh, doing like your FIDS and your UW and all of that. The, the, um, the traditional special forces tasks.

• 41:20Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  So, but yeah, I, I, I failed out of first phase and it was.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  I failed first, I failed survival in first phase. Now, I was SF baby, keep in mind, and, and the senior guys did not dig that there were privates going through the queue course. There was some animosity there, bro. They, they weren't digging that shit at all. They were like keepers of the crypt, you know? Um, survival was cool and I don't think they run it the same way anymore. I'm not even sure they do it all, but back then it was six days. You got no food. Uh, they send you, they, they drop you off in an area of like Uori National Forest and they give you one ration for those six days and it's either a live chicken or a live rabbit.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Now they teach you prior to, you know, you get, you learn all the field craft stuff and everything, you know, how to make fire, how to kill stuff, all this stuff. Uh, and then within those six days, you have, you have a list of 22 things you have to accomplish. And a lot of them aren't easy. You know, you gotta build this massive signal, uh, you gotta build a shelter, you gotta keep a fire going 24/7. You gotta find water, you gotta filter water, you know, just a lot of things. Um, but I'm gonna try to cut this one just a little short, but I was, I was thriving in survival. I was kicking ass because I did a lot of it as a kid, running around the woods, fishing and stuff like that. So I was crushing it and I found a pond that was within the confines of my, because they, they told you, you know, here is where you are.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  You could only move within this amount, this radius, you know, you can't go, I forget what it was. But within the confines of my, uh, boundary, I found a little pond. It was right on the edge of it. Well, where there's pond, people fish. Where people fish, people throw trash and sure as shit, I found a little camping spot. And, and I found trash and I was licking like yodel wrappers and stuff. I found a little remnants of chocolate. Um, and I found fishing line in the tree, in the trees. Cause guys were casting, whee, you know, so I climbed these trees and pull, and meticulously pulled out all these these nice long strings of, of good fishing line, barber hooks, all this stuff.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  And, uh, as I'm looking around this campsite, I see a beer can sitting up on a log. And I go over, I feel it and I go, oh man, there's beer. There's something in here. I'm smelling it. So I cut the top open with my knife and sure enough, you know, it's like two thirds full. You know, beer and there's bugs on it and I chug a lug this thing. Then I go fishing and I catch a stringer load of these massive bluegills. A stringer load. I mean, like sustenance, like, like I'm going to get full tonight. Now, when you, when I went back to my campsite, you know, priorities work start over again. Get your fire going. Make sure, you know, everything's squared away because the tax or the instructors come by every night to check on you. Make sure you're alive.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  And they read your log because you gotta log what you did during the day. And he's looking at my stringer fish and I got some smoking, you know? And he's like, what in the hell? I said, yeah, I got it. You know, all these fish and blah, blah, blah. And, uh, and I was, I found, uh, that worms are, when you're hungry, they are good. And if you cook them, there's, they're just food, bro. They're, yeah, they're just, that's just food. You know, you cook them in a little bit of water and you're in your canteen cup. There's nothing freaking gross about them and they are good. So I was, I was chowing down. Not only on the worms, but on all this fish and I was smoking it.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  I hadn't even killed my chicken yet. This is like day three. I hadn't killed chickens just walk. I got him tied up with a little piece of, uh, the gutted 550 cord. He's just walking around. Yeah. He's like my buddy. But that was part of the task. So I had to kill him eventually because that was one on the checklist. Uh, but I was saving him for a rainy day, but the, the instructor's reading my log and he goes, what's this here about a beer? And I go, oh yeah, yeah. So I found it, blah, blah, blah. And this chicken shit motherfucker pulls out his wallet and pulls out a card and he goes, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, he read me my rights, bro. Because you know why? Cause I was drinking beer on duty. Dude, this is survival, bro. He was pissed that I was surviving.

• 45:46Jocko Willink?

  And you were a private.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Right, and it was a private. So that was the 10 points. So you have, there was this point system. And I already lost a bunch of points just doing dumb ass shit. But that was my last 10 points. I had to go, I had to re, they allowed me to recycle. Cause I, I, and this is the last thing you're doing. And first, first phase sucks, man. It sucks. It sucks. I remember, you know, I got patrolling, being so cold and sleep deprived, deprived that I pissed myself, you know, on like 33% security. I mean, and so now I have to do this all over again. Oh, first phase. But that, that was the story of my life in the military.

• 46:27Jocko Willink?

  And that's the kind of thing though, like you were saying earlier, that's the kind of thing that gets people's heads.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 46:31Jocko Willink?

  Because they go, you know what, I'm not, they say, I'm not doing all this again. I made it this far. Now you're gonna tell me to do all that again. It's not, you, you guys are stupid. I don't even wanna be a part of this group of people that are assholes. No, it's not happening.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:43Jocko Willink?

  They get in your head for sure.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  It was very easy. When I left Camp McCall and went back to Fort Bragg and got hot, you know, chow hall food in me and a shower to go, yeah, this is, this is comfort here. This is where I wanna stay.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  You know, there's that point where you, you could accept, you know, being mediocre, where I could see it. And I was like, no, no fucking way, man. I want that so bad. I want that green beret so bad. I really want that. And they are giving me the opportunity. Cause they didn't have to. They could've said, fuck you. They're giving it to me. Hell, yeah, man. I took that shit. Oh, man. I did the same thing with combat dive school.

• 47:30Jocko Willink?

  And when, when, when did you go to combat dive school? Was that when you were already at a group?

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was in first group.

• 47:36Jocko Willink?

  Well, before we get there, so what was the rest of, you know?

• 47:39Speaker 01

  The Q course?

• 47:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the rest of the Q course. Did you, did you have to do language back then?

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Nope. Back then, no language. We did that when we got to group.

• 47:45Jocko Willink?

  Got it. Yep.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  So the rest of it just kind of, it, it sucked because you. Because you needed some experience. You needed to know how to write an operations order and you need to know what, you know, five point Tennessee plan was and pace report and Okoka and all those acronyms. You know, as a private, you don't have any of that. Guys who were coming and they had, you know, 82nd back, 82nd airborne background or Rangers. I mean,

• 48:08Jocko Willink?

  They were actually squared away squad leaders.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:11Jocko Willink?

  At a minimum.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  They knew the Ranger handbook, you know, by heart, inside out. I knew none of that shit. None of it. None of it. So thankfully, there was these staff sergeants and E7s who saw me and went, there's something about you. And they kind of took on the responsibilities mentor and I, I jumped on it. I hung out with those guys. You know, these guys were like first Ranger battalion, you know, 82nd airborne. I mean, they were hardened infantry dudes for like six years already. And they knew all that shit, all of it. Because

• 48:54Speaker 01

  with, there was no way without them, there's no way I would have made it. No freaking way. Uh, you just don't have, you don't have the freaking sense and you gotta know, there comes a time when you're going through training like that where you gotta know, you know what? Who am I going to align myself with?

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Who is it that I'm going to align myself with? And, and I can't look like a shithead. I gotta make sure that I'm never late, late, out of uniform. Cause otherwise these squared away soldiers, they're not going to want me to hang out with them. You know, if I'm just some piece of shit, uh, who's literally strap hanging on to them. I want them to want me to hang out with them. So I made that happen by, you know, being, uh, work ethic, you know, volunteering for the shit duties out in the field, that kind of thing.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Because nobody wants to volunteer. You know, when you're on patrol, nobody wants to volunteer. When you're patrolling and somebody says, hey, we need to build this or uh go on this reconnaissance. It's like, oh, but I could stay here in a patrol base.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  So I volunteered for every one of those things. But you, you know, I learned a lot on those too. Because I'm with some infantry badass dude, some grunt and um, you know, he's teaching me along the way, just OJT. So I mean, I made it by the skin of my teeth, I would say. You know, that training, I did not graduate as an honor graduate or anything like that. Um, but you know, down the road, I did, I did very well at different schools, but uh.

• 50:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's like that thing where, you know, you get the kids in school that got held back a year.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:30Jocko Willink?

  You know, and they, they, they do a lot better.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:32Jocko Willink?

  I mean, obviously, you know, when you're that young and I was the same way in listening when I was 18 and it's just like, I look back now and I'm like, well, I'm same thing, like, okay, I'm glad I made it through. Cause there was guys that were a little older and you just think, man, they had a, they just knew more. They were physically more developed than I was and you know, you just, just try and hang on, man.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:53Jocko Willink?

  Hang on.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so let me, let me just snap link to you, man. Yep, I got a little bit of line here.

• 51:01Jocko Willink?

  That's another thing is uh, in basic SEAL training, there's, you don't learn, you basically don't learn anything.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:09Jocko Willink?

  It's just six months of just suck.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Just, yep.

• 51:11Jocko Willink?

  Just, this is just gonna suck. You don't really, you don't go on, I mean, like I say, you don't go on patrol, you go on some patrols, you know, you go through the land warfare phase, which is six weeks and you go on a, you know, you go on long humps, you do these little missions, but it's not, it's, it's not anything. It's, you don't, you're not actually learning anything, you're just having to suck it up.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  It's, it's a good way to trim the fat though.

• 51:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, for sure.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Who really wants to be here because SF, what, now they have, you know, like a selection and assessment process. Back then it was called pre-phase. So it was just a couple of weeks of just beat down.

• 51:42Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  That's it. It was PT four times a day and you know, three hours of sleep a night.

• 51:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  For a couple, and there was no rhyme or reason to it. There was nothing, there was not a, I don't think there was a single piece of hip pocket training. You know, it was just formation, run, push-ups, sit-ups, get up, get down, roll over. Uh, go clean this, clean that, pick up those pine cones, PT again. It just. Yeah, just to beat down, but it was a good way to trim the fat.

• 52:12Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Guys are like, fuck this. Oh, man.

• 52:17Jocko Willink?

  So you graduate, you get through, and then where did you go from that?

• 52:19Speaker 01

  I went to a first group out of Fort Lewis, Washington.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  The Arctic jungle.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:25Jocko Willink?

  We used to go up there and trade.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:27Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking awesome.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Arctic jungle, really, yeah. South Rainier Training Area, you know, um, that's like a jungle. And if Bigfoot exists, that's where he lives.

• 52:36Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  That's where he lives, man. Holy crap.

• 52:41Jocko Willink?

  And so you check in, so what did you do when you checked in? Did you go to an A-team? Right out of the gate?

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, right out of the gate. I went right to an A-team and man, talk about being intimidated all over again. I'm the only private on this team. You know, Team Sergeant's Vietnam Vet, uh, I mean, the, the team commander was badass. There were two other, there was another Vietnam Vet and every one of these dudes were from Ranger Battalion. Not even 82nd, they were all Rangers, all of them, and then me.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Yep, me, no asset, I have nothing to offer. What am I? I'm a cherry weapons dude on a freaking A-team, just a cherry. Who could PT his ass off?

• 53:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  That was it. You know, I could PT my ass off and I could volunteer for all the shit duties and make sure that every, you know, all my kit is squared away and that, and that I'm gonna,

• 53:33Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, you know, and I'm gonna stay out of trouble.

• 53:35Jocko Willink?

  So you've been in the Army for what, like two years at this point?

• 53:37Speaker 01

  No, yeah, yeah, yeah, if that, year and a half.

• 53:40Jocko Willink?

  A year and a half. And the other guy's been in the Army for 10 years.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 53:43Jocko Willink?

  12 years, six years, nine years. And you're the only guy.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  That's it. Yep, it was.

• 53:50Jocko Willink?

  And they're NOM vets.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Yes, right. I was the new guy so many times, even when I went to uni.

• 53:55Jocko Willink?

  Eighty-five or something like that?

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, before, this is 84, when I went to first, 84. I got there and 84, beginning 85.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  The cool thing too is, um, I got opportunity just like that, boom, boom, boom. Uh, do you want to go to this school, that school? I was like, hell yeah, send me, you know, if you're, if you're asking me, then yeah, the answer is yes. I want to do all of the things. Yeah, all of them. I don't want to just ride it out and accept mediocrity, you know, and be, just be another dude. I want to be top on that totem pole. Um, oh, yeah, so my.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Battalion Sergeant Major was famous Vietnam vet like Donald J. Taylor. But highly decorated. He saw me one morning and I was running through the battalion area and he goes, "Private Mac, come here." And he looked, remember Jack, Jack Polanc, the actor?

• 54:55Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  He's kind of like Jack Polanc, you know, had that scowl on his face. I go, "Yes, Sergeant Major." Run over, snapped, "Parade rest." He goes, "I'm having a surprise inspection of the barracks this morning and I want you to be my recorder." I'm like, "Oh, I'm going, my room is fucked up, bro." Yeah, it's jacked. It's jacked. Well, the thing is like that morning, I got a call from Greyhound because I shipped all my stuff Greyhound because back then, you know, it was like fifteen dollars anywhere in the country. So I had it shipped from Fort Bragg to Fort Lewis, my, all my duffel bags. And my team sergeant said, "Hey, go pick your shit up at Greyhound." I went and got it, brought it back to my room, dumped

• 55:38Speaker 01

  it all over the freaking room. And then right after accountability formation at like zero nine or whatever, that's when he grabbed me and I'm going, "Oh, my God." I go, "Roger, that's Sergeant Major. When do you want to start?" He goes, "You got something to write on, something to write with?" I said, "Yes, yes, Sergeant Major." He goes, "Let's start right now." And my, my room, I, we did three, four, we lived in the old, it was those World War II barracks, you know, World War II, the, the white freaking, the raised, they got the big, um, crawl space underneath of them. And I swear, my, mine was the last room to get inspected. Last, last building, last room. And he's been ransacking shit. I mean,

• 56:19Speaker 01

  dumping drawers and knocking over beds. You know, there was something askew with somebody's room, he was just ransacking and looked for clues or, or booty, you know, looked for paraphernalia. He got to mine, opened up that door and there's shit everywhere. And he goes, "Who in the fuck's room is this?"

