464: Default Aggressive. Combat Ready Leadership From Estonia. With Estonian Spec Ops Soldier, Remo Ojaste

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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 464 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So, we do an event at Echelon Front. It's called the FTX Field Training Exercise. And it's a simulated combat event. And what we do is we take a bunch of people from very, a wide variety of backgrounds. From like the finance world, the energy world, just any type of business. We also will have usually some law enforcement, we'll have some military. But then it'll be salespeople and construction people, whatever. And we give them some like rudimentarily rudimentary tactical training.

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  And then we put them into missions, like I said, simulated combat.

• 0:48Jocko Willink?

  Usually in urban combat. So there's houses and buildings that need to be cleared and people that need to be communicated with and hostages that need to be rescued. And the missions are chaotic. We'll put them out with some task and then we'll, we've got role players. The role players are, you know, former SEALs or former Marines or former Army guys. And so they'll be really good and they'll get hostile and there's smoke and there's gunfire and there's screaming and there's yelling and confusion. And we'll watch this group and it's, the training is not for the tactics of the training. It's for leadership. It's to see how people respond in these chaotic situations. And it's what these people get to experience.

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  And what they get to experience is a massive amount of pressure. Their emotions are running high. They get like tunnel vision, they get adrenaline overload, they panic, they yell and scream. And what we get to see, and what they get to see, is like a comprehensive breakdown of a team. And they get to learn from that. And each individual will feel that. And everyone's going to struggle.

• 2:02Jocko Willink?

  Just about everyone will go into some kind of brain lock at some point, like where they just freeze up. Some people just go full meltdown at some point.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  And it's, it's hard. And there's been some, some, some of the initial runs that we do, some of the initial iterations can be so chaotic and the people can perform so poorly. That a few times I've been, I'll catch myself wondering. Is this too much? Like, are we doing things that no human can actually handle? And sometimes I'll be thinking that. And while I was at one of these events, one of these field training exercises at Echelon Front, I was watching these two gentlemen, these two guys.

• 2:45Jocko Willink?

  And they're just unfazed. And there's chaos and there's mayhem and there's people freaking out and yelling and screaming and not knowing what to do and deer in the headlights, the whole nine yards. And these two dudes are just calm, cool and collected, but also engaged. They're making things happen. They're not just doing their assigned jobs, but they're picking up, they're taking security, they're leading little teams. And I'd actually never seen anyone perform like this at one of our FTXs. And here's these two guys.

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  And I knew something was going on. So I walk over to JP, because JP, you know, he's running the whole FTX program and they have bios on everyone. I was like, hey JP, what's up with these freaking two guys over here that are like holding security, covering, moving, making things happen? And he's, he smiles and he's like, those guys are Estonian special operation soldiers and they deployed to Afghanistan. One's an officer, the other one's a senior enlisted guy. And they actually follow the principles that we teach and we talked to them about it. And I looked at these guys, I was like, yeah, they sure do. And that right there was the beginning of a relationship that we now have with these two men and their

• 3:55Jocko Willink?

  company. Their company is called Combat Ready. And Combat Ready is a company in Estonia and they represent Echelon Front and they partner with Echelon Front in Europe. They teach the same principles that we teach and they help leaders in every realm, in every different type of business, lead and win. And it's an honor to have one of those men, Remo Oiesta. Actually, it's Remo Oiesta.

• 4:27Jocko Willink?

  Here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned. Remo, thanks for joining us. Oiesta, I got it right the second time?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, almost.

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, let's hear it for real then.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Remo, oiesta.

• 4:40Jocko Willink?

  So you have to roll the R, huh? Remo, oiesta.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, some, some people just say Remo. I don't really care.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  Style points with the R.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 4:51Jocko Willink?

  All right, let's, let's talk about Estonia real quick. Give us the basics, the basics on Estonia. It's located on the Baltic Sea. You got, uh, what Sweden to the west, Latvia to the south. Popu-, it's a pretty small population.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yep, 1.3 million.

• 5:08Jocko Willink?

  1.3 million.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Finland to the north.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Big bear to the east.

• 5:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and a big bear to the east. So you're, you got Russia as well. And you've had to contend with Russia for your whole existence.

• 5:23Jocko Willink?

  It's a pretty flat place. Like, what's the highest peak? It's like several hundred feet or something like that.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  It's 380 meters. I don't know how much that didn't fit. It's a hill.

• 5:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a hill. A bunch of lakes and islands.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Yep, we have over 2,000 islands. Latvians have zero. So we won.

• 5:44Jocko Willink?

  People speak Estonian. That's the language there. You've had a bunch of wars there and you've been occupied and reoccupied multiple times.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  You fought the Estonian War of Independence against the Soviets and the, and the Baltic German forces. 18, or sorry, 1918 to 1920. In 1940, there was Soviet occupation.

• 6:08Jocko Willink?

  In 1941 to 1944, there was German occupation.

• 6:13Jocko Willink?

  Some Germans fought, or sorry, some Estonians, many Estonians fought for the Germans against the Soviets. Of course, there was people that fought against both the Nazis and the Russians.

• 6:28Jocko Willink?

  In 1944, Estonia was absorbed into the Soviet Union. And then spent many years as part of the Soviet Union. And then 1988 to 1991. You aggressively had what's known as the singing revolution.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Yep, people sank themselves free.

• 6:49Jocko Willink?

  How'd that work?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it was a good setup, I would say, and then it just was a matter of people starting singing. Like, there was a Baltic chain from one side of Estonia until Lithuania. So, many hundred kilometers, people were just holding hands and just showing that we want to be free. And then there was a singing square, and people went and sank. So I would say it's like more of a like a symbol when things started to go in the right direction. But that was one of the times when we were able to start singing Estonian songs. People went crazy in that sense. We gathered like, I don't know, hundred thousand people. So, yeah.

• 7:31Jocko Willink?

  And luckily, at the time, I mean, the Soviet Union was falling apart, so it was kind of really good timing. And then showing that the Estonian people wanted to be free. And that's very interesting that the songs were suppressed, these old songs were suppressed. And so then they came back and caught the spirit. Now, you were born in the Soviet.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:53Jocko Willink?

  In the Soviet Union, I guess.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Eighty-nine.

• 7:55Jocko Willink?

  In nineteen eighty-nine.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 7:56Jocko Willink?

  And so what was, what'd your parents do?

• 8:00Speaker 01

  So, they pretty much worked. So, mother was like, like, most of the time, like in Soviet area, everyone had to go to some sort of a skill school. My mother went, I think, learned some gardening, gardening. So they were like from the countryside. My father, I actually have no idea what he learned. But eventually he was a builder, so he did all of that stuff. Initially during the Soviet times, my parents did some illegal stuff, as everyone in the nineties. So I remember that we were selling vodka, or like illegal vodka, cigarettes, gas.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  So we were like living next to a Russian airfield, like there was a military base there. And as you understand, like, that's

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Everyone was cropped. So I don't know how my mother figured out or my father figured out that hey, we could actually get the gas with a good price from the soldiers. Then I know that they hold it in a like a small, like a small building. And then they sold gas out of it to people. So like everyone was doing it pretty much and we were able to kind of gather a lot of resources. Uh, but that was what everyone was doing. Everyone was dealing. Everyone was trying to get by. So everyone pretty much got after it. And so that, so that was in the nineties? That was after? Yeah, it was in the beginning of nineties. Yeah. Okay. So it was like freedom and we were trying to figure out what to do with all this freedom.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So because as I remember, so it was more maybe in the middle of the nineties. But yeah, it was wild. I mean, in the beginning, when we got independent, like everyone like just tried to figure out what to do because now you have this freedom. And there was a lot of opportunity in that sense to do a different type of things. And people just started doing whatever was in front of them. And they just made the thing happen. Like my mother, she also like, like, I don't know. She was a scammer in the best way. Like she had some like leather friends. So you're sending like postcards. Oh yeah. We call that a pen pal.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, pen pal. Yeah, exactly. So she, for whatever reason, had a pen pals in Germany. I don't know how that ever happened, but and then as they didn't have much money. Uh, because like we, we did all of that illegal stuff and get money, but my father liked gambling. So he go, went out and like destroyed all the fortunes, so to say. So it, and then eventually my mother like, there was like, uh, whatever, like, uh, there was no money. So there was a lot of like this, I don't know, piece of paper. You go there and you get the ratio of milk or whatever. So. And she figured out that, hey, I'm going to collect German marks, like German money.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  And she wrote to the pen pal or pen pal. Yeah, pen pal. And like, hey, I, I don't have this type of money in my collection. And then those bin pals started sending her money. And obviously, she didn't collect them. So she just made those into money and that's how you get by during hard times. So yeah, you have to innovate a lot, so.

• 11:23Jocko Willink?

  And then what about, was there any military history in your family that you knew about?

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, not in like, I didn't like see anyone. There was like one uncle who went to the military. But my both grandfathers, or great grandfathers actually, they both stayed in the Second World War. One fought on the both sides. Like, we were really proud that they killed Soviet guys, then we were proud that they killed Nazis. So, nobody really knows what happened. It's just legends about them, but the fact is that they stayed there. And all the grandparents, they lived through the Second World War, they lived through the deportation, or yeah, departing them, sending to Siberia. So they, they were like super hard people. Like, like my grandfather, he eventually like, I think he lived, lived until like seventy.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  And he was like farming or treating animals. And like when he was like seventy, he got a stroke during while he was like farming. Then what he did, he just sat down for five minutes and then continued.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  And that was the like attitude of those dudes, like just hard people doing hard things, living through tough times, so.

• 12:38Jocko Willink?

  So your uncle, so he must have been in the Soviet Army?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, there was one, one uncle who went to Soviet Army. He like, yeah, so how, like every man had to, during Soviet time, every man had to serve Soviet Army. He did two years in the, in the Army or three years in the Navy. And usually the people were sent very far away from their home. And in a case of my uncle, so there was in, in the, in the city where I lived, there was like a restaurant. My father had a birthday and as there was no possibility to sing any Estonian songs. Because pretty much like you had local people and some of them. On a communist side. So they were like looking, okay, who is here, who doesn't like this system? And then They're rats.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's the way that these communist system works is that there's rats that live amongst the people. Exactly. And then there was a birthday and obviously they like drinking, so they started drinking. And then at some point, my uncle started singing Estonian like songs. And about freedom, about our land, about our sea. And then just one dude didn't like it. And then whoever the rat was, he said, Ah, I know where you will going, you will be going to Afghanistan. And that's, that's where we, where he went.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  What he specifically did there, I have no idea. Because every time when we had conversation with him, he kind of talked like he was part of every legend. Every legend that was out there, he, he was there. He was the one who survived everyone else in the platoon was like cut. Their throats were cut. He was the one who survived. Then there was sniper shooting. He survived again. Like he had all of those stories and once there was like a really funny thing, we went to my countryside with one of my friends who wasn't in the military. And we were doing some stuff over there and then they went to the barn and obviously he liked vodka. So they started drinking there and I was just doing some, something else and eventually I went back, what the, what the hell are they doing?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  I went there, they were crying. I was like, okay, what's going on? And then I started listening. These are friends of yours. Yeah, one of my friends. Are now crying, but they were talking to your uncle? Yeah, exactly. Like, and they was crying, I was like, what are you guys crying about? It's like, what the fuck? And they're like, yeah. I was in the situation where everyone was killed. I was survived. Then I saw dead babies. And like, there was like this tremendous stories, which you can see it's total bullshit. But this guy didn't understand, so he believed it. So he was a great storyteller. And he was like just talking all the legends and this guy was crying. I was like, okay, let him enjoy it. And next day I told them, hey, hey, all of what you heard is bullshit.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  So yeah, that's what that's that's that was the connection with the military.

• 15:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is. That is kind of crazy. And then you think about, I mean, it's a little fast forward, but your uncle, at least in some aspect, fought against the jihadists over in Afghanistan, who were at the time, supported by America.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 15:54Jocko Willink?

  And then, fast forward however many years, you were over there, fighting against the jihadists who were no longer supported by America. As a matter of fact, you were you were fighting with the Americans. So.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  So we had a couple of couple of guys who actually fought fought on the Soviet time, and then they were still in the external army, and then now they fought on the NATO side. So we had those two as well. And those are like really tough guys, like the like everyone went to the army and it was hard, like because there was like a lot of beating up, there's a lot of figuring out how to survive. So all of the people who went through it, they either broke or break, or they came out pretty tough. So, yeah.

• 16:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the Russian army is, for lack of a better word, is just straight like tyrannical abuse of the soldiers.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a prison.

• 16:46Jocko Willink?

  That's what they do. Yeah. Uh, as you're growing up, I know you were telling me that you had like grandparents in the countryside and grandparents in the city. So you've got a little bit of both worlds.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah, I had like an awesome childhood in that way that, like on the countryside, there was like nine children. So like if you go there, like there's no rules. Because those grandparents, they utilize decentralized command, as we say, like everyone has to get by by themselves. So I went there, there's no rules. You can do whatever you want. You can go out hiking, you can go wherever, you go do other stupid things. Now, when you go to the city, you had to be at home by eight. Like morning, you had to wake up at certain time. So they're like two opposite worlds. One was like super disciplined, otherwise like total freedom.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  So I saw the dichotomy there a lot and but it was both good sides, like my grandfather, who was on the city side.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Like he was the, he was the man, like he was really someone to look up to. Because he went, he was deported to Siberia. Then obviously, like he took ownership of everything, he didn't blame. Like he went there, oh, it sucks. So what do we do now? We started building life here. So they started building houses where they could live. And eventually he started doing sports. And then there was like this story where like, at least based on what his friends like were saying during, on his funeral that, like we were walking in Siberia. And then we are just hearing someone cursing in Estonian. In a garage somewhere. Like what the hell is that?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Someone is cursing in Estonian here? And then they went there and there was one dude who was fixing his bike and just going at it with the, with curses. And they said, what are you doing here? I'm just fixing my bike here, I want to like, I'm going to the competition. So like, okay, we have actual club here, maybe you can join. And he said, yeah, okay, let's do it together, you're Estonians, no problem. And eventually what happens is that he became the Far East Siberian champion in bike riding. Like he had full, like box full of gold medals. Then when he returned to Estonia, after there was a possibility to go back home.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  At some point, like when you did your time. And then he became skiing champion of Estonia. Then someone gave him a gun. And then he was skiing and shooting, he became a champion of that. So whatever he did, he became a champion. And then eventually, when he retired, he worked 40 years in the factory, driving a forklift.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  And that's kind of like that bizarre world worked like people did amazing things and then they came in and just did one thing.

• 19:47Jocko Willink?

  That's the standard, the kind of a holdover from the Soviet Union where that's your job, that's your life, this is what you're doing.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And they were like, they had a lot of money, but there was nothing to do with money. Like, there's nothing you can you can buy, there's nothing to buy, but you have a lot of rubles. Like, awesome. What do we do with it? Nothing.

• 20:10Jocko Willink?

  And then for you, so where were you living when you're actually like the rest of the year? It's not summertime, you're just going to school, you're with your parents. What was that? Where was that?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was living in the in a age of the city. And like, we had a studio apartment, one room, one kitchen, like everyone was living in one room. So I only I didn't have any brothers or sisters. So we made it happen in that sense. But it was a tiny place. Because government was giving apartments to people. And that's what we got, I guess. And then.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  So yeah, from there on, like my parents kind of put me or my mother wanted me to learn English. So he she put me to a school where it supposedly was harder. Like, I have always said that I'm not special at all, but apparently there was some tests. And for every reason, I passed some of them. And then I got into the class where like the language was the main thing. We had to learn English in the second grade, in the fourth grade, German, I don't know, Russian in the sixth. And in the like, like, high school, you get to get France or French. I knew any none of those languages.

• 21:24Jocko Willink?

  The only one that stuck is English?

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, only.

• 21:27Jocko Willink?

  What about Russian?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Like, I understand some of it. But if you don't practice it, you like lose it. But yeah, you can I can handle it. But I couldn't have like real conversation. Like, we can't we couldn't do this. Not at all.

• 21:40Jocko Willink?

  What about what about sports?

• 21:42Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I I liked sports. So my father, like my grandfather was a sportsman, my father was a sportsman, like, obviously, he was. Also doing some sports and he was pretty successful on a like a city level. But I guess he found drinking at some point and crime. So that was his way out from the sports. So but he put me to play basketball, soccer. So I started always like with the team sports and I really enjoyed it because. I know for the whatever reason, I always loved when there was a lot of people and we can compete with each other and when we do something together, we win.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  So but the the the problem with that was always that every summer I was sent to the countryside. So there was no access to anything. So I kind of like missed every year three months from the training. I still kind of did okay, but still there was no consistency of that. So. I like the sports. I did some, what's the called like? Like running, running, not marathons, but hundred meters, sixty meters.

• 22:52Jocko Willink?

  Track and field.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, all of those things we had to compete. So I was I was like doing that. I was like always in the top five or whatever. So yeah, that was what I did with sports. Eventually became like Estonian champion in basketball.

• 23:09Jocko Willink?

  Basketball?

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:11Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Well, like thirteen, fourteen. I mean, like not no big deal. Then in soccer, we became fourth. Or something like that. So every team where I like was able to be, I was somewhere in the middle, a gray mess.

• 23:25Jocko Willink?

  And and what about like educationally in school? Is there is there, you know, in the in the eighties and nineties in America? It was like everyone was pushing, go to college, go to college. I guess they maybe still are pushing, like everyone has to go to college. They shouldn't be. But at the time, when I was growing up, it was like everyone needs to go to college, everyone needs to go to college. Was there that push for you guys?

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was always a push from my parents because they didn't go to university. So the mainly was like that's the only way to get, I don't know. Smart, I guess, or whatever. Even though that they were like getting after it on a entrepreneurial level and doing crime and other stuff. So that was the success, but I mean, yeah, it was always like that, like.

• 24:09Jocko Willink?

  So did they just maintain like a low, low level crime where they avoided?

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Oh, that was different.

• 24:14Jocko Willink?

  Interaction with the, the mob.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:17Jocko Willink?

  You have mob.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:18Jocko Willink?

  You have organized crime there?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  So my, yeah, my father definitely had something to do with them. Uh, because at some point my father went and worked in Russia. So they were like bringing over, I don't know, stuff that we don't have here. They were selling those things. Uh, I know there was some things about drugs, but those are like drunken stories. So I'm not, I haven't confirmed. They were like, like they were doing all the things, whatever the things would be.

• 24:43Jocko Willink?

  Somehow they gave you the impression that that's not the best path to be on.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  No, not really.

• 24:48Jocko Willink?

  Like, oh, they didn't give you that impression?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 24:50Jocko Willink?

  You were just like, hey, this is a good way to make money.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Part of life.

• 24:53Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Just that was normal, like everyone was doing it.

• 24:55Jocko Willink?

  So the next door neighbors, they were also doing their scam and their?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  Deals and so that was just how we, Evan was living at the time.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. That was the, that was the word. That was like our entre- entrepreneurship.

• 25:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  That was what it was, yeah.

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  So, so when you're going to school, are you trying hard? You're trying to get into college, that whole thing?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. So, I mean, until like ninth grade, like I was doing good.

• 25:21Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Uh, because of my father, he liked to drink and liked to party. Then was some mess at home all the time. Then I kind of like felt like, okay, I'm not doing drinking at all or whatever. So my first drink was in the ninth grade.

