405: All on The Field and None in The Tank. Battles, Bullets, and Lessons with Ret. Navy SEAL, Jimmy May.

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Retired Navy SEAL, Jimmy May discusses The Battle of Ramadi, and his SEAL career. Also his Non Profit, Beyond The Brotherhood. 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 405 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  The enemy rounds continued hitting the wall and edges of the rooftop. Michael had taken the bulk of the blast and shrapnel. His wounds were many and grievous.

• 0:21Jocko Willink?

  With enemy gunfire increasing, Benny knew that if he didn't get back on a gun, none of them were going to make it off of the roof.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  He did not want to leave Michael's side, but this was the only thing left that he could do. Benny grabbed Michael's Mark 48 and went to work. He sent long, continuous outbursts back at the enemy. The pain from his wounds faded into rage. By this point, the Iraqi scouts had made their way back onto the rooftop and began to help Benny with the fight guided by Doug and Mike S. The rooftop was taking heavy fire from multiple enemy automatic weapons.

• 1:04Jocko Willink?

  Seth, you guys need to get here fast. Doug and I are hurt bad and Mikey is down hard. Mike S. called into the radio. He did not know that Seth and his team were already on the way to reach their position. Got you. We're coming. Hang in there guys. The Bradleys are on their way. Seth called back in response. Seth's element had heard and seen the two blasts from their overwatch position and were already moving when the call for help came in.

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  The men urgently picked up the pace when they heard the amount of enemy automatic weapon fire that their friends were receiving.

• 1:44Jocko Willink?

  They broke out from the main entrance and headed west. Initially, all was quiet at their position, but within 15 seconds of hitting the street, all hell broke loose. Enemy rounds snapped and skipped around them. They moved from cover to cover, returning fire as they closed the distance to the other overwatch position.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  Suddenly, a SEAL from the other element burst onto the roof and headed over to Doug, Mike S., and Michael. He was followed by Seth and the other SEALs. One of the strongest SEALs grabbed Michael and hoisted him onto his back. Seth grabbed Doug, and the other, the others took Mike S. They could hear the 25mm autocannons of the Bradley Fighting Vehicles begin to fire, effectively suppressing the enemy and providing cover for the SEALs to load their wounded. When the wounded SEALs arrived back at Camp Corregidor, they saw the men from the 1st of the 506 lined up waiting to support wherever they could.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  Another testament to the bond that the two units shared. Doug, Mike S., and Michael were loaded onto stretchers and brought into the aid station on the camp. Doug and Mike S. were given shots of morphine, and for the first time since the grenade explosion, they finally had reprieve from the piercing physical pain. The reprieve, however, was short-lived. The atmosphere in the room shifted, the mood had darkened, and the two men could feel it. Then they overheard the nurse say it.

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  Michael was gone. In that sobering moment, they became aware of what Michael had given them. He had freely exchanged his life for theirs. It was September 29th, the Feast of Saint Michael, the Archangel, the protector and guide of warfighters since time immemorial, and whom Michael had been named after 25 years earlier.

• 4:08Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from the book, "Defend Us in Battle: The True Story of Medal of Honor Recipient Michael A. Monsour", which was written by George Monsour, Michael's father. And it was an honor to have George on the podcast, number 359, to share the story of his son, Mikey, who was part of SEAL Team 3, tasking a bruiser when he jumped on a grenade to absorb the blast and save three of our other teammates, three of our other friends, three of our other brothers.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  And the strong SEAL who grabbed Michael and hoisted him onto his back to carry him out to the Bradleys was another teammate and another friend of mine, another brother named Jimmy May.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  And Jimmy served for over 22 years in the Navy, most of that time, 20-plus years as a SEAL.

• 5:12Jocko Willink?

  He led troops in combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He led training. He's a jiu-jitsu practitioner. He attended Harvard Business School. And he's been a friend of mine since the day we met in Ramadi, which happened to be on August 2nd, 2006, the day that Mark Lee was killed.

• 5:33Jocko Willink?

  And it's an honor to have Jimmy with us here tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned. Jimmy, thanks for coming by, man.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. And you jumped right into the heavy stuff. We're not going to mess around. All right.

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I mean, that's obviously a day we'll never forget and something that the more people know and understand and recognize and remember, the better off we'll all be. So.

• 6:05Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure we'll get there. We'll, we'll talk about that day.

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  But let's, let's, let's talk about how we got there and how we got here today. Let's talk about you, where you came from. Let's start at the beginning. So what? Texas kid.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, Texas, but El Paso. So it's kind of like right on the border. It's very much. I mean, the Mexican influence is all over the place. I spoke a lot of Spanish growing up. I had nicknames like Guero or Leche or anything else that means white. And, you know, I still to this day feel very comfortable in that Latin culture. You know, I spent a lot of time in Mexico, working, playing, surfing.

• 6:41Jocko Willink?

  Do you still speak? Do you speak Spanish?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  I speak it. Okay. I speak Spanglish. I would never do it here on, because I probably say a lot of bad words and I'm not supposed to say, because I didn't learn it in the classroom. You know what I mean? You know how that goes. Yeah.

• 6:52Jocko Willink?

  So what were your, what were your mom and dad doing growing up?

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Uh, I didn't see my dad much because my dad had three jobs. He worked at Gibson's, which is like a Vons or something like that. And he worked at 7-Eleven. And then he, my uncle lived with us too. He worked at, you know, Pizza Hut. We were, I mean, probably below poverty family for most of the time. You know, my mom, she worked too. And as I got older, they ended up, my mom went to college because they're like, we gotta do better than this, you know? And so my mom went to college and when I went to high school, they both finished, but I was mostly lower middle class for my life. And then I didn't know what to do when I got out of high school. During high school, I was a wrestler, football player. And then I just never thought, I thought college is for rich kids. I never thought I could go.

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  How good of a wrestler were you?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  I was decent. I, I took fifth in the state of Texas my senior year. But you know, the guys are going to really win. They all come from Iowa, those midwestern, like good grindy states. You know what I mean? Those guys are, they start early and they're a cut above, at least at that time.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  And what about football?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Football was decent. Uh, I played a lot, but I wasn't going to go to college on it. I'm a little fella, you know, I'm not as big as you guys walking around. But I played, you know, cornerback and then wingback. So I, I was in and out as a receiver and then I returned punts and kicks. I was relatively fast.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Back then.

• 8:09Jocko Willink?

  What about school? Did you pay attention in school? Did you try in school?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  No, I didn't try at all. I I just I was like, I'll just enlist in the military like the rest of my family did. Almost, I think, at that point, every adult male had been in the military. Most of them thrown out for something. A lot of them got in trouble. But I was just gonna enlist.

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  Had your dad been in the military?

• 8:26Speaker 01

  My dad was a Hawk missile tech in the army. And he got out. He didn't say much about it, but I do remember like, you know, my dad died. All the things he did, I didn't know much about his armor service. On this tombstone, it said US Army. And it had the dates he served. I'm like, that's interesting. Of all the things, it has his army service on his tombstone. I don't know. It just kinda was interesting to me.

• 8:47Jocko Willink?

  So so you're growing up, your parents are working all the time. Did you have brothers, sisters?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got a younger sister. And I got a younger brother, so my sister's two years younger than my brother's. He's five years younger than I am.

• 8:59Jocko Willink?

  And were you kinda like the man of the house then a bunch with their if they were working all the time?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  I was kind of a I kinda picked on him a lot, I gotta say. Like, I was kinda like the quintessential big brother, like, tying him up and doing stuff and messing with him, you know, like letting the spit drop right by there and suck it back up, you know? I I kinda picked on him a lot. We're pretty close now, though, I'm happy to say. You know, my brother's started no college, started his super successful cell phone tower business. He puts light bulbs on cell towers. He's crushing it. And then my sister, she's a teacher. She's just and she works for me now. Actually, we've made it executive. I I I pay her to do all the things I don't know how to do, and she's awesome. Trust lowers the cost of transaction. She's got my social, my credit cards and everything. You know what? Take it. And I just trust her. She pays her own. I don't even pay attention to it. She takes the money. She set a website for me. I really haven't seen it. I don't deal with it, so.

• 9:49Jocko Willink?

  So you're you're growing up in El Paso. And basically, it's a bunch of I've been to El Paso. It's like, like you said, it's a huge Mexican community. Are you getting into trouble? Are you staying out of trouble? What was keeping you from? Like getting in a lot of trouble.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I got in, I should have been in more trouble. I used to go, I rode the rodeo for a little bit. I rode bulls walking around there and then I also used to go, I'd go to Juarez, which is like the sister city of El Paso in Mexico. Cause you could drink down there and then I'd actually box some smokers down there sometimes. And uh, just did all sorts of stuff that my family was pretty appalled at. And uh, that was really hard to control because me and my dad kind of had it out at when I was about sixteen, seventeen. And we really didn't talk much until I left again for the Navy. It was a, it was a really tensioned relationship.

• 10:34Jocko Willink?

  Was he trying to like, control you and you didn't like that?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  He was super controlling, but I'm also kind of hard to control. You work with me, you know? Uh, it's, I, I had my own attitude and my dad, he trying to, he tried to control it by intimidation. But I was a wrestler, football player after about sixteen, you can't do that anymore, you know? You probably should have do it a different way and we got frustrated with me and, you know, we didn't talk much, but you know, he, he's, he's dead now. He died of cancer when I was, when I was finishing BUDS, but he really turned it around, I have to say. You know, his last two years, he saw the writing on the wall and he, you know, swallowed some jagged pills and, you know, really manned up and became a pretty awesome person. So I'm, I'm happy to say he, he figured it out.

• 11:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, your kids are, if you try and, your kids are gonna rebel at some level. And the more you try and control them, the harder they're gonna rebel, the worse it's gonna be. And by the way, like you just mentioned, like, oh, you know, I'm hard to control. I, I, I work for you, but like, I never felt like that with you. I never felt like any.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  I didn't feel like you were controlling me.

• 11:33Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  You kind of like gave me a direction and you'd look at me and like, hey, that's a bad call and you explained to me why and then I, you didn't control me. I don't, I never felt like a jock was bullying me right now, you know?

• 11:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Except on the mat.

• 11:46Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, it's a good perspective to have, you know, especially from that kid, when you're raising kids. Like if you're gonna try and get them to do exactly what it is you want them to do. There's a decent chance they're gonna kind of say, no, I'm not doing that. And they're probably gonna go harder. And it's the same thing, not just with kids, it's the same thing like, you know, with, with your people that work, if you're in a leadership position, people that work for you. You can do the same thing. You can piss them off as well. And you be super controlling and, but you might think, well, but my way really is better. And great, your way really is better. Now you got a bunch of people that don't want to work for you. They're not gonna give it the full effort. You're not gonna see everything because you're down there trying to control everything that's going on. So just.

• 12:27Jocko Willink?

  Just don't be a micromanager as a parent or as a leader. That's my recommendation.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then you also, I remember one time I was so vivid. I came back from an op and we were doing something and you were like, where were you? And I couldn't find the spot. We were on the map. Dude, I never felt so embarrassed in my entire life. You're like, no, no, show me. I'm like, well, and we're over in Eastern. You're like, well, show me on the map because I want to hear it. And you knew, you knew that I didn't know where we were. And I was so embarrassed into this day, man, like we used to hike across the Grand Canyon. I had a map out every stop because it was so ingrained in me. I was like, I cannot believe how embarrassed I was for that.

• 13:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that knowing where you are. And that's something that when I was a young SEAL, uh, we, when I was going through SEAL tactical training, which was what became SQT and it just was with the like 20 guys, 20 new guys at SEAL Team One. And we would go out on patrol and do every different position. And you know, like one time I was rear security and then I was rear security for four hours. You have no idea where you are. And it's, it was so frustrating to me because when I was a, when I was a communications guy, I would be close enough to like the officer and the point man to be like looking at their map, looking on them, you know, like see where we're at. But no one else in the platoon would know where we were.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  And that was before GPS.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And you've got to stop and mean, meaningfully take out your map and spread it out and put your red lens low to the ground and all those things. It's a pain.

• 13:50Jocko Willink?

  So when I became an officer, I would always do my absolute best to make sure everyone knew that where we were. And then also when I was in E5 and I was now teaching at SEAL Team One and I would have these officers that didn't know where they were.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:04Jocko Willink?

  And I would be like, you know, I'd, I'd break out my map and be like, hey, you know, where are you? If they didn't know, I would just like try and explain to them. If you don't know where you are, you can't call for fire support. You can't call for an extract. You can't do anything. You can't, you can't even really navigate to anywhere because you don't even know where you are. So yes, if I probably detected that you might not have known exactly where you are.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Oh, I knew it too. And I was trying to get out of there. I was trying to get out of that office and you weren't having it until I clearly explained that I couldn't tell you exactly where I was.

• 14:39Jocko Willink?

  All right on. Um, all right. So. Seems like life in El Paso was looking like a little bit of a dead end, but you're like, cool, I'm gonna join the military, no factor.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't know what I was gonna do, so I went, I took a test and I did super well on the ASVAB. I'm not a super academic guy. I end up getting like a 99, what I think is the top. So you can do whatever you want. And so we used to do nuclear power, you get automatic E3 and you'll be E4 after nine months. I'm like, that sounds like, I wanna make some money. And so I went into nuclear power.

• 15:07Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any idea what was going on?

• 15:10Speaker 01

  No, I had no clue. I didn't even know why I joined the Navy.

• 15:14Jocko Willink?

  Just FYI, the nuclear power program in the, for an enlisted guy in the military, in the Navy, is a really hard program and it's a really hard job. It's a very technical, hard, like down in the freaking engine rooms on a nuclear aircraft carrier or a submarine, nuclear sub, like it is a freaking hard job. And the, there's no margin for error. Like, it's a really tough training program and it's a tough job. So they just signed you up, like, hey, you'll make E3 and you're like, yo, sounds good.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  I think they get bonus for like signing nukes. I think it's like, hey, we can get a nuke in here. And so I got to boot camp. I did real well at boot camp. I got, you know, I was like the Navy League guy and I was the honor recruiter in boot camp. And I'm like, oh, maybe this, but I just, I just didn't like it. I'm like, okay, so I get to nuclear power school. That was pretty hard. I had to study a lot. You know me, you guys would call me coconut, not smart, hard. Yeah, anyway. And so I get there and I studied hard. I mean, it was hard, but I had like a 3.1 GPA. I worked real hard. And I didn't like it, though I could tell this isn't for me, you know. And one day I was coming back, I finished nuclear power school, and then you go to this thing called prototype, where you like practice running a nuclear reactor. And this lady's car broke down the side of the road. I was

• 16:32Speaker 01

  coming back from Daytona Beach and I pulled over. It's not that hard to fix. It was like the radiator gasket between the upper radiator hose and the intake manifold. Not a big deal. Scraped it, bought a little cut a gasket at Autozone, put it on there for her. She's like, hey, man, can I give you some money for this? And she gave me 30 bucks for pizza, which I thought was fair, you know. So I took it. It was the CEO's wife. And, you know, that Thursday, we're, I'm, I'm like, I snuck my book into the, to the assembly, because no one's talked to me. I'm a stupid student. I'm just trying to study, because I studied a lot.

• 17:03Jocko Willink?

  Wait, which assembly is this?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  It was like this, so they had an assembly on Thursdays when the CO would address everybody like, hey, students. It's like.

• 17:11Jocko Willink?

  Like an all hands call?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, all hands call, correct. And, uh, and they're like, we're gonna call Jimmy May up here, or James May. Seaman, what was I, Seaman, Seaman May. Yeah. I'm like, and someone's like, hey, they're calling you. I'm like, there's no way they're calling me. No, they're calling you. I get up there and the lady walks out and the captain, and I'm like, hey, I recognize you. And the captain's like, yeah, this is my wife. He's like, hey, thank you. And he gave me a little letter of like nicety or something. I don't know what they call it. The opposite of a reprimand. It was like a good thing, but, but it's not quite big enough to like, wear a ribbon with. Whatever that middle ground is. And then he's like, if I can ever help you, let me know. I was like, well, I gotta, I gotta officer package him. But it's not going well because my SATs aren't that good. I'm like an 1100 guy. And they're like, give it to me.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Boom. Turn around. Next thing you know, I'm going to Texas A&M. So.

• 18:02Jocko Willink?

  Dang dudes.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:04Jocko Willink?

  All right. So now it's going to Texas A&M, but you're going as a E3 or something?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Well, I went in there and they wanted me to go into the Corps of Cadets. And, you know, I really had a problem with it. Cause you show up and these guys are yelling at me about military stuff and none of them been in the military. You know, they're a year ahead of you and they're supposed to be yelling. And I was over it. I'm like, are you kidding me? I was such a problem child to my upperclassmen because I just, I mean, I had a job because I had a daughter in college and I had to make money. And I remember I came back from work one night and they had tore up my room. Oh, so mad. I'm like, who did this? And I'm not going to say their names because I still remember their names. And I, I went in the room and I told, I pulled their racks over and tore up their room. I was so pissed. And then, uh, and then it was interesting. They weren't sure what to do with me.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  And I end up eventually getting thrown out of the. Corps Cadets for something.

• 18:56Jocko Willink?

  And the Corps Cadets at, at there is like ROTC basically? Is that what it is?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Well, it's a, if, when I was there, there was like 2,000 people there, but only 10% go in the military. So a lot of them, it's almost like a military-esque kind of a club thing. But, uh, you know, they do a lot of leadership training and stuff and it's got a really good history. I'm not going to like talk about, about the Corps Cadets. It just, I just had a real hard time getting yelled at about military stuff that people had in the military. And I'm like, you know, actually, uh, Mike S. from the book was there at the same time I was.

• 19:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right on.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And he didn't even play the game at all. He like, he's, he's like, I've been a Marine, I'm going, I'm moving off campus. But he was smarter than I was. It took me a couple of years before they had enough of me and said, you're just going to go off campus and stop this.

• 19:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Right on. And then how are you doing in school?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Uh, so I, I kind of, I, I didn't study, but I found ways around things. You know, like they, they used to have a grade distribution they'd publish, which is okay, which teachers have the easiest classes. So I would like do that, find the easiest classes, I'd go to those. And then I would, you know, I was always, you know, dating like a, a girl that's had, was in the, some athletics. They had the old tests, which isn't legal because they have a test bank. And so basically if they have like 600 questions, they choose 50 of them for the test. If you study all the old questions, you're going to do fine on the test. So I always found ways around things. I never really tried to learn. I had to work a lot. I worked like 40 hours a week and.

• 20:19Jocko Willink?

  What were you doing for a job?

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Uh, I was a bartender at a steakhouse. I would say it's like, uh, uh, like an Outback caliber, but it's, uh, it was called Oxford Street. So it was like an, like an English themed and it was good because I didn't have a lot of money for food. And so I used to have this rule when I was bussing tables, like, okay, if I'd kiss her, I'll eat after her. And so that's how I got there. Otherwise I couldn't afford food. So we're just.

• 20:42Jocko Willink?

  And you had, so you had a, what, when was your daughter? What year of college? What, did you, did you have your daughter?

• 20:46Speaker 01

  My, it was, she, she was born in 99. I got there in 96, but I had to start working right away as, as well. So she was born in 90, yeah, 99. So it was like, it was my sophomore, junior year.

• 20:58Jocko Willink?

  And at what point did you hear about the SEAL teams? Did you already know about them? Did you learn about them in regular Navy boot camp? Like what, how'd that come about?

• 21:05Speaker 01

  This is such a like un, like an amazing story. I was just kind of beside myself with everything. I was just gr, I was kind of grumpy. I'm like, I went to Navy. I didn't like it. It seemed ridiculous to me. College is ridiculous. I don't go to class. I have a three six GPA. This is ridiculous. Like what? Is there anything hard? And my uncle, he was, uh, he'd been in the Navy. He was one of the guys that did a good job. He ended up being a warrant officer when he got out, I believe. And he's like, you know, the SEALs are hard, but you shouldn't do it. I'm like, why? He goes, you won't make it. I'm like, how come? He goes, nobody makes it. I'm like, hmm. That's it. So I, I didn't even really think about what a SEAL did or anything. I just wanted to try to get to BUDs because I was looking for something hard. And it was hard.

• 21:50Jocko Willink?

  So did you start training hard?

• 21:52Speaker 01

  I did. Yeah. There was a little group at Texas A and M. So I really, like I said, I struggled with the Corps Cadets thing. I didn't like wearing a uniform in the morning. And there was a group there of guys who wanted to be SEALs and they just got up earlier than everybody else. Like thirty minutes earlier, you ran out, you had a crazy hard workout. And then you showed up to chow late, but you could actually eat. Cause like, if you're a regular cadet, every time your upperclassman would talk to you, you had to spit your food out and you had to sit at attention and you had, you know, all those games you talk about at OCS. It was kinda like that for me. But you could, you had to have the same, everyone had the same food, unified chow. It was ridiculous. And when I went with these guys, I could sit down and I could eat good nutrition. I just destroyed my body. Now I can get good nutritious food. And now I can't go drinking every night because I got a pretty hard workout to do the next day.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  So it really like put some discipline and structure and a lot of those guys became SEALs. So all those guys that, you know, were my upperclassmen, they were, they didn't treat me. I was a freshman. They didn't treat me like a turd. You know what I mean? Like show up, you do your stuff and I really found my, my niche in that group. So it was good for me.

• 22:50Jocko Willink?

  So it's hard, very hard to get a billet for, to go to BUDs as an officer. How the hell did you pull that off?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  So I, I didn't have the greatest grades. I mean, decent, but you know, nowadays, especially all of our O's are like four O Ivy League guys, you know? And I went to this thing called Mini BUDs back then and Mini BUDs was like a little taste of hell. You know, you do like two weeks of BUDs, then you do two weeks with, with the team going around, like some G O gets stuck with having to show some, you know, midshipmen around. And, uh, but the two weeks in Mini BUDs, I did really well. And, uh, they give the top three guys a contract. And so out of Mini BUDs, I ended up getting a contract along with, uh, I know the other two officers actually that, and they're, they did pretty well on the teams too. So it was, uh, that's how I got it.

• 23:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's hard. That's a hard thing to do, hard thing to pull off. So you get done, you graduate from college and then it's going to BUDS. How how how BUDS work out for you? What year is it now? It's like 2001?

• 23:46Speaker 01

  2001, yeah. I I got there. I graduated August 19th in the summer. I took a bit of a victory lap. I was like on the five and a half year plan for college. And then I get there in September and they're like, hey, we got a slot to get this next class. I'm like, yes, let's go, just jump into it. And so I jumped right into class 238. The only thing I failed the whole time was drown proofing. I'm pretty negatively buoyant. Like it seems like a lot of like the black guys had a hard time because they're pretty negative too. Well, I was in that ilk of those guys that had a hard time being negative.

• 24:16Jocko Willink?

  You don't have enough combat swimmer muscle.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  That's what I need. Yeah.

• 24:19Jocko Willink?

  Too lean.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  I get cold. Yeah. But yeah, like, like, so I did everything fine, but I couldn't float and you had to do a two minute float. And so I failed and the instructor, I was sitting with the other nine guys that failed. They're like, hey, if it could pass right now, this is your last chance to get back into BUDS. And then struck and I'm like, I can do it. The only guy, no one else tried. So I jumped back in. The guy's like, hey, look, you're not going to float. And it was a black dude and he's like, you need to swim in circles. That's all he told me. And then I got back and I did it and I, you know, and drown proof is pretty tiring, you know, I did it back to back the second time. It takes about 25 minutes.

• 24:52Jocko Willink?

  It's even more tiring if you don't float.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  It is super tiring if you don't.

• 24:55Jocko Willink?

  Because like for me, I was floating, you know, like at the time when you were swimming in circles, I was just chilling. I was just over here cruising.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Swimming in circles, struggling. Yeah.

• 25:04Jocko Willink?

  Dude, there was a guy, there was a black guy in my class. He was from Africa, super good dude, you know, but he had like a cool African, like British type accent. And dude, he, when they would push him into the water, like tied up for drown proofing, I'm not kidding. He just sank to the bottom like a like

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Like a brick.

• 25:22Jocko Willink?

  Like a like a brick, like just right to the bottom and just didn't move. He just was down there.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:27Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, bro, it was a bar. He didn't, he ended up not making it.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:31Jocko Willink?

  But he needed some uh like real help.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:35Jocko Willink?

  And some pizzas, you know, like, because he was shredded, bro, like, you know, like he was just shredded.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:42Jocko Willink?

  Shredded. Um, so you you what was your first like impression of BUDS though? Like when you showed up there?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Man, I was just waiting for the thing I couldn't do. I'm like, there's going to be something here that's going to be so crazy. I can't do it. And it just wasn't. It was, I mean, it's a lot, you know, you run six miles a day just to eat back and forth from like, you know, breakfast, lunch, dinner. That's not even on the schedule. That just happens. And then, you know, I was just pretty stoked to be in what I thought, you know, was probably arguably some of the world's hardest military training. So I just was excited about that. Still hadn't thought about what happens after. And of course, I'm in first phase when nine 11 happened. And, you know, instructors tried to put some levity on that for us. And I was like, okay, things are about to change.

• 26:25Jocko Willink?

  What phase were you in? First phase when?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  First phase, we were about to do a four mile time run and we were eating breakfast because we had like the morning PT. And I was just, you know, as you should, officers eat last. So I get in and the class is still giant, you know, the class starts off with like, ours was 155. We had 22 originals finish, which actually is not too bad. And, you know, there's just all these people and I'm just trying to wolf down whatever food I can get because I'm starving, you know, and Bud's, you're just, if you're not running, you're shivering, or you're carrying something heavy. That's pretty much what Bud's is for six months. And so, you know, I got the metabolism of hummingbird anyway. So I'm like, I'm just trying to keep stuff.

• 27:01Jocko Willink?

  What did you weigh when you checked into Bud's?

• 27:02Speaker 01

  165.

• 27:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay. What do you know, what are you walking around to right now?

• 27:06Speaker 01

  175.

• 27:07Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I've lost a little bit. We'll talk about it later, I'm sure. But I got my hips replaced and I'm still on the recovery. Yeah.

• 27:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So what do you remember about like guys that made it versus guys that didn't?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  I was shocked at who didn't. There were some badass dudes that I was like, oh dude.

• 27:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  And then when they quit, a bunch of people will quit with them. Cause they're like, I don't know if they felt vindicated, like, okay, I made it as long as that guy did. So maybe it's okay. Or I don't, I don't know. But like, you would see like a big tough dude quit and like three dudes would quit with them.

• 27:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  And I remember during hell week, everyone was quitting and it just sounded like they were ringing the bell. I thought the instructors were messing with me because the ring, the bell's just ringing continuously, you know? And then I remember I'm like, what happened to all the boat crews?

• 27:50Jocko Willink?

  Bro, it's mayhem.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  There was like three or four of them left, you know? So I used to be the XO at Bud's. It's actually super scripted. So, I mean, down to every minute. It feels like mayhem when you're in it. But when you watch it, you're like, dang, this is a, it's super tight.

• 28:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you're going through and it seems like mayhem because you're a student when you're going through it. I know for, I never was an instructor at Bud's. I don't regret it or anything, but I wish I would have worked a couple of hell weeks or something just to like see behind the like behind the scenes of what was going down.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's it's a lot and we we did. We made some major changes to the way we, you know, when I was XO there, we end up having someone kill themselves. And we we stood up this whole new thing called the A-roc, which is really interesting. I don't know if I want to jump ahead into that.