• 56:39Speaker 01

  And he looks at the name tag in the door and he looks at me and he kind of smiles. And he opens this, I shit you, this is how clever, uh, no wit, you know wit, I like, I appreciate wit when guys have wit. And this is how witty those dudes are. He opened up the first drawer, let it hit the floor, bam, and shit just freaking jumps out of it. And in that drawer, I had three seven six two rounds, you couldn't have ammo in the barracks. And I had $200 in cash, you couldn't have that amount of cash in the barracks either. And he picks up the money and he picks up the bullets and he walks over to me and he looks at the money, goes, is this a bribe for whoever finds these? And he drops them and he fuck, just hay make right to the bread basket.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Wham, I mean hard, I double over, but that wall to wall counseling back then, I would much rather have that than Article 15.

• 57:33Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  I mean, eh, but my shit was wrapped so tight after that. I mean, I, oh, never, ever, ever fucked up again. I mean, I thought I was squared away before that, nope, I was, I was on it like a bonnet.

• 57:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, I was, I was talking about this the other day, like the, it sounds like you're going through the same thing. One thing that was awesome for me when I joined the Navy is, what I wanted to do, what I, what I really just wanted to do is just like be a good SEAL.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:02Jocko Willink?

  And like whatever I could do to try and be a good SEAL. And when that's your goal, man, it's like your whole life is pretty good because, like we're trying to stay in shape, you're trying to have your gear ready, you're trying to be squared away, like that's what you're trying to be a good teammate, you're trying to volunteer for stuff. It's such a, it's, it's, you know, when you hear, there's a lot of the people running around now, myself including, included saying like, hey, you gotta have a mission, you gotta be, you know, driving towards them, you gotta, meaning is found in responsibility, Jordan Peterson, right?

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 58:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, for me, it's like, oh, guess how lucky I was, I was a total knucklehead kid. And, and I had an aim, my aim was this broad thing of like, hey, I'm gonna try and be a good SEAL. And like, if that's what you're trying to do, man, it just, it puts you on a path.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, puts you on a good path.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:48Jocko Willink?

  And it sounds like pretty similar for you, getting on a good path, hey, I want to be a good special forces soldier. And when you screw something up, you tighten up even more.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Yep. And, and, and, you know, and.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  They were always giving me opportunity to improve myself and I never let one of those opportunities pass. I mean, do you want to go like combat dive school? It's like, hell, yeah, that's another one. I failed, by the way.

• 59:13Jocko Willink?

  How'd you fail combat dive?

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Well, here's the thing. I knew nothing about it. Nothing. I had no idea what that's I thought I was going to like die for conch shells in Key West or something. No idea, none. No pre scuba, which is a prerequisite.

• 59:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Just that, hey, Pat Mac, private Mac, you're fit.

• 59:32Jocko Willink?

  Were you a water guy at all?

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm strong in the water and I was on a water team, a scout swim team.

• 59:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Uh, with in first, in, uh, first group. Uh, so a lot of surface swimming, you know, just dragging a ruck, surface swim. Um, I went to combat dive school and once again, you know, everybody's screaming at you, you're PT until you're freaking, you know, I, I got an umbilical hernia. We PT, so I was getting an umbilical hernia. But, uh, water is the great equalizer.

• 1:00:07Jocko Willink?

  It is indeed.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  There is no doubt about it. And so when, when they started having us doing, like the PT thing, I was like, all right, this sucks, this sucks. But then, you know, you have a couple of classes and then right to the pool and everybody's screaming at you and you're trying to get your gear in as fast as possible. And, you know, you got these twin 80s on your back and the second stage is stuffed into your BC and you're not breathing of stuff. It's just all weight, 20 pound weight belt. Um, mount the gunnel, prepare it into the water, into the water and then terror, you know, with the crossovers. So the crossover thing to me blew my mind. Talk about, you know, uh, humility, how to make somebody humble.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  You know, how to suck the freaking life right out of you.

• 1:00:55Jocko Willink?

  Explain crossover.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  So i- i- i- this particular pool, you know, it was a, what's a, what's an Olympic swimming pool?

• 1:01:02Jocko Willink?

  I think it's fifty by twenty-five?

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty wide. It's pretty.

• 1:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's probably fifty by twenty-five.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's like twenty-five and this pool was nice. It was eighteen feet too deep. So you've got guys on each side of the gun, so on each side of the pool. So, and you're, you're, you're chest to back. You're just stacked up. And you got a mask on and you got your buoyancy compensator. You got your twin eighties. You got a twenty-pound weight belt. You got air in those tanks. You're just not breathing it. That regulator's stuffed in your B C. Uh, the instructor yell out, prepare to crossover, crossover. So one, you, both sides go underwater and the objective is to make it to the other side.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  One side goes shallow, one side goes deep. And you come up and you get a few puffs before they say, prepare to crossover, crossover. It ain't enough time, especially if you had no pre-scoob and you had, you haven't experienced this. Uh, and then you do it again and again and again, and people start dropping like flies. And what the, uh.

• 1:02:14Jocko Willink?

  When they're dropping, is it quitting?

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, with sometime with me, for example, it wasn't necessarily, I didn't say I quit. I refused to get off the wall because it was a shock because I already had a shallow water blackout. So I already had a shallow water blackout. They, and with the shallow water blackout, it's basically, once again, the human body is cool because you, it won't let you drown unless you want to drown. Unless you inhale water, you're, you're gonna pass out before that happens. So when you hold your breath long enough, you just pass out. And they're schooled at this shit. They know because it happens to people all the time. So they go down, they freaking bring you up. And usually as soon as you come back up and they slap you on the surface, you're, you're revived. You're coming out of it. And then it takes you a while. You know, you're like, holy shit, that was scary.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  And then they ask you, once you're revived, they give you some oxygen. Do you want to get back in the water? The answer for me was yes, I do. And then I had another one. And the next day during crossovers, uh, it was, I had that other one. They said, do you want to get back in the water? Yes, I do. Another crossover and I couldn't get off the wall. And the rule was they tell you three times and you're out. Get off the wall, mister. And they're, they're, they want you to succeed. They want it. They want you to. There's like, I'm telling you, that's the first one. I'm going to give you another one. Mister, get off my wall. It's not get off my wall, get off my wall, get off my wall. You know, they want, they want you to want this.

• 1:03:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Because you're a, you're a, you're a fellow SF guy.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. They want you to want this. So, and super, super, um, professional cadre.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  So they gave me the third one and it didn't happen. I was froze. I was stuck to it. But that's another one that I avenged. I went back. I got pre scuba and I went, I, I fucking killed that school. Not only did I kill it, but I was volunteering for shit. For instance, I had a buddy who, uh, during ship bottom search.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  So you, you, you, that was, that's some scary shit, you know, ship bottom search. Cause your back is on the freaking deck, man. You're, you feel your, your twin eighties in the, in the muck, in the, and, and, uh, and you're, you're, uh,

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  basically wandering with your hand, the bottom of this boat, this ship. And you could feel that ship rising and sinking just a little bit, just a little bit, just those couple inches. But what happened to my, a buddy of mine is there was a type of salentorate, uh, type of jellyfish that was on the ship itself. And when he was washing, basically washing the ship, they went down his blouse into his shorts. And he got a freaking, he got like stung by jellyfish all the way from his chest, all the way his ball sack. So, uh, it was medical emergency up on shore. This is a funny thing.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  When we got him on shore, he's going, he's burning up. You know, it's jellyfish. And so here's a grown man and this is one time where you don't question this shit. Where a grown man is ripping his clothes open. He's going piss on my face, piss on my face, piss on my dick. And we're all trying to, you know, we're all shrunk up because we're frozen and we got our dicks in our hands. And we're like five dudes pissing on one guy, you know, just pissing on him. Well, he had a really bad reaction and he started throwing up, uh, and he failed the next days.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Subsurface swim, fifteen hundred subsurface swim. But he got to make it up on a Saturday and we had that Saturday off.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  And they asked for volunteers.

• 1:05:46Jocko Willink?

  Somebody gotta be a swim buddy.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Somebody gotta be a swim buddy and I freaking volunteered. And this guy was badass. He was way more badass than I was. So I was a little nervous because I didn't want to slow him down. And we, we mined the gout and went in boom, he or you know, got the surface, got his bearings. He gave me a freaking, you know, the go down signal. And we start finning and I am struggling to keep up with him and I'm on his tether. You know, I'm like, oh, he can't, I can't, I have to keep up with this dude and he is an absolute cyborg. And that was the hardest I ever worked in my life because now I'm not, I'm working for me, I'm working for somebody else and I can't let this dude down, you know? It's like, oh my God, but he crushed it. He crushed it. Yeah.

• 1:06:32Jocko Willink?

  What was the time, space between you failing dive school and then going back?

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  One year.

• 1:06:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So this, so this is like.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no. Six months. That was six months. Yeah. Six months. Uh, one year was for selection.

• 1:06:43Jocko Willink?

  Were you guys, were you guys, uh, were you guys going on deployments at this time?

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  Uh, yes.

• 1:06:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Jocko Willink?

  And where were you guys deploying to?

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  For us in first group, it was Southeast Asia, Thailand, Malaysia, those kinds of things. Yep.

• 1:06:58Jocko Willink?

  And it's Cold War.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Right. Yep. Cold War, FID stuff, peacetime army. Yep.

• 1:07:06Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you actually learn a language at this point?

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was pretty good at Thai. I didn't do, it was a condensed course, like a three month. You know, so you learn all the survival skills and all that, but yeah.

• 1:07:18Jocko Willink?

  And then, then where did you go when you, how long did you stay there for? How long did you stay at first group?

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Well, uh, like three and a half years and then I got recruited, um, by some dude. I got, uh, he had a list of ten of, ten, ten names on this, on this, uh, sheet in this folder. And company sergeant majors told us we had to go to this meeting. And he's some dude. He's civilian clothes and he's got long hair. Uh, and he's, it's so vague what he's explaining to us. He goes, yeah, it's a Cold War job and it's in uh, Europe. It's, I kind of felt like Will Smith on Men in Black when he's going, now what are we doing here again? Well, we're looking for the best of the best of the best, you know, that kind of shit. I had no idea.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  But I knew it was something bigger than what I was doing currently. So once again, opportunity knocked. I freaking jumped on that shit, man. And what we were doing with that is uh, we were uh, like uh, building networks for double agents working uh, in, in Berlin.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  So before that, I went and got German language as well. Got it. But that was a cool job because it was some real cloak and dagger shit, you know? There's some books written about it now that are pretty cool. Did you go over there like undercover? No, that one, no. Okay. It was different times when I did. We had like, it was soft cover and you had to have, for that one, you had to have cover for action, cover for status. You know, why are you here in this country besides, you know, I'm just some military nug. Right. Because we had, you know, tracksuits, leather jackets, mullets, you know? You know, all that freaking looking like Eastern Euro trash.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Body odor, smoking cigarettes.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  How long did you do that gig for? I did that for about a year and a half and then I, I got recruited by some other dude. He came and he was looking, he had one name on his list and it was mine. Well, because I had, uh, there were certain things they were looking for. It was a very the skill set was very um, particular. You had to be good at the language. You had to be good at like driving and uh, uh, there was certain different motor skills, you know, all these tests. Anyway, I met the quota. I met the data that he was looking for. And now this guy's in uniform, but he's SF guy. And um, I, I said, there's another SF job here? He goes, yeah, man.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  He goes, we're spying on the Soviet Army in Soviet East Germany. I said, get the fuck out of here. I said, I never heard of this. He says, no, there's only seven slots, seven SF slots, seven. So I jumped on that one. So that was more schools. I had to go to Wipit Warsaw Pak ID School in England, more driving schools, uh, get my language, uh, because now I'm working in East Germany. Their second language ain't English. You know what I'm talking about? I mean, you know, uh, and I did that for about two years. That was cool as shit.

• 1:10:22Jocko Willink?

  And once again, you're going over there as an army dude?

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  On this one, I was over as an army dude. The cover for action, cover for status on that one is we were liaison to the Soviet Army. They all knew what the hell we were doing. It was paper thin, man. The cover was paper thin and it was all cat and mouse. They knew it. They issue us.

• 1:10:43Jocko Willink?

  They're doing it back to us.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  They were doing it back to us in West Germany. Uh, we were way more aggressive. I think at the time, 95% of the intelligence on the Soviet Army was coming from those units. So in East Germany, the US was doing it, the French and the Brits. And we would all rotate sectors and it was scary. It was scary gig because, um, they was, the Soviets reserved the right to, to kill you. Uh, they issued you maps and on these maps, they had these yellow mark, yellow, uh, areas and they were called PRAs, permanently restricted areas. And you couldn't go in this, those areas. Well, that's where all the good shit was. You know, all the frigging KGB comms and all the nuke stuff. So we'd probe those

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  things. Um, and it, oh man, it was, it was so, the, the cover was paper thin. How we were doing stuff was, you know, you had, you were going over with two guys. And one of the guys was an SF dude. The other was a, uh, an officer who was a so Russian fail or something like that, or a intel weenie. No, no tactical skills whatsoever. I mean, I remember sitting down.

• 1:11:59Jocko Willink?

  When you say you'd go over, would that mean you'd go from?

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  From West Berlin to East Germany, into East Germany.

• 1:12:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  Uh, across the Glinika Broka and we had a Soviet credentials, uh, and, and we would go to the, uh, like the consulate or what, what was something like that and deliver mail. So that was how we got in and we did it all the time. It was, you know, several times a week. Yeah. And then when, as soon as you cross the bridge and you deliver your mail. You were, you stayed in country now for about three days. And you did your mission and you had, uh, you know, a, a list of, uh, tasks.

• 1:12:39Jocko Willink?

  Objectives.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, you had, you had your essential task lists, uh, and, and.

• 1:12:43Jocko Willink?

