541: Skills, Struggle, and Responsibility. With Jimmy May.

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Jimmy May returns to discuss life after the military, helping veterans transition, building stronger families, and teaching the next generation resilience and responsibility. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 541 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:05Jocko Willink?

  The military provides more than a job. It provides identity, community, structure, and purpose. When those pillars are removed simultaneously, many veterans experience what researchers call "transition stress," a combination of identity disruption, loss of community, and uncertainty about the future. Common challenges include translating military skills into civilian resume language, navigating unwritten workplace norms that differ vastly from military culture, finding community after leaving the tight-knit bonds of service, managing mental health during a period of major life change. Understanding these challenges is the first step toward overcoming them.

• 0:49Jocko Willink?

  The military-to-civilian transition is not an ending. It's a redeployment. Your mission has changed, but your capacity for excellence has not. And that right there is a quote from an article written about an organization called "Beyond the Brotherhood," and it was actually founded by one of my brothers from the teams, who started his Navy career as an enlisted man on the path of becoming a Navy nuclear technician.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Oh, you're gonna say that.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  Hey, it was your career. Thankfully, he found his way to college, ROTC, Commissioning, and the SEAL Pipeline, made it through the SEAL Pipeline, stationed at SEAL Team 2, followed by Language School for Arabic, which he utilized when he joined Task Unit Bruiser in Ramadi, actually arriving the day that Mark Lee was killed. He was on the operation when Mike Montsor was killed. He was wounded himself. A through-and-through miracle shot to the chest that missed his body armor. And thankfully also missed his heart, his lungs, his ribs, his arteries and his veins. And he went on to become a platoon commander at SEAL Team Three where he worked for Seth Stone.

• 2:02Jocko Willink?

  He was a troop commander. He was XO at Bud's, deputy commander at Siege of Sodif, opposite group one. He finally retired. He's been on this podcast before, episode 405. So if you want to hear the details of his career and the teams, you can have a listen to that. But Jimmy May hasn't taken his foot off the gas since retiring. And Beyond the Brotherhood has continued to have a huge impact. And that's not the only place that he's been making things happen. And he's back with us again to share some of his experiences and lessons learned. Jimmy, thanks for coming back, man.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, brother.

• 2:35Jocko Willink?

  You've been turning and burning as usual.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39Jocko Willink?

  Although you take November and December off.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 2:45Jocko Willink?

  And July?

• 2:46Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:47Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's, that's legit.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you know, I missed most of my first two kids' lives because I was gone 300 days a year in the teams. You know what it's like. And now I've got a second chance and I have, he'll be 12 this weekend. And you know, I just want to soak it all in. And so having those months available because he's off a lot of school. So we do a lot of cool things. So it's been, it's been so good.

• 3:09Jocko Willink?

  So you got, speaking of family, you got your oldest daughter is about to.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  She's about to finish. She's graduating from medical school and Baylor. So super proud of her. She's been driving hard. I mean, she was nine years old. She told me she's going to be a doctor and she never looked back. So.

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  You couldn't talk her out of it, huh?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  You can't talk her out of nothing. She got a, she got a hard head. She must get it from her mom. That's what I'm thinking. But no, she's super squared away. She got married about two weeks ago, another doctor, great, great young man, just really happy for them. And so she's about to do a residency in Alabama. So really, really like she's got a bright light ahead of her.

• 3:44Jocko Willink?

  How long is residency? Two, three years?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I think it's four years and I think it depends on what you're choosing. She wants to be general because she doesn't want to like get stuck at some, you know, big campus where you gotta like, you know, be in the city. So she wants to kind of have a broader, a reach with things.

• 3:58Jocko Willink?

  Sure. And then what about your, what about your middle son?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Middle son, dude, you wouldn't recognize him. He, I saw him at the wedding and he was jacked. He's. Good. I didn't recognize him. I was like, who is it?

• 4:10Jocko Willink?