• 28:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we'll we'll get there on that. Let's uh stick with where you're going. So no issues other than drown proofing. First phase hell week, no factor.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  No, I did pretty well in that.

• 28:45Jocko Willink?

  What what time of year did you go through hell week?

• 28:47Speaker 01

  It was October, November.

• 28:49Jocko Willink?

  How was your how was your chilly chilly?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Dude, it was so cold. We had to we had to carry around the stupid pumpkin all the time and the instructors would try to break it and they're like, you better let the instructor break your pumpkin. And so like on top of that, we had a stupid pumpkin. I remember I Charlie was his name. I still remember that stupid pumpkin's name and uh yeah, I mean, I don't know. I didn't hell week sucked, but it was long, but I don't remember. Like ever everyone's like everyone thinks about quitting. Like I didn't really. I was like, hmm, this is this is hard. There's gonna be something I can't do and there just wasn't, you know?

• 29:19Jocko Willink?

  So you were in pretty good shape when you showed up there.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  I was I was ready for buds. Yeah, I think I could say that for sure.

• 29:25Jocko Willink?

  Did you get rolled for anything?

• 29:26Speaker 01

  No, the only thing I felt was that one that one drown proofing thing. And back then they didn't roll.

• 29:30Jocko Willink?

  Did you uh get? How about pool comp? Did you pass pool comp first time?

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I was first time every time on everyone except I didn't get you get a first time every time if you pass. They're called OCs, open circuits, and basically one through eight. And I think one of them I failed and it wasn't a it wasn't a big deal, but like there's different a different knot they tie every time and you got to figure out how to get it. And I I remember one of the most elate like elations I felt my entire life was when they tie the one where you have they tie a knot and like your ex your ex uh exhalation hose. And so you can still get air, but it feels like you can't because it's full of water and you have to drink the water out and you're like, I'm drinking. I'm like, please let there be air and you have, come on, come on. And I'm drinking and all of a sudden like. Oh my gosh, I got, I'm so fired up. I was like, man, I can't smile right now because I was, but I was so happy that there was some air behind there.

• 30:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, uh, pool comp is a gnarly evolution. But you passed it first time. That's pretty impressive.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Um, I, I don't know. I wasn't super impressive. I was okay. I, I failed that one thing, but everything else, you know.

• 30:30Jocko Willink?

  So, so you end up getting, so that's it. You graduate and then it rolls into SQT.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went to, so we were the first SQT class and back then they were like, this is the first time you're going to get your trident after, right? When you go to have a team. And so now you were already, you're the old guard of the team and you're like, who are these new? You know, they, they had the birdcage where you had to put your trident in it and they spray painted them blue to make them a nerd, you know? Team two is a little old school about things. We'll leave it at that. And they weren't super happy of us guys showing up there with a bird on our chest.

• 31:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, that must not. What year was that?

• 31:02Speaker 01

  That was oh, two.

• 31:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I left team two in 2000.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:08Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, I imagined.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Lucky that I missed you.

• 31:12Jocko Willink?

  I imagine my boys definitely probably kept it on lock over there at ST2.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:17Jocko Willink?

  And so you show up there and so that means you've already been through SQT. Did you, what was your major like lessons learned during SQT?

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Uh, SQT actually was pretty professional. I, even back then, like they didn't mess with us too much. They were, I thought we're still gonna, I'm still in Bud's mode. And just the fact that they're talking to me like a human, they're trying to teach you actually things. And I remember at the backside, you really thought you knew what you had. Like, oh, I've been to a lot of schools. I'm a dive supervisor and you know, I've been, you know, assaults and stuff. And then you get to the team and you realize like you just barely know anything. Like I get in the house, they're all running and I'm, you know, walking the slow mo walk that we were doing before this. I'm like, yeah, it's, yeah.

• 31:55Jocko Willink?

  So you get, do you get put right into a platoon?

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, right into platoon. Um, and it was, so it was really, it was actually cool for us. We deployed three months early and that first deployment was PACOM, CENTCOM and UCOM. So I did three months in PACOM because they ripped that team, one team out to go over to Afghanistan. And then I went to UCOM for three months and then we went over and we did what turned out to not be a super fun mission. Uh, PSD, personal security detachment where we were protecting Barham Saleh, who was the deputy prime minister of Iraq. He was a good dude, man. He was a Kurd. You know, I don't know how you feel about things, but the Kurds are pretty.

• 32:28Jocko Willink?

  The Kurds are definitely the fighters.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've done a lot of work with the Pesh over there and they're, they're, they're good dudes. I, I, I feel bad for how it went down. I was over there in 2017 when they tried to declare independence and, you know, I guess I can talk about how I feel about it now, but I was, I was upset that we didn't back them more than we could have.

• 32:48Jocko Willink?

  Wait, this is your first platoon. Is there one assistant platoon commander or were there two of you guys?

• 32:53Speaker 01

  I was, I was the third O, which was the best deal of all time. They got rid of it, which basically I was a 60 gunner. I carried a 60 as an officer. You know, people are like, well, officer shit. So I carried, I carried the 60 and then I did all the travel claims and the paperwork. That was kind of what I did. So like, you know, I got to get on the pigs and that's a cool thing when you're a young dude, you know what I mean? You don't mind carrying, you know, 55 pounds in just weapon and ammo.

• 33:15Jocko Willink?

  That's the shoot. Yeah. Let's go. And that's a pretty awesome deployment though. So you went PACOM?

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:22Jocko Willink?

  And then to where?

• 33:24Speaker 01

  UCOM.

• 33:25Jocko Willink?

  And then to UCOM?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yep. Over in Europe.

• 33:26Jocko Willink?

  So you did some exercises in PACOM?

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Um, you done in PACOM? Yeah. We did some with India. We did some stuff with them. We did some stuff with the Thai SEALs. And, uh, the Indians, I learned a lot over there. You know, the Indians don't put the same premium on life as we do. And I remember that they wanted to do, they wanted to like go right to VBSS, visit, board, search and seizure, which basically like, climbing up the side of a boat from like another boat and like assaulting it. And they didn't, they weren't worried about the helicopter piece. Cause we normally do it with two, with helicopters, the half helo assault force and the BAF, the boat assault force. But they just want to do the boat side. But you know, you've got a, you've got this tiny little ladder that's wrapped around a Gatorade bottle. And you like hook this thing up and you've got to climb up while the boat's moving. And you need to be able to do a couple of pull-ups, you know?

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Because you got, you're wearing, you're wearing probably about 80 pounds worth of kit. I think that's a, cause you're kind of light when you're going VBSS. So 80 pounds is about what you're wearing and you peel off that ladder. Not only are you going to go in the drink, but you could hit someone on the way down. Like our good friend Cestone has someone on his head, remember? And broke his neck. So it's a pretty dangerous thing. And I ended up telling him, I'm like, hey man, we can't do this with your group right now. Like we are just going to do this. And the guy, he was like, why not? Well, because, uh, it's too dangerous and it's not worth you losing the guy. And he, the guy tells me, This training is worth more than one or two of my guys and I'm like, I'm like, listen, man, that's not the way we roll. So we can't do it. And they were pretty upset. I didn't get a good mark from them, but I didn't want to do it.

• 34:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then UCOM?

• 34:54Speaker 01

  UCOM, uh, we just did a bunch of like, uh, basically PSD training, learning how to like, because we actually didn't do any PSD during the workup. And now we're going to be protecting, you know, head of state. We did some, we protected some other people who were over there. It's not a fun mission, but you get cool pictures like it is a fun mission. Cause lots of time you're sitting in the green room, waiting for them and all of a sudden like, oh, they're, they're done or they're meeting around long and everyone gets up and leaves their, whatever they're doing and jumps into the cars and gets ready. So it wasn't fun, but uh, it looks like it was fun.

• 35:24Jocko Willink?

  Makes for some cool pictures.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. My mom actually saw me. She saw a picture of me on like Fox News or something. She said, dad, are you in Iraq? Cause I told I was in Europe and she's like, you in Iraq? I think I saw you. I'm like, yeah.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  Mom's got some good eyes.

• 35:38Jocko Willink?

  And then, so you get done with that deployment and what was your big lessons learned from that deployment?

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Um, on that deployment, man, I was a new guy. I wish I could say that I had some kind of big profound thing, but I really was just, it was so many different things and I would, I was often the advon. And so, you know, I didn't have any super illustrious things to say about that deployment. I mean, I learned a lot on your first deployment, but I can't even put it into a encapsulated.

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's, I, I look at it sort of similar to having kids. Your first kid, you just know nothing and you're just like hanging on and like trying to, and you also are focused on some dumb stuff and like you're, I remember, you know, my wife was cleaning, like boiling every, bottle cap or whatever, like, oh, we gotta, this needs to be boiled. And, and then by the time we had our fourth kid, like kids are just eating mud.

• 36:30Jocko Willink?

  Just doesn't care. But you learn so much and that's, it actually almost equates almost perfectly to like what you feel like in your first platoon where you're like, oh, I was like, and then your second, second platoon, you're like, okay, I kind of understand it. But third, third platoon, you're like, okay, I got this. Fourth platoon, you're like, oh, I six, fifth platoon, sixth platoon, you're just like, you know what to do, man.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  So, um. So what, what happens when you get done with that? And you all, you had another kid in

• 36:55Speaker 01

  I did.

• 36:55Jocko Willink?

  While you were at team two, right?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did.

• 36:56Jocko Willink?

  So did you get married?

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, we got married right after, right during college before I left. And then he was born, he was born in May. So I, I came, I came back early from deployment, two weeks early so I could go and see him be born.

• 37:10Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:11Jocko Willink?

  And then what's your next?

• 37:13Speaker 01

  So.

• 37:13Jocko Willink?

  Next up on the, so on the, on the gauntlet of NSW?

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Every junior officer is trying to like get another platoon. That's, that's what, that's the golden thing you want to do. And so we were all trying to figure out how we could do it because they want to like send you off to do this, the associated tour. And they had me take this test and turns out I can learn languages. So they're like, hey, you're going to go learn Arabic. So I thought I could just slow roll this thing until eventually, you know, someone gets fired or something. And then now I'm at the team because that seemed like a good call, like someone's going to get hurt or fired or something. So, but it never happened. So I went off to learn Arabic and was, I couldn't believe I was going to miss the whole war. I'm like, I'm going to miss, all I did in this whole war was protect the dude. And now I'm going to be in Arabic school. It's be done by the time I get back. So, I mean, I was just super mad. Studied super hard and I end up completing a 16 month course in 13 months.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Fought a lot. I had a really good, two different jujitsu schools I trained at up there. Great partner named Keith Paragon. I trained with him all the time. He lives up in Del Mar now. He's broken too now, so we can't train, but we talk about how awesome we used to be to each other.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, I, I would be, I have to say it because he's going to love this, but you know, we actually had a tournament and we were in the finals together. And, um, when I tell the story, I'll talk about how bad I beat him, but it was zero to zero and they gave me the nod. And to this day I have it over him. So

• 38:31Speaker 01

  and, uh, and, and so I left there and they're like, hey, you're going to go over, uh, over and join team three on deployment. I'm like, cool. I landed there and they're like, well, let's push them out to out station. August 2nd, I ended up with you, you know, and I don't remember the Arabic test you gave me.

• 38:46Jocko Willink?

  I do remember the Arabic test I gave you. Yeah, cuz what was it? Seth had called over and said he needed, he needed another Terp.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Well, we had eighteen interpreters. Two would go outside the wire. One got shot. So you had two platoons. You need an interpreter. So he's like, I need a Terp and I'm, and you didn't even ask me. I was like, hey, man, I can, I can habla. You want me to do it? And do you want me to tell you? Let's have you tell the story.

• 39:11Jocko Willink?

  No, go ahead.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  I want to hear what you have to say.

• 39:12Jocko Willink?

  Let's hear your memory of it first.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Okay. Oh, you get the last word? I see how it did. So I'm like, hey, just, let's just, let's practice. And there was that, we had Moose there was that, he was a good Terp. He was a good dude.

• 39:23Jocko Willink?

  Great.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  And he, I was like, okay, you said, we'll say some words to him. So I started talking and then we're talking back and forth. I'm like, hey, you don't know what we're saying. Why don't you say the words and I'll translate them and you can see how we do. And you're like, okay. So you're like, hey, tell those guys to get down at the end of the street. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm talking. And then in the middle of it, you're like, wait, they're shooting. Get them off the roof. Tell them who going out. And I'm like, like I'm choking, you know, cuz you're like in my face. And you did, I locked up and, and I'll, and then, and you look at me and you were like, fail.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  So I turned to walk away and as I walk away, you're like, your flight leaves at one.

• 40:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's similar to how I remember it. Yeah. So we had you, me and Moose and we needed a Terp. And somehow you got to me and said like, hey, you know, I, I speak Arabic, like that's where I just came from DLI. And I was like, okay, well, how well do you speak it? And you're like, well, I just graduated with a whatever. Whatever would you two plus, two plus or whatever thing you had?

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You were super impressed, by the way.

• 40:31Jocko Willink?

  And so, yeah, I said, you know, tell him, and I was all mellow, like, tell him, hey, we need people to move down to the west side of that building. And you're like, dirka, dirka, dirka, dirka. And I look at Moose and I go, did he say it? And he's like, yeah, he said it. And I said, okay, now tell him this. And you tell him to push up one more building. You're like, durka durka, durka durka. And he's like, yup, that's what he said. And I said, Tom, she's fired. Tom, get off that building. Completely locked up, bro. You were just like, yo.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  I didn't even know you. I'm like, who is this guy screaming? I met you for like five minutes and you know, that was the day Mark Lee was killed. So it was a weird, kinda somber thing.

• 41:12Jocko Willink?

  Freaking somber, man.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Man, when you jumped on me like that, I was like, ah, ah, ah.

• 41:16Jocko Willink?

  But you know, like you could speak it well enough. And guess what? You were better than what we had, which was nothing.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Low bar.

• 41:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So like, go grab your shit. I remember saying, go grab your shit. Flight leaves in an hour or whatever it was. So that was, uh, that was how it all kicked off. Um, so then what? So you went, you went over to Stoner, you went over to, to

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Corregidor.

• 41:35Jocko Willink?

  Corregidor, to the east side of Ramadi. You, you ran out on some ops over there for a bit.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Yep. And then you pulled me back for something. I can't remember what. I think we had like a reservist, good dude, and you wanted me to bump him out, let him go get on some ops.

• 41:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  And so, but I bounced back for between Corregidor and actually you guys dealt me out to a bunch of different teams. Like on that one deployment, I did ops with team two, four, five, and eight. Cause sometimes they'd be like, hey, we don't have a terp. And you'd be like, hey, I got one for you. He's, I'll, I'll deal him to you. So like, I got a lot of ops in. And when you guys were home, I stayed after that too. So I got, I got, I got to work with a lot of different teams.

• 42:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was a wild time. It was a wild time for you to show up for sure. Yeah. Not only showing up like, like, look, you showed up the day Mark Lee died. General Brown visited that day. So like the, I don't know if you, you might've even come on the same bird. I don't know.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  No, no. I, I had to, I drove you over there in a Humvee and I didn't know how to drive a Humvee. Cause you're like, hey, and I was like, oh my God. Cause back then they didn't teach us in the workup. And so like, they're like, hey, you gotta take Jock. So I had, went around trying to find Humvee keys. Cause I'm like, that guy. Cause I gotta be ready, make sure I had gas in it, but I couldn't find the keys. I'm like freaking out. So finally I, I asked somebody like, hey, bro, where are the keys? And they're like, you idiot.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  So you did, you didn't know about that part, but like, you know, but I made sure we had all the gas. He's like, you're just going across the street. I'm like, I don't care. Make sure the gas is full. Make sure everything, I cleaned the Humvee, make sure it's good.

• 42:59Jocko Willink?

  So we picked, so you and I picked up General Brown.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  I, I drove you over there and then I think you rode with somebody else. I don't think that I, uh, I don't think that I.

• 43:06Jocko Willink?

  When did we, cause we trained jujitsu too. You threatened me.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  I didn't threaten you. I knew you were gonna, you know what? I knew this was gonna come up, but.

• 43:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, what did that happened almost immediately too, right?

• 43:18Speaker 01

  No, you were like called me in your office. You're like, hey, so what's your deal? I'm like, I don't know what's your deal. What do you mean? And you're like, yeah, sports this and we get into it and eventually you're like, you know, oh, you do jujitsu. I'm like, yeah, I've been training for a couple of years. I'm a blue belt and you're like, oh, so what's like your move? And I'm like, I don't know. Like, no, you've got something you're good at. I'm like, well, I guess when we train, you'll find out. That's what I said. And now he's like, oh,

• 43:43Speaker 01

  let's go.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  You know what's funny? You told me that exact story.

• 43:46Jocko Willink?

  That's exactly what it was. Yeah.

• 43:50Jocko Willink?

  I, I heard another version of it that was like a little bit like not quite, cause let's face it, look, I don't know how you actually said it. We could probably discuss how you act, but when someone says the words, well, when we roll, you'll find out. Let's face it. That's the kind of thing, you know, like, oh, okay. We'll see what's up. We'll see. And so, uh, yeah, but in my mind, this is, this is, well, the, the way I was thinking in my mind was, look, I've been training with like, all the guys that are there, none of them are good at jujitsu. So you show up and I'm kind of stoked. I'm kind of thinking like,

• 44:24Speaker 01

  I didn't feel that.

• 44:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I, I was like, dude, like maybe you got some good moves. Like, hey, I'm good at crucifix. I'm good at Camaro. What are you good at? Like, it'll be good to like, learn whatever you know. And obviously I didn't give you that vibe because you're just like, well, you'll find out. And then, I think I was like, okay, cool. Go grab your gear.

• 44:44Jocko Willink?

  I was like, we're going to train right now.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  You submitted me with this thing where you put your head under my, I called it the fish. I felt like I was a fish. You put your head under my chin and like crushing my back. Cause I did great against the other guys, you know? I was, I was doing pretty good against them. And then, and then when you showed up, eh, yeah.

• 45:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, you're, you're, you're a, like a solid jujitsu player. You know what I mean? And you wrestled. But I mean, even at that time, I was like, I was good, you know?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, you were already black belt.

• 45:12Jocko Willink?

  I was a black belt in jujitsu. So.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  And you were training with Dean.

• 45:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was a level that I was not, did not know existed. I trained on the east coast. There's a difference between east and west coast jujitsu. The jujitsu here is insane. When I traveled, when I traveled, you know, I, I would travel and I would do, I'm, I was only a brown belt, you know, but like I trained at different schools. And I, I would, I call it catch and release. I wouldn't, would never submit the instructor, never. But like I'd catch it, I'd let go. They, they knew, they'd be like, and they'd be like, okay.

• 45:39Jocko Willink?

  I just remembered this. So we had this like tent, you know, like a GP medium tent and I went, wow, you know, brought mats on deployment. That's where.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  But they weren't mats. They were like those like folding, cheap things with like the vinyl top.

• 45:52Jocko Willink?

  But I remember you were like, after we rolled, you were not, you were like distraught.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  I was super distraught.

• 45:58Jocko Willink?

  You were distraught like, damn, what just happened?

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wasn't sure because I've had not been manhandled like that. And like, I've rolled with what I thought was some high level guys. And I was like, this is stupid.

• 46:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you were like, you're like, dude, you're like, that's, that's, that's never really happened to me.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  What year was this?

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Two thousand two?

• 46:18Jocko Willink?

  No, this is oh six.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry.

• 46:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. So you're nodding your head, Echo, because you know, like, that in comparison of the rest of the world, at that time, I was really good. If you compare me to the rest of the world right now, like, the rest of the world is better now, because like, the whole world is better at jujitsu now. Everyone is better at jujitsu now because everyone's better because there's that much more knowledge and learning going on. But at that time, in the whole world, I was better than I am in the whole world right now. You know what I mean? So for you to.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  That was a level I had was not ready for.

• 46:52Jocko Willink?

  You hadn't been there yet. And like, I was there all the time because I'm training with Dean and like, I'm training with world champs out here all, all the time. So, yeah, that was.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  You want to hear the ending part of the story, how he told it to me? Because he told me that story and then he had his like additional input, like as to tell me. So he said that exact same story. So funny how you use the exact words. Like, oh, so what, what do you move? So same story. And then, um, when he got to the part when he said, um, when you said, oh, you know, we'll find out on the mats or whatever. And he added, it didn't matter because I was just gonna smash from the top. That's what he said.

• 47:29Jocko Willink?

  Wait, how did I say?

• 47:31Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna smash from the top.

• 47:32Jocko Willink?

  Like, that's what I said to you or what I said to him?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  To me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, kind of like, the story was done and then you were telling me, but it didn't matter because I was just gonna smash from the top. I remember that story.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, but once you started to smash from the top, it wasn't a waste of your time. So you went to the bottom. Because I, because I'm like, okay, he's going to give me some top. Well, I'll show him.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Interestingly, that's where I got the term smash from the top, from you telling that story about Jimmy.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:57Jocko Willink?

  Damn, smash. Dude, I was so stoked to have somebody that knew like jujitsu to train with. I know that might, it might not have come off that way.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Didn't feel that way, yeah, yeah. You also introduced me to the 20 squat workout, if you remember that.

• 48:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Bro, we had that, hell, yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  It was like, I'm just up here to work out, you're like, hey, come here.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  What's a weight you can do 10 reps with? I was like, uh, 225, I think you could do it. So I took, except this, except do 20. Okay, so I did it and I put it up and you're like, that was too easy, you're holding back. He's like, take a break, put some more weight, do it again. So then I did with 245 and you were like, can you do it? I'm like, I can't do it again.

• 48:42Jocko Willink?

  I'm fired up, like, imagine, you know, when you're in the teams and you get like a team guy that's like a young, I mean, you're a young guy to me then, right? I mean, I'm like 35 years old, you know, I've been in the teams for a long time and I'm always stoked to have somebody that's fired up to like train and lift and like, it's awesome to me, like.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  That's not how I felt, I have to say that. I felt like you were messing with me. You'd ask me a question, I'd be like, ah, please, I hope I know this answer.

• 49:09Jocko Willink?

  I just, I just saw another young officer that had joined us on deployment who's now captain.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Remember I put him in an arm bar and it like, and he's like, no, I'm good. And I cracked it and you were like, bro, I was like, oh shit, sorry. But I know what you're talking about.

• 49:23Jocko Willink?

  He had said to me something like, you know, hey, sir, do you, do you have any recommendations? My, my shoulder's kind of injured, do you have any recommendations? And I was like, yeah, muscle ups, because I had rings mounted.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  I remember that, yeah.

• 49:33Jocko Willink?

  Do muscle ups, do lots of muscle ups, like just the worst, the worst advice.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there you go, good times. But what I was saying is it's crazy. So you arrived there, Mark had just been killed, like it's, like you said, somber. And yet at the same time, we have the SOCOM commander coming in, General Brown.

• 49:55Jocko Willink?

  And, and you know, this was.

• 50:00Jocko Willink?

  We, we were in so much sustained combat that it wasn't like, it wasn't like, oh my gosh, someone got shot. It was like, yeah. Okay.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Well, we had, we had thirty two dudes, sixteen Purple Hearts, three killed. Is that right? I think that's roughly what it was.

• 50:17Jocko Willink?

  It's something like that. Um. But yeah, it was a lot. And yeah, for you to show up there, that, that definitely must have been. Did you hear about what was going on prior to arriving?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  No, I was a DLI. No one knows anything. The, the, the regular Navy, for all intents and purposes, didn't know much about the war going on as far as I know. They had individual augmentees that did stuff over there, but I think most of them ended up at a big base somewhere, which is like a big piece of America, kind of, right? Like, oh, you're in Iraq or you're at Bagram Airfield and they're salsa night and, you know.

• 50:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, one thing, one thing that I didn't really connect with until we got home was the guys, they were reading our Opsums, right? Like at Trade Ed, they were.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  I was at Arabic school.

• 51:01Jocko Willink?

  They were reading the Opsums in the morning, like, meeting, like, this is what the guys at Task Unit Bruiser did last night. Like, and so everybody, well, at least like the West Coast guys that were in Trade Ed and talking to the, because when you're in Trade Ed, then you're telling the platoon that you're training, you know, so that, that everyone kind of knew what was going on. So you were just coming in out from nowhere.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  I had no clue. I had no clue. Yeah, it was time to learn fast. And, and I remember the guys were moving so much faster than I was. I really felt that way. Because while we came up and like I've, you know, I had my H gear wasn't set up like you guys was because I had it around my hips and it needs to be on your chest because we're riding in vehicles all the time. And I, I just wasn't ready. And somewhere a couple of weeks into it, I stopped noticing that everyone was moving faster than me.

• 51:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you got kind of caught up.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Until I stayed at the next group and Team Five guys came in and they were moving slow. And I was like, oh, it was, it was a weird thing to, to realize like, hey, the speed of combat takes a little bit of ramp up. And you know, you know, when, when the guys get hurt, the beginning of deployment and the end of deployment, that's it. I mean. That's the preponderance of it because guys come in and they're ramping up and then the end deployment they get a little complacent maybe or they're thinking about home. They're not fully dialed in. It's always those times and I think it a lot of that happened and we got we had a lot of gunfights. So it happened sprinkled throughout, but in my experience, it's been the beginning and the end.

• 52:20Jocko Willink?

  What did what did you say? So you went over to Corregidor and you meet with Stoner? What's what?

• 52:26Speaker 01

  People don't know Stoner. I walk up and Stoner doesn't say hi or anything, you know, because I got my bags and my kit and I'm like, hey, I'm Jimmy May. And we're living in this bombed out thing we called Full Metal Jacket. Basically like blow a building up. That's where we're living in. Like some of the walls were down. I remember the army guys had a cat and like the cat liked me. So they thought I stole their cat, but it was nice because the cat ate the mice and it would sleep with me and they're and they'd be that guy's that the SEAL stole our cat. And I'm like, I didn't steal them the cats. Anyway, but so we're living this. It was you had to wear body armor because we got mortared daily. They're just dropping mortars in there and especially during sandstorm because like our counter attack to mortars was to get some helicopters up or like

• 53:07Speaker 01

  or get some ISR, which is intelligent surveillance reconnaissance. So like some kind of asset overhead that can like drop on the guys dropping on us. But when sandstorms didn't work. So every sandstorm, you know, you're getting mortared and we got mortared all the time. So you had to wear body armor everywhere. So I come walking up and Stoner is like, I'm like, hey, I'm Jimmy. And he's like, hey, here we were army ACUs. You got to go in there. There'd be a set and we shaved our head. Gave me clippers. I was like, okay, I shaved my head and put on my army ACUs. And then I and then I walked into the thing and my guest was working in there and they got me to work. That was that was my end doc. Stoner didn't have a lot to say other than that, but I remember he kind of gave,

• 53:50Speaker 01

  you know, that that head that head shake like after I shaved my head, he's like, like it was good.

• 53:58Jocko Willink?

  So you end up, like you said, you're doing ops all over the place. And how much Arabic are you speaking?