• 25:36Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  And when I tasted that nectar, I never went back.

• 25:40Jocko Willink?

  So wait a second, you had decided after watching your dad drink too much, you're like, I'm not drinking.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:45Jocko Willink?

  Until you were 14 and then you're like, oh, I'm in.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's like my first, first time is what like I was straight went to vodka. And people had to like drag me to the toilet. That was the first experience. But I mean, uh, we were like, yeah, and then everything kind of started. I started to learn what it feels like or whatever. And then it became cool, but my parents never figured it out. Because I always kept it, I was like always sneaky in some way.

• 26:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, they, they never figured out that you were drinking?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Like, I think my mother figured out it when I was like 19.

• 26:19Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Like, you're drinking.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Like yeah, for ten years.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  So yeah, so and that that's kind of started to introduce me to to to that and then eventually like yeah, I I kind of ended up in in in places where I hang around with older dudes. So they were cool, they were drinking. And yeah, that's what I learned. I learned from their example.

• 26:49Jocko Willink?

  And are you still going to school, but now you're hanging out and drinking and just kind of being a a juvenile delinquent is what we would call that in America?

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so yeah, I was I was drinking and then like I still get to the uh high school, uh so gymnasium. It's not the like a school where you can get a like a profession, because there's like two ways, like you can get the profession, uh I don't know, you learn to chef or you're kind of prepared to go to university. So I got to be go to the school which was like preparing to go to university. So zero skills teach. And during that time, I kind of we were so bored that we started playing cards. And we had this one game

• 27:36Speaker 01

  where as as as I like at the countryside, what did you what the what did people do at the Soviet time? They just played cards. And then I kind of had a knack to it, or I don't know, for whatever reason, again, uh it kind of worked out for me. And then we started playing like, okay, who gets the most win in this wins in this game gets a uh box of beer. So we played one like quarter and I got like eighty wins. Second place had like thirty six. I'm like, okay, okay, I have the beer. So

• 28:11Jocko Willink?

  What game were you playing?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Uh it's called let's let's uh poetic night.

• 28:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay, that's cool. We'll go with the Estonian word.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I have no idea what it's in English. I don't know if that that the most likely there is a like, I may maybe spades or some something like that. I don't know. But it's a it's a skill game, like you can read cards, uh you you can have a strategy. So if you play with the person who understands the rules, you can beat them. Like there is certain amount of understanding, like how to beat other person, but it's a it's not like a lucky game.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  But eventually, like next quarter, we figured, okay, let's do it again. But everyone understands what the results will be, so it became boring. So then I thought, okay, what could be the new game? And then I went home and figured out, hey, it should be poker. And then I brought in papers with poker rules and then we started playing poker. In like 10th grade at school, which is like legit, right? And then we like had these like coins, which everyone brought and then we started playing it everywhere. Then eventually we bought a chip, uh, uh, case. Then we kind of started putting in, okay, you put 25 runes, you can put, like it's like 10 bucks.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  And winner takes all. And then I figured that, hey, what if I cheated? Then I went into, at that time, like, as you can remember, like, the internet was like really slow. So, but there was a lot of access to, like, illegal stuff again, like, uh, yeah, stuff that is not available. So there was like access to that and you downloaded a video of how to cheat in poker. Uh, it took like a week to download, maybe, I don't know, 10 megabytes or something. But eventually, when I got it, then I started looking at it and I started playing around it. I really, for whatever reason, liked it. So I became pretty good at sleight of hand.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  And then I went to those poker nights and they, I guess what, I started winning. And nobody understood why I was winning. Uh, but yeah, I was cheating, that was the reason. But then eventually, like, we ended up with those dudes to, we went to a bar. And then we saw that there were some other dudes playing cards and they were already like university, I was like 16, 17. And then there was other dudes who had done it, like, they were like 21 plus. And they started playing. And obviously, I thought, okay, I will jump into that table. And then we started playing and then for the next four months, every day, I went to play pool. Or at least that was what I told to my parents.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  And in reality, I was playing poker in the back room with some of the adults, continued doing cheating. I was successful in it, nobody understood it. But then I realized also that it's a skill game and you can make money. And eventually like one thing led to another. I eventually like cashed out like, I don't know, in the next two years. While I was in high school, about fifty thousand euros.

• 31:20Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  And at that time, it was worth like an apartment. So yeah, I made more money than my parents and everything like that, just because I like card game. And eventually like, as my father had that gambling issue. I never wanted to raise that, that hey, I'm making money with poker. Because I thought that they would never believe me. But eventually I kind of like, I never ask any pocket money. And like, okay, so most likely they will start thinking that I'm like selling drugs or something. I'm doing the business that they did. So eventually like, I showed them the evidence that hey, it's monthly coming in in like a right way. So there is no like, and all the other guys are playing, they are university like educated.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  So they're smart. And I'm like, oh, makes sense, go on. And then I just pretty much moved out and uh, but yeah, that was pretty much what I did in the high school. I just, eventually, because I started making so much money. I went to school on Tuesday.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  And I pretty much started my weekend on Thursday. And as the weekend went so long, on Sunday, I never get to school on Monday. So that was pretty much my school. I really didn't go there, but I still passed all of my grades. It didn't take much to me to get the like Bs and Cs.

• 32:43Jocko Willink?

  So then what came after that? Did you end up going to college?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I was, I was forced. Like my mother said, hey, you have to have an education. So I said, okay, so what do you want me to learn? Like she said, okay, let's go and learn economics or business. Finance, leadership or something like that, like yeah, finance management. So I get, get in there. And obviously what I did. Again, I just played poker during.

• 33:10Jocko Willink?

  More poker.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, more poker. And then I was like sitting around, like I had one like a, like school sister uh, from the school. She was my like neighbor. And there was like a bunch of other girls around me who were studying hard, everything. And I was like, playing poker. Getting my C's and B's without much of effort and they were like mad all the time because they get same grades what I got. But I just ran through it. And what kind of ended it to me was that I forgot to sign a paper, which kind of gives you an extension that you don't, you can like postpone your

• 33:49Speaker 01

  conscript service or mandatory military service after you've done your studies. So by that time initially, as a young guy, I really like, actually before I entered the Bokor, like actually liked military stuff for whatever reason. Now, as I got so much money, I was like, fuck that military stuff. I don't need it anymore. And but then it was like, okay, I had no choice. So I decided, okay, I will go and try it after the first year. Because otherwise it will be harder to finish it. Uh, after I do a break after the second year. So as I forgot to sign the paper, I just had to go.

• 34:22Jocko Willink?

  And everyone's going. It's mandatory for everybody.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 34:26Jocko Willink?

  So they must have a pretty, down to a pretty good system of bring, how long is, how long is like the boot camp indoctrination and all that?

• 34:32Speaker 01

  So you, you can have two choices, like if you, if you end up in a leadership position, like a squad leader or platoon leader, then it's 11 months. If you're like especially like a machine gunner or a driver, or actually if you're a machine gunner or just a shooter, then it's nine months. So for whatever reason, uh, again, I was sent to 11 months, uh, which means that I'm on a course of either getting driver's license or becoming a squad leader. So, so, but the boot camp, the boot camp is pretty much same. Uh, it's like three months of Zackfest. That's what it is.

• 35:10Jocko Willink?

  How much, how much is left over from the Soviet military? Or did they weed that out pretty good?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Nothing, yeah, nothing. It was like in the beginning of like 2000s, but I went in like 2009 or 2008 and nine. So, sorry, 2009 and 10. By that time, there was nothing, but the previous years, like 2000 earlier, like it was, it was stupid. Like they were like, um, doing backflips and breaking, um, whatever.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Breaking wood with their hands, jumping out from the cars that are moving, breaking their legs, screaming each other, beating each other. So that was the army initially.

• 35:53Jocko Willink?

  So was that, did that kind of start to disappear as Estonia started to work with the Western militaries?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It started to-

• 36:02Jocko Willink?

  That had to be unique for like the first Americans or Brits that showed up with these freaking borderline Russian dudes that are hitting each other in the head with blocks and stuff like this.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Because like the, like the transition was that the people who were in Soviet Union or in the, in the army, they kind of became the only people who knew anything about army. So who do you take? So you put those guys in the army, but they come with the wrong mindset. And yeah, that's a, that's a disaster.

• 36:31Jocko Willink?

  So you had a bunch of money, now you go in the army and it's a sock fest, but for some reason you like it.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, uh, actually it was also like overweight, like, like maybe like, whatever it's like a hundred eighty pounds. So-

• 36:47Jocko Willink?

  This is vodka and like-

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, good lifestyle. Yeah. Eating pizza.

• 36:52Jocko Willink?

  Pizza and vodka.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Playing poker, right? So that's not a great, but at the same time I went to MMA training. I did some jujitsu and stuff like that, but that really lasted only for a year and then I had to go to the army. So in reality, I was the guy who you see in the movie, uh, who is always left behind, like in the back. And then some people have to come and push you. That was my first month.

• 37:22Jocko Willink?

  What do they do? Like, let's say you, you got a person that just doesn't want to be in the army and he doesn't care. He's a conscript. He doesn't want to serve his one, two years, much less one year, doesn't want to be there for one month. So he's just gonna not try. What do they do with that guy?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  They will just make them do it. Pretty much they're like, there are ways out. I mean, they will figure out the fake injury, all that kind of stuff. But in reality, like, they have no choice. They just go through it. They just have to suck it up pretty much. And yeah.

• 37:55Jocko Willink?

  So then what's your first job? Once you get done with your training? And what'd you say your training was? To be a squad leader?

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, initially just boot camp. There's no profession. You just go through the basics. You get to learn how to shoot. Maybe you shoot. At that time, you shot like, I don't know, 30 shots in three months. So you get to know how to shoot for sure. So then you do those like long hikes. So you just basic soldier skills. That's what it is all about. But during that time, you get the regime. You start waking up early. You go bed early. So you get eight hours of sleep every day. But there was like nitrials. So it's like a mayhem. And so by the end of the three months, I lost all of my weight. And I was in shape. So now I was on top of it. Like I was in top five.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  And I started to enjoy it for whatever reason. Because like you do certain things and things start to happen. So it kind of makes sense. And then all of my previous memory from the childhood, when I was going to the forest and playing America's Army. I was like,

• 39:02Jocko Willink?

  What's America's Army?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Uh, America's Army had a game. I guess it's for recruiting purposes. And that was just a like shooting game, like Call of Duty.

• 39:13Jocko Willink?

  Like a video game?

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Call of Duty.

• 39:15Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, confirm? No idea?

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, never heard of that.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:18Jocko Willink?

  But it was, it was made by the American government?

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 39:22Jocko Willink?

  And they recruited your ass?

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I played 2000 hours of that.

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I switched that to playing poker.

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  Uh, okay.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Because I already had a good attitude, discipline of playing or sitting behind the computer. But yeah, then pretty much, I kind of for whatever reason, like got reminded what I felt when I was young. And I was like, okay, fuck that university stuff. This is for me now. And then the same dude that we, um,

• 39:57Speaker 01

  That we established combat ready with, he was already an officer. He was a company, like two IC in a company.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  And he was like legit guy, like tall, strong. And he apparently had just passed the selection to the special forces. But as it was such a new thing, like nobody wanted to let go of the good guys.

• 40:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  So they like tried to like hold the people down, they will not let them go. But he kind of gave a brief that hey, there is this unit. Cool American pictures, people with night vision that hey, these are the best of the best. They will pay you a lot of money. All of that was a lie, of course. And just the recruitment stuff. And then I went to his office and like, yeah, I want to try. Even though I kind of never thought that I would pass, but I was still, like I had a huge ego. That at least told me that hey, I will try. So yeah, that was kind of like setting me like on a way where okay,

• 41:13Speaker 01

  if I get there, I maybe even want to be part of the army.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  So that's where I understood that I like it. Then I was eventually sent to the NCO. So the first three months is basic soldier skills. Then the next two months is squad leader training. And that's like an extensive, really good training. And I was fortunate because at that time, we were already been in Afghanistan for, I don't know, four or five years. And we like, we have a scouts battalion, which is like one of the only

• 41:50Speaker 01

  like battalions that actually is deployed, like professional army. And so as I was in engineering battalion, there were like two dudes who came back from Afghanistan. And they were put to be the leaders of the NCO or the, yeah, junior NCOs. So.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  They came in and they started teaching us drill shit. So the level of training, what we got was like super high level.

• 42:19Jocko Willink?

  And this was in the NCO course that you went through?

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yep, absolutely. So because they they were like designated, there was two platoons full of like NCOs. And they were as like the commanders or responsible for each platoon. And they were like really legit. They knew what they were saying. And at the same time, two guys just got killed in Afghanistan.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Obviously, they were their friends.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  And now, we obviously got all the good stuff from those guys because they were mad about the situation. And when we did stupid things, they remind us that this is for real. And that that kind of provided me the foundation for everything. And it was really, really high level, good training.

• 43:09Jocko Willink?

  And that was regular army?

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:12Jocko Willink?

  NCO course?

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Go on script service.

• 43:14Jocko Willink?

  And then, so let's talk about the SOF, Estonian SOF. There was like, they originally tried to form a SOF element years ago under the Military Intelligence Battalion, and it didn't work out. In 1999, they they created another SOG force and apparently a member of the of the new Special Operations Group attempted an armed robbery with his SOG weapons.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:44Jocko Willink?

  And they disbanded the whole unit.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yep. So yeah, there was like, we have like a National Guard. So our defense is overall built in two ways. So we have the reserve army. And then we have like volunteer army. And the Defense League is like National Guard. And the the first try on that was they put together people, what they did, pretty much, they just did cool stuff. So and whatever reason, they got out of hand. They thought that they are awesome. And like, as I, as I, as you remember, everyone was doing crime. They thought that they will go and steal money from a dude. Like the dude was. Like, they said that they're either, I don't know which way it was, but they were like, they wanted to sell a tractor.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  And then the dudes were supposed to come there with, I don't know, fifty thousand. And they thought that they will ambush them and like, take the money. But at that time, those dudes came with guns as well. Because they know that the, like, doesn't make any sense when we're moving. And then one guy got shot. So they were not really special in that sense. So they, they lost and then all of that was dismantled.

• 44:58Jocko Willink?

  Um, two thousand and two, they make another attempt to form another spec ops unit. I guess it was. And then by two thousand and five, they had like a human element, which is human intelligence. They went to Afghanistan two thousand and five. Their mission ended up in, uh, two thousand and seven. And two thousand and eight, special operations task group is formed. And this is where they start getting trained by US special operations forces. Uh, by the guys over in SOC, your special operations command Europe. And then by two thousand and ten, the.

• 45:40Jocko Willink?

  You guys in Estonia are actually running your own selection course. And is that when you went through?

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yep. So I went through it in two thousand and ten.

• 45:49Jocko Willink?

  And so were your instruct, was your course in Estonia?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:53Jocko Willink?

  And were your instructors Estonian instructors?

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:56Jocko Willink?

  Was there any other, was there Americans, was there Brits, was there anybody else? Just pure Estonians?

• 46:01Speaker 01

  So it's, it's just like a selection, like, uh, just two weeks in hell.

• 46:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  That kind of thing.

• 46:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you get done with that, and then what comes after that?

• 46:13Speaker 01

  So then, uh, like, first of all, you, you get through it, you pass it. So we had like sixteen guys starting, uh, three of us passed. So it's usually.

• 46:22Jocko Willink?

  What was wrong with the other freaking fourteen of those dudes or whatever it was?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  They just wanted to quit.

• 46:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  But it's, uh, like, the groups of people are really small, like, uh.

• 46:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, sixteen dudes and three passed?

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you, you get incremental.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Attention.

• 46:38Jocko Willink?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  You can imagine.

• 46:40Jocko Willink?

  How many instructors were there?

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't know, seven, eight.

• 46:44Jocko Willink?

  There's like two instructors for every dude at the end.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  So yeah, the, the, there was one.

• 46:49Jocko Willink?

  How did they torture you?

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Same way as here.

• 46:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Do they have cold water for you?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 46:55Jocko Willink?

  You got a bunch of lakes, a thousand lakes or whatever.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Everything, like you got everything, like it's all, all kind of torture that you, you get. Uh, no sleep, like, yeah, there are a bunch of interesting ideas what they have, what we run. Eventually I was able to run those things myself. Uh, but yeah, so we have like this, like when you fall asleep. Uh, and you get caught, then there's like this small toy, uh, from Russian area, like when you screw it up, it starts doing tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck. And then it screws down, it stops. Now, for each time you close your eyes, you get one hour. You sit in behind the table and you have to turn it on. You let it go.

• 47:41Jocko Willink?

  And it goes for like 10 seconds and then you have to do it again.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Then you have to do it again. And there's a camera in front of you. Who's like watching at you. So you do that. So a lot of people get 10 hours of that. So while other people are sleeping, you go there and you do the, you do that. It was like duck, duck turning. It's a small duck. So, and then there we have like this dude called Toivo. Who is just a like mannequin, like if you get two meters further from your battle buddy. You get that dude on your back, everywhere. So there are like some fun things what we do with people. Uh, but yeah, it's, uh, it's pretty much like, uh, the Green Race. Uh, selection.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  It's just, we don't have much people, uh, in terms of the participants. I think the lowest one was eight people. Came to the selection. Uh, one instance, there was 21 starting, only one passed.

• 48:36Jocko Willink?

  He was a hard man.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the attrition rate is really high. Uh, but the dudes who get through are pretty good.

• 48:44Jocko Willink?

  And then what's, so what do you do after that?

• 48:46Speaker 01

  So after that, it's a. Like a Q course. Is it like the Q course? Yeah. The Green Breaker Q course. So even if you. Where did you go for that? Still in Estonia? Yeah, initially there was like the preparation course, then we were sent to Hungary.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, we we did three months there, just basic stuff. I mean, it sucked really. And the main reason why it sucked because sadly it was really bad quality. Because like our conscript service, especially mine, was like really good. And the dudes that we went there, like most of them were like already, some of them had already deployed. They had gone through real infantry, basic training. They were in Afghanistan. They knew how to do things. And now you end up in a place where they are going to do you another basic soldier skills. And sadly, they didn't speak really good English. So and their teaching methods wasn't really up to speed.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  So it was just four hours of sleep for two months. And that if you close your eyes, it's like it's morning and the sacrifice starts again. And all of this is not like, it's just, it's not physically hard, but it's

• 50:01Speaker 01

  it's just mentally so hard because you're looking at just us doing stupid things for so long. We did that part, so it made us like strong in our head, at least. So we did that and then. Either that or super annoyed. Yeah. So we did that part that sucked really, but then eventually, like there was some some issue with Americans and Hungarians. I don't know, whatever it was, some sort of dispute because there should be now next phase is MOS. So you're learning your whatever. And then eventually it should have happened like a team training. But the Americans didn't show up for whatever reason. And then our command decided that this is not

• 50:42Speaker 01

  like logical anymore because this will continue the same way as it has been. And then we were sent back. And fortunate for us, I knew like S U T, so small unit tactics.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Camp started because now we, there was nothing, nobody to send us. Because our main idea behind our overall situation was that we need to get NATO qualified. And we need to go a NATO course to get the paper. So all of what we did was for papers. So we need to, then eventually there was no people to come in Estonia to train us. So what do we do with dudes? We sent them to school. So then they sent us to the senior NCO school. But before, we had like three months of free time. And what to do? You take those dudes to the forest and you just do tactics.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  And cover move, all that kind of stuff. So pretty much half a year straight, we did only the SACF stuff. Then you go to the NCO school and guess what that starts with?

