347: To Accomplish The Impossible, We Must Decide. With Nick Lavery, Green Beret and Wounded Warrior.

Grew up in Boston. 2007 Army Basic Training. Green Beret, Nick Lavery. 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 347 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  Simply put, Warrant Officer Nick Lavery is a warrior's warrior.

• 0:14Jocko Willink?

  Nick selflessly and repeatedly risked his life for his nation, his comrades in arms, and most importantly, he accomplished what our nation needed him to do every time he left our shores.

• 0:27Jocko Willink?

  Nick is a hero in the truest sense. Nick's chosen profession requires an immersion into some of the nation's most difficult challenges, often in demanding, complex, and especially uncertain environments.

• 0:46Jocko Willink?

  To answer the nation's call, we seek men and women who have the tenacity to achieve the impossible and the resiliency to do it again and again.

• 0:58Jocko Willink?

  Nick Lavery's story is truly an exemplar of that.

• 1:06Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from a book. The book is called Objective Secure, and the book is actually written by Nick Lavery. And the words in that excerpt were spoken by Lieutenant General Francis Baudet, who was the commander of US Army Special Operations. And the speech was given when Nick received an award for his service in Special Operations. And I think anyone that hears Nick's story will agree that Nick is exactly what the general said. He is a warrior who can absolutely accomplish the impossible.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  And it is an honor to have Nick with us here tonight to talk us through his experiences and share some of his lessons learned. Nick, thanks for coming down, man. Thanks for having me. I wanted to read a really quick intro so we could start talking, man. Yeah, man, let's do it. That's where I'm at. Yeah, freaking insane. Your life's been kind of crazy thus far, and we'll get into that. Let's start from the beginning. Normally, when you spoke in nine words, everyone knows where you're from. Pretty quick, yeah.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Boston, Mass is where I where I claim home. I guess more accurately, though, is is I'm a nomad of Massachusetts. You know, I moved every twelve to eighteen months as a kid, all the way up until eventually I got to college.

• 2:41Jocko Willink?

  And that's because you're what your parents were just moving around?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of it was was financially related. You know, my both my parents, they had me and my youngest sister real young. So struggling as young parents and trying to just grind it out with also my father. Trying to pursue his passion in life, trying to figure out what that is and then go after it while he's got, you know, two young kids he needs to feed.

• 3:06Jocko Willink?

  How old was he when he had you? And how old was your mom?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Twenty, and my mother's was twenty-two.

• 3:11Jocko Willink?

  That's like old school.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, my sister's two years younger than me. So, you know, they do what they had to do and you know, I love him and respect him for it. But that part of the story, that movement is deeply rooted in a lot of what we're going to get into here today. Like those experiences, particularly me struggling socially, struggling to make friends and keep friends and being the new kid in school every year. In today's world, what's known as bullying, you know, back then wasn't as looked at as it is today. So my my resiliency started from the time that I, you know, was five years old and went to kindergarten.

• 3:52Jocko Willink?

  That thing, man, we were just talking about bullying yesterday as a matter of fact, because it is. We were talking about like everyone gets bullied, right? Well, at least back in the day when I grew up and you grew up, when Echo grew up, we all got bullied. That wasn't going to happen. Because because no matter what, when you're ten, there's going to be a twelve year old that's bigger than you. And when you're twelve, there's going to be a fourteen year old that's bigger than you. And when I got bullied and pushed around and shoved in the lockers and all those things, I kind of was just like, that's it. To me, it was just sort of the way things went. Like, oh, yeah, well, I'm smaller right now and I'm going to get I'm going to get knocked around a bit because I'm smaller. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I don't know. It didn't like hit me in some big emotional way. I don't know.

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  Am I dumb?

• 4:38Speaker 01

  No, you're you're just you, bro. You're just you. I I I definitely struggle with it more so than you did. Um, eventually I became conditioned to it, though, which, you know, took a few years, then it then then it became normal for me. I wasn't. I wasn't as as understanding of it as the way you just put it, but I just. My mind was conditioned to deal with the pain and discomfort and embarrassment. So the effect was was less and less and less over time. Early on, you know, coming home with tears in my eyes just about every day of school, you know, and my parents are doing their best to kind of mentor me and be like, you know, you're gonna be good and just. You give me some guidance.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  But then, you know, eight months later, I'm in a new location and it starts all over again. But.

• 5:26Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I I guess I never had that too, because I like basically grew up in the same town with the same people all the time. Everybody knew who who I was and knew who my sisters were, you know, whatever. So I didn't have to go into some new environment. So I never really experienced that.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was tough, but I look back now, of course, extremely grateful for that. Because a lot of people, you know, they asked a lot of the questions, how'd you do this? How'd you do that? I don't typically just dive straight into into that portion of the story, but if I extrap this thing all the way down. That's deeply seated in that.

• 5:59Jocko Willink?

  Is there anything that you remember? Do you remember like one kid? Do you remember? You know, I I wrote a book about bullying. Uh, there's a there's a bully in there named Kenny Williams, you know, who's just bullying. Do you remember any specific? Like things that happened where it really left a mark?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  I'd say the most. The clearest memory comes back was a kid who was maybe two years older than me. And he, you know, he would beat on me just about every day and one day got dropped off the bus. Uh, he gave me an exceptionally good beating this particular day. So normally I come home, I wouldn't be like vis like visibly beat up and I would I would hide it from my parents. I wouldn't let them know how often I was getting like beat on. Because I even as a young person, I oh, I felt bad for them. Because they're struggling and they're grinding it out. I didn't want to add to their. Stress like we're getting kicked out of this house or moving to another house like they're working their balls off. I could see that as a young person. So I would hide it.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  One particular day, there was no, there was no hiding it, right? So I was like busted up pretty good. Walked in and uh, you know, my father got home from work a little later and the kid lived just down the street from us. So he grabbed me and like drug me down the street and I'm begging him like, no, no, no, let's not do this. You're gonna make it worse. Let's not do this. I was in, I don't know, third grade, so I was probably, I don't know, seven or eight ish. I'm like, dad, no. He's like, no, no, no, we're doing this. Not, you know, knocks on the door. And this kid, you know, his, his parents weren't all that put together, you know, father answers the door. Hippie looking dude, but like big hairy, hairy big mustache, you know, uh. Shirtless answers the door and he and my father had some words where.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  It almost went physical between the two of them right on this dude's doorstep, you know? And the kid I was dealing with is behind his father and he's now he's yelling at me. About how I'm gonna get it worse and I'm like, this is not working out for anybody. Ironically, the whole, but it did, I do remember that it did tone down after that. So it, it reached the precipice of confrontation, but it did kind of level things off a little bit.

• 8:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, that's, that's a little bit crazy, you know, that's, that's what the dad wants to do, right? Echo Charles, what? That was a, that was a real strong affirmative over there. Did your dad get into it? Back you up?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  No, but I, I don't know, I'm thinking like every time like I hear a bully story. Yeah, you know, I, I have kids now, they're small. But if I, you know, you, you imagine them coming home with visible damage. Bro, oh yeah, you wanna go over there and kill everybody, like whoever wasn't even a part of it.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  We had a kid, we had a guy at this gym, uh, and he worked here and he, he did sales. And but you know, he was, he's, he's kind of, you know, like a, like a loud mouth, you know? Always poking fun, always, you know, that kind of guy. And he, he did jujitsu, did brown belt, you know? And he used to roll with my son. And he would kind of like bully my son. You know, when my son was a little kid, he'd like, you know, maybe slap him around a little bit on the mats, you know, maybe give the nuggies, right? The nuggies.

• 9:12Jocko Willink?

  And I remember one day when my kid was maybe like 10 or 11 years old. We're leaving the gym and I I didn't like pay any mind to it, you know, he would just get abused or whatever bullied whatever. While I was training or something by, you know, he's trying to train and this guy would grab and rough him up. And one day we're walking out and and my son goes, hey dad, and I go, hey, what's up? And he goes, do you think that guy, he's like, do you think he'll be here when I'm like 20?

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, I don't know, but I could see he's plotting. Wow. I mean, he's plotting on this dude. So that guy doesn't work here anymore. So he's probably going to get away with it. But that's the kind of thing where you think like that left a mark. Yeah. On my kid like, oh, when the time comes, I'm going to train and I'm going to work and I'm going to be bigger and stronger than that guy. I'm gonna come back when I'm 20. How old was he when it happened? It was probably like, I mean, this happened for years. I mean, we've had this gym since he was, since my son was like five. So this could have happened anywhere between the ages of five and 15, you know? So he was forecasting like a decade down the road. This was when my son was like 10, he was thinking, hey, he was, yes, he was forecasting.

• 10:27Jocko Willink?

  By the time I'm 20, that guy's going to be old and I'm going to be ready. In my prime.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  I think he is about 20 now.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  He's coming, yeah. That clock is ticking.

• 10:41Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to go to the book here, give you a little childhood background here. When I was around nine years old, my parents bought me a dumbbell set. It had pairs of three, five and eight pounders. I began constantly working out in my bedroom. Eventually I got to an age when I could join a gym. No matter where I was living at the time, I would scout out a nearby place to train, often my, oftentimes miles away. I would ride my bike there and back. The progress wasn't what I had hoped for. Neither did it have much of an effect on my social life. But the desire to be big and strong remained. I caught the bug. Mother nature eventually blessed me with a growth spurt, shooting me up over six feet, five. And my consistent work in the weight room paid off.

• 11:23Jocko Willink?

  I introduced different combat sports and martial arts into my life. I was no longer picked on and as my social skills also developed, I was no longer without friends. So you started getting after it.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. He made that connection. I don't know if that was a pre-planned segue with Yostam, but that's, I mean, that's perfect. Yeah. I didn't have a specific dude in mind that I was targeting a decade down the road. It was really everybody I was targeting. But the grind began then in order to, you know, build up the, the confidence that I wanted and needed. And so what, when did you start wrestling? High school. Yeah, wrestled high school, uh, for my first three years up until my senior year, which is when football became the only sport that I would play. Our head coach, head football coach was also the athletic director of the program.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  So I started getting looked at to play football my junior year by college scouts. So comes senior year. He's like, no, no, no, all you're doing, you're in the weight room. It's football. You can run with the track team to help you with your speed and conditioning, but you are football 24/7. And you were down for the cause on that, right? Absolutely. Yeah. That became my primary sport earlier than high school. Uh, and then I saw it as, as a way to go to college because I was not an academic by any stretch. You weren't talking about doing the bare minimum just to be able to stay eligible to play sports. That was me, man. So that was my only route to college. Uh, so I, I was cool with that adjustment. When did you grow? I was a peanut most of my life growing up. I was a massive baby.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  I was born, I was 12 pounds, nine ounces as a baby. And my mother. That's not a baby, bro. That's like a small child. Yeah. I set, I set the record at the hospital, which has since closed, so I own that forever. And my mother's, you know, she's a hippie and she wanted to have this natural birth process. And the doctor's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. Like, we have to go in and remove this human from you because he will split you in half. So that's the route I took and I was massive as a as a baby and then I became really, really small. Like I wrestled at one twenty-three, you know, my freshman year. So little, I was maybe five, five, five, six, little guy.

• 13:46Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  It wasn't till, I think it was between my sophomore and junior year of high school, that I hit this massive growth spurt and I shot up like six inches over a summer. And my my joints were all achy and I had Ausgood's, what it was called.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  I had that going and I was dangly and awkward because I had gotten so tall. Came back my junior year and my football, all my coaches were like, what do we even do with you now? You know, because you're you're growing so tall. But between that time and then the time I graduated, those two years was when I shot up, you know, like over a foot over the course of two years.

• 14:25Jocko Willink?

  That's insane.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  It was wild, man. And it was even, it was stranger because I, my birthday, September first, which is coming up here pretty soon. I went to school early, so everyone in my class was a year ahead of me. So I started college, for example, at seventeen years old was my freshman year of college. So I was already a like a year behind everybody in terms of my maturity and my puberty development. So even my buddies, once I had them, their voices are dropping, they're getting hair in new places and I'm still this little squeaky mouse, right? You know, trying to lift my eight pound dumbbell set so I could stay, you know, one of the one of the cool kids. So I was real late to the game with all that stuff.

• 15:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's why parents hold their kids back. That's a big deal, man. Holding the kids back so that they're little dominators. In wrestling, that's like the way, that's the way, you know, at least in California, kids are getting, kids are like twenty-three.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  Their senior year, you know.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  It's like football in Texas. It's the same thing. See these scenes in high school with full-blown beards, like men, right? These aren't kids, man. These are men.

• 15:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, so you, so you must have started to like just completely shine on in football because you get huge.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  I didn't get huge like body mass wise until I was in college. So by the time I graduated my senior year, you know, I was a strong safety, but I got so tall that the scouts started looking at me for linebacker in college. They're like, you're eventually going to fill out that frame. We just need to maintain your speed and stack on some muscle mass to go along with your now new height that you have. So I was recruited to play linebacker. And then the muscle mass really came around, you know, sophomore year of college. I spent my first year in that summer just with the strength coaches and the nutritionists all within the the program that we had at the school. Learning how to eat, learning how to train. And that's when I really filled out my frame. So my sophomore year of college,

• 16:25Speaker 01

  you know, I was eventually around like two twenty-five, two thirty. Whereas if I was born in Texas, or if my father had half a brain and he had done what he should have done, right? I would have been more than likely D one, full ride, playing on Sundays today. I blame him for, for my current lifestyle.

• 16:47Jocko Willink?

  Would, would, did they put you on like a straight up just dirty bulk? Is that the proper term?

• 16:51Speaker 01

  One of them.

• 16:52Jocko Willink?

  Dirty, I mean, I imagine if you showed up to me and you're, you're a freshman in college and you weigh whatever a hundred and eighty-five pounds, I'm like, cool, deadlift, squat and just eat. Did they put you on that? Like you said, nutritionist? I thought the nutritionist at that point would be Domino's.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Eat everything.

• 17:09Jocko Willink?

  Eat everything.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  No, I wasn't. It was more dialed in. I had a, I had a regimented meal plan that I would just show up to the cafeteria and just give them my name and then they would give me the food. But it wasn't just like pizza and like Hot Pockets and shit. It was like real food. It was just a lot of it.

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  I, there was a basketball player named Manute Bowle who played for the University of Bridgeport. He came from Africa and he was seven, ten or something crazy. And when he got here, he weighed, you know, like some tiny amount. And I read some article that they were like, hey, they just, they were just pizza and beer. Like, we just need this guy to eat everything he can to just get a little bit bigger because he was too skinny.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that it's weird. I mean, we're in the generation where the we they know a lot about nutrition nowadays. Where even in our college where if they would have guys gain weight, it would be good, good.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Oh, no kidding.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, we had a program called Training Table where all the the football players would go and they'd eat separate and it would be different food. And it's all like good food. There's no pizza. There's no that kind. It's like chicken, vegetables, potatoes. Yeah.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of potatoes.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  But that was really where I began learning about nutrition and then I was seeing the effects as it pertained to me on the field. And that was where I really fell in love with with training and fitness and, you know, continuing that through today. That was the foundation of that knowledge was at that point.

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  And then so how did how did it go? How'd it go in the football college career?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  It was good. You know, I played I played D two at U. Mess and a U. Mess Lowell. And, you know, my first freshman year, you know, it didn't didn't get really any playing time. But I was still kind of growing and developing sophomore. I started to play a little bit and then junior year I was starting. Um, I say junior year because that's the way we normally break it down, but for me it was like more like my sophomore year two point O. You know, because I wasn't in line with the credits I needed to stay on track to graduate in four years. Right? So, but my second or third year of playing ball, my third year in college. Uh, was when I was on the field and then my fourth year.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  I took a I took a pretty nasty injury to my back and that ended my season a little early.

• 19:27Jocko Willink?

  That was your senior year?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:29Jocko Willink?

  So what year was that?

• 19:31Speaker 01

  That would have been two thousand four, two thousand five.

• 19:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so where were you and what were you doing when September eleventh happened?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  That was my sophomore year. Yeah, sophomore year or my second year of school was nine eleven.

• 19:47Jocko Willink?

  Were you? Is that what focused you maybe thinking about being in the military?

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that was certainly the. The tipping point for me was that I started looking at it in high school. Around my freshman sophomore year in no direction. I skipped school one day. I went downtown Boston and I went with the Marine Corps recruiter. And I said, I think I want to be a Marine and he's like, perfect. Finish high school and come back and we got you. We got you, bro. I'm like, great. So I had like kind of an idea. Cause I hated school. I liked athletics, but I was tiny. There was no future in that for me. I wanted to, again, I wanted to be respected. I wanted to be feared in a lot of way because I lived my life in fear most of the time. And the Marine Corps was the route to give me what I needed. He's like, cool. Graduate high school, come back.

• 20:33Jocko Willink?

  Did he take your number or anything?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 20:36Jocko Willink?

  It might be too far outside their window because they gotta get their quotas and all that. At the same time, like when they, some you walk in there, it's like a going onto a car dealership, like they're ready to take you.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:48Jocko Willink?

  But I guess if you were like 13, he's like, no, come back when you graduate.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't, I don't remember any, any exchange of information. The only thing that detracted me from going that route was, was football was athletics. So went to college, you know, kind of plan B. Uh, and then sophomore year was, yeah, that was nine 11. And then at that point I struggled to stay in school because I was really angry and I wanted to be part of the response to that. I struggled to stay in school, listen to some, you know, family and friends and mentors. And decided to stay in and grind out the rest of my degree and then look at options to come in.

• 21:22Jocko Willink?

  What'd you, what'd you get your degree in?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Criminology.

• 21:26Jocko Willink?

  And then you, so you know, you're graduating. What'd you, what year did you say you graduated? 2005?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  I graduated in 2007.

• 21:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no kidding.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  So yeah, that, you know, normally if you go to college for seven years, they call you doctor. Me, they, it's just Nick still. So, you know, a lot of different academic probations and uh, having to redo semesters, you know? It made it easy for me to be eligible for football because it's played in the fall. So all I needed to do was maintain, I think it was nine credits, like three classes. And just not fail any of them. If I could, I could fail all the rest of my classes after the season was over and I didn't care. And that was the route I took, immature. I didn't, I didn't care, you know? I look back now and I'm like, man, you know, what if I just applied myself?

• 22:17Speaker 01

  And now I enjoy reading and learning and studying, but back then I didn't, I didn't care. So yeah, 2007 was when I finally received my degree. And then.

• 22:26Jocko Willink?

  When'd you talk to recruiter? So now, did you still look at the Marine Corps or how'd that go?

• 22:31Speaker 01

  I looked at the Navy.

• 22:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Graduated college. The war was still going on. Now Iraq is kicked off as well. So Afghanistan, Iraq are both surgeon. It was prime for someone to go in and get some. And I'm like, yep, here we go. So I, maybe it was a week after I graduated college. I went downtown Boston and in the same building, they had three branches. They had the Navy, the Marines and the Army in three separate offices. And I went into the Navy office first and I said, I want to be a SEAL. And I knew I wanted to be in special operations. I want to be right at the front of the fight. And the SEALs came, comes to mind really fast today as then of being the ultimate badass warrior. So I walk in and say, I want to be a SEAL. And he said, perfect. Uh, let's get you enlisted in the Navy and then you can request to go to BUDs and go that route.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  And I said, okay, thank you. And I left and I went and talked to the Marine Corps recruiter and I got the same answer. When I went and talked to the Army, I got a different answer. They said, we have this program called the Special Forces Recruit Contract Option, known as the 18x-ray, which I'm sure you're familiar with. Gets you straight into the Army Special Forces. You bypass the conventional Army, assuming you make it all the way through.

• 23:44Jocko Willink?

  The Navy recruits, the Navy brings in a lot of people that want to be SEALs, that aren't going to be SEALs. I mean, a lot of people. And it's, it's interesting that you were able to identify that, that, that what they were offering you wasn't what you actually wanted. And there's, there is a, there are, there are programs. I'm surprised, like there are programs that you get like a contract to go at least get a shot at BUDs. Those things do exist. When I came in, that's what I did. It was at the time, it was called the Die Farer Program. I have no idea what that means, but it was like, you are guaranteed. An opportunity to take the test to go to BUDS. And I was like, yeah, cool. Sign me up.

• 24:26Jocko Willink?

  But it sounds like that guy was, didn't even have that much to offer you.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  No, no. And I mean, if he had, chances are, things would look a little different. Right now, because I would have taken it.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Because that was my goal. I was like, I want to be a SEAL, boom. If he had said, hey, man, we got this option right here. We'll get you into BUDS within the first six months, whatever, some kind of guarantee.

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  I probably would have signed it right there and then.

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. He, man, that's weird. I wonder what was up with that. And then the Marine Corps, same thing. The Marine Corps used to be like, hey, you join the Marines and you don't even get any kind of slot. You, you're going to join the Marines. We'll give you a job. That's the way the Marine Corps, it's better now.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:01Jocko Willink?

  Uh, but the Army has had that, that 18 x-ray program has been freaking goldmine for them.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. It kicked off, you know, originally back in the day and then, uh, and then it went away for a while and they turned it back on in 2002. You know, post nine 11. When the O D A was getting requested to do a whole bunch of stuff to like, we need to, we need to get more quality candidates. Let's start this program back up again.

• 25:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I don't know if you've heard some of the SOG guys, a lot of those SOG guys were off the street, straight into S F. And they'll defend the 18 x-ray. They're like, we're all, we're basically 18 x-ray. Cause they just came right in, went in, went in and went to NOM and got after it.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:40Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so that's what happened. So you end up. Did you even think about an officer program or was that just not happening? I mean, it sounds like your grades weren't stellar.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Grades were not stellar. Uh, it, it was offered to me. It was brought up to me by my recruiter. But the x-ray, 18 x-ray contracts, not an option for offices. So Ed immediately wiped that off the table for me. Also, my interpretation of what offices do back then was a little off. There's some truth to it, but in my mind, then officers strictly sat behind a desk and enlisted guys with the actual guys that worked. And I wanted to be a worker. I wanted to get my hands dirty.

• 26:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  And everything else dirty. I wanted to get into it. Like, I don't want to be the guy telling the guy to do the thing. I want to be the guy doing the thing. And in SOF, that's, that's obviously not the case. Um, but because the x-ray option didn't exist for O's, that automatically made it a non-option for me.

• 26:37Jocko Willink?

  What'd your parents think of this?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  My father essentially tried to ground me when I brought this to his attention, you know.

• 26:44Jocko Willink?

  How old were you?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  I was 24, right, 24, a lot of life experience, graduated college and I called him up, you know, because I had done my homework. I didn't sign the X-ray contract right there and then either. I went home, I said, "Thank you." I didn't know what Green Berets did. I'd seen, you know, Rambo and John Wayne, but I didn't know what an SFODA does, what a Green Beret really does. So I did some homework. I was drawn to the mission. I was really attracted by the timeline. And that's what ultimately made me pull the trigger. But once I did my homework, made my decision, I don't think I'd sign the contract yet, but I called my father and I said, "Hey Dad, this is what I'm gonna do." And he's like, "No, you're not."

• 27:22Speaker 01

  And I'm like, "Listen dude, I love you. You're my best friend in the world. I'm not asking you permission." I'm 24, you know, but you know, as a new father now, my kids are also, are also young. I can put myself in his shoes, right? He sees the news, he sees what's going on, he knows where I'm trying to go and he's just scared for me, which is fine, but they were both totally against it to begin with.

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  Now, you described your mom as a hippie. Like, is that like classic definition of a hippie?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  She's a free spirit. Yeah, she's a free spirit. She's got her stones and she's got her...

• 27:55Jocko Willink?

  She's got some crystals in the bedroom?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Got some crystals. She's got a dream catcher over the bed, got some incense burning, you know?

• 28:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay, she's, she's in there.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 28:03Jocko Willink?

  She's in there some shit.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  She must have been really freaking out. Yeah, she's less than my father. My father's much more like rigid and objective and scientific. My, my, my mother was still kinda like, "Well, you need to, you know, you need to choose your own journey," kinda thing.

• 28:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, damn.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Right, but like, I'd rather you not do that, but like, you need to be who you need to be, kinda thing.

• 28:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay, we'll take it. I remember, I just came home and told my parents, "Yeah, I, I just enlisted to the Navy," you know? And my dad just looks at me, he goes, "You're gonna hate it." He said, "You don't, you hate authority and you don't listen to anybody." And I said, "I'm gonna be in the SEAL teams. It's a team." You don't know nothing, old man. Yeah. Do you come from a military family background? My grandfather was in the army. My dad's dad was in the army for twenty years. My dad got, uh, kicked out of ROTC. And he says that the military gene skips a generation because my dad's not a very militaristic dude. But I was a real, I was a rebellious kid, so my dad was just looking at me. And my, but they were both like, cool, you know, get out of here.

• 29:06Jocko Willink?

  That's probably the best thing that could happen is you go in the military instead of staying around here, causing trouble, being an idiot, which I was doing a good job of. Yeah. So rolled out and that was that. But I, yeah, I didn't, I just came home and told them I did it. So they were, I think they were overall, they were like, this is probably a really good thing that this idiot's getting out of here. Getting off the payroll. Yeah, that's right. Um. Let's jump back to the book here real quick. August thirteenth, two thousand and seven was my first day in the United States Army. It began at the thirtieth adjutant general reception battalion located in Fort Benning, Georgia. This is the first location US Army basic training recruits arrive prior to the actual start of basic training. Its purpose is to receive, prepare and train personnel for what lies ahead.

• 29:52Jocko Willink?

  While I am sure we were given some classes, the only things that I recall during my time at the thirtieth AG were doing paperwork, eating our three meals a day and waiting, a lot of waiting, most of which was spent standing in formation. We stood in formation for hours each day. While in formation, waiting for what seemed like an eternity, we would sound off with several mantras. The soldier's creed, the army song and the warrior ethos are a few that come to mind. At any point, a drill sergeant, a member of the command or any soldier in the formation would simply yell, the warrior ethos. Then the entire formation of soldiers would sound off with that mantra. This served two purposes. One, it killed time, even if it was only thirty seconds of time, it gave us something to do. Two, it ingrained these mantras into our heads.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  Basic training in the ar- is the army's method to break down an individual into human clay in order to then be remolded into a soldier. The same goes for other branches of the military. The verbalization of mantras is part of that process. The warrior ethos was one of them. The warrior ethos has four tenants. One, I will always place the mission first. Two, I will never accept defeat. Three, I will never quit. Four, I will never leave a fallen comrade.

• 31:09Jocko Willink?

  So it's welcome to boot camp.

• 31:12Jocko Willink?

  How'd you feel about boot camp when you got there?

• 31:16Speaker 01

  It was annoying more than anything else. I mean, I was physically in phenomenal shape. So physically, it was it was relatively easy.

• 31:24Jocko Willink?

  How long was it before between when you enlisted and when you left?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Maybe three, four months.

• 31:32Jocko Willink?

  Were you, were you, did you shift your training to be ready for?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:36Jocko Willink?

  So you were humping rocks and?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So because I finished playing football around 2004, 2005.

• 31:43Jocko Willink?

  What'd you weigh when you got done? What was your max weight?

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Playing ball, I would usually start the season around 250 and I'd end up usually around like 240 by the end of the season. So I was done playing ball, still more college left and I just wanted to see how big and strong I could get. I didn't need to be quite as athletic as I needed to be as a, as a football player. So I got more into strong man and powerlifting type stuff. I was doing a little bit of boxing, a little bit of light wrestling. But it was mostly just like, let's get big and strong, which worked for me because what I was doing professionally was VIP security and nightclub security. So, you know, all my bosses liked, you know, a big yoked up dude in a suit at the front door. So, you know, it helped me with my, what I was doing for work and I enjoyed the training.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  So by the time I decided to, by the time I graduated college, decided I was going to enlist, I was close to 300 pounds.

• 32:35Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I was doing like 12,000 calories a day. I mean, it was, it was just crazy. So there's no way I was in a condition to go to basic training.

• 32:44Jocko Willink?

  Does it take effort for you to eat 12,000 calories in a day?

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:47Jocko Willink?

  It was hard. It's work.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, I really disliked it. I'm like choking down, you know, chicken breasts and dried potatoes with a gallon of water. You know, my, my strength coach is like, hey, this is what it's going to take, you know, if you want an 800 pound deadlift, this is what you gotta do.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  So I decided to enlist and you know, I'm, I'm huge.

• 33:07Jocko Willink?

  So you're 300 pound bouncer.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:10Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever get a test as a bouncer that you had any trouble with?

• 33:15Speaker 01

  No, not really. Not at that point, man.

• 33:18Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I can just imagine you're six foot five, 300 pounds. You wrestled like you must have been a real quick peacemaker in these scenarios.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. At that point, man, you know, I was so comfortable with losing fights, although it'd been a couple of years since that had happened. At that point, I'm the biggest guy in the room. I've been boxing since I was a kid wrestling, you know, some different martial arts. Like I was well equipped.

• 33:44Jocko Willink?

  Did you train Jiu Jitsu yet?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  No, Jiu Jitsu didn't come on until, until I got into SF, actually.

• 33:51Jocko Willink?

  Did you know, did you know how to choke people? Did you know like a, did you know like the sleeper hold?

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I knew basic stuff. Yeah, I knew basic, I knew basic stuff.

• 34:00Jocko Willink?

  Like as a bouncer, you occasionally had to put somebody asleep?

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. And you know, I wasn't the most mature bouncer until I got a little older. You know, some of the places I worked, some of the people I worked for, their methodology was let's make, let's punish this person so that they don't think, or no one else thinks to act a fool in my place again. Which I enjoyed. I look back with, you know, some regret hurting some people that probably didn't need to be hurt that way. But I mean, that's just the nature of the business I was in, the way I went about doing it.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  So big boy.

• 34:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you're 300 pounds or almost 300 pounds.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:38Jocko Willink?

  When you enlist.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  When I decide that the military is definitely going to happen.

• 34:43Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  And by the time that I signed the contract and then my report date was like four months or so after that point was when I started my training program. It was about a 16 week program I did.

• 34:54Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you get that program? Did you create it?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  I was working with a strength coach, same coach I work with today, actually one of them that I've been working with them now, you know, close to 15 years. He's, so he put it together for me and obviously it was a wild shift from flipping tires and moving atlas stones to, you know, running, rucking, dynamic, CrossFit style, circuit training. So I sliced myself down over about 16 weeks from, you know, 295 to about 245, about 50 pounds or so came off. Two forty-five, six-five is a big person, right? But I was just diced because I had so much mass on that I just sliced everything off. So by the time I showed up day one, I don't think this is in the book. This is no shit. This is day one of boot camp? Of basic training. Yeah, you're just a savage.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm a twenty-four-year-old, six foot five, two hundred and forty-pound diced dude. And I'm surrounded by a lot of, you know, seventeen, eighteen-year-old children who have never left the house before. And you know, you get your ass smoked, right? Of course, for the first several hours when you get there. After maybe four or five hours of just doing push-ups and flutter kicks and sit-ups, I'm like pumped up. My muscles are like full. And then they do their tattoo inspection. They strip you down into your underwear and they just go person to person to person. And I don't think they're really searching for tattoos. I think they just wanna see like your physique and like expose you and just make you feel uncomfortable. So all three drill sergeants are like surrounding you and you're standing there in your underwear.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  And they're just like looking you up and down and just like getting into your head. Well, the tattoos I have on me, this is Latin for strength and honor. I didn't have a lot of these other tats on me at the time. So these stuck out. And they look at me and they're like, what's your deal? And I'm like, I don't know how to answer this question, you know? Like, why are you here? And I thought they were messing with me. In retrospect, I talked to these guys like years later. They're like, we thought you were like an actual like government project that was going on. Like you were created in a lab or something. Like they didn't know what my deal was. Cause and then they ask me about the tattoos and I say it says, it says strength and honor.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  And then they look up at the wall and it's engraved in the wall above the whiteboard. It says strength and honor. So now their wheels are really spinning, like I'm some kind of an implant. You're from the movie Soldier, bro. And I didn't pick up on all this at the time. Eventually our head drill instructor, later on that evening, came over to me and he's like, no, really, man? Like, did someone send you here? And I'm like, I can't, I don't, I don't know what's happening right now, dude. I'm trying to play the game, but I don't know what game we're playing right now. So it was more, it was more, uh, I say it was more annoying and frustrating because I was babysitting kids and I was put in charge of my, of my platoon on day one, like you're the guy. We're all gonna leave for the night. You're gonna make sure that everyone that's in their beds right now are gonna stay in their beds.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  So I'm, I was literally chasing kids like down, down the stairwell that were trying to just leave Fort Benning. I don't know where they thought they were gonna go. But I'm like dragging kids back to their beds, you know? It wasn't very like tactful with my approach. It was very blunt, like get your ass back in your bed and stay there or else, you know? So that was like 16 or 17 weeks and pretty much that.