  How old is he?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  He's 21. I guess the the male stuff started flowing and he's

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  He's fighting and

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, he is?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. He's fighting. He's training hard and he's about to finish the semester early and he's a start vet school. So I just, uh, he's got applications in, but I'm pretty confident he'll get. He's been working in the vet industry for a long time. I think he's a, he's got straight A's. He's good.

• 4:30Jocko Willink?

  Bro, when you're between the ages of perhaps maybe like 14 and 24, you're on steroids, like for all practical purposes, like you are on, if you're that age right now and you're listening to me, this is the best opportunity in your life to get jacked and strong. Echo Charles?

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:52Jocko Willink?

  Agree?

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. And yeah, good news about that is it goes beyond that as well. Each wise.

• 4:58Jocko Willink?

  But is that the peak time? Did I get it right?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Uh, yes, but depends on for what. So I mean, look, I'm not gonna make it about, you know, my knowledge on this topic, but yes, in a way chemically, yes. Structurally, maybe not, you know, and if you're going for like big muscles, it extends more. If you're going for performance, not so much.

• 5:17Jocko Willink?

  But what's the peak, uh, peak performance time? 33 or something like that?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  No, that's like muscularity and stuff like that. They call it muscle maturity, but no, performance is going to be probably around 25. Give or take.

• 5:28Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, performance. Yeah.

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 5:34Jocko Willink?

  Pure performance 25 is the peak?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:37Jocko Willink?

  What about, uh, strength feats? Same?

• 5:41Speaker 02

  It depends on what you mean by strength. So like even like, again, there's a whole rabbit hole, but even you saying like, uh, well, you just said an absolute word. I forget what it was, but you can't say, it's not, it ranges. You see what I'm saying? But even strength is like, what kind of strength? Powerlifting?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, those powerlifting guys are big and they're older. They're like in their 30s.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Right? Because structurally, you need, you know, all this stuff or whatever, but like recovery or like, um, speed, that's more younger guys.

• 6:08Jocko Willink?

  Now, when you were at Bud's working as an instructor, Jimmy, the young guys are having a harder time, right? Cause they haven't quite like. Matured out?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yes and no. It's like you look at Hell Week and on the backside of Hell Week, if guys are like eighteen to twenty, those guys are wearing shoes the next day. It's like their body just snaps back. But like guys are like twenty-four, it still sounds young, but it takes a little while for them to mature. Above twenty-eight, dude, I mean, you gotta get a waiver to get into BUDS and we gave, I think we gave eleven waivers when I was the XO there. Zero made it. The body just doesn't heal fast enough. So it's, it's, it's a young man's game for sure.

• 6:44Jocko Willink?

  Damn, I didn't know that kind of stat right there.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  And I know a couple of guys that have got through. I think AJ James, you know, that guy.

• 6:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. He still looks like he's like twenty-three.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Dude, he's like sixty. I know. He just doesn't, yeah, he just doesn't age. But you know, he went through it like thirty-three or something. That guy, he was like Abercrombie and Fitch model and he was like a pro Muay Thai fighter and then he decided to become a SEAL. Like, I'm not making this up.

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, he's a beast. Uh, Drago was pretty old too, going through. I want to say Drago was like thirty-one or something like that.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:15Jocko Willink?

  Maybe.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Drago's Polish, right?

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Okay, so when I got my knee surgery, the doctor asked me, seemingly randomly, he said, are you Polish or Samoan? And I said, no. And he's like, okay. And he just continued on. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, why? He said, because Polish people tend to heal way quicker than normal people and so does Samoans. Yeah. He didn't say normal people. That's not a doctor term, but that's how I interpret it. You know, than other people.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  I didn't know Drago in the teams, but I talked to him like two or three weeks ago. He's helping us out with the swim. We'll talk about it at the end. But just interesting, our paths crossed. I'm like, I didn't remember before, you know?

• 7:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, bro.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  I know he's been on here.

• 7:48Jocko Willink?

  I was so lucky to, because I did a platoon with him at team two and we, we had such a freaking good time. And then randomly, he was the, the Grom liaison in Baghdad.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did a bunch of stuff with him. Those guys are heavy-handed, but good.