  What would be, what would be like a task that you'd be.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Oh, one of them would be, uh, there is, cause satellite footage still existed. So what's going on in Kotbus? There's a big military exercise. What we need is, um, just pictures of the vehicles and unit affiliation. See who's there. Unit affiliation. Cause satellites can't get unit affiliation. But you know, we could get up close and take all the pictures of all the vehicles and the bins, uh, get unit affiliation. Another one might've been, r- railways were a big one. Railways, you know, what's coming in from the Czech side, Polish side? Wh- what is coming into Falkenburg, into the train station? And all that shit was tarped, but we, we were experts in tarpology too.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  We could read the piece of equip, equipment under a tarp.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Even a variant, bro. I'm talking like, uh, beater, uh, eighty PB to a regu- to a beater seventy, you know? Yeah. We even know the variants under tarp. It was, it was, it was good shit. That, that was a fun ass freaking job. Scary as hell. Scary as hell. Because we were so paper thin, it, it, uh, here's the other job we had.

• 1:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Cause I'm, I'm edgy. I mean, you're carrying a camera with you or you carry like a straight up telephoto cameras? Or you're carrying like little clandestine cameras?

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  No, no, no. We're traveling in a Mercedes Galendavagan, cause it, we're not undercover traveling. Cause we're a liaison to Soviet army. So we're in an OD green, uh, Mercedes Galendavagan. So like a Mercedes Jeep, but it's souped up, man. It's got, it was very, very high speed shit in a low speed world. You know, uh, uh, we had a dashboard with toggle switches where you could control. For instance, as soon as you went over the bridge, it was SOP. Turn off the switch number one, because that killed the horn. Because you don't want to have that horn AD. Uh, there was like a one switch where you, another one, you turn off the, um, the. Brake lights? No, the, uh, the license plate illuminator. Okay. Yep. But you had a brake light dis- disabler. You had even disabled one side.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  So from a distance, you look like a motorcycle. You know, all that stuff. Uh, and then, so it was a two seater and the back was a big sheet of ethyl foam with holes cut. And each hole filled a Nikon lens. God. And each lens was attached to an F1 body, bro. Yeah. Every freaking one of them. Yep. So you just reached back, boom, 500 mirror. Yep. You just went to town and then we, we had a, uh, video. Cameras mounted, uh, like basically where the visors are with the, uh, remote on the dash. So pretty, it was high speed shit in a low speed world. For sure. Yeah, it was fun as hell, man. Pumped. Oh, when, especially if you got a big hit, because it was competition with the other tour guides. We were called tour, tour guides.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  Um, so you know, who could get the biggest hit? Like I got, I got a, uh,

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  SA 24 nuke. Damn. SA 24 nuke in the town was called Beeteritz. Um, and we heard that it might be coming in. And, uh, you know, so we, we hung out and I was, oh, I was with a squared away officer at the time too. He was, um, he had been to Ranger School. He wasn't a Ranger, but he been to Ranger School. And he was, he got a scholarship. Uh, West Point Scholarship for Football. So he's a fit dude too. So I was with this dude. So I was, I was fired up and we were going after this, uh, S, uh, SA 24. And, um, we ended up. It's, it's a, it's a long story. I'm just going to cut it short. We were hiding behind a hay bale. The landowner came out. He smashes the front of our vehicle. Um,

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  Because we're not, we're trespassing, we explain, this is I mean, you're communist, bro, you don't own this shit. This is Soviet land. But, uh, uh, he gets, he apologizes, invites us to his house, his house is right on the tracks. We parked the vehicle in the backyard. Orient the cameras, check out the orientation and everything, have a camera with us at the ready. Cause they don't know what we're doing, we're just fucking off in his field, you know, as Americans. They serve us tea and coffee, train comes, we get the whole video footage, we got all the stills, we got all the freaking numbers on it. And we're sitting in this dude's backyard, yeah.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Yep, so that was, that was a big, that was a big hit, but yeah, that was a fun job because I got chased by all kinds of shit like T-80. SS, uh, SS-21. Oh, man. And the thing about Soviet kids, there's so much of it, it's so big, you know? I mean, it's massive, like, um, there was this one called, um, Petun, Triple Star P, Petun, Triple Stripe, three, PTF, PTF, yeah. It's like a, uh, it's a tracked pontoon that takes tanks across the rivers.

• 1:17:36Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  You know, it's just, it's massive, it's like the brontosaurus of the, of the kit world, we have nothing that big, you know, and that moves that fast. And then their BMP1s are like the velociraptors of the kit world, you know, they're just, I mean, it's not, it's all in horrible state of repair. But if you got a shitload of it, something's gonna work.

• 1:17:59Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's cool that you were doing real stuff in the eighties, because most of the guys at that time weren't doing anything.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, you know what, I was so fortunate, I never, one of the things I'm, I'm careful is I always,

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  I always, uh, make sure I tell people that I was very fortunate, that I was very lucky. That I had the best mentors and I never ever rest on my laurels, you know, I never go, well, fuck back then, I was a badass. I'm a badass tomorrow. I don't need to rest on my laurels because I hate those guys, you know, this is what I did yesterday. And, and I don't reflect upon it a lot, but it's interesting. It's interesting. Uh, it's, it, I had, it was an interesting career.

• 1:18:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And like as I read some of the stuff that you don't, I kind of piece together, not just what's like out there, but you know, I kind of piece together what I know about, you know, so I have a little bit more in depth. I can fill in some holes and that's what got me thinking about, you know, when I was open up talking about like soldier skills. I just think about all the different things that you did and how the variety in your career. And I know like when you, I mean, I know you went to some kind of camera school and you went to some identification, infield developing, like all that stuff. And I'm like, oh yeah, he did all that. And then he did scuba. And then he did, you know, like everything that you've done. That's why I was asking about languages. Like now you got Thai, you got, you got like, you know, it's skills.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's, and I'm scratching the surface.

• 1:19:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  I was so lucky, you know, I was, because it's, it's not that I'm, I was, you know, I'm not like some stellar super soldier. Um, I was very lucky and I always made sure that when opportunity knocked, that I'd answer the door. Uh, and that, man, that paid off big time. And then if I failed something, I wouldn't say, ah, fuck it, man. That ain't for me. I'm like, nope. I gotta avenge that shit because I won't be defeated. That defeated me? No, there's no way. I'm going back and kicking that ass. Damn.

• 1:19:58Jocko Willink?

  So what was next? What's, what was next?

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  So the next one's, um, I was there through reunification.

• 1:20:05Jocko Willink?

  That had to be crazy.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was cool. That was cool shit. Uh, so I was there through reunification. So, you know, the wall came down eighty nine, reunification ninety one. So I was there during that whole thing, but now my job is drying up and I'm having to train, um, the Bundesnachrichtsdienst. It's like the German FBI. I'm pretty sure I got that right. It's been a long time since I accessed that database. But, um, so I'll have to train them and, uh, you know, we're handing over that job because they just have to see the withdrawal now and all that. And I don't want any part of that. So the next step was go to, you know, try to get my foot in the door and use the sock.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  And so I went, I I got a slot to go to selection. Day freaking one, I break my ankle. How'd you break your ankle? So on the on the first day, there's a, so no more yelling and screaming. There's no more that, you know, you're just taking instructions from a chalkboard and you're making sure you're not late, late out of uniform. And you're getting food, too. It's just now it's it's all big boy rules, you know, it's a totally different game. It's a totally different test. Totally, completely different, you know, it because it tests resolve and whether or not you have heart. And if you're capable of deductive reasoning and if you are um resolute and if you have um of um.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, besides deductive deductive reason, there's another term, I'll think of it here in a second. But um, so day one, there's a, I I won't disclose too much of it just because I don't want to ruin it for people who may go in the future. But there's a physical movement, you know, it's a movement and it's at night. Uh, with a ruck on, it's nothing hard and I think it's there kind of as a uh, like a litmus test, you know, maybe to. Shake out patrol. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're on your own, you're doing this thing on your own, but it's at night. Now you're not, you know, you're on dirt roads because you don't know it, they haven't given you any training yet. So you're on dirt roads and there's people periodically to guide you along the way. And you have even have a flashlight.

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  So it's nothing, you know, it's nothing crazy, it is just there to trim the fat and it does a good job at it. Because it'll tell whether or not you're there for the right reasons, that'll that'll tell the cadre. But I'm coming downhill and whenever you have the opportunity, you know, you double time down hills just to make up time. And I roll an ankle and I roll it so bad that I hear a crack. And I knew it was the ankle, you know, the the sprain cracking, but I felt bone in my shin too. Uh, and man, you know, it's the worst feeling, you know, when. For those of us who have had sprain, it's a it's a horrible feeling and a sprain is worse than a break. I swear to God, it's worse than a break.

• 1:22:56Jocko Willink?

  There's no doubt about it.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  I've done so many of them. I've I've I've torn so much shit in my body that, uh, man, I'd rather be broken than torn.

• 1:23:07Jocko Willink?

  Well, the big difference is when you break a bone, you put it, you you put it back together, you put a cast on it, it heals up. It's actually stronger than it was.

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:15Jocko Willink?

  You tear a ligament.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:23:16Jocko Willink?

  That thing is never the same.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  Ever. Yep.

• 1:23:18Jocko Willink?

  If it even heals.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:23:21Jocko Willink?

  So you hammer the shit out of your ankle.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I and I make it through this first movement and I think just I just make the time. I don't know what the time is. Uh, and then I end up walking on it for another week and a half. I'm going over these mountains in West Virginia. Uh, but there came a point where I where I say, you know what? This is a big boys game and they know I'm hurt because I went to see a doc the next day and my ankles, you know, like a football. And they gave me some whatever, some ranger candy, some cam, uh, buffered aspirin or something like that. Uh, and they gave me an ace rap. Uh, that's it. But they knew I'm jacked up and I thought, you know what? These guys, they they're gonna think I'm retarded. They're gonna think I'm stupid that I'm, you know, that I'm.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  So, uh, I I made it. I made it. I wasn't. I was making no ground. I was getting weaker by the day. So I sat by a dirt road, waited for a casualty car to come and I said, hey, I am I am voluntary. Volun- I am withdrawing voluntarily. It was a hard pill to swallow, but the thing is I I had to do that. Uh, and the guy said, hey, as long as you're not cheating yourself. I said, nope, I am not. And they invited me to come back. Well, because they knew that I was jacked up.

• 1:24:35Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  If I volunteer, if I wasn't jacked up, there was no way you quit something like that. There is no way. But they knew that I was jacked up because I went, I actually went and saw the doc and I said, hey, can you give me something for this? And he was like.

• 1:24:49Jocko Willink?

  What what if you what if you just don't make the times, would they have said, all right, you failed, you're out?

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:24:55Jocko Willink?

  Which one of those two is?

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  Uh, I didn't get to that point yet. I didn't get to the stress phase of this course, you know? So it was just all the training, the train, uh, the, um.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  I forget what it's called, but like the the train, yeah, the training phase. It was a training phase. It wasn't the graded portion yet.

• 1:25:14Jocko Willink?

  So there was no, there was no maximum time. You could have taken whatever.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  But I, but I felt that I was getting weaker and weaker and weaker every day.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  So yeah, they invited me to come back and I, I took every bit of a year. What I did too is I, I made a huge gamble. I was in Germany and I volunteered to go to SWIC, Special Warfare Center, to be an instructor. Four-year commitment. I volunteered to go to that, to get me to Fort Bragg, to get me closer.

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  And did you also figure like if I'm there and I'm all I'm doing is teaching, I can get in good shape, recover and all that?

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yep. But if, if I didn't make selection, I would have been stuck in SWIC for four years too. So I knew it was a gamble, but I said, it's going to get me there and it's going to get me strong.

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  I'm not going to have to go anywhere. I'm not going to, you know, like, yeah, it's, it's, it's very light duty. And I worked out like a man possessed. I took it, I had a new, um, uh, kind of a, a, a perspective and, um, a new strategy with the training. I, I went very low impact. So I did a lot of bicycling, like in a, in the tiny sprocket, a lot of stair climbing, stuff like that. A lot of, uh, like 40 repetition squats, that kind of thing. Cause I already had a taste of it now.

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  Were you worried about like being able to hump though?

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I did that. I, I humped, but I didn't do a lot of it. I didn't do a lot of, uh, breakdown. What I did is I found a, um, I, there was this massive helipad on Fort Bragg, right by where I was working. So it's an elevated chunk of ground and it's elevated, you know, on all sides at an angle. And, um, I would do laps around that. Because now I'm walking on a, on a traverse, on an angle. So I got all that friction, you know, and working my angles and I would do lap and it was probably 400 yards around and I would, every day I'd go over there and I would do lap after lap after lap, turn around lap after lap, after lap after lap and turn around, do the same thing until my feet burnt because I wanted

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  strong ankles and I wanted tough, tough, tough feet because I already had some blisters when I went the first time. That second time, I didn't have a fucking blister. I had a hotspot on the last exercise. I had one hotspot. Yeah, bro. I crushed it. I crushed it next time. I mean, I, I destroyed it. I mean, I had some bad days, but when I went back, man, I, I freaking, I really, I tore into it.

• 1:27:45Jocko Willink?

  So what year is, what year is this now that you go back and you make it through?

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  Ninety-one, ninety-two, when I went back through. Yep.

• 1:27:52Jocko Willink?

  Ninety-two, so, so I'm thinking Gulf War.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  Yep, Gulf War just finished. I was still doing the Soviet stuff when people were doing the Gulf War.

• 1:28:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Was that driving you crazy?

• 1:28:05Speaker 01

  Nah, because I was doing stuff. Yeah, I was working, you know, and yeah, nah, I was happy.

• 1:28:12Jocko Willink?

  I was in boot camp there, or no, I was just after boot camp during the first Gulf War.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:28:16Jocko Willink?