• 54:06Speaker 01

  A lot. So I spoke, because we have a partner force, and if you have a bunch of guys with automatic weapons who are kind of on your team, you should be able to know what they're saying. And so I was pretty valuable for that. And it's also nice when you have a team guy, because if you know, you're going to set the guys up downstairs, you have a TIRP, you got to spend another team guy down there to walk around with the TIRP. And do you trust that interpreter? I don't know. What about those conversations going on around you? Do you know what's happening? So I had like widely, a wider net of situational awareness than what you would have if you didn't have a team guy down there, because I can hear him talking about us. And you know, the same thing with the prisoners talking, you know, I did a lot of interrogations and I would use an interpreter for interrogation, the battlefield interrogation. But they don't know that I

• 54:49Speaker 01

  understand what's, what's going on. And it was a super powerful thing, you know, to figure out what exactly they were saying.

• 54:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I remember you told me too. I had a, I had written an email to the Commodore.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  I still have it.

• 55:03Jocko Willink?

  I gotta get.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  I gave you a copy of it. I gave you a copy. It was hanging in my cage. I gave you, I told you about it and I made you a copy. I gave it to you. And it was, it was about, it was about, hey, because at the time, they're trying to get SEALs through training. Is it that one?

• 55:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're trying to get more SEALs too. And they're like, you gotta get more numbers, but you can't. Like, if, if, Echo, if I had you sit in that chair for five and a half days, it would suck, dude. Like, your feet would be swollen. Now, add on 200 miles of running and carrying a boat and a, and a log and being cold and wet. Add all that on there. You know, and so we just, no matter how you water it down, we can't get more guys through. And then you came up over the top with like, don't make it easier, make it harder. He's like, we need more. He goes, we need a bigger tail, not more teeth. He was like, so give, don't have SEALs do non SEAL jobs. And man, I've been spouting that for the rest of my career. Like, you know what? Why do I got you counting comms? Why do I got you fixing guns? Let's have you assault and do what you need to do. Because at a Fortune 500 company,

• 56:00Speaker 01

  that top engineer you're paying, he ain't sweeping the ground.

• 56:03Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  He's not doing stuff he's not paid to do. I'm like, have these SEALs focus on that. And then I'll add the tail on the back. So I thought that was pretty wise and I hung it up, but I don't know.

• 56:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the so the Commodore was like a friend of mine and a great guy. And he had sent out and like kind of an all hands like or whatever leadership email like, hey, we're looking at, you know, ways that we can grow the force and blah, blah, blah. And I just responded all hands because I also, you know, was kind of halfway through deployment and just that's the that was the truth like you could see that.

• 56:37Jocko Willink?

  The seals needed to be freaking awesome guys like they needed to be tough like everything you just said like, oh, show up here, put your gear on and go out and getting gunfights. That's what's going to happen for the next, you know, however, long you're here for.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  And you're not going to have good chow. It's going to fall from the sky, you know?

• 56:52Jocko Willink?

  It it it's like that was. That was the time I said to myself, oh, this is what all that training that we go through? This is why because someone's got like you just said, like, who's going to be able to pick someone up and carry them out when they get shot? Who's going to run out into gunfire and carry them out when they get shot? Who's going to stay up for 48 hours to make sure that we're ready to go do like it is? It is what it is for a reason.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  And all the time like like when I got sleep, it's on the way to the op.

• 57:24Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Like if I had a calm guy and like, you know, we set up our pro words. So do you know where we're at? And I'm like, hey, bro, I just need to sleep for like 40 minutes. So on the on the bird, if my calm guy is good and lots of stuff, I'm working till the last minute, the guys would throw my stuff in the truck, you know, and I so I'm trying to line up the assets like you gotta go hurry. So I run in, I jump in there and they're briefing me on a lot of things that you might think I'm running, but you know, these guys set me up. I trust them. I know I got a good point, man. I know I got a good chief and they're squirming me away on the way because I got to set up all of our like permissions, you know, through the through the different layers of command and the battle space owners and everything. So, yeah.

• 57:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the the the training is how it is. So yeah, when the Commodore reached out to all hands like, hey, you know, what could we do to to get more people through it's like, no, give us more. We don't care. We don't need more seals. We need more support people that can make this stuff happen.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 58:11Jocko Willink?

  And make sure that we're getting the best freaking hardest guys for lack of a better word, look smart and capable and all this other stuff. You need dudes that are just fucking hard, like mentally hard dudes. And buds produces that for the most part.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  No, it does. It does. Yeah.

• 58:33Jocko Willink?

  So you're doing ops all over the place.

• 58:38Jocko Willink?

  We're getting towards the end of our deployment and that's when, you know, September 29th, you were actually with Stoner's Element, which was like a couple of blocks away.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were probably about 350 yards away. So like the plan is to have two mutually supporting sniper overwatch positions and mutually supporting means that we can look around there to make sure no one sneaks around their, around their base of their house and they can do the same for us. But it was really hard because we had to be on the edge of what was called L Block at the time. And they had some army guys, dude, some 18-year-old army dudes, running concertina wire across Route Farouk in the middle of the day. I'm like, I mean, that's crazy. Cause we insert at night, no one attacks us at night, but it was crazy that those guys were doing that. I'm like, I don't want to Japan these guys, but dang, that's, that's like some World War II, jump out of the trench. I mean, I don't know, that's a hard, that's a hard

• 59:31Speaker 01

  bar to get to, but I did not think they were going to make it. And so we were up on top of these roofs. We're supposed to shoot the guys from this one angle and there was a bad mosque. And I say a bad mosque because I can understand what they're saying over the speakers. And so when they say things like, hey, come give blood in Arabic, that means come in here, they arm up, they get a plan and then, or they they get their weapons stowed and they leave with the plan, they grab their weapons and then they go. So I know this is happening. I can hear it over the loudspeakers. And so I'm like, hey, guys, get ready. You know, it's getting ready to go. And sure enough, we've been in a pretty good fight all day long, down on their end, they'd killed two, we'd killed one. I think our guy was a foreign fighter because when we hit him, someone ran out and stole his boots and that was it. Cause like, you know, usually if they're going to drag him out, then maybe okay, I should probably shoot that person too.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  There's some rules of engagement and escalation of force that has to happen that we abide by straight up. But that being said, the fact they just stole his boots means I think it was probably a foreign guy and the body was there for a pretty long time. So then as this fight's going and escalating, I was on glass, we had these periscopes. You couldn't stick your head over the wall, but you, or through a window, but you put this periscope up. And I remember this, the house we were in, this guy named was Oddle and he was a good dude. And I felt bad for him because we went to use his house a lot because it was a nice sniper range, a nice good line to shoot right in that really bad area. But when we left, the bad guys would come in and beat him up and beat his family up. And he would always be like, please don't leave. And I'm like, dang, bro, I'm sorry, man. Like,

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  I can't stay. He's like, you know, they're gonna come. And he even set up an American toilet for us where he had like a chair. He cut a hole in it would sit it because you know they have a hole in the floor. So I felt for that dude and I know Stoner did too. Stoner always gave him a bunch of money of his own money been like, hey, I know they're gonna steal and break stuff. Take some money. He always gave him some money. But I was on glass when that thing blew and you know, that guy Mike S. That came over the loudspeaker. Man, it was, he's one of the hardest dudes I know. I don't think you'd argue with that. His voice was pretty broken. I could tell, oh no, this isn't good, you know, and and Stoner's like, hey, get the Iraqis, let's go. And so the first three guys ran out in the street. I was trying to get the Iraqis. I couldn't.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  They wouldn't come. I had the guy by the front of his, front of his plates and it was like trying to put a cat in a bathtub, man. He had his hands out on the side of the door and I'm yanking. And finally I, I turned, we left our like our breaching tools and stuff there because it's, we had a lot to do. So we left like our hoolies and our sledges and, and our backpack. We just had, through our night vision, second line and just went out there. And I ran out there and Stoner's like, he's like, hey, where are the Iraqis? I'm like, they ain't coming. He's like, tell them to come. I'm like, I can't. And so now we're already in a pretty good scrap. Things are going bad. Two of them did come with us. Uh, Jamil and Mohammed, they did come with us, uh, which

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  we knew them. They were good people. Anyway, we started scrapping our way up and then you know, you talked about Benny grabbing that gun. That was Mikey's gun he grabbed. And, uh, the, I was laying next to Tommy D and, uh, there was like, maybe a, we're on one side of the street, the other element's on the other side. And probably like a 12 inch high pile of rubble and I'm, we were pinned down. There's like a light post next to us and we were just ping, bullets are just flying and uh, we, you're just laying as flat as you possibly can. I'm trying to reload my magazine and I remember thinking like, uh, I don't know, but we're gonna go from here. And then I heard that big gun light up and I was like, Uh oh, but I'm like, oh, all of a sudden there wasn't pinging around us anymore, you know, like all the spaulding of the concrete wasn't hitting. And so when I heard that, I looked up

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  and I saw him. I saw him holding that gun, like just no strap, no nothing, just at the, at the shoulder, shouldering that big weapon and just laying it down, which probably the most important covering fire of my entire life. And we got up and we just, we made it to the house underneath that, that, uh, that covering fire. And as I came up, the way that the roof was, there was a center fed stairwell. So you came up in the middle of the roof and you could see right what happened, you know, uh, Mike S. was blowing up in his feet because he was laying down when he caught the blast. And then, uh, Mikey, Mikey Mansour was just bleeding up and then Benny, not only before he did that, what took him too long, he was patching everybody up. Like, you know how it is when guys are bleeding,

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  you never have enough gauze, doesn't matter what. He made it work. That dude, he's a man. Like, he patched everybody up. So I, but Mikey was bleeding terrible. And so like, I rolled him over and I, I like swiped down his chest to see what, to see what I had, because there was just like a blood and gore. And I just saw holes and they filled back up with blood. And I was like, and he was kind of making this grumbling noise. So I'm like, okay, I think he's gonna live. I'm not a medic, you know? And Stoner, Stoner was a good combat leader. He, he looked at me, he just said, get Mikey. That's all he said. And then he grabbed, I think he grabbed Mike S. and kind of had him on his hip, because Mike could kind of hobble. And then the other guys, and you know, you and

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  I had this big conversation when we met later on, where I just couldn't stop talking. Remember, I was just running my mouth. And I remember you just sat and listened and, you know, it was about this, because I felt really ashamed that I couldn't, you know, you see me around Mikey's family, like, I, I just feel so, you know, like. Like I let him down, you know. Um, I had him as, I carried him as far as I could. He was not a huge dude, but he's like 200 pounds, you know, and then you've got probably another 60, 80 pounds of kit on both of us. Uh, at some point I couldn't carry him anymore because we couldn't get out the front and the brads wouldn't come that way. Of course they'll get blown up. I'm not saying anything bad about those guys because they were our brothers. They weren't supposed to get us anyway.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  And, uh, we pushed down a wall, like a little, uh, a wooden fence, like a dog ear fence. We pushed it down. It went out, came out right on Route Farouk. And, uh, those guys were way ahead of me. I couldn't carry him anymore because I, I just ran out of juice and I was dragging him. So I'm dragging him through the street. His, his, uh, clothes are shredding and we're getting to the brad and there's bullets hitting and the guys were like yelling at me like hurry, hurry. We're trying to close the door and like, I got in there and then, uh, you know, my guest came and talked to me once, uh, when I was XO of BUDS and I kind of was, I kind of apologized. Cause I, I checked out for him and it like, as the ramp went up, I was like, I was so, so tired. You know how we say that? Oh, he's, I was so tired.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  And, and, uh, Mike is, he's bleeding. He's sitting kind of funny because he's got a bunch of frag in his body and he's like, dude. Do CPR. I was like, and then I kind of snapped back out. So I got to do CPR and you know, as you, you do your chest compressions, stuff's popping and cracking. CPR is not a gentle sport, you know? And then back then it was 15 and two and now it's 30 and zero, but I did my 15. I tried to blow in and I could see. You're supposed to look for the rise and fall of the chest. I could see bubbles come out of the holes and I'm like, does that count as one? I don't know. And he like at one point threw up in my mouth and I was just like, I don't, I don't know if I'm doing it right. And then, you know, we did that all the way till we got to cop aid, uh, which was like the little medic outpost they had set up.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  And then, um, I'd fired, like I'd fired some rockets and stuff. So my ears were kind of like, I couldn't really hear. It was this big roaring thing. And, uh, the medics were talking to me, trying to bark at me because, uh, Mikey and Doug had got their name tapes kind of blowed up a little bit. And they couldn't have. What their blood type was and they're sitting there trying to ask me and I remember I couldn't understand what they're saying and I'm like, who are you talking about and then and they were like washing because I had all this blood on me they're washing it off with their water hose they're spraying me and I'm looking at them and and when that backtrack when that Bradley door opened the first two dudes that stuck their head in there was at the time Colonel Clark remember that dude I think he's a general now

• 1:07:11Jocko Willink?

  He absolutely is

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  First dude him and Major Womack stuck there I mean that little crack their heads in there and you know he called us frogman he's like frogman he's like get out of there we got a medic here I'm like alright you know but uh good dudes full of respect for those guys yeah anyway and and it turned out they need to know what kind of blood type these guys were in their names and so like I don't know why they maybe they morphined them and they couldn't get it I don't know why but I kinda came to enough to give them that and then then you showed up I don't know when right before it was maybe a little bit later but I remember I just couldn't stop talking and you just sat there and listen to me and yeah I really struggled with did I do things right for Mikey you know and like did if a better guy was there and I actually went and talked to the doctor that worked on him I'm

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  like hey man like I know I just want to hear like I messed this up you know and he showed me an x-ray it looked like a bunch of fuzz and he's like see this this is his heart and these are pieces of the you know and I was like he goes there's nothing you could have done and so he told me what I needed to know but I know that I didn't I wasn't up on my medical care like I could have done like so anyway the point was he told me what I needed to hear it felt good I don't know you know maybe if there was a better guy up there it would have worked out better but that's that's how it worked out

• 1:08:25Jocko Willink?

  No I mean all the all the doctors said the same thing you know like he was mortally wounded from the moment of you know and um and it was actually it was actually Colonel Clark that called me told me what was going on and he he told me like they're they're doing CPR right now and I just knew like yeah CPR is not a good sign yeah to be doing um

• 1:08:57Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I was trying to explain to people like that it wasn't over either. Like you still had to go back out in the field to get the Iraqis. Get the gear that you guys left behind.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  You know, I remember talking to Stoner. He's like, I'm going back out right now, you know, like that kind of thing.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I didn't go with him. He went without me because I was with those guys. Like I jumped in the Brad with those guys to show them back. So he went back and got the gear and stuff.

• 1:09:24Jocko Willink?

  And the Iraqis.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we don't leave gear.

• 1:09:26Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:09:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that was September 29th. We ended, I mean, you guys still did more ops than that.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  And, and you know, I, I teach this now and I teach more detailed for what I do with the, with the SEAL teams. But, you know,

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  I always taught like about minimum force and what you should have because we didn't have a medic. You know, I medic took around earlier, so we didn't actually have a medic on that op. And we talked about minimum force requirements and stuff like that. And I used to teach like after that, you know, I knew about min force and I never did again. When there was a guy that was on op with me, he's like, no, we even started op like three weeks later, just three of us. I'm like, oh, yeah. I learned it now. But, uh, yeah, we, we were still working. I mean, it's like being on the mat, right? If I stop, you're still going.

• 1:10:17Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  The same thing happened. We had, the fight wasn't going, so we, we kept going.

• 1:10:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that, that was a, a different, definitely a dynamic for that deployment that I think was for us anyways. For me, you know, especially growing up in the nineties in the teams. It was like in the nineties in the teams, you, your mindset was you're going to go do one op somewhere. Like that's what you're going to do, like one big mission. You're going to go rescue, save the princess or slay the dragon or whatever. And when it's over, it's over. And.

• 1:10:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, like Ramadi was not, it was like, it's not, it's not like you just said, the enemy's still going. Like, they don't care.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  They live there.

• 1:10:54Jocko Willink?

  They, they live there. They don't, they don't care what's happening. They're, they're gonna keep going. And, you know, even, even at like the SEAL team level, the thought of like, oh, replacements.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:11:09Jocko Willink?

  You know, like, we didn't, there was, no one ever talked about, hey, like, once I took over trade at, you know, I would talk to the SEALs, I'd be like, hey, what is your replacement plan? For if you lose three guys from a platoon of sixteen guys, that's a huge hit. And who did you lose? Did you lose a J-TAC? Did you lose a corpsman? Did you, did you, did you lose one of your senior enlisted guys? Like, we, we didn't really talk about that. We just didn't.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  And, and that's another reason why you need to have, you know, at least troop-wide TTPs, the techniques, tactics, and procedures, but team-wide TTPs and probably community-wide. Cause like, you know, we, we're like, we don't have doctrine, we kind of do our own thing. But, you know, in the platooners course, I teach away, you know, when I took over the course you used to teach. And I'm like, hey, you gotta be able to plug and play with another platoon. Like, on my Afghanistan deployment, I took in half another platoon. And, you know, they, if they couldn't operate with us, that they use different things, it wouldn't have worked. So you, you gotta have that interoperability. And I think that probably spawned some of that. And I, I definitely learned it at that point.

• 1:12:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  But, uh.

• 1:12:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we, we really tried to push that. And, you know, we had like a, you know, we had like a battle book about casualties, right? Like, if you have a casualty, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna, you know, shut down the radios. You're gonna do this. You're gonna contact these people. Like, there was a, there was an administrative protocol to follow.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Timeout, you're still in a fight.

• 1:12:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But there wasn't, there was two things that there wasn't. There wasn't like a combat. Like, okay, where's replacements? What are we doing? What are we doing here? And also, like, what does it do to the team? Like, what do you do with a guy that's now horrified? What do you do with a guy that is now feels like, oh, this was my fault, or I should have done this? Like, just the same, like, everyone's gonna have those thoughts. I should have done this different. I could have done this different. And how, you know, how do you walk through that? What are you supposed to do? What's the grieving period? How long do you take off? Do you take off short time long? So for me, it was a lot of like, Trying to figure this out and honestly, I got a lot of it from about face from Colonel David Hackworth, you know, about what I would kind of reflect on what he would do and that's kind of what I did.

• 1:13:17Jocko Willink?

  But it's, you know, you know, Mark was the first SEAL killed in Iraq, you know, there was no uh, lessons learned that I had recovered from somebody else. So, and it's the same thing for the rest of the guys in the task unit.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  And I have a perspective on that. I definitely have an opinion on that, especially after, you know, I got hit. November 10th, I end up getting hit. You guys got home and um, you know, this is true. I don't know if you know about this. This is exactly what happened. I, I end up, you guys went home, Team Five came in. I'm like, hey, I speak Arabic. You guys should probably keep me. And they're like, yeah, we don't have anybody, so we'll stay. So I'm staying at Team Five's deployment. Great dudes. They showed up and uh, you know, we got in a pretty, we're supposed to do this, clear this market area, the Malab. You know what the Malab is? That was, so Laba means play. The M sound at the beginning means verbal noun, which means place you play. So it's the arena.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  And we're supposed to be sniper overwatch as the Iraqi army clears this whole market for like three to five hours. That's the plan. We insert at night. No one messes with the night. We get in there. We can't find two good spots. So we end up on the same house. And the Iraqi army shows up for like three to five minutes. Seriously, they showed up and they made a U-turn and I'm like, hey, man, I've got, I've got their comms on a little thing. So I can kind of listen. I'm like, what's happening? Like, I think, do I not understand the scheme of maneuver? And like, no, they left. And so now we're getting, we're stuck. And the plan was for them to go out and grab a big bite. So they grab a big bite around a circleless area. Then we fall into their perimeter. And then we, we leave with this like 400 band of Iraqis and their Humvees and everything. And that's how our exfil plan.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  Well, now, you know, I mean, we've got a lot of, as much as we can carry, but if you're in a gunfight with a whole city, you know, you, you can't sustain that. So it's about 11 o'clock and we're like, I don't know how much more we can do this. So the calls made is like, hey, let's call those, let's call these guys to come get us. And they already told they can't get us. They said they're not. They say, hey, we cannot exfil you there because of the ID threat. But they're like, we're coming anyway. So the plan was for me to bounce around corner. I had a LaRocque left. So I was going to hit this house with LaRocque. And then inside of me, the 60, which is like a Mark 48, which is like a belt fed machine gun, 762, 100 round belt. He's gonna open up, but and I'm gonna run it, I'm gonna run around the corner from there and then the Brad's are gonna come in, we're supposed to run next to the Brad's and run all the way back to cop Eagles Nest.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  You remember at that, where that water tower was, we're supposed to run back to there. So it's not a super long way, but what's it like, I don't know, three hundred fifty yards, five hundred yard dash. So we're going to do that. I go outside, I go open up the rocket. I, cause it's like, it's the kind of opens up like a, you know, like you see on the movies that open up, that's what it is. It's actually not a very big rocket, um, but I, I go to shoot it, thing blows up in my face, like, I don't know if I hit a wire, if I did it wrong, I am an officer, it could have been possible, but it blew up right in my face. So I'm waiting for the gun to pick me up, I hear another crazy explosion, not sure what's going on. I pick up my, my M four, I start peppering in the house, waiting for the sixty to pick me up, they don't pick me up. I come back around the corner, guys are running out, I'm like, what's going on, they're like, hey, the Brad's got hit.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  That was the explosion I heard, so we gotta go. And so we are just trying to get out, we're throwing smokes and I'm running down, um, running down around the, as I round the corner, around the stadium, there's a house set back about two hundred yards, opens up with a, uh, with their version of a belt fed machine gun, the sixty. It's called a, what do they call that?

• 1:16:46Jocko Willink?

  PKM.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  PKM, yeah, PKM, it just doesn't have disintegrating link, but it's the exact same thing. So it's a seven, six, two by like fifty six, right? Pretty good size round. I have three rounds hit me as I come around the corner. I, I, I was carrying my rocket tube because we don't leave gear behind, right? I mean, don't, I heard what you and DC talked about Afghanistan and I was yelling at the radio when you guys did that on your podcast because I have a spent rocket, I'm not gonna lose, you know what I mean?

• 1:17:12Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, we leave billions of dollars in Afghanistan.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  I was yelling at the radio, I was like so mad. Anyway, I come around the corner and my hand was back, so I had one round hit my camel back hose, one round go through my chest and the other one go through my backpack. It kind of spun me around, I fell under a burnout car. And then he was, thought I was dead and I lost consciousness for a minute. When you think you did, you probably did for a minute, cause I kind of hit the thing. And then, uh, he had a thing like a laser on like a little, a Jersey barrier, you know what a Jersey barrier is, I go?

• 1:17:40Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  It's like a, those little, uh, concrete barriers between like traffic going opposite directions.

• 1:17:46Jocko Willink?

  Like on a highway or like a construction site, they got like a little three foot tall, four foot tall, little.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  The cement?

• 1:17:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, the cement thing, yeah, it's like a Jersey barrier, so they all jump behind that thing, he's drilling that thing and then like. I figure out what's going on. I can feel that I'm bleeding. I end up, I'm like, I still got a couple more rounds in my magazine. So I emptied everything I had through that window. Pretty sure I got him. Not positive, didn't do a BDA, a battle damage assessment, didn't do that. But when I was done, everyone was, had run back. So I'm like, well, I guess I'll run back. And I ran back and the medic, who is now an elected official, awesome dude, I got back to Eagles Nest. I'm like, hey, guys, I think I got shot. They're like, yeah, I'm pretty sure. So I opened up my plates and he puked right on me, like threw up right on me. I was like, bro, I don't think that's useful. He kind of wiped, he had the big beard,

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  he wiped his face. And then they put a piece of hydrogel on it. Hydrogel is the stuff we use to stick explosives to a door. It's not like an absorbent thing. It's like a, how do you describe hydrogel, Jocko?

• 1:18:46Jocko Willink?

  Glue.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  On a piece of plastic?

• 1:18:50Jocko Willink?

  On a piece of plastic, maybe?

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, he just stuck it on my chest. So I'm still bleeding.

• 1:18:54Jocko Willink?

  Wait, why'd he throw up? Cause it was gross?

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  He's a medic. I don't know. But he's, we're good friends. Like, we're really good friends. And maybe he just didn't like seeing his buddy get shot. But I don't know why he threw up. But he sent, he sent me a picture of it on like Christmas 2014. I'm at dinner. I'm like, bro, give a brother a heads up before you send me a picture of this.

• 1:19:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just to give everyone like, you got, if that's not the luckiest, one of the luckiest shots to get shot, the way you got shot was like, one of the luckiest possible ways to get shot.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was running at a full sprint through a, through a solid beam of ammo.

• 1:19:27Jocko Willink?

  And the, and the bullet hit, like basically went through like your chest muscle.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Just my peck.

• 1:19:35Jocko Willink?

  Like, just like your peck flesh.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:38Jocko Willink?

  Like, which is crazy to be able to survive. You know, that's like, that's like the guy moves his sight a millimeter and you're dead.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or if I'm a little bit slower on my 40 yard dash, you know what I mean? Like, yeah.

• 1:19:52Jocko Willink?

  So you got this, I mean, what amounts to essentially a bad flesh wound, but not a horrible flesh wound. I mean, you were running around after you got shot. So. Yeah, just so everyone knows what the shot was. It was it was from the side and went right through like your peck.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had soft body armor. And so he said it had to been hit with a smaller round. It might have broke the trajectory and would have went into my ribs or something. But since it was such a big, heavy round, it cooked right through my soft body armor, right behind my plates, didn't hit them. And went right through and it left a burn mark across the other side. So it went through my right peck and my left peck. So I got like like two little holes here.

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  And then it came out. So it came out and what do you call grazed your other peck?

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I had this little burn mark and they gave me, when I got there, they gave me like a pipe cleaner. And I had to like put it through one side and kind of floss it for five. Dude, I wanted to throw up. I'm like, so gross. And then I had like, you know, those squeezy bottles like football players have so they can squeeze through there. I had one of those and I had to irrigate it, they called it, where I had to squirt it and then like, they like push that little like, that's the pop noise I'm not supposed to make, but let me go pop, pop the little blood clot out of there. And I had to do that for a couple of days. And then, but I was, so this is, it gets weirder. So I go there, I get to the hospital, they take, they have to take chest X-rays. That's what they have to do.

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  And they're like, hey, you, good news. You didn't have anything important. You're good to go. And that's why they put that, that hydrogen because it's an occlusive bandage. Because what could happen is if you poke a hole in your lung, even a small lung, a small hole, as I breathe out, that air, instead of coming out of my mouth, it comes out of my lung. And it, it fills up my body cavity and it collapses your lung called a tension pneumothorax. And then that you end up like dying from that. Unless they poke a hole in you. And actually, the medic wanted to poke a hole in me. Oh, just in case. I'm like, I don't think so, bro. He's like, no, no, I'm the medic. I'm like, no, you're not going to poke a hole in my chest. Like, I think I'm good. Like, we got in a little argument about it. So then I go there, we're good to go. Now, I'm pretty angry.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Like, I'm angry. And I'm also embarrassed and ashamed because I'm not supposed to be getting shot, man. You know what I mean? Like, I don't, I don't know. That's just how I felt. And so I was really pretty distraught. So I walked out. I wrote CG for a crager on my hand because that's how the helicopters worked back then, remember? And I had a beard and a cool gun, so nobody asked me a question. And I got on and I flew to cop aid as close as I could get. And I got out of cop aid. And I was running down Route Michigan, going towards, Route Michigan is like the most IED route since the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I think that's how they said it. I'm running down that at night, trying to get back some, probably like, I don't know, was it three quarters of a mile from Craigador, from Copade, roughly?