• 38:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's classic, dude. You're not a normal dude to be showing up to boot camp. That's friggin awesome. Uh, so you do, you go to basic and then you go to, do you go straight to A I T after that?

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Well, for us as the 18 X ray, you do the infantry program, which is called one station unit training. So they go basic and A I T back to back without any break.

• 38:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  So it's boom, boom, right? Straight through.

• 38:38Jocko Willink?

  Are you just having fun this entire time?

• 38:42Speaker 01

  No, no, it wasn't fun at all. There was, I was just like staring at the clock, like get me out of here, you know? They're like the runs, like the workouts, they weren't all that like stimulating and difficult. I was trying to play the game. I did play the game, you know? I wasn't like a rebel. I was like Roger that. I was a good soldier. I was just like, I, I want to get to the real work, which I know is at Fort Bragg. So like, get me out of here.

• 39:02Jocko Willink?

  And then, so uh, you make it through all this stuff. Did you, you went to airborne school too?

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Go, when you finish basic or A I T and then you go straight down the street to airborne school.

• 39:11Jocko Willink?

  Get your airborne shuffle on for three weeks.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:14Jocko Willink?

  Do some P L Fs in the sawdust.

• 39:18Jocko Willink?

  And then it's, then it's to, uh, where'd you go? SOPC? Did they have SOPC up and running at this point?

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Then it was to SOPC.

• 39:24Jocko Willink?

  And that's to get you ready for, that's to get you ready for selection, right?

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 39:29Jocko Willink?

  You were kind of ready for selection.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 39:32Jocko Willink?

  Were you in worse shape now than you were when you entered just from being in boot camp and stuff? Or were you able to maintain?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  No, I was, I, I, I lost, you know, 20, 25 pounds in basic training just because I didn't get, I wasn't getting the calories I needed.

• 39:46Jocko Willink?

  You're, they were starving you.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:48Jocko Willink?

  The freaking government project is freaking.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  They were trying to cut off you. They wanted to tear me back down and have me sent back to the lab for, for a refit. So I, I was in, I would say I was in worse shape for selection specifically than I would have been if I had just gone straight to that without going to base training. Uh, but it was okay. Cause you know, by the time I got to SOPC and, or got to Bragg to start SOPC, then I could eat like normal again and I put some mask back on. So, get back into more anaerobic stuff with some resistance to be ready for SOPC. So I was, I was good to go.

• 40:25Jocko Willink?

  And how's SOPC when you get there? Is it starting, is it starting to approach what you have in mind?

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it definitely was. I mean, the way SOPC was back then, I think it was five or six weeks and you would stay at Fort Bragg and then you'd go down to Fort Campbell on Monday and you would train and be in SOPC Monday through Friday, and then you would come back to Bragg for the weekend and you would just do that for six weeks. And it was just a lot of PT, land nav, like knot tying, some SF history stuff. But it was mostly physical to get you ready for selection. Well, at the end of the first week, so it's Friday, one week, week one is done. And now I'm feeling like I'm playing the game with like, with like the big boys. I got SF guys that are now my cadres and my first time being introduced to them. I'm surrounded by a bunch of X-rays.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  I'm like, okay, now I feel like I'm in the game. That first week ends and our lead instructor comes down. He says, all right, check it out. The upcoming selection class has some open slots. So we're going to send volunteers. Um, or we're going to just force those that are in the top 10% performance wise to go. And it starts on Monday. I raised my hand immediately. I'm like, yep, I'm, I'm good. I'm ready to go. Like, let's go. My confidence was, was really high. So it gave me a weekend to just get my stuff ready, my equipment, make sure I had everything I needed, which I did because I was part of SOPC. So my SOPC experience was, was five days and then I was in an SFAS the following Monday.

• 41:50Jocko Willink?

  And how was, how was that selection?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Selection when I went through was was 14 days long. Now it's back to 20 or so. Uh, it was 2021 for a long time and then mine was the second class after they condensed it down into 14.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  I can't tell you why they did that, but you would think that that meant they removed like five or six days worth of stuff, but they didn't. They just rammed it into a shorter window. So there was no like white space in between stuff. Everything was just, it was much more intense because you still had to check all these blocks, but just in a week less of time.

• 42:28Jocko Willink?

  What percentage of attrition comes from that selection?

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the time I went, we started with around 300 or so candidates. And around 100 made it to the end and then they selected around 40 or so.

• 42:49Jocko Willink?

  God, see, that seems like a freaking crazy roll of the dice. If you're joining the army to be a SF guy, that you can go through the training and they can just be like, yeah, you're not what we're looking for. Is that what it is?

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, they, you know, I have some buddies that are selection cadre now and some that have been and now are back to the unit. Uh, you know, they make it as objective as I think they can, but it it's open to subjectivity because there are human beings that are evaluating you. And when, if you're looking at purely physical capability, like how fast did you run two miles? That's, that's objective. How many pushups can you do, pull ups, whatever. But when you're evaluating people for leadership and their ability to work in a team dynamic, that gets subjective pretty quick. So it is a roll of the dice to a degree because you may just have a bad, may have a bad day or bad week. You're a solid leader, you're a solid performer, you just didn't perform when you needed to.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  And that's what the cadre had to go off of. So yeah, you didn't make this round, but come back and try again.

• 43:50Jocko Willink?

  How long do you have to wait before you can come back and try it again?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  I think it's, I wanna say it's like six months.

• 43:57Jocko Willink?

  No, it's not too bad.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  I think it's like six months.

• 43:59Jocko Willink?

  Were there guys that you thought were like, oh, that guy seems like good to go and he didn't make it?

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:03Jocko Willink?

  Didn't get selected?

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, a few, few of my buddies that were actually in, um, basic with me. That made it all the way to Sopsey that came with me with that first chunk. Cause there were like 10 of us that left Sopsey early. I think maybe five of us got selected that first class. And the other five, I would have said, no, no, those guys are, these guys are gonna be good to go. I was mostly looking at their physical performance, like their rock times and their pull ups and they're like, these were physical studs. But for whatever reason, they just didn't, didn't display what they needed to.

• 44:33Jocko Willink?

  Do, do the cadre debrief a guy and be like, hey, man, you, you were definitely not in the game over here. You fell short, looked like you had a big ego. Do they debrief guys?

• 44:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:43Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  No. It's, uh, the cadre during selection are like robots. They're, it's not, they're not in your face, they're not screaming and yelling. Eh, there's a couple of times that they're screaming and yelling. Log and rifle PT are two iterations where they are in your face and screaming and trying to crack you physically and emotionally, mentally. But the rest, they're like cyborgs. It's very just, this is your task. This is your condition, this is your standard. Do you have any questions? Execute. That's it. And if you, if you don't make it, they're like, okay, go over there, there's nothing. They're not trying to, they're not trying to get you to quit. And they're also not there to tell you why you don't get picked up or why you failed an event.

• 45:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  They're like cyborgs.

• 45:29Jocko Willink?

  That's wild, cause it seems like in BUDs, really the whole first phase is to weed people out. But most of it happens, the first, second, third, fourth week, the fourth week is, the fourth or fifth week depending is, is hell week, you know? And they'll get rid of so many people. But, uh, yeah, that, that objectivity. I guess it happens a little bit different in BUDs, you know, like the instructors will see someone that's weak and they'll kinda like, they'll start working on them and they'll just break him.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:00Jocko Willink?

  And that'll be that.

• 46:04Jocko Willink?

  Was there anything that was a challenge for you in this stuff? Cause you're like a freaking government experiment. Was there anything that was hard for you in selection?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, selection was certainly challenging. I think what I struggled most with was the team dynamic aspect. Although I grew up playing team sports. You know, you, you get put in these, in these scenarios where you have a, a mission to execute as a small group. And they'll rotate, who's in charge? You're in charge of this, you're in charge of that. And that's where they're assessing you as leaders. But they're also assessing everyone else as a team player and their ability to support a leader. Right? To kind of lead up the chain of command kind of philosophy. Well, as an aggressive, younger person, as if a leader made a decision on how we're going to execute something and I didn't agree with it. I made that note.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  I'm like, no, that's, that's not going to work. Like I wanted to win. And these tasks that they're giving to us, they're essentially impossible. Like within the standards that are given to you, there's no way it's happening. They know that. It's not about can you be, get from A to B in a lot of time. It's about how do you work together as a unit? How do you lead? How do you communicate? How do you problem solve? How do you deal with stress? That's what they're looking at. I wanted to win. And if homeboy came back with some like crazy ridiculous strategy that I knew wouldn't work, I let him know that. I'm like, no, no, that's not going to work. And now this dude's in a, like a tough spot. He's like dealing with someone who's like bigger than him and angrier than him. He's trying to, you know, do his job as a leader. And of course he's being evaluated, the cadre is standing right there.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  So I could have done a better job of being a supportive member of the team. Um, I didn't have the same leadership philosophy and methodology and tools that I have now. So I struggled with that. Cause even in the moments I could tell like, I'm not handling this very well, but I want to win. And, and it's just, it, it superseded my ability to stay, you know, calm and tactful.

• 48:02Jocko Willink?

  Did they debrief you on that or did you just figure this out later?

• 48:05Speaker 01

  No, they did. So if you get selected, you sit down, uh, with a cadre after and they go through your entire, your entire packet with all your scores and all their inputs. So that was the number one thing that, that was told to me was you need to learn how to be more supportive of a leader.

• 48:22Jocko Willink?

  That's legit.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:23Jocko Willink?

  Give you some legit feedback and you, were you, uh, humble enough to understand that at the time?

• 48:31Speaker 01

  I was humble enough to to accept it.

• 48:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  I didn't have the same mentality towards leadership then as I do now. Where now I look as leadership as very much a skill. Like it's something that you can learn, but you have to deliberately train on it. Back then, even even at that point, so I'm now 25, I just got selected, whatever. I still looked at leadership as as a talent, as something that you either had or didn't have. And that was it. So I just took it like Roger that Sergeant, I appreciate it. But like this is who I am. And I don't have the leadership like skill ingrained in me genetically. I just don't have it. So I'm gonna have to get better other ways to kind of make up the difference. Now I look, you know, my mentality towards it is wildly different.

• 49:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's a that's a a lot of people make that. Or a lot of people have that attitude. And, you know, we have a leadership consulting company and explaining to people that they can actually learn skills, just like, I guess, that the example I always use is playing guitar or shooting baskets in basketball. Like you can't just pick up a basketball and be think you can make free throws. It's like not happening. You can't pick up a guitar and just think you're gonna be able to play. You it's skill and leadership is the same way. And are there some people that have a little bit of a tendency that have better hand eye coordination? That they're gonna be able to pick up basketball a little bit quicker? Yeah. Are there people that have a certain ability to recognize different notes? When they hear them? Yeah, that's an actual thing you can be born with. But regardless, you still need to learn the skills in order to get good at it. And leadership is the same way.

• 50:01Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna have some natural propensity for it. There's gonna be some parts of it you'll be good at. There's gonna be some parts you'll suck at. You take advantage of the ones you're good at. You work on the ones you're not, but it's definitely everyone can get better. Unless they're a person that says, I already know everything.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:15Jocko Willink?

  And then then they're gonna be a problem. So then it's off to Q course after that?

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Yep, get selected, go into Q course. Uh, and back then it's different today, but back then, you know, you go through these different phases. Phase one, two, three, four. And in between those, you would just be waiting at Fort Bragg for there to be enough students that they could lump together to start the next phase. So a lot of white space in between. You know, phase one, you go to down to Camp McCall, you're there for three weeks, seven weeks, whatever. Come back to Bragg and reset. Well, sometimes those breaks could be a month or three months. Right.

• 50:52Jocko Willink?

  What do you do during those breaks? Just working out?

• 50:54Speaker 01

  PT formations. Um, they do like some LPD stuff with some of the tax that were back there at Bragg. The guys that were like in charge of us keeping accountability. So we do some like leadership type classes. But you were mostly just hanging out, waiting, trying to stay out of trouble. And that's where actually a lot of guys, that's the reason why they're not Green Berets today is because of that downtime. You know, there's plenty of distractions in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

• 51:17Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Plenty. There's plenty. They're all, actually all, they're all there. All of the vices and distractions that you could want or hope didn't exist. They're all there. Girls, drugs, booze, nightlife, fights. That is what got a lot of guys removed from the program. Because they just couldn't stay focused for that amount of time. Because it took me, just the Q course alone, about 18 months.

• 51:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no kidding.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  To get through it. Yeah.

• 51:44Jocko Willink?

  And how much of that time was, I mean, just, just a guess. Yeah, how much was actually training?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Maybe 12.

• 51:50Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:51Jocko Willink?

  Well, when you were going through that, was there anything that was trouble for you in there?

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Language school. Real hard. Yeah, language school is hard.

• 52:00Jocko Willink?

  What language did you learn?

• 52:01Speaker 01

  I learned Russian in the Q course, which is six months long.

• 52:05Jocko Willink?

  Do they have Rs in Russian? They have the R sound in Russian?

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Cause they do, but I don't.

• 52:09Jocko Willink?

  Passing shit.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Nah, you talk about a confusing accent. You've mixed Russian and Boston together. Literally no one knows what I'm saying, including me. So everyone's left lost. What did you just say? I'm like, I don't think I even know. That was tough.

• 52:24Jocko Willink?

  Uh, how long is the, how long was the Russian course?

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Six months. And that's all you do, eight hours a day.

• 52:29Jocko Willink?

  Headset on, freaking, they don't speak English to you.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  We have instructors. So you're in a classroom with like six, seven other guys, uh, eight hours a day, just learning Russian. And it was even worse because we, we still didn't maintain our jump status during the Q course. So we did a jump like the week before I started language school and I broke my tailbone. Broke my coxus. I came down, I landed on the, on the, uh, on the runway.

• 52:56Jocko Willink?

  Bro, those shoots are not made for big dudes.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  No, man. I come down like a, like an asteroid.

• 53:01Jocko Willink?

  I always did too.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:03Jocko Willink?

  You know.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Especially with equipment. I mean, forget about it.

• 53:05Jocko Willink?

  It's just a freaking disaster.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Even at thirteen hundred feet, you know, it's like by the time I shoot opens, I check my stuff, I drop, I'm dropping my equipment pretty much immediately and I'm smashing into the earth.

• 53:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  With a vapor trail behind me. You know, so I came down, I, I had some wind, I couldn't steer, couldn't avoid it, runway, this is happening, boom. Broke my tailbone. Thought, I thought I paralyzed me. I thought I was paralyzed.

• 53:26Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking horrible, yeah.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  It was scary as hell.

• 53:27Jocko Willink?

  Guys have been paralyzed from that type of accident.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I'm like, okay, uh, this is the rest of my life. Fortunately, it was just a broken tailbone, which is, is not a convenient injury, you know?

• 53:41Jocko Willink?

  No, I've never had it, but it doesn't sound like fun.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  There's no great, you can't cast it, you know, so you just have to stay off of it and let it kind of heal the best it can. But I'm immediately going into language school or I'm going to be spending eight hours a day in a classroom. So my first, I don't know, three, four months of language school, I was either on a knee or standing. Because I couldn't sit. You know, eventually I was coming to class, one of those donuts, you know, inflatable things, that's what I was doing. So I mean, also not an academic. Trying to learn a new language, which I'm convinced is in the same area of the artistic side of people's brains. Like if you can play music or if you can paint, that's the art form of learning a language.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  My wife's a great example. She's both. Like she's a musician, she's a phenomenal artist. She can pick up foreign languages like that. For me, nah, dude, it was, it was brutal. It was just forced reps. Like that's how you do it. So I mean.

• 54:39Jocko Willink?

  And you have to test out. Do you have to test out like at a certain level?

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta test out at the end.

• 54:43Jocko Willink?

  What do you gotta test out at?

• 54:45Speaker 01

  What I would say would be like a, like a, between a beginner and a novice level. To have a working knowledge, I think is the way they kind of describe it.

• 54:55Jocko Willink?

  Where, where is that language school?

• 54:57Speaker 01

  For Pratt.

• 54:58Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, what, what, what were you, you were a 18 Bravo, were you a Bravo?

• 55:03Speaker 01

  I was a Bravo.

• 55:04Jocko Willink?

  And how was that's part of the schooling?

• 55:06Speaker 01

  That was great. Yeah, the Bravo course was awesome. You know, just learning weapons and, and a little bit into tactics. But, uh, you're just playing with guns all day.

• 55:15Jocko Willink?

  Did you pick that? Is that what you wanted?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I picked my, I picked my MOS and my language, which determines your group. Everyone that gets selected, or at least back then, picked those two, two things, requested MOS and requested language. And they would give, I think it was the top like 15% or 20% of the performers would get what they, what they asked for. And then the rest would get whatever they, you know, they needed to get. So I requested Bravo and I wanted Russian because I wanted to stay at, at their group.

• 55:44Jocko Willink?

  What made you want to be Bravo?

• 55:47Speaker 01

  There the ass kick is on the team. You know, stereotypically, but also in reality, because you kind of, you kind of have to be, man. And here's why. You're, yes, you train on weapons and maintenance and troubleshooting. But you're also the primary tactician on the team or the primary tact, tactical advisor to the team sergeant. Is that, that's your support function on a team. So you're putting together ranges, you're executing training. Well, every SF guy, every soft guy thinks that he is a perfect tactician and a perfect marksman. The other skill sets, medics, commo, demo, those are much easier for those guys to teach their teammates.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Because they don't have the pride associated with not knowing medicine. I don't have the pride associated with not knowing how to use this, this radio. You walk up to a guy and say, you don't know how to use your rifle? That, they don't take that very well. So you have to have an aggressive, dominant personality to be able to break through that barrier that your teammates have to be able to do your job.

• 56:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're gonna take that very personally.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  They don't like that, you know, they don't like that. Like you're my, you can't shoot and you don't understand tactics. You tell that to a Green Beret or SEAL or Ranger, it's not gonna go well.

• 57:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're gonna have, they're gonna have a little bit of an ego flare up in those scenarios.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:15Jocko Willink?

  And how was, uh, how was Robin Sage?

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Robin Sage was good. I mean, aside from the infill, which is, it's just, I mean, horrible. We didn't jump, thank God. My buddy, this is a good buddy of mine today, he was on one of the teams that had to jump in. Because you're, everyone on that, on that team is carrying about a hundred and twenty pounds in their rock. To, you know, sustain off of, to conduct unconventional warfare in a denied area. That's what Robin Sage is. The teams that have to jump in, man, nah, nah, nah, dude. If I jump in without equipment, I'm coming in hot.

• 57:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  You throw a hundred and twenty pounds on me? So.

• 57:53Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna leave a mark in the earth.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Put a dent in the earth, yeah. So fortunately I didn't have to jump, but you know, the infill, the infill's tough. Uh, no matter whether you jump in or not, and you're humping miles through North Carolina. But once you get past that, then you're actually operating with other MOSs, which is the first time that you get to see that. Because it's the last thing you do and they bring, so now you can see what medics do. You can see what the eighteen Charlie's do, you can see what the commo guys can do. You see the, the alphas, you see the, the team leaders. Up until you go to MOS, everyone's just a candidate. Then you learn your job. And then you come together to execute your job with the other team, with the other MOSs.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  So I remember just when we were on infill, I started cramping up. And I needed to take a short halt because I needed to stretch because otherwise I was gonna go down. And one of my teammates yelled the word medic, which is the first time I had heard that, like in real life. You're gonna hear in the movies, but someone actually yelled medic and then a medic showed up. And I was like, oh, this is like a real thing. We actually have you guys. I hadn't seen it before, you know? So it was cool to see those different jobs and how they employ themselves within a team dynamic. So it was actually a lot of fun once you got past, you know, getting to your, your site.

• 59:12Jocko Willink?

  How long is the freaking infill?

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Usually takes, uh, you know, like two to three days.

• 59:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh damn.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  To get in. Yeah. I mean, it, every, every route's different. Uh, it's usually, it's trains, planes and automobiles and a lot of walking. So, you know, horse trailer from here to here. You get there, you walk, you know, 12 miles through the wood line, link up over here, jump on a boat, move down this river. You know, it's like a full on infill as if you're going into actual denied area. That's what they're trying to replicate.

• 59:41Jocko Willink?

  You get done with that and that's, that's it, right? That's when you get your, your designation, your green beret.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  That's it. Yeah.

• 59:48Jocko Willink?

  Did your parents come down for that?

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:50Jocko Willink?

  Did your mom put any crystals in your green beret?

• 59:52Speaker 01

  She probably did. Uh, she blew some incense on me.

• 59:56Jocko Willink?

  Do you have like one green beret that you got that one time? Like, and that's the one that you get and the one that you keep?

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  The actual headgear?

• 1:00:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  So I still have the same one is the one I graduated with.

• 1:00:09Jocko Willink?

  Right. So that's what that's, is that pretty common?

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  I think that that's most common unless a guy like loses it. Uh, we don't really wear it that often though. So there's, there's no real need to upgrade because you like destroyed it. It's, it's kind of funny, man. You spend all this time thinking about becoming one and you want to earn this little green hat more than anything. It's on the top of this mountain. It means everything to you. You want to put it all on the line. And then you get it and then you never want to wear it because it's just a pain in the ass to put on your head. So we don't usually wear our uniform all that often anyway, but when we do, obviously it goes on. So. I think that's part of the reason why most guys, the one that they had originally is the one that they keep throughout their career.

• 1:00:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. No, uniform is always not fun. I, I remember, uh, I always thought to myself, man, I'm like a, I'm like a 30, 35, 38 year old dude. I go to work all day. Don't have to wear a shirt, man. This is the, this is the life. Freak good to go.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Uh, but your parents came down to graduation and all that?

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:11Jocko Willink?

  How'd they feel about that? Cause now what year is it?

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  2010.

• 1:01:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so Iraq is kind of chilled out by now. So you must just be eyeing Afghanistan at this point.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so at this point, I know I'm going to third group, which is at Bragg, which is the one I wanted to go to because third group owned Afghanistan. For the, for the groups, for the SF groups, that's all third group did. The other groups would filter in and support, but third group owned Afghanistan. That's where I wanted to go. That's why I chose that language. That's where I ended up going. So from my parents' perspective, of course, they were proud of the work and happy for me for being successful, but also petrified because they knew what was coming.

• 1:01:55Jocko Willink?

  And this was 2010, you joined in 2007. Damn, that's a long freaking pipeline.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:02Jocko Willink?

  That's a long pipeline.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  Now it's much more streamlined. So the current Q course, they've cut that white space in between. So they give guys, maybe it's a week or two or so off and it's, it's a much faster turnover rate.

• 1:02:14Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Jocko Willink?

  So you get, how was it checking into, to the battalion?

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  It was, I mean, I showed up, never having been like a real unit before, other than as a student. And you don't get a whole lot of guidance. It's like, report to third group on this day. It's like over there somewhere. I'm like, okay. So you find it, right? And then I walk into like group headquarters building and there's like some E5 working the CQ desk. And I'm like, hi, I'm here to report to first battalion. He's like, okay. It's over there. I'm like, all right, Roger that. So like I meander over there and the funny story is I'm walking around the battalion, trying to get all these little boxes checked off, right? Check in with S1, which is your admin section. Check in with S2, your intel section. Like get yourself administratively within the unit.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  I'd never heard of S4. I don't know where it is. Like what's, okay, it's over here. I find it. What do I need from you guys? So I'm meandering around pretty lost. Clearly, I was lost because a dude comes up to me in PTs and he's like, you need help finding something? And I'm like, yeah, man, I'm looking for this like S6 thing. He's like, yeah, it's over there. And as soon as I start talking, he's like, you from Boston? I'm like, yeah. He's like, I'm from Boston. I'm like, oh, no kidding. So we start talking about the socks and the pads and you know, where you're from, what's your neighborhood, whatever. We're just like bullshitting. And he's like, come over here, let me show you something. Following this guy, I have no idea who it is. He brings me into an office. He's got Red Sox pictures on the walls, all this memorabilia. We're just, we're chopping it up.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  And I realize I'm in the battalion commander's office. I haven't dropped a single sir yet. I have no idea who I'm talking to. And it's like dawning on me and I'm like, all right, but I'm just gonna keep going with this cause like he seems cool with it. Maybe this is just the way it is. I don't know. It's my first day in the EUNIC. And then I just hear this bellowing voice from the office next to it. And this was Sergeant Major Spratt.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Command Sergeant Major Spratt, who had just left SWIC, which is where the Q course and selection is. And came back to third group. And he had some specific language about, you know, asking very politely, who was talking to the battalion commander that way? And he walks in the office and he's an old school SF guy, man. Old school, like big mustache, big chest, right? Walks in.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Yelling at me.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  I look over at the battalion commander like, are you gonna, are you gonna step in here? And he's just laughing. I thought we were boys. I thought we were buddies, you know? He hangs me out to dry completely. So Spratt's like, you know, looking at my name. He's like, I heard of you. He's like, you know, he's like, you're one of those combatives guys, right? You're one of those like MMA fighter type dudes. And I was like, uh, I don't know if I should say yes to this. I feel like you may wanna challenge me out back and I don't know how that will go. I'm like, yes, yeah, it is me. And he's like, okay, well. Basically, uh, don't ever talk to the boss like that again and like get out of here and like go find your company.

• 1:05:23Jocko Willink?

  What gave you that reputation as being an MMA guy? Cause what? Just cause you wrestled or were you, did you pick up jiu jitsu and stuff along the way?

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  So I ended up getting uh, MACP, which is the Army Combatives Program, CERT uh, one and two during basic training that they offered to just like guys that were proficient with um, combat sports. So I showed up to the unit um, that with, with that and then uh, or during, during the Q course. And then actually, when I was in Robin Sage, um, Alan Shabaro, who's a uh, Jiu Jitsu Black Belt, former third group SF guy. He was a cadre for a different field team out at Robin Sage. And uh, he came over one night randomly and was like, hey, uh, you know, I heard you're into like combatives and stuff like that.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  You know, come check out my gym. Once you get out of here and you graduate and whatnot. That was my intro into, into Jiu Jitsu. So I've been training with him a little bit before I actually showed up on day one. I just think maybe word kinda just travel kinda quick, you know, or whatever, but.

• 1:06:25Jocko Willink?

  So that's your welcome aboard. You freaking bro out with the battalion commander and then get your ass chewed.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:06:32Jocko Willink?

  And how long does it take for you, before you get into like an O D A?

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  I was on my first team probably, probably a week or two after that. Because the timing was interesting. My entire company was forward in Afghanistan, but they only had about a month left before they were coming back. Every team except for one of them was forward and there was a team that was a, that deployed offset from the rest of the company and the battalion because it was a specialized team. So it took my company sergeant major a little bit of time, a couple of days to think about where to put me. Because I met him that day, my very first day. I made my way over to the company, met the sergeant major, introduced himself. He said, cool man, like what are your goals? I said, I want to get in Afghanistan like now. He's like, of course you do, but like the entire company's coming back.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  It doesn't make any sense. By the time you get there and get situated, you're gonna just be packing things up and come home. So the timing's not there. But I do have this team that's set to go forward in a few months. I'm like, cool. Can I go to that one? He's like, well, it's it's a different type of team. So like, let me think about it. He did. Eventually, I sat down with the with the team sergeant of that team. And this team focused on preparation of the environment is the task that that we were assigned. So kind of like left a bang type stuff, which isn't exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to go kick down doors and shoot bad guys in the face. This team was not designed to do that. But

• 1:07:59Jocko Willink?

  It was more designed to find the bad guys so that someone can go kick them in the face.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  It's designed to facilitate the door kickers to get to the guy or get to the area. Right. So I mean, that that it was that type of work. And it was a very senior team because most guys would go spend, you know, a few years on a standard O D A. And then they would migrate over into this type of stuff. So senior dudes. Um, but eventually that's the route that I went when I was on that team within a couple of weeks of getting a group.

• 1:08:25Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I'm just gonna say like, you're a new guy. You're checking in. You get a chance to go to Afghanistan in in a more rapid manner. They could probably told you like, hey, we need a cook to go to Afghanistan in a month. You'd have been like, I'm in.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  Roger that.

• 1:08:37Jocko Willink?

  At least I know I would have been. I'm like, cool. Where's the freaking spatula?

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  Where's the ladle?

• 1:08:44Jocko Willink?

  Let's do this. Uh, did you have any time to like prep? Was there any type of workup? Were they already done with all that?

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  No, there was a workup. Um, I think maybe, yeah, I guess I think I was on the team about four months before we we infilled. So I went and I learned Dari, which is a prominent language of Afghanistan. So I spent six months in the Q course, getting my ass kicked, learning Russian, show it to my group. And they're like, welcome. Go learn Dari. My God, kidding me. I can't get away from this language thing, man, which I understand the value of it now, actually, even once I was able to employ it. So it was three months of that and then some like preparatory collective training that we did. But it was pretty fast and furious before I was out the door.

• 1:09:29Jocko Willink?

  And then you, how was that deployment? What what was it like when you got there?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  It was amazing. Um, you know, initially I wanted to come in, do my five-year contract, get some payback for nine eleven, learn some skills, and then get out. This was not gonna be like my profession or my career. And then I got to the ground, I got on the ground in Afghanistan. It was a nine-month rotation, mostly down in Kandahar. We were mostly doing split-team stuff. Uh, so one team was on the Paki border and the other team was in like downtown Kandahar. So I was getting a chance to see more rural and urban environment. And because of the team I was on, I was seeing the more overt stuff where we get in like mounted gun trucks to go support a particular op, to being in a soft-skinned Corolla, driving through downtown Kandahar and civilian clothes.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  So I was exposed to a lot of what ODAs can do, what SF guys can do, aside from the thing I really wanted to do, you know. So we, we did end up getting to do a couple of little things somewhat by accident, but it was in that deployment that I, uh, I couldn't imagine doing anything else. I decided like this is what I'm gonna do for my career. And I re-enlisted actually in Afghanistan for like another six, I think it was, beyond my current contract I was on. So it was great.

• 1:10:49Jocko Willink?

  So was the op tempo good where you were working all the time?

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  Busy.

• 1:10:53Jocko Willink?

  Busy?

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:55Jocko Willink?

  No, no like sitting around for long periods of time? You were getting after it all the time?

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  No, no, it was, it was super busy.

• 1:11:00Jocko Willink?

  And that's cool, you get, get exposed to a wide spectrum of different things that are happening. You get to see a lot.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Jocko Willink?

  That's a freaking great first deployment for you.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was, again, I was with all these senior guys. So I was an E5 and everyone else was E7 or 8 or an officer. So I'm just learning from these dudes that have been around for a really long time. And, you know, some of them were on their fifth, sixth Afghanistan pump. So I'm just, I'm drinking from a fire hose, but, um, just the knowledge that was coming in from these dudes, it just, I caught the bug and I was like, yeah, this is it. This is, this is for me.

• 1:11:39Jocko Willink?

  You get done with that deployment, um, you said you got into some things. I mean, did you get, did you get in some gunfights? You guys gotten a few gunfights over there on that one?

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  But not, nothing that like, uh, was too major?

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  No, no, it was not that anything all that serious. But what's, what's funny about it is because the mission that we were on is not designed for us to be in those environments. But you know, there would be like a LERS unit or like a, another unit over here that was going out to this area for whatever mission they had. And we're like, well, maybe there's something out there we can check out that isn't aligned with our mission. I don't know. Maybe I can talk to someone over there. Maybe there's, I don't know, something. So we would just get added on to their con ops. And then some things would happen, but because of our team and our reporting channels, it was different than the other units in the AO. So even though we had been in these engagements, there was no like reporting of it happening.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  At one point, the commander that we actually worked for heard about some stuff and he showed up to our site. We were working under, uh, NSW. So like, there was a SEAL O5 that showed up. And he's like, how's everything going? Blah, blah, blah. First time I met him, he's like, okay, so just so you know, I know what you guys are doing. And you need to stop. I'm like, Roger that, sir.

• 1:12:58Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, Roger that.

• 1:13:01Jocko Willink?