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  Same stuff.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Same stuff again. So there was yeah, one year of like nine months of basic training. And you get good. That's, that's the good part about it.

• 52:04Jocko Willink?

  And that was all while you were basically waiting to go to some kind of a NATO qualified.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:11Jocko Willink?

  Q course of some kind.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:13Jocko Willink?

  And so where did you end up doing that?

• 52:15Speaker 01

  So eventually like that took us like then about nine months, I think in total. So started in 2010.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Coming back March from Hungary, then in August going to the school. So I think we were five months in that school. Then there's MOS, then I started learning again engineering. So I got the new MOS. And then eventually you have, you can do the practice part in your own battalion. And then we were sent back and then by that time we had like old school American SF guys. Who were like, like bodybuilders.

• 52:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Two meters tall. Like, like super awesome dudes. And they kind of started to do us the same stuff again.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Because then we started it again.

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Another S U T.

• 53:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Another M O S training, another team build up. So that's what we started again doing, but in that time, like we were the only team. So again, ratio.

• 53:23Jocko Willink?

  Is there eighty of you guys or something you said?

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Uh, something like that. Uh, let's put it like that. That's like a small number. And then, uh, what was, what happened is that like each M O S, like me and the other guy, we got one instructor. And that instructor was, uh, I mean, remember J P was his name. And he had twenty-five years of SOF. He was from Ranger Battalion. He had been in every conflict from whatever time until today.

• 53:54Jocko Willink?

  From, from World War Two.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 53:57Jocko Willink?

  Just a hard old green beret dude.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And then they started teaching us how to do explosives, how to do all the other stuff. And then eventually we had the team training and then we supposedly was ready to kind of get qualified. And then we had qualifications, then we went to another team and then we kind of supposed to be ready to go deploy it.

• 54:21Jocko Willink?

  And your qualification ended up being engineer?

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:24Jocko Willink?

  And did the other guys get normal?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, same, same, like, like, uh, like eighteen Bravo, like eighteen Charlie, eighteen Echoes. All, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, pretty much same. Like you get different radioman, machine gunner tactics, same stuff.

• 54:42Jocko Willink?

  So now you show up or your guys are, is, is Estonian SOF already deployed to Afghanistan when you show up there?

• 54:49Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so pretty much, uh, when, uh, when we got back, I think the first unit went in two thousand twelve. So Martin, again, uh, he was the first guy in Afghanistan. Uh, he was sent there to pretty much set up and figure out where we could be sent. So he had a half a year deployment, like, okay, go to Afghanistan and figure out where we can go. And he went there and then he started pulling strings, started building relationships. And eventually we had a province where we could actually go together with the tenth group, I think. And then the first, uh, team went there. And then when did you end up going?

• 55:31Speaker 01

  So I ended up going in 2013, so we were like changing them out. And yeah, it was like a Lagman province, pretty much similar situation like there was not a lot of freedom of maneuver, manu- ah whatever, freedom to maneuver. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, and it was in the, like in the mountains, it was just one valley shaped Y, we were somewhere in the middle. And the local guys, obviously, wasn't able to accomplish much, but the first team then they didn't start doing any DA, they didn't do any fancy stuff, they just did what was needed.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  What they said that, hey, we need to push the bubble to create possibility to start moving. They started utilizing the local ANA and started putting checkpoints, checkpoints. And then they started training the local special forces. And actually, in that province, the, the people that we were able to utilize were pretty good. Like, like it's hard to tell that usually, like if you say it's pretty good, it's not good, but they were pretty good. And they had their EOD teams and their like success rate in terms of finding, like IED was 97%.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  So like when we went out, that it was pretty good. That's amazing. Obviously, every day or I don't know, once a week, someone blew up still, but I don't know for whatever reason. There could be half of the times they just blew up because they did something stupid rather than drive on the IED. So they were able to actually establish a really good system. They were able to pass the bubble and now there was a freedom of, freedom to move. And when we got there, we pretty much now had ability to go start getting all of the dirt packs. So we had one dude whose name was Joe Dirt.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  And yeah, so we started to kind of establish rapport with locals, like the local unit. Initially, we, we kind of started.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Training together to learn each other so that we don't shoot each other. So and then when you go to the first operation, maybe one month in, maybe one and a half months. Like here is a bag, put all of your cell phones here. You take all of the cell phones and then you tell them where we're going. And then you go out in the night in a random valley with two Chinooks and you start killing bad guys, pretty much.

• 58:21Jocko Willink?

  It's it's interesting. You guys were you were training for like four years of legit infantry and special operations training. You must have been very gratified when you finally got on a Chinook and flew out to go kill bad guys.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was interesting. Like I was the guy sitting on the edge and then flying in in the total darkness. We had like two Apaches covering for us, two Chinooks. We are going in both of them like, I don't know, fifty fifty people. And then I'm sitting on the back. We are starting to get closer and then I just watch out from there and I see like tracers flying. I was like, okay, now I'm getting I understand where I am. Then I'm when we land, like I didn't take any of my, what is it? The like the goggles that you hide. I went there, all of my eyes were full of sand.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  So and then I hear like the Apaches are singing already. They are sending some hell fires to that mountains or whatever.

• 59:27Jocko Willink?

  And this is your first op, huh?

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:29Jocko Willink?

  And are you with like a bunch of Afghan?

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had like.

• 59:33Jocko Willink?

  And then how many of you guys?

• 59:35Speaker 01

  It was like, I think it was seven Estonians and five Americans. And then about, I don't know, eighty locals. Nighttime in the middle of nowhere. And it was funny, like we initially were supposed to get the like the special forces helicopter guys, the whatever they are.

• 59:56Jocko Willink?

  One sixty.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And obviously there was a higher priority somewhere, so we didn't get that. And then eventually we got the regular, I guess, army guys and they put us one click away in the middle of the valley. And then what we had to start doing is getting closer to the target area, wherever the shura was.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  And that was fun, because we, there was like, the mountain was on that side and there was like this ridge lines, or like, yeah, this ridge line is coming down. So we went over the first one. And I was like, okay, that's fucking sucks.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  And you look at the locals, like, they, they have their dress on, they're just chilling.

• 1:00:40Jocko Willink?

  AK-47, a few mags or whatever.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  And then you get on the bottom of that, and you look at the next one. Holy fucking shit. You go up there, you go down, and you're like, next one. Then you are on top of the third one.

• 1:00:55Jocko Willink?

  So this is your first op?

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Jocko Willink?

  And you've already, you've done three?

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And then, then by the time I was on, on the, on the, on, down on the third one,

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  my legs were so full of blood that they just didn't, like, no, no steps up. So what we did is that we did a chain and we just pulled each other up, because that's how fucking bad the legs were. Obviously, we had all the six plates in it, all the ammunition was with me, I had like five kilograms of explosives in the back, I had everything.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Only thing what they didn't have was water.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Uh, so we get on top of the fourth one, and they were like, okay, we can't go further anymore, because we're already dead.

• 1:01:42Jocko Willink?

  Like everyone's crashed.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, everyone's crashed. And then, like, uh, one of, like, as I was the last guy of Estonians, they're like, oh, other Estonians are already down there. Go and link up with them. I'll say, okay, let's go. Like, I just go down random place, down the hill, and then I link up in a random corner and say, okay, other Estonians are here at least, very good. Now we start moving. So our idea was like, there was like mayhem going on, and then we had to go and confirm if we get the Joe Dirt, right? We had a dude with a, like, a mask on, we didn't know who he was. Uh, he was supposed to be the guy who was actually confirming the dude. And then we have like, I don't know, maybe half of the Afghans with us.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  And then Afghans at some point say that, hey, we don't want to go first anymore. Our Zulu, who was for our Zulu, like Team Sergeant, he was like, I don't know, third deployment in Afghanistan. Is this Estonian guy or an American guy? Estonian guy. Yeah, he was in charge of the like the lead element, like the officers, they stayed on top and now all NCO was just going in there just to confirm. And then our guy said, okay, so Estonians go first then, because we need to move. We are not going to stay here. Because I guess the Afghans, they didn't like to use their night vision or whatever. Whatever the reason was, they didn't want to go first.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  So the first kind of street or first kind of where there's like just two, like 50 meter walls, no doors, no nothing, just a corridor. It's like, oh yeah, that's a great place to go from. So yeah, we just took a leap of faith, started going, nothing happened, then went on and on and on. Eventually get to a place where the alleged bodies were. Because like I think the Apaches, they already like had killed like 11 and we just went there to pretty much confirm. So I was put in one position to pull cover and then people piled to the right and then our dudes, they found a body.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  And now, how do you get the picture? You take out your camera and you start taking a picture. Now what happens? Flash goes off. There's a flash. Now, as the flash, as the flash goes off, there's like a machine gun fire coming from a random direction. And so then the mayhem started, like bullets are flying over my head. I have no fucking clue what's happening, like first time in a contact. Like, okay, that's interesting. That's an interesting feeling. So now I heard like that they say that they're in contact, contact, contact. Now there's like shots fired, but then the officers or the HQ who stayed on top of the

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  mountain, they don't understand or they don't hear anything. So I'm like, okay, so should I be, should I become a relay now? Or what should I do? So I just say, contact, contact, contact into my RAC radio as well. So now they got it. Then the next thing in five minutes is that, okay, now we have wounded in action. Someone is wounded, so.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  Now I have that information to relay, I will continue that. Now they are in panic on the HQ there, because it's our first relop. And then, uh, then next thing is like, okay, Apache, we have only like seven minutes left of Apache airtime, so Apache would like to start shooting someone. But as the only ones who have the blinkers are Estonians and one American, then we don't know where to shoot, because there are a lot of Afghans and where they are, we have no idea. So then I started like having a conversation through radio with those dudes to figure out, hey, are they in line, are they in the right place?

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Now, at the same time, I had this amazing equipment. So we had this night vision goggles where in front you can put a thermal sight. But if the thermal sight's battery goes out...

• 1:05:55Jocko Willink?

  Black.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  It's black. Nothing.

• 1:05:57Jocko Willink?

  Sounds awesome.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  So at the same time, all of that is going on, and I'm like doing my job and figuring out, then obviously, black. Then it's like, oh, this is getting only better. Then I kind of, whatever, I ask the guy next to me to take over in terms of this position. I change my battery, I coordinate that, yes, all of the dudes are out from the way. I relayed the information, and then on top of me, Apache started singing towards whatever compound. After that, everything was silent. And now our team sergeant, understanding that, hey, we just climbed over four mountains. We have been now, I don't know, two clicks into the city in a random place where we have no idea where we are. It's our first operation.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  And then he decides that, hey, okay, let's just fall back. Uh, so pretty much who got wounded, it was the one of the terps. His like fingers were shot off or something. And then we just started going back.

• 1:06:55Jocko Willink?

  Did you get Joe Dirt?

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  No, absolutely nothing. No, no. And then we started going back, and the dude who brought us there... He came to me, he was just there in the epicenter, like, I have no idea where the fuck we are. Can you lead us back to the beginning? I said, hmm, I saw how fucked up he was, I said, yes, no problem. I had no idea where we are, just started going in one direction and figuring out the way, so I started to be a point man. So I pointed us back to that hill, we eventually somehow got to the place where we came from. We climbed up to the mountain and then we were like...

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I wonder, do we now have to climb back over all of those mountains and then get the helicopter to bring us up? Like, we would rather stay here and fight for whatever amount of days, because we are not capable of doing that. And obviously, then, magic happened, there's like two Chinooks came, they were hovering. And we were running into the Chinooks and then we got back. And I guess we had like three people captured, I don't know who they were, I had no idea what we did, because it was my first time, I had no fucking understanding of what's going on. But all of those things happened and which was like really fun, like when I like talked about those experiences that, like, all the laws of combat

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  were just utilized on the first operation, and why I was able to do all of those things because of our training. Like, that nine months of, like, training paid off. Because, like, it was all cover move, it was keeping things simple, understanding what the hell to do, become a radio man, which I have never been, relaying information, like, understanding where we have to navigate back, prioritize and execute, decentralize command, like, all of those things, sharing bottles of water, like, everything. And, so yeah, that was the first thing, it was, it was interesting.

• 1:08:53Jocko Willink?

  How was the debrief on this operation?

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  So, debrief was pretty fine, in terms of, I don't even...

• 1:09:00Jocko Willink?

  Did you feel like, did you feel like, "Hey, we got some shit to fix"?

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:09:06Jocko Willink?

  Or did you feel like you did a decent job?

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  We did like a decent job in general, like because when we get there, like we were high fiving like.

• 1:09:15Jocko Willink?

  When you got home?

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, when we got to the base, like, yeah, we got back to base. It was like, I can't even remember debrief, like, I can't remember it.

• 1:09:24Jocko Willink?

  You were just too fired up.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess I was like, I don't know, rushing there, but I remember like first thing what I did is like I opened up my Coke bottle and drank that and we were sitting with three dudes and then the team sergeant came in. What the fuck are you doing here? Why is your gear off? Hey, maybe we have to go out now, so better go and get prepared. So he just pretty much vanished our dreams of relaxing here. We were like, oh, laying back, starting to like debrief how we went and like, but he came in and he was like a hard head. Like he was a true team sergeant from Ranger School, that kind of dude. So, so yeah, he, he, he teach me. And he, he made me a human, let's put it like that.

• 1:10:10Jocko Willink?

  So, how, so that was your first op that you went on? And then what was your op tempo like after that first op?

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  It wasn't, it wasn't really like high. I mean,

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  because mainly what we wanted to achieve is we wanted to achieve, like our intent was to make the area safer. And pretty much all of our, I like help the locals start doing stuff, push them out. Don't go and break doors before them. So that was the kind of idea. So I think we did overall like, I don't know, six, seven, like huge operations and some of them were like, we go out with thousand people. Nobody wants to mess with you, like nobody. So there was like no like extensive firefight.

• 1:10:55Jocko Willink?

  Thousand people being like.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Locals.

• 1:10:58Jocko Willink?

  Like almost all locals, like eight hundred locals or something like that, nine hundred locals?

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:11:04Jocko Willink?

  Were you involved in the training of those local nationals as well? So that's what you were doing. That was your job. Train these guys, get them ready for operations and then roll out.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Exactly, and build relationships and pretty much help them with whatever they needed. So as we had, like, we, our guys were able to speak Russian. Like, we were, we have the common enemy because they had fought against Soviets. It was much, like, it's much easier to, like, bond if you have a common history. So, and our guys were, like, able to speak Russian with them, our commanders, like, things were good. So, and as the previous, like, unit, they did a really great job of building everything up. It was, like, pretty easy for us.

• 1:11:45Jocko Willink?

  And you're saying that your forces, your Afghan forces were actually pretty squared away?

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the, the, the special forces part, or the police, whatever it is, PRC or whatever they were called. But the A and A, they were, like, random, like, every time you, like, our camp got attacked, they were shooting every direction, so. So they, they were still, like, everyone.

• 1:12:05Jocko Willink?

  Did you, so did you live on a camp with them?

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  So we lived in a camp where we had the privilege of having a, I think, like, we had a battalion of Americans who were pulling security for us. And we were in the middle in our small, small camp, and we were able to do whatever we wanted, pretty much. So we were privileged, we didn't have to pull any security, we didn't have to do much. We just, only thing what we had to do is figure out how to make this area safer.

• 1:12:34Jocko Willink?

  And how, how much did your field of vision open up as you started doing more operations? And now you're more aware of what's happening and maybe paying attention, like, oh, let's make sure that the helicopter puts us down in the right spot, which is always a big one.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:12:49Jocko Willink?

  It's a crazy thing, Echo Charles, so if you and I are going to get dropped off by a helicopter? Like thirty seconds in a helicopter means we have to walk an extra six hours. Like it's that, it's that crazy. And so you can, you can be looking at your map for reference, like, oh, there's that ridge line. Cool, I'm gonna put my map away because we're almost there. And two minutes later, you're off, like so far off. And that's why we always would have, if we could, helos would drop us off. And then they would maintain on station, like somewhere in the vicinity. So if we were five kilometers away or something, we could call them back and say like, hey, wrong spot. But in Afghanistan, it's different.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:28Jocko Willink?

  And because if you call them back in, now you just made a huge signature. So sometimes like, oh, you're just gonna have to deal with what you got.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  So from there on, I mean, we kind of went in in the night. Then we did some like twenty-four hour operations where we go in the night, we kind of, like, I don't know, to three sixty to the village, which is like huge village. Like, it was funny that we were preparing for callouts in Estonia. Like, and when we trained it, there's like one building in the middle. We gathered around and we go there, it's like, yeah, it's a city. Who are we going to call out here? So we totally had, we prepared for wrong things. So but eventually, like, like eventually, like some of the operations were like, I got assigned seven locals and it was me.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  And those were fun, fun ones.

• 1:14:20Jocko Willink?

  And what type of operation would that be?

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  It was like you have to, you have to pull security on the south side with, with those dudes. And you have to be a relay. Because other dudes will now, locals, we go in there, we again, again, following each other or whoever we want to capture. So we tried to pull security. Now we put together in one place, then you navigate to a random, I don't know, area. You set up an OP or covering position and then you stay there pretty much and wait for others to do their operations in the middle somewhere. So, but those were the fun ones, like, like you go there, you have zero ways of communicating with those dudes. Just hand signals, hand signals. And.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  But and then in the first five minutes when you're there, like we go in dark. I have no idea where the heck I am. And all the other guys are going away, so everyone is separate. Now, me with the seven dudes, I'm like, okay, I have no idea where we are. But I know that soon, in one hour, there will be a little bit of light. So I will wait until the light, then I will have a little bit better understanding of the bearings. Then I move to the covering position and then we just stay there. Then on the first, as the first light comes up, three of those dudes just go away randomly. They just leave? They just leave. They go into the city. Like, that's awesome. Now they come back in like forty-five minutes, they come back with some food.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  Food, yeah. Yeah. So then we talk or eat. I don't want to eat their stuff because I know that then I have zero bladder control and I'm in a worse place. So you can't put your eyes, you can't close your eyes, you're just there. Uh, looking for enemy. At the same time, Apaches are coming, there is some action going on. So those kind of operations started to happen. And eventually, as our, like, the buildup for that was like, I think, three months. We were not able to be at home. So, and we didn't have a next team to be prepared to like switch us out. So initially, we had to be like eight months.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  And I think on like fifth month, like we was like, hey, you can, you can come home because we have nobody to send you. Uh, so we started pulling out from there. Because pretty much our overall intent was to showcase and get the qualification. That, hey, we have worked together with Americans, we have two like guys going there. We are now good in terms of books. We have done something. Now, it's good, nobody got killed, nobody got injured. Let's get the fuck out of there and let's concentrate on the stuff what we have to do at home. Now, because now we have done our job in terms of that.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Now the next dudes who came out are like in the, in the, in the very last moment when we, there was like this one awesome operation that was planned.

• 1:17:17Jocko Willink?

  For you guys while you were still there?

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so but it didn't get the green light because it was too crazy. Like there was like a Taliban like training center.