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  And I see the boys pull out onto the street. And so I break out my infrared chem light, so you can only see with night vision. I pop it and I make the little bud saw use. And they pull over and it was the same medic, because they were going to get some Iraqis to go on a op. And he's like, he's like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "I'm coming back." He's like, "It's Jimmy." I was like, "Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah." He's from Texas, you know, he's like, "Hell, yeah." And I can probably say his name. Yeah, he's elected official. Yeah. Okay, yeah, so it was Morgan Luttrell. So he's like, "Hell, hell, yeah, come on." And so they called in and they're like, "Hey, we got, we got Jimmy here." Like, negative. He's at the hospital and we're going to pick him up." And they're like, "Nope, he's right here. We're going on a, and we're going on a op." And they're, they're like, "Okay, we'll handle it later."

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  And that's, and so I went on, I went out and worked with them for another couple of weeks until December 10th, when, you know, Elliot got blown up and Joe.

• 1:23:28Jocko Willink?

  November 19th.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, December 10th, yeah, it was, that's a different date, sorry. So never, November 10th when I got shot. And then I, I, I went home with Elliot Miller and, and Joe.

• 1:23:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those guys got really messed up, leaving, leaving an overwatch position. And we're supposed to have Elliot on at some point. So Elliot, let's go. We're gonna make it happen.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Jocko Willink?

  And then, so you flew those guys, those guys home wounded?

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I flew back with them right around Thanksgiving. I think I did Thanksgiving with Joe in the hospital. Elliot wasn't really very, he couldn't really talk too well. He was really, really messed up. And he ended up, we had to, as we were dropped, as a plane gained elevation, I'm not a doctor, but he was up coding. And like, I remember this nurse was like messing with, and the flight crew's like, "You need to sit down while we're trying." And she's like, No. And I was like, I love you. Like, hell, yeah. Like, she's like, nope, I'm staying and working. She did. She stayed and worked on him. And, uh, you know, he had like an SUV worth of medical equipment on his bed. And she was just working all of it. And they were trying to get her to like, when they land and take off, and she just wouldn't do it. She stayed there and worked. So mad respect for that lady.

• 1:24:40Jocko Willink?

  God bless her.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  And then, uh, you know, we had, we end up having to fly lower than we wanted to. And we ended up dropping, we dropped off Joe at Bethesda, and then we sent, I think we sent LA down to San Antonio for the Bern Center, because he was pretty blowed up. And then, uh, you know, I land in San Diego. So I'm like, you know, thirty six hours, I had a pretty major gunfight. And, uh, you know, my wife had left me and went back with the kids. And I, the ambulance drove away. I didn't have any place to go. I went to the team. I think I went to Danny's. And then I think I slept in my cage sometimes. And I was just getting ready until, because we were already in mid-workup, because I missed a part of the workup. I missed the professional development part. So we were already starting unit level training. And so I didn't need a place to live, because you're gone most of the

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  time anyway. And so that was kind of where I, I was at that time, just living in my cage, kind of. Yeah.

• 1:25:34Jocko Willink?

  And so now you're a platoon commander at Team Three.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  And you're in Stoner's Task Unit, right?

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  I am. Yeah. Yeah. Same, same guys that I'd been with before. I remember seeing you at the team, and you're like, hey, did you get shot? I'm like, yeah, like, the trap or something. You're good, huh? I'm like, yeah, I think I'm good. He's like, okay, cool. You training? I'm like, yeah, I'll be training.

• 1:25:59Jocko Willink?

  Uh, how's that workup?

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  Um, that was the one, I did bad. Um, as the OIC, that was probably my worst performance in any platoon I've done. And, uh, you brought it to us, it, it, it traded. And I remember, you, you know that one where we come down the canyon? We, you guys killed all of us. Like, we were all dead, and you left me alive to try and solve problems. And I just, I wasn't doing it. And, uh, you know, I, I still remember, I was carrying like, a person and a sixty, because everyone had, we couldn't even fight, we were combat ineffective, just running down this thing, like, I don't know. Stoner was pretty upset with me, rightly so.

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, uh, when I think about this whole story, because I've never really like thought about your whole career like this before. But this is why that training was so important because essentially you had guys that had just not been in leadership positions before. And you're an example, like

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  I really hadn't.

• 1:26:52Jocko Willink?

  You really hadn't been in an actual leadership position.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  I was a combat interpreter.

• 1:26:55Jocko Willink?

  Right. And so you learned some really good lessons learned about combat. You learned about like how to handle yourself, but as far as like maneuvering elements around, and this was very common in the SEAL teams.

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  And you would come sit next to me and I'm shooting and you're like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm shooting and you're like, you should make a call, but I'm like, but I'm shooting because that's what I do, you know? I had never been leading and I remember you pulled me aside and you're like, you need to sit behind a bush with your gun pointing up in the air, looking around. And I'm like, that's, it's just, I'm like, that's ridiculous. Like, you know, but it's right. But at the time I was just like, bro.

• 1:27:29Jocko Willink?

  Well, and it's the same thing. I realize this because Leif and Seth were the same way. Leif and Seth were like, when they got into my task unit, they, they had both done something similar. Like they were in a platoon where they got told, hey, keep your mouth shut. You're a new guy on deployment. They sat in the jock doing a PSD or whatever. So they didn't really actually.

• 1:27:49Jocko Willink?

  And this was so common in the teams that you could be like a young officer. You'd never been in charge of anything before. And you definitely didn't get taught how to do this stuff. And so that's why like that, that training was so important. And you know what I do remember is one time you guys were at, uh, urban warfare and you guys were all jacked up. And I got done like debriefing your platoon and Stoner's all freaking mad. And he goes, Jimmy Scott, come with me. And he, well, this was still out at Fort Knox.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. He wrote us up.

• 1:28:22Jocko Willink?

  So he walks outside and I follow, he like calls you two outside and he starts yelling at you guys.

• 1:28:31Jocko Willink?

  And you know, you guys are like Roger, Roger, and he said, get the hell out of here. And he walks away and I look at him and I go, hey, bro. How many times did I yell at you when you worked for me?

• 1:28:45Jocko Willink?

  And he like you saw the look on his face. He was like, oh shit. Cause I never yelled at him. I never yelled at Leif didn't, you know?

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  I think he had a neck brace on at that time too. Remember?

• 1:28:53Jocko Willink?

  No, he didn't.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  That was the neck brace?

• 1:28:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, he might've.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  Cause I remember he yelled at with his neck brace.

• 1:28:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that might've been it. That might've been it.

• 1:29:00Jocko Willink?

  But it was one of those things where he was like, oh yeah. And it was like, hey, man, if your guys,

• 1:29:08Jocko Willink?

  if you think you need to yell at your guys, that means you haven't trained them right. That means they're making mistakes. They need to learn not get yelled at. Like I can guarantee you, you know, that's like when I was saying earlier, when you showed up and this is like, I, I would meet a young, again, I'm not trying to sound like I'm an old man, but I had been in the SEAL teams for a longer time than you. And I could see that you wanted to do a good freaking job at what you were doing. Like to me, that's just like the most, that's all you could want, man. All, all I ever wanted from a guy was like, they want to do a good job. They want to do a good job and they're tough. And I remember actually there was a little uh, uh, uh, political movements. This is during our workup during my workup with Tasking the Bruiser.

• 1:29:50Jocko Willink?

  And they were like thinking of moving some of the officers around and like, maybe they're going to move Stoner or something like this. And they're going to give me a different officer and, and the ops officer pulled me and he's like, hey, you know, we can make this adjustment. And I was like, I was like, no, I don't, I don't, I don't want, I want these guys. I want Leif and I want Seth. And they're like, well, you know, these other guys might have some more experience. And I was like, what I want is guys that are tough and guys that want to do a good job. And I said, Seth and Leif are tough and they want to do a good job. So when I met you, I was like, oh, this guy's tough and he wants to do a good job. And so when you were in your workup with Seth, dude, you wanted to do a good freaking job, you know, like of course, and you're tough. Give me that all day long. I don't need to yell at you. And as my point to Seth was like, bro,

• 1:30:33Jocko Willink?

  that guy, both you and Scott, you guys wanted to do a good freaking job. If you screwed something up, it's just because you didn't know what to do at that particular moment. All you want to do is learn. So let's teach them, not let, let's not yell at them. And he's like, Roger. So.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't know about that conversation. I definitely, you know, the learning curve was steep and years later, when I came back as a troop commander, I was much, much more ready to go there. And I spent a lot of time with my officers, my junior officers. And, you know, I did a lot of work with them. And then I took another platoon on. So the way that the SEAL workup is, is to start off with professional development, six months, then unit level training, six months was what Jocko ran. And then you've got, at the end, you've got T-Jet, Task Group Integrations, the last six months, you get all your assets. Well, they gave me another platoon that I didn't go through my workup with me. And actually, it was Bobby Ramirez, who killed himself the weekend after my retirement, actually.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  Great guy. Tragedy, truly. But he, he came over to me, it was my, it was one of my OICs, and he's like, he's like, hey, man, all this stuff that you're teaching my JOs, because I brought his JOs, I'm like, hey, I do JO development once a week. He's like, will you teach me? I'm like, his troop commander didn't teach him that. He didn't know how to do ground force commander stuff. Now, his chief was a badass. It was Bo, you know, that guy. And that made it for them. But good on Bobby for having that kind of, like, humility to be like, hey, can I sit in with the JO? So here he is, an OIC, and a prior enlisted guy at that. So he's probably got, you know, six platoons worth of experience. And he's like, hey, I, you know, I need to learn how to do this. And that's to your point. Like, we never really taught him how to do that. And I didn't know it either.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  And I, I failed that workup pretty bad. I felt like, like, I mean, I know that Stoner was pissed.

• 1:32:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, also, everybody kind of failed that workup. But by the time you go, everyone would learn. Like, there would be a steep learning curve, but this shit's not rocket science either. Like, I would tell you, like, one time, like, hey, dude, you don't want to do that? You'd be like, Roger. And you wouldn't do it anymore. Like, or hey, you might want to think about this? And you'd do it. Like, so, yeah, everyone gets their ass kicked. And

• 1:32:38Jocko Willink?

  And 90% of guys go, dude, I just got my ass kicked. What do I need to do better? 10% of guys go, I got my ass kicked. It's because the training sucks or because my chief sucks or because my new guys are suck. They just blame other people and they're never gonna get better and they get fired. But yeah, you were a normal kind of learning curve, especially, again, I never really connected your whole leading up to this. Like, you didn't have like a true assistant platoon commander. You know what I mean? Where you were like, okay, you're gonna run this squad and you're gonna run through these IAs and you're gonna run through the house or whatever, you're gonna be doing this. You were kinda like carrying a pig and doing travel claims, which is not great officer development, man. So, I hope that we started doing a better job,

• 1:33:20Jocko Willink?

  you know, and that was my main effort. That's why I went to Trade Ed. The reason I went to Trade Ed when I got done-

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  I'm glad you went there. That was good. That was good for that thing.

• 1:33:28Jocko Willink?

  That's the reason. Cause I knew that we had learned, I knew that, I knew that what Leif and Seth knew on deployment, I was teaching them while we were in workup. I knew that. And I was like, who's gonna teach these guys?

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  But you were on your sixth deployment by that time, right?

• 1:33:42Jocko Willink?

  That was my seventh.

• 1:33:43Speaker 01

  Okay, seven. So like, at about, at about third, three deployments, you're kind of a Jedi. Like, that's when the Jedi thing kicks in, I think. But, and then after that, it's completely different. Cause the first, one, you don't know what's going on. Two, you think you know what's going on, but you don't. Three, man, the blinders come off, you have some excess capacity, I can tell what you're about to do. You know what I mean? If you screw up, no big deal. I'll just play off that and fix it. It's about that seven year mark that it really hits, I think. That's my opinion.

• 1:34:10Jocko Willink?

  And what, what really helped me out a lot was, I, when I was in E5, I was in training cell at SEAL Team 1, and I was a single, young guy. And guess what that meant?

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Nothing better to do.

• 1:34:20Jocko Willink?

  I taught CQC, land warfare, combat. So I did everything. I did everything. And so now, I'm watching these things and I could see like, oh, that guy doesn't, that guy shouldn't be over there. Oh, that guy's on his weapon too much. Or that, that platoon commander's not making a call. And so I, through teaching it, got to look at things from a detached perspective. And that's really, by the time I got to Team 2, now I went into Team 2, I just got done teaching this stuff. And I wasn't like, oh, I know everything. But I was like, oh, I can-

• 1:34:48Jocko Willink?

  I know I need to take a step back. I know I need to look around. I know I don't need to be shooting my weapon. I know I need to keep things simple. I know we need to cover and move for each other. Like, I know we need to focus on certain priorities. I know we need decent, like, I knew those things.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:02Jocko Willink?

  And so it was very lucky for me. And so then when I got done with that deployment to Ramadi, I was like, there was, you know, the Admiral said, where do you want to go?

• 1:35:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:10Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, I want to go to Trade Ed. Cause I didn't say why. I think he knew, but I wanted to make sure these lessons got passed on. Because, because also, the Battle of Ramadi wasn't over when we left. You know, I mean, you got wounded. Joe and Elliot got wounded. I mean, that was still hard fighting. I was like, I don't know when this is going to be over. So all these guys, all my friends that are about to get in an platoon and roll back over there, they need this training. Like, I need to make sure they have this. And that was what became my focus. Um, but, you know, like I said, you, you had a little bit of a lack of knowledge, but as soon as you would get tightened up, you'd fix it and freaking kick ass. I mean, that's, that was pretty normal from, from my perspective. Like I said, if someone's arrogant, they would suck.

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  I think the bar came in high for me. They're like, oh, Jimmy's come off the Ramadi deployment. He's ready to go. But, uh, so they came in expecting me to know these things. And I really didn't because I was essentially a combat interpreter for most of the time. I really didn't do a whole lot of leading on the battlefield, to be completely honest. As an officer, you're supposed to be from the front, but I was actually doing what my, my niche, my part in that cog was that.

• 1:36:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, I wasn't going to step on Stoner's toes or, you know, anybody else's.

• 1:36:18Jocko Willink?

  And how was, so you had some challenges during workup, but like I said, it was normal. I mean, Stoner was stoked on having you, like a hundred percent. And I'm talking like as you guys went through and he'd be like, oh yeah, we screwed this up. And I'd be like, yeah, but we got it. You know what I mean?

• 1:36:34Jocko Willink?

  How was that deployment? So you guys go on deployment?

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was a frustrating one because, you know, I just came off that super kinetic deployment and I got all the same kinetic guys that want to go scrap it out. And you know what? It just wasn't that, it's like, hey, man, you can't shoot, the rules of engagement have changed. You can't shoot people for what you used to shoot people for. And now, you know, we had to dial them down a lot. And then, uh, you know, I had Chris Kyle on that deployment and, uh, he ended up, you know, he took a round in, uh, In Solder City, kind of yanked his helmet off and I wasn't there with him. He came back with me and he was, he was a different person after that. You know, I remember thinking the, I wanted to help him as best I could. I did, I did all the things I thought I could do, but he, he really struggled.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  You know, at first it was kind of funny like, oh, the legend, it's about time. Who gets a nickname like the legend in the team? Yeah, I'm coconut. Jimmy Whiskers is, that's not a, that's as good as I can get.

• 1:37:27Jocko Willink?

  Jimmy Whiskers? I haven't heard that one.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a newer one, uh, cause I got nine lives. I always landed on my feet. Eventually it went to got though, and then it's been whiskers. Yeah, Jimmy Whiskers. Anyway.

• 1:37:41Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, that, that was pretty much a non kinetic deployment.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  It wasn't totally non kinetic. We rounded up 12 HVIs, high, high value individuals. So we had some ops, but it wasn't like, I mean, Marty, I reloaded my mags. Seriously, probably multiple times a week, like, cause I'm shooting live rounds at people every night. And then on that one, it just wasn't quite that, you know, and the appetite was more like, let's try and build this place and you have to, you know, it's a shifting, it's not, you just can't beat everybody up all the time. At some point you gotta build some people up and let them do their own beating up. And that was kind of the phase was in. So it was frustrating for those guys coming off that deployment to realize like, hey, it's not that kind of fight again. And, you know, I'm in the middle of that. I'm a pretty aggressive guy, I think. And so, you know, I had to do some growing up there too.

• 1:38:27Jocko Willink?

  Check. So what, what's your next job after that one?

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  So after that, I went to Bahrain, cause as an Arabic speaker, I actually kind of had it out with the XO. We didn't, I don't care much for this dude, but we, he was the one to send me to the Pacific next. He's like, hey, you've got two back to back tours in Iraq.

• 1:38:44Jocko Willink?

  Wait, this was the XO at Team Three?

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, at the time, yeah. And, uh, he was like, you need to go to Pacific. I'm like, listen, bro, nobody speaks Arabic but me. It's stupid to send me back there. Have me do my troop commander here, or my, or task unit commander back then is what it was called. And he's like, no, he's like, you need to get well rounded. You're not, you're just, you're so one sided. It's going to be bad for your promotion, which I didn't care about. I came in to go to war and I know people like, no, you came in to be an officer. I'm like, no, I came in to go to war. That's what I came in for. So anyway, we had it out and I was like, that's so stupid. So he sent me to a one year tour in Bahrain to do J sets. Which once again, I'm like, I'm gonna miss the whole war. I was all frustrated. Uh, we didn't know it was gonna last 20 years back then. I know, I know. You know how everyone was like, I can't miss the war.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  And I went over there and ran J sets and actually for the same commanding officer at team three that we had there. Yeah.

• 1:39:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  He went over to uh, to Bahrain and actually we got along really well over there.

• 1:39:39Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  Cause at team three, I think he was really nervous around me and yeah, I don't know. He's a good man. I, I think well of him now. He came out to my retirement, actually, if you remember seeing.

• 1:39:47Jocko Willink?

  Right on, yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  Uh, but we worked together really well down there and I, I definitely count him as a friend and an ally now. So, yeah.

• 1:39:55Jocko Willink?

  And you're just basically working a bunch of setting up these exercises over there and running things.

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think there was like 22 joint combined exercise for training. That's what a J set is. And then, you know, you, you fly in there, you grab a platoon that's on deployment that's not doing anything. You pair them up with the skill set they wanted to learn and a lot of it is like showing up for the final ceremony. I got along super well with all the Arab people because I speak Arabic and they love it. You know, I got to go falcon hunting with the Bahraini royal family. And uh, you know, just, it was an interesting deployment. My Arabic got pretty tight. Um, I found a place to train jiu jitsu down there. And uh, yeah, they had flown in a Brazilian who was good and but then the, the guys that ran the thing was not very good. He was a black belt. He, he, you know how sometimes people just pay for their black belt. That's, so must happen because I was tearing him up as a blue belt.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  And then uh, but his Brazilian guy that was, it was under an alliance school, I believe. That Brazilian guy would put me in my place pretty quick. And I got to fight in Abu Dhabi. I went to, I went and did a J set over there.

• 1:40:56Jocko Willink?

  ADCC trials or just trained in?

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  No, the Abu Dhabi tournament. I got to fight in that tournament. So like, I went there for two weeks. And uh, there was a J set going on, so I stayed there and trained there and they had like 30 Brazilian black belts. Brazil like, you know, putting you in the quad and grabbing your batch and you know, they were good and uh, I. It was super fun to train with them because the locals didn't want to train jiu jitsu and it was at the Equestrian Center in Abu Dhabi and I trained there and then I stayed and I got to fight in the Abu Dhabi.

• 1:41:24Jocko Willink?

  That's cool.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  I did six, I did six rounds. I didn't make the medal round as a, I think I was fighting as a blue, maybe purple at that time. It definitely was blue.

• 1:41:35Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  And I was fighting with them and I'm getting knocked out by a, I think we lost by points to a Brazilian, but it was really cool, man. Like just getting to fight in that tournament. You fight all night. You start at 10pm and you fight all night because it's like 130 degrees at night there, you know?

• 1:41:47Jocko Willink?

  Okay, check. Yeah, your Arabic must have gotten freaking good.

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was tight. Yeah.

• 1:41:53Jocko Willink?

  Because my last memory of your Arabic.

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  I know. This is a good one. Was it Mikey Montsour's memorial?

• 1:42:01Jocko Willink?

  So, Mikey Montsour's memorial and we're at Camp Corregidor. The guys from the first of the 506th. Like it's, it's freaking heavy, obviously. And the Iraqi scouts.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was Mahanid.

• 1:42:19Jocko Willink?

  Wanted to like have their guys talk and put some word out. And so you were the interpreter.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:27Jocko Willink?

  And what was, so.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  It was respect.

• 1:42:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  Because Arabic is a much more flowery language and they have different levels of respect, which are different words. And so he would be like, he'd be like, you know, to use your, and I'd be like, and respect. And he'd be like, "Durka durka", and I'd be like, "Heavier, deeper respect." And you'd be like, "Durka durka durka", I'm like, "Super heavy durka".

• 1:42:48Jocko Willink?

  So, so I'm listening to this.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  That's really what it translates.

• 1:42:51Jocko Willink?

  I'm listening to this and you know, and I mean, obviously it's like super emotional, but then I'm actually trying to listen to like how Jimmy's doing up there a little bit, right? And I don't notice it at first, but the guys like going on, you know, you see like after a post-fight interview, like the guy's Russian or the guy's Brazilian and so they're, they're going on and on and on and on. And then the interpreter will be like, "He says he's looking forward to the next fight." You're like, "No way that's just happening." That didn't just happen. So the same things happened here. Like this, this guy Mahanid is up there and he's talking, you know, he's talking for like, you know, let's call it like 45 seconds. And then Jimmy's like,

• 1:43:28Jocko Willink?

  They truly respected Mike and I'm like, okay, cool. And then it happens again and he's like, it was a deep respect. And I was like, well, then it happens again. This is like a seven minute speech, which Jimmy did in 17 seconds, right? So we get done, bro, and I walk up to him and I was like, bro, what was that guy saying? Like you only interpreted one word. And I go, he goes, well, it's just really complicated. There's a bunch of different words. I go, all right, bro. Well, I, I just know you're not ready for like UN.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  That's what you said to me, like you're not ready for the UN. I was like, all right. Cause you know, I was, I was what 36 hours out of that gunfight too. I wasn't super stoked, you know? And John goes just like, hmm, you're not ready for the UN.

• 1:44:08Jocko Willink?

  Ready for that UN slot, bro. Oh, check.

• 1:44:14Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with this Bahrain gig for a year. And then next up you go out to the East Coast. You go out to a team on the East Coast?

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, I go out there and it's, it's like having a big selection process. And I go all the way through it. And at the end, they ended up decided to put me, and it was my own fault. I screwed up on one of the major operations that were grading. And they decided to send me to a different squadron that I didn't want to go to. And not only did they send me to it, that's like, hey, you're going to deploy on February 24th. I'm like, do you mean tomorrow? Am I deploying tomorrow? They're like, yeah, so boom, I'm out. So I'm on deployment. I, uh, it's a really interesting deployment.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  I don't know how much I can go into this one, just other than I was running a, an emergency task force at that time. And it was, we were wildly successful. And, uh, you know, you met, uh, the admiral that spoke at my retirement. And he became a really close mentor to me because basically I did a lot. I went so far above, cause you know, when you're, I thought that since my con op is signed by like the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that means no one below that can say no to me. That's kind of how I felt about it. And, uh, it turns out that's actually not true. So I was skipping like layers in the chain of command. I mean, I, I moved to, I moved to US ship, truly. I also launched some assets out of different countries, trying to clear the airspace.

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  And I just really went way out over my skis. And I remember I went and woke him up and I'm like, hey, uh, this is what I did, this and this. And he looks at me and he's like, huh. Goes Jimmy, I'm not sure what you did, but we're gonna go upstairs and we're gonna make sure this goes well. And then after that, we're gonna have a conversation about who's a decision maker and who's a decision facilitator.

• 1:46:02Speaker 01

  And like, I learned a lot from him because he didn't try to crush my spirit, right? It's like you said, I want to do good. I just, I got deployed on one day notice. I don't, and my turnover was a high five turnover, which means I get off the plane and he flies back on the plane that I got on. So I didn't know. So anyway, he, he didn't break my spirit and we had some really cool things, you know, down there. He, I had my own jujitsu fight club, you know, like we do. And he would come to it and we had all the different people from different agencies coming to it. You know, guys have a black eye and there's kind of like a little like, mm, you're training with Jimmy and the boys. And it was pretty cool. They ended up having like a little civil war in this country for a while. And I had to go out and grab some teams. Speaking Arabic was huge. I actually drove

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  right up to a tank in a Toyota Avalon. And I was like, hey, man, do you mind moving this tank? So I can, and the guy's looking at me, trying to explain to me that there's a fight going on. And I'm like, I totally get you. I feel you. But I just need you to move the tank for long enough for me to, and the guy finally looked at me and shook his head like, okay. And I went out and, you know, got those things back. And it was a really interesting deployment. We were worried about the embassy getting overrun, eerily close to what's going on in Benghazi, to how that went down, to be honest, because, you know, the ambassador was like, hey, you guys are coming over the wall. If things go wrong. I'm like, oh, yeah. He didn't know there's three of us. It's just three of us to come over the wall. We had 19 fast company Marines, which they would have done a good job, I'm sure, like, not being facetious at all. You know how Marines are. They get after it. So, but

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  that was kind of how it went down over there.

• 1:47:33Jocko Willink?

  Where were you at when extortion went down?

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  I just got back from deployment and, you know, extortion, I lost my best friend. You know, John Tumlinson, he worked for you. You remember when he got in that big fight?

• 1:47:45Jocko Willink?

  I do.

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was worried because he, you were his boss. So John Thomas was my roommate and he, he goes out, okay, he's not an angel. He was probably like picking up their girlfriend or something. You know, he was a big looking dude. And he was walking out of the bar and these three guys tackle him from behind and he like slides on his, gets up and

• 1:48:05Jocko Willink?

  And one of them was a bouncer too.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  Oh, the bouncer plus two other dudes? Okay, three guys tackling from behind, he's down. He gets up.

• 1:48:13Jocko Willink?

  They kicked him out of the bar. And so he's leaving the bar.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:17Jocko Willink?

  And this, this, so then they, they, they came after him.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:48:21Jocko Willink?

  So I'm just saying all the ways that he was right.

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  Right. He didn't know.

• 1:48:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:24Speaker 01

  Like he was walking, they tackled him from behind. So now you've got three dudes tackling you from behind. JT gets up and puts them, he puts him in the hospital, like jaws wired shut. And it turns out that uh, these dudes were in the Navy. And so now the Navy wants to press charges against him. And I was concerned and I'm like, I'm, and you know, JT, he had a blood infection because like you get these streaks that go down your veins when you get infected. And I was like, you gotta go to hospital, bro. And I was like, you go to hospital, I'll go talk to Jocko. Cause I, I was like, I walked in your office. I'm like, hey man. I just want to let you know what happened with JT. And you're like, what? He got in a fight with three guys and won. I need tough guys. I was like, yeah, that's kind of how it went down. But I know they want to mask him and stuff. And Jocko was like,

• 1:49:06Speaker 01

  yeah, I got it. And that was kind of it. And I don't know, nothing really happened of it, but.

• 1:49:11Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I'll tell you exactly what happened.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:14Jocko Willink?

  He went to cat, he went to Commodore's mast.

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:17Jocko Willink?

  And the Commodore.