• 8:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're great. And he was, you know, he was there. So, you know, I show up in Baghdad and there's Drago. It was like, one of my brothers is already here, man. I was so stoked. But yeah, Drago, epic. So, and then you got your youngest boy. Um, and you were just mentioning that. And one of the things I've, I've been, uh, you know, watching you do is you've been doing some LinkedIn posts about parenting.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I never had social media before, like most of us in the team. So when I got ready to get out, I was like, hey, what should I like? Hey, if you're gonna run a business, you need to kind of have a social media presence. You should learn about it. So I didn't know anything about it. So I'm like, well, it's just right about something you want to do. And so I started these dad drops because, you know, I really wanted to focus on my second chance of getting to be a dad. And I tell you, it's actually got a really big following. It's pretty funny and it's just stupid stuff we do together. And you know, there's always some kind of little takeaway and yeah, he's just watching the man he's becoming. I'm really proud of him. You know, he's like, he's got a lot of strengths that I didn't have. And it's been really cool watching him grow. And you know, he'll listen to this. He listens to a lot of the podcasts I'm on and you know him, you know? He always grabs you by the neck when you see him.

• 9:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, as he should. But watch yourself, boy. Sneak up on me. Could be a problem. Some of the things that some of the things that you brought up, some of the topics, one of them is like build it yourself. And this is actually in the Warrior Kid books, like the kid wants a Mark wants a new bike. And Uncle Jake's like, oh, you can't get a new bike, but we can get an old bike and we can rebuild it. And think of the value of that. Compared to the value of, oh, you want a new bike? Here you go. I mean, what's a new bike cost Echo Charles? Hundred bucks? Maybe 150?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, at the bottom end for sure. Maybe.

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's more like three, four, five, six.

• 9:47Jocko Willink?

  When you're buying a seven year old, you're not getting a seven year old, like a top end bicycle.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  I just got my son a BMX bike used off of like the offer up scenario and he goes 150.

• 9:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so I'm in the, I'm in the game.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. You're talking about the used ones?

• 10:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:02Jocko Willink?

  But I mean, even a used BMX bikes is showing up kind of dope.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  It showed up dope, yes.

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  How much is it new? 400?

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it ranges. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, 400 for a new BMX bike is normal.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  We actually did the exact same thing with Warrior. We've got the old bike that's a neighbor. We had to replace the axle and he was like giving us pennies and it took us a while. He like sanded it down and he did a great job with it. And then we ended up, he ended up, someone gave him a bike later on and he'd outgrown that one. So he went to sell it. And I remember, you know, I saw it on offer up, go ahead. So I'm waiting and I'm watching the guy and the guy's comes like, well, can you take less? I'm like bargaining with him, you know, and you know, it's 25 bucks. You're bargaining with like, but he was like seven at the time, you know? He's got it. You've seen his little straight face. He's like, he's like, he looks at me, I'm like. It's like hold out for 25.

• 10:53Jocko Willink?

  Did he get the 25?

• 10:54Speaker 01

  He got 25.

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. So that's a great lesson, though. When you, when, and it's, by the way, one of the things that I notice about these things is, and this is the same thing I notice about parenting is it applies to everything. It applies to anyone you interact with. Like, if you want somebody to value something, you have them build it themselves, including, oh, we got some project that we want to do and I've got a, my, my team is going to do it. Why don't I let them build the plan? Cause then it's going to, they're going to take ownership of that plan and it's going, they're going to value it more. And it's just the, the good way to do it. And another one you have is, uh, do the maintenance yourself.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he's the Mayday Executive Maintenance Manager. It's his title. He gets 10 bucks an hour. Dude, the guy can clean weapons. He scores away my spear guns. I, he, I mean, rinses all the gear. I just drop all the gear in the, in the, you know, in the fridge or the garage or wherever we're at. And he just like gets to work and, you know, a couple of hours later it's clean while I load for the next one. So.