  Trying to keep the boys, trying to keep the boys down. Come on. Uh, so you come home from that deployment. What's next?

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  A ton of schools and training, individual schools. At that time, we were doing, usually it was six months on, nine months off before we would rerotate. Uh, for me, I think it was, ended up being around nine or 10. I was back in the States, but it was just individual school, one after another. And then, um, I went back over on, into Afghanistan for a short period of time with, on a tasking from another unit that needed some support. And so I went over there for a quick little thing and came back and then.

• 1:13:41Jocko Willink?

  But how long was that? When you say a quick little thing, was it like months or was it like four months?

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  Like 90 days.

• 1:13:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  90, maybe 120 days, somewhere between three and four months.

• 1:13:50Jocko Willink?

  Now, are you still with the the same ODA this whole time? And so you still are kind of focused on the same type of mission?

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  Yes, until I get back from Afghanistan and then my company Sergeant Major decides he wants to put me on a standard ODA or a direct action focused ODA.

• 1:14:08Jocko Willink?

  So this is after your second, after that 90 day stint?

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  So on the 90 day stint, you're over there, did you get some good lessons learned from that deployment?

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:17Jocko Willink?

  What'd you take back from that one?

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  That there are other units within the SOCOM Enterprise that operate at an entire different stratosphere, which I could tell even as a junior Green Beret working on, you know, around ODA guys. There are other people out there that are really good at what they do and they know how to do it. So I was a, I was a, a riding on the side of this thing. They just needed some support. It was for PSD stuff.

• 1:14:47Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  It came over to their group because we're on Fort Bragg and they needed like a bigger combatives PSD type dude just to like take orders and not talk or ask questions and I was the guy.

• 1:15:00Jocko Willink?

  I'm in. I got this all day.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  I didn't know really like what I was doing. I understood like PSD work, but who I was with and what we were doing, it took me like a while to like figure that out. But I learned a ton and that was really what sunk my teeth into what my next thing would be post ODA time.

• 1:15:22Jocko Willink?

  Did you, are you still, are you training jujitsu all the time now?

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:27Jocko Willink?

  So when you got back and what about when you're on deployment, are you training at all? Do you have time?

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:31Jocko Willink?

  You're like, hell, yeah.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  Make time. Yeah. Every trip I've been on, I've built, I've built a little fight house.

• 1:15:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  Even into like austere stuff. We get into the next actual rotation. We're in the mountains doing VSO and I built us a fight house up there.

• 1:15:45Jocko Willink?

  So that's, so you come back from the 90 day stint where you're doing PSD type work?

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:15:50Jocko Willink?

  And then you get put in, now this one you're getting put into like a DA type ODA?

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I get back and my, my, my deal was I would do two rotations on the first team I was on. And I committed to that, uh, cause there's a lot of time they spend in training, you know, how to do certain stuff. So it was like, yeah, that's no problem. Sergeant Major came in, um, right after I got back and he's like, uh, hey, man, I'm going to talk to your team sergeant, but I think you need to be on like a DA team, you know, you're like, you don't fit in in this team you're on now. You don't blend.

• 1:16:20Jocko Willink?

  You're like, you're like, you're the worst low visibility guy in the history of freaking special forces.

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. So it didn't make sense from that lens and I was young and hungry and he wanted to like, you know, maximize on that, leverage that, get me into the fight for more traditional sense. So he made my team sergeant, team sergeant was like, cool, man. This is what he wants. This is what's best for him. Roger that. So he let me go and then I went to a DA team. Uh, this is now in like early 2012 and I was with them just in time to go through a full train up.

• 1:16:53Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  Of that type of work before we went in, um, what was my second actual combat rotation in the fall of 2012.

• 1:17:02Jocko Willink?

  And so how's that, how's that working out?

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  The, it was, it was night and day, man. My first pump doing what we were doing, we were living cush. We were living cush. Everyone had their own shoe. I had air conditioning. I had a full sized bed. I had a plasma TV in my room.

• 1:17:21Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Two different chow halls, two different gyms, full blown fight house. Cause I, I, one of our camps was in the, was like on the back end of a massive, of a bigger FOB. So we had all the FOB stuff, but then we had our own, our own stuff. You know, OGA camp was right next to us. They had a whole bunch of cool stuff. So I was, but that was, that was just the way it was for me. It was my first trip.

• 1:17:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  Like this is the way, this isn't living off the land. Are you kidding me? I haven't had to kill a single snake yet. You snake eaters. I got two chow halls to choose from. When I switched teams and went to the DA team, we went in to do VSO, Village Stability Operations. And that by design is very austere. You actually have limitations on what you can do to build up your physical infrastructure to keep it within line with what your partner force or those within that area with how they live. We assimilate to them.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Which is exactly the mission we wanted, but when you get dropped off on a, you know, mountain top helicopter, the zero three, and you're the first team that's occupied this site, there's nothing.

• 1:18:25Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  And it was like, oh, this is what ODAs do. This is, okay, this is what this, so it was a night and day shift from my first trip to my second.

• 1:18:36Jocko Willink?

  So now you're out in the middle of, where are you?

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  Wardak.

• 1:18:39Jocko Willink?

  You're, so you're in Wardak, just your ODA team in the middle of nowhere.

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  So there were three teams that they inserted into Wardak along the Chalk Valley, um, two on one side, one on the other, but it was really just us to mutually support each other.

• 1:18:53Jocko Willink?

  And you are starting from scratch, building out what you're gonna build out, because there's no pre-existing team there at all? There's no turnover or nothing?

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  There was a turnover only because the team that was on the ground when we got there, they had closed down their site, which is where we were originally planning on going, but as things changed operationally, they shut that site down, they packed up all their stuff, they moved to this secondary location, they were on the ground for 24 hours before we landed.

• 1:19:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:19:28Jocko Willink?

  So there's nothing there?

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  There's nothing there. There was a team there, but they hadn't been working out of that site.

• 1:19:32Jocko Willink?

  Right. So then you guys start building out, do you have a partner force that's there?

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they handed over their partner force to us, which was a, an ANASF team. So the regiment, the Army Special Forces had created an Afghan National Army Special Forces unit, and they looked structurally the same way as us, same MOS, the same breakdown.

• 1:19:52Jocko Willink?

  And they had 12 guys or whatever?

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  12 guys.

• 1:19:55Jocko Willink?

  12 guys, just like ours?

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:19:57Jocko Willink?

  So you show up there, you get settled in, and is the AO, how hot is the AO?

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  It was, it was, it was busy, it was hot. Um, we got our footprint, you know, we're like patrol base activities for the first, like 48 until we got some semblance of some force pro going, and then on maybe day three or four, we, uh, we went to drive down the street to a Afghan local police checkpoint, which you could see from our camp, it was maybe 400 meters down the road. I think we had a four-vehicle convoy, I was in the little trail vehicle, working out of a hatch, and by the time our second vehicle got on the road, we were ambushed.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  So at this point, we've got like some ratty chain link fence and some half filled HESCO as like force pro. There's nothing, you know, other than guys that are up there with two forties. So ting ting ting ting. And I'm like, what? I don't know what's happening.

• 1:20:53Jocko Willink?

  What kind of vehicles?

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  We were in Mat V's, um, and then IG thirty three, IG thirty one. So I'm up armored, you know, they're legit. But even though I had been around a couple, you know, engagements prior, it was nothing like this. Like we were like ambushed. This wasn't some, you know, moron who got creative with an AK forty seven to wanted to get his jihad on for a second and then drop his gun and run away. This was like a no shit. We're gonna fight right now. So.

• 1:21:21Jocko Willink?

  And this is you're not even all the way out of the gate.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  No, no, it's all right there. So we're, they dropped us off into a hornet's nest, you know, which we kinda knew, although we were prepping for location A. We ended up at location B, but they were relatively close where a lot of our intel and prep in terms of personalities and leadership and cells and who we would be targeting. Was still considered the same. I didn't realize it was gonna be quite that level of of beehive. So zero white space, uh, which became our pri- our primary mission was just to open that up. So every day or every other day, whenever we rolled, it was just like move to contact. Like that's the, that's the mission for today.

• 1:22:02Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing.

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  Let's go find the ambush and like set it off.

• 1:22:05Jocko Willink?

  And you're going out with your team plus the Afghan SF team. So you got like twenty, twenty five guys?

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  So we also had, uh, an infantry squad that was there as an uplift. So about twenty twenty two, uh, so maybe about fifteen dudes. You all be super young minus their, their squad leader. Uh, most of them were just fresh out of basic. Young and hungry though.

• 1:22:28Jocko Willink?

  Hell yeah.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  I can work with that all day. You give me a blank canvas. I, I love me some blank canvas. So it was, it was, there were, there were studs like savages. Eventually we created some savages.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Afghan National Army SF team was I was I dedicated partner force. Eventually, within I say the first month or so, we started doing bigger ops. And we bring in Afghan National Army guys or another commando element or Afghan National Police guys. And this leads to, you know, me, me eventually getting shot up with an insider attack. Because when you start getting all these different dudes from different units, there's no practical way to establish a baseline with these with these guys. You know, if you're living with somebody, you get to know them. That way you can tell if something's off, like the spidey sense can start to go off. Because it's different. When you're getting new bodies as frequent as eventually we were,

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  uh, it drastically opens up the risk for an insider threat.

• 1:23:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, you end up, you get wounded early, huh? In this deployment? Is this deployment you get wounded for the first time?

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:36Jocko Willink?

  What happened there?

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, I mentioned I ended up taking some shrapnel to to the back of my shoulder. We were on the ground for, I don't know, just a few weeks. We, we, you know, we drove to contact. We actually had an actual mission other than like, let's go find a fight to get into. We did get ambushed on the way, uh, from what ended up being what we considered to be the Taliban's strong point village within our immediate AO. It was the first time that we actually maneuvered into it. And, uh, my team sergeant would tell you himself, like, he made a, he made an aggressive.

• 1:24:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Decision.

• 1:24:10Jocko Willink?

  That's gonna piss some people off.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  To go.

• 1:24:12Jocko Willink?

  In there.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, and we were way over our heads and we were outgunned and outmanned, you know, because he just took myself, one of my teammates, and then a handful of, uh, of our partner force guys. And we maneuvered, dismounted into the, into the village, just like the six of us. We had swirled by fire machine gun coming from the trucks and some mortars, but like, we were in a village. Now you're in like a more urban environment with three US, three partner force. We've been on the ground just a few weeks. You know, an error and he'd tell you the same thing like it was a mistake. Me actually getting hurt may have may have saved that because we fought our way to a two-story structure where we were taking dishka fire from up to the road. So the guys are engaged in that way.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  There's some other dudes on some rooftops and there's six of us maneuvering through an urban environment, an Afghanistan urban environment, different than like Iraq, but you're still dealing with buildings and multiple level structures and windows and doors and all the hallways and alleyways, all the things, right? So I even noticed at one point, I'm like, we shouldn't be here right now. You know, we shouldn't be here right now. This is a mistake. I didn't voice that. I was like, Roger that. Like, let's, let's keep going. And we made it to the structure that we were trying to breach to deal with the with the dishka that was coming out of the second story.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  And um, we had been receiving some, some indirect that were coming in and dudes were dropping grenades out of structures as well. So we're at the breach point to enter the courtyard into this structure that is still actively engaging. And something just blows up behind me. There was a grenade and it just ripped into the back of my shoulder. And it was like getting hit with a sledgehammer. And you think about shrapnel penetrating your body, you may think it's like this, like piercing stabbing sensation, like a piece of metal going into you, but it's more just impact. Someone just hits you with a bat. And then I look back and there's just like a lemon sized hole in the back of my shoulder. I'm like, oh, okay.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  This just happened. So uh, I immediately just like, no, I'm fine. Now adrenaline's pumping. It's a shock, but there's no real pain that sets in. I'm like, we're good. My team sergeant comes over and he's like, no, no, no. So he grabs my other teammate. He starts putting some, we get into like a little strong point. He got, he gauzes it up. Is the dishka still firing? Yes. Well, that's good times. Yep. So that's still going off. The boys in the trucks are really the ones that are getting it.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  And our partner force had dared send a separate dismount just themselves to stop moving in towards the building as well. So they're, they're treating me, some gauze, you know, pressure dressing, wrap it up. And uh, my team sergeant's like, we're, we're aborting this mission right now. We're getting, we're getting back to the trucks. And I'm like, no, no, I'm fine. Like, let's go. We just fought our way all the way to this door that we're in front of now. Like, let's, let's get in there. He's like, no, no, no. This is, we're in our rights. So that was the, that was the trigger for him to be like, yep, let's detach and take a look at what I'm doing. Uh, so a lot of ways, I think I'm grateful because I don't know what was on the other side of that door.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  But those guys were still getting it and it could have been, it could have been a lot of different things.

• 1:27:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:27:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, sometimes the things just pile up where, you know, I used to joke, you know, you have the no-go criteria, like, hey, this is no-go criteria. We don't have aircraft or we don't have this, we don't have that. And I used to joke and say, hey, we just have go-go criteria because we're fucking going. Like, that was like, you know, my attitude. But then this thing would happen, something else would happen, something else would happen and it would be like, this is a sign. Like the, one sign I can overlook, two signs, maybe I'll ignore. But now we got three, four things that are going on that don't seem right. It's like, hey, we're getting out of here. This is a bad call.

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:13Jocko Willink?

  And it sounds like he came to that conclusion.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:15Jocko Willink?

  Which, you know, you got one wounded guy, you got a bunkered freaking dishka.

• 1:28:22Jocko Willink?

  Elements maneuvering through the city. Yeah, could go sideways real quick. I mean,

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:28Jocko Willink?

  Uh, how much different does that impact? Does that shrapnel have to hit you where all of a sudden you're not just a wounded guy? You're a dead guy or you're a severely wounded guy?

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  I mean, two inches.

• 1:28:37Jocko Willink?

  Freaking, it's ridiculous how those little things can change, uh, the whole, the whole scenario. How bad were you actually hurt once you guys pulled out?

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  It, it, it wasn't, it wasn't bad. You know, I get back to the trucks and, uh, we, we ITB and my medic takes a look at it and he's like, dude, you're good, but it's like a pretty good hole here, man. So this was the first time anyone had been wounded. We'd have been in the ground, maybe just like a few weeks, like I said, and so he, he gets medevac'd out. And I throw a temper tantrum at the camp. I'm like, I'm not going anywhere. And my team sergeant's like, yes, you are. I'm like, so I, I think I'm going to Germany. I think I'm going home. Like, we just got here. This is where I need to be. Uh, you know, I'm really childish in my response to that. But I do, and I get back to, they send me to one of the.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  One of the outstations where there actually was a was a forward surgical team and they treated it and the way they treat that is they pack it with this antiseptic gauze because they can't just sew it shut because it'll leave this open cavity.

• 1:29:42Jocko Willink?

  No, it'll get infected.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  For infection. So they pack it and then you just change that dressing out, you know, three, four times a day. So it closes from the inside out.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  It was it. It really wasn't a big deal. I was supposed to stay at that location until it was completely healed. The head doc who was at Bagram was made aware of my wound and he said, Nick will stay where you are until it's closed to make sure that there's no infection.

• 1:30:10Jocko Willink?

  How'd that work out?

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. After about, I don't know, three, four days, I start getting anxious. And the only rotary wing flights that were going into my site where my team was, was coming out of Bagram. So either way, I had to get to Bagram before I could initiate movement back to Jalrez, which is where we were. Well, I grabbed one of my buddies who's on that support team that was there and I said, Bring me down to the tarmac, which he does. And I go from one C-130 to another one until I find one that's going to Bagram.

• 1:30:44Jocko Willink?

  Just hitching a ride.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  And I go up to the, I'm like, Hey, you guys going to Bagram? It was like the third plane I walked on and they're like, Yeah, we're taking off in like 10 minutes. I'm like, Can I come with you? They're like, Sure. So I just jump in the plane. I don't tell anybody where I'm going. Land at Bagram. I had been to Bagram before. That's where we originally landed when we got there, but I was only on Bagram for like a day until we just got all our stuff together and then we flew out to our site. So I wasn't familiar with Bagram at all, which back then it was like a city. I mean, Bagram's huge. So I land. I have no idea really where I am. I know that the special ops camp is in the vicinity of this. So I find my way over there and I walk into the jock and it was my first time actually being in like a real jock. I hadn't seen one before with all the TVs

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  and all the different staff sections and they're all wired in. It was like, this is kind of cool. I hadn't seen it before. And I walk in and the SODIF commander, who's my battalion level command team, they're the ones that are running the SODIF, Special Operations Task Force.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  He's like, hey, what are you, what are you doing here? And I'm like, hey, sir, how you doing? You know, I need a ride back to, uh, to Ja'rez. This dude's from Boston. So he starts going off. He had actually brought in a bleacher seat chair that he bought that used to be in Fenway Park as his like battle chair.

• 1:32:08Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  So they refurbished Fenway Park and they sold a bunch of stuff. So he brings this over with him to Afghanistan. So rather than focus on why I am there, he just wants to show me his chair. He's like, dude, look at the chair I brought. Isn't this great? This was used to be out in, you know, Fenway Park, whatever. And I'm kind of like, yeah, sir, that's awesome. That's an awesome chair. Well, then the, then this sort of command sergeant major walks over and he's like, no, really? What are you doing here?

• 1:32:33Jocko Willink?

  I like how you can always know the officers, but they're freaking E-dogs, man. They're on to your bullshit.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  There was no, any Jedi thing happening with him. He's like, why are you here? And I'm, I'm like coming up with some bullshit that doesn't float. And then the phone rings. And he picks it up. And I hear the yelling on the other end of the phone. And it's my company sergeant major who was at the location that I had just left from. And I had been gone maybe three hours or something, four hours. And I hear him screaming and CSM is like, oh no, he's right here in front of me. And I'm like, okay, now I know this is about me. I, I don't, am I going to get court martialed? Like what happens? I don't know. I'm, I know I'm in trouble. So he hands me the phone and my company sergeant major just loses his mind on me, you know?

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  For like 10 minutes and I'm just like, Roger that, Roger that. A lot of that going on. And at the end, he's like, okay, dude, listen, like I get it. I get it. I've been there before. I get it. But like, don't ever do that again. And I said, Roger that, hang up. Well, now everyone's kind of joking about it a little bit. CSM thinks it's kind of cool, but he's also trying to be professional. There's a lot of people around. I've clearly just done something and subordinate.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  It was, it was, the commander eventually gets switched on. He's like, oh, wait, what? Did you really just do that?

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Well, my team's on a mission, right at that point. My first time in a jock, I just got yelled at, which is fine. We're kind of joking. And I look up, red lights, that's going off, you know, essential personnel only inside the jock. People are leaving, people are coming in, people are getting spun up. I can tell something's going on. And it's my team on an op and my team sergeant takes a round to the abdomen. And I'm watching this for the first time through the lens of an ISR feed. I'd never seen it before. And it takes you a minute to realize what's happening and I put two and two together and I have, you know, an emotional breakdown of like rage and I'm like throwing chairs, immature, completely emotionally charged response or reaction.

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  And I'm like, you guys need to get me a ride now. I'm going back. And I get pulled out of the jock and the doc shows up. And I'm with the group or the sort of commander and the sort of CSM and the doc comes over and he's like, why are you here? You need to wait till you're healed. You're not going back. And I start yelling at him and then the commander's like, listen, doc, I don't think you want to tell this dude like, no, like he's, he just like jumped on a plane and flew here. Like he's, like he's gonna, he's going back. So they overrode that decision.

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  And I was back on a bird the next day or the day after that, back out with the team.

• 1:35:26Jocko Willink?

  And what happened to your wound, the guy that got wounded? Would you say that was your team sergeant?

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  Yep. So he came in, I was there to meet him at the hospital when he showed up to Bagram, which was good. He went into surgery. He was medevac out of country. He was over in Germany. I don't think he ended up going back to the States because he returned back in to the team. He was out of the game for a maybe a month or two and then he came back over.

• 1:35:52Jocko Willink?

  Do you guys have any kind of backfill plan? I mean, you only got 12 dudes. When someone gets hit, that's like a freaking significant amount of a force.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, every dude does play a big role. We didn't get outfitted with the with the new team sergeant, just the next senior guy on the team.

• 1:36:12Jocko Willink?

  Spent up.

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  Picked it up.

• 1:36:13Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  Oftentimes, we will get augmented by by one of the support teams that's in the area.

• 1:36:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because I mean, you got 12 guys. Like, that's that's a freaking important gun, just like legit, like just a gunner. Even vehicles, like whatever you're doing, that's freaking crazy to think about that. You lose two or three guys, like you're almost, you need replacements sometimes.

• 1:36:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36:40Jocko Willink?

  So you get back up there now. How often, what's your op tempo like? Like, how often are you guys going out?

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were going out probably three, four times a week.

• 1:36:48Jocko Willink?

  And and most of the time, do you have things that you're doing? Are you trying to do civil affairs out there? Or are you going out patrol to contact? Like, what are you guys actually trying to do?

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so our mission was to open up

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  white space, open up freedom of maneuver, so that some of the other units in the entire AO had the ability to begin their exfil process. So this is 2012 going into 2013. The writings on the wall that we're about to close down Afghanistan, so the units on the ground are making those preparations to be able to get men with weapons and equipment to Bagram and to Kandahar. So we needed to open up some lanes.

• 1:37:30Jocko Willink?

  So does that mean you're, are you setting up combat outposts out there? Or are you just going out clearing and then leaving? What are you doing?

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  No, so the Afghan local police concept was built specifically for this, where we would build and or reinforce checkpoints along the major avenues throughout the AO. So there were these Afghan local police checkpoints that were all down the major roads. So we were either building those out, validating the ones that were already there. Training the guys that were there or bringing in like resources and stuff to make them more effective.

• 1:38:06Jocko Willink?

  So let's say you might, oh, we got this checkpoint down there, checkpoint four, we're gonna go out there today. We're gonna check their force structure, we're gonna meet with their people, we're gonna give them some pistol training. And then we're gonna come back.

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:38:18Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of like the type of stuff that you were doing.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that and then we were tied also into the local and regional government officials. To help them with their structure and their building out and just gaining more control of the area from like a civil and diplomatic perspective, which. It's a tough task to do that in Afghanistan. So we mostly focused on Afghan local police enhancement. Via checkpoints along the major routes.

• 1:38:46Jocko Willink?

  What's the local populace think of you?

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  Hit or miss. In an area like that, you're really putting the local populace in a lose-lose scenario. We come in, big, big white guys, big American guys, tatted up with all the guns and the stuff. And we come in and be like, you're gonna help us. And what are they gonna say? No? Well, the problem is when they say yes, the actual dudes that run the show in that whole area, they're gonna come back. So, you know, it's, it's tough.

• 1:39:18Jocko Willink?

  And they know those, those Americans, they know that they're gonna leave someday. The local populace is like, oh, you're here now, but. The Taliban's gonna be here forever.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's, it's impossible.

• 1:39:29Jocko Willink?

  Well, is it, is the biggest threat on the ground IEDs at this point?

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  At this point, the biggest threat on the ground was IEDs and then a close second would be the insider attack. Which, once that happened to us. Uh, in, would have ended up being early 2013 on the same deployment. That was kind of the catalyst that drove that threat up to supersede IEDs within that immediate area. Because it was just so effective.

• 1:39:58Jocko Willink?

  You ended up getting shot again, right? Or you get shot?

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:02Jocko Willink?

  In the what? In the face?

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  In the face. Yep. I took an AK round, um, which sounds worse than it was. It really just grazed my cheek and, you know, ripped a chunk open. It did clip an artery, so it bled a bit, but I didn't know that I had been shot.

• 1:40:17Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  For like an hour or two after the fact. Because it was the result of a, a massive IED that hit our lead vehicle, decimated the truck. And when I showed up to that vehicle, there were some dismounts that had showed up as well. This was a full on ambush.

• 1:40:36Jocko Willink?

  So we'll talk us through it. So you're out on patrol, how many vehicles you got with you?

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  So we had, I think it was four trucks and a couple side by side raises. Uh, on that, we were returning to base from the, from the thing. We just did like a KLE, a key leader engagement.

• 1:40:50Jocko Willink?

  How, how far away are you from? Like, what are these? Are these like four mile, five mile transits? Are they shorter than that?

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  This one was a little longer. This one, we drove out along the main road, maybe nine miles, 10 miles. And we were on the way back when we hit this. And we had driven down this road multiple times before. Um, and this thing had been in place before all that. They just, they, they never set it off. Lead vehicle, which has my team leader in it, he, uh, that, that vehicle gets just decimated.

• 1:41:23Jocko Willink?

  What vehicle are you in?

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  I'm in vehicle four, working out of a hatch. And I see it go off in front of me and we had hit a bunch of smaller IEDs before. So I was familiar with it, but this thing was it, the, the biggest and the most accurately timed. It just boom, it was perfect. Picks up the truck and just launches it off the side of the road. Down into this apple, apple orchard off to the side and it's down this little ravine. Uh, off the side of the road. And that was the initiation of a complex ambush. So PKM, uh, IPG, some indirect are all coming in. And, uh, you know, I know what react to IED is. We have that SOP established and I don't do my job. This is an important note.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  Instead I jump out of this hatch, the vehicle's still moving and I take off on foot towards the truck. Which was, you know, a couple hundred meters away from me. Not a tactical movement by me, like rifle in hand and I'm just at a dead sprint to the vehicle. And I slide down off the side of the road into this, into this orchard.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  And I, I know.

• 1:42:33Jocko Willink?

  You solo? This is a solo?

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I'm just gone by myself. I know everyone's dead, right? There's no way anyone survived that level of destruction. Truck is on its side, so driver's side door is pinned against the ground, passenger side door would be facing the sky. And I, I slid off the road and I trip and fall and what I had tripped over was my teammate, who was in the turret of that truck, who was ejected and landed about thirty meters from the vehicle. I didn't see him, I trip over him, look back and it's him and he's alive. I can't believe it. His leg snapped in half just below his knee. Uh, he's got a whole bunch of other like lacerations on his face.

• 1:43:17Speaker 01

  But he's alive, he's suffering from immediate blast injury for sure. He's incoherent, but he's alive, he's breathing, he's not bleeding from anywhere profusely. So I do like a quick assessment of him and then I start hearing different rounds impacting the truck, which is behind me about thirty meters and some dismounts that showed up and they were just kind of randomly shooting at the vehicle.

• 1:43:40Jocko Willink?

  This, they're shooting at the, the blown up vehicle?

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so just ting ting ting. I turn around, there's three of them. Um, so I smoked two, the third one takes off running and this is an, again, an apple orchard, but it's in October or it's in November. So there's not a lot of vegetation, there's just mostly trees and branches. So you can, I can see kinda, but there's just a lot of, so I'm maneuvering through this. He's running away from me on an angle with his AK over his shoulder, firing in my general direction while running away. And next thing you know, I'm looking up at the sky, boom. I felt an impact, I'm looking up at the sky. And I thought that I had run into a branch from a tree and it just knocked me over.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  So I pop up and I like kind of look around and I'm fine. And I go to reengage on this dude and I noticed the vehicle is on fire. And I hadn't checked the vehicle. I had only, I've only seen one of my buddies. So I was bad as I really want to go kill this dude. I was like, I'm gonna go check the vehicle instead. So fortunately, the passenger door, which again is facing the sky, had been blown off the hinges. Because the truck had basically collapsed on itself. So the turret was, you couldn't, there was no access point inside the cab, other than that door.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Climb up the vehicle.

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  Uh, look in and my team leader is buried kind of where the driver's seat would be. And he's trying to establish comms.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  Which just says a lot about like training and like just doing what you need to do, regardless of how bad it gets. I mean, he's in an exploded vehicle and he's a mess. Uh, both his legs are nasty. He's a below the N A P T now. Both his legs are completely mangled. He's got an arterial bleed through his arm. His face is completely riddled with spall. And he's on the radio in a destroyed, decimated truck, trying to establish comms, communicate to high out what's going on. Says a lot about that dude. Well, I'm looking inside this vehicle, you know, we're still taking P K M and R P G. Now our trucks are set up. They're returning fire. We got a couple of our 60 millimeter mortars out. They're returning fire. Team sergeant, uh, who, uh, our acting team sergeant at the time,

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  he's got a maneuver element that's maneuvering on the ambush line. I don't think anyone really knew like where I even was. Cause I'm in the middle of all this that's happening.

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  I look inside the truck. I see him. Okay. Truck's on fire. It's burning from the back towards the cab. I look inside. The rounds from inside the vehicle are starting to pop off from the heat. So it's like looking into a, like a popcorn bag. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Rounds are still taking off the front of the truck from the enemy machine gun fire. I'm like, this is a really bad day here and that this is where it ends. There's no way either one of us are making out of this. My team leader played offensive line at West Point. Big cat.

• 1:46:45Jocko Willink?

  This is the dude that's legs are smangled.

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:46:49Jocko Willink?

  Trying to make comms on the, on the radio.

• 1:46:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, our captain.

• 1:46:52Jocko Willink?

  So he's a big jacked dude?

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  Big boy. I wouldn't say jacked, but like just a hoss. Six, seven, about.

• 1:46:59Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  About two ninety, two twenty-five without kit. Big boy. With kit, he's well over three hundred pounds. And we used to joke about this. You know, which is kind of ironic that he and I can never be in the same vehicle because we were the only ones big enough to move the other guy. If we needed to. Which is what played out. So I see him in there, big dude wedged in a pile of metal that's on fire rounds outside the vehicle rounds inside the vehicle.

• 1:47:28Jocko Willink?

  Anyone else inside the vehicle?

• 1:47:30Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:47:31Jocko Willink?

  How is that?

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  So it, it seemed like two got ejected. Uh, or three got ejected. There were two in the back, the guy in the turret. And then the driver managed to sc- I think scamper out of that, of that doorway. Before I got there.

• 1:47:52Jocko Willink?

  Were they Afghans or Americans? Was it all Americans?

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  All Americans except for one of our Terps. One of our interpreters was in that truck.

• 1:48:00Jocko Willink?

  God, I can't believe these guys made it out of there.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:03Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking crazy.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  It is, it is crazy. Uh, cause I assumed they, they all lived, but I assumed that everyone would be dead. Based on the level of damage. So I jumped in the truck and, uh, I kind of just like wedge him up a little bit out of the, out of the area where he was, kind of pressed him into the, into the dash. And then I climbed myself back out. And then just grabbed his kit and just like dead lifted him out of this thing. And just chucked him over the side of the truck. And at this point, some of our partner force guys had showed up, a couple of my teammates had showed up. So they took him. Bust that out of the litter, began, you know, moving him. The truck pretty much burnt up completely, you know, within like a minute or so after we were both out.

• 1:48:48Speaker 01

  And then we just circled around to find scoop up all the rest of the guys that were just in like random areas around. Set up a CCP and then, you know, finished the fight and then went to, you know, our, our med course action.

• 1:49:01Jocko Willink?

  How far back was it to get back to base?

• 1:49:06Speaker 01

  We were maybe three, four miles out.

• 1:49:08Jocko Willink?

  So did you go back before you casuvac the guys?

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  No, we set up an HLZ right there. Bird came in, we pushed out the dudes. They did launch a ground QRF element from one of the sister teams that was in the valley with us. They showed up on the ground. We medevac the five or six guys that were in that truck right from there. And um. Then eventually I got medevac'd out after.

• 1:49:35Jocko Willink?

  You guys got a, did you guys blow that freaking truck in place or did it burn so much that you didn't even have to do anything?

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  At Charlie's, they strapped a couple charges to it.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  But it was pretty much destroyed. Anyway, they recovered some of the combo stuff and then dipped like the rest. But I was treating one of the guys in the vehicle. Once we established the CCP. His uh, one of our attachments, one of our nerdier attachments, although important. His eye had come out of his head. So his eye was like dangling down where his cheek is. So I was treating him. You know, put the eye back in the socket and I'm wrapping it up with gauze. And one of my teammates comes over and just slaps some gauze against the side of my face. And this is like 90 minutes after initial contact. And I'm looking up at him like, what are you doing? And he's like, bro, you're like gushing blood. I'm like, really? I'm like, alright, so he's holding this thing against my face. I'm putting this guy's eye back in his head.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  And then I, you know, stand up, I take a look at it. I didn't take a look at it. I'm like talking to, I'm talking to him. And uh, my medic was like, yeah, I think we're gonna need to get you out of here to get that looked at. And uh, you know, I threw another childish temper tantrum right there. I refused to leave until the other guys were out and then QRF showed up. So they showed up, situation under control. They were gonna escort them back to base.