  And the, I remember watching the news and they said they were expecting US 40,000 casualties in the first 48 hours or something like that. And I was like, oh, it's so hot. It's so hot. It's gonna be so hot. They're gonna, I'm gonna get fast-tracked. They're gonna put me as a freaking door gunner like a nom.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  Door gunner.

• 1:28:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I don't think they're gonna need people to replace, man. That's what's gonna happen. So you get done and, and so now you're, you're there and everything's kind of leveled up. You're training freaking just like all the time.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Well, you know, after selection, I had to go through six months of OTC and you're on the bubble during that time. I mean, that's six months and there's no break in that six months. I mean, and you're on the freaking bubble, bro. Man, I love that the way they reserved the right to fire your stinking ass at any freaking second for anything. And that, that went my whole, I was, I was at the unit for 13 years and I mean, there were stellar dudes, you know, 10 years in who, that little mistake, boom. But, but you want to work in a place like that. You know, you want to, you want to be a part of that where dude, and I remember there were guys. Who were great dudes who would have like, I had this one friend who had an ND.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  He was by himself. And he went and turned himself in.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  I was like, holy shit.

• 1:29:40Jocko Willink?

  And was that it? He's gone?

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but with NDs, uh, there were certain things that you were, uh, they'd send you packing for a year. And you were, you were able to get a relook.

• 1:29:50Jocko Willink?

  What's an ND?

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  Uh, negligent discharge.

• 1:29:54Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:29:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:29:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  Uh, oops. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they, they didn't happen often, but when you're constantly around guns, you're constantly doing shit. All you need is a momentary lapse of reason. And that's it. We are human beings and we are capable of momentary lapse of reason. And they, they happened to the best dudes I knew, man. The best dudes I knew.

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  So U A D?

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:18Jocko Willink?

  ND?

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. They just changed the verbiage like, uh, I don't know, a decade and a half ago. There are no accidents. It's negligent. I don't know. There's something, there's some things.

• 1:30:29Jocko Willink?

  Came from. I never thought, I never thought about that fact.

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I, I, I've been on the range enough where I've seen. Uh, where I know that shit actually does happen. I mean, I've got some great stories that are actual ADs.

• 1:30:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like.

• 1:30:44Jocko Willink?

  Rounds cooking off?

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  Not, or like a, um, a guy dropping his backpack. And he's got like an ALS holster on. Key, car key goes into the holster and fulcrums up. Boom. As he's dropping his backpack, boogies, you know, shit like that. I've seen a bunch of things like that.

• 1:31:02Jocko Willink?

  I've seen guys with, uh, like in the summertime out in the desert.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  Cooked off.

• 1:31:06Jocko Willink?

  And they're like, like I remember we were new guys and one of the guys with me, he's shooting and all of a sudden, you know, he's kind of, uh, we're done. We're kind of debriefing all of a sudden, crack. And he, he literally just held up his weapon. He was like, I didn't touch anything. I didn't touch anything. He's like, there was a, there was another funny story. What Jason Gardner told me this story. They're debriefing. And this guy, they're sitting there, they're doing Kell House stuff. They're debriefing and all of a sudden like the junior officer cracks off around at the feet of like the debrief group. And he said, he like looked at the gun and he looks at the group and he goes, he was decocking it.

• 1:31:46Jocko Willink?

  He had like an out of body experience and explained himself in a third person making an excuse for himself. It's like the funniest thing, man. I gotta have Jason Gardner because my buddy Jason who's Master Chief and he's been on the podcast a couple of times, but he, he always tells everything in like a monotone voice. So, you know, goes, yeah. So he cracks off around right at the feet of our, of our group and then he shakily looks at everyone and says, he was decocking it.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  Oh shit. Oh my God. Kill me.

• 1:32:20Jocko Willink?

  So as you're doing this, what other, what other skills are you now picking up? I mean, you aren't, it's the nineties.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotta think about this.

• 1:32:30Jocko Willink?

  You're at a place where there's money and there's time and there's a mission.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  Yep. Let me think about it. First off, more driving. I mean, I've been through seven driving courses. One of them was the Gary Simic motocross school. Well, we had dirt bikes, you know, and, and, and, uh, it's a great mobility device, but you need training on that thing. So when I was a team sergeant on a mobility team, I said, I want the best training. I want a motocross, you know, supercross school. But, uh, so driving training.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  I mean, more water stuff, water, water. So riverine stuff. Uh, uh, you know, it was cool. I just thought about that. The, uh, the dunk training, like up in Groton, Groton thing. Yep. I did that. Uh, but schools, let me think here.

• 1:33:21Jocko Willink?

  The Heeloo Dunker.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep. Um, oh my God, there's so freaking much of it. Oh, uh, so the demo was the big thing with the unit, you know, but special specializing in that.

• 1:33:32Jocko Willink?

  Were you like a breacher?

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, but everybody is a breacher at some point, you know, when you're an operator, you're all, you're a breacher at some point, you know, you, you, you come onto a team as an assistant and then you work up to a breacher. Um, but then the amount of weapons too, you know, so not just crew serve stuff, but like anti-tank and, you know, it's like holy crap, because there's always something new emerging. You can't just lug around and goose off, you know, all the time because more stuff is emerging. Uh, what other kind of trip? It just went on and on and on and on. I mean, it never, the wheels on the bus went round and freaking round and the amount of

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  Hilo stuff that we did, you know, and, uh, and, um, a lot of different environmental training. So, you know, when we did winter training, it was hardcore winter training. When we did desert training, hardcore desert. We did mountains, you know, all that stuff. And then, uh, so a lot of environmental stuff. I mean, yeah, I wish, I wish I was tasked with a homework assignment prior to, so I could have written those things down because it, but it's cool because it's cool. Cause I, I forget about how much shit that I've learned. The amount of shit that I've forgotten could probably, you know, fill volumes. But every once in a while I'll go, oh yeah, like Rebecca and I'll watch a TV show. I go, oh yeah, I've

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  done that. She goes, no, you haven't. I go, yeah, I have. I've done that. Yeah. I, trust me, I've done that. Yeah.

• 1:35:01Jocko Willink?

  And you're shooting, um, just insane.

• 1:35:05Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. All the time. And then not only that, but what was cool is we were encouraged to compete, you know, at national level with the shooting stuff. So I'm not just talking action shooting like IPSIC, but I also did national match, you know, like bullseye stuff. Uh, yeah, I competed in the all army small arms championship too in 2004, right before I retired. So I was at E9 and the unit sent me down there as a, like a recruiting trip. And best competition I ever went to. Now they did preface it with, hey, you know, you gotta win this thing too. Now no freaking, I tell you, that was not an easy, I did, but it wasn't an easy task. Cause you got like 250 competitors and you got these, uh, the AM, the army marksmanship guys.

• 1:35:49Jocko Willink?

  The army marksmanship guys who do that.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Right. That's what they do for a living. You got, um, Ranger snipers, 82nd snipers. Cause when you show up to that type of competition, you all look the same. Everybody's same haircut, same uniform, same M16 A2 iron sights, same sidearm, same ammo. Yeah. Same ammo. Everything's the same.

• 1:36:11Jocko Willink?

  It's like stock car racing.

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. Bingo, just like that. So no mechanical advantage with anything, nothing. Um, and then you start this week long competition, you know, in the first several days, it's all national match rifle at 500 yards, iron sights. Uh, granted, you're shooting, you know, 77 grain Sierra match, Black Hills, you're shooting good ammo. So you're, you know, you're really, you're able to group with these, with these, with these rifles. Um, but a- after the rifle portion, I was sitting good. I was, you know, like out of 250 people, I was probably like 225. But when the pistol portion came up, I crushed everybody. So it was like, cause thankfully it was a combined aggregate. So I was able to, yeah, I was able to

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  whoo, whoo, I did not want to go back to you and say, yeah, I came in third or something like that, you know, I got beat by a E4 from division.

• 1:37:06Jocko Willink?

  Where were you when September 11th kicked off?

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  So I was, at that time, I was a OTC instructor, so Operator Trainer's Course Instructor. I was on the range teaching, uh, our OTC students, CQB. One guy had a piece of equipment go down. I said, I'll go get it. I'll go get it for you. Just give me that and I'll go DX it for you. So I drive back down to the main buildings, go in and, um, the, uh, that's for the guy from supply is watching the TV and one of the planes had already hit. And I said, what happened there? He goes, ah, some plane hit one of the trade, one of the World Trade Center towers. And I go, oh, huh, was it accident? He goes, ah, it looks like it to me. Cause at the time, that's what it was.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  And plus people, you couldn't grasp the gravity of how big those buildings are. You know, they thought it was a Cessna.

• 1:37:57Jocko Willink?

  I completely thought it was a Cessna.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's what everybody thought. Because those buildings are gigantic. So we're both watching it. And then I saw live the second one go in. And we both just, dude, when you, when you watch that shit lot happen, I didn't see it on the news as a repeat. I watched it live. And I heard the news that, uh, the announcer go, oh, oh, oh, boy, oh, oh, oh, all right. Nope. This is no accident. You know, and I went, holy fuck. So I got this piece of kit, boogie down, uh, range and, uh, we did an admin halt, brought everybody back, into the chow hall, big TVs on so they get kind of a update and then brought them back to the shoot house around CQB.

• 1:38:39Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take from there before you got over to Iraq?

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  It took me, it, it, oh man, I was so bummed out, bro.

• 1:38:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because you were an instructor.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  I was an instructor. Not only that, but they asked me to do another six months on top of my two year stay. Because there was a course that they were putting together for somebody else and they wanted me to build this course. And I'm going, oh my God, squadrons are already on their second deployment, bro.

• 1:39:07Jocko Willink?

  And this is the crazy thing.

• 1:39:09Speaker 01

  Second or third deployment. So it's funny because when I get over there, I remember the first night I'm with this dude I put through selection and OTC. He's a staff sergeant and I'm an E9 and he goes, oh Mac, it's so cool that I'm doing hits with you here. I said, yeah, bro, tonight you're in charge of me. He goes, huh? I said, how many hits you got in country? He goes, uh, 125. I said, well, I got zero, bro. Yeah, goose egg.

• 1:39:35Jocko Willink?

  So when you went over, you went over, you were telling me earlier, like you went over as like a, an ops position or something?

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Initially I went over as a, in an, in an ops position with the, with, and it's a funny thing. Um, we didn't even touch on this one. I went over to, um, work with the units, uh, supports, support squadrons. So I was working with all, these, these guys with no training and they're going outside of the green zone and all that to get resupplied. To get freaking, they're going, they're making buy up runs to get diesel, you know?

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Going down route Irish.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro, with soft skin hummers, you know, because we were, nothing was up armored yet. And so I'm driving with them, scared, scared as I've ever been in my life, going with cooks to get freaking food. I'm one man security detail. I got comms, AR, our M4 mags and I'm, I'm out there flapping. I'm one man security detail for dudes who have zero training. They got guns and stuff too, but I know they have that, that.

• 1:40:41Speaker 01

  That stay scared the shit out of me. The amount of freaking rounds that the support guys were taking and I'm going, go, go, you know, because we're mobility survivability. I'm like dudes, first lesson, it's harder shooting moving target. We're not these other, we're not driving 15 miles an hour. Fuck that. As fast as this vehicle could go. Change lanes under bridges, you know, that kind of stuff. All that old school shit. Um, uh, I mean, yeah, that scared the hell out of me. Uh, and then I would do a couple of hits with the, with the working squadron. But when I got back and between those, I built a course called, uh, CSC Combat Skills Course. It's a two week course for all the support element.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  And it was, they loved it, bro. They freaking loved it. They were, because you start with BRM, Basic Rifle Marksmanship. You know, and then movement with a rifle and then security positions, working barricades, driving, um, and then, um, you know, reactive freaking IEDs, you know, all this stuff. So, uh, reaction contact, move to, from, all that stuff. So we did all, just

• 1:41:52Speaker 01

  two weeks of non-stop balls to the wall, uh, basic training, combat skills training. And the fulfillment I got out of that was ridiculous. I loved doing that so much. Um, it was, the job was hard. It freaking sucked, but you know, these cooks and log guys, you know, seeing them freaking rip rounds and shoot AT4s and stuff. And then when I go back to Iraq, um, walking around, we got a hit. It's kind of vanilla. But the, and the cool thing was too, when, when no matter how vanilla the freaking hit was, guys were treating it as if it were, you know, HVT, you know, high value target. I was like, hell yeah.

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  But, um, there was a couple of vanilla hits where I'd go and get my cooks. And say, hey, you guys want to come on and hit? They were like, really? I said, yeah, man. And I put him on, you know, security position with a, with a, with a saw or a, or a mag 58. But dude, dirt fucking combat, bro.

• 1:42:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  One of the cooks even got the freaking.

• 1:42:57Jocko Willink?

  Let it rip.

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, he got to let it rip.

• 1:42:59Jocko Willink?

  I had a, I had my radio man, my radio man from my tactical operations center, right? And he was the guy that kind of ran things. And one night we were going on off, it was pretty, pretty close to base, you know, kind of a no brainer. And I needed, but we had a bunch of people to coordinate with. And I said, hey, man, you know, you, can you come out with me tonight? And, and, you know, just man the radio. And he gets the big eyes. Cause you know, hey, let's face it, I mean, even though I'm saying it's no big deal, man, there was guys getting wounded and killed every single day. So even though I thought it was no big deal, his eyes got real big and he's like, he's like, yes, sir. And so we get out and we did, by this point, this was oh six, we had armored, armored Humvees.

• 1:43:40Jocko Willink?

  And we get on target and I'm, you know, I'm out and we got multiple targets going down and I'm the GFC. So I'm kind of conducting and seeing what's going on and, and I walk over and he's in the Hummer. And I go over and I kind of like cracked the door open. I was like, hey, man, you want to come out and, you know, like, you know, I'll show you what's up, what's going on. And he's like, I'm good to go right here. I was like, Roger that.

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  Sight and sound at the battle.

• 1:44:05Jocko Willink?