• 11:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a underlying theme here that I've talked about before, which is like, as much as you can treat your kid like an adult, the better off it is. And that's a classic example. You're, you're making him work, but you're paying him. So he's getting, recognizing that I can earn money. I have value. I can make things happen. I have responsibilities. If I don't do what I'm supposed to do, I won't get the money. Like, these are really good lessons that you can teach to someone.

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  Respect your elders.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, you know, we're from the South. Yes, sir. No, sir. It's how we roll here. It's kind of weird in California because they got pronouns and stuff.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  But I'm like, hey buddy, take your best guess and you make sure you say sir, ma'am. But no, we're, we're pretty tight on that. Like he's a very respectful young man and, you know, he had a little scrape at school pretty recently. We talked about it the other day and, uh, you know, the teachers were like, hey, he's been respectful and he owned it. And, uh, it was a, it was a good walk away. We can talk about it if you want. It doesn't matter to me.

• 12:43Jocko Willink?

  No, it's, it's an interesting one. And it's funny because, you know, we just had a, the podcast last week, we had a guy on that I grew up in the same town as me and I, I was a rebellious kid, right? And you, you want to have your kids, in my opinion, you want your kids to have the, the level of respect, but also have a little underlying of.

• 13:07Jocko Willink?

  Questioning authority.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:09Jocko Willink?

  You know, like a little, a little bit of questioning authority because there's bad people. There's adults that don't deserve respect.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:16Jocko Willink?

  And if you automatically think, oh, I, this person's older than me, so they're better than me, smarter than me, no more than me, I need to listen to them. Well, look, there's places where that is actually going to get you in trouble.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so there's a, there's a, you gotta teach them both those things at the same time and, and learn. Cause yeah, being respectful to people is, is, you know, elders, people that you're, as you know, it's funny, I, I say like, uh, I treat, when I was in the SEAL teams, I treated the admiral the same as I treated a new guy. You know what I mean? Now, now, now, if you were in a platoon with me when I was in E4 or E5, and you were a new guy, I can't make that claim, but when I was older and was a little bit more mature, like didn't matter who you were, it's like, okay, you got something to say, I'm gonna listen to you. That sounds like a good idea, or it doesn't sound like a good idea. And giving kids that ability to treat other human beings with respect, but always be keeping in mind that

• 14:10Jocko Willink?

  you treat them with respect. What's the thing that Matt has said, like, treat them with respect, but have a plan to kill them. Don't have to quite go that far, but treat them with respect, but remember, people have their own agendas and people might not be, they might be doing nefarious things, go watch out for them.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Dude, he's a deep thinker and he always asks really good questions. I mean, you know, sometimes I don't even know the answer. I'm like, bro, we're gonna have to get on some chat GPT and try and figure this out, like, but, you know, he asks deep, good questions and I'm, I'm really proud of him. He doesn't make the kind of grades my first two kids make. He's just not, doesn't have the same interest. I hate to say that. He just, just doesn't interest him as much. But man, he's always got these really good questions and he's a sharp kid. He's got, he might pull off strays this year, but barely. My other two were just, they just, their little dopamine hit was like ding when they got good grades. The youngest, he ain't that way.

• 14:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, next one, let them come up with their own rules. And again, I'm, I'm paraphrasing kind of the, the main theme of these posts that you do and you, you will describe a situation that you were in, describe what you did, how you handled it. Sometimes you're like, oh, I screwed this up. Sometimes you're like, oh, this got screwed up for me, or I could have done it better, but here's the lesson from the future. And one of them was let them, let them come up with their own rules and the debate you were having is he wanted to stay up till 10 o'clock.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:23Jocko Willink?

  And on a non-school night, right?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:26Jocko Willink?