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  There was one bird that had come back in, so I jumped on that and then I was medevac'd out.

• 1:51:05Jocko Willink?

  And then how was it was the result of that? I mean, what'd they do, stitch it up?

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  No, they had to cauterize it. I think it's because it clipped an artery. So they sent me to Bagram, which is where the rest of the guys were at. And

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  I wanted to just be with those dudes. I wasn't sure if some of them were going to live. I mean, some of them were like real banged up. So I wanted to get there and be with them. And I had a little bit of a situation with some of the army staff that were at the at the hospital. They have this protocol where they don't allow a kit, grenades, weapons, like they secure all that stuff into like a separate area. I had never been in a hospital like this before. And I just come blasting in the front door angry, looking for my teammates. And, you know, two or three of these little like E three med kids were like stopped physically, like getting in my way to try to take my weapons and kit from me. And I did not appreciate that at all.

• 1:52:00Speaker 01

  Fortunately, one of another another SF guy that was there came over and grabbed me and pulled me in real tight and was like, you need to calm down, man. So I gave him my my stuff. And there happened to be a army reservist doctor was in Bagram, who in his day to day job owns a plastic surgery clinic. So he's an army doctor and then he's a plastic surgeon in civilian life. He was the guy that treated me. So he pulls me over and he's like, hey, man, I gotta I'm gonna cauterize your wound and then I'm gonna I'm gonna sew it back up. I'm gonna get you on some pain management stuff like now, like intravenously. And I'm like, no, you're not doing that.

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  And he's like, no, it's like gonna it's gonna be unpleasant. I'm like, dude, Doc, listen, Doc, like hit me with some lidocaine if you want, that's fine, some like numb it up. But you're not going to put me out of my mind. I'm not going to be stoned and drifting around this place in Pixie Land. Two of my teammates are in surgery, three other ones are bedside, right there. You need to hurry up and do whatever this is so I can go do my job, which is to be next to those guys right now. So the sort of commander had showed up because there's six or now, I think, seven of us wounded. He shows up and the doctor looks over at him and sort of commander's like, just, just go ahead and do it.

• 1:53:27Speaker 01

  So I'm laying down on my side and he, it's this little medical welder that goes in and, you know, like burns it back together and then sews it shut and, you know, it sucked, but I was so angry and filled with just rage and concern that it really wasn't that big of a deal.

• 1:53:42Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. And then you said all the guys that got wounded, they lived.

• 1:53:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:53:50Jocko Willink?

  And yet, how many of them got evacuated out of country?

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  All of them.

• 1:53:55Jocko Willink?

  So now how many guys you got left on your freaking team?

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  So out of the, out of the six, only two were SF guys.

• 1:54:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:54:04Speaker 01

  Our captain and our, another one of our weapons guys, another one of, another Bravo. The guy was in the turret. So they replaced my, our captain. They gave us a new captain who was already in country. He was working out as like a staff support officer in one of the other locations. They pushed him to us.

• 1:54:24Jocko Willink?

  And then it's back to business.

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:28Jocko Willink?

  You get back up and it's like, uh,

• 1:54:34Jocko Willink?

  you gotta adjust to this new captain. You gotta work through the guys that you did lose, the other guys that, that left, even though they weren't, they weren't, uh, attached to your ODA, but you gotta replace them somehow so you can start figuring the stuff out. How, how long did it take for you guys, we're going back out on ops?

• 1:54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was definitely a lag. Uh, that was the end of November, so right around early December was when the snow came in anyway. And when you're at 75, 78, 100 feet in the mountains, I mean, that's like real snow, like feet of snow. So the timing was kind of good for us because no one can move when you've got nine feet of snow outside in the mountains. So everything just kind of goes on pause for a little bit from like December through like the end of January. That's where we got our new captain. We got plussed up with a couple more attachments to backfill the dudes that we had lost.

• 1:55:28Speaker 01

  So we had, you know, eight, nine weeks together just to kind of get our stuff together, bring the new captain up to speed. So by the time we were ready to kind of get back into it, come early February timeframe, he was, he was good to go.

• 1:55:43Jocko Willink?

  And then you start doing ops again?

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:47Jocko Willink?

  And now you're working like you were talking about earlier, you're starting to do some bigger ops and you got a bunch of other Afghans coming in from different areas, different units, and that can be sketchy.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:00Jocko Willink?

  And you guys know it's sketchy.

• 1:56:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. We, we prefer to keep our, our, uh, our task org with our internal unit because we, we lived with this ANASF team. And we're talking about like a broken down clay, you know, structures. Like when I say we were living together, I mean, we were living together. Right? So you, you, you gain that bond with those, with those guys and you learn them. You learn their personalities, their character, their, their quirks. When you start throwing, you know, a hundred random dudes at us because we're going to go do some massive village clearance. You don't know any of these guys. We had been training them like randomly within our training cycle.

• 1:56:44Speaker 01

  Where we would run through, you know, a couple of days with the Afghan National Army, a couple of days with the Afghan National Police, a couple of days with the ALP, the local police guys, our own guys. So there was a, there was a, a system in place, but they're still just sending us whoever they wanted to go to training that day.

• 1:57:00Jocko Willink?

  And you know, you said, you mentioned earlier that the threat, IED threat started to be surpassed by the threat of an insider attack.

• 1:57:11Jocko Willink?

  So was there insider attacks before you guys had yours?

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:15Jocko Willink?

  And so you guys are full, full aware, like this shit can happen.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were, um, we didn't take it as seriously as we should have.

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  We didn't prioritize it enough to instill greater mitigation criteria. We had some stuff in place, but we got, uh, we were sloppy. I think as a detachment. It's, it's not anything you can prevent by any means, but we could have done a better job to mitigate it. You know, and a lot of the lessons that have gone out from the event with us, which is still considered the most catastrophic insider attack since nine 11. Is the lessons learned from that are being employed now really much is like, it's like pretty much a baseline for all the guys that work with Indige.

• 1:58:03Jocko Willink?

  All right, so, so let's get there. It's March 11th, 2013, and you guys are getting ready for some kind of a big operation. What were you doing? A clearance? What were you planning to do?

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were doing a larger village clearance, I believe.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  My memory is terrible during this whole timeframe because of me getting banged up that day, but I believe we were going to do like a 48-hour clearance with Iran and we would sit tight. I think it was more of an ALP checkpoint establishment mission to like begin building something from nothing.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  And, and so this is one of those ops where you have a bunch of other Afghans that you don't know. Maybe you've seen them sporadically, but I mean, look, you get freaking a group of 100 Afghans that you saw three months ago, you know, like, who knows who these guys are?

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  They might as well have just been anyone, random.

• 1:59:07Jocko Willink?

  So you guys had some, some standard operating procedures as far as what you would, how you would conduct these operations? Cause you knew, you know, it is a threat. You know that an insider attack is, there's some level of threat to it. So you have some standard operating procedures about how you're treating the Afghans?

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:59:25Jocko Willink?

  And keeping them, some, keeping some kind of distance. And so what is basically like, you would only allow the leadership into the compound? That was kind of the standard operating procedure?

• 1:59:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so our compound had two layers to it. Internal, which is where we lived and where our op center was. And then we had, outside that perimeter was where our motor pool was. So we kept our vehicles, fuel, weapons, or not weapons, but other storage. So our SOP was for an op, the units would show up, they would stay outside of our entire perimeter. The leadership would come into our motor pool area. So we could brief them on what we were doing. Standard practice is you want to keep that window where you notify your partner force where you're going as narrow as you can because they they talk.

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  So in an attempt to reduce that word getting out, we would just tell them right there and then and then we would roll. And that worked for us, you know, and the Bravo section, eighteen Bravo section is responsible for base defense. Right. So me, my team and I or my my section and I, we're the ones that put this together. Team Sergeant, obviously, is the one that says yes. Because we roll with and it worked.

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  That entire time. On this particular day. Leadership comes in. And a Ford Ranger pickup truck rolls in. And I immediately see it, obviously, it sticks out to me because it's a violation of the SOP that we developed and we've been executing two, three times a week for five and a half months.

• 2:01:05Jocko Willink?

  Is it like a technical? Does it have a mounted machine gun in it?

• 2:01:08Speaker 01

  I wouldn't call it a technical, but there was a mounted PKM in the back. I think a technical, I mean, I was in Eastern Africa, there's like different kinds of like Mad Max technicals.

• 2:01:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so it's not an upgraded technical. It's like the lowest.

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:22Jocko Willink?

  Form of a technical possible.

• 2:01:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:24Jocko Willink?

  You know, but a but a mounted PKM in the back.

• 2:01:26Speaker 01

  Hundred percent mounted PKM in the back that a machine gun could operate from a standing position.

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  That rolls in with two dudes and I see it and my first response wasn't. Oh shit, this is a threat. It was, you know, these idiots just can't follow instruction, which is pretty common in Afghanistan. So my first response was just, I'm annoyed that you're that you're doing this. And I'm at a crossroads, man, and it's either. Do I address this problem right now, an error on the side of security? Or do I let it ride? I go the more diplomatic route. Where my team sergeant talks to his leadership or my commander talks to his leadership and we handle it after the fact.

• 2:02:14Speaker 01

  I went with the more diplomatic option.

• 2:02:17Jocko Willink?

  And you've been working, I mean, you've had this SOP. It's worked. You've been working with a bunch of Afghans, like all these idiots. It's all just kind of leaning you in that direction of like, oh, these people are stupid and, you know, I'll square this away when we're done with the brief.

• 2:02:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and it's easy to look back and judge, which I do to myself about how easy you can get complacent. Which is true. But when you've seen so many things that could have gone wrong, that didn't, you become conditioned to these types of mistakes or these types of acts by your partner force. It's not, they don't jump out as these glaring red flashing holy shit lights. But I noticed it and I'm like, you know what? I'll deal with this later. Let's just get through this mission. And we'll address it after the fact. And this was the perfect storm because we do the mission brief, get our partner force leadership up to speed on what we're doing.

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  And then we're doing our own team internal comms checks. So we're in a circle. And you know, you go around, you go around the circle, right? Like Alpha up, Bravo one up, Bravo two up. Everyone's just checking comms. The trucks are all pretty much right behind me. They're all up and running. Comms are good in the truck. Weapons are good in the trucks. First thing we do. Well, when I got our vehicle set up, I had left my go bag, my rifle, and then my crew surf all inside the vehicle. Important lesson to note. I have my Glock on me and I'm overdoing mission briefing final comms checks.

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  My radio is good to go and I immediately turn and start walking towards my truck, right? Kind of insubordinate because you're really supposed to stay there until everyone's good to go. And I'm like, I'm good. I can hear you. You can hear me. I'm going to go get to my vehicle. And I'm walking away from the group and that's when I hear the rounds crack off from behind me. And my first thought again was one of our Afghan partners had just N D'd their weapon, just negligently discharged their weapon, which also wouldn't be unheard of. But after the second round, third round, fourth round, you know, I can tell it's coming from a belt fed machine gun. Like no, no, no, someone's deliberately shooting at something.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  And I snapped my head around and one of those guys, sure enough, had jumped up on the back of that four Ranger and was just opening up into the crowd. Perfect setup for that. We're all lumped together and he's, you know, 20 feet away with a PKM. Ripping into the crew.

• 2:04:58Speaker 01

  So I see that and my first thought is move to cover, eliminate the threat, like just react to near ambush.

• 2:05:07Speaker 01

  And although I've played this game now, I don't know, infinite amount of times in my mind, I wonder if I had had my primary weapon system on me, would I have done what I am supposed to do? Because I had cover right there. There were four or five armored trucks right next to me. Take a couple of steps over, weapon system comes up, problem goes away and we move on with life.

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  What I see after I see the shooter is one of our infantry uplift. Soldiers who was scheduled to be a driver for us that day.

• 2:05:43Speaker 01

  Frozen and he's maybe eight feet in front of me and he's like a deer in headlights and he's staring at a guy with a machine gun shooting in his direction. 15, 20 feet in front of him.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  I see that and

• 2:05:59Speaker 01

  although I know what I'm supposed to do. My love of a teammate superseded me doing my actual job.

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  So instead of moving to some cover and eliminating the threat, I move towards this kid. And I take maybe just like three, four aggressive steps. I'm coming in pretty hot. And I get my back to the gunner and I get in front of this kid. And that's when I'm hit for the first time, just below my right ass cheek, upper thigh, boom. Knocks me down on top of this soldier. And then I feel another two, three impacts to my legs. So I know I'm hit.

• 2:06:43Speaker 01

  I don't know the, I don't know the severity of it, but I've been hit before. I'm hit again. Okay. We'll deal with this here in a second and I drag myself and this kid, you know, maybe four or five feet behind the front corner of another truck to get, to get us a little bit of cover.

• 2:07:02Speaker 01

  People are dropping all around us. People are scrambling. I get to this, this next location. I don't have my rifle on me. There was a rifle laying on the ground next to me that I seen your medic. It was his weapon. He had been hit. I roll over, I grab that, I throw that into action. I'm laying on my back. I put a couple horribly placed rounds towards this threat who's still engaging. And then one of my teammates comes in and, and smokes this dude. This was the initiation of a complex ambush. So we start taking machine gun fire and rockets from outside of the, outside of the camp. So immediate threat's been removed. I can tell that we're in a firefight, but I'm in

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  no position to address any of those problems. So I go to my next course of action and I check this soldier who I'm still kind of laying on top of, who's just in shock, but there's no holes in him and he can breathe. So no massive, no massive hemorrhaging. He got an airway. Okay, we're good. I now look to see how bad my damage is. So I rip my pant leg open and my, my right leg is just mangled. Right? They, docs estimated it was probably four or five rounds I took to that leg. I took one to my lower left leg, which I didn't even know about for like weeks, weeks later. The right leg was definitely the problem.

• 2:08:28Speaker 01

  And the river of blood that was flowing from me to where I had initially been hit was substantial. So I know my femoral artery has been clipped. So time is, uh, is of the essence, right? I know due to training, I have probably maybe eight to 12 minutes before I'm completely bled out. So I grab a kid, grab a tourniquet off my kit. I slap that on, wrench it down, lock in the windlass. Bleeding doesn't stop. Second one goes on. I put a second one on myself, put that down. Looks like the bleeding may have slowed down a little bit. Um, but I can tell I'm still bleeding. Teammate gets to me and he's like,

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  You're in bad shit. Like the look on his face said everything I needed to know. He puts on a third tourniquet. And then he gets IV access for blood or for meds or whatever. And I was trying to like get him away from me originally. Like I know I'm dead. Like I'm in the expecting category. Like I don't know who's doing triage right now, but I need to be with the group that isn't going to make it. I'm with the group that you don't waste your time on because I know there's a lot of people that are down right now. And I know that I'm not one that can be saved. So get like, get away from me.

• 2:09:47Speaker 01

  He ignores me and does what he needs to do. Third tourniquet, IV access, and then his work was pretty much done. So he moves on. Well, I'm still confident that I'm still bleeding out. So I'm thinking, man, have I done everything I can do?

• 2:10:06Speaker 01

  So I decided to grab some gauze out of my kit and uh ball it up into what we call a little power ball, just taking gauze and creating this little ball out of it. I loosen up one of the tourniquets. And I just wedge this gauze up into my thigh and I'm kind of reaching up towards my hip, looking for the, to feel the pulse of the artery. And we do training to be able to do this, but it's on something else other than, you know, you. And when you're bleeding at that volume, all the blood starts to shunt inwards to your organs to protect your body to survive as long as you can. So my hands are real numb. I can't really feel anything.

• 2:10:49Speaker 01

  I think I feel something. I'm brushing past broken femur. My femur was shattered. So now the pain is really kicking in for the first time. And I'm trying to stay conscious. I feel something. I think I just wedge down as hard as I can. Press that gauze in, feed the rest of the gauze in on top of it, resecure the tourniquet on top, lock that in. And then uh my work there was pretty much done.

• 2:11:20Jocko Willink?

  You cover that in the book.

• 2:11:23Jocko Willink?

  You say, "This is gonna hurt." "I ram the powerball into my leg, reaching up toward my hip. It hurts. I'm feeling for the femoral artery. It needs direct pressure to pinch the bleeding off. The problem is the remaining blood in my system is shunting away from my extremities to protect my vital organs. My hands feel like meat mittens. Zero dexterity or fine motor skills in my fingers. The only way I can tell I'm brushing past my shattered femur is the shearing shock wave it sends through my body. Going unconscious seems inevitable." There it is. "I think I feel a pulse inside my leg. No way to be sure, but the clock is ticking. Only a matter of minutes, if that, until I am completely bled out.

• 2:12:07Jocko Willink?

  And only a matter of seconds before I pass out, I ram the powerball down as hard as I can. The pain rips through my body, attempting to eject from my eyeballs. I feed more gauze on top of the powerball, just as our medics taught us. I resecure the tourniquet on top of it. Tighten the strap, twist the windlass, lock it in, and pass out. I wake up what I think is just a few moments later. I wasn't out for long. I look at my leg and determine my work here is done. Alright, that's enough sleeping on the job. Get back to work. Be there for your brothers." "I drag myself maybe six feet to a teammate.

• 2:12:48Jocko Willink?

  He is taken around through the calf. Nothing life-threatening, although certainly painful. The guys have applied some interventions already, including a tourniquet, which seems to have stopped the bleeding, but he's in severe pain. Note: Tourniquet saves lives, an essential tool, but that comes with some impressive pain for the patient. I do what I can to distract him, provide some verbal relief. My efforts create minimal effects, but it is what I feel to be the best use of whatever time I have left, which I am certain is not long." "At some point, I go unconscious again. When I come to, I'm being carried out on a stretcher. Seems like they are preparing me for medevac.

• 2:13:33Jocko Willink?

  I am right. How long has it been? How long was I unconscious? It doesn't matter. I'm still alive."

• 2:13:42Speaker 01

  Still in the fight.

• 2:13:45Speaker 01

  The bird touches down, my teammates load me on. One of them grabs my face, looks me in the eyes and says, "I love you, brother."

• 2:13:56Speaker 01

  My heart is full. What an honor to have served with such men. What an honor to die alongside such warriors.

• 2:14:22Jocko Willink?

  Our, uh... Our medevacs and our docs and our medical, uh... Military operations are so good that a lot of time, it's like, oh, if you get on the bird, if you're alive getting on the bird, there's a really good chance you're gonna make it. It doesn't sound like you're thinking that way.

• 2:14:49Speaker 01

  No, I, uh...

• 2:14:53Speaker 01

  Just hearing that, you read that, like, puts me back in that place, man. Um... I wasn't sure how long I had been still on the ground, but I knew it was, it was quite a bit of time. So...

• 2:15:10Speaker 01

  I was surprised that I was still even alive at that point. Um...

• 2:15:18Speaker 01

  I was convinced that that was it, though. That was where it was ending.

• 2:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Your boys put casts all over that valley, by the way. Drop all kinds of bombs. Um, you're on the first medevac bird out, obviously.

• 2:15:41Jocko Willink?

  You get to the AOB surgery clinic.

• 2:15:45Jocko Willink?

  And, and this is, this is freaking nuts. You get, you need a blood transfusion because you've lost a ton of blood.

• 2:15:52Jocko Willink?

  And somehow there, you end up with the wrong type of blood. Wrong type of blood transfusion, which is horrible.

• 2:16:07Jocko Willink?

  Do you, you remember any of that? You're not, you're not conscious at this point, are you?

• 2:16:10Speaker 01

  I remember being at that aid station. It's spotty. But I do remember getting pulled off the bird and getting thrown on the table. Uh, and then just, you know, the, the med staff scrambling to work on me.

• 2:16:26Jocko Willink?

  So the next, they get you stable enough, or at least they think they get you stable enough to get you from the aid station to Bagram.

• 2:16:35Speaker 01

  They don't know what the problem is with me, other than I'm crashing hot. So they put me on a helicopter to send me to Bagram where there's a full-scale hospital. At this location that I was at first was a forward surgical team that certainly has medical capability. But once they put me on that transfusion, everything began shutting down. They didn't know why, but they knew I needed to get to Bagram immediately.

• 2:17:02Speaker 01

  It was while I was flying to Bagram, which was maybe a nine, 10 minute flight, that they realized what happened with the blood. Because they were giving my teammate my blood type and they were giving me his. We have very similar last names. We, they both, both begins with LA. So they just switched up the names. Well, they're pumping him full of O positive, which is my blood type, which is I'm a universal donor. I can give blood to anybody. So he's fine.

• 2:17:28Speaker 01

  But when they looked to see what they were giving him, they were like, wait a minute. And they looked to check to see what they just gave me. And it was like eight units. I mean, it was a ton.

• 2:17:38Speaker 01

  That's what they, that's when they realized what happened. So I'm airborne and they call Bagram and they say, "We just pumped Nick full of AB negative. There's no way he survives this flight." I was already in like critical condition to begin with. There's no way he survives the flight. Just be prepared to receive his body when he gets there. And in a lot of ways, they were right. I mean, I coded on that flight. And to your point, the, the flight medics were getting real creative with keeping me alive. So panels and the whole thing is out. I think they were hitting me with like shots of adrenaline and just like whatever tools they had to keep

• 2:18:17Speaker 01

  me clinging on. Pull me off the bird, get me into surgery. They take my foot off immediately. Really, I mean, it was, it was probably dead at that point because now we're talking 90 minutes, close to two hours since the point of injury. But really, it was just try, try to minimize how much damage my body was trying to recover from. And then, uh, intubated dialysis, transfusion machines are just keeping me alive, you know, at this point. And that was the, that was the case for like three or four days at Bagram.

• 2:18:54Jocko Willink?

  What's the first thing that you remember when you come back? Where are you?

• 2:19:01Speaker 01

  I remember, um, coming to at Bagram a couple of times and I was restrained to the bed because I had been trying to rip the breathing tube out when I would wake up. When you're, when you're intubated, you know, a machine is breathing for you. But when you try to breathe yourself against that, it can throw off the timing of the machine. So it feels like you're like suffocating. It's a horrible feeling. So I would, I was trying to get this tube out of my mouth when I would come to. I don't remember doing that, but I just remember coming to and being like restrained to a bed and wanting to, for someone to put me out of my misery.

• 2:19:47Jocko Willink?

  And then when, when do you come to again? Like, what's your next memory? When's your first full, when do they take you out of coma? When do they bring you back and let you start talking and thinking and?

• 2:19:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:19:57Jocko Willink?

  When does that happen?

• 2:19:58Speaker 01

  I remember um, my now wife, who was deployed and working at a Bagram. I remember coming to a couple of times and seeing her bedside. Uh, I remember my sort of commander being bedside a lot, talking to me. Um, but my last real memory is when they were moving me from Bagram to load me on to a fixed winged bird to fly me to Germany, which took about five days for them to stabilize me enough to survive the flight to Germany. I remember getting loaded on that bird, which is wild, those, those C130s that are outfitted. It's like a hospital on, you know, with wings. I remember getting on that flight.

• 2:20:43Speaker 01

  I don't remember much from Germany. I was, I was only there a day.

• 2:20:46Jocko Willink?

  Do you know that you lost your leg at this point?

• 2:20:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:20:49Jocko Willink?

  Or your foot? No?

• 2:20:50Speaker 01

  No, nope. Um, no recollection of that, no knowledge of that. They took my leg up to the knee at Germany and then they flew me from there to Walter Reed the next day. And I get to Walter Reed and my father was there, my mother was there. I went straight into the intensive care unit, which is where I spent the next like six weeks because it was still real touch and go. And it was around that, it was at that point that I realized my leg was, was gone, or at least a part of it was gone.

• 2:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Did you think you were gonna be, did they think, was it, when you realized you had lost your leg, was it above the knee or below the knee?

• 2:21:34Speaker 01

  By the time I realized, it was already above the knee.

• 2:21:38Speaker 01

  Um, they had taken it above the knee at Walter Reed. And the chief of ortho came in to the intensive care unit. And he, he looks at me, I'm whacked out, I'm on ketamine and Dilaudid, you know, I'm, I'm, on a high cocktail of pain management meds. But he looks at me and he's like, hey, man, I'm Dr. So-and-so, chief of ortho. Here's the situation. You've been here about three or four days. Your leg, most of your leg is gone. What's left of it is riddled with bacteria and infection. Any one of these things could kill you. So my staff wants to take you into surgery right now and amputate your leg at the hip.

• 2:22:23Speaker 01

  And just get rid of this problem that could kill you and just get you on with life. But I think I can save more of your leg. It's just gonna be a street fight and I need you like in the fight with me. And I just met this guy, you know, he's telling me that this problem could kill me at any moment. But he wants to slug it out with me. And I don't think I really processed medically what he was saying. I just heard like, let's get into a fight together. Do you want to do that? And I was like, yes.

• 2:22:56Jocko Willink?

  Who's car we taking?

• 2:22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, right. Who's car we taking? We're gonna hurt some people and you can never ask me about it again. Who's car we taking? That was, that was it. I think I just heard that and I said, let's do that. And he said, okay. So that began my regiment of surgeries three or four times a week. And they were just going in and amputating more and more and more, cutting out dead tissue, cutting out more bone. Monday, Wednesday, Friday was kind of my typical uh, routine and then flushing me with antibiotics, hoping that the infection would get taken care of. And then it was just rinse and repeat like that for you know, a month or so, five weeks, six weeks, something like that, until the infection eventually stopped. Which left me with pretty much what I have today.

• 2:23:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, let's do it. Um, you got a section in here where you're talking about as you begin. As you begin rehab. So, um, you get right into it.

• 2:23:59Jocko Willink?

  Says, "On one particular day, I was walking my laps around the track." So I'm fast forwarding a little bit, right? Um, obviously there's, and when you get the book, you can get some of these other details. I'm fast forwarding a little bit. "One particular day, I was walking my laps around the track, one step at a time. It was packed. In fact, a bu- in fact, a bunch of New York Yankees were there visiting service members. I typically avoided these meet and greet moments like the plague when I was working." Kelly knew this, and Kelly was your, uh, your, uh, rehab person. Physical therapist. Physical therapist. Yep. "Kelly knew this and did an amazing job of shielding me from unnecessary distractions. I'm pretty sure she literally hissed at a dude one time like an angry cat. Given that on this day, it was the Yankees, I was even less interested. Go Sox. I was in a good stride.

• 2:24:44Jocko Willink?

  My prosthetic had a solid fit that day and I needed to push it. I decided to hold a 90-pound barbell straight overhead in order to increase the difficulty. Off I went, shoulders burning, core burning, glutes burning, perfect. We were working. I picked up speed. I didn't have a set number of laps in mind. I just planned on going until I couldn't go anymore. My body began to twitch uncontrollably. Fatigue set in. I was right at muscle failure. I got one more lap in me, let's go. I rounded the corner of the track and lost my balance. I already knew how this was going to play out. My wipeout was of epic proportions. The barbell went one way, my body the other, and my prosthetic detached completely. It was a total yard sale. The barbell slammed on the floor, clanging around, looking for a target.

• 2:25:28Jocko Willink?

  It found the legs of a physical therapist who was coaching a patient through a stationary bike workout. The therapist fell on her back with a thud knocking the wind out of her. My body went flailing into a rack of medicine balls neatly organized according to weight, the heavier ones at the bottom, the lighter ones at top, all of which were now bouncing or rolling in all directions through the facility. The photo op with the Yankees stopped. The stretches stopped. All conversations stopped. Everything stopped. As I lay on the ground, I conducted a quick damage assessment. Fingers, arms, leg, head, everything seemed to be functioning. The therapist I knocked over regained her breathing ability. I asked if she was alright. She was fine and asked the same of me. I looked around the gym to see that nobody had moved an inch.

• 2:26:10Jocko Willink?

  Nobody, including Kelly, had made the slightest attempt to either slow me down before I wrecked or come to my aid once I did. It was business as usual. I strapped my leg back on and staggered over to Kelly. The only damage was to my pride. "You good?" she asked. "Yeah, I'm good."

• 2:26:27Jocko Willink?

  Think I didn't swing completely through and my foot hit the ground behind me. Yeah, that sounds right. Now go pick up those med balls and meet me over at the squat rack.

• 2:26:39Jocko Willink?

  So you're freaking get, how long was it, how long was it that you were like laid up, you were getting the surgeries before? You got fitted for a prosthetic and all that?

• 2:26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got fitted for my first prosthetic, probably ten, twelve weeks after getting there.

• 2:26:55Speaker 01

  And which is, you know, a monumental step in the process. Unfortunately, this is quite common. I needed a couple of surgical revisions after that had happened, which is really difficult to deal with because it pretty much puts you back at square one. You know, your leg changes shape, the swelling sets in, you have to wait until you can get recasted for another prosthetic. It kind of starts that clock all over again. I had to go through that twice. You know, and those setbacks, and I talk about this often, you know, like that's what separates those that can continue to make the strides. And oftentimes is what just derails people. They just can't deal with that, with that setback.

• 2:27:33Jocko Willink?

  How long, is this like a five week, eight week setback?

• 2:27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'd say maybe around three or four.

• 2:27:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Still, man, that's freaking.

• 2:27:41Speaker 01

  You know, yeah, it's, it's tough because you're making that, you can see the progress you're making and boom, you're back to where you were.

• 2:27:47Jocko Willink?

  And this is like a revision, they do surgery, they fit you with a prosthetic, you start walking on all of a sudden like the way your bone is, is jacked up or it's sticking out or something and they gotta go in there and shave that thing down.

• 2:27:58Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly that.

• 2:28:01Jocko Willink?

  And then you gotta get all healed up and start again.

• 2:28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what you just read was probably around July timeframe where I was done with surgeries. And I was really making substantial progress working with my prosthetic. I got to the hospital in March, so you know, a few months after that was when I was done with surgeries completely. And I was, I was really getting after it.

• 2:28:28Jocko Willink?

  Freaking walking around with a, with a prosthetic with 90 pound barbell over your head.

• 2:28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:35Jocko Willink?

  Dude, you were going freaking hard.

• 2:28:37Speaker 01

  I was. I was, I mean, my, my level of obsession, uh, cause I could already see where I was going. Like I knew what was in front of me was getting back to the team. That happened in the hospital. Even before I was on a prosthetic, I was like, I'm going back to my lifestyle and my profession. So these training sessions, this was, this was my life.

• 2:28:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You immediately knew you're going to go back to an O D A.

• 2:29:01Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 2:29:02Jocko Willink?

  Which, by the way, uh, in case this wasn't clear, you have no leg.

• 2:29:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:29:07Jocko Willink?

  And you're saying, I'm going back to an O D A.

• 2:29:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:29:10Jocko Willink?

  Um, people are actually trying to get you to freaking chill out and trying to, uh, you know, that's kind of a, a funny way of saying it, but people are actually trying to get you to adjust your expectations for your life. And you have a section in here where, uh, it's one of those scenarios.

• 2:29:32Jocko Willink?

  April, 2013, my father tells this story better than I do, as I heard it only secondhand. But on one particular day, a psych came in to visit me and I had just been wheeled out for surgery. My father told the doc the deal and they began talking a bit. The psych explained to my father that I was continuously talking about returning to my job on an S F detachment, doing the same things I had done before, et cetera. He further explained to my father that he felt I was perhaps in a state of shock or denial, simply due to the drugs, not yet aware of the severity of my situation. He essentially warned my father that at some point I would be made aware of how badly I was injured and that the likelihood of me doing what I intended to do is extraordinarily unlikely, perhaps impossible.

• 2:30:18Jocko Willink?

  He simply wanted my father to be prepared to deal with what could potentially be a dramatic, severe fall into depression. In hindsight, I may have had the same thoughts and concerns as he did. After all, I was on an enormous amount of medication. I was in surgery three times a week and I had expressed my intentions were un- and my expressed intentions were unprecedented. Additionally, I am positive he had seen this cause and effect happen throughout his medical career. So I get it. No hard feelings, doc. My father expressed his appreciation for the information and analysis before telling the psych that he didn't like, that he didn't see that as likely to happen. My father explained that he felt I knew what was going on.

• 2:31:01Jocko Willink?

  I had amazingly accepted the reality of my situation and just as quickly had already focused on the next evolution. He told the doc, this is just who Nick is. My father knows me as well as anybody. He's my best friend in this world. He knew that, he knew that I knew my current situation and that even while doped up with enough painkillers and anesthesia to kill a horse, I was already formulating a plan. Freaking ready to rock, man. Uh.