  I was like, hey, it's all good, man. You just chill, but I mean, he was a great guy. He did all kinds of good work for me, but you know, we do that, um, with the, with the support people. Cause it's, they just, they don't get good training.

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:18Jocko Willink?

  And, and so they're normally not super comfortable rolling out. I had a, I had a CB too, who was this giant black dude, awesome guy named Biggie.

• 1:44:32Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, yeah, Biggie, he was, he was awesome, but we took him on a couple where we had work to do. We had work for the CBs to do at some locations and man, you know, seeing him, he talk about big, he turned from Biggie. Just a big eyes, man. He was awesome. And one time we got hit, we got hit with, uh, Hit with mortars in the camp and they blew up our big water tank. And so he was just, you know, he was a CB, which CBs are known for, you know, acquiring things. So he went out in the next few hours and acquired a brand new, like giant water tank. We're talking, you know, I don't know how many, but as big as this room that we're sitting in. A giant, he brings back another one on a crane.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:45:14Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Peterson.

• 1:45:16Jocko Willink?

  Get it all filled up with water. And, you know, I said, Hey, man. Hey, I go, Hey, chief, that's awesome, man. Really appreciate it. Appreciate, you know, taking care of us. He goes, man, I'll do whatever I gotta do to help you guys. As long as there ain't no more boom boom in the camp.

• 1:45:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:45:37Jocko Willink?

  By the way, Biggie, I, I, I saw Biggie warming up with three fifteen on bench, warming up. Damn. Ten reps.

• 1:45:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's legit.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  He wasn't playing around. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:49Jocko Willink?

  Um, and so, so the second time when you went back and you guys are doing these hits. So now what year is that? Oh, five?

• 1:45:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, five.

• 1:45:57Jocko Willink?

  So things escalated a lot, right?

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:59Jocko Willink?

  But things, things escalated a lot between oh, four and oh, five.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 1:46:04Jocko Willink?

  I guess somewhere of oh, four, we're starting to get gnarly.

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:46:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh, five and are you guys are, you guys are going out hitting targets, reload? I mean.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of times like recock right there on the, on the spot. So battlefield interrogation, all right, this guy knows so and so, let's go freaking split the force and go. Check these dudes out. And then bam, police them up. Lot of, a lot of cool like police work. You know, snatching dude, I, I, I tell people, um.

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  Like people who don't know.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  You know, when you're trained and when you live in that kind of unit, killing a dude isn't very hard. Snatching up a dude requires, requires a lot of freaking work, you know, especially with. Like, let's say plausible deniability or no trace, that kind of thing. So I love that kind of stuff. That was, to me, that was, that was a lot of fun. It was interesting, you know, snatching dudes up out of their beds and crap like that.

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  But it was, um, the op tempo was, was really high and what I appreciated was being basically like a cherry. You know, I was a private E9.

• 1:47:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  And that's probably the only place in the, in the world, in the military where you, you have the opportunity to do that, be an E9 door kicker. I mean, I had this one night because it was like my third night going into, um, Fallujah on my own little bird.

• 1:47:30Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:47:30Speaker 01

  And I was following in a team and, uh, we were, you know, landing rooftops. And that the third night in a row, they had me on their planning board as task force.

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  Uh, it was killing me. Well, you know what they were doing? They were, they were giving me an opportunity to make up ground because they had been getting some and I'd been left freaking back. Uh, so they were like, yeah, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna.

• 1:47:56Jocko Willink?

  TF Mac coming in hot.

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was cool as shit. Uh, but seeing all the level at which dudes operated, seeing that, cause I was almost from like an outside perspective, you know, looking around going, holy fuck, man. This is pro. This is badass.

• 1:48:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, I think the whole US military, obviously, I mean, this goes without saying, but the, just the ma, the experience, I mean, I always tell people, they're always a little bit surprised, but you know, I didn't shoot my weapon at the enemy for 13 years.

• 1:48:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:48:32Jocko Willink?

  In, in the SEAL team, 13 years of, and I think I locked my, locked and loaded my weapon prior to that, like three times all on a stupid, like I was kind of fired up because we were doing security for something and I got to lock and load my weapon. I was kind of pumped.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:46Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:47Jocko Willink?

  But then, but it wasn't till 13 years, but the amount of combat that we have had now in the US military, repetition after repetition after repetition. And one thing I noticed is like on my first deployment, which was oh, three. We, you know, we were good at doing, you know, building takedowns and we do room clearance. And we, we were, we were good at it. By the time I went back in oh six, man, everybody was, everyone could, you know, everyone could just, there was no factor. It was like, hey, oh, you want to take down this building? Cool. We got this. It was, it had brought everybody up to a much better level. And I always, I think about this now all the time, just the experience that we have now.

• 1:49:28Jocko Willink?

  You know, a mission that would have seemed like a huge deal in nineteen ninety six.

• 1:49:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:49:35Jocko Willink?

  You wouldn't even, it wouldn't even crack the bump on a radar of like, that was cool.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right. Yeah, not even close.

• 1:49:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was, so the, the amount of experience that we've gained and, and, and, you know, even when I watch new platoons come in to relieve us and like occasionally I'd be in that spot like looking at my task unit, looking at one of my platoons moving down the street. And you just see and you go, man, these guys are so good. I mean, everybody's moving. It's like weapons trained everywhere. It's so efficient. And then you see like a new troop coming in and you look at them and you go, they'll, they'll clean it up. They'll clean it up. Cause.

• 1:50:16Speaker 01

  You can tell by his demeanor, you know, by his, just the body language alone, you know, you, you, you just the silhouette. You know who that guy is just by the silhouette. Yeah.

• 1:50:25Jocko Willink?

  For sure. When you, uh, so now it's, you do, you knock out a couple deployments. What, what makes you decide to get out? What makes you decide to retire?

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  I had, uh, some of it was, and I don't mind talking about this because it's good lesson learned shit. A lot of it was because of domestic messiness. I had little kids at home and they had a, uh, they weren't being brought up right. I needed to be there for them. I had already lost. You, you start to think when, when you, when you lose buddies that are close to you, you start to, uh, you know, reflect and you, and you, and you.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  You start to be very objective and you exercise introspection and you go, dude, man, if that's me, I don't really care, you know, I'm just some dude, but I'm gonna leave my kids dry because they don't have the other, their other half sucks. You know, their, their mom at the time, uh, really sucked. So I got out because I had little kids and they needed, they needed me. Cause they didn't have the other half of that. The other half sucked bad. And it was, it was, uh, because of, um, the problems stemmed from, it's big pharma shit, you know, uh, prescription meds. It's not a drug problem if it's, you know, prescription

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  meds. That frigging big pharma, bro. They, that shit pisses me off. But, so I watched the deterioration of a human being over, you know, a long time. Uh, big pharma and she frigging just sucked. So, but I had, I had to do it. Yeah. And, and, you know, initially I thought this is a great idea, but man, it wasn't long before I ran into just feeling horrible about myself and missing the hell out of it.

• 1:52:21Jocko Willink?

  What was the time span between you made the decision that you're gonna retire and like when you retired?

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  Uh, I made the decision the first time I, uh, pushed to Iraq. I said, I'm at the, at the 22 year mark because I was E9. I needed to stay in grade for three years and complete the academy to keep E9 on my

• 1:52:47Jocko Willink?

  Retirement.

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  Retirement ID card kind of thing. So I wanted to make sure that I retired with that stuff. So, yeah, I, I made that decision. Got the academy right before I retired. I think I did the academy and retired two days later, something like that.

• 1:53:03Jocko Willink?

  And then you retire, what was your plan when you retired?

• 1:53:07Speaker 01

  I had no plan.

• 1:53:08Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:53:08Speaker 01

  Zero.

• 1:53:09Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  But I got hired.

• 1:53:12Jocko Willink?

  Job offers like.

• 1:53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got hired prior to retiring.

• 1:53:16Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  Couple of months.

• 1:53:17Jocko Willink?

  So that becomes the plan.

• 1:53:18Speaker 01

  Yep. And the thing is, that's low hanging fruit. I don't recommend that to people. That low hanging fruit shit, man, you know, working for the man, fuck that.

• 1:53:28Jocko Willink?

  And this is oh five, oh five. So contracting is still.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:53:32Jocko Willink?

  Uh, good money.

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:53:34Jocko Willink?

  This is before the market was flooded.

• 1:53:36Speaker 01

  Return to another shithole. Yep. The reason I got out was to be there for my kids. So I didn't want to, you know, make a shit ton of money and deploy again.

• 1:53:45Jocko Willink?

  Right, right.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  Freaking 90 days without the big green machine at my six.

• 1:53:51Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  Cause now I lost some buddies doing contracting stuff too. And it was just killing me, bro. It was killing me. Oh my God.

• 1:54:00Jocko Willink?

  So what was the job that you got? So what did you start doing?

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  It was basically doing what I'm doing now ish, but for a corporation.

• 1:54:07Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:54:08Speaker 01

  I was doing the instruction thing and I was building this unit called the AWG.

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  Asymmetric Warfare Group.

• 1:54:17Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  Yep. I was building that.

• 1:54:19Jocko Willink?

  You sent some people over to me in Ramadi.

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was trying them up and I was trying, the other thing I was doing was I built a course called CATC Combat Application Training Course. And we were training big army. I recruited a couple other guys, a couple of guys like me, retired unit guys. And we were training big army, a five day course. And I loved, when we first started it, we were doing, training first brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, fourth brigade, fourth brigade. Fourth brigade was fit up for a little while. And I love that these guys were so badass, you know, that there were E fours with two deployments.

• 1:54:54Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  And with combat wounds and stuff like that.

• 1:54:57Jocko Willink?

  Two deployments that were 13 months each.

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  Months, yes. Right, right. Yeah. And they were so badass and their soldier skills were, you know. So far surpassed than what I had seen in like the nineties for something. Uh, so that was once again, very fulfilling, you know, running these guys hard, getting them really good training. And making them focus on the fundamental, fundamentals, fundamentals, being expert at the basics, you know, that was, that still is my thing. But that was our thing when we were training, uh, the CAT C program. Expert on the basics and fundamentals. Um, so that was fun. I, I did that for a few years. And then I got, um, I got laid off.

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

  What the fuck does that mean? You don't know, you have no, when you're a career military guy and then you're working for, you know, a company that does government contracting shit, is all retired military, you're not even thinking job security. That's not even, that's not a part of your thought process. You don't go bed at night and say, oh, I hope I don't get fired tomorrow. You don't think that, you don't think it. So laid off things, and I didn't even see the writing on the wall. Cause I'm dumb about corporate America. I don't know any of that and stuff. Um, so the company got bought out and they started, uh, to, um, you know, cut corners, trim the fat, pinch pennies, all that stuff. And I was thinking, oh yeah, we gotta do it, you know, gotta cut those corners, gotta pinch those pennies. I wasn't thinking about me. I cost money to that.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  And they laid me off with a phone call, man, phone call. You know, not even face to face. And the feeling, cause I was already down at that time. I was really bummed out. I was, um, I was in a dark, dark place. I was going through depression. I was freaking drinking on the job, like not on the range, but I would bring like, a Jack and Coke to work in a, in a big Coca-Cola bottle and stuff like that. I was hating life. I was miserable.

• 1:56:52Jocko Willink?

  And that's what you got your, your, uh, I guess she's your ex-wife now. She's dragging things down.

• 1:56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, no support whatsoever.

• 1:57:00Jocko Willink?

  Disconnected from your former teammates that you spent your entire life with.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  Has no concept about that stuff and not only disconnected from that, but disconnected from reality because of like prescription meds and stuff. So no connection between the neuroreceptors, just dark space. Every once in a while, target of opportunity. You know, a moment of clarity, but it, now all that shit sucked bad. Then getting laid off, you know, on top of it was like, holy fuck. And then the, the, uh, other half saying, oh, just get a job with another company.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  And I'm like, fuck that, man. I wanna do something else.

• 1:57:39Speaker 01

  So I called three guys who owned owned companies. All good friends of mine, all ex-Unit guys, and they all said the same thing. Yep, I will get your back. I will get you work if you need it, but dude, man, do it yourself. You can, you have the ability to do this. So they all gave me permission to be my own guy.

• 1:58:00Speaker 01

  Best thing that ever could happen to me, because that was 10 years ago. And I generated my company, T-Max, and it just freaking detonated after that. It went batshit. Yep. I mean, there's ebbs and flows. It's scary. You're running your own business, you know, there's ebbs and flows. And I, you know, like, I got ripped off by a promoter. I had to go through the sequestration 2013, all that deficit spending bullshit. Where I had all government contract stuff for the year, and then that light switch went out in January. No money, none. At the same time, I'm going through divorce, you know, and dude, that was hard. That was hard. But that was good. It was freaking odd. It was so good. Those kind of lessons learned, you know, you really grow as a human being.

• 1:58:42Speaker 01

  Based on how you, how you come out of a bad situation like that, you know, how, how.

• 1:58:50Speaker 01

  How you, for me, it was making lemonade out of lemons. And trying to rekindle my past, trying to remember who I was, what I'm here for, what my purpose is. And then I had to give myself meaning, you know, I needed to be.

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  There needed to be a reason for me to get up every freaking day.

• 1:59:11Jocko Willink?

  A new mission.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, every day, new miss. Yep. Because that's what, especially special op guys, not just military guys, but special op guys. They need that purpose. They need that mission. So without meaning, without purpose.