• 1:17:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Uh, obviously, like numbers are always wild, but like a hundred Taliban or whatever. And we will go over there in the middle of night and let's start doing things, right? But that never got green light from the higher. So we got, we, we, the other unit came in from Slovakia, I think. Uh, and then I met like 10 years later, the partners in Estonia in a random bar, just walking in the bar. And saying, hey, I know you, we were in Afghanistan together, like they were deployed in Estonia. And then like, okay, how did your deployment go after that? And the, there were like two Slovakians got killed. So most likely they went and did that kind of stuff.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  So there were like low operations, but a lot of, as you know, like unlucky. And crazy and wild ideas, because if you don't get the momentum in, like if you're doing one operation in a month, if you're doing one operation in two weeks, you don't get this muscle memory.

• 1:18:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you get the muscle memory, you get the repetition, you get the reps in, basically. It's, it's nice to be able to do those, just like, yep, we're going. I remember my, when I was on my first deployment to Iraq and I was in Baghdad and my, my boss, my commanding officer was like, hey, how much time do you need to be able to launch on a mission? And I was like 15 minutes and he was kind of like, no, seriously, like, and I go, no, seriously. If you give me a target location and you give me the frequency of the conventional forces that own that battle space and a location of where they're camped at, I said 15 minutes, we can be wheels up. And we actually launched a couple of times on very short notice, like 15, 20 minutes a couple of times.

• 1:19:10Jocko Willink?

  One time we did it and the guys were like, uh, in, not in uniforms. And that was kind of jacked up. I was like, hey, bro, you couldn't put on a uniform in one minute, like you had 15 minutes to go. But I look up like we're rolling out and I look at the turret gunner ahead of me and he's wearing like just random American clothing.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Jeans.

• 1:19:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like literally jeans, because you know, he was just sitting around watching a movie in his tent or something. So he was wearing like board shirts, board shorts and a T-shirt or something. And just, you know, and it's my fault, obviously, because I didn't say, hey. Here's the standard, when we roll, get your freaking uniform on. So I was, you know, had to tighten that up, but yeah, we would, we could roll out pretty quick. And it, but the thing is, the reason we could roll out quick is we were doing reps. Like we were doing so many, so many hits that it was just like, everyone knew their job. Everyone knew what to do. And we could do it, we could do a whole operation only with standard operating procedures, with no brief whatsoever. Like breach team one, you got it, they'll figure that out.

• 1:20:16Jocko Willink?

  Assault team, you know what to do. External security, you're good. And vehicles, you'll get squared away when you check out the terrain. The vehicle commander will put you guys in place. Boom.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  So yeah, if you kind of wanted to get that part, then you should have gone to infantry in Estonia. Like, like if you go into scouts battalion, they were like 10 years in, pretty much in Helmand.

• 1:20:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  They like, they had constant firefights every day, all the day, like, like in six months, I don't know, 300, 400 like contacts. Uh, there was one like Estonian company number eight, which was the bloodiest one. Like they, they got a really, there was a one squad, like I don't know, 12 people. And there was only one person who hasn't got injured. They lost few people and they got like hit really hard there. But for us, our one was like nothing. Like the operational tempo was, it was like perfect first mission. That's what it was. Perfect first deployment.

• 1:21:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I actually feel that way about my first deployment too, because it was like the enemy wasn't that settled in yet. IEDs were kind of just starting. The ambushes were honestly like not that good. This is 2003, 2004. So, and we were, we kind of had the upper hand when we'd roll out. And then by the time 2006 rolled around, it was like, okay, I, you know, had more. Awareness of what was going on.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:21:54Jocko Willink?

  And, and we like, you know, it's funny. I talked about helos like doing helo ops. I never did a helo op, never, I never did a helo op in, in combat because we just took vehicles everywhere. And, and even like in Ramadi, he, helos wouldn't even, they wouldn't, you couldn't do missions. You couldn't do a mission in Ramadi with a helo. If you had a wounded guy, you couldn't get him out on a helo. You had to get him back to base, onto a secure part of the base, and then a helo could come. But there was no like going out on an operation in a helo for us. And we did it zero times. So the, uh, which is, you know, kinda, kinda interesting because

• 1:22:33Jocko Willink?

  it, what's, what's interesting about it is when I was a kid in the teams, we would do training missions. And they would call, we would use vehicles. We would use like big six by trucks, you know, like big five ton trucks. And they would call them in the brief, they would call them a helo truck. As if to say, hey, if this was real, this would be a helicopter. And so my whole career, I was like, yeah, of course, you know, if war happens, we'll have all these helicopters. And then as it turns out, the way the war went in, in Iraq anyways, I know it was different in Afghanistan, but in Iraq. And look, there was definitely people that used helicopters in Iraq. I wasn't one of them. Like we, we just, we had our own vehicles. We were gonna get to the target, we were able to do it fast.

• 1:23:19Jocko Willink?

  In Baghdad, it was just, we all, we used helos. One time in Baghdad, but it was to, we had captured a high value target and they, they took him. So they like met us and took him, which was kinda cool. But other than that, didn't do it. And then in, in Ramadi, couldn't, like, there was no helos in the city. Even the, even the Apaches, which are like flying tanks. They would barely roll into Ramadi because it was like just massive. When they did roll in, it was scary. You'd just hear freaking the whole city lighting up, like trying to shoot them down. So the helo truck thing. We actually did a bunch of, I mean, we did so many operations in five-ton trucks. You know, it's kind of crazy.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  We had a gatling gun on one of the trucks.

• 1:24:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  It was like, like usually like the same thing what happened with the dudes who later went to Africa. They got like British trucks, which looked like that you don't want to mess with it. And like, like all the people who got ambushed was like in front of the French. Because they had like, like weak looking vehicles. So, and they're like, they don't want the Vikings to come.

• 1:24:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Because if Vikings come, then it sucks.

• 1:24:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:24:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we had that too, like on that first deployment to Iraq. So we didn't have armored vehicles. Our Humvees were just Humvees, like with cloth doors. So we took the cloth doors completely off. We turned the seats so that the seats were facing out. And then the guys sitting in the Humvee, obviously the driver was driving, but everyone else was facing out with their weapon out. And then in the back, we had heavy weapons, including these articulating arms. And so this, these things look like, we called them porcupines because it was, and obviously we had the turret gun. And so they just looked like if you mess with this, and there'd be whatever, four, five, six Humvees that were all just look like porcupines. And it was a very good deterrent.

• 1:25:19Jocko Willink?

  We got ambushed a few times, but it was, we, we, we drove a lot. And to have had that little amount of, to only get ambushed a few times and have been on the road for countless hours, you know, hundreds of missions, like that's pretty good. That kind of told me like the enemy is looking at us going, let's wait for the next convoy to roll by. Well, that seems like a good idea. They don't like, same thing, they don't want the Vikings.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, they don't want it. They don't want the gatling gun starting to shoot them. That will be bad one. And there was like those random times, like we were just driving back from somewhere. And once of the, once was like, like the, our, the checkpoints, but that was established.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  They also did their test fires towards our vehicles. Uh, once there was like, uh, an American dude was on the, um, behind the 50 cal. And there was like this one, like the hinge was up. And obviously the bullets were in there. So they're like to random places where people could get, get killed, but nothing really like happened. So we were lucky in that sense, but the next team, they were not so lucky.

• 1:26:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Estonians, I mean, they deployed to Iraq since 2003 and Afghanistan, I think also in 2003, like constant.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:42Jocko Willink?

  On the ground presence from our allies in Estonia.

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:45Jocko Willink?

  And suffered some pretty significant casualties, uh, like in Afghanistan, I think it's nine killed and 90 wounded. And, and then in Iraq, 18 wounded and two killed. So for considering how small your population is, that's, uh.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were second sadly.

• 1:27:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you mean in comparison to population? Wow.

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, in terms of lost, I think the first one was Danes. They were also wild people. So, yeah, uh, but that, that was the price. So with that, we had to pay to get advancement in our army. Because that changed everything. Equipment got better, the knowledge got better. We now know what to teach to our conscripts. Otherwise before that, I mean, we were breaking, I don't know.

• 1:27:31Jocko Willink?

  Bricks with your.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  Bricks with your hands. So that kind of changed.

• 1:27:35Jocko Willink?

  How was it when you got home from this deployment?

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  So first thing what we did, we went to drink, obviously. So there was some like, the first thing is like, uh, it was hard to kind of get back to the normal life. I mean, there was like, uh, a lot of stress, like every, we, we had more problems when we didn't go out. Because if we stayed in our teams, I actually like to find us jobs to do. So we had a lot of meetings, we had a lot of stuff, so we had internal, I would say, stress. Rather than outside stress. Uh, when we got back, like, uh, the brain was a little bit stressed out.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  Uh, you couldn't, like, you read the newspaper, the biggest news is someone got a huge ass and that's the biggest problem. So you couldn't kind of comprehend what, what this world is here. But that went on pretty fast because we didn't get much time to rest. We just went to start doing J sets, going, uh, doing some, uh, training with seals, going to Georgia. Uh, going to States. So we went on the road and, yeah.

• 1:28:47Jocko Willink?

  And are you thinking that this is gonna be your career? Are you thinking you're gonna do? How many years do you have to do to retire there?

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  Um, so in reality, like, uh, I had like five year contract, but you can get out from the contract whenever you want. Yeah, so there is no rules. There were like some, some, some people like saying that we have to change the rules. Because people can get out pretty much whenever they want. So, uh. But yeah, pretty much it's not the system like, uh, in over here. So you have to, like, you have to do the conscript service, which one year. And then, uh, first I got like this trial time for one year and then you get, uh. Uh, you get the security, like top security clearance for three years and pretty much it will be three years, then five years. So.

• 1:29:32Jocko Willink?

  But once you get, like, I'm talking about you personally, what were you thinking? Were you like, look, I just, I done all this training. I went to Afghanistan. I had an awesome deployment. We're doing J sets. What's next? Like, were you thinking you were gonna be a career soldier at this point?

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  So I, I never kind of wanted to have a career. Like, uh, I wanted to get the experience, like, uh. By that time, I kind of like was there. I did really good in terms of like, I liked it. I, that was the first time I started learning. Uh, with intention of wanting to learn. So it was fun for me because the development also was uphill all the time. And then when we came back, like, then there was a problem of not having enough work because there is like, uh, not many terrorists born in Estonia. So.

• 1:30:17Jocko Willink?

  Being a warrior without a war has its problems.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much like that. And then, uh, we were like. Well, also we were building our unit, so there were like a lot of things that we had to do internally to spread the knowledge and stuff like that. And then eventually, there was opportunities to go to Syria. There was a lot of like other places, but none of the politicians just kind of wanted to send us anywhere.

• 1:30:42Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  And until then, I think it took like six years, or seven years, to get again to the area where there could be some combat. So it was a pretty long period, but at that time, I kind of like...

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  We went to now in a training mode. So Ukrainian war started in 2014, right? And then we figured out that there is a way how to support them. So we started doing some stuff over there, helping the Ukrainian forces, together with Americans, Lithuanians, Polish, Latvians. And during that time, I kind of have a daughter born, and she was one week old. I had to go away for a half a year again. And then it was a time I was like, okay, I don't see any action coming. And I made a checklist, pros and cons.

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  And it was like 14-0 to go out. So there was not much of decision. And yeah, so then I just pretty much said to my team that, hey, I'm thinking about other stuff. And I was like 27, I think, that I will try something else, because now it's the moment, or otherwise I will kind of stay here. So... And yeah, then it was time to let the other team know, and then pretty much I started looking outwards.

• 1:32:08Jocko Willink?

  What insight can you give us on the Ukrainian military?

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  So they were really bad at that time. So when we went there, yeah, they, like civilians, sent to the front line, not with much training at that time. So when we actually, like, we have like this huge exercise, a springstorm, when our, like, the whole... Country NATO like sometimes it's like ten thousand soldiers come together and we have an exercise. Which all is played out during one month. So we one month there is like maneuvers and all that kind of stuff. Everyone gets to train and it's like live, like there's like a huge FTX. And then we ask like Ukrainians like, do you have also similar exercises? They say, yes, uh, we have it.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  So, but they work differently. It it works like this, like for one month, you train. Uh, and it's like theater. Like, because you know that in one month generals are coming to look how we are doing. And but by that time, there's like trails. And then you go there and you fall at some place, the tanks are coming. So it's all charades, there's nothing really there. And that was kind of the training that what they adopted from the uh, from the Russian army. That was the style of training. So their basic skills were pretty bad and we were able to kind of help them. To share the understanding of what we knew.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  What I would say, what they are on a really good level is like all, like explosives. Building poopy traps, building IEDs. That's where they are on a really, really high level. And they started to incrementally like war will teach them. Like eventually and I would say that at the moment they are pretty good, on a pretty good level.

• 1:34:00Jocko Willink?

  And they obviously have the will because it's their, it's their home.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have no, no like, uh, yeah, I mean, from two thousand fourteen until now when the war started. Then I think that if I'm not messing up numbers, they had sent through the front line like three hundred thousand men. And I think that they had like fourteen thousand or eleven thousand casualties during the ten, ten years. So they were in war uh, all of the time. So they, they learned some hard lessons. And from our point of view, we were able to learn in terms of our intelligence, we were able to start gathering information. I think Estonia was at one point like one of the centers in terms of the accurate information.

• 1:34:44Speaker 01

  That is coming from eastern side. So we, we are human and our, some of our.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  Services started to get really, really good information and they got really good like training out from all of that.

• 1:35:00Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, after that, you decide you're gonna get out. And then what's your plan when you get out? So now you gotta earn a living. What do you decide you're gonna go do?

• 1:35:09Speaker 01

  So yeah, I had a, I had a, I had an apartment. So I thought I would sell that. And then I got like, I don't know, forty thousand euros on a bank account, which I figured that, okay, for half of that, I can pay a year's rent or something. And then other, other, I will invest in poker. So I figured I left off with poker. I was pretty good at that. So I figured I would start that again. And then I started playing poker. And actually, the, the problem was that I was doing too good. And now, as you're doing good, you think that that's something which will last. And in reality, what, what lasted was that I was winning money.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  I never like, lost in terms of, I, like, I always made money, but my expenses were, for whatever reason, just going higher and higher and higher. And I didn't like, check the balance, I guess. So I don't know what the fuck I was doing. So eventually, I ended up in a situation where I was minus thirty thousand in like, one and a half years later.

• 1:36:18Jocko Willink?

  You needed to win more, bro.

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Because if, if you want to like, earn like, I don't know, three, four thousand in a month, you have to have about the bankroll of, I don't know, hundred thousand. Because the highs and lows are so crazy. So there's so much variance.

• 1:36:33Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta be able to dig yourself out of a hole.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you have to have a bankroll.

• 1:36:36Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't have a bankroll, you're just stuck.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. So there's no stability. Like, you can't get stable, because you can't get the money out, because you need it to work. So, so eventually, yeah, there's no stability there. And I was like, putting in hours. So, for me now, all the time. So I got together with the mother of the child, like, just before I deployed. And then we were together like, six years, somewhere in the middle. My brother was like, born. And then I kind of like, tried to figure out things. And then when we moved to Tartu, and where I was from.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  Then the rent went even higher because I started renting a house now, so. And you're literally the only income you have is poker. Absolutely. Okay. And then like things start to like don't work, but I'm never like looking at the red flags. I'm thinking, okay, if I do that, I was kind of like contingency planning all the time. So I was kind of like prepared. I knew that I can, whatever happens, I can dig myself out from it. So I always took like leap of faith. Okay, maybe this works, maybe that nothing works. And then eventually like I put in hours. So when I came back, I was like, okay, how do I schedule my day? Because I had no idea how to like operate outside from someone telling me what to do.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  And the only thing what I knew is that, okay, in the military, we had schedules. Like this is how your day starts, this is how it tends. And then I just made a schedule. I planned every hour and then I had a schedule like Saturday was a rest day. And every day I played poker. So now for me, I was always home. But for my family, I was working. Was it online poker? Mostly online, mostly online. So I eventually played like 6,000 hours. In total, uh, so I was sitting there like, like I think 2,500 hours a year or maybe more.

• 1:38:38Speaker 01

  Uh, so 10, 15, 16 hour days, sitting behind the computer, just grinding, grinding and grinding and grinding. Is it fun for you or are you just working? Uh, it's, it is, it is fun. Uh, it's fun and it's working. Like eventually it becomes work. Yeah. Uh, it's a beatable game. It's just a skill game, I would say. Uh, it's, it requires the same thing with every other thing. You have to learn, you have to be disciplined, you have to manage your bankroll in right, like right level. You can't go and play, if you have 1,000 euros, you can't play a tournament within 1,000 euro buy-in. You have to play one euro buy-in because then you can play 1,000 tournaments.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  So, so, but yeah, I mean, actually you're able to make some money, but uh.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  Just, I don't know, I was somewhere in a tunnel because of my ego and everyone outside was thinking, "Oh, Remo is doing so good, he's living in the right apartments, he's living large." But in reality, everything turned into shit, so I, obviously, as I put so many hours, I was not able to build a relationship with the, with the mother of my child. And then eventually, like, she came in at some point where everything was already shit anyways. And then she said that he found a more awesome dude than I, which I kind of agreed. Because to me, that was like a way out. I actually pushed forward a hard conversation.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  I already saw a long time ago that this is not working, but I just postponed it and postponed it, postponed it. And that gave me a way out. And then when I got the way out, then that was the moment when I kind of stumbled upon on your book. And then on the first page, like, first, I thought, obviously, where did my, all of my troubles start? It was my mentor.

• 1:40:33Speaker 01

  Who led me into this hole. It was my, like, uh, mother of my child, who sucked things. It was nothing to do with me and then I pretty much took that book and read, read the first chapter. Didn't take much more to figure out that, yeah, I had to look into the mirror. And then I just started grinding. For the first two, two weeks, pretty much, I was, I had five hundred euros. Uh, I had a rent to pay, which was like fifteen hundred. Uh, so I knew that we were going to split. I, I have no place to live, they don't have any place to live. So I called a few of my buddies, I said, "Okay, I need four thousand euros, another loan."

• 1:41:18Speaker 01

  And then I figured out the place where they could live. And then there was my friend, uh, who was the same dude who talked with my uncle and cried. Uh, that, "Hey, I need something to do." He was like going to his friend's farm. And then I just went there for two months in the summer and what I did, I just, uh... Destroyed buildings, like there was some Demolition, yeah. Yeah, something like that with whatever. And just thinking about life. And now I was like, huh, I'm like, I don't know, thirty or twenty-nine, I'm like in the biggest toll over my life. I'm a retired, I have, I'm a soft guy.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  And I'm actually like nothing, I have nothing. So I was in that spot. And then I started asking, okay, what should I do? And then someone recommended me that, hey, maybe as you have a military background, we have, we're starting to have a defense industry now. So maybe it would make sense that you start asking them. Because then, and then I went to the defense industry page. There's like, I don't know, hundred companies in Estonia. And I just listed out seven of them because first one was like they were doing like empty shells that you can fill in with explosives or plastic explosives. So you can heat those under the orbit and they are not considered as weapons.