  And again, a great example of if you let someone come up with the rules, they're so much more apt to be okay with those rules.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, he doesn't like being told what to do. So like when we were trying to make him go to bed at a certain time, I was like, hey, time out. Why don't you say what time you want to go to bed? What time should you go to bed? You tell me what what makes sense. And he would say it. And I'm like, okay. Then I don't have to remind you anymore. I have to tell you what to do, right? Because if I do, I'm just going to start reducing it by 15 minutes every single time I have to bring it up. So you're fully in bed by this time. Is that correct? He's like, yes, sir. I'm like, okay. So he sets this little alarm. It's got this little like Indian guy singing. It's pretty funny.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  He's into that thing. And so it goes off at like five minutes before he brushes his teeth. He gets in bed. Yeah, it's his rules, not mine.

• 16:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's actually a term for what you're describing. It's called psychological reactance. And it is a natural human instinct to

• 16:21Jocko Willink?

  push back against things that we're told to do. It's a natural thing, psychological reactance. And you know, once you realize that, you look back at your whole life and be like, oh, every time I tried to tell people what to do, they didn't like it. And every time someone tried to tell me what to do, I didn't like it. Now, look, are there exceptions to that where you get a leadership vacuum and it's time to make a call? Yeah, those things happen. But with kids, for sure. Every time you tell them to do something, they they usually don't want to do it.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And and now everything is on, it's on a timeline. He knows his timelines. Like we we ride e-bikes to school. I ride an e-bike everywhere. You've seen me running around. And it's like probably three or four miles, but he he leads. So now he knows how to signal with his hands, you know. So he learned how to ride a e-bike for me. We got, we're on helmet comms. We're talking the whole time. So, you know, if he's going to do something stupid, at least I can try and slow him down. Because I think a lot of these guys, you see people doing stupid stuff on e-bikes. I can't imagine what goes on in the ERs with those things. And it's like, you know, at least he learned right for me, I know, before he gets out there with a bunch of his, you know, half developed brain buddies out there to do something crazy.

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  E-bikes are crazy right now in California.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, there is no rules.

• 17:30Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what it's like in the rest of the country. But look, we live in Southern California. The weather is good 100% of the time. And so kids now, they have these these vehicles, these e-bikes, some of them can go 60 miles an hour. And these kids rip on them too. And like, I will see, first of all, they have gangs.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:51Jocko Willink?

  They they look like a motorcycle gang, except for they're eleven.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:55Jocko Willink?

  But there'll be thirty two of them ripping wheelies all over the road, the sidewalks. It's it's freaking crazy. I gotta say, I kinda like it. I do. I kinda like it. I don't know.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Dude, one of these little gangs were on skateboards, came up two houses down from me, jumping off my neighbor's roof. Like, making videos. I'm like, dude, that's pretty gnarly, but I mean.

• 18:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the kids are getting after. I wonder what's gonna happen with the e-bike thing, because I have seen, uh, there's been a couple of kids killed around here in Southern California, riding e-bikes. But look, kids got killed on regular bikes too, but kids, there's no rules. There's just no rules. They don't have any signaling devices, so it's just like a kick-ass ultimate bike of all time.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  It's one of those things that's super fun until they regulate it. You know, it's like right now, it's fun and they're gonna probably put, you know, governors on it, so it don't go that fast. And there'll be some kind of like little like geo fence where you can ride them, you know, it's gonna, they're gonna, they'll suck the fun out of it, but it'll also make it safer.

• 18:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's kind of a bummer.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Not to be a downer, but a big part of the e, the e-bike thing, because there's category, how you say some go super fast, right? And it's so it becomes a different category. It's more like a motorcycle, but electric, you know? And some kids with those high-end ones, they'll just go on the sidewalk and stuff like that. And you know, they're, you know, like rebellious kids, but they're ki, you can kill like old people. Like there's like an old guy who's just walking, he's a substitute teacher, he's just walking home and gets hit with it. From one of these rebellious kids who's been kinda on the hook for his reckless driving and stuff like that. And he's like, you know, he's a rebellious kid, he continues doing it, hits this old man, kills him.

• 19:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, this happened for real?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, here in California.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, damn.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  So it's like that kinda stuff. I get the, it does look cool, but it's like, I, I don't, I don't mean to be the old man, but I don't wanna die from these freaking kids who can't follow rules, you see what I'm saying? So that's happening as well. So the regulation is not completely.