• 1:49:21Jocko Willink?

  So the Commodore and other Navy dudes were in there.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  The Navy guys he got in a fight with?

• 1:49:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And their, their master chiefs and stuff. And so we're standing there and he busts him.

• 1:49:34Jocko Willink?

  He busts him. He's like, yep.

• 1:49:35Speaker 01

  Oh, I do remember this. Yes.

• 1:49:37Jocko Willink?

  Like your, your reduction in rank.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:38Jocko Willink?

  Which meant he wasn't going to be able to screen.

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:40Jocko Willink?

  And he, he had just made chief.

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:43Jocko Willink?

  So now he was going to become an E5.

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. I remember this.

• 1:49:47Jocko Willink?

  So the Commodore's like boom, boom, like you're, you're busted, like done. And he's like, all right, everyone leave. And he's like, Jocko, stay here. And so everyone leaves. And he, he, I said, hey, sir, this guy is, um, actually I told him this before. I said, hey, you remember the guy that you, cause he, the Commodore had just been up in an exercise?

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:09Jocko Willink?

  And JT was the, the uh, JTAC. Calling up at Fallon, like calling all kinds of stuff and.

• 1:50:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:14Jocko Willink?

  Commodore. I go, you remember that guy that was up there? And he's like, yeah. And I go, this is the guy you're about to send to Commodore's mast right now. He's like, okay. So anyways, bust him down, tells everyone to leave, tells me to stay back. And he gives me the paper. And he goes, here you go. And I was like, Roger, sir. And uh, somehow.

• 1:50:35Speaker 01

  It didn't get filed?

• 1:50:37Jocko Willink?

  Somehow that paper did not make it into uh, into his record. And, and you know what? That Commodore, who's no longer with us, he became an admiral. Um, who, he was a guy that was trying to look out for like a tough, good freaking team guy.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:52Jocko Willink?

  Like.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  What you want him to do? We got to jump out three guys. What do you want him to do?

• 1:50:55Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. Uh, and you know, it's one of those things I always think like, well, if JT would have gotten busted, he wouldn't have gone to damn neck, you know?

• 1:51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:04Jocko Willink?

  He wouldn't have been. So it's one of those things, but he was doing what he wanted to do.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  So back to extortion one seven and you know, so my roommate, I, I get back from deployment. I've got my kids visiting me out in Virginia Beach and I get a call in the middle of the night. I get to the command. I, I get, I'm like, what's this about? I don't know. I drive up there, six AM on my flight going back to tell his family. Cause you know, like if, if you don't know Echo and people outside of the teams, when you go on deployment, there's this like, people would consider it morbid that you fill out about before you go. It's like, who are your pallbearers? What songs they play at, play at your funeral? Who do you not want at your funeral? Where's your will? It's 24 pages long and you go through this and it's actually super important because it solves a lot of problems. And I'm the guy making notification. I knew it. I know his family. I get there and I drive, I find him in Minneapolis. I drive down there.

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  Bo Metis there. Uh, he just showed up because he's a good dude and we go in there and I walked up to his dad. And I, you know, I've got two more people from the command with me who were gonna, they're just squared away, like they're just squared away. People to come with me as part of the CAECO team. What does CAECO stand for?

• 1:52:11Jocko Willink?

  Casualty Assistance.

• 1:52:14Jocko Willink?

  Something.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  I don't know, but it's the person that could tell the family that they lost somebody. So I'm in my blues. I show up and his dad sees me. His dad's like, I've been expecting you. And George was a man of few words. I'm like, yes, sir. And we sat down and we didn't say much. And then his mom came home. She was at her 45th. She was retiring at 45 years as a nurse. And you know, I'm like, you're going to tell her or me? He's like, I'll do it. So he went out there and told Kathy and you know. It's a hard time. There's no way around it. And then after that, we started working on funeral preparations and stuff. I had to go back because I was a little bit messed up from my last deployment. So I had to get a surgery. Bounced back, uh, three days later and they had set up everything. They had, it's a town of 700 people. We got a 1500 person funeral going down. So every logistical issue you can think of, you think COVID was a pain?

• 1:52:57Speaker 01

  Imagine like not having enough hotels and you know, we're, we're bringing in a C130 with a bunch of guys from, you know, a bunch of team guys. And, uh, where do you house this? The answer was the school. We had like a one, one, a gymnasium and then overflow into like the theater and stuff. Anyway, I learned a really important lesson that day and, um, you know, it's one of the most important lessons of my life. And I always consider it like, uh, JT's parting gift to me. And so, you know, I get back from that thing and back then we had spreadsheets. That's what we did. A piece of paper with like names and jobs and those two, I'll call them tech, tech supports what we call them normally. There's probably a more PC name for it, but it's not derogatory. They're just, they're non SEALs who are at the SEAL Command.

• 1:53:38Speaker 01

  They did a great job, really good job. And, uh, you know, they're friends of mine to this day and they, on it, I'm like, okay. I'm probably a pallbearer. I'm probably speaking, you know, I'm probably giving his mom a flag. I'm flipping through. I'm like, nope, not pallbearer. Okay. That's weird. Hmm. Not speaking. What am I doing? I am handling the VIPs. I'm getting pissed. I'm like,

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  I'm getting mad and I'm getting ready to go say something and all of a sudden I stop and it's, and then I feel like this intense shame over me. And I'm like, oh,

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  I just want to be recognized for who I am in JT's life. It's about me. It's not about me. And so JT's final lesson to me was to get over myself and, uh, you know, I don't live up to the, uh, humility I would like to all the time. But I hope, you know, that, uh, I, I could manifest that in my life after that. And you know what happened? I shut my mouth and you know what I did? I handled the VIPs and it makes sense. I'm the senior ranking of my friend group. It makes sense. And you know what? The guys that carried the coffin didn't drop him. The, the people, the guy that spoke did a better job than I would have for sure. He did a great job, you know? And guess what? The mom found the right seat and she got the flag.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  So, and I'm not remembered as the dickhead who had to like make myself the center of attention, you know, but I was super close to doing it. And so, you know, that's, there's, there's always a silver lining. And, uh, you know, there's nothing good about losing my best friend. I'm not going to say that. But I will say that, you know, in his memory, there is something I learned.

• 1:55:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And what a freaking stud. Um, freaking Iowa wrestler, trained jujitsu, trained here. Actually, I've always wanted to do something. I gotta put something up like a freaking kick ass memorial thing.

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  Dude, and he was a, a ranked top 20 triathlete in the tri Kaisersl division in his spare time. Like when you're in the SEAL teams, you don't have a lot of spare time. That dude, he was just a phenomenal, phenomenal. And we called him the human Labrador. Like what better compliment can you get than that? You know what I mean? Like he was just everybody's friend. Yeah. He'd do something, we'd, we'd scrap it out. You know, guys are, we'd be mad and I'd be like, I'm still mad. And he'd look at me like, like 10 minutes later, he's like, what? You still mad about that? I'm like, it was like 10 minutes. He's like, so how long you be mad? I'm like, okay, I'm not mad. Like it was just, he was just that way, you know?

• 1:56:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:13Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, and I mean, that, that, I mean, that obviously that time for NSW was just a freaking disaster. With extortion 17, it was just horrible. And I mean,

• 1:56:27Jocko Willink?

  that's one, you know, that's one, this one guy, you know, and that, as much as that impact was, it was that impact over and over and over again throughout the community and throughout all those families, man. It was just a freaking nightmare. Um,

• 1:56:46Jocko Willink?

  what, what, what did you end up doing after that? What was your next command? Where'd you go?

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  So I went over, I went back to team five and, uh, you know, my old platoon chief, I can say his name, you know, Jason Torrey. Yeah, you're smiling. Go ahead.

• 1:57:01Jocko Willink?

  Just the other JT. Oh dude, the other JT. But yeah, no, Jason's like, well, he was my.

• 1:57:08Speaker 01

  LPO.

• 1:57:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he was my LPO when I was at SEAL Team Seven.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:12Jocko Willink?

  And just freaking.

• 1:57:13Speaker 01

  Hyper squared away. Yeah. He came over to me when I was OIC. They, I, my chief was a great guy, but he wasn't doing a good job. And I was defending him till the end of the earth. And then, and JT actually got on JT, my chief, JT gets on him in the front of everybody. And I pull him aside. I'm like, hey, bro. Like, that's my chief. Don't do that to him in front of the guys. And he's like, I'm the assaults, the assaults lead. And if I'm going to do this, I gotta square him away. And like, we kind of got into it. And then, so then they end up firing my chief. And then guess who I get? JT is my chief. And I'm like, oh, that guy, here we go. But, I mean, all of a sudden in the house, I had nothing to do. I'm like, oh.

• 1:57:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:50Speaker 01

  Like, the assault got ran. Everything just was running. And I was like, dude, hyper squared away, dude. He's working now. Um, I think he's chief staff officer at Silabs up in, up in Washington, doing great things. And, uh, so he's, uh, he, he calls me, he's like, hey, if you want to leave there, why don't you come here? I need a, I need an officer. I'm like, oh, you think you can make it happen? He's like, hell, yeah, dude. I fly in there and it was just, it was awesome. Really good deployment, really good workup. We went over to Afghanistan.

• 1:58:19Jocko Willink?

  He was your SEA?

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  He was my SEA as well. Oh, yeah. And, uh, you know, I didn't have to, I didn't have to talk much. You know, JT talks a lot.

• 1:58:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He made up for you.

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  He made up, he'd say his thing and I, I would just sit back and he always deferred to me like, you got anything, sir? I'd be like, most of the time, no. And it was kind of cool because it gave an extra gravitas when I did have something to say. You know, they'd be like, oh, he's going to talk this time. Cause JT is just, he's that good, you know? You know him.

• 1:58:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude. We, and, and he's freaking just like a character.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  He's hilarious.

• 1:58:48Jocko Willink?

  As, as an operational SEAL, hell, yeah.

• 1:58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:51Jocko Willink?

  But also like just to have fun and hang out.

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:54Jocko Willink?

  Crazy with like, just, just always having a good time. And when I say always having a good time, I mean, like, no matter where you are, like, we're in Iraq.

• 1:59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:02Jocko Willink?

  And like, we're having a good time. Like, things are funny, things are fun, things are good. Which is the coolest thing about the teams. Like, no matter where you are. You can have guys, we're gonna have fun no matter what, like the shittiest situation, the worst, the hottest, the coldest, whatever the case is, like you look over at JT and you're gonna

• 1:59:22Speaker 01

  He's got a sound effect for you and a crazy story and you're like, oh, okay.

• 1:59:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I got him again and, you know, I picked up four platoons, rolled over to Afghanistan, had a really phenomenal deployment. I mean, those guys were so good. I was pretty hard on them during the workup. Um, but they did, they did a good job. I had really good OICs and then, uh, you know, of course Bobby came over as one. And, uh, yeah, they did great. And on that deployment, I think we had 168 dudes. And, uh, I'm not gonna go into kill counts and stuff, but we had a, we did a lot, you know, they found like over 24,000 pounds of HME, homemade explosives. Um, they recovered a drone, they did all sorts of cool stuff and just really cool. I would just show up as a guest assaulter. That's what I would do. You know what I mean? Like you know how to run your thing. You know the battlespace owner. They're like, you wanna run an element? Maybe.

• 2:00:11Speaker 01

  But if you, if you need element lead, like, well, now we got a guy. So I'll just guest assault and fall in there and had some really cool ops with those guys, man. We had a really cool op on Christmas where we were just in Afghanistan, walking through Afghanistan and this, one of the guys was like, we set up a ALGL, which is like a grenade launcher. And it's belt fed. It's got like a, from this hill, it has like a two kilometer reach and he was up there dressed as Santa Claus.

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  It was really cool, man. Yeah, it was really cool. So, yeah, great deployment and, uh, we did lose a guy. We lost Chris Pike. Um, he was not a SEAL, but he was an operator, straight up. Like the guy was awesome. He was built like a gorilla.

• 2:00:50Jocko Willink?

  So is he one of the tech, one of the technical guys?

• 2:00:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, a technical guy. So they carried, he carried around this technical equipment that would help us, um, I don't know, I'm not gonna go too deep in that. He carried around technical equipment, but he was strong. You know, he didn't try to pretend he was a team guy, but he could operate, was competent and, uh, you know. Uh, he was a, I, I went to his funeral and his mom and his family. I'm like, oh, I see where they come from. You know, his mom spoke at, at his memorial. I don't know a lot of moms that can do that. And, you know, she had a little, maybe a little tear in her eye, but she's, she's looking right out at us and as intense as you can, as tense as you can get. And she's like, don't anybody cry for us. We're warriors. We're pikes. And I was like, dang, I hope you have a lot more kids. She's, that's what we need. So, yeah.

• 2:01:38Jocko Willink?

  Any other, uh, major lessons learned from, from being a troop commander?

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Being a troop commander, you know, I, I think I really, I kind of, that was one of my better, my better performances in the teams, not to sound overly arrogant, but I, I was ready for it, you know? I fell into it. I was tactically good enough. I didn't have to worry about, you know, how my weapons work or anything. I could shoot with the guys as, as well as anybody. And I could really sit back. I had a great chief, a great S E A and really solid chiefs. All those guys are master chiefs now. It was just a really phenomenal deployment. Guys did their, did their piece. I did get in trouble once, right when I got there, which I, I was like, great. So I, I threw a keg party at Danny's and, you know, I, I just decided to buy a keg for everybody, get to know everybody. And, uh, I left,

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  not super late, but I mean, not toward, but I left before the keg was done. And so one of my guys stayed and decided to like, you know, kill the keg. And, uh, he went out to have a cigarette, I guess. I'm sure he was helping an old lady across the street or something. And, uh, he gets rolled up by the cops for being super drunk, you know? And he, he, he, so he gets put, he gets put in the drunk tank. And then, and then after he gets put in the drunk tank, um, they release him the next morning and they tell him there's no paperwork or anything. So he goes and he tells his chief and his chief is like, wait, there's no paperwork? Oh, well, I'll just keep that. So for all you listeners out there that are not policemen, you, I don't think you can put someone in jail overnight without, uh, without paperwork.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  I think you have to put something down on paper. So anyway, so they don't tell me, I don't find out about it. It goes up to the top through Warcom, right? The highest guys, the Admiral. So my boss's boss's boss tells my boss's boss, who tells my boss, who tells, who comes out to Nyland, I think to check out how awesome we are because I'm like, yeah, I mean, we're awesome. He wants to see some awesomeness. This is where you come. And so, yeah, we were out at, you know, Siphon, we're driving to Siphon 16 next, you know, the, the one with all the pointy hard rocks. Yeah, we're going to Siphon 16. I'm like, oh, you wait till we get down there. You're going to see some real awesomeness. Anyway, the, the commanding officer and the Master Chief are like, hey, why, why don't you come, uh, ride with me, Jimmy and JT?

• 2:03:54Speaker 01

  I'm like, oh, okay. So we sit in the back and Robert and I get in there. He's like, so when you guys get a DUI, when are you going to tell me about that? I'm like,

• 2:04:06Speaker 01

  I'm like, I don't know. Um, I don't think you're, you're right. Who was it? He gave me the name. I'm like, no way. There's no way. I know that guy. There's no way. He goes, well, you got a police report that says that. I'm like, will you give me a couple of minutes to figure it out? So I walk out. He tells me the story. It wasn't DUI. He's like, told chief, I told, guess what? Well, you know, I didn't, I didn't think there was any paperwork. I am like, you feel the fire. Like, are you kidding me? You know, so I get back to the boss and I'm like, I'm like, yeah, this is what actually happened. And, you know, he goes, what do you want me to do about it? And I was like, hold me publicly accountable in front of my guys, please. And my boss goes, uh,

• 2:04:51Speaker 01

  that's not what I expected you to say. I don't know if that's the right thing. I'm like, nope. You do that and I got the rest. It's like, just, you need to hammer me in front of the guys.

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  He said, okay. So, you know, we had the SEAL team got together and we got in this room and he wrote me a letter of badness, whatever. Maybe it's a nip lock or something. I don't know how bad it was. It was a letter of badness. And anyway, read it in front of everybody. And then walked out.

• 2:05:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 2:05:21Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, I looked at my guys and I was like, all right, guys. I didn't even, didn't say a thing.

• 2:05:26Jocko Willink?

  No, you don't need to.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  I had nothing to say. I was like, listen, this was our one, our one silver bullet. Like, everyone at this team is gonna go to Afghanistan. Every one of them wanna go. This, it's ours to lose. So all these things that are gonna, your focus is that, and if it's not, if it's not that, it needs to blur out. Alright? That's it. And, you know, that dude was a good dude. He was dying to get punished. He was like, please, hold me a, he was, he wanted that gift of accountability. And I didn't give it to him. And I know that was a cruel thing to do. Really. Cause had I hammered him, he would have felt better. But I didn't. I didn't say a thing. And that dude ended up being Sailor of the Year at Team Five. And he's a Master Chief now. And you know him.

• 2:06:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, you know, I, I learned, you know, I'm, it's toward the end of my tactical career there. I kinda knew how to navigate their circles and I was like, these guys don't wanna see me get strung up, you know? So, they really cleaned up their act and they had a great deployment and I, it was phenomenal nine months in Afghanistan, other than losing Chris Pike.

• 2:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You also told me about, um, learning some resilience from one of your guys. I think he's still active, but.

• 2:06:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is still active. And I'm not gonna say his name. I'm just gonna call him Don. So, um, this dude, that, that same group that, uh, was out in Afghanistan, I had a group out in the west in Helmand, working for the Marines. And, cause the battlespace owner, the Marines own that battlespace, if you don't know, and within that are different groups, but we all answer to the battlespace owner, cause he has to coordinate everything that happens in there. So. Um, he, you know, point man, solid dude. He can brief. He's a level three, which is like human intelligence stuff. He's just a sharp dude. Who do you put on point? You put the dudes who are sharp and this guy, he's a Mexican dude and he's up front and he sees an Afghani about to step on an IED. He runs up to grab him too late. Boom, blows that Afghani

• 2:07:19Speaker 01

  in half, kind of smashes Donnie up a little bit and he, he lost his eyes. Eyes are gone. He's got a trach in, uh, pretty blown up, lost some of his hand because like the, the frag came up, blew his hand up, gets blown up. And I remember thinking, all right, like, I don't know how bad it is, but I wasn't on the ops. They flew him into Bagram. I go see him in Bagram and I'm, we're putting him on the plane and the lady's like, hey, he's, uh, he's not responsive. I was okay. So I kind of take him by his hand and he's got a trach and he can't talk. He can't see. And I kind of like, hey buddy, it's Jimmy. How you doing, man? And he struggles to sit up and I'm like, what's happening? He wants to communicate. So we try and get him a whiteboard, but he can't see. He's got a right with his off hand because his good hands blown up and he's, we figure out

• 2:08:03Speaker 01

  he's trying to tell me he wants to come back. And I'm like, oh, this guy. So I, I tell him, I was like, listen, buddy, like, you know, it's important for the guys to see you do recover. They're worried about you. So what I would like you to do, would you please send videos of your recovery to the guys? Stay in touch with us and if you get better, I'll bring you back.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  And that guy did it. Don got blown up on December the 10th. And so I go out there, I spent the holidays with him and we're getting ready to go on op and you see, you see him, he sends a video of him running on the treadmill. He's sweating and the guys are cheering and you know, the, the physical therapy staff are, are distraught at what's happening, you know, with this guy putting out. And it was cool, man. The guy, it was, they kept him in touch and you know, he didn't make it back on deployment. His injuries were too great. Um, but that he still had community. He still had a purpose and he still had a goal. And you know, we sent a guy home from our deployment after he got shot in the plate and we didn't do anything for him. We sent him home and gave him time.

• 2:09:16Speaker 01

  And I don't think he had the same kind of recovery, you know? Whereas what Don ended up doing was, you know, he came back and he wanted to get back in the teams. Somehow and I grew back. I'm not a doctor. I don't know. He's a badass, you know? He just grew back an eye. He's like, I want to come back in the teams. And so a lot of the higher ups were like, no, you can't bring him back to teams. He has to have peripheral vision, CQC, skydiving, and I'm pissed. I'm like, give him to me. I'll take him, you know? And I'm the opposite now at, at, at five. And they're against it and they're like, well, what if he does SQT? I'm like, okay, well, just maybe just a couple of blocks. That's a slap in the face, man. Like, you know what I mean? This is seasoned operator. Like, anyway, so I'm like, that's fine.

• 2:10:01Speaker 01

  Which blocks do we have to do? And it was like, close quarters combat and skydiving. And because they're like, make him do all of them. Like, he doesn't have to breathe underwater again. Like, that's, that's ridiculous. Anyway, he, I went and told him, I'm like, hey, bro, listen, this is, they said they can bring you back. But this is what you gotta do. He's like, oh, cool. I'll do the whole thing. I'm like, no, no, no, no. He's like, no, no, I'll do the whole thing.

• 2:10:24Speaker 01

  He did. He's the only enlisted guy to ever speak at an SQT graduation. And he was the honor man for MSQT.

• 2:10:32Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:10:33Speaker 01

  Awesome. And he's still, he's still out there right now. He's going to do Beyond the Brotherhood with me after this. And I'm super proud of that dude. And, you know, I learned that from, I learned about those important things about resilience along the way. And I think maintaining that community, he's still a part of the team, you know? Maintaining the, the purpose and the goals was super important. And that's one of the things I'm trying to do with Beyond the Brotherhood, which I'm sure we'll get to in a little bit.

• 2:10:59Jocko Willink?

  Freaking outstanding. What'd you do after that? I thought you went to BUDS, right? As XO or something?

• 2:11:05Speaker 01

  XO, kicking and screaming because I'm like, they're like, hey, man. I screened XO Third Look, which is your last possible look because I never took a real staff tour. I just didn't do that. I just kept going. They're like, you've only gone to the Middle East. You only, you know, just done SEAL teams. You need to do some other things. They want you to do boats or SDV. Anyway, so I somehow made XO. So now you have to go do an XO tour. So that's my first ever staff tour. I didn't know about all the Navy programs, just like 24 Navy programs, like motorcycle safety and like all. I didn't, I hadn't taken a PRT in like seven years. I didn't know and they're like, well, you're fit reps. So you take it? I'm like, I don't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. We still took the PRT. I just didn't even know. So now I'm the XO

• 2:11:46Speaker 01

  in charge of all this admin stuff I don't even know about and had a great staff there. I still stay in touch with, with some of those ladies. They were, one of them, she just put on warrant officer. I'm super proud of her and no, it was, it was a really good tour for me. I didn't realize how far gone I've been because like when you're, if you walk into a coal mine, you're going to get a little dirt on you, you know? It makes me think of that one. You, you did a podcast where there was a guy living in like the CIA world or one of those worlds with the intel. It's a dirty world. Well, going to combat over and over for 14 years is going to leave a stain. And I didn't realize where I was. And then, you know, being at shore and being home and oh,

• 2:12:28Speaker 01

  it's, you know, I'm a normal person and it took a while for that stuff to kind of bleed off, but it was really good for me. And being at BUDS, you know, we learned a lot. I learned a ton while I was there and back to the resilience thing, we had, we had a suicide there.

• 2:12:44Jocko Willink?

  So this was a guy that quit, right?

• 2:12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a guy that quit. I think the proper word used to be a trite. I don't know what it is now. They always have a Phoenix Division or something. I'm trying to be good by NSW, but we called them in trites back then. So usually when guys quit, they, you take them, you give them the man talk with the master chief, which is like usually some big stud. You know, the dude who it was at the time. And he was like, get, and then you go and put him in bed because they've been awake for two or three or four days. Well, this guy didn't do that, jumps in a car, drives downtown, jumps off the 24th floor of the Marriott. And, you know, we're like, and then we start looking at the stuff and we're like, wait, there were some kind of suspect car accidents where some guys lost. Could there be, I don't

• 2:13:28Speaker 01

  know. We don't know, but we had, we know that we got at least one suicide and we have to do something about it. And so I had a couple of these lieutenants and by this time, you know, nowadays these SEAL officers are so freaking smart. They're all Ivy League guys. They're all 1600 SAT guys. And these two guys went to MIT and I was like, hey, I need you guys to design something. Let's figure out. Well, what we can do with these better to treat these guys. And they came up with the Aatroc, the Hell Week Recovery Observation Center. And they were like, look, after you quit, you gotta spend 24 hours in the Aatroc. And during that time, well, first, before you start Hell Week, you have to put down the name of one person that you're gonna call when you finish Hell Week. That, that, that name, that's first. Then you have to talk to us, like, you have to spend 24 hours in there.

• 2:14:11Speaker 01

  And you have to, I have to get a med check. And then you can go, you can leave. So I, I looked at this, I'm like, that's the worst idea ever. This is gonna be like Jonestown the day after, it's gonna be one mass suicide. They're always gonna like be in this huge pity party and they're gonna all, you know. But that's not what happened. They, it made this sense of community. They're in there watching, eating pizza, watching movies. And then you realize, hey, I'm not the minority. No one talks about quitting BUDs. No one does. And now you've got all these guys who are in the same boat, you know? Every one of them is the biggest badass, their, their towns, their families ever known, you know? And, oh, and then they have to call that name.

• 2:14:53Speaker 01

  And that's an interesting wrinkle too, because now it's like, okay, my family, they love me because I'm the best, I'm the golden child. You know, those calls, how do you think those go? You think it's like, you're dead to me? No. When they call, it's like, hey, I'm proud of you, you know, do great things in Navy. And so it breaks that glass and it gives them a community. And then we start working on their next jobs and they get goals and purpose. And it really was a really cool thing that we, uh, that we did. And it worked out great. To my knowledge, there's been zero suicides from guys from a trites after BUDs. And, uh, yeah, I think I, it was something that I learned a lot about resilience, uh, that I didn't know from these, uh, young lieutenants who were smarter than I was.

• 2:15:36Jocko Willink?

  When you got a guy like you and me, kind of, you, you said when you were going through BUDs, you didn't think about quitting. I didn't, definitely didn't think about quitting when I was going through BUDs at all. Well, what did you learn from these guys, like, hearing them talk? The outbrief, when somebody just, so did you do that outbrief as well? Are you sitting there for some of those?

• 2:15:53Speaker 01

  Well, no, it's, it's not really an outbrief. You're talking about the man talk. The outbrief, yeah, we talked to him on the backside. And usually, we is usually not me. Um, you know, we have the, the psych and stuff, we'll talk to him.

• 2:16:05Jocko Willink?

  What kind of stuff do they say?

• 2:16:07Speaker 01

  Well, a lot of times they.

• 2:16:11Speaker 01

  I after so before and after Aatrox because when after Aatrox it was a lot different. Um, but before a lot of these guys were just like, I want, I gotta get back. I lost, I lost.

• 2:16:22Jocko Willink?

  The focus.

• 2:16:23Speaker 01

  I lost focus or no, I don't remember quitting. I was hallucinating or there I always, a lot of times they had some kind of excuse. After the Aatrox, I didn't see that as much, you know? And what an interesting thing was, uh, one time the mic pond, that's a master chief petty officer of the Navy. That's the like, I'm saying it for your people, not for you, is the highest ranking list of guy there is in the whole world. Like he's the top dude. He's the only guy with a third star on his little anchor and uh, he came up to me and he's like, hey, man, you know, I was a Bud's a trite. I'm like, no, like, bro, you gotta tell people that. That'd be a great thing for these guys to know that they could, they could, you know, quit, not make it. And now they could become the mic pond. And uh, he's like, no, I don't want to talk about it. I was like, dang, that would have been a great thing for him to do, you know?