• 2:31:39Jocko Willink?

  You were there, just mentally there.

• 2:31:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, that was it.

• 2:31:44Jocko Willink?

  How long are you and Walter Reed for?

• 2:31:47Speaker 01

  About a year total.

• 2:31:51Jocko Willink?

  And that just, uh, you, you report in here that it was great for you. Like the medical support that you got, the people there, the people that were training you were just freaking good to go.

• 2:32:07Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 2:32:11Jocko Willink?

  How is it happening? How does it progress? Like what, what happens when the chain of command hears that you want to come back? What do they say?

• 2:32:19Speaker 01

  So, I mean, I was in communication with them while I was in the hospital and they come visit me every now and then and we, we just, we maintain comms, but it wasn't so much about tell me what your, what your goals are when you get back. It was just how you doing? Do you need anything? How's your family? Right? That was the focus. When I left Walter Reed and got back to Bragg, I reported back over to their group and I met with the group command team, uh, the first day in their office, you know, and of course they're like, welcome back, you look great. I'm still early on in the process, you know, I've been an amputee for about a year. So, you know, I'm, I'm no physical specimen. I'm still hobbling, you know, I'm still limping, I'm still trying to figure out how to live

• 2:33:01Speaker 01

  life with one leg and I'm sitting in their office and they eventually asked me, so like, what are your goals? What are you, what are you looking to do? And I told them that, I was, I'm going back to the team and.

• 2:33:15Speaker 01

  They just said, okay.

• 2:33:19Speaker 01

  Is that something that you think you can do now? And I said, no, no, no, no. I have a lot of work I still need to do. But that's where things are going. In the interim, you know, I need a job. I need to provide value here. So I requested to go to the combatants committee to work as an instructor. This is a great fit, you know, long time like combatants dude. And, uh, and they granted that. They granted that request. And I haven't talked to these guys, you know, years later about this exact moment. They'll, they'll, they'll, they'll have all told me. We had to do everything in our power to hold back. Like the crazy one eyed look like, what did you just say? Or go down the expectation management kind of brief.

• 2:34:04Speaker 01

  That I was getting quite a bit at the hospital. They had to fight the urge to do both of those things. And just stay kind of cool and neutral. Cause they wanted to be supportive of me, right? Um, but as a leader, right? Like you also want to be practical to a degree. So, you know, I understand that. Um, they didn't think that what I intended to do was, was possible. They didn't think that that was going to happen. But, uh, they did grant me the request to work as an instructor. And that's when the game really like went up significantly. Cause as amazing as the staff is at Walter Reed, their job is to keep you alive. And then get you as functional as you can be to live the rest of your life. With whatever condition you're dealing with.

• 2:34:50Speaker 01

  They're not there to train someone to go back to an O D A. That's not their job. The guys in my unit, that is their job. So I knew I needed to get back to brag ASAP. To begin training with those guys and gals. Um, first I needed a job, which my unit gave me. And then I knew I needed to fight this thing administratively, which I didn't know what that looked like. But I knew it was going to trigger a medical evaluation board. Which I refer to as a military eviction board. Because that's really what they're like programmed to do. And in their, in their defense, most of the guys or gals or service members that they see are looking to transition out. So they do place a lot of emphasis on let's make sure we get your VA rating where it needs to be. All the documentation.

• 2:35:35Speaker 01

  Get you maybe an internship for what life looks like as a civilian. That's what they're there to do. And I walked in and I'm like, I'm going back to the team. And the first person I got linked up with that kind of quarterbacks you through that process just didn't get it. Uh, he just didn't get it and uh, I, I fired that guy, which I didn't know I could do. Uh, but I threw enough of a tepid tantrum and talked to his boss. And I was like, you either need to get me someone who's on the same page as me, or I'm just gonna do this myself. So he was cool. He linked me up with this girl who was amazing. Her name was Rachel and she had worked with some SF guys that remained on active duty. So she, she became my girl and she was on the same page as me. So

• 2:36:22Speaker 01

  the admin fight happened at that point, which took about eight months of time. So I'm working as an instructor day to day. And I've really just taken the same mentality I had at Walter Reed, which i- in a lot of ways is easier to maintain this because you're living in this bubble where your only job is to go to these appointments and you're like living at Walter Reed. Once you get home, you got, you know, your friends, in my, in my instance, I had my girl who I moved in with, like there's these, these other factors that a part of your life that can distract you or detract from the mission.

• 2:37:01Speaker 01

  So I had to take the same mentality I had in the hospital and apply that to a normal living environment. And with just within the first week of being home,

• 2:37:11Speaker 01

  I had to make some real hard choices and eliminate anything that didn't need to be there. Complete and total reevaluation of how I spend every single minute of my day. And if you didn't need to be there, if it didn't need to be there, both tasks and people, it was removed. And with tasks, I think it's, it's easier to say, I'm, I'm not gonna watch Netflix anymore. But when you start talking about removing relationships from your life, that can, that can be real difficult to do. And I sat down with my now wife. And this is like the courting phase of our relationship, right? Like she was in Afghanistan when I got banged up.

• 2:37:50Jocko Willink?

  And what was, what was she doing in Afghanistan? What was her job?

• 2:37:53Speaker 01

  She's active duty. Um, at the time she was doing psychological operations.

• 2:37:58Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:38:00Speaker 01

  But we hadn't spent any like real time together, you know, and then I move in with her. And within the first week, I sit down with her. I say, babe, here's the deal. I'm, I'm going all in.

• 2:38:11Jocko Willink?

  Hey, just real quick. When you're communicating with your significant other. A good way to not start this conversation is, hey, look, here's the deal. So we're getting off to a good start, bro. Yeah. All right, here's the deal. It was, it was the truth, though. Yeah. Like, there was no alternative.

• 2:38:29Speaker 01

  This is the deal. This isn't like a course of action. This is the way it's gonna be. I just wanted to be transparent.

• 2:38:38Speaker 01

  I'm going all in on this, like, complete and total, burn the boats, like, I'm either gonna be successful, or I'm gonna die trying. That's it, non-negotiable. I have to do this. And what that means on the tactical level is that there are no dinners, there's no, we're gonna go to this wedding. There's no, like, nothing. Nothing, everything gone. It's eat, sleep, train, repeat, until I get successful, or they kick me out of the army. That's it. And

• 2:39:11Speaker 01

  I look back at that conversation now with the family we have, we're married now, six years, two young kids. The, the highlight of my life, most important thing in, in my life by a mile, and all that could have very easily just non-existed. If she didn't have the, the strength to be okay with the somewhat craziness that I was communicating to her.

• 2:39:36Speaker 01

  So I'm incredibly grateful that that happened. You know, it's like, it's, it can be tough to talk about because it could have all, have just not, not been a thing. She was like, okay. Roger that, you know, and I think what enabled that was she was also aggressively pursuing kind of her next echelon, her next evolution in her career. So she was really dialed in professionally as well. So we were both kind of going down in parallel, these hyper focused roads towards our professional ambitions at the same time, which helped because, you know, she had stuff she needed to do, stuff I needed to do. We'd come together when we could, but it was, it was interesting, you know, introduction to our relationship with all this was going on.

• 2:40:23Speaker 01

  So eight month process of a med board. I'm working as an instructor and I'm just, I'm living just this completely and total dialed in, you know, minute to minute, hour to hour lifestyle. Obviously, a lot of physical training was involved. And, you know, after, after about eight months, med board complete, the army allowed me to stay in on active duty. Then that check, that box was checked and then it was, okay, now I need to get back to the team. And now I need to figure out how to go about doing that.

• 2:40:55Jocko Willink?

  And it sounds like there's a really specific list of things that you needed to be able to do, like, is it some kind of test, like a fit for duty test? Is that, is that, like, there was certain tasks you had to be able to do? And where's that list come from?

• 2:41:13Speaker 01

  It was created in, in real time by my chain of command. There, there wasn't this laid out pipeline. It started off simple. It was go do an army physical fitness test. Okay, you did that. And then they threw every army physical fitness program of record at me. And once I checked all those blocks, then they started just throwing other stuff at me. So they had me, I was getting evaluated cognitively, proficiency. They ran me back over to the 18 Bravo committee, which is where I learned how to be an 18 Bravo. They threw me back over there for like a one week, two week train up evaluation to see if I could still do my job as a Bravo.

• 2:41:59Speaker 01

  They uh, they put me in for their psych screening, which no one's admitted this to me yet directly, but I'm confident when I say I was, I was operating at such an insane pace and intensity that people thought I was like legitimately crazy. You know, people thought I had like a diagnosable problem, well, I was delusional or like psychopathic. Like, we need to get this guy's mental wellbeing checked out because I think he's insane and needs like treatment. The psych came back and was like, yeah, he's no crazier than he was before. So he's, he's good.

• 2:42:32Jocko Willink?

  At this time, you're teaching combatives, which is who are you teaching combatives to? Is it within your own battalion or is it like, who, who are you teaching combatives to?

• 2:42:39Speaker 01

  The group, so third group.

• 2:42:40Jocko Willink?

  So third group, you're teaching combatives, you're, and then you're just PTing to try and get to be able to do this job?

• 2:42:48Speaker 01

  Yep, PTing, doing a ton of jiu-jitsu, um, competing in jiu-jitsu as well, which is a huge part of this overall journey is what, is, is that piece of it that, not just from a training perspective, but just mentality and structure and, and like technical focus on what I'm doing, adaptation to how do I, how do I do this with just one limb now, one leg now?

• 2:43:08Jocko Willink?

  Were you like a purple belt when this thing kicked off?

• 2:43:11Speaker 01

  No, I was a white belt.

• 2:43:14Jocko Willink?

  A white belt?

• 2:43:15Speaker 01

  I got my blue and my purple after I lost my leg.

• 2:43:19Jocko Willink?

  Check. But you trained before you lost your leg?

• 2:43:22Speaker 01

  I did. Yeah, I trained. I got into jiu-jitsu right after I really, I graduated the Q course. So I did that on two legs for a while. And then my, my jiu-jitsu journey as an APT started at Walter Reed. They had a, a local black belt who owned a studio downtown Washington who would come to the hospital one day a week.

• 2:43:38Jocko Willink?

  Who's that?

• 2:43:40Speaker 01

  Jose, it's like Ortiz was his name.

• 2:43:43Jocko Willink?

  Good on him.

• 2:43:44Speaker 01

  Awesome dude. I met him at the hospital and then I began training. He invited me over into his, into his dojo. So I began training there like three, four nights a week.

• 2:43:54Jocko Willink?

  You know, one thing that you, and I forget if I'm gonna cover this or not in the book, but I want to talk about it anyways. You've got this thing that really like struck a chord with me. So you explained that when you got a prosthetic, when you put that thing on, there's a clock that starts because you can only wear it for so long. And there's a bunch of factors, if it's hot out, what activity you're doing. And it made you, that was one of the things that kind of drove this, this efficiency in you. Cause you go, okay, when I get this thing on, I have X amount of hours to operate, walking around and after that I gotta take it off. And it, that's, that was one of the things you said, okay, as soon as I get this thing on,

• 2:44:38Jocko Willink?

  here's what I gotta get done. And that struck a chord with me, cause like, that's the attitude you should have regardless, uh, in life is like, oh, you're gonna wake up today, you only have so many hours. But that put a, put an exclamation point on that for you.

• 2:44:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd say that, you know, be, having been in the military and special ops for, for a bit before this, I, I was used to live in, you know, structured, disciplined lifestyle, but the forcing function of knowing I needed to be able to execute at the highest possible level. In order to do that, I need to be as efficient as possible. You said it, it was about efficiency. How do I maximize every moment I have upright on two legs? And I got, I developed a bit of OCD on that because if I would, if I would go to leave my house and I would leave something and I'd walk 12 steps before I realized I forgot it, that would, that would irritate me, cause now that's, that's 24 steps I'm not getting back.

• 2:45:35Speaker 01

  So there's a, there's a glitch in my system, there's a glitch in my, in my protocol. Things aren't prepped where they need to be. This mistake can't happen again, cause I just lost 24 steps. So I mean, I was dissecting like where I put my phone, my keys, my, like, like to the, like to the inch within my life, so that I didn't lose 24 steps ever again.

• 2:45:58Jocko Willink?

  You were freaking committed to this thing. How, what was the, what was the biggest challenge as you, as they threw all these different tests at you? Right? They're throwing the army PT test at you. They throw this other test at you. What was something that, uh, really was a challenger? What was the hardest thing?

• 2:46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the final, the final physical evaluation, uh, which was my final overall evaluation was the, was by far the hottest one. This was at the end of about 12 weeks where I was doing one or two assessments a week. And third group, again, only operated in Afghanistan. They were dealing with a lot of injuries. So third group took it upon themselves to create what they called originally the return to duty, physical fitness assessment. And that was specifically for guys that were wounded that wanted to go back to operational status. They spent months putting this thing together. This was while I was at the hospital. And they were telling me about it a little bit and they developed it out. They ran, you know, able-bodied guys through it to develop the standards.

• 2:47:01Speaker 01

  And it was more of, more tasks that were more in line with a combat scenario. So as opposed to just, you know, push-ups, sit-ups and running, it was tactical tasks, like move to cover type drills. Everything's done with a 50-pound weighted vest to simulate kit. Most were done with a rubber duck rifle. So it was more tactical tasks. 12 events in total. Well, the day before I took mine, this was like my Super Bowl. And my, my training for about six weeks or so, leading up to that point, was mostly focused on those particular tasks.

• 2:47:40Speaker 01

  The day before, I went in the gym just to loosen up, get some blood flow, get ready for my next, for the, for the test that happened the following morning. And the group command sergeant major and another dude who had been shot through the hand, who was trying to go back to the team, they both took it that morning. So I walk in the gym to loosen up and they're both sprawled out on the turf, drenched and exhausted. Group command sergeant major's name is Mac Eckard. He just recently retired. He was the most recent, uh, USASOC CSM. He's a stud. He's a PT stud. Able-bodied dude, stud. He's out on, on the turf, both of them are.

• 2:48:21Speaker 01

  And I walk over and, "Hey, Sajid Majid, how you doing?" He's like, "Uh, not great, because that test just kicked my ass." He's like, "You're taking this thing tomorrow morning." I said, "Yeah." He's like, "This thing's no joke." And I knew it was brutal. I had never taken it entirety, in its entirety, to standard, once, because I knew it was just gonna break me off. So in my training, I was playing around with different resistances, but I would just lump together different groups of them and go back to back to back in repetition. I said, "Yeah, tomorrow morning." He's like, "Okay, well, I'll be here." You know, "Good luck." I said, "Thank you." So I show up the next morning. Group command team, battalion command team, company command team, and about 50 other dudes

• 2:49:03Speaker 01

  are all there. This is a massive entourage. They basically closed the gym. Um, or at least no one was training, because everyone was just there to watch this. My teammates are there. And, uh,

• 2:49:16Speaker 01

  I knocked that out. And the final event on this thing is, it doesn't sound bad, but it's actually quite miserable. The 12th event, and I think you had, I think it was two minutes in between each event. The final one, the 12th one, is just as a walk on a treadmill. And it starts off flat, and then every two minutes it increases in elevation. So at the final point, you're walking at a 45-degree angle, which is steep. It's at a slow pace, you know, it's like a fast, like a brisk walk. So you're doing this 50-pound weighted vest, 12th event. Well, my issue, similar to the way I wiped out there at Walter Reed, was because of the lack of range of motion I have in my hip.

• 2:50:01Speaker 01

  When the angle is that steep, I can't get my foot out in front of me. So I had to develop a technique where, once it hit a certain degree of elevation, I would rotate my body laterally, and I would laterally shuffle uphill. So my prosthetic is the trail leg, my sound leg is the uphill leg, and that's essentially just pulling me up. So I'm doing this little sidewards lateral gallop up this hill, which just looks crazy. So, I finish.

• 2:50:38Speaker 01

  Event complete. I'm on the verge of passing out. I'm on the verge of going to see the wizard. I'm losing peripheral vision. It's getting real sparkly around me and I'm standing there trying to look tough like I could do it again if I needed to. And uh, Group CSN comes over and he says, "Hey man, you know I just took this test yesterday and it kicked my ass." He's like, "If I wasn't here to witness you just do what you just did, I would never believe that that was possible." And this is at the end of 12 weeks and I'm like, "All right dude, thank you, but like, what else do you need from me?" You know, which my teammates were kind of laughing. I'm talking to the Group Command Sergeant Major and I'm like, "Thanks for the, thanks for that, but like, what,

• 2:51:19Speaker 01

  like, what's next? Come on, man. What else, what else is it gonna take?" He looks over at the Group Commander and he just goes, "Hey, Mark, this is your decision, but I don't know how we're gonna tell this dude no after what we just put him through." So he, Mark Eckert looked at me and he goes, "All right, man, um, you'll have your orders come Monday and you'll be back, back on the team."

• 2:51:46Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you have a section here in the book. You got a few sections like this in the book where you, where you have other people that knew you or that know you chime in. You got a section here about this. This is by, uh, Master Sergeant Jimmy Rooney. And he writes, "The ORT is an extremely difficult assessment even for able-bodied men. Some events are arguably, arguably impossible for an above-the-knee amputee such as the depth drop. In this event, an individual must climb up a four-foot platform wearing 50-pound weighted vest, jump off, make an athletic landing without touching the ground with his hands. Nick's mechanical knee was incapable of articulating in a dynamic fashion and prevented him from sticking the landing. For weeks, Nick drilled

• 2:52:30Jocko Willink?

  this event, starting on one-foot platform with no additional weight and gradually increasing height and weight over time. The method he developed to complete this event was to land in a pistol squat position, essentially a single-leg squat landing."

• 2:52:45Jocko Willink?

  The guys and I watched him practices over and over again. The mere thought of doing this myself made my knees and hips hurt. But Nick insisted it was possible. He meticulously measured out the distance from the platform to where his heel needed to land, marking it with the tape on the ground. Too far forward, he'd fall backward. Upon landing too close to the platform and his knee may explode. He approached this event like a science experiment, a problem that needed to be solved through trial, error and work. On the day of Nick's final physical assessment, the ORT felt as if the entire unit was present. Nick was attempting to make history as the first above the knee amputee to return, not just to an ODA, but to an ODA set once again to deploy to Afghanistan to conduct combat operations. Everybody was in awe watching him perform.

• 2:53:28Jocko Willink?

  When he completed the last event with our entire command and attendance, he was given approval to return to the team. It was one of the most memorable moments we shared. So how did Nick put his mind and body in such a positive, motivated and influential place to become so well-known as not only one of the most aggressive warriors, but also a life coach, teacher and mentor? I believe Nick's outlook on his environment is where it started. He had to determine what it was that he wanted in life and set a plan to achieve it. Nick could have easily become negative and bitter and could have medically retired out of the military. Nobody would have fought less of him for doing so. He had been through a lot.

• 2:54:09Jocko Willink?

  Instead, Nick chose to pursue what he identified as his purpose. I feel the key to Nick's success is that he clearly stated his intent and it gave him a reason to get out of bed every morning. This only grew as he continued achieving goals along the way. And Nick may not realize it, but he became a model for success in every aspect of being a phenomenal Green Beret and leader. His sphere of positive influence encapsulates everybody he comes in contact with. Complaining around Nick is impossible. Giving anything less than 100% around Nick is not an option. His actions raise the bar for the rest of us to match. His presence makes us better.

• 2:54:53Jocko Willink?

  What did Nick do to get where he is today? Plain and simple, Nick embodies intestinal fortitude and cares about the men and the mission.

• 2:55:05Jocko Willink?

  Hell yeah. Freaking insane, right? Jumping off the four foot thing, landing on one leg? Come on, man. That's freaking savage. Uh, what was your mock max squat when you had two legs? Do you know?

• 2:55:25Speaker 01

  Uh, back in my, when I was like big, big before I came into the military. Um, I was around, I was in the six hundreds.

• 2:55:34Jocko Willink?

  What do you think your one leg like? Is it stronger now than it was then?

• 2:55:39Speaker 01

  My one leg?

• 2:55:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:55:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that thing is just like freaking savage.

• 2:55:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:55:44Jocko Willink?

  That's the most savage leg on the planet.

• 2:55:46Speaker 01

  His has to be, you know? It has to be.

• 2:55:50Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so.

• 2:55:55Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's, there's, there's one more thing I want to read about this, uh, before we get into some of your other, you know, moving on from here.

• 2:56:06Jocko Willink?

  It's just going back, it's a little reflection on the whole scenario, but I think it's an important thing to read.

• 2:56:13Jocko Willink?

  You say on March 11th, 2013, we were set to conduct a routine operation. As always, our partner force gathered outside our camp. The leadership entered Dewire to receive the mission brief. Only this time a truck also drove in. I noticed immediately that it wasn't right. I was pissed. Do I address this now? I thought to myself, it seems obvious that the answer was emphatically in the affirmative. Why wouldn't I? The answer to that question is rapport. This is a tough balance and arguably the most critical factor for an ODA's success. Fostering and maintaining relationships are the keys when conducting partnered operations. I decided to hold off. I would address this with my detachment commander after, and he would address it with the partner force leadership.

• 2:56:56Jocko Willink?

  This was a decision I must live with for the rest of my life. This truck was a Ford Ranger with a mounted PKM in the bed. This is the weapon that would moments later rip my body to shreds, drastically altering the rest of my life. But this result is not the reason for my regret.

• 2:57:18Jocko Willink?

  The loss of my leg is not why I spring up sweating in the middle of the night. Living the rest of my life as an amputee is not why I continue to reanalyze my decision-making process on that day.

• 2:57:30Jocko Willink?

  Our detachment commander, Captain Andrew Peterson Keel, our infantry uplift squad leader, Staff Sergeant Rex Shad, and our military working dog, Back, were all killed in action as a result of my decision.

• 2:57:49Jocko Willink?

  It took years to be able to look at this event and extract positive value. The pain was too great. I couldn't see past my anger and the disappointment with myself. I couldn't see past the faces of my brothers who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

• 2:58:06Jocko Willink?

  It took time.

• 2:58:08Jocko Willink?

  It took a lot of reflection. It was hard, but I owed them this effort so their deaths were not for nothing.

• 2:58:17Jocko Willink?

  Gradually, I was able to gather the lessons learned. Internal security, SOPs, partner-force relationship dynamics, and John Boyd's Oodle Loop Cycle are just a few examples of what was extracted. We used our experience to better educate ourselves and those around us in order to minimize the likelihood of a future similar tragedy.

• 2:58:43Jocko Willink?

  The loss of these men brought value to those who remain in the fight.

• 2:58:48Jocko Willink?

  How many lives have been saved because of their sacrifice? There's no way to ever know, but I am certain it is substantial.

• 2:58:56Jocko Willink?

  The insider attack on March 11, 2013, is considered to this day the most catastrophic insider attack since the start of the global war on terrorism. It is referenced in schools and training events throughout the SOF community. As painful as it remains, we have managed to pull the positive value from this tragedy. We must get better. We owe this to the fallen.

• 2:59:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, you and I were talking when we weren't recording.

• 2:59:38Jocko Willink?

  You know, for me, I had a blue on blue incident in Ramadi that I was in charge of. A friendly Iraqi soldier was killed. Several more were wounded. One of my guys was wounded. And

• 2:59:52Jocko Willink?

  like what I did when I got home was debrief that event to every SEAL team on the West Coast that was going on deployment. And I had many times guys come back and say, hey, I was in the situation. We had this element over here, that element over here. If I wouldn't have known and trained to avoid blue on blues, the 100% would have happened. And, you know, I was just saying to you that you telling this story. Look, man, there's, there's, there's special operations guys working around the world right now as we speak with countless partner forces all over the place. And

• 3:00:36Jocko Willink?

  this is a lesson that everybody will will not forget. And, you know, I know that the blue on blue that we had early in deployment saved lives later in deployment because we would have had. You know, I mean, there's, there's other things I talk about in extreme ownership, you know, I had a freaking Bradley wanting to put 25 millimeter chain gun on what they thought was enemy enemy element on a rooftop and that enemy element was actually my guys. You know, Leif talks about in there, he had Chris Kyle identify, hey, there's, there's, I see a person with a scoped weapon in this building. Do you want me to shoot him?

• 3:01:17Jocko Willink?

  And Leif's checking with the army. Do you guys have anyone in this building? And they're like, no, kill that sniper. And Chris didn't feel comfortable taking the shot and didn't take it. And luckily he didn't. Because we were so sensitive to blue on blue. And, and so the lessons coming away from this. Guaranteed, you know, you say you don't know how many lives they've saved and we'll never be able to know how many lives they've saved, but no doubt the level of caution and making sure that assessment is happening all the time.

• 3:01:48Jocko Willink?

  That's what we got to take away from these things for sure. Have to.

• 3:01:56Jocko Willink?

  You know, another thing that I breezed over a little bit is the fact that as you are focused on you and you're focused on your goal of like, hey, I'm gonna get back to an ODA team. At some point along that journey, before you took that final physical test, you looked in the mirror and thought to yourself, wait a second, this isn't about me. And, you know, you're going over, if you can't do your job, it's not just about you, it's about the guys you might let down. It's about, do they want me on the team?

• 3:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Do they want, do they feel like there's gonna be slack that they're gonna have to pick up from me? Talk about that, kinda, you had some legit heart-to-heart conversations with the guys that you would be working with about the situation that you were in, and whether you should proceed down that path, because it wasn't just about you. You got 11 other guys that are counting on you to be able to carry the weight.

• 3:03:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and not just the 11, but the families as well. And you're right, I was in a tunnel, my tunnel vision during that first phase, about, it was about me being successful, doing what I knew I needed to do, proving the naysayers wrong, proving myself right, all that kinda stuff. It was about me. And, once I began going through this assessment, I'm knocking one out after another, boom, boom, boom. Right around that time, I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic, because I realized in that moment that I was going back to a team, and I hadn't thought about them once before.

• 3:03:43Speaker 01

  And these are guys that are around me, they're in the gym, we're training together, I'm seeing them all the time, but I was so target fixated on me doing what I needed to do, that I didn't consider them. And it's just, it scared the hell out of me. So that day at work, I tracked down a couple of the guys that were, that were local. Had some phone conversations with some guys that were offsite doing some stuff. And I was like, guys, you know, I apologize for having not even done this up until this point, but is this within the best interest of the team? You guys are supportive and you're in my corner, but are you, are you doing that just because you care about me and you want me to be happy? Have you guys thought about this? Cause I haven't.

• 3:04:27Speaker 01

  And I, I, I don't think I can give this an objective look because I'm so obsessed with success. I need you guys there to do that. And this was maybe four or five different conversations. And I got pretty much the same answer from all of them and they said, listen dude, we've all, we've all talked about this already amongst ourselves. And the, the hard truth is, is we don't know if this is gonna work. But what I can promise you is we want you to keep working towards it. We will be the ones to tell you if this isn't gonna work. If you're able to make it back. We'll assess the situation then. Um, and we'll make that hard call for you so you don't have to.

• 3:05:12Speaker 01

  So I had to put my trust into them and in my teammates to be able to look at it objectively that way. And Jimmy Rooney, who you just read about, he was set to take the team as the team sergeant. Um, he may have already taken it at that point, but he and I were working together when I was working as an instructor. He was the head instructor of our SOFAWIC committee, Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat Committee. And we work at, our offices are right down the hall. We work together, that committee and the combatives committee. So we had a working relationship. And it wasn't till much farther down the road that he told me he was going to take, take two six, take my team. And, uh, he was the last one I talked to on that day at work.

• 3:05:55Speaker 01

  And we had a, you know, a candid, uh, emotional conversation. And he said the same thing and hearing it from him as the guy that I know is going to put the best interest of the team above all else, because that's his job.

• 3:06:10Speaker 01

  I can trust him and the guys to give me that that no shit objective feedback. So, once I made that switch about wanting to pursue my own goal versus and the reason behind that to it being about them. And when I'm walking into my fourth training session for the day and I'm exhausted and tired and beat up, rather than thinking about taking those first steps off the plane in Afghanistan with my arms raising the uh, I was thinking about my teammate's son. I was thinking about my teammate's wife and I needed to annihilate this workout right now. There's no other option for them, for that kid or for that woman.

• 3:06:54Speaker 01

  And it took what was already an extraordinarily intense and rigid lifestyle to another level. And you could, I, I could even feel the additional energy surging through me. It was like electric that now I'm walking into these training sessions. It was just that much easier to get up at zero three. It was just that much easier to do those extra two, three reps when everything in my body and my mind is telling me to stop. The image of my teammate's five-year-old is what fueled that to happen.

• 3:07:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, freaking um, I guess we get some of that beat into us, you know, like you do, you just never want to let down your friends and then you throw the family on top of that. Yeah, that's heavy.

• 3:07:45Jocko Willink?

  And you make it back. You make it back to a team. You end up going back to Afghanistan and it's August, it's fighting season, it's hot. What do you think when you show up there, man?

• 3:08:01Speaker 01

  There was a, you know, there was a, there was a quick, you know, celebration that I had just with myself. Um, the boy collectively, we were, it was all business, but I did have that, that glorifying moment that I dreamed of, taking the steps off the plane. That was real short-lived because I realized how fast um, we were in the game and how, how many gaps I had. So, we landed, this is 2015, we landed, C-17 lands, it's taxiing, it stops.

• 3:08:34Speaker 01

  The tailgate hasn't even dropped yet and the SOTIF command team is running on to the plane. Which is unusual.

• 3:08:42Speaker 01

  And they run over to our team leadership and they have a little huddle on the plane. So we're all looking around. We had a horrible infill. I mean, we went through like five different countries, delays and flights. It was a mess. It took us like a week to get in. So we're all operating on random time zone times coming off of Ambien, you know, half asleep like, okay, we finally made it and this meeting is happening on the plane. Uh, we get the equipment off and our team leadership is like, we need to go into the, into the meeting briefing room like now. We go in there and there was a 19th group team. So Army Special Forces National Guard Team that was operating down in Helmand

• 3:09:21Speaker 01

  that had a real bad situation going on with their partner force. Like we use the term catastrophic loss of rapport as being like mission abort because we worked through partner force. They were right at that point where the machine gun barrels were essentially being pointed inwards with the commando elements they were working with. It was, it was, that was horrible. So we needed to get spun up, even though on that trip, we weren't falling directly under the SOTIF. We were falling under a separate task force for that deployment. Task force gave us over to the SOTIF to be the answer to this problem as like a temporary solution.

• 3:10:01Speaker 01

  So we were getting spun up the second, we literally the second we landed and it was, it was game time.

• 3:10:09Jocko Willink?

  So did you guys go take over for them?

• 3:10:11Speaker 01

  We didn't take over, but we went down there and assisted them to get the situation under control for a couple of weeks.

• 3:10:20Jocko Willink?

  When you look at that from a leadership perspective, what was wrong?

• 3:10:26Speaker 01

  I'm gonna piss off a lot of National Guard guys on this, but this is my opinion is National Guard SF teams provide an enormous value across the operational continuum. Where I've seen it work the best is when they take National Guard SF guys and they attach them to active duty ODAs. In 2012-13, we had a National Guard medic that was attached to us for that duration of that deployment. That always works out great. When you have an organic National Guard ODA and you put them into a combat environment, this is, I'm generally speaking, they just don't have the time that they train together to the same level that we do as in

• 3:11:09Speaker 01

  the active side to bring that same level of tactical capability to a fight. And they're hamstrung oftentimes because they group these teams together, kind of as of a hodgepodge of different dudes in the unit to send them over. So you don't have that organic chemistry that you have with an active, on the active duty side. So from just a management and operational perspective, they're, they're fighting upstream because of that dynamic. And when you put them into a hostile environment, like in Helmand, and you're given that type of mission, it can be, uh, it can be really tough.

• 3:11:49Jocko Willink?

  It can be hard for anybody. And if you haven't done a good work up together, it's gonna be even harder.

• 3:11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. You also, you know, you get over there and there's like new challenges for you. One of them you talk about is getting in and out of an MRAP. And you go through this whole thing. You're like, uh, if you don't know what an MRAP is, it's a, it's a mine resistant vehicle, but they're freaking tall because they want them off the ground as high as they can be so that the, the explosion, if it's underneath it dissipates. So they're, you're climbing a ladder to get in there. You say, I can recall one of the most frustrating tasks was getting into and out of a mine resistant ambush protected all terrain vehicle.