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  But if you add the C4 into it, it's a actual, it's an actual like M14, it's like Claymore? Yeah, it's claymore, but also like this directional charge. Uh, EFP? EFP, exactly, yeah. So as we were testing those things when I was in the army, I thought, okay, maybe they, they would like to utilize my knowledge. They said, yeah, you can contact us in half a year. Okay, cool. Then the next, next place was Milram. And then I sent my CBO there, just info mail. Hey, maybe you want me into your team and then What company was that? Milram Robotics. Okay. Yeah, Estonian company.

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  And then there was one dude who replied to me and he was a

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  He was a, one of the commanders in my previous unit. And he said, of course, come in on Monday. And I went in on Monday and then there was a work interview.

• 1:43:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  I was sitting there and I saw that, oh, there's two other dudes from the SOF. And there's other dudes. So there was only four military guys in front of me. And they just told me what I will start doing. I had no option.

• 1:44:00Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  And then they asked me, so how much do you want to get paid? I said, I need 1,000 euros. I don't care about anything else. I need that. Then they all started laughing. Like, that's how, how lowballing you are? Like, that's such a small number. So you will get like 2,000 straight away? I was like, okay, so you want to tell me that I have no skills? And you are going to pay me like for learning 2,000 a month? That's good for me. I only wanted 1,000 to get by. And then I pretty much figured, I just read the book Outlier before that. And then there was a section like, there is sometimes things happen which shouldn't happen with you.

• 1:44:45Speaker 01

  And now most of the people miss them, miss those opportunities. And I figured out, okay, that's the opportunity that I shouldn't have. And then what I started doing, I just started.

• 1:44:56Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean that's the opportunity that you shouldn't have?

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  Like, it shouldn't, like, if, if I just, if my friends were not there, I wouldn't get in.

• 1:45:02Jocko Willink?

  Got it. Yeah, like you don't deserve it. So, so like you don't deserve it, so you should really get after it?

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I mean.

• 1:45:08Jocko Willink?

  Or is it like you shouldn't do it because you don't really deserve it?

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  In terms of like, if you look at my CV, like, I would never get that position.

• 1:45:15Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:45:16Jocko Willink?

  So you were lucky to get that job?

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:45:18Jocko Willink?

  And you felt that?

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:19Jocko Willink?

  And you're like, all right, I'm gonna work hard.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna do everything I can to make this happen. And I look at all the other people and said, okay, I will outwork all of you. And I was first person in the office, last person out from the office. And I just pretty much got after it. And when you have that attitude and you have back against the wall, I mean, nothing is stopping you.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  And then how long were you doing that for? So I was doing that for three years. So I started from being a project manager or program manager, which was like, like, I don't know, you get a one army and you pretty much start building relationships. In reality, it was more of a business development, sales job. And this is when you say one army, you get an army from some other country. Yeah. And you're like, you're gonna work with this army from this country and you're gonna sell them weapons. Yeah, exactly. Work with them. First customer was like, I got designated Italy as a first customer. Like on the first month, they came into Estonia that they were interested in our robots. And what we did, we, there was four military dudes sitting on one side of the table.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  On our side of the table, there's other four military guys. And what we did, we just talked, then we went drinking. And we had good time and that's how we started to build relationships. And it took me then like one and a half year of building a relationship. And eventually, yes, we got deals. Like, I was like, okay, so what are you doing this week? We have this amazing update. Would you like to know more about it? So that was kind of the stuff what we started doing. And eventually, like, it was like a total startup where we didn't have the product ready. And we were like, yeah, our machines are capable of doing Terminator stuff, but in reality, no.

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  And then I remember I had to go to give a presentation in Italy.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  And the way how it worked was that there was a huge tender. We were competing against all the huge companies, Rheinmetall, Leonardo and all the European big ones. And then I had to go there and provide a presentation. So the product that was presenting was invented day before in a slideshow. And the name of that was ISIA2 or some, something like that, a really complicated name. And then I got the brief and then I had to go and present that to fifty, fifty kernels. And I was like, hmm. And then I went there, just spoke something in twenty minutes. I have no idea what I said.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  And then the head of the overall thing said, hm, I like what you said. You know why? Because you're the only military guy here. You had the structure. You were like simple, clear and concise. Like, alright, Roger that. I have no idea what I just said, but if you say so, then I'm good. And I was able to like build good relationship with them and eventually

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  we got to understanding of what are the tender terms. As I had a good relationship with them, then we were able to get our team together. We, we wrote a lot of poetry into the tender documents and eventually we won. I was like genuinely believing that we are able to, we are the best like partners for them. And then eventually we won the deal against all the big ones. Nobody believed in it and that was one of the biggest deal at that time in the company. So, and I was head of that and then eventually we started delivering that. So, and I remember that was one of the best lessons I learned that when we went there and I, we already kind of knew that there was a lot of poetry.

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  And when you go there and you are sit down and then they started asking questions about things that you know that you don't have right in, in a right order. And then we called it that, I was like, like, I don't know how to say it, but like we went there to get on the knees. Ah, okay. Yeah. Yeah, and that's what we did. Like it was a really awesome experience of understanding how that works. But eventually we were able to start delivering them. We were able to cooperate with them and we were able to eventually help them. So, but that, that was the world. And that was like in, in, in Europe.

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  Eventually, as I was successful in all of those things, eventually I got designated to the Middle East. And then I started going to the Middle East. Now, what I did. The only thing what I did is building relationships, making connections to everyone. And then obviously who do you, like how, how that world worked for me?

• 1:50:12Speaker 01

  Same same time when I went to Italy, there was one guy from FLIR, like and black hornet driver, he was from Norwegian soft. And you just if you speak with them, you know that hey, you you have this language that you can actually speak enough. And then I said, OK, actually, I'm like my main area of responsibilities in Middle East now. He said, yeah, I'm there as well. So, OK, next time when you come there, let me know. So next time I go there, I let him know. He he tells me that, hey, we are drinking. Come and join. I go there, he puts me and he puts me on on behind the table. And next to me is like a president of a company. In front of me, there is another owner of the company.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  They just won like a 70 million deal of drones or something. They're just celebrating. And now I'm there. What we do? We talk military stuff. We talk nothing about our products. We just drink, have a good time. Next day, they remember that, hey, we had a good time. So what are you selling? Oh, yeah, we have these robots. I don't know, come and check it out. They come, oh, this is really high tech stuff, yeah? Of course, yes, it is. And then you take like three months from there, and they pretty much bought one without ever seeing a demonstration or nothing. So it's all relationships. And then you start working on.

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  So what I always did is that I built network, which started, so I always gave, I utilized pretty much these central commands. So I'm cover moving, build relationships, we understand their intents. And then eventually I let them do the job, because I have no idea how to do anything anyways. Like, I I really don't know. So the only way I have is to let them do it what they know. And as they have a good track record, they start connecting people. And eventually you're running in all the countries and you have agents on people there. So only thing what you have to do is just manage them, provide them information, and that how that world works pretty much.

• 1:52:20Jocko Willink?

  So then at what point did you recognize that there was another opportunity in the world?

• 1:52:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  In terms of teaching what you had learned in the military to other people?

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  So I kind of like recognized it in the very beginning when I joined the company. Because obviously at that point, I thought that the only thing what I know is to how to shoot and blow things up because that was my profession. But then I started realizing that hey, that experience what we had, because we were growing as a soft unit, right? Then the military was exactly like that. There was people, especially there was military people. And they were actually had the same attitude as they were like as there. So I just started pretty much understanding that first of all, the book that was really easy guide for me what to do. And eventually like I started understanding the taste exactly the same. You just have to have the right attitude.

• 1:53:17Speaker 01

  So I understood that I have to have the same mentality how I got through selection. So one step at a time, not giving up, being a team player, building relationships, trying to support all the kind of stuff. And then eventually I started understanding that hey, there is something there. I started listening more of your podcast and stuff like that. And that point I started putting together some PowerPoints randomly. Like you put together a PowerPoint, you think that it could be a course. Then I think I went to whatever page. I really didn't get far further than making an account on some page.

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  I never uploaded anything. I did nothing. It was just I had a lot of PowerPoints in my PC. Then I contacted two other dudes, Martin and one other dude and pitched them, hey. Let's do something our own. But they were already like going to university, doing some other stuff. So nobody wanted to do anything. So I postponed it until one day. I don't know, maybe it was two years in. Martin called me and he said that, hey, I went to speak with in one company about military decision making. So M D M P and they really seemed to like it. I helped them solve a problem or something and it was okay.

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  And there was like one person who had transitioned to another company. And she wanted him to come and speak about that again. And then the problem statement, what was in the email was like, my people are not taking ownership. Like this is not a military decision making problem. This is like a ownership problem. They need something else. And so what I would do is that, because I had already observed all of your stuff so much. And I said, okay, we should like just talk about what's written in the book or give them a book. Or I don't know, do something about it because they don't definitely need that. So he kind of like, hmm, but I don't know, let's, let's try and put it together then together.

• 1:55:31Speaker 01

  I said, hmm, okay. And then next day we founded Combat Ready. I went to the, I don't know, I looked, okay, what is, what is their name? Aeschylon Front. All right. So what could be our company's name? So he took some military vocabulary, just started scanning. So what could be our name? So randomly combat and ready. So everyone is facing some battles or combat in their life. So they have to be ready for that. So I know it makes sense, whatever. I like it. And then we established that because in Estonia, it's all digital. Like you can do like 99% of stuff you can do digitally. Everything in government, like we are like E Estonia. It's like one of our. Like, I don't know.

• 1:56:16Jocko Willink?

  It's like the pride of your country.

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:56:18Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's actually something to be proud of because here in America, these fools, dude, you want to get something done in America? You gotta fill that shit out, dude, triple it. And then you're gonna get some other form you gotta fill out. And then you gotta fill out the same form, like you're filling out the same information over and over and over again. It's ridiculous. So, good job, E Estonia.

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah, everything, banking, everything is online, like signing things online, everything is online. And then, um, what, so in Estonia, it takes fifteen minutes to establish a company.

• 1:56:49Jocko Willink?

  Damn, nice.

• 1:56:50Speaker 01

  You go there, you fill out some forms, I don't know, you, oh, that's what we do. Whatever, and as he was an officer, he knew things about the right.

• 1:56:59Jocko Willink?

  He's filling out the forms.

• 1:57:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's filling out the forms. I have no idea what to do with those forms. So, that's what we made clear in the very beginning. You're a form guy, you do our finances, you do our, uh, housekeeping on that side. I want to do nothing with that, and I don't know how to do it either.

• 1:57:16Jocko Willink?

  Check. So then, how was the first gig? What was it, what kind of company was it?

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  So, it was a, like, insurance company, uh, startup as well. Uh, we went there, again, seven women, looking at us, and we are talking something about extreme ownership. We also put in the military decision-making, we also talked about things that we knew. Uh, and then the first reaction from them is that, oh, makes sense. Like, alright, we got something. I know, I remember when we were walking away from that place to, we were high-fiving. Like, huh, that felt good.

• 1:57:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:52Speaker 01

  So, we actually did something.

• 1:57:54Jocko Willink?

  When I, when I talked to a fir-, my first civilian company.

• 1:57:58Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:57:59Jocko Willink?

  I walked out of there going, and it's actually when the person asked, like, I went through the brief, the combat leadership brief, very, it's the same thing that we give Eshalon front. And I got done it, then I started answering questions. The first question, when I answered it, I was like, oh, this, this applies to everything.

• 1:58:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:58:14Jocko Willink?

  And I, I knew, like, we got something here. So, that's how you felt.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I already knew it while I was implementing those because it was so obvious that this works. I even bought everyone, uh, I even bought everyone this book in my team. Because I saw that they, like, they had, they complained about.

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  We don't have a time. We don't have enough time. Yeah, I know. You come in nine, you leave at four. So I'm coming in at five and leaving at seven, and I have plenty of things to do and everything gets done. So you like, I understood that they were in comfort zone already. They have egos, like miniature guys still. So they were not paying attention. Now I gave them the book. And then eventually one, one guy reads it. And he calls me like one month in, like, hey, awesome book. I really liked it. Now I understand whose fault it is that everything is shit. The CEO. I was like, of course, now you understand it really well. So, yeah, so I kind of gave up on that. But yeah, I really understood

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  because things started to go in the right direction. Like everything started to turn around in my life.

• 1:59:24Jocko Willink?

  And then, so you started turning around your own life. Now you get an opportunity to go talk to these seven women. They're kind of high fiving. What year was that? Do you remember?

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  Uh, it was 2022.

• 1:59:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so that's relatively recently.

• 1:59:35Speaker 01

  So, sorry, sorry.

• 1:59:37Jocko Willink?

  2022?

• 1:59:37Speaker 01

  Twenty one, twenty one, twenty one. Yeah, because commentary is already three years old. So, yeah, twenty one.

• 1:59:43Jocko Willink?

  So 2021, you do this first event. Now, what's interesting to me is a lot of people would have said, okay, extreme ownership, cover and move, simple, prioritize and execute, decentralized command. I get it. Um, how about we go total responsibility? How go, how about we go fire and maneuver? Keep it simple, stupid. Analyze and prioritize and then empower your people. You see what I'm saying? Like, you could have easily just said, uh, I see what they did. I get it. I'm from a different country. I could, you could translate the exact same words and just be like, in Estonian, I would never know it.

• 2:00:28Jocko Willink?

  You're a stand-up human that was like, actually, no, we got them from this book. Let's, let's, let's give credit where credit is due. Uh, but you know, for me, like from a humility perspective, like that's pretty awesome. You know, for, I mean, everyone's competitive and oh, those, you know, we're, we're the SEALs, you know, they're just doing the basic military stuff or we, we know stuff too. So where'd that come from?

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  I think, I think it, it came from one, just because we did one, like one month long training in Norway, uh, with SEALs, SEAL Team Three.

• 2:01:11Jocko Willink?

  Are you sure it was SEAL Team Three?

• 2:01:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:13Jocko Willink?

  That's really weird. Most of the time they don't go to Europe at all.

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  They were like responsible for Europe.

• 2:01:19Jocko Willink?

  So it was either Team Two or there has been some funky deployments.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  Maybe it was two then, I don't know.

• 2:01:25Jocko Willink?

  It might have been two.

• 2:01:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  So you, you were SEAL Team Three or what?

• 2:01:29Jocko Willink?

  I was SEAL Team Two, SEAL Team Three, SEAL Team Seven and SEAL Team One.

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  Okay. So, uh, but task unit was what cruiser was.

• 2:01:37Jocko Willink?

  SEAL Team Three.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  Okay. So then it was SEAL Team Two.

• 2:01:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So because it wasn't the same number.

• 2:01:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  So yeah, it was SEAL Team Two and we were doing things over there together with them. We, we, we formed the one task force and, uh, I really just liked what they were doing. I mean, there were junior guys who were totally junior and they were designated initially drivers to us. And then we were driving, uh, them to their operations and stuff like that. And then, I don't know, they were the first unit to kind of didn't throw other branches of army under the bus. So they have a different attitude. They were training all the time. They were boxing in this. We were living in same anger. So, I mean, they were like kind of legit and, uh, there was like really huge winds at that one day when they had to go out there.

• 2:02:28Jocko Willink?

  Wind.

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, wind. Yeah. Like really strong winds, uh, between the fjords and then they have to go on operation. And in the middle. Night, we, I take them to the port. There are local people tying down boats because they have a storm which even had a name. I, I can't remember what the name was, so I already see that.

• 2:02:49Jocko Willink?

  The name was Satan's breath.

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  Something like that. And then they went out. Even though they knew that there will be no reach, or they will never reach to the place where they had to go. But they had to go out because it's a good training, right?

• 2:03:07Jocko Willink?

  That's what we do.

• 2:03:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then they get back, they were so fucked up, totally wet, totally like done. And then I kind of gained respect on that. And also like at the same time, they, they got a call in. There was one, I don't know, oil tanker taken over by someone, somewhere. And they started switching their locks out, the FTX locks or, is it FIC? I don't know, whatever it is, like blue ones, which you can insert in your own weapon. So they took those things out. I'm like, okay, what are these guys doing? They are actually putting actual stuff together. So, and then, oh, we can't tell you. Okay, fine.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  And the next day, we read from the newspaper that SEALs went and, I don't know, rescued a ship or onboarded it and took it down. Then there was a lot of celebration. The HQ stayed there. We continued our operations, but that kind of experience eventually like.

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had respect because they were kind of legit, obviously, right?

• 2:04:07Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 2:04:08Speaker 01

  Uh, and it's good that they don't have to like think it was really the first unit that kind of impressed in that sense that they didn't throw anyone under the bus. And sadly, I can tell that the green brace, they, they, they threw SEALs and everyone else under the bus constantly. So anyways.

• 2:04:25Jocko Willink?

  It's a strange thing because it doesn't seem like it, but when you talk smack about other people, it, it doesn't really, it doesn't really sound that good. You know, if, if when Echo walks out, you know, to go grab a drink and I'm like, you know, Echo's not really that great at jujitsu. Like what, who does that? You know what I mean? Like, that's just such a.

• 2:04:45Speaker 01

  And I would say also like, I don't know, I work with probably like 10 ODAs or something like that in total. And they're like, there were like ODAs which were like totally legit.

• 2:04:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah.

• 2:04:56Speaker 01

  They said nothing. And then there were like, some of them were like, one dude or two dudes were like, had huge egos and they kind of shit on all of them.

• 2:05:05Jocko Willink?

  And don't get me wrong, I mean, every unit has some dudes in it with that are.

• 2:05:11Speaker 01

  I know, we had them.

• 2:05:12Jocko Willink?

  Losers and they're the biggest egos ever. And broadly speaking, most dudes like are good mugs. Like you go to an ODA team, you go to a raider platoon or troop, is the SEAL platoon, like, the dudes are good dudes. And there's, of course, there's some loud mouth in there and there's someone that's disgruntled and there's someone that has, you know, insecure and so they're gonna talk smack. But most dudes, and of course, you know, it's like, when you're in, the dudes that you meet, you're like, oh, dude, these guys are good to go. Most of the time. So.

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that that experience kind of gave me that I wanted to share the respect and continue it. And then when we saw those principles and actually like, hey, let's build a relationship with those dudes because we have no idea how to do any of this. And they have been doing it for 10 years. So, why not? Let's, let's, I don't know, let's partner up. Because we would have to invent a bicycle, like, and there's no point of doing that. Yes, we can write our own book, like, extreme responsibility. Or we could maybe be smarter and say, responsibility extreme, or I don't know.

• 2:06:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:18Speaker 01

  But that's not worth it. So, yeah, we started, wanted to start from the right foot. And after that training, we decided after high fiving that let's write to you guys. We figured out, I don't know, I think we were not able to find your emails.

• 2:06:34Jocko Willink?

  We have like a contact page at ashonfront.com.

• 2:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, something like that. But then we, we did our OSINT. So we, we had a pretty good training in terms of intelligence, uh, how, how that world works. So we went back, I don't know, five years to do your first page. And then we got all of your emails. And then we just added you guys there in the CC line or whatever, and then started sending the first email. Leaf was the one responded back. Thank you for your service. Two guys from Eastern Europe. And go to the academy and see what's up. And then we went to the academy.

• 2:07:15Jocko Willink?

  So the academy is our online training program. So Leif was like, hey, that's awesome. Thanks for your service. Go check out the academy.

• 2:07:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But we want the partnership.

• 2:07:23Jocko Willink?

  Which, which props to Leif.