• 2:17:06Jocko Willink?

  So when you're seeing these guys, like if, if someone's listening to this right now and they're like thinking about going to Bud's.

• 2:17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:12Jocko Willink?

  And one thing I've always said is like, if the three of us were going to Bud's and you were wanting to make it because your ex-girlfriend said you could never make it and you're gonna prove it wrong. No, I think you can make it. And, and Echo wants to make it because, you know, he wants to prove to his dad and I want to make it because I'm patriotic. All three of those guys could make it. We could also all three not make it. Like whatever that why is, I don't think it really matters. Like, I know guys that were like, oh, just no one thought I could do it. So I was doing it.

• 2:17:37Speaker 01

  That was me.

• 2:17:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, there you go. That's like a classic situation.

• 2:17:40Speaker 01

  I didn't have anything.

• 2:17:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and there's guys that are like, I, you know, I, I'm doing this because I believe in service and they quit like freaking day two. So they have these big like uh, super philosophical reasons and they don't make it. They quit. Now, look, again, some people that have big, super philosophical reasons, they don't quit. Some people that they're doing it for their, because they're, they want to prove their ex-girlfriend wrong. Sometimes they quit, sometimes they don't. Is it what I'm saying is like? You just gotta, you just gotta wanna freak do it, as far as I'm concerned.

• 2:18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I don't know. We tried, we did a lot of things trying to find the magic sauce. And really, one of the best things we figured out was that we, they made this thing where they put all, they rack and stack these scores. And some of the major components are self-assessment, cadre assessment, peer assessment. And they look at those things, and if those things align pretty close, the guys do better. That, and oddly enough, being close with your mother. Was another common thread. I don't know what that says, but those were some of the few things we could do.

• 2:18:39Jocko Willink?

  When you say the self, peer, and cadre assessment, so if we all think, if like, okay, the cadre thinks I'm like, not the best athlete, but I'm a tough guy, and I think I'm not the best athlete and I'm a tough guy, and my peers think I'm the best, I'm not the best athlete, but I'm a tough guy.

• 2:18:58Speaker 01

  Those lenses align, and you're probably, you, you have a better chance because you're, you know what's going on.

• 2:19:04Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:19:05Speaker 01

  But if you're like, I'm the best athlete ever, and they're like, nah, he's a little slow, and, you know, just being, maybe it's a maturity thing with your frontal lobe. I don't know, but if, if those things align pretty closely, it's been, and that, and of course, there's the baseline physical fitness. People are like, it's all mental. Well, it's more mental if you're not in good shape, you know?

• 2:19:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've always tell people, hey, man, you know that rope climb? It doesn't matter how mad you wanna climb up that rope climb, you can really, really, really, really want it.

• 2:19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:31Jocko Willink?

  But when you can't do it, you can't do it. And all the want, and all the mental strength in the world, you, you gotta freaking train for that, you gotta be physically ready for it.

• 2:19:37Speaker 01

  And for all those buds, gonna bees out there, you know, just the baseline, you know, mile and a half running boots and pants, nine minutes. Uh, your five hundred meter swim, nine minutes. Twenty pull-ups, if you can't do that, don't show up. Um, and then, uh, what's the other one?

• 2:19:50Jocko Willink?

  Hundred and a hundred.

• 2:19:51Speaker 01

  Hundred and a hundred, hundred push-ups, hundred sit-ups, that's right. You do those things, and you've got the physical tools to make it. If you don't.

• 2:19:59Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be harder.

• 2:20:00Speaker 01

  It's gonna be harder. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think, did you say, now, you're good at pull-ups, you're not a hard pull-up guy. What, what, running was your thing, wasn't it?

• 2:20:07Jocko Willink?

  I, I was not great at anything, and not horrible at anything.

• 2:20:11Speaker 01

  That's a good place to be.

• 2:20:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I never wanna run. I failed one. I never won a swim. I failed one, which there's a lot of swims you can fail. There's a lot of runs you can fail. I never won the O course. I never failed one. Like, so I was just like, uh, in the middle of the pack.

• 2:20:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, not a bad place to be.

• 2:20:27Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, I think I got gooned like one time, um, in the goon squad.

• 2:20:32Speaker 01

  That's a slippery slope.

• 2:20:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it can be, but like, that's why, you know, if you only get gooned one time.

• 2:20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:38Jocko Willink?

  You learn your lesson. I was like, yo, whatever it takes to stay up with the pack is worth it.

• 2:20:44Speaker 01

  So, so Echo, if you get gooned once, like, let's just say we're running and they decide that this is the cutoff for people who are running fast enough. So everyone behind them has to get in this. So if you made it past that, you're running in a circle, nice and slow and catching your breath. If you didn't, you're hitting the surf and doing pushups and just getting beat down. And now we take off again. And guess what? You know, you're probably not going to do real well. So that slippery slope just gets worse and worse. So it's like, you best decide to just put out, cause once you get gooned once, it's, yeah.

• 2:21:13Jocko Willink?

  Did you work how weeks while you were there?

• 2:21:15Speaker 01

  I, uh, I did not. Um, I, you know, there's a lot of things I had to do and I don't know. I've never sent a single person to surf. I've never, I don't yell at people. It's just not my thing. It's not my style. So I went out, I brought them pizza on some nights. I always like to go to the, uh, camp surf where they like dig that big microphone and they tell jokes, you know? And, uh, it's, it's a really cool, like indoctrination of teams. It's like day four, you're probably going to make it. And I remember they're like, okay, someone tell a joke and they like had couches out there and I had, I'd bring burritos and pizza for the cadre. And we're watching them and, you know, uh, the, my buddy Bo was the, uh, he's in charge of first phase. He always ran that and he's like, okay, tell a joke. And someone would get up and they'd start to tell a joke that I'm like, maybe it was racist or something.

• 2:21:59Speaker 01

  He'd be like, hit the surf, everybody, before you even finish it. So hit the surf, you know? And they come back and maybe they would tell a joke that was like. Sex or something. I hit the syrup, everybody in the middle of it. And like after a while, you see someone get up and try to tell a joke and class will be like, shut up. But it was a good like tone setter for like, hey, we don't do that here. You know what I mean? It was really cool. You know, because they're, they're boys and they're all like, they want to say things, but you know, he really, he set that, he used that as like a, hey, that's not how we do these things here. So it was pretty cool.

• 2:22:27Jocko Willink?

  And meanwhile, you would also, you have another kid at this point, right?

• 2:22:31Speaker 01

  I do. I got the little savage. Yeah. Yeah. You know him.

• 2:22:33Jocko Willink?

  The little beast.

• 2:22:34Speaker 01

  I ain't gonna bust his name out, but if, you know, if he sees, if he sees Jocko, he's gonna grab him by the neck and try and put him out.

• 2:22:40Jocko Willink?

  I know. He always approaches me as if, what is it like? It's like, he shakes my hand. He looks me in the eyes and he, how old is he right now?

• 2:22:49Speaker 01

  Nine.

• 2:22:49Jocko Willink?

  So he's been doing that since he was like six.

• 2:22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:52Jocko Willink?

  Like coming up to me, shaking my hand and looking me in the eyes like, good to see you.

• 2:22:59Jocko Willink?

  He's got like the soul of a freaking thirty-two-year-old veteran.

• 2:23:03Speaker 01

  Dude, that cost me five gummy bears to teach him. Because like, I used to bring in the mornings, I'd train with, uh, you know, the, the Wolf Pack, you know, Morgan and Bram and Junior, you know, those guys. I'd train with them every morning and I'd bring him in there like, and he would, he would train with me for five minutes just because I want him to be, the gym is a fun place, right? And then I'd put him in thing with a little TV and his breakfast and then I'd go fight with the boys. And, uh, my friends would come in and he wouldn't, he wouldn't walk up and, and shake their hand. He'd hide behind my leg. I'm like, what are you doing, bro? He's like, I'm, I'm, I'm kinda, so I read this book about how like, loss aversion is more powerful than like, if I tell you I'm gonna give you five hundred dollars, that's not as powerful as I give you five hundred dollars and I take it back, right? So I'm like, okay, let me try this new psychology power I have with my five-year-old.

• 2:23:48Speaker 01

  And I, I, I give him, I'm like, hey, hey buddy, here's five gummy bears. Put them in your pocket. They're yours, but you can't eat them until after class. So every time someone comes up and you don't shake their hand, I'm gonna throw one gummy bear away.

• 2:24:04Speaker 01

  Okay, can you do that? He's like, yes, sir. I'm like, okay. We say, yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. My house. I'm like, okay. So we go up there and sure enough, Morgan comes up the stairs and he's hiding behind my leg and I'm like, oh, oh, hey, uh, then give me all those gummy bears, please. And he like takes it out and gives it to me. You know that metal trash can we have right next to that? Right next to the water fountain? It's a clang. It's a clang. It's like 20 feet from here. I laugh when I see it and and his face look horrified like just, I can't believe you just threw away the sugary goodness. And then he, you know, he's like, okay, I'm like, are you gonna do it now? Or do I need to take another one? He's, he walks up, he shakes his hand and and then people react. They're freaked out. They're like, what is this kid all intense? So now, now it's his game. Yeah. I mean, so if you're parents out there, five gummy bears is all it takes. Yeah.

• 2:24:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I never recognized that loss aversion thing. I know the, the, the punishment that I had with my son was, I took one of his toys and brought it to the concrete patio and smashed it with a hammer. Uh, cause he had done something.

• 2:25:02Speaker 01

  A little more intense.

• 2:25:03Jocko Willink?

  He had done, he had done something that was unacceptable in my family. And so, yeah. And so people are like, I can't believe you did that. You know how many times I did it?

• 2:25:13Speaker 01

  Once.

• 2:25:13Jocko Willink?

  Once. And I put, and then I had a staging area and I took his next favorite toy and I put it in the staging area. And I was like, this one's next. If anything like this, if you, if you're out of line.

• 2:25:23Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:25:24Jocko Willink?

  And he couldn't really speak very well because he was only four.

• 2:25:30Jocko Willink?

  He was like six though.

• 2:25:31Speaker 01

  You will change your own diaper.

• 2:25:33Jocko Willink?

  And he was like, he was like, check. So I only had to only do it one time and it left a mark, right?

• 2:25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:39Jocko Willink?

  Don't wanna, don't wanna lose the, the favorite toys.

• 2:25:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:43Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. So you got him now. And then what, after that, you go back to, uh, you, didn't you go to the deploy again?

• 2:25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:51Jocko Willink?

  Now it's like 2017, 2018 timeframe.

• 2:25:54Speaker 01

  The second half of the Mosul fight with, uh, we did Western Mosul, which was like that big fight with ISIS. And it was an interesting thing. Now I have this new thing called A2E, A3E, like advise a company and assist. And everyone wanted to go with the company is a third A and that's what everyone wants. Cause the guys, now you've got these new guys who want to come in and they're like, they're trying to prove themselves because they got all these combat vets, but the war ain't the same anymore, right? And so these, it's time for the Iraqis to defend their own country. And you know, these guys want to go in and get in the mix, but really, you know, we can like mark the Iraqis where they are, let the Iraqis fight when they get stuck. They are not technically savvy enough to like do the combined arms things with the aircraft and calling the JTAC. Cause you know, calling in bombs is, I mean, it's not

• 2:26:39Speaker 01

  super hard, but there's pretty big consequences, right? On a risk assessment, it's like, it would be bad.

• 2:26:44Jocko Willink?

  Catastrophic.

• 2:26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, catastrophic. So we do that for them. You don't have to be there on the ground with them to do that. And the guys really like struggle with that because they're like, come on. So we, we made this rule. You had to be one kilometer off the flot, the forward line of trace. So the Iraqis are pushing, you gotta be one K back and then you can call in the strikes and that's on the, that's on the, with the company. Usually you can do it from the jock. You don't even need to go. And you know, the guys really struggle with that, but you know, I don't want to send a guy home in a box for, for that country anymore, you know? And we, we, we went into that and it was actually super, super good, but it was interesting seeing how much the guys were always trying to find a way to get up there. They're always trying to find a way to get in the fight. And I'm like, wow, how close are you? And well, it's gonna be closer, but I can support with a

• 2:27:27Speaker 01

  50 cal. And I'm like, bro, I know, man. I know, I know, I know. But what's happening here is gonna happen whether you're up there and getting shot at or not, you know? So yeah, it was an interesting place for me to be on the other side, right? I'm sure there's someone like, oh, Jimmy's weak, he's, you know?

• 2:27:43Jocko Willink?

  You were, you were the guy pulling the reins.

• 2:27:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I was the, I was the deputy commander of the CDR and then I was the commander for a while. So that's like all special forces in Iraq and Syria. Cause the boss had to go home because he had a family issue. And, uh, you know, NSW was like, we'll send a guy over. And he's like, no, no, let's have Jimmy do it. You know, now I'm running these commanders who are way senior than I am.

• 2:28:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's wild.

• 2:28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. And they know me. It's the teams, you know? And I, because in my mind, I'm like, there's no one here that can tell me I can't go on an op. I'm going, you know what I mean?

• 2:28:13Jocko Willink?

  You immediately, yeah. You immediately went to the same.

• 2:28:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I was like, I'm, so I think I'm gonna go on an op. So I go on this op and the guys were like, oh, here, sir, this is where you're sitting. I'm like, okay, do you want me to gun drive? Where am I? Like, you just sit right here. I'm like, oh.

• 2:28:29Jocko Willink?

  You're that guy.

• 2:28:30Speaker 01

  I'm the combat vet, like, what a spectator now, like, oh, I'm like, no, guys, I can really help, but no. You know what? It's not a place for me to be. The guys did a great job. I went on an op with them and I'm like, okay. I am that guy who is, you know, it's past my prime.

• 2:28:45Jocko Willink?

  Turned into that guy.

• 2:28:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So I didn't go on anymore. I just went on that one and they were good. It was some Team Seven guys, but. Yeah, so we did the Mosul fight. It was, it went, I think that really the integration of technology, unprecedented level. Guys didn't get to get the scrap on they wanted to get, but also we didn't hurt a lot of guys. You know, we, we lost C4, Charlie Keating, you know, but.

• 2:29:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the technology advancement was so incredible. Like, our deployment when you and I were together, 2006, like, the, the, the UAVs and stuff.

• 2:29:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:29:21Jocko Willink?

  Were just like pathetic.

• 2:29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:24Jocko Willink?

  And I remember our, one of my officers, it was actually Leif's, one of Leif's assistant platoon commanders. He was, he was like the UAV guy and like every time he would launch for those.

• 2:29:36Speaker 01

  It was a recovery op. Remember, we gave him such a hard time.

• 2:29:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, bro. They were hitting walls, hitting buildings, hitting trees and, and.

• 2:29:44Speaker 01

  Was it the first Aqua Puma? Is that what it was?

• 2:29:45Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what it was, but and not only that, but the imagery sucked. You know, it was like from a shaky little freaking camera that was on target like one quarter of the time. So they, and, and it just turned into, the technologies got so good, so fast. And by the time you guys were over there, it was like incredible.

• 2:30:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:04Jocko Willink?

  Incredible. And also the enemy had it as well. And you see some of the stuff that's going on right now in Ukraine where there's like. Drones dro- dropping hand grenades. Have you seen some of those videos?

• 2:30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:30:15Jocko Willink?

  Freaking horrific.

• 2:30:16Speaker 01

  We were worried about that in, in Mosul too. And actually, they had all sorts, we like tried to all sorts of different things. And somebody came up with this idea of having these like Falcons swooping down and taking out the drones. I'm like, I don't know, that'd be cool. I mean, it'd be cool to see like, like what's more America than an eagle swapping out a fly and grabbing a drone, a bad guy drone. But, uh, we ended up finding lots of different things, but really the best thing to do was just, cause the drone had, had a return address. It had to go back, right? And so, once that thing goes back, you followed in with a hellfire. And that was kind of the most successful thing, in my opinion.

• 2:30:47Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's a pretty good success.

• 2:30:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:49Jocko Willink?

  How you like me now?

• 2:30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. You drop your little forty mic, mic shell and then you eat a hellfire.

• 2:30:55Jocko Willink?

  And when did you, when did you end up, you did like the executive, uh, what do they call it when you went to Harvard? Cause you didn't go there, right?

• 2:31:02Speaker 01

  No, it's Program for Leadership Development. It's, cause I was looking around for an executive MBA. And, uh, you know, I, I went all, I was like, I'll do SDSU or I'll do, and someone's like, but every place was accepting me. USC. I'm like, wow. Maybe I should start at the top and work my way down and see what happens. So I threw out like Harvard, Stanford and then got accepted. And I was like, oh, well, I guess I should go now. So I went to that and it was actually awesome. It's basically their MBA curriculum. You do all the case studies and then you do six weeks on campus. It's nine month long. And then you do one more module and it ends up you as alumni. And, uh, it was great. Well, the best thing I got out of there is the network. I mean, I tell people now, I think school is overrated. Like if you're going to be a engineer or a doctor, you gotta go to school, man.

• 2:31:46Speaker 01

  But if you're going to run business, and my brother's awesome at business. He doesn't, didn't even go to, he finished high school barely, you know? And, uh, it's, there's just, I think that entrepreneur line is we need to preserve that and celebrate that. And I don't necessarily think that college is the right fit for everybody, you know?

• 2:32:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. I definitely agree with you. As a matter of fact, I was just getting interviewed the other day and I was, they're like, oh, less men are going to college. And I was like, no, I kind of support that, you know? I mean, yeah, if you're, like you said, if you're going to be an engineer, you're going to be a doctor, but if you're going to go. And do like, why not go learn how to weld or go learn how to be an electrician in a in an 18 month trade school where you come out with a legit skill that people actually need in the world. So

• 2:32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, because all these other things you just plug into into the big machine making eighty to a hundred thousand dollars a year. And on top of that, college is and it's an indoctrination. It's like nonstop indoctrination. And you know, this is I'm speaking from I got a daughter who's in medical school and then my son is just starting at Charlton State. And you know, I just see it. It's so much of an indoctrination. They've put all these little things. It's like, well, why don't we just teach them the skills that they need and leave them alone. And I think the trades are still that way.

• 2:32:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. And what was you but you started a business kind of around this timeframe, right?

• 2:33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I started sushi assassin.

• 2:33:06Jocko Willink?

  Sushi assassin. Echo Charles now he's entered the chat.

• 2:33:10Speaker 01

  Are you a sushi guy?

• 2:33:11Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:33:13Speaker 01

  Can you say sushi assassin?

• 2:33:15Jocko Willink?

  Sushi assassin.

• 2:33:16Speaker 01

  It's kind of hard to say.

• 2:33:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:17Speaker 01

  But so I came back from business school. I'm like, I got this new business muscle. I got to use and then the teams, you know, that's what we do. Like, oh, I learned how to be a hearse master. You go tie that. So I went down and I I speared. I'm a big. I like to spearfish. I had like 200 pounds of yellowtail. I'm like, what do I do with this? And my buddy's like, bro, we should start a sushi thing. I'm like, uh, do you know a sushi chef? He's like, I'm a sushi chef. I'm like, uh, okay. You sure? Make me some sushi. So trying to like what you did with me. And he did a good job. And he's got a really, he's from Kauai, actually. He said, I think he said he know you. His name is Aaron Bishop. But he grew up. He grew up in Kauai. He's like a small framed little white guy, smaller than I am.

• 2:33:56Jocko Willink?

  Freckles?

• 2:33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:57Jocko Willink?

  Does he have a brother named Damian?

• 2:33:58Speaker 01

  Yes, he does.

• 2:34:01Jocko Willink?

  Aaron Bishop. Yeah, yeah, he's older than Damian.

• 2:34:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:04Jocko Willink?

  Damian's my class.

• 2:34:05Speaker 01

  So yeah, so he's a good dude, man. And and he started this up and, you know, at the time, I'm super proud of him because he didn't have a lot going on. He was working. He hadn't done his taxes in a couple of years and he just his life was kind of not going super good. And we started sushi assassin and he He runs it, you know, he runs it. He does it. I set the business up and he's got a really nice like vibe to him. Phenomenal sushi. If you're in the San Diego area and you want to do some sushi, get some in your house. And what really helped us out was COVID because all of a sudden they shut down all these mom and pop restaurants, you know? And no one knows how to make sushi. I mean, I kinda can now, but I can't make what he makes, you know? And so now you can have, we'll take a PCR test, show up in your house, boom, minimum of eight, it's about a hundred and forty dollars a head.

• 2:34:50Speaker 01

  But it's super good. All you can eat, you know? And you're in your house. If you wanna just, you wanna drink, you drink your own stuff and then we clean up and leave and it's been pretty good. So he's making a good living now. I don't take money from it, but I wanna hand the business off to him, but that was my first foray.

• 2:35:04Jocko Willink?

  What is it? Sushiassassin.com?

• 2:35:06Speaker 01

  No, he has an Insta and I think it's sushiassassin.co. I think that's, I don't have, I'm looted social media, man. I, I have a LinkedIn. That's all I have. You know, it's like.

• 2:35:17Jocko Willink?

  And it's mainly the San Diego area?

• 2:35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's mainly San Diego area. Yeah.

• 2:35:22Jocko Willink?

  All right. So you're doing that.

• 2:35:26Jocko Willink?

  And now we roll into your, kinda like your last, your last tour was, was group one, right?

• 2:35:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I rolled over to there and I was the opso for a while and then

• 2:35:36Speaker 01

  they shut down the four units and they combined everything in group one and I was, I was redlining. I'm like, I was running all of what used to be down there and I'm like, hey man, and the staff hadn't come here yet. So the guys that were there had to come back and I was like, hey, I can't, can't maintain this. Cause I was working from like, you know, I get, you know, it's like the team, I work at four thirty until six, get a workout in, then go to work. Cause I, we have like zipper piped into our house. I actually had it hardwired into my house. And yeah, you just like, my, my friend knew how to do it. We set it up. So anyway, they, I was working like crazy and I told the boss, I'm like, bro, I gotta tap out, man. Like we gotta, we gotta, so they split my position into three. We had like the opso, the training officer, which is what the group one ops used to be.

• 2:36:15Speaker 01

  And then we had like the thirty-five, which is like combining intel and kinda forward looking ops. Anyway, so I'm like, I wanna take training. And because I'm getting out, so that's that's a kingmaker job, put someone in that kingmaker job. So I went to training and it was awesome. Had a great job. I loved it. You know, I'll just say CB work with me. And one of the best, most capable, humble people I've ever met, you know, I, I, I just, he was your, one of your OICs.

• 2:36:45Jocko Willink?

  He's my OIC. He's, he's the Delta Charlie in the book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. He's the guy that I stole everything from.

• 2:36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know what? And you ask him what he does? He's like, I do the bitch work. That's what he says.

• 2:36:56Jocko Willink?

  Of course.

• 2:36:57Speaker 01

  Just a phenomenal dude. He set up my whole retirement for me and just he lives, walks from this, you know that?

• 2:37:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:37:03Speaker 01

  But phenomenal dude and I worked with him and we, we ran that, that training and that, that went well. And then I kind of like started working my way out. And, uh, you know, I started a couple of other businesses, so.

• 2:37:14Jocko Willink?

  And so tell us about the, what do you got going on now?

• 2:37:17Speaker 01

  So now I've got.

• 2:37:19Jocko Willink?

  So you re- well, you retired in 2022, right?

• 2:37:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, actually technically January 1st, but my retirement that you.

• 2:37:26Jocko Willink?

  Wouldn't, yeah, that I spoke at was what?

• 2:37:28Speaker 01

  December 16th, I think.

• 2:37:29Jocko Willink?

  Check. Okay.

• 2:37:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, but I started Mayday Executive Services and we do high-end events for, uh, for executives, high, safe, unconventional. I just did one, this last three days I've been doing it and I took some folks riding like water boards, those little water jet boards and we did some, uh, we did some.

• 2:37:47Jocko Willink?

  Wait, what's a water jet board?

• 2:37:48Speaker 01

  You like stand on it and the jet ski follows you around and you like ride on it. It's almost feels like a hoverboard.

• 2:37:54Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:37:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We did that and then we did, uh, we went around with the sharks out in La Jolla, which if you're not from here, it's a pretty big deal. And, uh, and then they don't know, but I actually did see a small great white when I was out there.

• 2:38:06Jocko Willink?

  How big?

• 2:38:07Speaker 01

  Uh, seven foot maybe.

• 2:38:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:08Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:38:08Jocko Willink?

  La Jolla is breeding ground for great whites.

• 2:38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:11Jocko Willink?

  Um, so it's not a surprise to see one.

• 2:38:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:14Jocko Willink?

  But most of the sharks that you see in La Jolla.

• 2:38:16Speaker 01

  Those little leopard sharks.

• 2:38:17Jocko Willink?

  Little leopard sharks that are, they're nice.

• 2:38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:20Jocko Willink?

  They're nice sharks.

• 2:38:20Speaker 01

  They got little bitty mouths. They just like clams or something. Yeah. But anyway, they were pretty, it was a big deal for them. And then we also did some underwater knot tying. And then I did a talk with them on, uh, On adjusting your team to change. So it was really good. I work with, uh, this was through prey.com. I work with those guys all the time. Uh, their CEO, Steve Gutina has been a mentor for me on the way out. You met him at my, uh, at my retirement and he's, I did some work with him early on, like in 2015, I did something for him. I'd set up a scavenger hunt or something. And he's like, hey, can we pay you? I'm like, no, you can't pay me. I just, he's like, what can you, I'm like, well, will you be my mentor? Dude, that was the best investment of my life. Those guys, I mean, he's probably texted me 10 times already today. I called him on my way

• 2:39:01Speaker 01

  here to make sure I was squared away. And he's just been a phenomenal, you know, mentor and leader and just good people, you know? So you need mentors inside and out, in the, in the, in the military. It was you, Dave Cooper, um, Bone Ancebo, you know, those were my mentors. And then now on the outside, I've got Steve Gutina, you know, he's been amazing, you know?

• 2:39:23Jocko Willink?

  So that, that is called, uh, May Day Executive. It's at maydayexecutive.com.

• 2:39:30Speaker 01

  It's maydayexecutiveservices.com. And I've actually never seen the website. My sister made it. I don't, I don't pay attention to it.

• 2:39:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I looked at it. Yeah.

• 2:39:38Speaker 01

  I heard it's messed up on the cell phone right now. So she's got to fix that. But on the desktop is tight. I don't know. I don't do a lot of that. I'm mostly word of mouth. I'm booked through March right now. And, uh, but I try to just do two, two events a month. And sometimes it's speaking. I do a lot of with the entrepreneurs organization and the young, the YPO, Young Presidents Organization. Um, and then, but my preponderance of my time is spent on Beyond the Brotherhood.

• 2:40:02Jocko Willink?

  Right. So, so talk us through that. Beyond the Brotherhood. This is a, a 501(c)(3).