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  You you you could you could falter, you could short circuit yourself and you could, you know, start slipping into dark places. And you were slipping there. Dude, I I almost capitulated. I was close, bro. I mean, I was dark. I was at the bottom, bottom. And then I it was it was it was it was lasting for years. I lived in the bonus room above my garage for five years. I lived in the bonus room above my garage. Um, I wasn't a drunkard, but I was drinking all day. So nobody knew it, you know, that I was that I was medicating. Nobody knew it because I would just all day long, all day long. Probably, you know, eleven o'clock in the morning, start. Um, and, uh, I had no, I mean, I would

• 2:00:09Speaker 01

  go to work, I would get jobs, and I was faking it. I was faking the, you know, get you some Pat McAfee, you know, all that. I was just faking the Mac show, just faking it. And nobody knew where I was. Nobody had any idea. Uh, because I had no, I wasn't like hanging out. I had no close friends or anything like that. My kids were my close friends. Uh, and they were my kind of my sanctuary or my escape, you know, hanging out with them. Are you still working out? At that time, not very much. I mean, I'm getting by because everything that I did, my my my now ex thought it was because I was having an affair, you know, so there's no ex other explanation for me working out other than wanting to fuck somebody. You

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  know, there's no explanation. Everything that I did was because it's an affair. And I had,

• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  in her mind, I mean, it was bad when people, when, you know, when I say, yeah, my ex is crazy, they go, oh, I know what you're talking about. Oh, yeah, yeah. I say, no, man, I'm not talking bitch or cunt. I'm talking legit crazy. I had a girlfriend, imaginary girlfriend living in her, uh, closet for four years. Her name was Skeeter. Damn. I would come home and the cops would be at my house. And she had taken all the light switch panels off and showing the cops that there are blue washers because I'm bugging the house, you know, stuff like that. I would come home for four. I remember doing this one trip for, uh, twenty fourth SDS, you know, uh, CCT guys, badass dudes. Uh, four days training. I was wiped out, man. I was smoked and I was coming back from, uh, it was up by, uh,

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  Moyak, you know, so for me, it was like a five hour drive and I am I back in my drive with the truck and I'm looking in rearview mirror and all my shit is in the driveway. It's all in the driveway and she's sitting on a stool. She's going through like my tackle box, you know, and all my tools and it's all just everything. She's looking for clues or something, you know? That was, that was the, I remember that night, that was the start of a broken camel's back. And she called the cops that night, cops came and they said, hey, can you stay somewhere else? I go, yep, absolutely. Cause there had been a hotel that I'd been going to. And it was just a mile down the road. Uh, next day, one of the cops called, calls me and he says, um, can I talk to you?

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  So I, I said, where are you at? He said, I'm at your house. I drive there. He goes, hey, I ran into your wife in the village. She's frigging doped out of her mind. He said, brother,

• 2:02:39Speaker 01

  that he knew, he knew who I was, where I came from and stuff like that. Very nice guy. He goes, you need to take radical steps and you need to get the fuck out of here. I know you're in it for the kids. Kids are, um, resilient. They will handle, they will be able to handle this, but you need to get the fuck out. And I was going, oh man, I was broke down because nobody at that, until then, nobody, I, realize, I, I, I felt that I was all alone in the world, that I was going through this shit, you know, that nobody had any idea. The cops had seen it because they've been there many times. But, um, that night I get jacked up again, uh, and I'm with my sweet son, James and, and I'm talking to him and, and I remember telling him,

• 2:03:21Jocko Willink?

  How old is he at this point?

• 2:03:21Speaker 01

  He's probably, let me see, thirteen, what, what,

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  seven.

• 2:03:30Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  And, um, he said, I said, James, I don't just love you, I am in love with you. And he started crying. He, that really meant something to him, you know? It really meant something. And then I realized, fuck, man, this kid really digs me, you know? Really freaking digs me. So I, he falls asleep. I take him to bed and I go back up into my bonus room. And I realized that I need to make a change now. This has to happen now.

• 2:03:59Speaker 01

  So that hole that I was looking at, that I was almost capitulated to, you know, I'm at the bottom of the hole. It was like an epiphany where I, I, I'm not letting this, this bitch bury me. I will not be defeated. I am not buried. I have been planted. You know, and it was, it was this moment of clarity I had. I put out my running shoes and, uh, put my, um, my, I, my iPod, I, yeah, iPod out my headphones, uh, put out some shorts and I said, all right, set an alarm clock. I'm going to go for a run tomorrow. No plan, just let me go clear my head. Got up full of piss and vinegar, put the shit on and I ran and I'm not a ground pounder. I like to sprint. I like running, but I ran for about an hour and a half.

• 2:04:44Speaker 01

  It was nonstop. I just kept running around town, you know? Got back in my driveway, I'm starving and I look at the house and I'm going, ugh, this is the house where dreams going to die. I don't want to go inside. So I stay in my driveway. I work out for like another two hours, just up and down. I had some dumbbells and a pull-up bar and I just work out for like another two hours. I mean, to the point of like incapacitation. Um, but that was it. That was my, that was my rebirth thinking, uh, there's no way I'm going to be defeated by this. There's no way. And I, I am not buried. I have been planted. Uh, but that was the beginning of a whole, and then with the cop coming the day before and saying, get the fuck out. So that day I got the fuck out. Grabbed your shit and left?

• 2:05:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just 500 yards away. I found a, um, condo because I didn't want to be far from my kiddies. Yeah, for sure. Um, so it was like 500 yards as the crow flies and just, you know, I didn't need things. I needed my guns and some tools and that kind of stuff. And, uh, packed up what I, what I could and just freaking boogied. Uh, yeah. And started that arduous process of domestic messiness at last and for a long time with me, because I was trying to get custody too at the time. And trying to do that in North Carolina is like pulling freaking teeth. Yeah, it ain't easy. You need, um, they're, they're got to a point where I was going.

• 2:06:13Speaker 01

  The cops said, go see the magistrate, magistrate. I went to the magistrate magistrate.

• 2:06:19Speaker 01

  Plead in my case, magistrate says you need to call, um, mobiles, uh, mobile, um, mobile crisis management. Call mobile crisis management and they say you need to talk to a shrink. I go to the shrink. They won't talk to me. They say, go tell the police. So send me in a big circle.

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  So I finally talked mobile crisis management into, um, they said, we're voluntary. They have to voluntarily commit themselves. I said, can you at least talk to her? So they talked to her. They came out and said, yes.

• 2:06:52Speaker 01

  Paranoid and, uh, delusional. Uh, no doubt. I said, so what does it take? She goes. There has to be basically.

• 2:07:03Speaker 01

  In, in the state, something horrible has, has to happen first. Like, let me set the house on fire. Let me drown the kid. That kind of thing. Then, okay. Now it's okay. You got, yeah, it's, I said, are you fucking shitting me? This is how it works. I said, you're basically, that's what, those are my words. I said, basically what you're telling me is something horrible happens, happened first. And they said, yep, that's exactly what I'm telling you. Something horrible happened, has to happen first.

• 2:07:32Jocko Willink?

  As you, as you look back at this.

• 2:07:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:07:35Jocko Willink?

  Like from your perspective right now, because a lot of guys that, um, a lot of veterans, a lot of guys that have gotten out. And a lot of guys, you know, I mean, they had, they have a rough time with it. Is there, uh, advice, straight up, when, when a guy's looking at the abyss, when a guy's thinking everything sucks, when a guy's thinking they, they lost their job, their wife's acting crazy, whatever, all these things pile up. Is there advice that you have for guys that get in that situation? What I always tell people is like, you need to find a new mission. That's what you need to do.

• 2:08:03Speaker 01

  That's exactly what I, I, I, I, either mission or I say purpose. Um, or meaning. So, and meaning could be volunteering somewhere. It could be going to the gym, you know?

• 2:08:17Speaker 01

  Same, it's all semantics.

• 2:08:19Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:08:20Speaker 01

  But you have to have purpose and meaning. You have to find those things. So one of the things, this is a funny, this, I volunteer, every day I have five guys I train at my gym. It's gratis. I do it voluntarily. But they're relying on me to show up. You know, so it's again, they always say, thanks, bro, man, because I'm changing their lives. These are guys I know, they work in the community, you know, it's my mechanic, my owner of my pub, these kind of things. But, you know, I'm changing their lives, but the other thing I tell them is, bro, thank you because, you know, you're getting me here. You're getting here, you're keeping me on my programming and you're giving me purpose and meaning.

• 2:09:03Speaker 01

  I'm still gonna probably freaking get some anyway, because that's who I am, but, you know, you're keeping me on schedule, keeping me on track, that kind of thing. So thank you. But yeah, you gotta have that, you know, new mission statement. Purpose and meaning, gotta have those things. Especially guys who've been in for a long freaking time. And sometime it pisses me off because I'll have guys ask for advice and they'll say, yeah, I'm in a dark spot. You know, I have a loving wife and, and kids who love me and I want to tell them, bro, fuck you. You know what? Because I had to do that shit without that, with hate, with disdain. And that's your reason right there, man. That's your mission.

• 2:09:45Speaker 01

  You got a wife who freaking digs the hell out of you and supports everything you do? You know, that's your queen, bro. Lay out the freaking carpet. Make her, your mission is to make her coffee and cook for her, clean your house or whatever it is, I don't know. Make a lot of money so she's comfortable. Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:10:05Jocko Willink?

  And then what was it, as your business grew? Like what was some, what was some things that, that kind of accelerated your business?

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  I think the big thing is I don't, all my eggs aren't in one basket. That's a big one. But because that business is good, but I've been hit before by like sequestration and stuff like that. It could be a ammo crisis or whatever, because basically my business is, is, you know, shooting combat marksmanship, close quarter battle, those kinds of things. That works well. That runs well because I have my own brand of training methodology and, you know, can't be replicated. We're all teaching basically the same thing. It's just that how do you deliver that? You know, what is your delivery platform? How do you relay? Because that's what people are buying. I mean, you could teach somebody to squeeze a trigger the same way I can,

• 2:11:00Speaker 01

  but how do you deliver that message? And then, you know, what words do you use? And, and what demonstrations can you put together? And how is this important or why? So that business goes good. And then I just, I keep putting, jamming shit into the pipeline. You know, I mean, I still don't want to, man, when opportunity knocks, I'm like, yep, I'm snatching that up. I'm doing that. Yep. Oh, man. And it's been a double edged sword because the last couple of years I've got really smoked. So this year I cut back on courses. And I'm going to work more out of like home, do more mentoring and coaching, like online stuff. And, you know, sell more product, that kind of thing.

• 2:11:44Jocko Willink?

  What kind of products you selling?

• 2:11:45Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I got the bands, the get you some bands.

• 2:11:51Speaker 01

  Those are, you know, every once in a while I'll get them in stock. And it's not something I have constant, a constant flow of because I have to order them. They have to be made. I've got a sling ding, you know, that's for AR. It's kind of like a modular monopod. I got books. I got a. What kind of product do I have? Not a lot, not, not, oh, I have like a store, you know, T-shirts and stuff like that.

• 2:12:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in case somebody wants to get you some.

• 2:12:18Speaker 01

  Yep, that's one of the T-shirts, get you some, that's one of them.

• 2:12:22Jocko Willink?

  Get your Blaze Ops on.

• 2:12:23Speaker 01

  Get your Blaze on.

• 2:12:24Jocko Willink?

  And you do, when you, when you, uh, like I've seen some of your stuff where you've got like, uh, Blaze Ops 45s. Weapons.

• 2:12:32Speaker 01

  Oh, right, yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:32Jocko Willink?

  Are those like, um, available?

• 2:12:35Speaker 01

  Uh, well, those, every once in a while I do a collaboration.

• 2:12:37Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:12:38Speaker 01

  With a guy, you know, and so I did one with, um.

• 2:12:41Jocko Willink?

  Cause I know someone that needs a Blaze Ops 45.

• 2:12:44Speaker 01

  That was real bad around here. It was 25, only 25 of those were made.

• 2:12:49Jocko Willink?

  We gotta do another run.

• 2:12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, well, I'm collaborating right now with another company to do a different one. So it's, it's, it's very fledgling right now, it's in its infancy. Uh, but, but I've done, uh, like a, a knife, you know, uh, a, uh, a knife by one company, I've done three different guns. Different gun companies, working on another one right now, it, it's just good to collab, you know, build partnerships with companies.

• 2:13:16Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:13:16Speaker 01

  Yep, um, sometime they work well, sometime they do not. Yeah, not everybody out there is, uh, there's some, there's some slimy motherfuckers out there.

• 2:13:27Jocko Willink?

  There is indeed.

• 2:13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:28Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I mean, look dude, it's been, it's been over two hours.

• 2:13:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:13:33Jocko Willink?

  Uh, but, so all the stuff that you're doing right now, you're getting after, you got, you got, um, TMAX, TMAX Inc. com.

• 2:13:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:13:42Jocko Willink?

  That's where people go to hook up with your training, which I looked at your schedule, you said you're not doing as much.

• 2:13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:46Jocko Willink?

  Bro, your calendar's.

• 2:13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:48Jocko Willink?

  Pretty packed.

• 2:13:49Speaker 01

  It's not much more than two courses a month though.

• 2:13:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:13:53Speaker 01

  For the, for the year.

• 2:13:54Jocko Willink?

  But you do them in different locations.

• 2:13:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:13:56Jocko Willink?

  People can go on there.

• 2:13:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:13:57Jocko Willink?

  You know, uh, and what I was gonna say was you're like, hey, look, you know, people can shoot and, and there's, you know, thousands and thousands of guys that are really good with pistol, and then you kind of mentioned, but, you know, it's the methodology. But also, look, I instruct too, man, I teach leadership all the time, that's what I do. And there's a bunch of people that teach leadership.

• 2:14:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:14:14Jocko Willink?

  There's a, there's a communication.

• 2:14:17Jocko Willink?

  Skill set that you have where what you can do is convey the message properly that so people actually absorb it. Right. That's the important part.

• 2:14:24Speaker 01

  I like to say that, you know, the big thing about teaching is you have to be the right person is going to say the right thing to the right person at the right time. It's important to know what to say, but more important to know what not to say. And the message has to be palatable too. And then, you know, it has to resonate with, uh, resonate and be relevant. But yeah, man, it's, I love doing that. I love the teaching thing. Um, and

• 2:14:46Jocko Willink?

  And those courses are for everybody.