• 19:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the thing that's a, such a bummer is, is it gives kids so much mobility to go wherever, you know? When they're thirteen or fourteen years old and being able to go to practice and the thing and the stuff in the friend's house. Like, now you could do it on a regular bike. My son, who's an older kid now, but he's like anti e-bikes.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could see that. Yeah, I could.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  I was the first to.

• 20:09Jocko Willink?

  Because he pedaled everywhere. And he will tell you, you know, uphill both ways, the whole nine yards, you know what I mean? Wow, I've never rode, never rode, you know, like, okay, bro. But he's, you know, that's the way it is.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have, we have a bunch of e-bikes, so I'm down for the e-bikes. But I think they're gonna break it up into categories with the laws. In fact, I think it's already like that. So if it's like one of these categories, these fast ones are like, okay, that's not an e-bike, that's a motorcycle. You see what I'm saying? Then you have certain rules with that.

• 20:36Jocko Willink?

  Certain like, speed limit will be there.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Dude, the one I have, has goes like eighteen miles per hour, like you can.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there's a little way you can unlock it to make it go faster.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, the one that I bought for myself was my, which my son kind of took. And like he's, you know, that, that one can, that one can go fast. It can go like thirty, thirty miles per hour, which is.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  I unlock mine so it goes faster, but the thing is, it's got those dorky dad baskets on it, you know? Cause I, I shop off mine, I got, I got a school book on it, so I look, I got like my socks pulled up, like I look like that dorky dad, you know? And, uh, but, so he don't ride my bike, but it keeps him off it, but it's faster.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  How fast is his one?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  His goes twenty-two.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, that's an e-bike, that's like not, not crazy.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, whether he pedals or not. Mine going up a hill, I got to pedal to get, I get up to thirty-something, yeah.

• 21:23Jocko Willink?

  Do you think, do you think that if you openly admit that you look like a dorky dad, that that means you're not?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  No, I, I know, I mean, it did, I'm not, I know. I, I pull up to the school with the baskets on the bike, I know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, send it.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  I got a helmet on, hide my shame.

• 21:38Jocko Willink?

  You were harassing me about my iPhone holster.

• 21:43Jocko Willink?

  Which is funny because I, I, you know, I was surprised because I've been wearing a, some kind of a phone clip since I was the admiral's aide in two thousand and five. And I had a BlackBerry, I had two BlackBerrys.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  One like for the classified stuff and one for unclass, and like I had to carry them. And they came with a little holster, BlackBerry.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  So, so listen.

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  Posted up with that.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  We got him. We know we got him because he's been making excuses for like, I mean, now on air.

• 22:15Jocko Willink?

  It's one of those things where I don't even know what I would do with it if I didn't have.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  It's cool.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  You're right, bro. You're right. You're right.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  We'll get you some of them tall, white socks to go with it.

• 22:25Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I already wear tall, white socks. We're in there. Well, that's why I was asking. I was trying to figure out like, hey, we know, I kind of admit that I look like a dork. Oh, no, no. You're a hundred percent a dork. There's no escaping it. That's how. And by the way, I do have, well, my wife has an e-bike and I drive it sometimes. And it is not a cool, it's not like a cool.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 22:46Jocko Willink?

  E-bike. It's not.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Oh, like looking?

• 22:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You don't go, damn, that looks cool. No, you go, that dude's a dork.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. There's a range, right? Like some of them. Yeah.

• 22:57Jocko Willink?