• 2:40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct. Correct. And you know, people don't realize how often, uh, SEALs kill themselves. It's, it's pretty bad. Like within four months of my retirement, four of our brothers died by their own hand. And, uh, it's, it's a problem. And we're just, I think we're just getting on the tip of the iceberg because now the guys that did a lot of the, a lot of the combat are just starting to get out. And I think that, you know, we talked about resilience, community, purpose, goals. These guys, they're used to fighting for a higher cause. You know, they're fighting. Maybe it's for patriotism, maybe it's for the guy next to you, it doesn't matter, you're part of a community. And now, you get out and you're working for money. And a lot of these guys do fine, but years down the road, they lose that community purpose, sense of

• 2:40:52Speaker 01

  goals. And so, I thought about what I could do to get after that problem and, you know, Beyond the Brotherhood, in cooperation with Punta Brava Surf and Golf Club, I've been doing work with them for a while, and they're like, hey, would you start a 501(c)(3)? We'll, we'll, we'll cover it. What do you want to do? I'm like, let's get after this problem. And so, you know, we're just getting started. I did 14 dudes in 2022, and this year, I think we've got 18 so far. But, I don't advertise. We take the guys in, and basically, I like to use the Navy programs, be an expert at that. We help them get through the VA process. Then when they get through that, we, we plug them into a network. Because you know, in the teams, you're like in a black hole. You, you don't really have social media. I got

• 2:41:34Speaker 01

  my first social media account in January. And so, you, we kind of, we, we take them, we give them the last bits of what they need. So like, if you're a company trying to hire, oh, I need them to have this real estate thing. I'll get them that real estate certificate. I'll send them to you. And we, we line it up based on five things that I actually learned from a different nonprofit. But it's like, what matters to you most, put it in order. Where you want to live, who you work with, the mission that you're doing, how much you get paid, or ability to control your own time. Once I get that, I get a picture of what kind of thing you need to do. And then, you know, there's no one size fits none solution. We work with the guys, get them placed. And I'm starting, I got good partners, I need more. So, you know, we, of course, we need donors, because it's a 501(c)(3), but we also need mentors, people that want to take these guys and hire them. And I'm finding

• 2:42:19Speaker 01

  that they've, they've done really well. So, if there's a value proposition on both sides, and we've got a website, beyondthebrotherhood.org. And, you know, it's a way to give back to SEAL community, it's important to me. May Day Executive pays the bills. Beyond the Brotherhood is like, good for me. And I'm still plugged into the community. And, you know, I think down the road, I think the magic's not what we do right now, but I think it's going to be in five, six years, where these guys are higher up, and they're, you know, they're at the, the echelon of society that they deserve to be. A society that they fought for and earned. And then now they're looking at what their life is and maybe they can find some purpose to give them back to Beyond the Brotherhood. Maybe they come to our events or you know, they see that snot nose little punk that just like he was getting out.

• 2:43:01Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Let's, let's get this little fella turned in the right, right direction.

• 2:43:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for people hiring, uh, so, so if I'm at a company and I'm looking for somebody to do a certain job, I can go to beyondthebrotherhood.org.

• 2:43:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:43:16Jocko Willink?

  And I can say, hey, I'm looking to hire somebody to run one of my plants or one of my sites. And you, this is what I really liked about what you're doing. Talk, talk me through how you are screening guys.

• 2:43:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:43:31Jocko Willink?

  To, you're preparing on what you talked about, hey, we're gonna, you need a real estate thing. Cool. We'll get you that real estate thing. But you're also doing a cool, uh, methodology for screening them.

• 2:43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. So like, there's a lot of organizations just taking anybody, you know what I mean? But you don't know who that person is. Is he a guy that got, you know, shit canned after a platoon and a half and stole something and lost his bird? He's got a buzz class next to his name. So, you know, we screen our guys for character. Um, not everybody makes it. And when I say character, I, I take, I have them turn in when they apply. One supervisor, one peer, three subordinates. And we talk about those lenses, they need to align. So like, if they all think that you're a jerk, but you're squared away. But you're, even your supervisors say that, you're like, all right, this, this might be the right guy because everyone sees in the same. But if the kids, guys below you think you're a jerk and above you're like, oh, he's the nicest person.

• 2:44:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, that's, that's not, you're not true across the board and you probably are not the guy we're looking for. So we screen these guys and you know, and the teams is about 2,500 of us. Like, you know, if I, if, if someone didn't, didn't know me and they ask two or three team guys, they can get a kind of converging validity of what my reputation is. So that's what we do. We get, figure out who these guys are. They're not perfect, but they're pretty good, high caliber dudes. And, uh, you know, we'll give them the last bit what they need and send them on their way.

• 2:44:48Jocko Willink?

  And then what's the deal with the, uh, with the Punta, what is it? Punta Brava?

• 2:44:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:53Jocko Willink?

  What's that all about?

• 2:44:54Speaker 01

  Punta Brava. So it's a private surf and golf club. I've been doing work with them for a while. I know I would take investors out and take them big wave surfing or take them to the wineries in Mexico or whatever it is they want me to do. And it's been fun. We've got a really, it's a really cool place. It's puntabrava.com.

• 2:45:12Speaker 01

  But it's gonna be one of the best highest end golf clubs in the world. There's five holes. They're designed by Tiger Woods. You have to hit over the, over the water to get on the green. And they're only gonna take 360 members. It's super high end, but it is cool. It's, so if you know where La Bufo Dora is, just south of Ensenada.

• 2:45:29Jocko Willink?

  I was checking it out on a map. It's a peninsula that sticks up south of Ensenada.

• 2:45:32Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:45:32Jocko Willink?

  Seven miles.

• 2:45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, seven, seven miles out into the Pacific Ocean. So it feels like an island because there's this huge mountain on it. And, and they're breaking ground. I think before the end of this year, they're gonna have the, they're gonna have a nine hole setup. And they're talking, they'll have an airstrip there and uh, just.

• 2:45:47Jocko Willink?

  How are the waves?

• 2:45:48Speaker 01

  The waves, not that good, but uh, Toto Santos, the world-class big wave spot is a four-minute jet ski ride from there. So, once we get the marina set up, it's gonna be really easy to bounce out there. I took some dudes out there surfing in 25 foot. And uh, they, they didn't do super great, but they didn't die. My leash ended up snapping. I had to swim all the way in and go get it. But uh, it was cool. I took some guys spearfishing there a few weeks ago. It's a really cool place, man. Like, I mean, it's expensive, but if you can afford it, it's definitely worth it.

• 2:46:19Jocko Willink?

  So are people gonna build houses down there on that place?

• 2:46:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, they got 25 lots that they're selling. And uh, you know, did they go through the website? They can figure out all the deets on that. But yeah, you can have a house on it. And I think the real estate around there is gonna really bump up. And in addition to Beyond the Brotherhood, they sponsor Punta Prava Medical. So they're trying to bring medical care to all the people in that area, try and give back to the community there. And you know, I got a soft spot for Mexico. I grew up right in El Paso and I, I surfed down there all the time. I've been dying to take you down there. Um, but yeah, it's good people, good community. I really like what's going on down there.

• 2:46:51Jocko Willink?

  Check. Now, if I'm a guy that's getting out, uh, same thing. I go to beyondthebrotherhood.org.

• 2:46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you'll click a little application thing and then it'll go to our admin, which is me and Sean Murphy.

• 2:47:05Speaker 01

  We're admin and then one of us will look at it. We'll divide and conquer. He takes most of the East Coast guys. I take most of the West Coast guys and uh, and then we, we do our little research. If it checks out, because sometimes I gotta put you on a wait because you know, I got like a couple of guys in the queue. There's only a couple of us doing it. And so I, I've got a lot of jobs, but I really think that once beyond the road, it gets up and running um, in a couple of years, especially when Puna Brava gets the constituency that they're going to get and uh, will be a centerpiece there. And I think it'll be easier for us. But right now I'm super bad at fundraising. I'm not good at asking people for money. I'm just not good at it. Like it feels weird, you know? Uh, but that's kind of what you gotta do for a 501(c)(3).

• 2:47:44Jocko Willink?

  And what else you got? You've married?

• 2:47:46Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah.

• 2:47:48Jocko Willink?

  So you got that going on?

• 2:47:50Speaker 01

  Yep. And she's awesome. She's active duty right now.

• 2:47:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:47:53Speaker 01

  So going to, going to dime her out, but she's a lawyer.

• 2:47:56Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:47:56Speaker 01

  All business. You see her on the mat here sometimes. She's out here training you.

• 2:47:59Jocko Willink?

  Check. And, and then, you know, when we were talking uh, before you were kind of talking about just like broad, like life lessons. And one of the things you were talking about was just like decision making and at some point shifting from like making selfish decisions, which might not have turned out the best in the long run.

• 2:48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:48:19Jocko Willink?

  Over to like, okay, I gotta put others first. Like talk me through some of that stuff.

• 2:48:23Speaker 01

  Well, I made a lot of selfish decisions, you know? And I know, think one of the biggest things I can say that has been a huge effect on me was I missed the first 14 years of my kids' lives. Like those 14 years, you know, I was gone, what 270, 300 days a year. And then when you're home, you just kind of drop off your dirty laundry and prep for the next trip. And I was gone a lot. And so I really, you know, I'm grateful to my older kids, 18 and 24, because especially my daughters worked really hard to like maintain a relationship with me. She came out here to go to SDSU. Um, and I, I missed a lot of that. And but now I got the second chance. And I guess my message to other people out there that maybe made some bad decisions, you know, not the team's a bad decision. It's who I am, you know? I was, I was made for this.

• 2:49:07Speaker 01

  But you know, I've got another shot with my youngest son and you know, I spend a lot of time with that guy, you know, when I I pick him up at school, I work from like four thirty AM and I'm off by two and then it's just he and I do our thing. And you know, he's got a bunch of different interests. He does rugby. He's here on the mat a couple of times a week. But just that time that I I give him is for him. And you know, I didn't do that for my first two. I was worried that they would be like, oh, now you're gonna this is is he your only real kid? But they weren't anything like that. It's been cool. I took a trip to South Africa this summer with my oldest. That's where he wanted to go. He wants to be a vet. And then and I took the little fella. And we self directed safari in a Toyota Camry.

• 2:49:49Speaker 01

  There's lions like looking down. Animals aren't hard to find there, by the way.

• 2:49:54Jocko Willink?

  What self directed safari?

• 2:49:56Speaker 01

  You rent a Camry. Step one. Step two, you drive to the wild animal park.

• 2:50:00Jocko Willink?

  Got it. And you just drive through?

• 2:50:02Speaker 01

  That's it. You drive right up on them. Like, I mean, hyenas, elephants.

• 2:50:06Jocko Willink?

  Were you in South Africa?

• 2:50:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was in Kruger National Park.

• 2:50:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because that's one thing that I when I went to South Africa is like, there's no, like, there's only parks, right? There's no lions walking around in normal places.

• 2:50:21Speaker 01

  No, no. But in the parks, if you get out of your car, you could be lion

• 2:50:24Jocko Willink?

  Right, yeah.

• 2:50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:26Jocko Willink?

  I also made that mistake.

• 2:50:27Speaker 01

  I got out of the car sometimes.

• 2:50:28Jocko Willink?

  Did you hear this story? So I'm with Leif and his wife Jenna and with our our friend Paul down in in South Africa. And we're driving and we had to go from Joburg to like this place, this game reserve, right? So we're driving and we're talking and we're, you know, whatever. And I didn't really realize it, but we had gone from like, world into the thing, right?

• 2:50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it happens fast, right?

• 2:50:51Jocko Willink?

  But I didn't really see, but we went through like a gate and everything. But I didn't really, I don't know if I was doing something else or whatever, wasn't paying attention.

• 2:50:57Speaker 01

  It's not like America, yeah.

• 2:50:58Jocko Willink?

  So we're driving, now it's getting dark, but the sun's going down. And all of a sudden, it's like a nice sunset across, you know, like, cool, like, like little woods and like little mountain thing. And I'm like, oh, like, hold on, let's get a picture. And so like, this guy Paul stops the car. And I'm like, all good. And then I'm like, you know, I'll get a better picture if I'm not in a car. So I just like, open the door, get out, and I start walking around, like, trying to find that good angle with the tree and the mountain or whatever. And then I just take a few pictures on my whatever phone and then get back in. And dude, like,

• 2:51:30Jocko Willink?

  Leif was like, bro, I don't know if that was like a good thing for like, and I was like, what do you mean? He's like, well, we're in like the wild animal park.

• 2:51:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:37Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, oh, well, you know, kind of like whatever.

• 2:51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause in America, they're they can't eat you.

• 2:51:42Jocko Willink?

  But it turns out this dude Paul was like thinking like, hey, dude, Jocko's just freaking legit. Yeah. He just doesn't care. Like whatever, whatever. No, it was just Jocko's stupid. Cause the real answer was Jocko's dumb. And Jocko was almost dead because he was dumb, but I just got out and was like, just touring around like, oh, we get a cool picture.

• 2:52:00Speaker 01

  I did the same thing, man.

• 2:52:01Jocko Willink?

  Freaking idiots, dude.

• 2:52:02Speaker 01

  I pulled up on this, like you could go along the river and like these little pullouts and a dirt road. So I get out of the Camry and we walked down and to walk. I'm like, oh, there's a crocodile. I'm gonna go see a crocodile. So we walked down there and where the crocodile was, it's gone. That thing was setting up on us, man. And then on top of that, there's elephants in the, in this riverbed. I'm like, hey, boys. We should walk back to the car. Like, so I'm walking and you know, my boys are like, well, I kind of want to look at the elephant. I'm like, no, no, no. I think we need to go back to the car. Like, so we walk up the thing. Cause and I can see like, you know, elephants make big poops and they're all over the place. I was like, man, this was like their thoroughfare. Like we don't need to run into an elephant here, you know?

• 2:52:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that and I saw a rhino, right?

• 2:52:42Speaker 01

  Oh, that's the hardest one to see. I didn't see one of those.

• 2:52:44Jocko Willink?

  So we saw one and bro, I was like, we were in a Range Rover and I was like, this thing's looking at me.

• 2:52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:52Jocko Willink?

  And most of the things that I look at in the world, I kind of think I can take them.

• 2:52:56Speaker 01

  Not this way.

• 2:52:57Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? I'm kind of like, look, dude, unless you're like John Jones, like I look at John Jones and be like, yo, this could be a problem. But even John Jones, you know, I'll stick that, you know, I'll stab him or something, right?

• 2:53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, run.

• 2:53:07Jocko Willink?

  You know, whoever it is, I feel, I think I can take them kind of.

• 2:53:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:11Jocko Willink?

  Right? I'm at least gonna be able to handle the situation, but they're unarmed.

• 2:53:16Speaker 01

  I had a big knife.

• 2:53:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I didn't, I didn't have a knife because we flew in from, you know, flew in on aircraft. So I didn't, I was too stupid. I didn't go out and get a big knife. So I didn't have anything. It's not like, you know, I had to stick John Jones. Like if that happens, if I roll in through Albuquerque, no offense, John Jones, bones. But, uh, no, but seriously, you know, you look around at people, you're like, I, I'm gonna be okay.

• 2:53:34Speaker 01

  I'm gonna be okay. Yeah.

• 2:53:35Jocko Willink?

  Right. But this thing's looking at me.

• 2:53:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:39Jocko Willink?

  And it's like, we're in a car and I'm like, this thing will kill us all in this car if it decides to right now.

• 2:53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:45Jocko Willink?

  This was a weird feeling.

• 2:53:47Speaker 01

  Dude, did you see any hyenas?

• 2:53:50Speaker 01

  Scary AF dude. Think about a jaw muscle that goes straight into neck muscle.

• 2:53:54Jocko Willink?

  I hyenas are my favorite land animal.

• 2:53:58Speaker 01

  Dude, we we pulled into a little chain link fence and we camped there. We pull up and there's like you to me, chain link fence, hyena, my son. I'm like, dude, this doesn't seem super safe.

• 2:54:08Jocko Willink?

  It's Jurassic Park ish.

• 2:54:09Speaker 01

  It is Jurassic.

• 2:54:10Jocko Willink?

  Where I was, it was like Jurassic Park. They had like a little electric wire, like two little electric wires. And on the other side of it is elephants and lions and yeah, I don't know if they were on power outage or whatever, but that's where we were at.

• 2:54:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were same thing. I pulled in, camped in the Camry like.

• 2:54:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'm glad you made it home and I'm glad you're getting to spend all this good time with with your boys and with your daughter as well, who's just, they're freaking great kids.

• 2:54:36Speaker 01

  No, you know all my kids. Yeah, you've seen them.

• 2:54:38Jocko Willink?

  So, um, what else, man? Does that get us up to speed?

• 2:54:42Speaker 01

  I think it does.

• 2:54:44Jocko Willink?

  We got maydayexecutiveservices.com. We got beyondthebrotherhood.org. You're only on LinkedIn.

• 2:54:51Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. That's all I have. Just Jimmy May.

• 2:54:53Jocko Willink?

  If you want to connect with Jimmy May, he's on LinkedIn. Um, man, Echo Charles, you got any questions?

• 2:54:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do.

• 2:55:01Speaker 02

  So what's up with the Humvees? What? They don't have keys? Is that what's going on?

• 2:55:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, there's no, there's just a little switch. There's no key. You just switch it. Yeah. And so I was an idiot trying to find keys to the Humvee. But I didn't want to tell anybody, you know?

• 2:55:15Speaker 02

  Whatever. I would have been looking for the keys too. So, wait, but if I buy like, remember like Arnold Schwarzenegger had that big Humvee?

• 2:55:21Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure they rigged those up.

• 2:55:22Speaker 01

  They probably rigged them. But the ones overseas don't. There's actually, not only is your switch, but there's another little switch that like locks the lights because I had to turn the lights on. I didn't know how to do that. And I was trying to like, please let me turn these lights on, right? Because before Jocko looks, because there's one switch, you have to like unlock the little light thing and you turn it over. And some of them are IR and Jocko's sitting there with his helmet on like, oh my God.

• 2:55:42Jocko Willink?

  If I don't screw this up.

• 2:55:44Speaker 02

  So technically, anyone can just take a Humvee then?

• 2:55:48Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah.

• 2:55:49Speaker 01

  Well, actually, the way the Marines and Army do it, they have a little like lock and they just put a lock on the door like a padlock.

• 2:55:54Jocko Willink?

  Like a padlock.

• 2:55:55Speaker 01

  Oh damn. So you can't hold and it's like bulletproof stuff like it'd be hard to tear that door off.

• 2:55:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:55:59Speaker 01

  But you could crawl into the top sometimes if there's like, like a.

• 2:56:02Jocko Willink?

  Crawling through the turret.

• 2:56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:04Jocko Willink?

  But sometimes they throw some kind of chain around the freaking steering wheel too. Like there's, let's face it, there's some thievery going on, some borrowing going on.

• 2:56:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:12Jocko Willink?

  Some acquisitions happening.

• 2:56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, just about talking about like not wanting to tell people when you're messed up. Man, you know about my first skydive? Dude, this is ridiculous. So like I, I go through free fall school and you know, you get 22 jumps. You know how good you are at 22 jumps?

• 2:56:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:28Speaker 01

  You're not, you're sky trash. Yeah. So I just, I have a buddy that's on the jump team and he wants to, and I'm dating this girl. And he's like, hey, we're doing tandems. Can we, you want to take her for a tandem? Like, oh yeah, cool. So we take her down there and he's like, hey, you want to jump with us? I'm like, yeah, I'll jump with you. Cool. I can jump. So all I know is military, right? So.

• 2:56:48Speaker 01

  I, I walk in, I'm like, what do I do? He's like, hey dude, just act like you're with us. I'm like, okay, cool. So these guys are walking, you know? And they got sunglasses and they're putting their hand out and they put their left hand out and they slide a parachute on their hand and then they walk out the door, right? So I'm just in the back of the line, you know, looking cool, swagger, got my sunglasses on, put my hand out. She puts this thing on me to my horror. It's like a camelback. Like it does not look like the kind of like thing I know how to put on. So usually in the military, I, I've got this giant backpack, right? And then it has another giant parachute underneath as well. And it's got like, it's got buckles and like this thing that'll pull the parachute for me if I don't pull.

• 2:57:27Speaker 01

  And then all these things. So I'm like, well, that's okay. I'll take care of it. The J N P I, the jumper's pre-inspection. That's when usually I walk out and I have all my buckles and one person who knows what he's doing, looks at everything I do. They look at all my buckles, then they spin me around and they open up my pins. They look at every single thing and then they like smack me on the back. And then I go to another guy who does the same thing. And then I don't touch anything until I get on the plane. That's how it goes, right? So I'm thinking I'll just score this way at the J N P I. I walk out, we turn left, plane is spinning. We get on the plane. I'm not even wearing my parachute. So now I'm like, I wonder quietly to myself, how do I put this parachute on?

• 2:58:12Speaker 01

  So I step into the bottom, cause I look at, I've watched other people do it. Cause usually there's two straps around my, around my legs. Then there's a belly band, then there's these two straps behind me that I pull. Then there's another one goes across my chest. And all those things you put together, there's, you step through two straps and put one thing across your chest. And I'm like, is that it? It seems like there should be more. So I'm looking at this thing and I'm like, then I noticed that there's no thing for me to pull to like, open my parachute. So the plane's in the air and I'm, I'm flying. My girlfriend is sitting on my buddy's lap because he's like trying to strap her in.

• 2:58:55Speaker 01

  And I'm super concerned that I don't know how to open my parachute. And I'm like, hey, man, I'm trying to get his attention without letting her know that I don't know what's going on. And I'm like, hey, man, so where's my pole, you know? He goes, oh, it's back here. And there's this little beanbag and I reach back there and I feel it and I'm like, hey, what do I do? Do I squeeze it? Like what? He goes, oh, you just throw it. So I'm in this plane.

• 2:59:20Jocko Willink?

  This is ridiculous.

• 2:59:21Speaker 01

  I'm in this plane, dude, a hundred percent. This is how it went down.

• 2:59:24Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 2:59:25Speaker 01

  I'm in this plane.

• 2:59:26Jocko Willink?

  This is like, this is, this is.

• 2:59:27Speaker 01

  You might have to cut this.

• 2:59:28Jocko Willink?

  No, no. This is, this is why the life expectancy of men is freaking so much freaking lower than women.

• 2:59:35Speaker 01

  So now.

• 2:59:36Jocko Willink?

  Cause this is an idiot.

• 2:59:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so now we're going up and I'm like, okay, so I think I'm supposed to throw this thing. There's another little can handle down here around my waist, which I can only assume is for my, my backup parachute, which I hope there is one, because at this point I don't know. And the light turns green and I gotta jump before the tandem people jump. So light turns green.

• 3:00:01Speaker 01

  I jump out this plane. My clever plan for safety, because usually I pull it like thirty five hundred, four thousand. I, I decide to pull it seven thousand, because you fall a thousand feet in six seconds. That gives me an extra like eighteen seconds to figure out how to fix my parachute if I don't, it doesn't work. It's my clever plan. So I, I reach, I throw this thing as hard as I can and it opens, right? It opens and usually my parachute goes like,

• 3:00:28Speaker 01

  this giant parachute opens, right? It's like three hundred and sixty square feet of just giant parachute goodness. This thing goes.

• 3:00:37Speaker 01

  It's like a kite and I'm not even going much slower than I was when I was falling. I'm like, what is happening? So I'm like, okay, it looks like it's as big as it's going to get. So maybe I should try my canopy controllability check. That's what you do, right? I usually I look left, I shake my leg left. So the people behind me know I'm about to turn left. And then I pull my parachute down and it's like, whoa, whoa, and you kind of go slowly to the side. This time I look left, I shake my leg, I pull the thing down. I go above my parachute like a serious like a pendulum.

• 3:01:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So echo just, just the, the military parachutes, they're really big. They're 360 square feet and they're meant to be able to support you and your weapon and your rucksack and all this weight. And so they're not very maneuverable and he's jumping a little sport shoot.

• 3:01:27Speaker 01

  It was probably, if I'm guessing, it's probably like the jump team does like a 150. So, and this was super long time ago. So I don't know what the, the.

• 3:01:35Jocko Willink?

  They're, they're like, they're like, like surfboard. This is like a, the, a, a, a five, nine surfboard, like just a little shred surfboard where he's used to riding a longboard. Like he's used to like.

• 3:01:48Speaker 01

  I'm used to trying a paddleboard. Yeah. It's, yeah. So I come, so now I decided not to finish the rest of my canic controllability check because I am.

• 3:01:55Jocko Willink?

  Horrified.

• 3:01:56Speaker 01

  I'm sorry. I'm horrified. I'm like, I don't know. I've seen these guys land these things before because I can't yank it. Cause I'm going to pop up in the air like you'll pop up to 25 feet and then just like stall and fall. So I'm like trying to figure out how to land this thing and I end up pulling it off pretty well. And my buddy, his name was Johnny. He's like, dude, you did great. And I was like, oh my God, I can't believe. So anyway, I didn't jump civilian for a long time. I do now and I really understand how stupid that was. But at the time, you know, I didn't want to admit that I didn't, you know, at, at the time it made so much sense.

• 3:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Don't want to look, don't want to look like a wimp, bro.

• 3:02:36Speaker 01

  No, I mean, come on, bro.

• 3:02:38Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, that's like Tony, Tony Fraddy told a story on here. He was like. He's absolutely horrified of heights and

• 3:02:45Speaker 01

  Tony is?

• 3:02:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's horrified of heights and he was rappelling in like Hong Kong off of, you know, some skyscraper in Hong Kong. Like it's literally like a 500 foot rappel or something crazy like that. And he was like, I was so freaking horrified, but I wasn't gonna look like a wimp. So I just jumped off, you know, like, what are you gonna do?

• 3:03:05Speaker 01

  I don't know, man. And I told that story and as the older I get, the stupider it sounds. I'm like, I cannot believe.

• 3:03:10Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I was, I'm like cringing as you're telling that story. So the normal protocol echo is you go to a class, they teach you about it and then they send you up with a free fall instructor. So like when I transitioned from jumping the military rig to jumping the civilian rig, went to like a class and it's not a big class, but it's like one hour class or something. You sit there and you go, they put you down there and they're like, here it is, you know, here's how you throw it out. Here's what you do with the other hand. Here's the malfunction procedures. Like you learn a lot of stuff. And then they take a military free fall per, or sorry, a civilian free fall fall person that's going to qualify you and they jump with you, holding on to you. Because think about this. So even though he only had 22 jumps, he had definitely developed the muscle memory for doing one thing that if he does that,

• 3:03:52Jocko Willink?

  it ain't gonna work. Like you'll die. So they'd send an instructor out there. And the reason they send an instructor, because people have died as they're scrambling, looking for their rip cord and it's not there. So they, they go, oh, people die doing this. So we send someone. So they see Jimmy doing the wrong thing. They'd be like, no, and they can signal to him and get him to do the right thing. They can pull it for you or something like that. No, Jimmy's just going solo. He's in the aircraft, doesn't even know how this freaking thing works.

• 3:04:17Speaker 01

  I didn't even, wasn't even wearing it yet. I didn't even know how to put it on. I was like, dang. But I didn't, I didn't want, I didn't want that chick to think I was a wuss, you know?

• 3:04:24Jocko Willink?

  Hell no, dude.

• 3:04:25Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 3:04:26Jocko Willink?

  You made the right call.

• 3:04:27Speaker 01

  I made the right call.

• 3:04:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, what else? Echo, you got any more questions?

• 3:04:32Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. You guys talked about the, what's it called? The freaking talk or the man talk? After the trait scenario. What are they saying? What's the man talk technically?

• 3:04:42Speaker 01

  So basically it's kind of based on the man in the arena. If you've heard of that talk. I'm trying to think who, who said the man?

• 3:04:49Jocko Willink?