• 3:12:28Jocko Willink?

  To get in and out of these trucks, one must climb up four feet with the use of a couple metal steps. As with most military vehicles, the M A T V is designed for function, not comfort or accessibility. Of course, getting into and out of one of these was simple as a two-legged dude, but in 2015, it was anything but. To say this was frustrating would have been an understatement. This was also something I did not even consider during my train-up to get back onto a team, but it was a challenge nonetheless. I began drilling over and over again, in and out, trying different foot placements, trying different hand placements, how I shifted my weight. Then I did the same with kit on, then with a rifle, over and over and over again. I had a teammate videotape my reps so I could watch the tape and check

• 3:13:08Jocko Willink?

  for deficiencies or wasted movement. I had them put me on a stopwatch over and over. I checked my time against one of my teammates to compare. I focused solely on the task at hand. I wasn't thinking about all the other tasks I needed to master, and I certainly wasn't thinking about the bridge, just this one piece of the puzzle. Focus. Rep after rep until I felt I was sufficient. I repeated this process throughout the entire deployment, even after I displayed enough capability to my leadership where they felt confident putting me on more and more operations. That's like one little thing, which no one would think about, and it's a freaking challenge for you, and you had to figure out how to do it.

• 3:13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, because by the time I got to the team, man, they were already past their collective training phase. They had already finished PMT. They were basically just getting gear prepped, taking some leave, and then heading into the box. So I had just like six weeks on the team before we were back in Afghanistan. So these tactical tasks, you know, they would have been fleshed out in training if I was with the guys leading up. I didn't have that time. So things became real on the ground. The first time I tried to climb into a M A T V or an M R A P, and I'm like, how the hell do I even do this? You know? So that's just an example, and you know, it's a list of tasks that I performed the same way, and I, you know, downtime in between training and ops, I would just identify one of these

• 3:14:31Speaker 01

  things that I knew needed work, and I would just like go crazy and just do it a thousand times. And like, if I do this a thousand times, I'm going to figure out how to do it. If I do it a thousand times, I'm gonna find a way to do it. I just need to do it a thousand times. So like, how do I do that? I'll do it a hundred times a day, you know, for a hundred days or whatever, ten days. And what was your, what was your mission on this deployment? What were you guys doing? So we were running the Khatihas, uh, which is an Afghan commando unit. That's their tier one unit that was, um, established by CAG years prior that they handed off to us to run. So that's their premier, um, direct action CT force. So we were running those

• 3:15:11Speaker 01

  guys based primarily, um, up out of the Kabul area. Not Kabul proper, but in that vicinity. Uh, so we had, we moved around the, basically the entire AO. And just running DAs mostly? Yeah. What was your op tempo like? It wasn't as busy as, uh, as the deployment I had prior, um, because they were just more specific point target raids based on higher levels of intel and higher levels of effects. Whereas on the ground prior, we were just like going out and like paving the road a lot of the way. So this was more tied to like strategic initiatives and directions. So we'd maybe have a thing, maybe once a week, once every couple of weeks. But in

• 3:15:53Speaker 01

  that time, there were a couple massive ops that we were a part of that took up good chunks of time. One of that was, was when Kanduz, uh, the Taliban took it over. Um, we were a part of that as well. So we ended up shifting to that AO and we dedicated like two, three months to the response to that and then to the rebuild of that AO. How many guys were in that force you were working with? We had around a company sized element, about a hundred, a hundred and ten dudes. And the craziest thing about working with these guys, so these guys were built, you know, by, by CAG years prior. They had all, like all the equipment. They had all the

• 3:16:35Speaker 01

  Gucci stuff, same uniforms. They're rocking PVS 31s. Like they got like high speed stuff and they're all juiced up. Like they're like, they're pumping like sustanon in there like daily, which you see that right when you meet these guys. That's like very strange. It is. Even like the standard Afghan commandos, they aren't, they aren't outfitted that way. They don't look that way. We meet, meet up with these dudes for the first time and they're these just yoked up Afghans, rock and cry precision, like. This is weird, but what made it, I, I, I, I never got to a point where I was comfortable. Was under nods, everyone looks the exact same. Whereas normally, I can tell the difference between my teammate and our partner force instantaneously.

• 3:17:21Speaker 01

  When you got guys that size rocking the same gear we are, I couldn't tell who was who. So we, you know, we had different like markings that we used as like IR markings to try to help us figure out where we were. But I was constantly uncomfortable when we were doing night stuff, which was a good portion of it. Because I didn't know who was who.

• 3:17:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's not feeling good.

• 3:17:42Speaker 01

  No, man, I didn't, I didn't like it.

• 3:17:44Jocko Willink?

  How were they?

• 3:17:45Speaker 01

  They were good.

• 3:17:45Jocko Willink?

  In the field, they were good?

• 3:17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were good. They were good. I mean, you know, it's an Afghan partner force, but they were, they were the most proficient that I'd ever seen. You know, they were good.

• 3:17:55Jocko Willink?

  And so that, that deployment, pretty straightforward, doing a bunch of DAs. Any, any big lessons learned from that one?

• 3:18:04Speaker 01

  I mean, I was drinking through a fire hose because not only was my Afghanistan for the first time as an APT. I'm dealing with all these tactical gaps. We were living out of rucksacks most of that trip. So I didn't get a chance to really establish like a rhythm in one location at one time because we were moving around so much. So I had to adapt my loadout package for vehicles, for half infill ops, for dismounted ops. Like where do I keep my extra legs? Where do I keep all my equipment? How do I carry all this stuff that I'm going to need if and when something breaks down? It was a forcing function to think about how I would go about doing that.

• 3:18:45Speaker 01

  So for every deployment I've had since, it's pales in comparison because I, I jumped off like the massive cliff to begin with. So now if I go someplace and I'm working out of the same location, it's like,

• 3:18:58Jocko Willink?

  Easy.

• 3:18:59Speaker 01

  Quite simple comparatively.

• 3:19:00Jocko Willink?

  Why do you got to bring an extra leg? Like what scenario? Are you bringing an extra leg in the field?

• 3:19:05Speaker 01

  All the time. At least one. I mean, the technology in this thing is great, but it breaks like legs, legs break. You know, this thing's got a little microprocessor in it.

• 3:19:16Jocko Willink?

  It's got batteries?

• 3:19:17Speaker 01

  It's got an internal battery. Yeah, there's a little computer inside this knee. So I have to charge it and then it runs like a computer. It doesn't power me. It depends on the level of activity because it goes into like a hibernation mode like a computer. If like right now, it's, it's like sleeping. So depending on how much I'm moving will determine how much battery life I have. But on an, even on an active schedule, a fully charged knee will get me like three days.

• 3:19:43Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And so you're bringing a whole extra leg in the field?

• 3:19:47Speaker 01

  At least one. Yeah.

• 3:19:48Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes more than one?

• 3:19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'd usually carry one mechanical backup knee on my person in my ruck. And then I'd have a backup one of these. The mechanical ones are a lot lighter because there's no technology built into it. Mechanical knee, maybe, I don't know, eight pounds, nine pounds.

• 3:20:06Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 3:20:07Speaker 01

  This one weighs closer.

• 3:20:08Jocko Willink?

  Freaking nine pounds is a lot when you're humping around, bro. That's not fun.

• 3:20:12Speaker 01

  No, I'd, I'd rather have not have to carry it, but I've broken so many of these things that it's, it's really, I consider it a requirement. So my standard loadout for like a vehicle type movement, a gaff would be mechanical leg in my ruck, an extra one of these that I'm wearing now in my truck and an extra one of these in another truck. In case my truck was disabled or blown up.

• 3:20:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:37Speaker 01

  I'd have another leg somewhere to go get and put on.

• 3:20:41Jocko Willink?

  You know, it kind of sounds like a pain in the ass, but it's also like, hey, if you got shot and you're freaking prosthetic, you're like, cool, let me just put on the other one.

• 3:20:49Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny you mentioned that. One of the conversations I had with my group command team,

• 3:20:55Speaker 01

  they were voicing their concerns. They're like, well, what happens if your prosthetic breaks in the field? And I said, well, I have, I can carry an extra one. If your leg breaks in the field, you're out. And they kind of got a chuckle out of that, but that's true.

• 3:21:08Jocko Willink?

  So you got good, you got proficient.

• 3:21:12Jocko Willink?

  And have a good, solid deployment.

• 3:21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, successful. And we had a lot of visibility on us that whole trip. I mean, all the way up to like Washington. Because I needed approval from the USASOC commander to be able to go. The SOCOM commander was aware of it. So no SF team, no SOF team wants a lot of people checking it, checking in on them and paying attention to what they're doing. And answering phone calls from, you know, three-star generals. No ODA or team leadership wants that. My team leadership dealt with a bunch of that because it was almost like people were expecting and waiting for something to go wrong. For them to pull me out and be like, hey, we tried it. It didn't work. Let's like get back to reality here and like, let's find a like a real

• 3:21:58Speaker 01

  solution for this dude. But that didn't happen. We had a successful trip.

• 3:22:05Speaker 01

  No, no issues. So it was just, it was just hectic because I was doing this vehicle type thing in all my free time. So after that six-month pump. I was the most tired I've ever been in my life.

• 3:22:18Jocko Willink?

  What's the, uh, I know you, you, you wrote about how there's like a limit to the amount of time you can spend on it. Well, how long can you patrol for? Like a foot patrol?

• 3:22:26Speaker 01

  So I've done, you know, multi-day missions. It just, you know, it, it does start to take its toll after a while because there'll be a point where I have to take it off at a minimum. You know, wipe down the sweat, maybe throw on some anti-per- antiperspirant type stuff, get it back on and go. So, um, it just depends on those different variables, but there were times when, you know, I'd be in the field out on something for four or five days. And as long as I had, you know, a couple, two, three hours during my rest cycle. To kind of let that fluid go back into the residual limb and kind of plump back up. Strap it back on and, and, and be good.

• 3:23:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, being in the field for a few days, it's freaking legit. That's awesome. So you come home from that deployment and what? But go again? That's the deal?

• 3:23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, back from that trip, um, standard training cycle for us, individual schools, collective training, um, into PMT and then, uh, the, the next year, the year after that trip, uh, we were over in Somalia on our next thing, which was a CT mission as well, CTDA mission, just different continent, but very, very similar.

• 3:23:36Jocko Willink?

  Doing the same thing?

• 3:23:37Speaker 01

  Doing the same thing.

• 3:23:38Jocko Willink?

  Did you have a partner force over there?

• 3:23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had five.

• 3:23:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh damn.

• 3:23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had a bunch of Somalis, uh, we had some Kenyans, we had some Ethiopians.

• 3:23:47Jocko Willink?

  And you're training them and you're going out, did they're doing work, you're doing work with them?

• 3:23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were, uh, we were, we were targeting, uh, Al Shabab, this is a, you know, Al Qaeda affiliate. We were targeting those guys.

• 3:24:01Jocko Willink?

  And it's good op tempo?

• 3:24:04Speaker 01

  It was busy. Um, we were going out once, uh, two, three times a week.

• 3:24:12Jocko Willink?

  Doing DAs?

• 3:24:13Speaker 01

  Yep, doing DA. Uh, we were down south, the other unit we were working with was, uh, was further up north and we would just like flip flop to support each other.

• 3:24:24Speaker 01

  It was busy.

• 3:24:26Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, are you, do you get in a flow now? You said like, hey, once you did that first deployment to Afghanistan where you're living out of Iraq, are you in a pretty good flow now where you're, you're starting to be able to deal with your leg? It's not that big of a factor?

• 3:24:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the two years I had, um, like since Walter Reed, you know, the first trip to Afghanistan or the, the train up Afghanistan. Now I'm like two, two and a half years post injury. I learned a lot of lessons and ways to maintain my prosthetic and my body. So I'm learning how to do this. So by the time 2016 trip came around, I was, I was much more confident in my tactical prowess and, and insertion within operations.

• 3:25:07Jocko Willink?

  Hell yeah. Uh, and then what's after that Somalia deployment? Another deployment?

• 3:25:12Speaker 01

  That was 2016. So I came back from that and that was when I transferred groups from third group to fifth group.

• 3:25:22Speaker 01

  The reason I transferred because my wife, she went down a different career path and got orders for, for Campbell. So I transferred groups. At this point we were married. So to stay with her, obviously I transferred from third to fifth, went over there and then, uh, got integrated with those guys. And then my next trip was into Lebanon.

• 3:25:43Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, and you're obviously still active duty right now. We'll kind of let that one. We'll use our imaginations for that, that deployment over there. At what point did you decide you were going to try and get a commission, become a warrant? Or what you guys call in the army, a chief?

• 3:26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. In the Navy, I'm sure you know this. Yeah. A chief isn't a listed guy in the Navy and we still have warrant offs, we have chief warrant officers, but what, what point did you want to become a warrant officer?

• 3:26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I started looking at it actually when I was in Somalia. Because I warrant had to go home on emergency leave and I kind of took up a lot of those tasks. For the detachment. When I got back from, uh, from Lebanon is when I dropped that, is when I dropped that packet.

• 3:26:27Jocko Willink?

  And got picked up?

• 3:26:29Speaker 01

  Yep. So we, the SF warrant offices, we go to Fort Bragg to go to our school, whereas every other army warrant officer goes down to Fort Rukka and goes through the warrant officer course. We have our own, our own program because it's, the SF warrant officer is wildly different than all the other warrant officer branches. You know, there's only two combat warrant officers and those are aviators and then SF guys. The rest, those are, those are managers, like they, you, you run a desk, right? Because you're, you're an expert in that particular system and your job is to manage and task. On our side of the house, it's, it's, it's different because you're on the team. So we have our own school. So I went and did that. That was in 2019.

• 3:27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Five months, my five month course, it's a lot of writing and briefing and officer stuff.

• 3:27:19Jocko Willink?

  And you loved every second. Dude, salute to the army and to special operations for this whole thing. Just for them keeping you on that path, opening those things up, you becoming a warrant officer, like that's freaking just outstanding that they, that this happened, you know? I mean, look, this stuff could be easily be shut down. Like there could be some, some senior officer that's like, I don't think this is the right thing to do and boom. You know, so that's outstanding that you actually, that the army allowed this to happen. Do I believe it should? Hell yeah, of course. But I'm saying, man, you know, some of these, some of these bureaucrats, like they don't think that way. They don't think like you think. They don't think like I think. So salute to the army and to SF for, for keeping that door open.

• 3:28:05Jocko Willink?

  Freaking, that's just outstanding. I know how one of my guys was Ryan Job was blind. He's blinded and you know I talked to the Admiral and I was like, hey, sir, he, he wants to stay in and the Admiral's like, whatever he wants. He wants to stay in. We got jobs for him. That's freaking outstanding. You get picked up for warrant and then what's the next step?

• 3:28:28Speaker 01

  Next step is going to my next detachment as the assistant detachment commander and I was notified the team I was going to go to with about two weeks left of the warrant officer course. And the second I was told the team number, I knew the type of team it was going to be, which was a maritime ops team, a dive team.

• 3:28:47Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:28:48Speaker 01

  Right. And SF, all the, all the teams that end in the number five, they're dive teams. So I just completed the warrant officer course, right? First amputee to ever go. It was challenging as hell. Believe it or not, it's, you know, there's a lot of physical stuff. To go back a bit, when I first got to group, the warrant officer on the teams, stereotypically were the out of shape, old guys that were never around. Well, the regiment realized that and they completely re-altered the, the actual course to include a lot of physical gates that you had to pass because they didn't want these old crusty guy, out of shape guys on teams anymore. If you're going to be a warrant officer on a team, you need to be able to function as a team guy.

• 3:29:27Jocko Willink?

  And every ODA has the assistant commander is a warrant. Is that right?

• 3:29:31Speaker 01

  Every ODA doesn't have a warrant, but because it's a small community, most do, and that guy is the assistant detachment commander. Because the SF ODA, the 12 man construct is designed to run split team ops. It's not just like a random number.

• 3:29:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:29:46Speaker 01

  So the captain takes one section and the warrant takes the other.

• 3:29:49Jocko Willink?

  Yep. If there's no warrant, who takes the other one? The sergeant?

• 3:29:53Speaker 01

  The, would, would be the team sergeant.

• 3:29:55Jocko Willink?

  The team sergeant.

• 3:29:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, the senior enlisted guy.

• 3:29:58Jocko Willink?

  Where does the captain get his experience before he's the captain of an ODA team? Is he coming from infantry? Is that where he gets his initial experience as a leader? Like as a platoon commander or something?

• 3:30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, most come from the infantry. They don't necessarily have to have an infantry background, but they're, I mean, they're green. Even like the most experienced new captain,

• 3:30:18Speaker 01

  even in today's world, you're not seeing it that much because there's not a lot of combat, but they get maybe one trip as a platoon leader in their conventional unit, go to the captain's career course, go to the Q course, and then show up. And that level of inexperience is why the SF warrant officer exists. Because their trajectory, they get two years on a team and then they're gone. So the most senior captain on a team has been there for 24 months. Like that guy just barely figured out his job, what an ODA does, how we fit within the overall picture. And then he's on to the next thing. The warrant is there, you know, we're expected to do five, six years on the same detachment. We're there to be that strategic advisor to that leader.

• 3:31:00Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking legit. So you get the dive team assignment. Or sorry, I cut you off. So you, you were saying that warrant officer school was actually, there were some, there were some challenges in warrant officer school. It wasn't a walk in the park?

• 3:31:13Speaker 01

  No, no, it was, it was legit. Yeah, it was tough. So I mean, I got like two weeks left before I'm going to graduate. I'm just about the top of this ridge line. Like graduation's inevitable at this point. So I'm feeling pretty happy about my, you know, my performance and where I'm going. I'm excited. And then I get the phone call like, you're going to this team right here. And I had the same response that everyone, every SF guy gets when he's told he's going to a dive team, which is shit. Okay. Cause everyone knows, CDQC, Combat Diver Qualification Course, everyone knows that that is the hardest school within the army by a mile, physically and mentally. And most fearful of it. Most don't want to go down that road, you know?

• 3:31:58Speaker 01

  I had the same, I had the same response. It was, okay, well, my celebration here was Shaw lives because now I got to figure out how I'm going to do this.

• 3:32:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that sounds like uh like I was giving all these props to the army. I guess we gotta give more prop. They're like, cool. Oh, you wanna be warrant? Cool. Oh, you got one leg? How's dive school sound?

• 3:32:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's, I mean, it's funny, man, cuz I got back to the group. I got to my new battalion, got assigned to my new team, and I met with the company command team the next day. And within the first couple minutes of that conversation, they told me that no one had any expectations of me going to dive school.

• 3:32:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 3:32:35Speaker 01

  I had the same conversation with the battalion command team a couple days later, and was told the same thing from them. Which I found was interesting, you know, and I, I looked at them kinda sideways. And I said, listen, this team is, they're a bunch of aggressive savages. It's the most senior team we have in the battalion. They're hungry for combat. They haven't seen it yet. We need a strong leader on that team. There are only two warrant officer candidates. There were only two of us in fifth group that went, me and my buddy.

• 3:33:06Speaker 01

  Me and my buddy Mike had wildly different experiences. Mike did a lot of like inter-agency stuff, and he was more on the technical side of things and did a lot of intel stuff. My experience was like all combat. So they looked at both of our packets, and they're like, we can't send this guy to a dive team, especially this one. It's gonna have to be Nick, but it'll work cuz he's a strong leader. They'll respect him. It'll, it'll help keep things moving in a general direction. Dive teams are known for being insubordinate, aggressive, you know, it's the, it's, it's the, it's the double edged sword for leadership because you got a really high performing detachment, but you're gonna have to deal with their aggressiveness and keeping them within line in a garrison environment.

• 3:33:51Speaker 01

  So they made it clear to me that that was the reason why I was going.

• 3:33:53Jocko Willink?

  And yet, they didn't expect you to be actually going through dive school, like that wouldn't be a requirement necessarily, is what they're thinking.

• 3:34:00Speaker 01

  In their eyes, that's what they were thinking. I didn't see it that way.

• 3:34:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're just like, okay, well, I gotta go do dive school.

• 3:34:08Speaker 01

  It's, it's the one thing that separates dive teams from every other detachment is going through that extra filter. And it's really irrelevant to the actual execution of maritime ops. It's just that fine filter to be able to push yourself through that hell. And then you take 12 guys that have all been through that and lump them together. They are gonna be a high performing detachment, no matter the mission.

• 3:34:31Jocko Willink?

  Were you in the water much growing up?

• 3:34:34Speaker 01

  A little bit, but not much of a, I grew up in New England, you know, so yeah, I mean, spent time in the water, but I wasn't a swimmer.

• 3:34:41Jocko Willink?

  But, okay.

• 3:34:42Speaker 01

  You know, never scuba dived before, nothing.

• 3:34:45Jocko Willink?

  So this is not gonna be fun?

• 3:34:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:34:49Speaker 01

  No, it's not gonna be fun at all.

• 3:34:53Jocko Willink?

  You gotta start training for it, right? Like, you gotta start figuring out, like, getting comfortable in the water is a big deal. Do they normally pick guys that were, have some comfort in the water? Or do guys volunteer, does anyone volunteer for it?

• 3:35:05Speaker 01

  Some do, it's rare for a new dude to show, be like, put me on a dive team. Most are happy with the little green hat on their head and they wanna just, like, chill and just get to team stuff. It does happen, it's not very often that it happens. I think the sergeants major, they do ask if there's an open slot on a dive team, hey, you know, are you comfortable with water? Do you spend any time swimming? You know, which I think brings value to your success in CDQC. Is more about your being comfortable in the water, not necessarily your ability as a freestyle swimmer.

• 3:35:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, it's definite comfort in the water. Well, I mean, I haven't been through that school, but in, in basic SEAL training, you go through some pretty significant dive challenges and people, it pays to be comfortable in the water.

• 3:35:49Speaker 01

  You have to be.

• 3:35:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:35:50Speaker 01

  So I do think they have that conversation, but if the answer's no and they needed another diver, it's like, okay, well, you're going anyway.

• 3:35:58Jocko Willink?

  And you had to fight against a med board again to kinda like get a waiver to go to this school.

• 3:36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wasn't a med board, but I did need a waiver approved to be able to go because of my physical profile. So there had never been an amputee to even like consider going. And now I'm kinda back where I was where I had to fight the admin fight and then also prepare myself physically and mentally. So the admin side, it worked out great for me because I went through my dive physical, which is the most in-depth physical we have in the army. They check you for everything, cause it's just such a high-stress school. There's two phases, I get through both of those, both are clean, both are good to go. And then our med clinic sends up the waiver for me to be able to attend administratively. Well, that needs to be approved by the SWCC surgeon, who's a full bird colonel. I said, okay, cool, send it.

• 3:36:49Speaker 01

  I get a phone call about a week later from some nine one zero area code number, which is North Carolina. Answer the phone and there's just some dude on the other end of the phone like yelling. And he's talking about a one-legged guy who wants to go to dive school. And I think that someone had just dialed my phone number by accident and I'm overhearing a conversation about me and I'm going, hello, who is this? Dude's just yelling, talking real aggressively, talking real fast. Finally he stops. I'm like, who is this? He's like, Nick, it's, it's Mike. And, uh, I said, Doc, how you doing? Well, Mike was the third group surgeon back when I was in Afghanistan.

• 3:37:30Speaker 01

  He was the first guy that operated on me when I got flown into Bagram. He had since been promoted to O6 and was working as the SWCC surgeon. So he and I knew each other real well. I didn't know that that's where his job was till he calls me. And I'm like, oh, no kidding. Okay. He's like, I'm staring at your, your wave up. It's in front of me right now. I said, are you going to approve it? He's like, yeah, I already did. I just, I just sent it back. He's like, I think you're out of your mind that you want to go do this, but if you want to go, go ahead, like, good luck. So, you know, ironic turn of events, if it was anybody other than him, who knows if that would have been approved because you are assuming quite a bit of risk, uh, both for him as the medical professional and then the commander in which he works underneath,

• 3:38:15Speaker 01

  like they're assuming that risk to send you a course like that as a student. He gave me the green light and then once I had that, I had already been training, you know, physically, my first day on the team, I was in the pool. Day one, like I just met these guys. It's my first day in this battalion. It's my first day as a warrant officer and I'm in the, I'm in the pool.

• 3:38:35Jocko Willink?

  You gotta get like, uh, fin legs or some shit?

• 3:38:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I did, you know, and I went to my prosthetist and I said, I need a fin. And, uh, they make, you know, fins for amputees. It's not, it's not like a new thing. He gave me this one. And things maybe, I don't know, three feet in length. It's small. And my teammates called it my finding Nemo fin. It's just the difference between my leg and this thing, which is so different. But the concern was that, you know, if it's, if it's a longer lever, it places more force through the socket, what's actually attaching to my body. So we were concerned that if it was too long, I was generating too much force, it would rip the prosthetic off my body. So we went with the more secured option, even though it gave me less propulsion.

• 3:39:23Speaker 01

  So that was what I had. And, uh, you know, I just said, you know, Roger that this is my equipment. I'm just going to figure out how to make it work. Really had to turn my left leg into just an absolute tank. Cause that's what was propelling me for treading and for underwater nav and for all the finning was my left leg. That's what I used uh, in the pool during our train up. And, you know, my teammates were phenomenal. But at the same time, it was, no one really knew how to do this with the guy with one leg. So it was a lot of trial and error and like figuring it out. Did that. And then, uh, I was in communication with the leadership down at CDQC. Uh, they reached out to me once they were made aware that an amputee was going to come down. It was a third group dude who was actually one of my instructors in the Q course.

• 3:40:08Speaker 01

  Was now the sergeant major down there. So he hit me up and was like, hey, man, just like, keep me updated with, if you're modifying any specific procedure, I just need to know what that is. Cause my instructors don't like know what this looks like. You know, so you know, like maritime ops, and especially in the schoolhouse, it's very procedural, like left foot here, right foot here. It's broken down step by step by step to increase efficiency and reduce risk to keep it as safe as possible. Well, for me, some of those steps just don't exist. If it's like, put your right foot here. Well, like I don't have one. So what am I doing when everyone else is putting their right foot over there?

• 3:40:45Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 3:40:45Speaker 01

  So just those small little tweaks is what my team and I were kind of playing around with. And then I messaged that to the cadre down there. It was ultimately up to them to decide if what I was doing would meet their standard requirements. Couple adaptations with a couple of different things, but uh, and then the CDQC journey.

• 3:41:06Jocko Willink?

  What's the attrition rate at that school?

• 3:41:08Speaker 01

  It varies from 20% up to like 60%. There are some classes that graduate like five guys.

• 3:41:18Jocko Willink?

  And if you just, if you fail, they just send you back to SF. You just can't be on a dive team type thing?

• 3:41:23Speaker 01

  You usually will get two or three attempts at it, which is quite common for it to take a guy maybe twice.

• 3:41:30Jocko Willink?

  How long is the school?

• 3:41:32Speaker 01

  Six weeks.

• 3:41:36Jocko Willink?

  You got a section in here. You talk a little bit about this, which I had a lot of joy and laughter when I was reading it.

• 3:41:44Jocko Willink?

  The Combat Diver Qualification Course or Dive School has several tests students must successfully complete. Each is designed with a purpose according to years of data collection and lessons learned from generations of previous combat divers. The most notorious is the one man competency exam. During this test, students are required to wear a blacked out mask to simulate nighttime conditions and then surge underwater for several currents. Once the surge phase is complete, the students are placed at the bottom of the pool and paired up with an instructor who systematically removes the student's air source regulator and in places a series of deficiencies. So how do I breathe without a regulator? You don't. You hold your breath.

• 3:42:26Jocko Willink?

  The student is required to trace the air source line from its origination point to the regulator while on a breath hold in order to retrieve the air source and breathe. This process is repeated until the exam is completed. If this sounds awful, it is because it is just that awful. The one man competency exam is widely considered the most difficult test within dive school and is the reason why so many do not advance in the course. There is however, a method to this madness. Conducting underwater operations is arguably the most dangerous task we do within the military. The ocean is unforgiving. A plethora of things can go wrong. And as with most operations, something will almost certainly will go wrong. Given the fact that we as humans require oxygen above all else to live,

• 3:43:10Jocko Willink?

  problems underwater can quickly turn deadly. During underwater operations, it is just you and your team. At times perhaps it is just you and your dive buddy. And if things really go bad, it's just you. When a problem presents itself, you absolutely must be able to correct it. And depending on the severity of the issue, time becomes a critical factor. Every second counts. Pressure is at an all time high. The stress of these situations can be incapacitating. The only way to work through the situation is to remain calm. Good times. We have a test like that similar. It's called pool competency. It's the same thing. They're just gonna freaking jack you up underwater.

• 3:43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:43:49Jocko Willink?

  It's not fun.

• 3:43:50Speaker 01

  Sounds, that's not fun. You gotta, you gotta fight the demons. Every survival instinct you have as humans, you gotta battle through that.

• 3:43:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. But you made it through.

• 3:44:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:44:04Jocko Willink?

  You, you made it through that, that dive thing. You failed a couple of times?

• 3:44:08Speaker 01

  I failed one man twice.

• 3:44:10Jocko Willink?

  How many chances do you get?

• 3:44:11Speaker 01

  Three.

• 3:44:13Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:44:14Speaker 01

  So I blacked out underwater, uh, my first two go rounds. And my blackout experience, they, they tell you, you know, you're gonna start to feel yourself going. Like when you're being choked out, right? Like things get soft and start to feel yourself getting comfortable. Like you're on the verge of blacking out.

• 3:44:30Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:44:30Speaker 01

  I, that doesn't happen with me. Mine is just continued increase in pain and discomfort. And then you're out. And then I come to and I'm on the pool deck.

• 3:44:41Jocko Willink?

  What kind of, are you using a, like a, a normal regulator? Like the kind with one hose that you press a button and air comes out of it?

• 3:44:50Speaker 01

  For this, yeah. So you're using open water tanks on your back with the standard regulator?

• 3:44:55Jocko Willink?

  We have this in SEAL training. They have this regulator from like 1960.

• 3:45:02Jocko Willink?

  Eight or something and it's got two hoses, one's an inhalation hose and one's an exhalation hose. And it looks like, you know, if you look at Jacques Cousteau diving in nineteen seventy-three, like that's what he's using. And it, you, there's no button to press. It, you have to drink the water out, you have to suck the water out of it when you put it back in your mouth. And they just take this thing and freak it out. It's insane. The only reason that this regulator exists is for buds at this point.

• 3:45:30Speaker 01

  Oh, they still use this?

• 3:45:31Jocko Willink?

  They still use it.

• 3:45:31Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 3:45:32Jocko Willink?

  They still use it to this day. It's, it's crazy. It's a crazy evolution. Uh, yeah, but I've talked to some of the people that, that work at that company and they were like, yeah, that's the only people we make it for. I guess there's, I guess there's an occasional person that were requested if they're an underwater photographer because the bubbles are behind your back. But other than that, it's just these, because there's no reason to use it. It's the worst, it's the worst piece of equipment ever. Like for diving, like they probably made it and like a year later like, hey, this is dumb, fix it. But that's what we still use. Uh, not fun. Um, all right. So you get done, you pass, now you're a warrant officer inside of a, inside of your ODA team. Rack up another deployment. Where do you go on this one?

• 3:46:16Speaker 01

  The one after that, uh, we were in Iraq.

• 3:46:19Jocko Willink?

  Damn, okay. Doing a lot of diving in Iraq, were you?

• 3:46:23Speaker 01

  Not much.

• 3:46:24Jocko Willink?

  What year was that?

• 3:46:25Speaker 01

  Twenty-one.

• 3:46:26Jocko Willink?

  No kidding?

• 3:46:28Speaker 01

  Last year. Well, we went in in, uh, December of twenty, December of twenty eight to twenty-one.

• 3:46:32Jocko Willink?

  I mean, from what you can say without going into classified material, like what was your general mission?

• 3:46:38Speaker 01

  Advisor assist. I mean, the Iraq of today is much different than, than the Iraq of your days.

• 3:46:44Jocko Willink?

  How'd you like being the number two guy in command?

• 3:46:48Speaker 01

  I enjoyed it. Yeah, we did a couple, uh, split team scenarios, but then, uh, because of what we were doing was pretty.

• 3:46:58Speaker 01

  Routine, uh, myself and my actual team leader, we would just swap out at times. So I got some reps at the detachment commander thing. So it was good.