• 2:07:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:25Jocko Willink?

  You notice he responds.

• 2:07:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:07:26Jocko Willink?

  Good for him.

• 2:07:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:07:28Jocko Willink?

  I always joke, Leif is way nicer than I am.

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:07:30Jocko Willink?

  Like, he's, like, when we go meet people, he's talking to someone for nine minutes, you know? I was done in thirty seconds. And I'm not a bad person, but like, hey, how you doing? It's good to meet you too. And Leif's like, so where are you from? And it's just like, he's just nicer than me. And, you know, he gets an email and he's like, hey, thanks for your service. Check out the academy, you know, right on.

• 2:07:51Speaker 01

  And then like,

• 2:07:52Jocko Willink?

  God bless him.

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  Then we got that reply.

• 2:07:54Jocko Willink?

  Cover and move.

• 2:07:57Speaker 01

  And he's doing that great. I mean, we, we, we were so happy that we got an email back.

• 2:08:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:02Speaker 01

  Like, okay, we have something. And then what we decided to do is that, okay, let's start then providing value. Because like, what can we do? There's nothing what we can do out here. Let's start grinding through the academy. We saw that, okay, it seems not to be digitally perfect, because there were some, it was like very first time when you went online with that.

• 2:08:26Speaker 01

  So we started seeing things and then we started writing feedbacks. That's a really great way how to build a relationship. You start telling what they're doing wrong. Especially from the point where we were, we knew nothing in reality. So that was the form of value what we thought that, hey, like, let's do that. They should like, they are talking in all of their posts that they appreciate feedback and stuff like that. So we can't go much wrong. So I started doing that. That really didn't work out. We were really sending a lot of emails, I think. Eventually, we didn't get much replies anymore.

• 2:08:59Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, because I never saw them.

• 2:09:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And then eventually, like, we thought that, hey, so this is not working.

• 2:09:10Jocko Willink?

  And were you still, did you still, were you still bringing on clients at this time and you were working?

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 2:09:15Jocko Willink?

  No, you're still trying to figure out how to get this thing launched for real.

• 2:09:19Speaker 01

  Because we both had the real jobs. I was still like flying to Saudi and stuff like that, doing the other, other stuff. So that was kind of like a hobby. Let's see what, what, what we can make out from that. And then. Then we thought that hey, so what options do we have? So they have an FTX somewhere. Most likely, we should be able to showcase that we know what we can do. Because it seems to be a military training type of stuff. And then we said, okay, 4000, whatever it was. Alright, so Martin told me that hey, let's, let's go there. I said, yeah. So where do we get the money? He's like, huh, I had like a credit line.

• 2:10:04Speaker 01

  Like, I don't know, with 15 or 20% interest, I took a loan. Like, oh, now we have tickets, I already bought them. Oh, so now we're going? Yeah, we're going. So now we kind of had it in April. So we, I prepared a homepage. A really good one, of course. Uh, we had zero pictures of us in civilian clothing, I would say. Because the first time I even bought adult clothing was when I joined Mildrum. Until then, I just had t-shirts. And then I had to wear a button-up shirt and stuff like that. So that was the first time I had adult clothing. And then, first of all, we didn't have any pictures.

• 2:10:49Speaker 01

  We only had pictures from military clothing. And then everywhere, what we decided that hey, we want, we don't want to do anything behind your backs. We want to do it the right way, so I created the homepage. Uh, with Chaco here, Chaco there, Lee there, Extreme Ownership here, so that's what we do. And then eventually, we started, we had a vacation for two weeks and then we flew, flew to States. And our plan was that hey, let's go there. We have already provided so much value to them. By providing them a lot of feedback. So let's go there and let's see what happens. And then we eventually arrived. Then we had the first, I don't know, meetup or whatever.

• 2:11:32Speaker 01

  And then I had an app, I don't know, Wix or whatever it was. And then I started getting like hits. Like someone is watching our homepage from Dallas. 10, 10 hits. Which means that, okay, now, now I knew that they know. Who we are, what we do, what we kind of want to achieve, at least they have a poor park understanding. And then we said, okay, now we will never initiate any conversations with them ourselves, because then we will look needy. So we will not be needy. So now the only thing what we have to do is just, just go there and perform. And then the next came in, next day came in and then first exercise started.

• 2:12:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was honestly, it was so legit to watch. I wish I, I wish I had film of it because it was like, I would say like, it was like Jiu Jitsu black belt against white belts and how much, but it's different because Jiu Jitsu in its, in its nature, looks sloppy. You see, you understand what I'm saying? Like Jiu Jitsu in its nature, there's movement.

• 2:12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you didn't see it before or whatever.

• 2:12:38Jocko Willink?

  This was like a different thing. It's like watching someone do a different, like a, like a sport, like the hurdles or something. Like do each, like a decathlon? And everything, they're just like smooth and just, and, and yet, and you're literally watching people that have never done a pole vault before. Imagine a dude that's never done the pole vault before, and he's running down the track carrying a pole for the pole vault. Like, this is a disaster.

• 2:13:05Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:13:05Jocko Willink?

  And in the midst of a guy doing that, a guy throwing a javelin backwards, you know, like a guy, like dropping a discus three feet from the circle. A guy jumping on the, on the long jump, like three feet and then falling on his face. That's what we're watching? And then there's two guys that are just like mechanically just slaying. And I immediately walked over to JP, it was probably JP that checked your website. I walked over to JP, like, who are these two dudes right here? And he's like, dude, they're Afghan SOF, like, I go, or sorry, they're Estonian SOF, they deployed to Afghanistan. I was like, check. I go, this is gonna be awesome. And yeah, so it was, that was a freaking great move. That was a great move that you guys executed. And you,

• 2:13:50Jocko Willink?

  I would say you had me at hold what you got, move forward. Like one of those things where I was watching, it's like, okay, well, these guys are in the game, you know?

• 2:13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that was the thing, like, then I think we did like two runs and then it's like, okay,

• 2:14:04Speaker 01

  sitting down, hey, we would like to do the same thing in Estonia. And you said, okay, now you got my attention.

• 2:14:11Speaker 01

  And it's okay. Now, Martin, we like mentally high-fived each other already. Let's not fuck it up anymore. Let's just keep cool and let's continue. We continued that and then we got the green light from you and we brought a flag with the message that hey, we gave you a stone flag with the message, I remember that this will, when you have a HQ, this will be first flag that you pull there in front of your HQ. There you go. And yeah, I mean, that was the planted seed. Yeah. Then we got back, we saw that this FTX thing works because we had no idea how to conduct it initially. And then we went back, we gathered up a group of friends, like, I don't know, 15.

• 2:14:55Speaker 01

  And then we run our first trial, so we rehearsed. And obviously, we got a really good feedback. Then we next, Martin was working in, I don't know, governmental company and said, okay, we have this new training idea, maybe let's run all the departments through that. And obviously, we did it for whatever, nothing. And then that started to build, like,

• 2:15:25Speaker 01

  yeah, like, we had content. Then I made another amazing video.

• 2:15:32Speaker 01

  Which sucked, of course. And then we think, okay, we have no idea how to market anything. So the first person we came in, like, was one lady, okay, we need marketing. And she initially thought that, who are these military guys, you're selling some military stuff. She didn't understand anything. But eventually, we got her on board and she started, made us a new homepage. And then we started doing Facebook content. And that was awesome, awesome thing because so far, the eight years while I was in the military, we didn't have any Facebook, nothing, zero, zero social media. And now...

• 2:16:18Speaker 01

  You guys tell me that I have to start making videos and speak things like to other people about how to, I don't know, live their life? Like, that's fucking stupid. Who does those things? And then I had, like, I made, like, videos. I need a 30-second clip. I liked it, maybe 40 takes.

• 2:16:40Speaker 01

  And then I said, like, okay, I can't do it anymore. And look at this. Oh, yeah, it's perfect. Like, no, it sucks, but, okay, give it a shot. So, in the beginning, Martin did all the videos. Because I just didn't want to do it. Because it felt so fucking weird to speak some things to other people and teach them whatever. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. And then eventually, like, we had, I think, four or five FTXs. I did, like, two-hour keynote of introduction in my company. And we had the same idea, like, okay, we have to, kind of, like, in the defense industries, like, if you go to the customer and they first ask, "Does your own army use your equipment?" And if you have "no",

• 2:17:24Speaker 01

  then you're pretty much, nobody wants it. "Why?" So you want to sell it to us, but your own government doesn't want it. So we figured that, okay, if we are able to, like, kind of, help our own companies to improve, then we have, like, yeah, we did it over there already. It works. So we started with our own companies and then word started going around. We got our first customers or something like that. And by the end of that year, we had, there was, I think, like, a conference. Whatever the conference was, we kind of got a classroom. And obviously, when we went to see where the classroom was, it was on the third floor, in the furthest corner.

• 2:18:06Speaker 01

  And we thought, okay, nobody will, fuck, yes, first of all, nobody will find it. And then, uh, when we started talking about it, then, for whatever reason, there was 100 people. And nobody... There was not enough room for people to get into the room.

• 2:18:25Speaker 01

  And I think that that day I was like, had been drinking until four, because that was the way how you build relationship in defense industry. So that was my gig. Like, I went there on a conference and every day until whatever, and then I had two hours of sleep. And we, and I gave first English keynote, which was perfect.

• 2:18:47Speaker 01

  It was perfect, right? I couldn't have done it most likely in any other condition. So it went really well. And now we said, okay, now we have again new information out there. And then I saw, started thinking, okay, how do we make it every time when we go there? We have to do something bigger and something more bigger. And by that day, by that year, end of that year, I think we maybe had run, I don't know, five trainings or something like that, so nothing much. And then, as we didn't have any understanding of how to do the classroom trainings, we just figured out some things. We, it was like, we talked about so many stuff that you can't imagine.

• 2:19:29Speaker 01

  We talk about everything, indirect method, ego, like all the things what you could possibly talk about. But still the feedback was really good. Because nobody has previously ever talked about it, so it doesn't matter if the content is so good, like they say good. And then eventually, like Martin had to go away. So now the company was pretty much on me. Because he left to Europe to run some huge projects, which meant that he now was our source of finances. Because he got a good salary and we were just doing, I don't know, zero money, zero, nothing. So we're not making much money, but at least we had our jobs.

• 2:20:12Speaker 01

  So we were able to live on that, but we were making no money. And then we had to start bringing in new instructors.

• 2:20:23Speaker 01

  Sorry, I'm actually speeding up. So the first year after we did those first gigs, for whatever reason, me and one other dude, we were Like talking, hey. So like in Estonia, like you can get a like a a a a mark if you are best leadership or training company, like instructor or whatever. Like, how do you get that? Like, and I was talking with one dude and like, we were like, okay, this is most likely a corruption anyways, like, it's just a pointless piece of thing. And then in one week, someone called me. Hey, you have won an award. We went there. All of that news went to HR.

• 2:21:05Speaker 01

  So everyone started to understand that there is a company who's doing things differently. They are from ex-military guys, so it was like a new thing, so, and especially like the war was just started. So we were in right timing. So every was, we got everyone's attention. And from there on, we just continued on growing and growing, growing, started to implement the same stuff. So you already left your day job at this point? Uh, so I ended up my, I left my day job by the end of two thousand twenty-two. Got it. So one year in, I think that two thousand twenty-two, we ended up with like seventy thousand as our overall revenue. So because we were able to end like half of like fifty thousand of that was the after September or something.

• 2:21:50Speaker 01

  Because it's like continuously started going really, really high. And then he had to go away and now I needed few guys because I was not able to do it alone anymore. Then there were some dudes coming to me, hey, hey, I want to do the same stuff. So what do you want to do? I want to be an instructor. Okay, so these are the terms. These are the, we, we can't pay you any money. But you can do a lot of work if you want. Uh, there is a lot of opportunity here. We have seen Jocko in real life, so we were like, awesome dudes. Like, we were already like interesting to other people in the military, so. And then we started doing that and eventually what happened is that second year, we had already like, we had like four hundred fifty thousand as a revenue.

• 2:22:35Speaker 01

  So, and we never focused on any numbers. We're just doing the right things for the right reason. And the second time I went to the same conference where we had a classroom. So how I kind of got us to the main stage because we didn't know anyone. And I went to the, I gave an interview because there was like an interview of some of the speakers from the last year. They asked me to come to the office. And I said, okay, so now actually what we would like to do is that we would like to get to the main stage. Like, okay, so who is your like, who is the decision maker here? And she led me down the stairs and showed a dude sitting in a corner.

• 2:23:19Speaker 01

  Who was doing something with an axel. So I thought, okay, so I will go there and they jump in. Take just one step in and said, hey. We need to get on the main stage.

• 2:23:32Speaker 01

  Can I sit next to you for a minute? So, uh, okay, so I kind of like went there and nuked it like just. Everything went out straight away. Then I sat down there and he started saying like, hey, actually I don't know what you guys are doing military stuff. We actually have here like we want to talk about peace and stuff like that. We don't want to really bring any military stuff in there. Was that, and they were like looking for prime minister to come and speak on the main stage. It's like, what does a prime minister know about leadership? So, but I can see that, is this the schedule? Yes. So I can see that here is an open place. So could you just lead your mouse there and just write combat ready there?

• 2:24:16Speaker 01

  And that you just lead his mouse to that place and wrote combat ready. And that's how we got to the main stage. Just default aggressive going there, saying what we need and we got it. So, and that's how we kind of ended up doing everything. Just going there and asking or telling, I don't know. I don't know how we did it, but we just pretty much default aggressive has been always the thing.

• 2:24:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is obviously default aggressive, go in there and make things happen. And look, can you be too default aggressive? Yes, you can. It's called getting kicked out of buildings. It's called, you know, hey, security.

• 2:24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:52Jocko Willink?

  But if you have a good attitude and you're like being professional with people, my, the guy probably saw something.

• 2:24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:58Jocko Willink?

  When you were talking to him. And there you go, making it happen.

• 2:25:02Speaker 01

  So next year. In business, the new guys that we recruited, I started going there together with them half a year. I kind of showed them how I do it, so I gave them piece by piece. Just talk two laws. Now talk three laws. Now talk four laws. And that's how we get them going. And by the end of the year, one of the dudes, he got awarded as his next trainer of the year. So we have been able to do that two years in a row. And just everything started to go. Now, what was one of the things is that we still didn't have any contract with you guys.

• 2:25:42Speaker 01

  So we were just still, we had no PowerPoints, we know nothing, no actual information. So everything what we actually teach was like what we saw from internet. And then, so pretty much what we did is like, kind of like, like we got your word, but it's kind of like illegal in a way. But yeah, we were saying that we got it from there, but I mean, we just invented things. And then we just took a leap of faith. And then I decided that, hey, okay, this doesn't seem to go anywhere. And I just started treating you guys as a management board or board of directors or whatever. And then I said, okay, every quarter I will start sending you C trips, which you didn't ask.

• 2:26:26Speaker 01

  So just started sending those ones forwards, sending, sending, sending. And at some point in the end of then 2023, I think Lindy or someone.

• 2:26:36Jocko Willink?

  I think it was Lindy.

• 2:26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, in like in October or something like that, like, hey, now you have reached, like you have, you have become into our priority list over here. And we would like to now make it like official. And it's like, yes. Eventually, like two years, we are there. Now we had a really, really hard conversation in terms of contracts, because everyone was saying like, it's really difficult to have contracts with Americans. A lot of legal stuff, a lot of different terms. And our, our agreement was very simple. Like Lindy was saying. What was expected from us, like these are the numbers. I said, no, we can't do it. We can do it with these numbers. She said, yes, okay.

• 2:27:22Speaker 01

  Then there was like some other similar stuff. I said, no, we can't do it. We can do this. Okay. And then in one week, sign, where do we sign? Here. And it was done. And then next year, again, we were in a classroom, we were on the main stage. And now in January, the same event happened. It was a startup day. It's like a huge conference. And then we got your video of explaining that hey, combat ready is our new certified instructors or whatever. And that was on the main stage. Now everyone knew it was like article in the newspaper and stuff like that.

• 2:28:02Jocko Willink?

  You like that, Echo Charles?

• 2:28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And that's where like everything like went there. Like we just used like, like we were like thinking Martin, like, what do we have to do? We just have to do what's written in the book. And if you do things that was written in a book, you can't go wrong. And eventually if you do the right things for the right reasons, things will start happening. And that's how we got here.

• 2:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I liked when you were telling me, uh, yesterday, I think you were saying like, listen, you and Martin were saying, listen, we need to do what it says in the book. And if they do what they say they do in the book, we're going to be good to go.

• 2:28:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:37Jocko Willink?

  And sure enough, we're good to go. Uh, I learned something, Echo Charles, in Hollywood.

• 2:28:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:28:45Jocko Willink?

  Hollywood, hell yeah. What I learned in Hollywood deals is when the principals want a deal to happen, it's gonna happen. And the rest is just like people, you know, making it, they're gonna make it happen.

• 2:28:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotcha.

• 2:29:00Jocko Willink?

  But here, and so that's part one. Part two, one of my favorite things to do in, as a combat leader, is I would just say, do it. So like on the radio, like Leif would call up and be like, hey, Jocko, we got another building. It's two blocks down. We saw some squirters coming out of that. We want to go, we want to go hit that thing.

• 2:29:21Jocko Willink?

  Do it. And it was just like, that's, that was like such, it's, it's even just like a little bit better than execute, execute, execute, execute, execute. You say like at the beginning of an operation, it's cool. Look, is it cool? It's cool. But to have like some other branch plan be coming in with some explanation behind it. And to have the decentralized command where it's like, hey, we need to bump across, you know, hey, this is, hey, Jocko, it's life. We gotta move across this road. We got a, we got another vehicle we want to inspect down here. I might have to blow, blow the trunk open.

• 2:29:53Jocko Willink?

  Do it. You know, it just like, so good. And so like when these contracts is like, I get a long email like, hey, with the thing and the this and the that, and the response, do it.

• 2:30:05Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. I've experienced that many, many times. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, do it. And I got, I gathered that same thing. Like I see what you're doing is pretty freaking dope. So I, I get it and respect it.

• 2:30:17Jocko Willink?

  And that's what we're doing. We're doing it. But really, honestly, the, the, seeing you guys in the Decathlon on the battlefield, the FTX battlefield was like, I, I, I was so freaking pumped that you guys were so squared away because part of it was, like I said in the opening, sometimes I would watch and I'd be like, dude, is this too, like, am I crazy? Am I, is this too hard for people to actually be able to do? Like, these people are going insane. Like, have you been, you haven't been to FTX, have you?

• 2:30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Remember one of the OG Utah, in Utah.

• 2:30:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. You see people going crazy. Like, I need four more guys over here now. And by the way, like, no one's gonna die. Or like, you're totally freaking out. And, and these two guys were just like, robots, just Terminator robots. And I was like, who the, are these guys? And it's like, oh, they're Estonian Special Operations Forces. They, they deployed to Afghanistan. I was like, oh, Roger that. And I think actually JP was like, they use our principles. I, he, something like, I don't know if that was what he gathered from the webpage or whatever, but you know, JP's always like doing his research and stuff. So, uh, yeah. So you combine all those things together,

• 2:31:29Jocko Willink?

  which each one of those things was like doing the right things for the right reasons. Um, and also I, I, that's like one of the conversations I had with my team. I was like, hey, They could be teaching, uh, you know, total responsibility and that and and they're not. They're they're like, cool. And let's like, these are the kind of people we want to work with. There's no, did you guys, don't you guys want, didn't you guys want me to go to Estonia?