  Roosevelt.

• 3:04:49Speaker 01

  Roosevelt. Yeah. The man in the arena. It's like, you know, all you guys cheering, the guy that got in there and did it, that's like. That's that's an accomplishment in itself.

• 3:04:57Jocko Willink?

  Even though he lost, even though he might have failed, whatever.

• 3:04:59Speaker 01

  Yep. And that's kind of like, that's kind of the crux of what we're trying to tell this guy. Like, hey, you're a great American. You're smart, you're strong, you're capable, you're gonna do great things, just not in this community. That's it. And so that's what the man talk and that was kind of our whole Aatrox in a, in a, you know, probably two minute thing that they did. And now we have, it's a much more robust process. I really believe in it. I think it's good. And I learned a lot about, you know, those, those three things, you know, the community purpose and goals. And I think it was important.

• 3:05:26Speaker 02

  So the man talk is, oh, so it's not, so it's kind of like an encouraging talk. It's like a positive thing.

• 3:05:31Speaker 01

  No, you quit. No, we're not, we're done telling you, you suck and crushing you.

• 3:05:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, dang.

• 3:05:35Speaker 01

  Hey, you quit. And it's like, hey, listen, I gotta get you back into the regular Navy. You're gonna go into the Navy and you could be the McPon. You could be super high up. You're gonna do great because these guys are super high caliber guys. Even our quitters are awesome dudes.

• 3:05:48Jocko Willink?

  If they have the right attitude, they go out and dominate.

• 3:05:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know what? Uh, I don't know if I can say it, but you know, Mikey didn't make it his first time.

• 3:05:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, Mikey didn't make it his first time and neither did Mark.

• 3:05:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:05:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, I had, I had George on and we talked about it.

• 3:06:01Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 3:06:02Jocko Willink?

  And he was like, he, yeah, it's in the book. Uh, you know, he like called him up, like.

• 3:06:06Speaker 01

  Didn't make it, Dan.

• 3:06:07Jocko Willink?

  He was crushed, bro.

• 3:06:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:09Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, that's scary. And I'll tell you what, like that thing about the man in the arena. There's so many people that go, obviously there's people that go to SEAL training, props, respect.

• 3:06:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:21Jocko Willink?

  You went, dude, you gave it a shot. Good for you.

• 3:06:23Speaker 01

  Moved your family, you trained for years, you get here, didn't work.

• 3:06:28Jocko Willink?

  And there's all kinds of people that don't even do that, man.

• 3:06:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:32Jocko Willink?

  They don't even, they don't even, I mean, dude, it takes courage and commitment. To, to go for it. It really does. It's a huge step. And listen, I think it's you. Lately I've been telling, when guys are asking me about it, I'm like, hey. Most people don't make it and most people don't think they're that person, but you probably are. The chances are you probably are the person that's not going to make it. There's an 80% chance that you're the person that's not going to make it.

• 3:06:59Speaker 01

  And you know what? Those stats are low. I think that's what we say, but we know they're low because now you've got to compete to get into BUDS. You come into the combine and if you're not one of the top run swim, you don't even go and that doesn't count against our numbers. Cause we got, you know, we got to like appease the higher ups. Like it's not that bad. 20% make it, you know, but it's pretty bad. And those guys go off to the fleet and you know what? For the Navy, they get super high quality guys. 70% of our E-Dogs, they got degrees, man. At least a four year. They, they just couldn't get a slot as an officer because it's super competitive. So we get super high quality guys and the Atrites, I mean, they're solid dudes and it's kind of cool seeing them build this community after the H-Rock. You know what I mean?

• 3:07:35Jocko Willink?

  What do they, what happens to them when they get dropped? Where do they go?

• 3:07:39Speaker 01

  So first they go to the H-Rock, they spend at least minimum 24 hours there. And then they, they got to make that call before they leave the barracks, you know, before they, they leave supervision, they make call. Then they go back and they got to finish sleeping, you know, they're probably, and then they got to start thinking about their next steps in life. And then, you know, there's a big administrative machine that starts the needs of the Navy, you know, when we went through it was like, you take your ASVAB and here's the, that's the rates open to you. They start talking about what their next steps are. And they have to spend at least two years in the fleet before they can come back. Historically, people that quit once don't have a good shot of making it back through. I mean, you know, Mike and Mark were definitely outliers. Cause we ran the numbers every single way, like the, the highest, the guys that make it through the most are like the academy officers. Cause they live that for four years. They know what's going on.

• 3:08:24Jocko Willink?

  And they have a, really compete to get those slots.

• 3:08:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they have, they're living in that, they have a SEAL up there teaching them. So they're, they're the highest. They're the, the most probable guys to make it. Enlisted guys are probably about, I think 18% or something like that when I was, when I was there. So it's a super low and you know, to make it through under the age of 20 is super crazy.

• 3:08:43Jocko Willink?

  I heard that's like 5%.

• 3:08:45Speaker 01

  Super crazy. Yeah. And those guys, I mean, we, we know a couple of guys that have done that.

• 3:08:49Jocko Willink?

  Me and Jason Gardner.

• 3:08:52Speaker 01

  Jason Gardner?

• 3:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Jason Gardner.

• 3:08:53Speaker 01

  He was a long time, bro. I didn't know he was that young.

• 3:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:56Speaker 01

  But yeah, those guys, when I was 18, I don't think I, I had, I didn't have it. I don't think I had it. I learned it in college. I learned something in my head, but I wouldn't have had it at 18. No way.

• 3:09:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a weird, it's a weird dynamic. Um, what else? Echo Charles, any more questions? That's all I got. Good to hang with you.

• 3:09:14Speaker 01

  Cool. Good to see you too, man. You know, I, I, I miss being on the mat with you guys. I got my hips replaced recently and it's not, it's been a slower recovery than I was, I'd hoped for, but you know, it's good to see you guys still out here training and you know, this is still home for me. I come to Victory and I know everybody here and now my little boy's training here and it's just a happy place, you know, I was like, oh yeah, we do the podcast here. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's just like being home. Super easy, man. I've been here since oh six.

• 3:09:40Jocko Willink?

  We ought to do something for JT in here, man. That'd be badass.

• 3:09:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:09:43Jocko Willink?

  You know, we got that one mat that has like a flag and stuff on it. That'd be pretty cool to put something up there.

• 3:09:48Speaker 01

  Dude, I got a cool picture of him next to Hawkeye. That was his, his dog that we took on the beach when we were living in Ivy together. Same time when he was working for you. That'd be really cool. And I have it on my house. I wouldn't sure what to put up with it. I don't have, you know, California's small house. I don't have a lot of walls, but it'd be cool to put that up here. Maybe, maybe we'll work on doing that. I'll take that four act.

• 3:10:07Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Jimmy, any closing thoughts, bro?

• 3:10:11Speaker 01

  No, man. I, I, you were a mentor to me before. You've always been the same to me. I really appreciate you, Jocko. You know, you were hard on me when I needed to be hard on, and then you had a profound effect on my career as I went up. And I think sometimes people are like, oh, that's one of those, I'm one of Jocko's guys. I'd be like, you're damn right. You know what I mean? So I appreciate what you've done and you do a lot of good things for the teams. I know that there is an, and

• 3:10:33Speaker 01

  and undercurrent of the team is like, hey, these guys, they're, they go out and they use the Trident for, to leverage for their own purposes, but I know you do a lot for the community and I appreciate that. And, uh, you know, I'm trying to give back as well. So, you know, good to have you guys as allies. Echo, man, I love your part. Your, your, your little inserts are always so key. So I love having you here to keep us sane because you know, Jocko and I'll just talk in acronyms and go in our own little like violent agreement circle, you know, but uh, it's good having you here and yeah, bro.

• 3:11:01Jocko Willink?

  Right on, man. Well, uh, you know, like I said, the day I met you, I was like, cool. This guy wants to do a good job and he's tough. And for me, that's all, that's all I ever look for in, in my friends, you know, this guy wants to work hard, do a good job and is tough. So thanks for coming down, man. Thanks for, uh, sharing your lessons learned. Thanks for your service to the country, to the Navy, to the teams, and thanks for what you've done for me over the years. And thanks for what you're continuing to do today to help out guys and to keep them on track and get them moving in the right direction, finding their next mission, man. I know you care about the teams as much as I do, and I know you're still getting after it, man. Thanks for what you're doing.

• 3:11:45Speaker 02

  Sir.

• 3:11:48Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Jimmy May has left the building. Jimmy May.

• 3:11:55Jocko Willink?

  Always learning.

• 3:11:56Speaker 02

  Jimmy May.

• 3:11:56Jocko Willink?

  Always improving. Always trying to stay on the path. There you go.

• 3:12:00Speaker 02

  You know what's funny about Jimmy May?

• 3:12:02Jocko Willink?

  What's that?

• 3:12:03Speaker 02

  How I knew, how I like know him and stuff. So you told me that story about like,

• 3:12:08Jocko Willink?

  About some guy?

• 3:12:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:12:10Jocko Willink?

  This is the, uh, challenge story? You'll find out?

• 3:12:13Speaker 02

  Yep, you'll find out.

• 3:12:14Jocko Willink?

  When we roll?

• 3:12:16Speaker 02

  In fact,

• 3:12:18Speaker 02

  I'm thinking back, that might have been the time when I realized who he was. Like when I brought him together, because I met Jimmy May, like trained with him a bunch, because he'd come during the day and that's when like, you don't get, especially back then, there was no huge groups of people training during the day.

• 3:12:34Jocko Willink?

  Prior to that story?

• 3:12:36Speaker 02

  I'm,

• 3:12:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I might have told you that story at a pretty late date.

• 3:12:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, late. You didn't tell me it right when it happened.

• 3:12:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. In fact, if I'm remembering correctly, you, I told you

• 3:12:46Speaker 02

  about, maybe he came up or something like that. And then you were like, oh, let me tell you this thing about, and then I think that's why, I think that's, and then I put them all together. So, so I was just training with him. He was just going, he was like, oh yeah, I'm like a Navy SEAL, but you know, back in the day, I freaking, I know, but you remember Igor, like all these guys, my friends and stuff like, okay, yeah, everyone that I meet, like,

• 3:13:05Jocko Willink?

  He didn't say I'm in Navy SEAL. He said like, probably, oh yeah, I'm in the team.

• 3:13:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:13:08Jocko Willink?

  Because I just want to make sure you're not making Jimmy, Jimmy May up.

• 3:13:11Speaker 02

  It's not a direct quote, that's for sure. So, so I'm like, cool. And he's freaking good at jujitsu. And it's always, you know, I was always really happy to see him. So nice. He has a, to be honest, he kind of has a scary look in his face. When you look at his face, he looks like, oh, but he was super nice. He tried good training, really, you know, really good guy. So I was always looking forward to seeing him when I'd see him, training, right? Slowly but truly freaking convert, you tell me that story. I find out all this stuff. Greg tells me some stuff. I'm like, freaking, that's the guy that I used to train with, because I didn't train with him for a long time. And I was thinking, but that doesn't make sense, because it doesn't seem like he's that guy, because he's just a normal dude.

• 3:13:50Speaker 02

  Sure enough, that's the guy.

• 3:13:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so before you realized he was in the teams?

• 3:13:55Speaker 02

  I knew he was in the teams before I knew about all the stuff he did.

• 3:13:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:13:58Speaker 02

  And I didn't even know about all the stuff, but the guy, because I knew him just as Jimmy, not Jimmy May.

• 3:14:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 3:14:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, because he just said, my name's Jimmy.

• 3:14:07Jocko Willink?

  It's funny too, because I always call him Jimmy May.

• 3:14:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too.

• 3:14:11Jocko Willink?

  And then people in the teams call him Jimmy May. No one calls him just Jimmy.

• 3:14:14Speaker 02

  I called him Jimmy before I knew he was Jimmy May. You see what I'm saying?

• 3:14:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. So, uh, there you go, man. Training some jujitsu. I'm kind of bummed he can't train right now, like hard. You know, he can roll a little bit and stuff, but I think he's got, you know, he'll, he'll, he'll be there.

• 3:14:30Speaker 02

  He didn't go into the whole, like, hip, his hip scenario.

• 3:14:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, straight up, like, kind of gnarly.

• 3:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's not, dude, when they're replacing your hip, it's gnarly, period, end of story. You know what I mean? Like, they're taking a major part of your freaking skeletal structure out and replacing it with metal. You know? So, yeah, that's, that's what it is. So, anyways, but, you know, the thing is, Jimmy, just like all of us should be, he's always constantly working and trying to get better. So, staying on the path. There you go. When you do that, you need the proper fuel. Get yourself some choco fuel.

• 3:15:09Speaker 02

  It's true. Also, that pre-workout's out. That's the new hotness right now. And I am back on the pre-workout.

• 3:15:15Jocko Willink?

  You're back in the game!

• 3:15:18Speaker 02

  Bruh, I, uh, the tingling, actually, I, I shouldn't, because I didn't do it like a full-length workout. But my workout was thirty-five minutes. I still felt the tingling on the way down here.

• 3:15:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 3:15:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's when you know.

• 3:15:31Jocko Willink?

  How many minutes prior to the workout commencing are we?

• 3:15:37Speaker 02

  Ten.

• 3:15:37Jocko Willink?

  Ingesting?

• 3:15:38Speaker 02

  Ten. And here's the formula. And I went over this with Kerry, by the way. So if I'm working out right when I get up, here's the formula. It's the deluxe formula for pre-workout. Creatine. So it's water, right? Water. Creatine. Scoop in half creatine, one hy- hydrate, chocohydrate.

• 3:15:56Speaker 02

  You'd think, it actually doesn't matter the flavor of hydrate and then one scoop. I'm at one scoop. No, I started with half scoop.

• 3:16:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're already.

• 3:16:03Speaker 02

  I'm already, one scoop pre-workout. Those three all mixed. Some people like the greens, which I dig. I advocate for the greens for sure, but that's not the deluxe formula I'm currently on. Boom. Perfect, bro. Perfect. Lands perfectly. 10, 15 minutes before the workout. Boom, go.

• 3:16:19Jocko Willink?

  The tingling begins.

• 3:16:20Speaker 02

  Full speed. So good. So good. Perfect. Try that one. Report back.

• 3:16:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay, check. There you go. JacoFuel.com. Get yourself some of that pre-workout. Get yourself some go. I'm two goes deep right now and I'm getting ready to go train that.

• 3:16:35Jocko Willink?

  Which you're not training today? Is that what I heard? Cause you already lifted, apparently. That's what you said to me.

• 3:16:40Speaker 02

  Curves too. I have a whole day.

• 3:16:43Jocko Willink?

  Minute workout today and you can't train jiu-jitsu because of that?

• 3:16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I actually have some videos I have to do. I gotta do it, you know, prioritizing executing.

• 3:16:54Jocko Willink?

  Right on. All right. Yeah. But also get milk. Cause how many milks deep are you right now?

• 3:16:59Speaker 02

  Two.

• 3:17:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I am too. So we're both 60 grams. By the way, that's the only thing I've eaten today.

• 3:17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:17:04Jocko Willink?

  Is two bottles of milk. RTD. What flavors did you get?

• 3:17:10Speaker 02

  Banana and chocolate.

• 3:17:12Jocko Willink?

  I went vanilla, then chocolate. That's a good, nice to have the options, right? Little variety activity. Normally I'm super, um, boring, right?

• 3:17:24Speaker 02

  Well, like you stick with the same one?

• 3:17:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like go, like go, I only drink tactical tea. Eh, not only, but like 80% of the time tactical.

• 3:17:31Speaker 02

  The mainstay.

• 3:17:32Jocko Willink?

  20% of the time I'm doing maybe some pink mist, maybe some sour apple.

• 3:17:38Jocko Willink?

  Maybe the lemon lime, but 80% is the one. But I find myself with the milk mixing it up a little bit more.

• 3:17:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yep. I see it. I go from banana chocolate. I don't so much do the vanilla. Do you do the, um, the blue raspberry or go?

• 3:17:54Jocko Willink?

  Blue raspberry go is out.

• 3:17:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Do you like?

• 3:17:56Jocko Willink?

  Just came out.

• 3:17:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:17:57Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I do like it. I do like it.

• 3:17:59Speaker 02

  I surprisingly like it too.

• 3:18:01Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna say this light and refreshing.

• 3:18:04Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 3:18:06Speaker 02

  I know what you're saying. Well, you know, the mega mix too. I don't know if you heard me explain this to Carrie, the mega pre-workout mix.

• 3:18:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay, go.

• 3:18:14Speaker 02

  It's the same mix.

• 3:18:15Jocko Willink?

  But with a go?

• 3:18:16Speaker 02

  But with a go instead of water. Oh, yeah. So you get the blue as you stack the blue Raz all day. So you blue Raz go. Blue Raz hydrate, blue Raz pre-workout.

• 3:18:26Jocko Willink?

  Triple threat.

• 3:18:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Then, I mean, I don't know if that's, you know, you put the greens on the creatine.

• 3:18:31Jocko Willink?

  Legal, bro.

• 3:18:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you gotta cut it. Well, you gotta put creatine as well. So that's the mega mix right there. But I can't take responsibility for the results on that one because you can be wigging out.

• 3:18:41Jocko Willink?

  Jacked.

• 3:18:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:43Jocko Willink?

  All right. Get this stuff jockofuel.com, get it at Wawa, get it at Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, The Military Commissaries, Afees, Hannafords, Dash Doors, Wakeford, ShopRide, HEB down in Tejas, Meyer up in the Midwest, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields. And by the way, small gyms everywhere. And if you own a small gym, you own a little jiu-jitsu academy, you own a CrossFit gym, you own a powerlifting gym, whatever you own, email [email protected] and get yourself some of the stuff so you can give your clients the product. Normally that sounds bad, like who would have given them product? That's like drug dealers, right? They give you a free whatever, and then you're addicted to heroin.

• 3:19:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:19:24Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? You're addicted to crystal methamphetamine. Then you die. You commit crimes and then you lose your teeth and then you die.

• 3:19:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:19:31Jocko Willink?

  This is the opposite. You actually commit good workouts. You grow stronger and you live better.

• 3:19:38Speaker 02

  The real good stuff.

• 3:19:39Jocko Willink?

  So get some people some product. jockofuel.com. Let's go.

• 3:19:42Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 3:19:42Jocko Willink?

  What else?

• 3:19:43Speaker 02

  Also, Origin USA, boom up. So we're doing jiu-jitsu, we're working. What are we doing? Not working? Oh, we're working. So look, doing jiu-jitsu, you're gonna need a gi. Once you go with these Origin gis, you're not gonna go back to the regular conventional. Sweatshop geese.

• 3:20:01Jocko Willink?

  And you are working too, so you need a pair of jeans, maybe two. Can you wear black jeans in a elevated scenario?

• 3:20:10Speaker 02

  I guess it depends.

• 3:20:10Jocko Willink?

  Like a nice restaurant, like it's Valentine's Day or something.

• 3:20:14Speaker 02

  Bruh nowadays, hell yeah. Oh yeah, big time.

• 3:20:16Jocko Willink?

  I mean, we're in California, so we're kind of messed up. Because in California, you can roll out Valentine's Day, five-star restaurant, flip flops, t-shirt, surf shorts. You might get a little bit of like a look, but they're still letting you in, no factor. You're probably getting no factor.

• 3:20:30Speaker 02

  No factor, yeah.

• 3:20:31Jocko Willink?

  But if, you know, if you're trying to like, maybe step it up a little bit, you might want to put on the black jeans.

• 3:20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:20:36Jocko Willink?

  You might as well get ones that are made in America.

• 3:20:37Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 3:20:38Jocko Willink?

  Don't get ones that are made in a sweatshop.

• 3:20:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:20:42Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking wrong. It's just wrong. Don't let that happen. OriginUSA.com, get yourself some gear. Hunt gear, this went hunting, by the way. Didn't kill.

• 3:20:51Speaker 02

  It's okay.

• 3:20:52Jocko Willink?

  But I had a freaking awesome time.

• 3:20:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:20:55Jocko Willink?

  Cam Haynes had a elk two yards from him that he shot and killed. He's wearing the Origin camo, the thing was just like standing there, didn't see him.

• 3:21:05Speaker 02

  Damn, it really worked.

• 3:21:06Jocko Willink?

  Bro, what better proof do you want?

• 3:21:08Speaker 02

  I know.

• 3:21:09Jocko Willink?

  You got the proof, man.

• 3:21:10Speaker 02

  You don't get any more camo than that. Two yards away, elk.

• 3:21:13Jocko Willink?

  Two yards away.

• 3:21:14Speaker 02

  In his natural habitat. Look, if I'm in my house, if you're two yards away, I don't care. Don't care, you can be the predator from, you know, the movie Predator. You can be the predator, bro, I'm gonna see it. Two yards away, a hundred percent, in my house.

• 3:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:21:25Speaker 02

  Right? That's my house. I know when the house seems different, you know what I'm saying? So the elk couldn't even see him.

• 3:21:29Jocko Willink?

  Couldn't even see him in that Origin Raptor camo. So get yourself some hunt gear. Hide from what you're trying to kill.

• 3:21:38Jocko Willink?

  Uh, JacoStore.com, we make some stuff, we make some t-shirts, we make some rash guards. They're actually Origin stuff, but.

• 3:21:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, a little bit different designs, but yeah, rash guards from Origin, boom. You know, that's how we're rolling, a hundred percent. But yeah, if you want to, you want to represent good, discipline equals freedom, we got your shirts and hoodies and hats.

• 3:21:56Jocko Willink?

  I posted a video of you the other day, you were in a work, where, you were wearing a shirt that was like disciplined, but it was in a G.I. Joe font.

• 3:22:03Speaker 02

  Format, sure.

• 3:22:04Jocko Willink?

  Format and font.

• 3:22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, the whole deal, yeah.

• 3:22:06Jocko Willink?

  And there was a bunch of comments, said, where do I get that shirt?

• 3:22:10Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:22:10Jocko Willink?

  And you replied, Shirt Locker.

• 3:22:11Speaker 02

  Shirt Locker. Well, that could have been slightly cryptic because, yes, it's from the Shirt Locker. But the Shirt Locker is part of Jocko Store. It's our program. So yeah, man, you want to get on that, the Shirt Locker program, it's one new shirt every month, that's just one of many that you can get. Good news too, that is a past one. That one's from last year. Like 2022, last year.

• 3:22:31Jocko Willink?

  Can you still get it?

• 3:22:32Speaker 02

  You can still get it. So if you're a member of Shirt Locker, boom, we give you a little account. You just log in, you freaking buy whatever one you want from the past. So you have access to all that stuff. But yeah, new shirt every month. People seem to like the design. It's funny because a lot of people don't know about it. Or put it this way, less people know about it than I thought. Because even like, you know, the video that we put out, or you put out of you deadlifting and the shirt changing all the time. They're like, oh my gosh, where do I get that shirt or whatever, you know? And these are like, bro, they've been up, man. Shirt Locker all day. So yeah, good, cool. But yeah, now we know.

• 3:23:02Jocko Willink?

  JacoStore.com Shirt Locker.

• 3:23:03Speaker 02

  JacoStore.com. Just click on join the Shirt Locker.

• 3:23:06Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to Jocko Underground. We're recording one of those, actually maybe two of those this, this weekend. Get those up, some Q and A, answer your questions. Give you the info. It's $8.18 a month. Why? Because people get kicked off of platforms and there's nothing they can do about it. They're not prepared. We're prepared. Hopefully it doesn't happen. Well, we're good. We're over here.

• 3:23:28Jocko Willink?

  We're just putting out word, but sometimes people might think the word we're putting out shouldn't be put out. Then what are we gonna do? We'll be there on the underground. If you can't afford $8.18 a month, we get it. Tough times out there. Email. Email [email protected]. We'll take care of it. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Subscribe to or buy. Psychological Warfare, flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer making kickass stuff for you to hang on your walls. Got a bunch of books. You know what they are. Hey, Defend Us in Battle. I covered that already with George Mansour. Also Rose Ray. She co-authored that. She's a military spouse. She did a great job. George Mansour, just incredible book. Defend Us in Battle, the story of Mikey Mansour. Get that book.

• 3:24:12Jocko Willink?

  And then I've written a bunch of books. You know what they are. Got a new version of Leadership Strategy and Tactics coming out. Expanded a Dish. I put some very pertinent and pragmatic, useful information into this new version. So check that. I've also got a dope black cover. Which is kind of where everything ends up, you know, for me. Like we try, let's go, let's make it black. Looks dope, right?

• 3:24:39Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 3:24:40Jocko Willink?

  You gotta admit, it looks badass. So there you go. New version of Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, then all the other books, the kids books I've written. Get those. Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com, come to one of our live events. Bring us into your organization. Have us come and talk to your leaders about leadership. Let us get you aligned. That's what we're doing. Everything that we do sells out. So if you want to come to one of our events, get there early, go to echelonfront.com. Check it out. We also have online training, extremeownership.com. It's our online training academy. We have a lot of information. We have the skills that we learned and there's skills that you can learn. And if you don't have the skills of leadership, your whole life is worse. Period, end of story. And what is leadership?

• 3:25:25Jocko Willink?

  It means you're interacting with other human beings. Husband, wife, kids, employees, boss, peers, everybody, friends, everybody, family, everybody. You're interacting with other people. In order to do that effectively, you need to understand leadership. Extremeownership.com, learn how to lead. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. She helps with medical procedures and treatments that are not covered by the military. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 3:26:04Jocko Willink?

  Also, don't forget about Micah Fink, taking our veterans up into the wilderness to find themselves, HeroesAndHorses.org. And Jimmy's organization that we talked about today, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. If you want to connect with us, Jimmy can be found on the interwebs. MayDayExecutiveServices.com and BeyondTheBrotherhood.org.

• 3:26:30Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to reach out to Jimmy May, he's on LinkedIn. And then for Echo and I, we are also on all these different social media platforms that exist. Echo's at Echo Charles, I'm at Jocko Link. Just be careful because the algorithm is a big beast and it'll try and grab you and waste a bunch of your time and your life. So don't let that happen. Thanks once again to Jimmy.

• 3:26:52Jocko Willink?

  Jimmy May, thanks for your service, thanks for your sacrifice, and thank you for everything you are doing to continue to help our community and our brotherhood. And thanks to all the men and women in uniform around the globe at this very minute, protecting us and our way of life. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders. All of you continually step into harms way for us and our families, and we thank you for keeping us safe. And everyone else out there.

• 3:27:29Jocko Willink?

  You know, I started off this podcast by reading about Mikey Mansour, and what he did, and the sacrifice that he made. Well, on his gravestone, at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, chiseled at the bottom of his gravestone, it simply reads, "No regrets."

• 3:27:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's the way that he lived, and that's the way that he died. No regrets. And it's a good reminder to all of us.

• 3:28:03Jocko Willink?

  And I believe

• 3:28:06Jocko Willink?

  that for most of us, the biggest regrets come not from what we have done,

• 3:28:14Jocko Willink?

  but what we didn't do.

• 3:28:18Jocko Willink?

  So let there be no regret about what we could have done, about what we could have accomplished, about what we should have done.

• 3:28:29Jocko Willink?

  Let's leave nothing in the tank. Leave it all on the field. No ammunition to spare. Nothing left inside.

• 3:28:42Jocko Willink?

  Let's go with no regrets.

• 3:28:46Jocko Willink?

  And we do that by going out there every day,

• 3:28:51Jocko Willink?

  and getting after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.