• 3:47:07Jocko Willink?

  And you like that being in a leadership position?

• 3:47:09Speaker 01

  Very much so. It's, it's difficult as a warrant because the way it was described to me was it's a commandless, thankless, selfless position. You know, when you have that tripod of leadership, detachment commander, the captain, your senior enlisted guy, and then the warrant officer, you know, the, the detachment commander is in charge of the team. He runs the team. The senior enlisted guy, the team sergeant, he runs the boys. Like they all work for him. The warrant exists kind of in between that. And the way you influence as a, as a leader is more done through your actions than it is about having one-on-one, like molding sessions with the individuals, because that's really the job of the team sergeant.

• 3:47:51Speaker 01

  So your approach to leadership as a warrant has to be a mature one, which is tough for a lot of us because we're aggressive type A pipe hitters who think we know exactly what right looks like. So I have to stay back from that and lead through supporting others and lead through more of your actions than your verbal mentorship can be tough.

• 3:48:16Jocko Willink?

  And then, so where, where are you at right now? Are you still at a team?

• 3:48:19Speaker 01

  I just came off the team.

• 3:48:22Jocko Willink?

  And so where are you stationed now?

• 3:48:23Speaker 01

  I'm still for Campbell, still in fifth group. Uh, I'm just took over as the company operations warrant for our advanced skills company. So when I was working in the combatants committee, it was underneath the advanced skills company. So now I'm amongst the company level leadership where I work alongside a major and a sergeant major.

• 3:48:42Jocko Willink?

  Got it. Uh, you know, that, that kind of brings us up to date for this, for where you're at, right? Um, what you got going on? You know, th- this is the thing though about this book is this book. This book Objective Secure, it's not, it's not a memoir of your life. It's not, it's not like, "Hey, here's a bunch of stories." It's actually, uh, it's actually like, almost like a field manual of how you can overcome things and how you can achieve things in life, which is, is a pretty awesome book. And look, obviously I read some of the stories out of it today because you relate, "Oh, this event

• 3:49:26Jocko Willink?

  happened. Here's, you know, what occurred. Here's what caused me to do this. Here's where I learned this lesson." There's a lot of that stuff in there. But the actual book is, I mean, the subtitle of the book is Battle Tested Guide to Goal Achievement, right? Which is freaking legit. Like, hey, here's a guy that has gone through a bunch of obstacles and overcome those obstacles. And he did it not by luck, not by miracles, but by figuring out how to assess these things and how to overcome them. And you take the military methodology that you learned from being in special operations, and you apply that to your life, and apply that to the challenges you face. And you, you outline that throughout this book. And

• 3:50:11Jocko Willink?

  that's why if, you know, if you're listening right now, just order this book right now because there's so much good information in it to help anybody that's overcoming anything, that's facing any obstacles. But I've, I would feel bad if I didn't at least give people sort of a heads up, sort of some of the highlights that you go over in the book. So I just want to crack this thing open and like, just, like I said, just hit some of the high points of, of, of how you live your life, how you overcame these things. The book is called Objective Secure. You start off with Objective Secure, a military brevity term used during the execution of combat operations, meaning the location or target has been isolated and contained, the assault force has eliminated all known threats, and

• 3:50:55Jocko Willink?

  the element is prepared to move to the next objective phase of the operations, of the operation. Reaching objectives secure during a combat operation is a good feeling. It means we have a foothold, a location to reconsolidate, establish communications, prepare stage, and if necessary, fall back to. But this does not mean the mission is complete. Objective Secure in our context here is twofold. First, it is a victory, a milestone. It marks the success of achieving a necessary goal along the route to mission accomplishment. Second, it is a tool, a system, a methodology, a process designed to manifest our reality. Objective Secure is a philosophy and a blueprint that was created in real time,

• 3:51:40Jocko Willink?

  refined, then retrospectively analyzed following years of trial and error, years of failure, years of obstacles, and years of adversity. It was forged by fire and is battle-tested, literally.

• 3:51:56Jocko Willink?

  Objective Secure.

• 3:51:59Jocko Willink?

  Did you have that name out of the gate for the book?

• 3:52:02Speaker 01

  No, not at all. I mean, I created this thing. The original Objective Secure was about a nine-page Microsoft Word document that I slapped together as a result of being asked the same question hundreds and hundreds of times. Was how did you do what you did? So rather than answering those every single time.

• 3:52:28Jocko Willink?

  What's your email address?

• 3:52:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer that question, put a little more thought into it. And that way I can just attach and send. It was about efficiency. I created the original one of these things purely out of efficiency to answer the question, to provide that information to those that were seeking it. It wasn't until years later, I used it as such for years. It wasn't until years later that a good buddy of mine, now my business partner, hit me up. I was actually still in dive school. I had about a week left and he called me out of the blue and said, "I think you need to write a book." And I said, "Get away, get out of here. What are you talking about?" Dude, I'm clinging by a thread down here. I'm exhausted. I can't even have this conversation with you. We eventually circled back a couple of weeks later and I gave it some thought.

• 3:53:14Speaker 01

  And this is in the middle of 2020, COVID. I got a lot of extra time and energy on my hands. Gyms are closed, the combatives houses closed. We're doing this weird half-on, half-off work schedule, you know, remote LPD sessions. It was just a strange time. I had a lot of extra time and energy that I otherwise wouldn't have had. So out of respect to him, I gave it some thought, thought about that Microsoft Word doc. And I said, I actually kind of have something. And he said, just keep going with it and see what it turns into. So I sunk my teeth into it and became real obsessed with it. I really found out that I actually enjoy writing. Which if you had asked me that a week before this, I would have said, no. No interest, but I actually do enjoy it.

• 3:53:58Speaker 01

  But I didn't figure out the title until uh maybe about the halfway point. I started thinking about it. And then it it kind of kind of flipped.

• 3:54:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you got um. What you you the way you run your life and it becomes really clear in the book. I haven't touched on these part of the books yet, but like. You're you're very calculating in everything that you do. This is what I need to get done. Here's what. And that's what makes this so effective. And obviously it's work. Outstanding for you to be able to pull off the kind of shit that you've pulled off. Uh. That comes across. Um, and one of the things that one of the ways that you break down the book is you use some of the well, you use. The way you learn things in the army. And one of the things that you talk about is the the ethos. Um, the warrior ethos. And here's part of it.

• 3:54:47Jocko Willink?

  I will always place the mission first. Now I realize the term mission has a strong military undertone, but it this absolutely applies to everybody because everybody has dreams. That's what the mission is. It's a dream, the long term goal. The mission is what is waiting at the end of the road. Missions are impactful, often life changing, but for many the mission will remain just that, a dream. Many do not reach mission success. Many do not turn the dream into a reality. Those who do are able to recognize the need for something. Sacrifice. A subset of discipline, something we'll get into later, the act of foregoing what we want. For what we need. So.

• 3:55:30Jocko Willink?

  You break these things down. So when we say I'm fast forwarding. So when we say I will always leave, I will always place the mission first, what we are saying is. I will make the necessary sacrifices and I will prioritize my time. And again, I'm like jump. You've got all kinds of. Applications of this where people read it and be like, oh, I think that might be me right there. Oh, I think he's talking about me over here. Or, oh, I need to do. I need to do better on that thing. So this this this book is very practical from that perspective.

• 3:56:07Jocko Willink?

  The next section I'll read is, "I will never accept defeat." This statement has a somewhat obvious meaning behind it. Resolve, resiliency, and toughness. The mentality is that if you get knocked down seven times, you get up eight. Pretty, pretty straightforward. I'm gonna read one little section out of this. "Our egos do not digest failure easily. Our egos want us to constantly project strength, ability, and knowledge. Our egos can prevent us from asking questions and pushing our limitations. Humility requires allowing ourselves to become vulnerable, to expose our weaknesses, things that are extremely difficult for most and for individuals who work in a special operations community, they're next to impossible."

• 3:56:54Jocko Willink?

  Gotta stay humble.

• 3:56:57Jocko Willink?

  Can be tough. So when we say, "I will never accept defeat", what we are saying is strive for failure, and when you reach it, learn from it, apply it, and keep moving forward.

• 3:57:12Jocko Willink?

  Again, a bunch of good examples you throw in here about this,

• 3:57:17Jocko Willink?

  and all totally pragmatic.

• 3:57:21Jocko Willink?

  Next one, "I will never quit." Initially, this sounds similar to what we just talked about, but upon further examination, we'll recognize the difference. "I will never quit" is about avoiding complacency. It is not letting ourselves get comfortable, not celebrating too long, not accepting status quo, and not growing stagnant. It is adopting the principle that satisfaction doesn't exist, and that now is the time to attack.

• 3:57:48Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 3:57:51Jocko Willink?

  These things have a lot more meaning. When determining the appropriate rucksack, we need to think about the mission. We need to choose the right-sized rucksack for the job. Choose one too small, we'll not be able to bring the necessary equipment. Choose one too large, and we tend to fill the extra space with things we want, rather than only the things we need. Ounces equal pounds. Next thing you know, we're humping 70 pounds instead of 60 pounds. At first, this may go unnoticed, but as the miles continue, the extra 10 pounds take their toll. This will undoubtedly increase fatigue and reduce focus and ability, leaving us less effective when it is time to go to work. And this is what made me want to read this same as with ounces.

• 3:58:36Jocko Willink?

  Minutes become hours, hours become days, days become weeks, and before you know it, a year has passed with little to show for it.

• 3:58:51Jocko Willink?

  Um, later in the book, you got some of your time, like you got your daily schedule written out. It's like to the minute, you know, there's no time being wasted for freaking Nick.

• 3:59:02Speaker 01

  No, man.

• 3:59:03Jocko Willink?

  Not when Nick's on the mission, man. When Nick's trying to get back to an ODA team, there's not a minute, there's not a second wasted.

• 3:59:09Speaker 01

  Can't. Can't. I mean, for one, just the, the, the, the gift of perspective with coming as close to death as I did. Driving in how precious life is and how time is our, our most limited resource and just to maximize the gift of we have of minute to minute to minute. Just that, that perspective was given to me.

• 3:59:39Speaker 01

  Through what happened. And then when you've got, you know, big goals.

• 3:59:45Speaker 01

  That's what it takes. That's what it took for me. Anyway.

• 3:59:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, I think that's actually just what it takes, not just for you, but for anybody.

• 3:59:55Jocko Willink?

  I will never leave a comrade, I will never leave a fallen comrade. We know the obvious meaning behind this, the meaning reserved for the warfighter, the mentality that no matter what, nobody gets left behind. When we open the aperture a bit, however, this tenant is speaking to a commitment to doing whatever it takes. Yeah, there's not too many, there's not too many sayings that have the word never in them, right? And that's what this is. This is like the, the commitment.

• 4:00:25Jocko Willink?

  You talk about this in this section, when we understand that everybody eventually hits a decision point and that when they do most give in, our decision point becomes an opportunity. Man, we were just talking about this the other day, like your life, our lives are just a bunch of decisions. They're just, they're just all decisions. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna eat? When are you gonna get up? What are you gonna do today? What progress are you making? What time are you gonna waste? You say it gives us a chance to either extend our lead or make up ground on our competition. Through this understanding, we will begin to welcome these decision points. We will seek them. We will find ourselves intentionally pushing until we find ourselves standing at the crossroads. And when we arrive, when most would find themselves conflicted, we are not, we embrace

• 4:01:10Jocko Willink?

  it. So when we say, I will never leave a fallen comrade, what we are saying is, I will do whatever it takes to make it. At times, we have to ignore the brain, listen to the heart, and take the risk. It's, it's weird how many decisions you make without even thinking about it, the fact that you have a choice, right? You just, people just allow things to happen in their lives. Sure. Oh, that just, you know, oh, what are you doing today?

• 4:01:40Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? What are you doing today? Oh, you know, like, no, that's not part of the plan. That's not part of the plan. That's not gonna work. That's not gonna work. Nick knows what he's doing. He knows what he's doing on Sunday afternoon at 13:40. He knows what's up.

• 4:02:03Jocko Willink?

  And this is where you break down

• 4:02:07Jocko Willink?

  how we're gonna execute this. So like you just kind of talked about the mindset through the warrior ethos, and now you get into the execution of this whole thing.

• 4:02:16Jocko Willink?

  Phase one is the mission. Here's where we identify the mission. And again, how many people are going through life, they don't even have their mission identified? I'd say a lot. You know, I, I've talked about the fact that I was very lucky because when I was very young, I joined the Navy and I just wanted to be a good SEAL. And what, like that gives you, you can make so many decisions based on that. You can make, you can do so much just on having a goal like that.

• 4:02:44Jocko Willink?

  Here's where we identify the mission. This is a long-term goal, the dream, the what we are trying to accomplish, the who we aspire to become. There's a reason why this is phase one is it is exceedingly important. If we botch this up, we may be making progress, but progress in the wrong direction.

• 4:03:03Jocko Willink?

  So if you're listening right now and you don't know what your mission is, you're already, you already got a significant problem. You've got a problem going on because where are you going?

• 4:03:13Jocko Willink?

  Where are you going right now? What is your mission? If you don't have a mission, you need to figure out what it is.

• 4:03:22Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent. And yeah, I think that the way that you like had that, man, you freaking woke up from a coma without a leg and we're like, cool, I'm going back to an ODA team. There's my mission. Like this is what I'm doing.

• 4:03:40Jocko Willink?

  Design, we must have a solid understanding of our current situation, our mission, our obstacles, and how we are going to advance. This may sound intimidating, but don't let it overwhelm you. And then you break out. You know, there's another thing we didn't talk about. We didn't talk about the fact that once you didn't have a leg, you're like, all right, I need to be beneficial to my team in other ways beyond just physical. You know, you're going to be able to hold the standard and I would say you probably do a hell of a lot better than the standard, but you're like, hey, there might be some deficiencies that I have because I only have one freaking leg. So I'm going to make up for that. And you started going to some of the more cerebral parts of special forces, started going to schools to learn,

• 4:04:25Jocko Willink?

  you know, operational art and design.

• 4:04:29Jocko Willink?

  And, and that way you had something else to offer. You know, it was like, almost like a backup plan. If you didn't have it all physically, which again, I would, I would, I would say you definitely have it physically, but if you had some slack there, you're going to be able to make up for it. That was a conscious decision that you made.

• 4:04:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that was tough to accept that growing up as an athlete and a fighter and you know, being that door kicker on the team is what my team wanted of me. It's what I enjoy doing. Spend time in the gym, the fight house, on the range. And everybody, it was a win-win. Accepting the fact that no matter how hard I trained, I was never going to be as physically dominant as I was with two legs. How can I make up the difference and still be that asset? And this was in the hospital. I was still an inpatient status, living in the hospital, going through surgeries when this happened. And actually the USAC commander at the time, General Cleveland, he showed up just to visit me. And we had a conversation and that's what opened up my eyes to

• 4:05:25Speaker 01

  the other skills within being an all encompassing Green Beret or an effective O D A. Kind of the softer side of our business, you know, most of us come in because we want to kick down doors and shoot bad guys in the face. But there's a lot of other skills and tasks that enable that to be able to happen. So I recognized it then and committed to it. In my own personal time, so rather than reading about exercise physiology or nutrition, I was reading about cultural dynamics in Afghanistan. I was enhancing my foreign language skills. I hated doing this stuff, man. I absolutely hated it. I loved the way I spent my time with two legs. I didn't want to do this at all. But I, I believed that it would work.

• 4:06:12Speaker 01

  And I just forced myself to do it, man, which I'm preaching to the, to the gospel or I'm, I'm preaching to the choir on this is like the discipline to, to execute on the tasks that you know will bring value is the road to success.

• 4:06:29Speaker 01

  Doing the thing, whether or not you feel like doing it or not, and I know like you're the subject matter expert on this. I've learned a lot of this from you personally during all of the stuff we're talking about. It's like, did the research. I know this will work or I'm confident this will work. Yeah, it sucks, but doing the things that suck is what separates the average from the great. So diving myself into this road. Operational Latin Design was a school I went to. I needed a waiver to go because I was in E6. And it's reserved for more senior leaders who are going to be dealing with like campaign planning and type stuff. But I went as a, as a tool to increase my cerebral and intellectual capacity overall. But then I was able to leverage what I learned in the course and apply it to my mission.

• 4:07:12Speaker 01

  Take, take the lessons learned and actually use those techniques to outline my day-to-day life and my operational approach. So it was, it was multifaceted, what I was able to leverage by doing that.

• 4:07:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's almost like what we were talking about earlier with leadership and how leadership is a skill. Well, you know, planning is a skill and designing

• 4:07:34Jocko Willink?

  courses of action to overcome obstacles. It's not just something you're born with. You can actually learn how to do it and that's what you did. You went and learned how to do it and here you look, you applied it in the field, but here you're applying it to your life. Uh, you go through this, you go through this phase diagram. You got this, all these diagrams in here, determine your current situation. Define the mission, frame the problem, identify lines of effort. You go through this whole thing. Um, and then, once you figure out what the lines of effort are, you talk about how you're going to now attack those lines. You got the next phase, which is research. Access to information has never been as readily available as it is today. Never. There's absolutely no excuse to be uninformed.

• 4:08:18Jocko Willink?

  I don't know how it's just that an excuse and avoidable reason. We must set ourselves up for success. The key to this phase, however, is to move quickly. We cannot get stuck here. The research is solely to get the wheels spinning and provide some direction to advance down our lines of effort. So you're, and you know, you give like examples of this. Uh, what is it? One of the examples you give is, hey, I'm living in a crappy house. I want to get a new house. Here's the things I can do. Here's the problem. Here's how I can make this happen. It's a campaign plan. Oh, I gotta get a cheaper rent right now so I can save more money. I gotta get some additional income. Like you go through it. And another one you got in here is, what is it? Becoming a instructor, right? Like, like these are things that you're doing to, you, you've actually taken these methodologies and applied them to your life.

• 4:09:06Jocko Willink?

  And it's not complicated. Next phase is approach. This is where we create our approach. We have already determined our long-term goal, our mission, our 300-meter target. We have also identified our lines of effort, the broad conceptual categories along which we will advance. In phase four, we are going to implement the list of tasks and considerations we identified through research, the series of short-term goals that exist between where we are now and where we are trying to go along our lines of advance. These are our objectives, our 25, 50, 100, and 200-meter targets. Here is where we prioritize, organize, and correlate along the timeline. So again, this is another place where people can get caught up, right?

• 4:09:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I created a good idea. I have a good plan. And then they don't execute on it. They don't, they don't, well, not that they don't execute, we're gonna get there, but they don't figure out, what do I need to actually do to get there? Like, okay, I see that I want a new house. I know I need money. How am I gonna get more money? That's what this is. What are you gonna, what do you do? What are you gonna actually make happen here? Friggin', again, these things seem obvious.

• 4:10:19Speaker 01

  It's, it's really not that complicated. And I think a lot of people ask that question, how, to whoever they look up to or learn from, wanting a complicated answer, because it just enables the excuse. Well, this is just too complex. Well, he's a SEAL, he's a Green Beret, like, I can't, I'm not either of those things, so this doesn't apply to me. It's like, it's actually quite simple. It's not necessarily easy, but it is simple.

• 4:10:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The amount of times I've been asked, how do you get up early in the morning? And my response is, oh, I set my alarm clock, and when it goes off, I get out of bed.

• 4:11:02Jocko Willink?

  That's legitimately what it is. No. When your alarm clock goes off, you get out of bed. That's what you do. That must be, it's simple, not easy. Simple. That freaking pillow, that pillow grabs a hold of Echo Charles over there, man. That thing, you get strangled by that thing, man. He's getting put in chokeholds over there. It's very dangerous, yes. Here's another place people miss out. You gotta execute. Phase five, execute. Discipline, discipline is controlled behavior. In other words, it is the combination of sacrifice and time prioritization. Warrior ethos one, I will always place the mission first.

• 4:11:41Jocko Willink?

  With discipline, we are stopping ourselves from doing what we like or want to do and/or forcing ourselves to do things we need to do.

• 4:11:57Jocko Willink?

  That's another thing, I'll use that answer sometimes. Like, you know what you need to do. You actually know what you need to do, you're just not doing it.

• 4:12:07Jocko Willink?

  Like, you're not gonna get better at jujitsu not doing jujitsu. You're not gonna get in good shape by not working out. You know what you need to do. Like you said, I think there's people that want you to say, well, there's a big, complex thing that we need to discuss. There's actually not. There's actually not. Just start doing it. Just start doing it.

• 4:12:32Jocko Willink?

  Focus, to remain disciplined, we must remain focused. This right here is essential. We have our plan, it's broken down into a series of objectives. Each objective has a series of requirements and tasks that we must accomplish to reach an objective secure. We know there will be a host of challenges and obstacles along the way. We anticipate setbacks, we project failures, we are prepared. But what are we actually focusing on during the process? The reality of it is, it's our choice.

• 4:12:59Jocko Willink?

  Picture you getting your purple belt here, by the way. 2016.

• 4:13:05Jocko Willink?

  Check. How many times a week you train?

• 4:13:10Speaker 01

  Now?

• 4:13:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:13:12Speaker 01

  I'm coming off a shoulder surgery, so um, none, but usually two, three days.

• 4:13:18Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 4:13:19Speaker 01

  You know.

• 4:13:19Jocko Willink?

  What happened to shoulder?

• 4:13:21Speaker 01

  Tore my labrum.

• 4:13:22Jocko Willink?

  Doing jiu jitsu?

• 4:13:24Speaker 01

  No, this was just wear and tear, but it, I completely dislocated it back in fourteen in a jiu jitsu tournament. Shredded the labrum. Put it back together.

• 4:13:35Jocko Willink?

  Wait, two thousand fourteen, isn't that when you were still a white belt?

• 4:13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I, in this particular tournament, I had just belted blue.

• 4:13:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a lot of people that were unhappy the day they saw you in the freaking bracket. You know what I'm saying?

• 4:13:52Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, especially, it's, you know, it's a weight class.

• 4:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:13:55Speaker 01

  Sport, right? So, I mean, from, from the waist up, if you looked at me versus my opponents, like, there's no way these guys are in the same weight class.

• 4:14:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh shit, how much do you weigh right now?

• 4:14:04Speaker 01

  Right now, I'm probably two fifteen.

• 4:14:07Jocko Willink?

  What would you weigh if you had your other leg?

• 4:14:09Speaker 01

  Two fifty?

• 4:14:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's.

• 4:14:13Speaker 01

  You know, that's forty-five pounds of leg is just not there anymore.

• 4:14:16Jocko Willink?

  Wait, so you said right now you weighed, you weigh what right now?

• 4:14:19Speaker 01

  About two fifteen.

• 4:14:20Jocko Willink?

  Two fifteen.

• 4:14:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's messing up some people's, some people are bummed out where they see that bracket. They're looking at you going, there's, hey, get a scale.

• 4:14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, you know, when I was in the hospital, I learned a lot from Anthony Robles, an All-American wrestler, born with one leg, out of Arizona State. I read his book Unstoppable to help me with my training, and it's funny, there's an excerpt in the book from his mother, who talks about how when he was real young, the other parents would be like, hey, this isn't fair, he only has one leg, like, go easy on him, you know, because he was learning how to do it. So they, they noticed that as a disadvantage and they felt bad for him. Well, once he got real good and beefed up his upper body, it was the complete opposite, where now the parents are going, this isn't fair, because he's wrestling at, you know, two oh five, but really, he's got the upper body of someone who's two thirty-five. So it just, it went complete one eighty. It's like, I can take advantage of this.

• 4:15:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. Damn.

• 4:15:22Jocko Willink?

  You got a section in this part, hard work. Now that we choose to stay on track, it's time to put in the work. Here's where the tangible gains are made. Bottom line up front, good things come to those who work hard. Great things, however, come to those who are willing to do whatever it takes, to those who are willing to push themselves to a higher level. We're going a little beyond hard work. We're going for your Nick style.

• 4:15:49Jocko Willink?

  Structure. Our daily structure informs us of what are we, what we are doing and when. This is of course created based on many of the objective, secure considerations and requirements. And like any schedule, this provides us with some structure, a guide. And, and you got some, uh, cool examples of, of your freaking schedule and stuff in here. Um, I wanted to point this out, cost of ambition. We can quickly disregard those who genuinely don't want to see us succeed. They are irrelevant. So there's no associated cost. The haters of the world suffer from insecurity. They lack confidence. They look to tear down somebody rather than build themselves up because it's easier. They are weak. Ignore and move on. Easy.

• 4:16:37Jocko Willink?

  Our loved ones want our time because they love us in the onset. They are genuinely supportive of the goal, cheering us on any way possible. Then the realization sets in that in order to accomplish this mission, we are going to have to prioritize the task necessary to reach the objective along the way. This takes time, time that is spent elsewhere. There's gonna be some friction here.

• 4:16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Especially those that, you know, have spouses, kids. This is where, this is where this gets tough.

• 4:17:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. How old are your kids right now?

• 4:17:04Speaker 01

  Five and 16 months.

• 4:17:07Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. Freaking outstanding.

• 4:17:12Jocko Willink?

  Fear. They don't want to see us disappointed. Manage your expectations. Don't get your hopes out, up. This is out of love. Big goals are inherently a long shot. We, we have accepted the fact that there will always be failures along the way. We have accepted the fact that it's going to be painful. Resentment.

• 4:17:28Jocko Willink?

  It's always good to think about that resentment. Number one, to make sure that you're not getting caught up in it. Because this thing, it'll eat you alive, man. And the biblical story of Cain and Abel, I've talked about this a lot. Cain was so resentful of Abel that he literally killed his brother. Just literally killed him. His brother. Right? We use the term brother in the strongest bond we can possibly have with another human. And this guy killed his brother because he was resentful. So you gotta watch out for it yourself. And you've also gotta watch out for other people. When those around us see our drive, our work ethic, our dedication, they too may feel obligated to perform.

• 4:18:13Jocko Willink?

  Oftentimes, this is a positive chain reaction, accepted with gratitude and resulting in output. This may also, however, have a negative response. It is not a catalyst for performance. They can, they cannot refuse to reciprocate, which results in a feeling of laziness or lack of ambition. Similarly, some have also attempted to achieve the goal themselves and were defeated. Our success will affirm their inability to do the same. In both cases, rather than being a source of motivation, we can become a source of resentment.

• 4:18:42Jocko Willink?

  We must also be aware of the flip side of the same coin. When our ambition and determination are not reciprocated by those around us, our loved ones, it can result in our resentment towards them. You gotta watch out for that one.

• 4:18:54Speaker 01

  Sneaky. Sneaks up on you.

• 4:18:56Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's, uh... One of my buddies was trying to, Seth Stone was trying to go. He's like, "Hey, I wanna go to, I wanna go to, uh, Princeton." There was like a program to go to Princeton while you're in the SEAL teams. And he asked me like, "Hey, do you think I should go?" I was like, "Hell yeah, man." And he's like, "Well, some of the other guys are telling me, 'Don't go. It's not gonna be bad for my career.'" I was like, "Bro, how's it gonna be bad for your career to be a SEAL officer that went to freaking Princeton and has a degree in, uh, international policy?" But who said that? And I think it's the same thing. People just didn't want him to get that little, extra little thing going on in his life. A little resentment coming through.

• 4:19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe.

• 4:19:37Jocko Willink?

  Watch out for that one.

• 4:19:41Speaker 01

  Community, to put it bluntly, if we hang around with losers, we'll become a loser.

• 4:19:46Jocko Willink?

  That one's kind of speaks for itself.

• 4:19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the classic is you are the average of the five you spend the most time with, you know, which I don't think is like statistically accurate, but anecdotally and common sense wise, that makes sense to me.

• 4:20:00Jocko Willink?

  For sure, for sure. And by again, I'm, you've got all kinds of backing up data and stories and information to, to explain these things. I'm just trying to hit the high point so people know that when they get this book, they're going to get a legitimate guide on how to, how to live. Uh, consistency, unfortunately, it's easy, it's easy to be great for a day. Anybody can do it, but the other 364 days that make the difference, and this is truly the most challenging aspect of execution, consistency.

• 4:20:33Jocko Willink?

  That catches a lot of people off guard. Discipline, hard work and consistency. How can you stop someone who is willing to stay on track despite temptation, someone who's willing to sacrifice and put in hard work, someone who is willing to dedicate himself or herself on a daily basis? How can you stop someone who is willing to do whatever it takes? The answer is, you can't.

• 4:20:57Jocko Willink?

  Phase six, track. There's no reason to overcomplicate this one. It's simple. This is simply keeping track of what you are doing and how you are doing. It's a diary really for, for all my alpha tough guys out there. You will likely refer to this as a log. But that's all it is. We are logging our actions, what we're doing, how we're doing it. How, what's the oldest log? You got logs from your freaking college workouts?

• 4:21:20Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I go back decades.

• 4:21:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:21:23Speaker 01

  You know, yeah.

• 4:21:24Jocko Willink?

  Old school. Yeah, I've got some, I've got some old, old. I have the little write in the rain notebooks. And so I've got, that I just always track a workout in, and I've got probably, what is it, 2022?

• 4:21:40Jocko Willink?

  I might have fifteen years worth of I could pull up. I'm gonna have to check that one. I pulled. I had to pull it up. I we had a little situation unfold. A little situation. Well, we we uh we there was a guy that uh did a did a video about me being on steroids. And I've never done steroids. Um, and you know, he kind of broke down. He he had broken down like what we had said on this one particular video where we were. We were kind of just having fun and bullshitting back and forth and you know, talking about Echo's skinny knees. And.

• 4:22:20Jocko Willink?

  A lot of people thought that was funny.

• 4:22:24Jocko Willink?

  And anyways, you know, this guy, uh, his name, he's got a video, a thing called More Plates More Dates. Uh, good, good dude. His name is Derek. Anyways, he made a video and he just did like an assessment. I competed in jujitsu. I like he just did an assessment. It's like, oh yeah, he's probably on TRT and probably juiced at one time. And I just, we just made one back and said like, hey, no, actually I I haven't. And I I I realized that there was things that I said. That made him think, well, oh, Jaco says he can, you know, squat four oh five for twenty reps, which I kind of like. I don't know if I actually said, yeah, or ten reps or whatever it was, but I I'd said it bullshit with Echo on the podcast. It wasn't even a real podcast. We were just kind of like it was before.

• 4:23:08Jocko Willink?

  So it was that I said I worked out four times a day. Like there's some little clip where I'm like, oh, four times a day. And I had to clarify, well, what I mean is like, oh, on a good day, I lift, I run, I go to jujitsu and I surf. Those are all some physical, those are all tiring, right? But they're not like I I didn't do some crazy workouts. So anyways, um. While we were doing that, I kind of went back and just kind of reviewed.

• 4:23:34Jocko Willink?

  You know, just to get some real numbers out there where I said, hey, here's what here's an actual number. This is the time. So that's why that's like the last time, but I got just like stacks of these little notebooks, you know? But uh, journaling.

• 4:23:48Jocko Willink?

  You're talking about journaling over there, man.

• 4:23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 4:23:51Jocko Willink?

  Some alpha males are gonna get freaking distraught.

• 4:23:53Speaker 01

  That's why, that's why I talk about it as much as I do. Cause what are you gonna do? You gonna call me a bitch? With me, really, really? You know, that's not like ego talking. It's like, one, I don't care.

• 4:24:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:24:05Speaker 01

  And two, like, okay, good luck with that. But like journaling, logging is a huge part of my day to day. And I'm like, I'll scream that from the rooftops.

• 4:24:13Jocko Willink?

  And it's always good, like I, I, since I track my, since I write down, I can't, track is a strong word for me. But what I like about it is over time, if you're not careful, you can start to like let some things slide a little bit. You know, you're like, well, you know, I only really need to do this, or I only need to really do that, or what could I actually do? Well, this is good enough, I think. And I had, I had this conversation with a Burt Soren from Soren, actually, you know who I'm talking about? And I was like, man, there's exercises that I do just to make sure that I don't lose that capability. Like whatever it is, whatever that exercise is, muscle ups, like overhead squats. Like I had a hurt elbow for a year, man.

• 4:24:58Jocko Willink?

  I could not do an overhead squat, couldn't do it. Maybe it wasn't a year, but you know, in my little logbook, it says elbow still hurt. You know what I mean? Can't do overhead squats. So I know what's going on. I know why I'm not doing it. Um, those little things to put in there. Do you use any of like the electronic tracking devices of your sleep or your whatever?