• 2:31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, we, we, we said like, hey, can we, like, we had those kind of ambitions, of course. But we realized on the very first, in the beginning, that that's not going to happen.

• 2:32:08Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I mean, at some point, it will will make it happen. I'll probably do like a full European tour.

• 2:32:15Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna go, the start and end in Estonia. What up now? Yeah, the, back in the day.

• 2:32:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, the, when I was at SEAL Team Two, get some, uh, deploying to Europe and guys would deploy to Estonia and like, everyone loved Estonia. They thought it was like, they were in heaven. And so, but I never went there, unfortunately. So, at some point, we go into Estonia. We go to rock and roll. So, how many instructors do you have now?

• 2:32:43Speaker 01

  So we have about seven instructors.

• 2:32:46Jocko Willink?

  And then what's their qualification process look like? You, you, I guess you already went through it.

• 2:32:51Speaker 01

  So, so, yeah, I mean, we kind of changed it. So we have now belt system. White belt, blue belt, purple belt, brown belt, black belt. Now, everyone.

• 2:33:02Jocko Willink?

  We, by the way, we have, we have, that idea has been a thing at, at Echelon Front.

• 2:33:08Jocko Willink?

  It's not a thing, but it has been, it's, it was on, it was, it was discussed. You know, I think I was probably the guy that was like, well, that's jujitsu, I don't know. But we didn't do it, but that's.

• 2:33:20Speaker 01

  And we, we defined all of the belts, what they mean. And at the moment, we, we changed it like, a month ago. That's what we did because, uh, we wanted to have a very specific way how we can actually like, understand who is where. What is your way of moving forward? So at the moment. Other than one person, everyone's white belt. And it's not, it's not easy to get the next belt. So it takes years and it takes certain like modules that you can have. I mean, most of them, they're like, because we had our own, own stuff, right? We were not like doing specifically as you have been doing. And now as we have like trained together, we have now better understanding of how you actually teach those tools.

• 2:34:03Speaker 01

  So now we're just reorganizing all of those things. And now we are able to actually teach things specifically the way you do it. And we are much more precise. It's more much more useful because so far, I mean, our average score, because after every training, how we got here is like we asked feedback from customers. And like the average score, like in terms of numbers is like nine out of 10. So it's a good stuff, but it wasn't as practical as we wanted, or it wasn't, it doesn't, didn't have the fine tuning. Now, now we are fine tuned in and now we have kind of like a blueprint. And it takes only like, I don't know, a month or two for them to get to the blue belt.

• 2:34:46Speaker 01

  It takes another month to get to the brown belt. I don't know, will anyone ever get to the black belt? But definitely somewhere in the middle. So because we, we are able to affect, because we have like a lot of people who have like, you know, previous coaching experience and working with companies. And we have run like long-term programs already, but we just didn't have a system. So now we just established a standard, we established a system which we can just internally understand. So most of them are still able to go and execute with every customer. But it's just internally something to measure.

• 2:35:23Jocko Willink?

  And you just came out and went through our, our first, at Echelon Front, our first Train the Trainer program, where it was a nine-month program that you went through. The, most of the nine months was virtual, so you guys were doing calls and Zoom calls and giving briefs, learning briefs, and then had, then I think there was a total of 10 people showed up here in San Diego to get certified. And yeah, it was pretty awesome because it was like a, give your brief and get really good feedback. And everyone had already kind of built the brief where everyone gave a great brief. Like I told, like I told everyone today.

• 2:36:02Jocko Willink?

  It's like giving a brief is not an easy thing and giving a brief with specific content is is challenging and then to give a brief with a lot of pressure where you know you're gonna get picked apart, that breaks people. Yeah. And and everyone, everyone from a bunch of different industries came in, stepped up and and delivered an awesome job and then we do like a hardcore Q and A murder board. Do you guys say the term murder board? Yeah.

• 2:36:26Speaker 01

  We had it in the, already in the NCO school, we had that for two weeks.

• 2:36:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, two weeks of.

• 2:36:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you want to be an instructor, like every NCO, every senior NCOs, everyone who wants to be a senior NCO during that school, which is half here, you will have two weeks where you have to instruct. I know, here is Carl Gustav.

• 2:36:48Speaker 01

  Teach it and then you get a specific template, which is like timed. You can spend five minutes on this. You have to say these three words. You have to provide the intent. You have to have an instruction. In the end of the course, you have to have a practical session, like it's very much laid out and now you have like, you get like three topics, which you have no idea about. And then you have to precisely give it based on that template and it has to be timed. And now the difference is that if I, like the murder board is full of the same dudes. So you get one squad, each one gets three lessons and now for two weeks, you're just

• 2:37:29Speaker 01

  grinding and you, if you're murdering that guy, they will murder you. And most of the time, like the people who are the weakest, they get murdered the most, of course, because people start asking so stupid questions and then like that guy freezes and that, no, that's not a pass anymore.

• 2:37:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:37:45Speaker 01

  So that's how we like roll, but that gives you like a really good like baseline.

• 2:37:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:50Speaker 01

  And I think that's where kind of the instructor skills came from and as I was also explosives, I had to conduct and that I trained other like people to be able to blow things up. So I had that experience from there. So dealing with safety and being, I had all the papers in terms of being, I learned how to do IEDs, I learned how to, like, what's the word?

• 2:38:18Jocko Willink?

  Unexploded ordinance.

• 2:38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, diffuse them.

• 2:38:21Jocko Willink?

  Diffuse, yeah.

• 2:38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, all that kind of stuff. So and now if you start teaching those things, you I mean, it's very basic in terms of, but we had so much like repetition.

• 2:38:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's the thing is it's makes you competent as an instructor. And that was the goal of the of this training program, this train the trainer program at national front. Now, most of the people are people that are coming from their company. And the purpose of this is to be able to be an internal trainer in your company. The only people that we took from that's going to go and do this training outside is just you and Louis.

• 2:38:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:38:59Jocko Willink?

  And Louis is a character.

• 2:39:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:39:01Jocko Willink?

  Because here you are Estonian soft and Louis is, well, first of all, he lives in Estonia, but he's not Estonian. He's from Australia.

• 2:39:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:39:13Jocko Willink?

  So he's from Australia. And he his background, his he was a comedian.

• 2:39:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:39:18Jocko Willink?

  And he was a comedian. And then he ran like he brought, I guess there was no such thing as stand up comedy.

• 2:39:23Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:39:24Jocko Willink?

  In Estonia.

• 2:39:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:39:26Jocko Willink?

  And so he started stand up comedy in Estonia. And then you talk to him and it's like, oh, the way that he got that going and made it work was extreme ownership and the principles of combat leadership that we teach, which is such a great, like, you know, normally I'm like, oh, we we work with all these different companies, you know, this oil company, construction company, finance company, insurance company. Now I want to be like, stand up comedy company, you know, like, let's go full range of motion on this gig.

• 2:39:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And yeah, he he like, as as he's putting it like, yes, these principles also work on crazy people. So they work on everywhere. It doesn't matter where you are. So that's why we're able to actually, we have been able to influence so many companies already. Our government, we're able to, we're working with ministries, we are working with kindergartens, we're working with schools, we are working with the defense league, we are working with military again, like, I mean, startups, hundreds of companies have gone through the training. And I mean, this principle just work.

• 2:40:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Speaking of kids, you guys just well, now you guys have your own publishing company.

• 2:40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:36Jocko Willink?

  Right. And you bought the rights for a kid's book called Way of the Warrior Kid. Heard of that one, Echo Charles?

• 2:40:42Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:40:43Jocko Willink?

  And you guys just released The Way the Warrior Kid, Book One.

• 2:40:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's uh, it's going to be released on November, in the end of November.

• 2:40:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:40:51Speaker 01

  Before Christmas.

• 2:40:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Actually, speaking of which, I think this might have happened. I think you just emailed me a little while ago and said, hey, we're, we're uh.

• 2:41:02Speaker 01

  Modifying or whatever.

• 2:41:03Jocko Willink?

  We want, can we modify The Way of the Warrior Kid so that Estonian kids aren't trying to memorize American presidents and the Gettysburg Address, because that doesn't really make sense in Estonia. And I, I believe, I'll have to check, I believe that I replied, "Do it." I'm pretty sure, I'm gonna check.

• 2:41:23Speaker 01

  It was like two words or something, but it was along those lines, yes.

• 2:41:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, if it's "do it," I'm gonna be pretty pumped.

• 2:41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's how we made that happen. Like, when we saw that, uh, like, like, we have a blueprint. You have created a blueprint. That's how it is. That's how simple it is. Just do those things what you've been doing here. Do that in your country, do that in Europe, wherever. And then, uh, I love the story of how Chaco Publishing got published. Like, how that company came to life. That's a good story. And then.

• 2:41:56Jocko Willink?

  Watch this.

• 2:41:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then we like, uh, like initially, like, we wanted to start giving out that book, like, I don't know. We actually asked a, another publishing company in Estonia who has, uh, came out with these books. And, hey, there is also a kids book that maybe we would like to, like, that would be useful for kids. And then they were kind of looking into it, but then, I mean, like, 2,500 was, I think, the fee. And then there was like 8%, but they wanted to have it, like, it was 10% fee, but they wanted 8%. So they were not, it, oh, we are not able to make money. So, okay, fuck it then.

• 2:42:35Jocko Willink?

  Watch this.

• 2:42:36Speaker 01

  And then, uh, we took like another half a year, and then I heard that you're making a movie.

• 2:42:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:42Speaker 01

  And I was like.

• 2:42:44Jocko Willink?

  Better get in on this now.

• 2:42:45Speaker 01

  Strategically, we have to do it now.

• 2:42:47Jocko Willink?

  That was a good move, dude.

• 2:42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:49Jocko Willink?

  That was a good move. The movie is gonna be, um, you know, we, the movie is wrapped Echo Charles. You heard of that before?

• 2:42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I heard of that.

• 2:42:57Jocko Willink?

  That's a Hollywood thing.

• 2:42:58Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, it is.

• 2:42:59Jocko Willink?

  See, I gotta say Hollywood words for Echo Charles to make sure that he knows that I'm aware that I said a Hollywood thing. Cause if I ever, if I was just now, I'd just be like, yeah, well, you know, we wrapped filming on that project.

• 2:43:11Speaker 01

  Poser, poser.

• 2:43:14Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we, but it is kind of a big deal to rap and I'll tell you why, because until you have it filmed, anything can go wrong. Like there can be a strike, someone can get hurt, there can be uh, like some crazy lawsuit. Like you just don't know what could happen. And, and, and it's like the difference between having it wrapped and not having it wrapped is like the difference between graduating from SEAL training and being somewhere in the pipeline, in which there's no freaking guarantee that that's happening. So it's pretty good to be wrapped and it's a smart move that you formed your own publishing company,

• 2:43:55Jocko Willink?

  bought the rights, and now when that movie comes out, you're gonna sell a bunch of books.

• 2:44:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely. That's the point. And the most importantly, we're able to impact some, some of the youth.

• 2:44:06Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent.

• 2:44:06Speaker 01

  And actually, like, we have like this youth organizations under Defense League, like, I don't know, scouts, boy scouts and girls and stuff like that. They were our, one of the first customers in terms of who we went and practiced. Because like, okay, like, we get like a hundred euros. And we have a whole weekend to test out these principles, how we should teach it. And that's what we did constantly. We spread the information to the youth. So we got our repetition in and then, okay, this works, this doesn't work at all. So we tested it on kids and kids loved it. So definitely, we have been able to impact a ton.

• 2:44:47Speaker 01

  And we have also been able to go to Balkans. Uh, initially we thought that, okay.

• 2:44:54Speaker 01

  Because there was a company in Estonia who had subsidiary companies outside from Estonia. And we did one gig with them. And they said, okay, we have four subsidiary companies in Balkans. We want them to do it again, to do the same thing. So we went to the first company. We thought, okay, now it's Estonians coming to Balkans. Like, there's a cultural difference most likely, or stuff like that. So we did one first training. It was much better than Estonia, because Estonians are like stone people. They have zero emotions. They don't ask any questions. They're like, yeah, like, not very social people. I'm like, I'm not a normal Estonian anymore.

• 2:45:38Speaker 01

  So we went there. And now, the first month was their best revenue ever. Like, after the first month, now the HQ, everyone, let's go.

• 2:45:51Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's the story that's been repeated over and over again, Echelon Front. Like, some random person in one of the departments of the company scrouches together some money that he, that he saved from some other project that they were doing, brings in Echelon Front, and like, the growth is there, and the next thing you know, we're working with the whole company. And that's, that's just happened over and over and over again. So, the fact that you're out there in Europe, being able to make this happen. And, and again, you know, it's like, we, we say in the book, Extreme Ownership,

• 2:46:21Jocko Willink?

  these are not new, random, like, these are not principles that we created from dust. These are things that we learned, that were passed down to us. And they've been so, they've been tested over and over and over and over again. So, it really isn't that big of a surprise, when a company hears the principles, takes the principles, implements the principles, and they have their best, their best profit, their best engagement with their teams, like, the whole thing. So, it's pretty awesome to see.

• 2:46:53Speaker 01

  And that's, that's the thing, what, what we say, that if, like, we try to be an example, because in, in our opinion, like, the best way how to, like, change our culture in Estonia. Is to be a good citizen and do a great job and being a demonstrator of those principles. Now, I've always said like, if we will fail, all of what we have taught you doesn't work. And that's why we initially with Martin like, okay, every business book says that it should be like fifty one forty nine. It shouldn't be fifty fifty because there will be dispute and there will be a problem. And we were like, if we are not able to figure out the problem, then we are not supposed to do it anyways.

• 2:47:36Speaker 01

  So let's put it in a situation where we have to do it in the right way. If not, then it doesn't matter what we speak, it doesn't work anyway. So don't listen to us, just look what we're doing. And we are moving in the right direction, we are doing the right things and things happen.

• 2:47:54Jocko Willink?

  And what's the ultimate goal?

• 2:47:57Speaker 01

  Well, the ultimate goal is first of all to change Estonian culture, help people, help the youth. Because I mean, we are dealing with symptoms, which is the adults. Uh, we have to help the root cause. I mean, there's so much, if I would have, while I was in the school, if there was someone who actually would have given me and teach me some of those principles, I would be, would, would have been way better of prepared for life. So what we want to do, we want to strengthen our own culture. We want to have a nice place where we can live. And also, we have to help our neighbors. So we want to just, we want to make Europe great.

• 2:48:39Jocko Willink?

  I like it, man.

• 2:48:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's what we do. And yeah.

• 2:48:43Jocko Willink?

  Does that, uh, does that get us up to speed?

• 2:48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so.

• 2:48:47Jocko Willink?

  So for people to find you, um, you guys are at www dot combatready dot e e.

• 2:48:55Jocko Willink?

  You're on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, all those at Combat Ready. You've got your personal Instagram, which you are very apparently proud of. Remo, so it's Remo Ojasta.

• 2:49:12Speaker 01

  Yes. I'm gonna, I'm gonna just say yes.

• 2:49:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's so that's spelled R E M O O J A S T E. That's where people can find you.

• 2:49:27Speaker 01

  I think Louis wanted me to say that the webpage should be europe dot combatready dot e. Because we are now upgrading it.

• 2:49:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:49:37Speaker 01

  But you can find it from both places, so.

• 2:49:39Jocko Willink?

  What's Louis's Instagram? People want to check out his.

• 2:49:41Speaker 01

  It's Louis Zezarun.

• 2:49:45Jocko Willink?

  At Louis Zezarun?

• 2:49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:47Jocko Willink?

  And does he do funny stuff on there? Does he do leadership stuff on there?

• 2:49:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's always funny.

• 2:49:51Jocko Willink?

  I, you always learn stuff, right?

• 2:49:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:54Jocko Willink?

  Like when we teach these classes, you know, you're always learning stuff. You and I had, I learned from you about, you know, decentralized command and the expansion of simplicity and the expansion of relationships. And what, which is, which is something that I've talked about before, but you were like, hey, you know what decentralized gives you? Is a culmination of with all these things, time.

• 2:50:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:50:15Jocko Willink?

  Very good. Excellent. So I learned that from you. It was excellent to learn. And then from Louis, what I learned is Echo Charles. Louis is a comedian sitting over in the corner right now. And he was giving his brief. And he said, hey, when there's a, there's a technique called the read back. If I want to make sure that Echo Charles, hey, we need to show up tomorrow at seven o'clock in the morning. We need to be prepped to record a podcast with four people. Can you, hey, just to make sure you, I made that clear. Can you give me a read back? And you say, yeah, we're showing up at seven o'clock tomorrow, recording a podcast, gotta be ready for four people. Okay, cool. Boom. That's called a read back. So what Louis pointed out was that you can use the read, like comedians use read backs.

• 2:51:00Jocko Willink?

  Because it gives you a second to think. So if a heckler calls out. You know, and this is what I did. So I was like, hey, guys, this is a technique that he used. And Dave Burke was sitting there.

• 2:51:11Speaker 02

  Good deal, Dave.

• 2:51:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know it. And so I said, like, Dave, like, you know, heckle me. And Dave's like, uh, you know, he's a kind of like, what? And I said, heckle me, like, say, you know, something negative or whatever. And he goes like, yeah, who cut your hair? And I go, and so I was like, oh, read back. Cause I gotta think of a comeback, right? Who cut your hair? And I said, who cut my hair?

• 2:51:35Jocko Willink?

  Your mother, when she left my apartment, boy.

• 2:51:39Jocko Willink?

  But it's true, like those little, that's a little technique and it's it's technique that you use as a comedian. It could be a technique that you use as a leader, not just to make sure that you've confirmed someone's comprehension of your information, but you, if you do something I don't expect, I can actually give you a read back. To give me some time to think and to clarify that I understand what you're talking about, by the way. And as actually, he gave a whole like note about it where you can like, the read back itself can be funny. You know, I can misread back your thing.

• 2:52:11Speaker 02

  I actually noticed that when comedians do what we call crowd work, right? They do the read back and how they use that is they'll read it back, but the way they do it to make it sound funny, they'll just adjust their tone. And I'll be like, one time I'd be like, hey, wait, that sounded funny, but it wasn't funny. That's when I noticed it. He was like, he'll be like, uh, he's like, what's your name? Oh, John, right? In the crowd and he'll be like, what do you do? He's like, oh, I'm a, um, you know, a manager at a tech company. A manager and he'd look around at a tech company. Everyone would start laughing. I was like, wait, wait, that wasn't really, see what I'm saying? But I saw, oh, I know what he's doing. He's buying time so he can think of his jokes. See what I'm saying? But it's real subtle. But yeah, you're right. That's good. That's very smart.

• 2:52:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Interesting enough, like we had a discussion with Louis and the read back is a form of detachment.

• 2:52:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's true too.

• 2:52:57Speaker 01

  And also it's a form of prioritization because if you give me a hundred words and I give you back 10 words, what is that? I'm giving you the priority words.

• 2:53:06Jocko Willink?

  That you received.

• 2:53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:53:08Jocko Willink?

  And are they correct?

• 2:53:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those are all good points. Learning all the time.