• 2:14:49Speaker 01

  Yes. Yep. I do open enrollment courses. So they're for everyone. So I get the full gamut of people. I think most of them are sold out this year. I think the only one open, I have a women's course and a beginner's course. I've never taught either.

• 2:15:03Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Where's the beginner's course? Cause Echo Charles is signing up.

• 2:15:06Speaker 01

  They're both, um, they're both in North Carolina.

• 2:15:09Jocko Willink?

  Flying to North Carolina, Echo Charles.

• 2:15:10Speaker 01

  Yep. I'll bring my party mix. Alright.

• 2:15:14Jocko Willink?

  So we got, so we got T max, Inc. com. Then you also have combat strength.

• 2:15:19Speaker 01

  Right. Training.

• 2:15:20Jocko Willink?

  It's combat strength, training.com.

• 2:15:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:15:23Jocko Willink?

  Which is where, and you got, look, I, I, one of the reasons I didn't talk a bunch about this is because you got awesome videos online. You talk about what you're doing. You show what you're doing. Right. Um, you got those courses. Clearly you're based on, and I hate to use the word functional, because everyone uses the word functional. But if, go and look at your, your stuff, what you're doing, you can see clearly, these are drills, skills, conditioning, based on being able to function in a wide variety of environments, critical situations.

• 2:15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. The functional thing is overused and abused. Uh, I say it's exercise for the real world, maybe. Um, I think that what we do, or what I put together, it's all about, um, life-saving or ass-kicking. You know, those are essentially, and I put a lot of free information out there on my, uh, Insta shows on my Instagram.

• 2:16:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:15Speaker 01

  Um, you know, yeah. So that T max, Inc.

• 2:16:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:19Speaker 01

  Insta and, and the workout stuff that I put on there, it's not about hubris or gloating. It's, it's about, hey, this is a power day example, because guys will buy my programming. And if they run out of Curriculum or ideas, they could just go back and say, all right, power day, strength day, speed and quickness. All right. Yeah, those are good ideas. Yeah. So, man, it's, it's a great freaking platform and that's what I use it for. Information.

• 2:16:46Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep. So those are the two. Tmaxinc.com. You've got combat strength training.com. You've got a Facebook, which is Tmax Inc. You've got your Instagram.

• 2:16:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:16:56Jocko Willink?

  What'd you say? Insta shizzle?

• 2:16:59Speaker 01

  No baloney, homie.

• 2:17:01Jocko Willink?

  Ah, he calls it the gram.

• 2:17:03Speaker 02

  I don't even call it that.

• 2:17:05Jocko Willink?

  Capital T, capital G, the gram. And, and yours, you, you do all kinds of, the other thing you do, you talk about theirs, which is, which is awesome, is you give people a little heads up on, you know, you are your own protection detail. So.

• 2:17:20Speaker 01

  Sunday Sentinel sermons. Yep.

• 2:17:21Jocko Willink?

  So teaching people, hey, man, there's just some things to think about.

• 2:17:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:17:24Jocko Willink?

  And everybody could use those things.

• 2:17:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:17:27Jocko Willink?

  Cause the world is not a happy, peaceful place all the time.

• 2:17:31Speaker 01

  Right. Yep.

• 2:17:32Jocko Willink?

  And it's real easy, easy to lose track of this. Echo, you got anything?

• 2:17:35Speaker 01

  And I got a, my YouTube channel too. Pat Mac YouTube channel.

• 2:17:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. And th- those are great shooting drills. You got, you got all kinds of stuff. It pisses me off every time I see it. Cause I know you're like either at your gym, at your house, at your range. And I live, of course, live in California, in a city.

• 2:17:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:17:52Jocko Willink?

  So the only, you know, luckily I get to shoot my bow, but I'm not cracking off rounds out my back door. I can promise you that. So every time I see you climbing a fast rope and cracking off rounds, I get so pissed. I'm like, well, I'm moving to North Carolina.

• 2:18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:05Jocko Willink?

  Come on.

• 2:18:06Speaker 01

  Free America.

• 2:18:08Jocko Willink?

  What do you got, Echo? Anything?

• 2:18:09Speaker 02

  Oh, your bicep, like what, what's the status on?

• 2:18:12Speaker 01

  It's good. I mean, it, it, you know, it, like, if you were to look at me, arm to arm comparison, one's smaller than the other. And there's a big scar on, you know?

• 2:18:21Speaker 02

  Well, you said it, it tore on the, on the muscle. So did you have surgery?

• 2:18:24Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was very freaking meatball surgery. Army.

• 2:18:30Jocko Willink?

  Yes. You were an 18 year old private. They gave that to like a new guy doctor. They're like, hey, we got one for you there.

• 2:18:37Speaker 01

  I mean, the scar's gnarly. It's all keloid. It's like that wide, you know? And, and yeah. Yeah, but um.

• 2:18:46Jocko Willink?

  He tore each.

• 2:18:48Speaker 01

  Do you have them operated on? Yeah, yeah, the tendon though. Right. Yeah, that's different, huh? Yep, yeah. But it works though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All my surgeries, uh, cause I've had a bunch of them. There, everything's good, man. I'm, I'm feeling pretty good, but I attribute that to how I train. And I take care of myself, so I work out pretty freaking smart, a little more tentative now. Cause I'm fifty-five freaking years old.

• 2:19:16Speaker 01

  So, uh, you know, I'm a little more tentative when it comes to like mixing up grappling, freaking, you know, that kind of thing. Uh, I don't need to get jacked up while I'm training. It's called fitness, not brokenness.

• 2:19:30Speaker 01

  I got my own, uh, the other thing is I got my own, uh, podcast.

• 2:19:34Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 2:19:34Speaker 01

  University of Badassery.

• 2:19:36Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 2:19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's cool with, uh, CJ.

• 2:19:38Jocko Willink?

  And what's CJ's deal?

• 2:19:39Speaker 01

  He's the metal motivator. So he used to be a, a preacher.

• 2:19:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:43Speaker 01

  So we've got a pretty good get dynamic, cause he's got a gift of oratory, bro. I mean, that guy could jack his jaws. And he makes religion cool, too.

• 2:19:53Jocko Willink?

  But he's like a metalhead, right?

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, uh, his moniker online is the, uh, metal motivator.

• 2:19:58Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 2:19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's funny as hell, but.

• 2:20:00Jocko Willink?

  And how often you guys put out that podcast?

• 2:20:02Speaker 01

  Not often enough, like once, m- month and a half? Something like that? Yeah, but it's fun. It's all upbeat, you know, it's, yeah, positive messaging and stuff like that.

• 2:20:13Jocko Willink?

  Right on, man. Right on. Anything, anything else? What, did we miss anything?

• 2:20:17Speaker 01

  No, bro, I just really, uh, I appreciate the opportunity to be sitting here with you and, uh, like I said, man, the interweb is a cool place if you use it right. You know, if you use that thing right, it's, it's, it's a great platform that can help others and then I get to, I get to meet guys like you. You know, and, and you think it's like, dude, I already freaking know you because of the interweb. It's the same feeling I get every time. Yeah.

• 2:20:43Jocko Willink?

  Well, hey, man, thanks for coming on. Uh, glad you came out to California.

• 2:20:47Speaker 01

  Right up.

• 2:20:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, thanks for your twenty-two years on the grind.

• 2:20:51Speaker 01

  Cool, thank you.

• 2:20:52Jocko Willink?

  Taking that, taking us as a nation from the Cold War through to the War on Terror. You know, if it wasn't for guys like you that, that kept those skills up during all that time, that, that we wouldn't have been ready for, you know, what we faced on the battlefield. So, thanks for your service, brother.

• 2:21:07Speaker 01

  Rock and roll.

• 2:21:08Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 2:21:09Speaker 01

  Thank you, sir.

• 2:21:10Jocko Willink?

  Right on. And with that,

• 2:21:15Jocko Willink?

  Pat Mack has left the building.

• 2:21:19Jocko Willink?

  And we are here.

• 2:21:22Jocko Willink?

  Should be, hopefully,

• 2:21:25Jocko Willink?

  let's just say enthusiastic about improving our skillsets.

• 2:21:29Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:21:30Jocko Willink?

  In life.

• 2:21:31Speaker 02

  Agree.

• 2:21:31Jocko Willink?

  In all aspects.

• 2:21:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:21:34Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes it might be hard to figure out of all these skillsets, where am I going to put my focus? How do I prioritize and execute selecting proper skillsets to improve on?

• 2:21:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:46Jocko Willink?

  What do you recommend, Echo Charles?

• 2:21:47Speaker 02

  Well, I recommend jiu-jitsu, obviously. But interestingly, right? So Pat Mack, he's over here jumping at all opportunities to improve his skillsets. Every training scenario he was offered, jumped on it.

• 2:22:01Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:22:01Speaker 02

  Then what do you wind up with? A lot of skillsets.

• 2:22:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:22:05Speaker 02

  Very good. So many skillsets that you kind of forget you have them until the moment comes and you're like, oh, you know, I can do that, right? Did that.

• 2:22:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 2:22:14Speaker 02

  So don't let-

• 2:22:16Jocko Willink?

  Forget what skillsets you have until it's time to disarm a Bulgarian landmine and you're like, I went to school for that. Pat Mack coming in hot.

• 2:22:25Speaker 02

  So don't let jiu-jitsu not be one of those skills.

• 2:22:28Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:22:29Speaker 02

  You see what I'm saying?

• 2:22:29Jocko Willink?

  And you know, we didn't even talk about the fighting skills with Pat Mack for some reason.

• 2:22:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:37Jocko Willink?

  Uh, cuz he's, you know, he does stand-up, he does the jiu-jitsu. His gym is primarily an MMA gym, actually.

• 2:22:46Jocko Willink?

  So anyways, we, including-

• 2:22:49Speaker 02

  Including-

• 2:22:50Jocko Willink?

  Pat Mack, agree. What is one skillset that you can utilize just about everywhere? The jiu-jitsu.

• 2:22:58Speaker 02

  It's true. So when we trained jiu-jitsu, we needed jiu-jitsu gi if we're doing gi, which we recommend doing gi, so we are in fact doing gi. So get an origin gi. That's the answer. Best gi factually in the world. Many options.

• 2:23:14Speaker 02

  Quality, arguably luxury, arguably.

• 2:23:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, is that kind of a, is that, is that a problem for me?

• 2:23:21Speaker 02

  I don't know, problem.

• 2:23:22Jocko Willink?

  When I put on my Rift gi, am I kind of?

• 2:23:25Speaker 02

  You're in, you're in the lap of luxury, for sure.

• 2:23:28Jocko Willink?

  It does feel that way when you put on a Rift gi.

• 2:23:30Speaker 02

  Very luxurious, yes sir. Nonetheless, it's functional as well, more importantly, and just so happens to be made in America.

• 2:23:40Jocko Willink?

  That's not to just so happens, it's made in Amer- America through the determination.

• 2:23:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:47Jocko Willink?

  The determination of the people of America.

• 2:23:50Speaker 02

  On purpose, it's not happenstance, straight up on purpose.

• 2:23:54Jocko Willink?

  There was people that said it couldn't be done, by the way.

• 2:23:58Jocko Willink?

  Pete Roberts told all those people, really?

• 2:24:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Watch this.

• 2:24:03Speaker 02

  I was just gonna see about that one, on that one.

• 2:24:05Jocko Willink?

  And it's cool to make gis in America. Unfortunately, it's not cool that you can't wear your gi all the time.

• 2:24:14Speaker 02

  You know, I guess that's not.

• 2:24:15Jocko Willink?

  Right, that's not cool. I mean, you, I guess you, let me rephrase that, you could wear your gi all the time, but you might get some funny looks at the supermarket.

• 2:24:24Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:24:25Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever worn your gi outside the gym?

• 2:24:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:28Jocko Willink?

  The gymnasium.

• 2:24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so one time, actually, no, one time, where, where I was up later than my lovely wife. I didn't want to go in the room and like disturb her, maybe wake her up or something like that, to go get a jacket, it was kind of cold, so I wanted to put on a jacket.

• 2:24:45Jocko Willink?

  I was wondering how you got a gi on.

• 2:24:48Speaker 02

  I needed a jacket scenario is what's going on, but I didn't want to disturb, so I'm like looking around for just, I don't know, anything, I didn't want to put a blanket on myself while I'm on the computer, it seemed kind of, I don't know. I mean, I guess I could have, but it kind of is not functional, you know, it'll get in the way when you're typing, you gotta readjust, anyway. Find the rift gi, I put it on, it worked, see what I'm saying?

• 2:25:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:09Speaker 02

  So that there, there, uh, I was there, sitting there, wearing my gi top outside of the gym.

• 2:25:16Jocko Willink?

  And what we wearing, we wearing pants, joggers?

• 2:25:19Speaker 02

  Uh, no, no, uh, I don't.

• 2:25:21Jocko Willink?

  Shorts.

• 2:25:23Speaker 02

  I probably was not wearing shorts if it was cold, but.

• 2:25:25Jocko Willink?

  Good point. Well, that's not a good point for me though, because I wear shorts when it's cold all the time.

• 2:25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, but your legs don't get cold, right?

• 2:25:31Jocko Willink?

  That is true.

• 2:25:33Speaker 02

  You know, your legs, yeah, I don't know, I don't, I don't remember, but I think it was pants of some sort.

• 2:25:38Jocko Willink?

  Alright.

• 2:25:38Speaker 02

  Nonetheless, yes, we're getting origin gi.

• 2:25:41Jocko Willink?

  Yes, and because you can't wear a gi unless you're Echo Charles in your house, don't want to wake up your wife.

• 2:25:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:25:46Jocko Willink?

  Most of the time, you don't want to wear a gi around. If you need pants, guess what you can get? Jeans. Origin jeans. Origin jeans, which are also made 100% in America. And we just released the second version of the jeans, which are, the, the first version was called the factory jeans. They're a heavyweight, heavier weight. I guess technically it'd be a medium weight. But we have now launched the Delta 68 jeans, which are lightweight.