• 4:25:21Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:25:21Jocko Willink?

  Not yet?

• 4:25:22Speaker 01

  No, not yet. I mean, the technology seems to make a lot of sense.

• 4:25:28Speaker 01

  I haven't, I haven't found a gap yet where I may need to know that I got six point one, two, five hours of sleep at seventy-five percent efficiency. Like I, I think, I don't know what difference it would make. Like it's time to get up. Period. So that's it. My watch says I only got, you know, 40% quality sweets. It's like, doesn't matter.

• 4:25:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Actually, I was talking to JP and he said, so he was doing, my buddy JP. And he said that he started sort of his attitude would adjust based on what is, he stopped wearing it. Cause it's, it would say, oh, you need more rest. And he'd be like, oh, this workout's good. And he, and he said, he took it off, bro. He was like, I'm not doing this. Cause it doesn't matter. Like you just said, hey, I'm up. This is the workout I have to do. I'm gonna go do it. When you see, hey, you're only at 27% recovery. Man, come on.

• 4:26:21Speaker 01

  Start to feel it.

• 4:26:25Jocko Willink?

  Uh, phase seven, assess.

• 4:26:29Jocko Willink?

  This is where we analyze the state of our situation and identify areas of progress, stagnation and/or regression. Again, how often are we going through life without actually assessing where we're at? What's going on? What's our status? What adjustments do we need to make? Like, this seems so obvious, but guaranteed, guaranteed. I would actually say most people aren't assessing where they're at. Maybe they do it. Oh, you know, when they do it is, uh, what's the new, the new year, right? The new year.

• 4:27:04Speaker 01

  The resolution.

• 4:27:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. They're like, hey, you know, I, I need to do this now. But this is something you should be doing all the time. Where are you at? I used to tell the, I used to trick though, when I taught, uh, the young junior officers. One of the little tricks I would play them, I'd say, what's the most important piece of information that you need on the battlefield? And they would be like, where the enemy is, how many weapons they have, how many there are. And I'd be like, no, the most important thing you need to know is where you are. So that's what that's about. Assessment. Where are you at? So you can make changes to your course and get it corrected.

• 4:27:38Speaker 01

  Honesty is what's critical with this, which a lot of us struggle with, man. Especially with social media, like what people project oftentimes isn't real. And you get so conditioned to projecting this facade that you believe it yourself.

• 4:27:56Jocko Willink?

  That's gonna hurt. In order for this to have any kind of significance or value, you need to have that eternal no shit dialogue where you can be honest with yourself. Like where am I currently at? Forget about my last Instagram post, which has seventeen filters on it. I took fifty-seven different attempts for the perfect angle. Forget that. And your caption, that was very enlightening, I'm sure. Forget that. Look yourself in the mirror. Like what is my current status? And be honest with yourself. If you're gonna bullshit yourself, then forget about all this. It's not gonna matter.

• 4:28:28Jocko Willink?

  It's one thing that's nice about jujitsu. You can't bullshit your partner. You can't. It doesn't work. This just doesn't work. That's another reason for me. Like I have those logbooks in my workouts so I can say, man, you know what? I don't really need to do that. Oh, wait a second. Let me look at what I, see what I was doing two years ago. Oh, I was actually doing this many reps or this many sets or whatever. And that's what it, oh. It keeps me, keeps me honest, actually. Absolutely.

• 4:29:00Jocko Willink?

  Phase eight, repeat. Has the goal changed? If the answer is yes, then repeat the process. That means go all the way back to the beginning and do this assessment again. If the answer is no, repeat the process with specific and intentional adjustments based on the identified lags or deficiencies. Boom. Execute. Back to work. Move out. Continue to gather the data. Stay the course. Trust the process. We cannot make brash decisions. Odds are there are variables within our equation that are working. The only way to determine what is creating positive effects is through small incremental adjustments over time. It's hard. This separates the average from the greats. If it were easy, everybody would do it. Repeat, repeat, repeat. The process does not stop.

• 4:29:45Jocko Willink?

  Focus. It is worth it.

• 4:29:50Jocko Willink?

  So again, those were the highlights to this, uh, this guide, this, this methodology. The sort of military, the military planning wrapped around what you could use for everyday life. Freaking legit, man.

• 4:30:10Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 4:30:11Jocko Willink?

  Freaking legit.

• 4:30:12Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 4:30:13Jocko Willink?

  Um, so that's kind of, that kind of gets us up to speed, right? How, how many years you been in the army for right now?

• 4:30:20Speaker 01

  Fifteen.

• 4:30:23Jocko Willink?

  I guess you're gonna stay for twenty?

• 4:30:25Speaker 01

  At this point, man, yeah. It would have to take something real convincing to get me out of here.

• 4:30:30Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what the hell would get you out of here at this point.

• 4:30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:30:34Jocko Willink?

  Um, you got any, are you starting to look at what you might do after the military?

• 4:30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I mean, it's, I'm gonna continue to write because again, I found out that I actually enjoy it. So I got a few projects I kind of work on.

• 4:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Well, you did spend seven years in college, so you got some, you got some experience at it. Got some lessons learned.

• 4:30:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit. Um, so continue to write because I enjoy it. Um, and then I'm not working for anybody else ever again. After, after twenty years, I'll work with a lot of people, but I'm gonna choose who I work with. But the days of people telling me what to do will be over. Once I get that DD two fourteen in my hands. So I see myself doing, you know, consulting, um, speaking, workshops, seminar type stuff. And, you know, I got a small crew around me now that are, that are in line with that, you know, successful buddies of mine and some family that are, that are doing well in life, but feel unfulfilled.

• 4:31:40Speaker 01

  You know, called my buddies, you know, they work for like Salesforce and they make a ton of cash. They live in Manhattan. wildly successful but it's like do I want to look back on my deathbed at eighty and been like I sold a lot of software and I had I had a really nice house or do I want to do something sink my teeth into something that I'm proud of it gives me some fulfillment so just turning that into a from what is now a nights and weekends kind of side thing to just what I do full time

• 4:32:09Jocko Willink?

  where will you raise your family once you get out

• 4:32:12Speaker 01

  it's a good question my wife and I are having this conversation right now

• 4:32:17Speaker 01

  I would like to go back up north

• 4:32:21Speaker 01

  but I want land as well so I'd like to be able to live ideal for me maybe is like western or central mass where I can get my family because it's all about what culture do I want to raise my kids in that's the conversation her and I are having you know I think that there's a lot of value I grew up in more of an urban environment where there's the the edgy fast thinking wittiness that comes the expression is with New York if you can make it here you can make it anywhere because it's tough you take someone from that environment that culture put them into a much slower environment like Tennessee where I'm at now yeah they'll probably be frustrated because things are moving at a slower pace but they're gonna do well because they can move fast and talk fast and think fast where if you take someone who grew up in some you know backwoods

• 4:33:05Speaker 01

  area and through them in Manhattan they're just overwhelmed by events so I'd like to be able to give my my kids a taste of that high tempo environment but I don't want necessarily like live in that environment

• 4:33:18Jocko Willink?

  yeah I think there's I think there's a good if you can get somehow get both those get your kids in both those environments where they spend some time where they're like in the city scenario and they spend some times where they're out in the country scenario because you know you also have those kids that like they're out in the field and there's like a rattlesnake and they just like grab a stick you know hold the things head down pick it up swing it up against the tree and kill it you know you're like that's pretty legit

• 4:33:45Speaker 01

  absolutely

• 4:33:46Jocko Willink?

  so you get you can and you can kids are their minds don't get developed even remotely to the capacity that they've got you know so if you can get a little bit of that both you know you get them in the city sometimes where they're comfortable with that you get them in the country sometimes where they're comfortable with that I think that, I think that's optimal, you know?

• 4:34:08Speaker 01

  Same thing, man. Got some space, you know, get a little range set up out there, some quiet, some lands, made TVs, some, you know, some hiking trails, do some outdoorsy stuff, but then, you know, I'm two and a half, three hours outside of Boston where I can go in.

• 4:34:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you need to, you might need to go to New Hampshire or Maine or something for that kind of scenario.

• 4:34:26Speaker 01

  I could see that.

• 4:34:26Jocko Willink?

  Cause I can't, I don't see you having a range anywhere in, in your backyard in Massachusetts. Is that even possible?

• 4:34:31Speaker 01

  Uh, legally, that might be, that might be tough. It'd be tough if you had the land, but that type of dynamic, I think is the goal for both of us.

• 4:34:42Jocko Willink?

  Right, right. But you gotta, you also have, man, you got some roots in Boston, man, where you want them to have, you want them to have a Boston accent?

• 4:34:52Speaker 01

  I try to indoctrinate them into that now, you know, and they, you know, my oldest is five. He doesn't have, like I'd say a Tennessee accent yet, but he uses some of the vernacular down there, you know, the y'all and the, and the whatever. And I'll, I'll correct him on how to pronounce words with an accent, you know, cause he's learning how to read and write and he's like, you know, C A I, he's like, you know, car, and I'm like, it's car.

• 4:35:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:35:16Speaker 01

  Say it again, car. He's like, no dad, it's, it's car. I'm like, negative. It's car. My wife is like, would you leave him alone?

• 4:35:24Jocko Willink?

  Where's your wife from originally?

• 4:35:25Speaker 01

  Milwaukee.

• 4:35:27Jocko Willink?

  They kind of have not much of an accent, right?

• 4:35:30Speaker 01

  It's kind of like a, like a.

• 4:35:31Jocko Willink?

  Chicago thing.

• 4:35:32Speaker 01

  It's a little Chicago. It's like, eh, don't you know, it's kind of like Minnesota.

• 4:35:36Jocko Willink?

  Minnesota thing.

• 4:35:36Speaker 01

  Southern Canada type thing. Hers isn't, isn't really that thick. Some of her family is.

• 4:35:43Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 4:35:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:35:44Jocko Willink?

  Uh, awesome, man. Um, I think that's probably a pretty good place. Echo Charles?

• 4:35:49Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 4:35:50Jocko Willink?

  You got any, uh, got any questions?

• 4:35:52Speaker 02

  Well, I was gonna ask about jujitsu, but we kind of talked about it, you know?

• 4:35:55Jocko Willink?

  What would you wanna ask?

• 4:35:56Speaker 02

  Cause you know, how's the training? What, uh, uh, when are you getting back to training? Cause your shoulder and stuff, right?

• 4:36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, I'm probably, probably another eight, nine weeks out before the docs will clear me from that and there'll be a slow progression back. But I'm not training jujitsu like I used to. Um, I did deprioritize it. Where I was real heavy into it and competing and like real aggressive and like enhancing my skill and my, my technical capacity. Now I get in there a couple of days a week just to, just to keep a finger on the pulse and enjoy it, kind of open mat style. And I help with the instruction of my, my son who's in jujitsu now as well.

• 4:36:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's kind of a natural progression for a lot of people, right? Especially when you get kids and you know, all this stuff, it's like you keep jujitsu, but you de-prioritize it a little bit. Yeah, that makes sense.

• 4:36:45Jocko Willink?

  How's your kid like jujitsu?

• 4:36:47Speaker 01

  He struggles with it a bit because it's, there's a lot of free time where they're trying to teach some real technical stuff and he doesn't do well when he's told to just sit there and like pay attention.

• 4:36:58Jocko Willink?

  He's five?

• 4:36:59Speaker 01

  He's five.

• 4:36:59Jocko Willink?

  I very seldom, because I taught kids classes for a long time.

• 4:37:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:37:04Jocko Willink?

  Including my own kids classes. Five is young, man. It's almost like when they're five, you should have a half an hour class because you just get them out there and keep it fun. They already know how to wrestle. Like it's, it's, it's a natural thing. So if you just say, put some rules around what they already know, some very basic rules, they'll have fun and the funner you can make it, man, the better off you're going to be. And you know, I, I'm sure you've heard me talk about this before, but like I pushed jujitsu too hard on my kids when they were younger, like competing. They trained seven days a week.

• 4:37:39Speaker 01

  That's a lot.

• 4:37:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Seven days a week. And we were just, I was just talking about with my kids the other day. It'd be like on Saturday, we'd get, we'd get to this gym at eight o'clock in the morning and like I would teach their striking class and then I'd bring them up and teach their jujitsu class and then I would train for two hours or two and a half hours. So they'd be here just in this gym, ages like five through eight, for like five, six hours, Saturday and Sunday.

• 4:38:11Speaker 01

  That's aggressive.

• 4:38:13Jocko Willink?

  It's not, uh, not the best protocol. I would have been, done a better job. Now, look, they're coming back to it. I mean, one of my daughters is like training, she's training more than that right now, you know, she's getting after it. Echo knows.

• 4:38:25Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 4:38:25Jocko Willink?

  Echo almost lost his arm to her the other day. She's getting hostile.

• 4:38:28Speaker 02

  Every time I come in here, she's here. No matter what time, by the way.

• 4:38:31Jocko Willink?

  How old is she? Twenty-one. Twenty-one. But she wrestled in high school and stuff. Like she's down for the cause, but um. But yeah, you can't get too, can't get too, you gotta let, you gotta make them love it.

• 4:38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we scaled it back. It was twice a week and now we're doing like one and then we brought in some gymnastics. And he does like this little CrossFit like kid class thing. It's just, it's just, there's more movement with those things, which is good for him.

• 4:38:55Jocko Willink?

  Well, this was the main point I want to make. My, uh, my son had a friend, cause I would like try and get every kid in the neighborhood to train jujitsu. And my son had a friend who, I brought him in when he was five, he hated it. I brought him in when he, like literally a year later, he was six, hated it. He was seven, hated it. He was eight, hated it. And finally, when he was like nine, all of a sudden it clicked and he was like, oh, I understand what all this means and what, what this could help me with. And it, you know, and he started training all the time. And it wasn't like he was then five years behind my son. You know what I mean? Like the kids are only going to learn so much and they can learn so rapidly that once they get engulfed in it, they'll catch up pretty quick.

• 4:39:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:39:34Jocko Willink?

  So you don't have to worry like, this is a wasted year. Go freaking full, go freaking full Nick Lavery on him like, you missed a training opportunity, son.

• 4:39:43Speaker 01

  Right. That's a good, that's actually a good point.

• 4:39:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Cause they'll be able to make up for it. And if they, if they're into it, man, that's worth, that's worth it. Um. Look, we can find you. People can find you, machine nick.com.

• 4:39:56Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 4:39:58Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you're, you have a YouTube channel. You have Instagram, which is Nick, at Nick dot machine dot Lavery. Lavery's L A V E R Y.

• 4:40:12Jocko Willink?

  Any closing thoughts, Nick?

• 4:40:16Speaker 01

  I appreciate the invitation, man. I, uh, you're in this book. You didn't, you didn't read the parts where I mentioned you.

• 4:40:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I, dude, I totally appreciate it. It feels weird, you know?

• 4:40:25Speaker 01

  I bet it does. No, it's fine. But just like a level of gratitude to the lessons I learned, uh, from you and from these works, you know, once I did realize that leadership is more, is a skill.

• 4:40:40Speaker 01

  Although some people may be genetically enhanced based on character traits, it's a skill that requires reps like anything else. And you were the first dude that I found, the first mentor I found when I realized that I had that gap and that there was a difference and I drove down that road. So a lot of my operational and personal successes are from your works and the way you message that. So I'm a fan, so it's an honor to be here and just spend some time with you, man. So I appreciate it.

• 4:41:12Jocko Willink?

  No, that's awesome. And you know, my last job in the SEAL Teams was running training. And there was, it was so rewarding. I kind of already mentioned it, but having guys come back from combat and say, hey, we got out of this situation because of what you taught us. And now having been doing this stuff, you know, the amount of feedback that I get like that, man, it's just, it feels good to pass that information on. And you're going to get the same feedback, you know, on your story, on the lessons you learned, on the methodology you put forth in your book. So I appreciate you taking that and running with it.

• 4:41:55Jocko Willink?

  And that's what we gotta do, you know? We gotta take care of the next generation. So I appreciate it, man. That means a lot. And yes, it was a little, I did purposely avoid the parts of the book.

• 4:42:07Speaker 01

  There you go. I just dimes out.

• 4:42:09Jocko Willink?

  But all good, man. I want to read one last thing, just because I think it closes out the message really solid from the book. "I was not genetically gifted with any astonishing talents. I don't come from a family of wealth. I make mistakes constantly. I lose focus. I procrastinate. I waste time. I feel pain. I experience fear. I bleed. I am not cut from a different cloth. I am not from another planet. I am a human, same as you, which means we have the ability to choose. It doesn't matter what we do for a living, how much money we have in the bank, the size of our house, the disability we live with, who we care for, who cares for us,

• 4:42:51Jocko Willink?

  the car we drive, if we have a car at all, how popular we are, or how much we can bench. It does not matter."

• 4:43:02Jocko Willink?

  We must simply decide. This is what I believe. This is who I am going to become. And I am willing to put it all on the line to achieve it.

• 4:43:19Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go, man.

• 4:43:22Jocko Willink?

  You're living proof of those words. Thanks for joining us, man. Thanks for sharing your, your story, your strategies for victory. And most important, thank you for your continued service and sacrifice. You set an example for all of us and the next generation that's coming up is going to be looking at you and knowing that they can get things done. And it's an example. You know, not just how to live. But how to live right. So, thanks, brother. I appreciate it, bro.

• 4:43:59Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Nick Laboring, the machine. Has left the building. Appropriate. Fully appropriate, right? Yes. You're no, you're not like, well, that's, no.

• 4:44:14Jocko Willink?

  What a freaking stud, man. In the, in the classic Hackworth sense of the word. You know what, Hackworth? Yeah, I know Hackworth. That's the way he describes, there's two categories of people.

• 4:44:28Jocko Willink?

  Studs and duds.

• 4:44:31Jocko Willink?

  Hopeless in the hard part. Like the most, the best thing he can describe, he goes, this guy was a stud. That's like his, his big, his big statement, but um, yeah, man. Nick, just amazing, uh, human. Out there crushing and what a beast, man. Like, here's a small point of contention. Which you just alluded to before you hit record. He says he has no, not genetically gifted. He's a little bit genetically gifted, right?

• 4:45:04Speaker 02

  I was gonna chime in, you were sounding good. I was like, wow.

• 4:45:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:45:08Speaker 02

  You are a monster.

• 4:45:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's a, he's a massive monster of a human being.

• 4:45:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then, but then I was thinking about that.

• 4:45:16Jocko Willink?

  When he was 300 pounds as a bouncer?

• 4:45:19Jocko Willink?

  How tall he say he was?

• 4:45:20Speaker 02

  6'5".

• 4:45:21Jocko Willink?

  6'5".

• 4:45:21Speaker 02

  Well, he said he shot up to 6'5". I was looking at him, I'm evaluating, I'm thinking 6'5", 6'6". That's what I'm thinking.

• 4:45:26Jocko Willink?

  Not a small human.

• 4:45:27Speaker 02

  No, giant.

• 4:45:30Jocko Willink?

  And you can get by, you can get by with that in life.

• 4:45:36Jocko Willink?

  But then you can go next level.

• 4:45:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he's not like a sloppy, like too, you know, even how big he is, he's not like, and I'm not saying all because it's, I'm not saying that. But there's a difference between just being big and sort of lurchy and maybe sloppy and like a 6'5" stud, as it were. See what I'm saying? And he was for sure that. So I can imagine him eating with a diet coach and all this stuff.

• 4:45:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I didn't do a good job. I didn't do a good job of capturing the fact of like the discipline that he imposes in his life to achieve these goals. Look, it kinda is clear that you have to, but you know, he's, you know, this, how many calories I'm eating at this time, this is what I'm doing here, this is the workout, this is the stretching, this is the mobility, this is the time. You know, 0 400 revelry, 0 428, you know, in the gym, 0 521 starting cardio, 0 610 first calorie intake, 700 via egg, you know, like that kind of thing.

• 4:46:34Speaker 02

  Bro, he said something, or the one part that really, I was like, bro, that's so true. If you can just remember that. Cause you know, he mentioned tunnel vision. At one point, he mentioned tunnel vision, right? About when he was just thinking about his own goals, kind of thing. And I was like, bro, I think that, that's like an asset, that tunnel vision, because that's really a big part of what discipline is, is not getting distracted by other stuff, including like your own feelings, right? So you guys, both of you guys are talking about like, when you wake up in the morning, you just do it.

• 4:47:01Jocko Willink?

  Just do it.

• 4:47:01Speaker 02

  You're not distracted about how you feel, how much sleep you may or may not have gotten, um, you know, the weather or all this stuff. You're just not distracted by that. You just sort of do it, right? So technically, distraction is kind of the main enemy of discipline. And he mentioned it, how it was like, I was just like tunnel vision, I was like, yeah, that is huh? If you can maintain tunnel vision and leverage that, bro, you can kind of do anything. And this is the part where I was like, bro, that's so true. I hope to remember this. In at times that'll benefit me where he was like he was talking about getting in and out of the the vehicle, right? Where he's like having trouble. So he's just practicing. He's like, if I can do this a thousand times.

• 4:47:38Jocko Willink?

  I'll be good.

• 4:47:39Speaker 02

  I'll be good, good to do. Yeah, I'll be good. And I was like, that's so true. And you know, and we know it like we know it, but it's like, okay, so you know these guys? Like, uh, what's the group, the acrobat group, like a Cirque du Soleil or something or you know, whatever?

• 4:47:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you called it.

• 4:47:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they do these things. You're like, how the heck can they just nail that? It's so precise or whatever. But then you think about it in those terms where if it's like, yeah, let me do this a thousand times. Let me do this 10,000 times. Let me do this. I mean, probably even more than that. Just do it that many times. And it's just so automatic, just like anything else you do, not anything else, but like a lot of stuff you already do as a human, like walking. Bro, you ever consider about what you, your body has to do to just stand up and walk? Like your little feet and all this stuff. So it's like, man, you just gotta put it into perspective. It's like, yeah, you just apply that to like kinda hard stuff. And probably you can do it, but you gotta maintain that tunnel vision though in a way.

• 4:48:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the tunnel vision you gotta watch out for, cause he got tunnel vision just focused on himself. But I, what I liked, the power, when he was like, oh, when it was about me, he was working hard. When he realized it was about his teammates and his teammates, kids and wives.

• 4:48:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:48:48Jocko Willink?

  He's like, I can get another fricking rep. Watch this. You know what I'm saying?

• 4:48:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:48:53Jocko Willink?

  So it, it, you know, you are much less likely to allow yourself to let your friend down than to let yourself down. You know, that's why people need a workout buddy, right?

• 4:49:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:49:06Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, are you gonna be there? Yeah, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be there. You don't wanna let your friend down, so you show up. They recommend that if you're having trouble getting it done. Get a workout buddy. So he had that like amplified times 1,000. Cause it's him wanting to be able to execute the job to take care of his teammates.

• 4:49:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:49:27Jocko Willink?

  That's what this is about. So freaking Nick, awesome. Uh, awesome guy, man, just an awesome guy. Hey, uh, look, no matter where you are in life, you know, you can do a little bit better. And Nick is, uh, Good example to all of us. You know, I could probably do a little bit better. Everything that I do, every single thing that I, Jocko Willink, do is a little bit easier for me because I got two freaking legs. Can you imagine jumping off a four foot thing in order to be able to do your job that you want to do? You jump off this four foot platform, you gotta land in a pistol with another random prosthetic leg sticking out?

• 4:50:07Speaker 02

  And stick the landing.

• 4:50:08Jocko Willink?

  And stick it.

• 4:50:09Speaker 02

  By the way, yeah.

• 4:50:10Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 4:50:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 4:50:12Jocko Willink?

  So what, you know, they said in the book, if you're around Nick, you have no excuses. Well, we're around Nick, man. Nick's out there. Think about that right now.

• 4:50:20Speaker 02

  That's so true.

• 4:50:20Jocko Willink?

  Nick's out there.

• 4:50:21Speaker 02

  So the pistol squat thing, sticking the landing, jumping off the four foot thing, sticking landing in a pistol squat, even if you're not that like impressed with that, what if you were six, five, freaking two, you know, two fifty in one leg though? See what I'm saying? Like you would have been two fifty, the equivalent of like a two fifty. See what I'm saying? Now do it. Way, way more impressive.

• 4:50:46Jocko Willink?

  So we're doing better. If you don't want to do better, you're gonna need to work. If you're gonna do work, you're gonna need to recover. If you're gonna need to recover, you need the right fuel. You need the right fuel to work sometimes. I'm on some fuel right now, some Jaco fuel. I drink some go. It feels good. I feel good. So jacofuel.com, you can get some fuel.

• 4:51:07Speaker 02

  Supplementation.

• 4:51:08Jocko Willink?

  Supplementation. You can get mulk. You can get joint warfare. Go read the reviews on joint warfare and then press click order because it makes you feel good.

• 4:51:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, way better. I had a jujitsu sesh that was slightly more intense than maybe I was used to or whatever. No, no problem, but my elbow and shoulder. So I had to double up the joint warfare. It's a good move. Hey, that's my life, man.

• 4:51:34Jocko Willink?

  Energy drinks, which we use the term in its own category, separate from the poison that you may have been drinking. This is energy drinks that are good for you, actually give you energy, and now they taste good. They may not have tasted, they might have been not, they may not have been to your liking before. Now they will be. We fixed it. We took input. We're not over here like, no, no, we took input, wanted to taste better, now it tastes better. Now it tastes freaking delicious. So we're up there, uh, jockofuel.com, you can get the drinks at Wawa, you can get the stuff at Vitamin Shoppe, you can get it at ETB. I owe everyone a list of where you can shop for this stuff. I'll get it out there. I'm sorry, jockofuel.com, go get some, originusa.com. We didn't even talk really too much with Nick about jiu-jitsu.

• 4:52:20Jocko Willink?

  But he did, he did talk about how jiu-jitsu was like a huge part of his recovery and what he did. You should be doing jiu-jitsu and you may, you may have previous to this podcast had some kind of an excuse.

• 4:52:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:52:32Jocko Willink?

  As to why you couldn't train, cause you have this and you have that and you have the other thing. So you don't have an excuse anymore. Nick was a white belt.

• 4:52:42Jocko Willink?

  He, he didn't have, he doesn't have a leg and he got his black belt.

• 4:52:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and competed by the way.

• 4:52:47Jocko Willink?

  And, and competed.

• 4:52:48Speaker 02

  So, yeah, yeah. And that, and

• 4:52:50Jocko Willink?

  So come on.

• 4:52:50Speaker 02

  There's a, as far as like, you know, you want to go hard into jiu-jitsu, there's different levels, which to me are a hundred percent, well, all of them are a hundred percent acceptable. If you just want to train recreationally, you just, you want to train and go hard and see, you know, and for your rank or whatever, or you want to train to be a competitor. No, they're all, all legitimate.

• 4:53:12Jocko Willink?

  All viable.

• 4:53:13Speaker 02

  All viable. You do them all. It takes a lot more to do them all. You see what I'm saying? And this motherfucker did it all. So you are correct. There is no excuse.

• 4:53:23Jocko Willink?

  Yep, we have no excuses. So train jiu-jitsu, originusa.com. Get yourself an American-made gi. And while you're there, get yourself some American-made jeans, get yourself some hunt gear. We've got some good hunting gear coming out. We're gonna sell it all. Um, we're gonna make as much as we can. Next year we'll make even more. The pieces are freaking great. So, originusa.com, support America.

• 4:53:49Jocko Willink?

  And support yourself by getting awesome stuff. And don't forget that we have a store. What's that store called?

• 4:53:53Speaker 02

  Jocko Store.

• 4:53:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there you go.

• 4:53:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, just like Jocko Podcast, Jocko Store, same thing.

• 4:53:58Jocko Willink?

  Just like Jocko Fuel.

• 4:54:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's true. Yep. Yeah. You want to represent on this path? Varying levels of representation available, by the way. But yeah, we've got some new stuff on there. Discipline equals freedom, standard issue shirts.

• 4:54:12Jocko Willink?

  I wore one yesterday.

• 4:54:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you were representing hard. It was impressive. But yeah, if you like some stuff, get some stuff. There's something called the Shirt Locker, if you didn't know, is what it is. Subscription service shirt.

• 4:54:23Jocko Willink?

  Even I have to admit, at this time, currently, I'm looking at your shirt, which is a Shirt Locker shirt.

• 4:54:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:54:30Jocko Willink?

  And I must say, it is, it's squared away.

• 4:54:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, pretty solid.

• 4:54:34Jocko Willink?

  It's nicely done, man.

• 4:54:35Speaker 02

  This one is one of the, there's like six shirts that are kind of the crowd favorites that everyone kind of like asks about. This is one of them. Yes, sir.

• 4:54:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a good one.

• 4:54:43Speaker 02

  But yeah, a lot of good stuff on there. But yeah, jockostore.com.

• 4:54:46Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe to the podcast. Go to jockounderground.com. We've been, we just, we just recorded a couple of those. We have our own little platform, just in case things go totally sideways. We don't control the platform that you're listening to us on right now, unless you're on jockounderground.com, which in which case, we're all good. But they could shut us down, they could stuff. There's people, there's some of these platforms stick advertisements into the middle of our podcast. Did you know that?

• 4:55:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 4:55:15Jocko Willink?

  They just insert, they just insert a damn commercial.

• 4:55:21Speaker 02

  Oh, for real? Thanks.

• 4:55:21Jocko Willink?

  So we're in here talking about wars, talking about combat, talking about loss of lives and go, oh, here's an advertising campaign. So we don't like that. jockounderground.com, there are no freaking commercials on there. Uh, eight dollars and eighteen cents a month. If you can't afford it, it's okay. Email [email protected]. We can get you hooked up. We just, we just want to make sure that we can continue to do what we want to do with freedom. Uh, YouTube channel, Psychological Warfare. That's a little MP3 thing, which we owe another one, which I've been thinking about, actually. So that might come to fruition. Flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer out there getting after it, books, Nick Lavery.

• 4:56:04Jocko Willink?

  Objective secure. Just go on to Amazon and order it right now. It's a little guidebook on how to live your life. Check it out. Only Cry for the Living by Holly McKay, who risked her life to write a book. By some miracle, she made it out of Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan, and she interviewed all kinds of people on all sides of the conflict. If you want to know about it, go get that book. She's been on the podcast a couple of times. I've written a bunch of other books. Check those out. Echelon Front, echelonfront.com. It's a leadership consultancy. We talk about leadership. We teach leadership. Go to echelonfront.com if you need help with

• 4:56:45Jocko Willink?

  leadership. And if you don't think you need help, it's your first indicator that you need help with leadership. We also have the online training academy, just like jujitsu. You've got to keep training. You've got to do it every day. Extremeownership.com. Check out the Extreme Ownership Academy. And also, from the charity perspective, if you want to help out veterans, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. And if you want to help out, or you want to donate, you can go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, check out Micah Fink's organization. He's a SEAL. He's taken veterans into the

• 4:57:24Jocko Willink?

  wilderness and repairing their soul. Actually, they're repairing their own soul. He's facilitating, I guess I would say. HeroesAndHorses.org. Once again, if you want to check out NickMachineNick.com, you can find him there. NickMachineLavery on Instagram. So it's nick-machine-lavery. And he's got a YouTube channel as well. He said he's going to start putting out more YouTube stuff, so check that out. And then, of course, for Echo and me, we're on the Twitter, or on the Gram, or on the Facebook.

• 4:58:03Jocko Willink?

  Echoes at Echo Charles, I'm at Jocko Willink. And, and when you go in there, watch out because the algorithm is going to try and grab you by the throat. And thanks to all the military out there for risking your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for us. And a salute to all the wounded vets. Whose sacrifice is continuous. Every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every year. We thank you for your sacrifice and of course, thanks to Nick for coming out. For sharing his story with us and thanks to Nick for teaching us a better way to live.

• 4:58:46Jocko Willink?

  And also thank you to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret Service, all first responders. Thank you for your sacrifice to keep us safe here at home. And everybody else out there. Just remember what Nick had to say when he's talking about the fact in his book that he's not from a rich family. He's not genetically gifted, which that's a little bit of contention behind that. But, listen, we know this. He's now been physically put into a situation where it certainly was not a gift.

• 4:59:28Jocko Willink?

  So he's in a situation right now that's more challenging than most of us have. And he makes mistakes and he feels pain like everybody else. But none of that matters. None of that matters. He's not complaining about any of it. What matters is that we simply must decide what we're going to do and who we're going to be. So go make that decision and then get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.