• 2:53:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:12Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, that's what's the new website? Say it one more time.

• 2:53:15Speaker 01

  Europe dot combat ready dot E E.

• 2:53:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool.

• 2:53:21Speaker 01

  You can find us from the internet, I'm sure.

• 2:53:24Jocko Willink?

  True. Uh, Echo Charles, you any questions?

• 2:53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, one question. What's the most you ever won in a single poker game?

• 2:53:31Speaker 01

  Uh, I won like fifteen thousand euros.

• 2:53:36Speaker 02

  What's the euros to dollars scenario similar? Yeah, that's what I figured. Okay.

• 2:53:40Speaker 01

  And it was, it was like two hundred thousand krhuns.

• 2:53:44Jocko Willink?

  Did you walk away?

• 2:53:46Speaker 01

  Uh, so what I did, it was, that, that was like in, I was, I don't know, eighteen.

• 2:53:56Speaker 02

  Oh damn.

• 2:53:57Speaker 01

  And that's what I won. And what I did with that money, of course, nothing useful.

• 2:54:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think, I think I was, I, I think I won like twenty seven hundred bucks in Tahoe. And walked away like a boss and had like a kick ass weekend. I was twenty two years old, like, let's go. I mean, how much money? That was like a month's worth of pay.

• 2:54:20Speaker 02

  Bro, that's a lot.

• 2:54:21Jocko Willink?

  Back in the day. And I was like, I walked away like a boss. You're like, you sure you don't want to play one more hand? Like, no, dude, I'm out.

• 2:54:27Speaker 01

  The funniest, funniest way how I won it was like, uh, like, usually like you should be like super concentrated, right? So what I was doing is that I had won a satellite ticket, I don't know, for ten bucks. The buy in was hundred or something. So it was like thousand people tournament. So I had this setup on laptop. I had two and a half men running the deep series. On this screen, it was America's army. I was playing that game. And then in this corner, I had a poker at like table open. So I was actually like doing four things at the same time and I drink Jim Beam at the same time. So in the end of like, I don't know, five hours, like, okay, now there's only twenty five people left. I recognize that.

• 2:55:13Speaker 01

  So then I said, okay, now, sorry, sorry, American army friends. Uh, I now have to go and concentrate on winning some money. And they're like, what, what do you mean? Like, yeah, I have been playing poker at the same time. So I'm here like, I already have one, one thousand. I have a possibility to win like twenty five, but I eventually got second place. And they were like, what? And they're like, yeah, so yeah, you can download that app into your computer and as we are already. Having communication, I can start commenting you what I'm doing on that poker table. And I think that was the only thing what saved me because I had drank a lot already. So now I had to pretty much go every move and teach them. Which made me cautious, disciplined, and eventually.

• 2:55:59Speaker 01

  I got second place, I got some money, and I continued the poor lifestyle.

• 2:56:05Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:56:07Jocko Willink?

  Anything else, Ekelchoz, any other questions?

• 2:56:08Speaker 02

  No, no, that's it. Really good stuff.

• 2:56:10Jocko Willink?

  All right, Remo, any final thoughts?

• 2:56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, just, yeah, thank you for writing those things. Thank you for leaving those principles. Because if you didn't, like, none of this would have worked. So, thank you for telling me what to do in your book. So, yeah, I mean, it's been awesome, right?

• 2:56:33Speaker 01

  And we're gonna continue doing that. We will live, or we would, yeah. I'm just thirty fi- thirty-five. So, for the next thirty years, we will conquer Europe.

• 2:56:44Jocko Willink?

  That's what I like to hear, man. Freaking outstanding. Well, thanks for joining us. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned. Obviously, thanks for your service. And, and thanks to your countrymen for their service, supporting our allied troops and fighting alongside us. And thanks for what you're doing today. You know, taking these principles, you know, you were in a cush job. And you took a risk, and you are now making this happen. You're gonna help kids, you're gonna help parents, you're gonna help adults, you're gonna help Estonia. You're gonna help Europe.

• 2:57:12Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:57:13Jocko Willink?

  Outstanding. Keep getting after it, man.

• 2:57:17Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Remo has left the building. Good to have some Estonian Special Operations Forces in the building.

• 2:57:27Speaker 02

  Yep, agree. There was, there was a quick segment where he was talking about, he gave a brief before, before they started combat, combat ready. He gave a brief and he was like, he was like, hey, that was the, the guy who, maybe the client, the guy who was giving the brief for. He was like, hey, that was really good. And he was like, oh, I don't know what I said, but, cool, you know, remember that part?

• 2:57:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:57:49Speaker 02

  I, here's what I think, here's what I suspect. I think he he knew what he said. He's been funny and kind of humble. I think he knew what he said. I think he was just surprised that he was just like, hey, I just said what I thought I knew, you know, which is nothing, you know, when you compare it to like, you know, when the real experts roll up and they're using jargon, they're doing the whole thing, theatrics and the big words and the cool stuff, right?

• 2:58:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:15Speaker 02

  And it sounds good, but I think we all got you get used to that after a while, right? Where it sounds good, but it's like, man, I don't know, man, I should have took more notes, maybe. I don't know, you know, kind of a thing, but cool. It sounded good. And then when you get someone who just delivers it super simple and subsequently easy to understand, you're like, bro, that was freaking great. Like, I remember everything you said, and it was so groundbreaking because it all landed on my brain, you know, so now I know.

• 2:58:39Jocko Willink?

  And another component there is he's given, it was his first keynote in English. So what does that make you do?

• 2:58:45Speaker 02

  Simplify.

• 2:58:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you see, look at you.

• 2:58:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, I noticed.

• 2:58:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a short, brief, but everything's really simple, clear and concise, landing, not using any big words, but using the good words that actually work.

• 2:58:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:57Jocko Willink?

  And the thing that he mentioned quite a few times, which is awesome, is like, well, the content

• 2:59:04Jocko Willink?

  is it it's the truth, you know, as I said in that thing the other day, it's like, oh, why is the book Extreme Ownership popular?

• 2:59:14Jocko Willink?

  It's because it's the truth. And people read it and they go, yeah, you know, they're like, it's kind of indisputable and it's written in a way that people understand and go, yeah, I can understand this.

• 2:59:24Speaker 02

  Brad, it's so true because let's face it, there are and there's a lot of books and just speeches and keynotes and, you know, experts with opinions who instead of just sheer like undisputable truth, they'll say like real inflammatory things that have some level of truth, but there's just a lot more to it, but they like to say real inflammatory for the attention, you know, that front end, the front end attention kind of a thing, but then, yeah, a lot of times it doesn't last or you build a reputation for just saying inflammatory things that have like many levels and areas or areas of dispute, we'll say, and then, yeah, it doesn't tend to last, I think.

• 3:00:02Jocko Willink?

  I like it. And speaking of inflammatory.

• 3:00:05Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:00:05Jocko Willink?

  We want inflammation to go down.

• 3:00:07Speaker 02

  We don't like inflammation.

• 3:00:08Jocko Willink?

  A lot of that is based on like what you're putting into your body.

• 3:00:10Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Let's get the good stuff in our body. JockoFuel.com. Go check it out. We got, look, we got everything that you need. We got Molk Protein. We got Hydrate. We got Greens. We got Joint Warfare. We got Super Krill. We got Vitamin D3. We got Cole. We got everything that you need. We got energy drinks even. We got hydration. And it's all clean and good for you. So go to JockoFuel.com, get some. Also, we're at Wawa Vitamin Shop GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hannaford Dash Stores, Wake Fern, Shoprite, HEB, Meyer, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere, Jiu Jitsu Gyms, CrossFit, and by the way, Walmart.

• 3:00:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep, we got Walmart. I just was down at Walmart doing some burpees with the troops.

• 3:00:59Speaker 02

  Multiple Walmart.

• 3:01:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. We did San Diego so far. We did Bentonville. So we're gonna get around to some other Walmarts as well. We're working it. So that's what's happening. JockoFuel.com. Check out the goods. You need the good stuff to fuel your life, your existence. Go get some. Also, American-made products. OriginUSA.com. OriginUSA.com. Look, you heard what it was like. Even the remnants of communism is terrible. It's terrible. Just the remnants of it. Slave labor. You have to fight against that. Well, do you want to pick up a gun and go get on the line? Maybe you do. I kinda do.

• 3:01:41Jocko Willink?

  But let me tell you something else. If you don't want to get a gun and get on the line, go to OriginUSA.com, get some American-made jeans, get some American-made hunt gear, get some American-made Jiu Jitsu gis, rash guards, boots, everything that you need, not made in a oppressive tyrannical state where the people live as slaves, but made right here in America. By Freedom. OriginUSA.com. Go check it out.

• 3:02:12Speaker 02

  Sure. Side note, Origin USA newest product, one of the newest products, Jiu Jitsu Belts.

• 3:02:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:19Speaker 02

  You noticed that one?

• 3:02:20Jocko Willink?

  I didn't get one yet. I kinda need one too.

• 3:02:23Speaker 02

  Yes, you do need one.

• 3:02:25Jocko Willink?

  My belt's kinda old. And I've always felt like I'm just gonna have that belt forever.

• 3:02:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:29Jocko Willink?

  But it's kinda getting ridiculous.

• 3:02:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, plus Origin has one. So it's kinda like, eh. Yeah, look, you're gonna hold on to your old one. I get it, bro. It has a place in your, you know, in your life or whatever, but space it. What, you don't have an Origin belt?

• 3:02:40Jocko Willink?

  Good point. Alright. Maybe we have to get Hannah a purple Belchi. But she got Seth's purple belts.

• 3:02:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, she got that special one too. Yeah, yeah. But multiple belts, there's nothing wrong with that.

• 3:02:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 3:02:50Speaker 02

  You see what I'm saying though?

• 3:02:52Jocko Willink?

  I've never really kinda walked down that road before.

• 3:02:57Speaker 02

  You don't just collect like belts and...

• 3:02:59Jocko Willink?

  I know that people do do that.

• 3:03:01Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:03:01Jocko Willink?

  But I've not done that. I have had one belt per rank.

• 3:03:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, me too. Now that I'm thinking of it, but not anymore.

• 3:03:08Jocko Willink?

  And somehow I don't have them anymore. My blue belt was awesome because I had it for so long.

• 3:03:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:03:13Jocko Willink?

  And I had done like old rigor type stuff for it with the sewing machine. I sewed the black stripe on there and like, you know, like I sewed it on myself and it was like mega durable infantry quality.

• 3:03:25Jocko Willink?

  But if you need a belt, OriginUSA.com. Go get some.

• 3:03:30Speaker 02

  How can you not? How can you not? It's true. Also, Jocko's store called Jocko's Store. It's where you can represent Discipline Equals Freedom shirts. Got shirts on there, hats, hoodies, some shorts on there, socks. I know I've been talking about socks for a long time, but this time I mean it. And you'll have them.

• 3:03:44Jocko Willink?

  Wait, this time because they haven't been there before? It was only word? It was only talk?

• 3:03:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know how you're setting things up for the socks. Really, Discipline Equals Freedom.

• 3:03:52Jocko Willink?

  Would it be weird to like a person like me to wear those socks?

• 3:03:55Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:03:57Speaker 02

  In fact, I designed and created those socks with you in my mind because you have those lame brain freaking socks that you wear. So if I give you these, actually you can't wear them from working out, for working out. I guess you could if you want.

• 3:04:09Jocko Willink?

  But it'd be a waste?

• 3:04:09Speaker 02

  But that's not what they're for.

• 3:04:10Jocko Willink?

  What are they for?

• 3:04:11Speaker 02

  Looking good and freaking representing. See what I'm saying? You know, sometimes at the airport.

• 3:04:15Jocko Willink?

  Looking good and representing on the, in the, in the squat rack?

• 3:04:19Speaker 02

  No, we are there for sure, but head to toe. I'm talking about from head to toe. Look, you're doing great.

• 3:04:23Jocko Willink?

  Are we not doing that? We not got some Origin RTX on?

• 3:04:25Speaker 02

  What, socks?

• 3:04:27Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:04:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:04:27Jocko Willink?

  Upper body.

• 3:04:28Speaker 02

  Okay, okay.

• 3:04:29Jocko Willink?

  Lower body.

• 3:04:30Speaker 02

  Doing good from head down to the waist or shorts or whatever, but yeah, the toe part, you're not representing, bro. You're looking... Looking like you're looking, put it that way. Anyway, so, but we have some socks. They're coming, they'll be in time for Christmas. The holidays, the whole deal, the whole deal. It's gonna be ready.

• 3:04:48Jocko Willink?

  Alright.

• 3:04:51Speaker 02

  Also, short locker, subscription.

• 3:04:53Jocko Willink?

  You making a cool one for Christmas? I got some ideas I need to talk to you about.

• 3:04:57Speaker 02

  Okay, good. Yeah, Jocko's creative. Nonetheless, new design every month. Boom, sign up, subscription scenario. It's called the short locker. It is on Jocko's store.com.

• 3:05:08Jocko Willink?

  Check it out. Also primalbeef.com and coloradocraftbeef.com. We're making the best steak in the country. Delivered to your door. If you need steak, if you need ground beef, if you need meat sticks, go check it out. Primalbeef.com, coloradocraftbeef.com. Freaking outstanding people, outstanding companies, outstanding steak. Let's go. Subscribe to the podcast, also subscribe to Jocko Underground, also subscribe to our YouTube channels. Check out flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer baking cool stuff to hang on your wall. We got a bunch of books. I've written them. I've written a bunch of books for some reason. You heard about one today, Extreme Ownership. I wrote another one called Leadership Strategy and Tactics. I wrote another one called Final Spin. I wrote another one called Dichotomy Leadership.

• 3:05:52Jocko Willink?

  I wrote a bunch of kids books, including one that is available in the Estonian language very soon. So, check all those out. You know where to find them. Speaking of Echelon Front, you heard a lot about it today. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details on that. Also, we have an online training academy, which we received amazing feedback from Ramon. Unsolicited feedback, just to tighten things up, you know, just poured into us with value. He felt bad about that. He brought it up a few times. I honestly never saw him and I'm sure it was good feedback and it probably got implemented.

• 3:06:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Like probably someone on the front lines was like, oh, cool. We'll make that different font or whatever.

• 3:06:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:06:34Jocko Willink?

  No, because I don't know what they were saying, but.

• 3:06:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, fully. But you're and but you're the thing in which I think he was kind of alluding to, kind of hardcore, that it's kind of what you say where it's like, Brian, you can remember that one, I think it was episode, I'm pretty sure it was 184, maybe one. Sixty four, either way, we're talking about how like it information, feedback, um, a plan or whatever. When you're trying to convey a message, you can't just beam it. You can't shove it down the throat. You gotta be like a quarterback. Remember my friend, my quarterback friend, Tim Carey? Where he was perfect. This other guy, he would just jam it to show everyone how freaking hard he and fast he can throw. He's jamming us up, hurting our fingers and everything. Tim Carey loved, he, he didn't love it, he lobbing it. He puts it perfectly. Wherever you are, that's where he hits it.

• 3:07:15Jocko Willink?

  Is it getting picked off because he's throwing a little bit more gentle?

• 3:07:18Speaker 02

  No, no, no. See, that's all part of, that's all part of the delivery. He knows when he has to beam it a hundred percent. Or gun it or whatever. See what I'm saying? But anyway, I think that's what, um.

• 3:07:28Jocko Willink?

  Beam is a funny word, isn't it? It's like back in the day when you were a little kid, like I got beamed.

• 3:07:32Speaker 02

  Beamed, yeah.

• 3:07:33Jocko Willink?

  Dodgeball.

• 3:07:34Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 3:07:35Jocko Willink?

  It's like a word, yeah. But it's what you caught yourself, you like beam or threw, but you kind of like, we're trying to, it, it may have fallen out of parlance of our time, right?

• 3:07:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:07:43Jocko Willink?

  Where now it's like people don't say beam anymore, but we're bringing it back.

• 3:07:46Speaker 02

  Oh, big time. Well, in football, I, you'd say be, like if, let's say, um, it'd be more like, like a funny clown scenario. Let's say the, the receiver ran the wrong route.

• 3:07:55Jocko Willink?

  And you beam him.

• 3:07:56Speaker 02

  Right. And you throw it to him, like you gun it to him and it just hits him in the back or the shoulder. He looks too late and it hits him in the head or whatever. It's like, yeah, it's like you got beamed.

• 3:08:03Jocko Willink?

  So it's still a football thing.

• 3:08:04Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, big time. But gunning it means like I freaking zipped it as hard as I can. Sometimes it's appropriate, but sometimes it's not. You can't just be gunning in freaking criticism for the academy. See what I'm saying? And I feel, I think that he felt like he might've been doing that like after the fact, you know? That's what I think.

• 3:08:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he felt like he beamed it.

• 3:08:21Speaker 02

  Beamed like too much of it.

• 3:08:22Jocko Willink?

  Gunned it.

• 3:08:22Speaker 02

  Gunned it, beamed it, the whole deal.

• 3:08:25Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I'm real hard to offend. It can take a lot more than that. But anyways, what they gave us critique for, which we completely took on board and modified stuff, the academy, extremeownership.com, go check it out. And that's all part of Echelon Front. You heard these principles that we talked about today. They, they help so many companies, so many people. Go to echelonfront.com, check it out. Go to extremeownership.com, check it out. We're here. We got these lessons. We learned them. We captured. We want to pass them on to you. We want your life and your team and your family to be in a better situation. So go check them out. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 3:09:10Jocko Willink?

  And also don't forget about heroesandhorses.org. That's where Micah Fink is bringing our veterans up into the mountains.

• 3:09:20Jocko Willink?

  To relocate their soul and he's doing a great job. So check that one out. And also Jimmy May has got an amazing organization beyond the brotherhood.org. Check that out. He's helping SEALs transition out of the military and into the civilian sector and doing a great job. If you want to connect with us on the interwebs rewind and listen to whatever that website is that they said for combat ready. Also Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, combat ready EE at combat ready EE.

• 3:09:54Speaker 02

  The website is Europe dot combat ready EE.

• 3:09:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay, there you go. Thank you. I didn't take that note. Thank you, bro. Look at you cover and move. Cover and move. And Remo is Remo Ojaste. It's R E M O O J A S T E. For us, I'm at Jaco.com. All the stuff's there. Jaco.com. Also on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink. Echoes at Echo Charles. Just be careful when you go on there. You don't want to have your entire life freaking disappear without even thinking about it while you scroll while you doom scroll. Right on. And thanks once again to Remo Ojaste, Ojaste,

• 3:10:40Jocko Willink?

  for everything you did in the past, your past service, and your continued service helping people become better leaders and better humans in business and life. And thanks to all the military around the world, especially our allies and a solemn salute to our Estonian brothers. Thank you for the sacrifices you made to defend freedom around the globe. Also here at home, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all other first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe. And to everyone else out there, like Remo

• 3:11:20Jocko Willink?

  Ojaste says, like combat ready teaches, use the principles. Use the principles. They're free. It's no big secret. They're free. You have to pay anything for them. You just listen to them right now. Cover, move, simple, prioritize, next to you, decentralized command. Use them. Be default aggressive, take extreme ownership. There you go. They work.

• 3:11:44Jocko Willink?

  Use them.

• 3:11:46Jocko Willink?

  And that's all we've got for tonight. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.