• 2:26:24Jocko Willink?

  People ask, are they, what is the word, flexible? Is that the word?

• 2:26:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, flexible.

• 2:26:28Jocko Willink?

  Stretch, stretch. Yes, they are. They're, they're, they're made to move.

• 2:26:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26:34Jocko Willink?

  You can do a full, deep squat workout in your jeans.

• 2:26:38Speaker 02

  They're not jeggings though, you know what jeggings are?

• 2:26:41Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:26:44Speaker 02

  They're leggings, but jeans. Oh, no, no, they just look like jeans, but they're leggings.

• 2:26:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:26:49Speaker 02

  So they're not jeggings.

• 2:26:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, kind of a violation of like humanity with that.

• 2:26:55Speaker 02

  Hey, you're the one who said the stretch. You said the word stretch, not me, you. So, unless, we gotta clarify. So Delta 68 jeans have some give in them. Let's just say that. Has some give in them.

• 2:27:05Jocko Willink?

  They allow you to move, some freedom of movement.

• 2:27:08Speaker 02

  You wanna do a high kick or something like this?

• 2:27:10Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:27:10Speaker 02

  Fine, right?

• 2:27:11Jocko Willink?

  You're good.

• 2:27:12Speaker 02

  Okay, boom. There you go. Delta 68 jeans are in the house, as it were. Also joggers.

• 2:27:19Speaker 02

  Comfortable joggers.

• 2:27:20Jocko Willink?

  For people that wear joggers.

• 2:27:22Speaker 02

  In the event of you wearing joggers, boom, origin main.com. That's where you get this stuff. Also, supplements. Jaco. Are supplements important?

• 2:27:33Jocko Willink?

  They are important.

• 2:27:35Speaker 02

  And again, not to split it and not to get put too, uh, sharp of a point on it. But it depends what kind of supplements.

• 2:27:45Jocko Willink?

  True, true. I recommend that you put supplements that allow you to get after it at the top of your list. I E. Joint warfare.

• 2:27:54Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:27:55Jocko Willink?

  I E. Krill oil.

• 2:28:00Jocko Willink?

  Super krill.

• 2:28:02Speaker 02

  Sure, super krill. Keep your joints in the game. If your joints aren't in the game, you're not in the game, straight up.

• 2:28:07Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Discipline, discipline go, discipline go. Pills, discipline go in a can. You're gonna need more protein. Guess what? You might as well get a protein that tastes like dessert. You don't have to punish yourself with protein. Remember those days?

• 2:28:25Jocko Willink?

  If you wanted extra protein, it was a punishment. It was a punishment.

• 2:28:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you wanted the good one. Like, you could get the can. You know how like mega meal mass five thousand? I don't know if you ever had this.

• 2:28:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it was like two thousand and it was five thousand.

• 2:28:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's in a big like dog food bag. Huge thing, but it tasted pretty good, but I, I, I'm fairly certain there is like straight up sugar and all this stuff. And maybe like technically I might add some protein in there, but it was like five thousand calories or something like this.

• 2:28:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was just.

• 2:28:52Speaker 02

  You see what I'm saying?

• 2:28:53Jocko Willink?

  So, milk. You don't need to drink that junk anymore. Now you can drink milk. Mint, strawberry, mint, strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, and peanut butter.

• 2:29:07Speaker 02

  Peanut butter.

• 2:29:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Good stuff. Daniel also got Warrior Kid Milk. You can hook that up for your children. Why would you give your children? Poison.

• 2:29:17Speaker 02

  No reason.

• 2:29:17Jocko Willink?

  Give him milk.

• 2:29:19Speaker 02

  I'll tell you the reason, man. Short term versus long term. Everything, everything can be broken down in short term versus long term. So you can give your kids poison, as it were, or these supremely unhealthy, uh, items for short term gain. To keep them quiet, to keep them from complaining, to make, to put a temporary smile on their face.

• 2:29:43Jocko Willink?

  You know why you do it? I don't even think that's the case, man. I just think you don't know. You just don't know. Now, yes, you're right. You go, okay, hey, I got this strawberry drink, beverage. It's gonna keep my kid quiet, make them happy. You don't even know that there's an option, that there's something that could keep them quiet, make them happy, and make them stronger.

• 2:30:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:03Jocko Willink?

  And smarter and better.

• 2:30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you know how like you or we, whatever, will discuss that really most things, pretty much everything in life can be broken down into short term and long term, like battles, right?

• 2:30:18Speaker 02

  Most of the time. By most, I don't know really what I mean by most, but we'll just say most of the time. Usually, if you choose short term, it's at the expense of the long term. Usually. There are exceptions. Every once in a while, you get something that fulfills both short term and long term. Sushi, in my opinion. Or your kid and milk. That's another exception. Short term gains, short term pleasure. Long term, uh, not only satisfaction, but long term gains.

• 2:30:51Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, you can get all this stuff, including Jaco White Tea at The Vitamin Shop, or you can get everything that we just talked about at Origin Maine, the state, M A I N E, dot com.

• 2:31:04Speaker 02

  It's true. Also, Jaco's store, it's called Jaco's store, and this is where you can get your very own.

• 2:31:12Speaker 02

  T-shirts. Your very own rash guard, more rash guards. More representative of this path that we're all on. Hats. Hoodies, I don't know if I said hoodies already, but they're on there. Some women's stuff on there too. Real good stuff. Good way to support. And more importantly, good way to represent.

• 2:31:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a good bona fides when you're out in the field.

• 2:31:33Speaker 02

  Oh, big time.

• 2:31:33Jocko Willink?

  You're just in the airport, you're representing and all of a sudden someone goes, they give you the nod.

• 2:31:39Speaker 02

  Yep, the nod.

• 2:31:40Jocko Willink?

  They give you the nod and we know. If something goes down. We know at least one person we can count on.

• 2:31:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:46Jocko Willink?

  Over there with the bona fides.

• 2:31:48Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:31:49Jocko Willink?

  Got that death core shirt on, you're like, hey, well, this guy's got my back.

• 2:31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's in the game, he knows.

• 2:31:55Jocko Willink?

  Put up the flag.

• 2:31:56Speaker 02

  Fully. Also, subscribe. To the podcast if you haven't already on your iTunes or Stitcher, wherever you listen to it. It's a good benefit to subscribe, right? You get the episode right in your, I don't know if you call it the inbox or what. But you get it on your phone.

• 2:32:13Jocko Willink?

  And also don't forget that we have the grounded podcast.

• 2:32:16Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:32:17Jocko Willink?

  And the Warrior Kid podcast. And don't forget, if you're. If you like the Warrior Kid idea. Can support.

• 2:32:27Jocko Willink?

  One Warrior Kid named Aiden. Who makes soap. At Irish Oaks Ranch dot com.

• 2:32:35Jocko Willink?

  Do we have it up on our site yet?

• 2:32:37Speaker 02

  Currently, we're finalizing some stuff, but. I did get my sample of the killer soap.

• 2:32:43Jocko Willink?

  And?

• 2:32:43Speaker 02

  Very good, approved.

• 2:32:45Jocko Willink?

  Big time, right?

• 2:32:46Speaker 02

  It actually smells kind of good too.

• 2:32:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:48Speaker 02

  So, and it's not the one of these flowery ones.

• 2:32:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no.

• 2:32:50Speaker 02

  I dig it, but here's the thing, I'm not mad at flowery soaps.

• 2:32:52Jocko Willink?

  I am.

• 2:32:53Speaker 02

  Okay, I dig it. I fully dig it, but I'm not. In fact, every once in a while, I'll appreciate a little, not maybe not necessarily flowery, but you know, like a, like a, like a Irish, uh, like a, you know, like a refreshing, you see what I'm saying? Nonetheless, the killer soap has a scent to it, it's mild. But an approved scent to it, I like it.

• 2:33:13Jocko Willink?

  It's tea tree oil.

• 2:33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:15Jocko Willink?

  But.

• 2:33:16Speaker 02

  But is it a tea tree scent?

• 2:33:17Jocko Willink?

  No, well, it has tea tree, but what it actually smells like to me is mint. Like a, like a, it's just, and it's this, what about the visual effect?

• 2:33:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, see, yeah, that's cool.

• 2:33:27Jocko Willink?

  It's a black soap. It's so awesome.

• 2:33:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's good.

• 2:33:31Jocko Willink?

  And you know what that soap is called? Killer soap.

• 2:33:33Speaker 02

  Killer soap.

• 2:33:34Jocko Willink?

  Help you get rid of. Little nasties that are crawling on you. Yeah. And the other thing it helps you do is it just goes ahead and it will help you.

• 2:33:46Jocko Willink?

  Stay clean.

• 2:33:47Speaker 02

  That's good. That's a good thing to be helped with for sure. Also. We have a YouTube channel.

• 2:33:56Jocko Willink?

  Pretty much you have a YouTube channel.

• 2:33:57Speaker 02

  No, no, no, it's the we. You're on the YouTube channel. In fact, bro, let's face it. You're on the YouTube channel. It's your YouTube channel. Well, it's ours. I'm on there sometimes.

• 2:34:06Jocko Willink?

  If it's my YouTube channel, then what is it called?

• 2:34:09Speaker 02

  Jocko Podcast.

• 2:34:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. I guess that kinda does make it mine.

• 2:34:13Speaker 02

  I think it's totally yours. And you know, you can see the video, video version of this podcast. Want to see what Pat Mac looks like if you don't know already? Let's face it, a lot of us newer, Eddie, what he looked like? See what I'm saying? But if you didn't, or you want to see more, whatever, whatever. You can see it on the YouTube channel. Also, X some excerpts on there if you're interested in that, which is kinda cool. We've talked about it before.

• 2:34:35Jocko Willink?

  Fire.

• 2:34:36Speaker 02

  Fire.

• 2:34:37Jocko Willink?

  Explosions.

• 2:34:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:34:40Jocko Willink?

  Psychological warfare. If you need a little psychological. hitter.

• 2:34:47Jocko Willink?

  Ah, you can check that out on all MP3 platforms. Me giving you a little boost. Little spot, little psychological spot to get over the moment of weakness. Flipsidecanvas.com, my brother Dakota Meyer. Got all kinds of cool graphical representations of the path. You can check that out if you want to hang up something on your wall that says, discipline equals freedom. Or you want to hang up the Warrior Kid Code. You can find it there. Got a bunch of books. The latest is called Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. Appreciate everyone hooking that up. And now what I see is people posting that they bought 14 of them for every person on their team.

• 2:35:29Jocko Willink?

  And I'm going to tell you, you get every person on your team moving in that direction, your team is going to rock and roll. So check that one out. For the kids out there, we got Way the Warrior Kid, one, two, and three. And we got for the littler kids, Mikey and the Dragons.

• 2:35:46Jocko Willink?

  Get those books. Get them for, even if you, even if it's like your neighbor kid. Look, is your life gonna be better if your neighbor kid turns out to be a loser? Turns out to be a drug addict, turns out to be a, a non-contributing member of society? You want that kid living next door? No, you want a warrior kid living next door. Why not get your, the neighborhood kids on the warrior kid path?

• 2:36:11Jocko Willink?

  Get them all the book. Get them like in the dragon so they can overcome fear. Let's, let's change the culture of America and make kids warriors. I don't think that's too, I don't think that's too much to ask.

• 2:36:25Speaker 02

  No, no man, it's not.

• 2:36:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. There's a book that you get for yourself, for people that you know, that you want to help them. Help yourself to have more discipline. Cause if you have more discipline, guess what you're gonna end up with? More freedom. Hence, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, How to Get After It. And then there's Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership, which are leadership books for you, your team, your business, your life. Check those out. We also have Echelon Front, which is a leadership consultancy where what we do is solve problems through leadership. That's what we do. Go to echelonfront.com for details.

• 2:37:10Jocko Willink?

  We've worked with companies of all sizes, all over the world, and that's what we do. So check that out. We have EF Online, which is a way to train the principles that we teach at Echelon Front. Train them in your company, in your business, in your life, online. Interactive, engaging. Check that out, efonline.com. We have the muster, which is our leadership event, leadership seminar, leadership gathering. And that this year is in Orlando. It is in Phoenix, Arizona, and it is in Dallas, Texas, every.

• 2:37:53Jocko Willink?

  Everyone that we've done has sold out and these are going to sell out too. So if you want to come, go to extremeownership.com for details and to register. And of course, we also have EF Overwatch and EF Legion, which is where we are taking military personnel that understand the principles, leadership that we talk about all the time, taking them and employing those leadership principles in the civilian sector. So go to EFOverwatch.com for executive leadership, go to EF Legion for frontline leadership. And again, if you want to check out Pat Mack, he has TMAXInc.com.

• 2:38:34Jocko Willink?

  And he also has CombatStrengthTraining.com. He's also on Facebook, TMAX Inc. and Instagram, TMAX Inc.

• 2:38:46Jocko Willink?

  If you want to check out someone that's getting fired up with Blaze Ops, check that out. And if you want to hear more from Echo and me, well, we're also on the interwebs, on Twitter and on Instagram and on Los Fras Boka.

• 2:39:08Jocko Willink?

  Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks once again to Pat McNamara for coming on, sharing his wisdom, sharing his experience. And more importantly than that, thanks to Pat Mack for his service and sacrifice, holding the line, continuing to pass on knowledge to make people in every walk of life, better. And the same, of course, goes out to all vets and all of our uniformed soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines out there, training and fighting to keep us safe and free. And to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics

• 2:39:52Jocko Willink?

  and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service, thanks for your service as well, which also keeps us safe. Thank you for what you do.

• 2:40:06Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else out there, listen, make yourself capable. Improve your skills, be ready, be prepared. Be, be able to take care of yourself and the people around you and the way you do that is to go out there every single day.

• 2:40:28Jocko Willink?

  And get after it.

• 2:40:31Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.