  Next one. Have excess capability before you need it. Boy, this is a good lesson. And you know, it's interesting is, uh, one of the things we teach at Echelon Front is

• 23:08Jocko Willink?

  don't try and build relationships when you need them. You know, try and build relationships when you don't, when actually when you can give something, someone like that's when you want to build. You know, I don't want to run to Jimmy and say like, hey, I need a favor. You know, I know I haven't talked to you much over the last six months that we've been working together, but I need something from you now. Can you help me? That's not, that's not, that's not a good way to do it. And your point was, you know, have excess capacity, capa- capability before you need it. And I think the picture was snow chains going on a vehicle.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. He and I were going out and, uh, we're going up to Mammoth for that big dump, you know, and we had, we, I brought snow chains because that's what you do. And man, you'd be shocked how many people didn't have snow chains. I'd pull, pull people out of, out of the ditch. They got their kids in the car. I'm like, bro, you're going to put your kids out here and you know, he's got what, but 57 or 70 inches of snow dropped and you're going to show up here in that, you know, Ford Festiva with no, with no, no chains. It was just, I don't know. I mean, I try to keep him prepared. It's what we do, you know? And, uh, it's, it's just an important thing, especially when you're head of a household, you're head of a family and, uh, that's where prepping him to be, you know?

• 24:14Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Um, reverence for life, even for a possum.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So there's a bunch of little critters around SoCal, you know, we, and we had a possum that was eating our avocado. So I tasked the young man with, uh, kept capturing it. So he needed a live trap. So we caught it.

• 24:31Jocko Willink?

  So it wasn't, it wasn't a capture kill operation?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  It was not capture. Well, it was a capture detain. I believe is what you have to call it. Yeah. They kind of give you the wink, wink when they know it. But anyway, so we caught it. I'm like, what do you want to do with this thing, buddy? You, you don't want to kill it? Or he's like, well, is there someplace we can take it? And you guys know the famosa slew down here? That's like our possum release zone. I was like, well, we can take it to the zone. I'm like, yeah, let's do it. And I know it was pretty cool that let, have them go out there and, you know, just, we, we, we hunt, you know, we, we kill deer, but we eat it. We kill, we kill fish and it's just, we don't just kill for no reason. And I think that the food chain is healthy and important, but there's no reason to kill someone if you don't need to.

• 25:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Reverence for life. Um, this was a good one. Press tracks are free. So basically your boy had a dead man's gun. What we, what we say, what we call in the SEAL teams, a dead man's gun, which means he didn't have a round in the chamber, pulled the trigger and it, it just went click and didn't go bang. And that's a huge violation in the SEAL teams. It's not a safety violation, but it's like a, uh, it's like a mortal sin, you know, it's, you are really going to catch some shit if you have a dead man's gun.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  You might end up taped up or happy had.

• 25:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, second place in a gunfight is a no place to be, you know? Actually, I've, I've lost a few gunfights in my career, uh, unfortunately. And, you know, it's just a, it's a helpless feeling. I think it goes click and the other person looks at you and what's going to happen, you know? So that's never happened to me in real life, but when he did that, I was, I had to like impress upon him how important that was that he knows the condition of his weapon. I mean, as a professional, when you pick up a weapon, you should be well trained and you should be professional with that weapon and proficient at least. And the fact that he did not understand the condition of his weapon was a problem for me. So I didn't punish him too hard, but I don't think, uh, the young man will have any more dead man's guns.

• 26:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I think that was one of the main points that you made was like, you could have told him. You could have, you could have preemptively saved him the embarrassment, but you didn't. And you know, this is something I call letting people brush up against the guardrails of failure. And it's a beautiful thing to make a mistake on the range.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:42Jocko Willink?

  That you will then never make again in your life. And, and so that's real positive. Actually, we just had a guy on the podcast, a guy, like the guy that I grew up with, and he got into an incident where he pulled a gun on someone, like they were in a fight. And he pulled a gun on someone, shot the guy once, shot the guy twice, like in the gut. The guy kept coming. He aimed the weapon at the guy's head and it malfunctioned.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 27:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And so he didn't kill him. The fight kind of, I forget the rest of the story, but they broke up. And when, when they went to court, the other individuals had instigated it.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:22Jocko Willink?

  And so he didn't get in trouble. They, the lawyer was like, hey, if I ever.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  What state was this in?

• 27:25Jocko Willink?

  Connecticut.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 27:27Jocko Willink?

  The judge, the judge said, uh, you know, this was self-defense. And he was like, he said his lawyer spoke and he goes, okay, I'm dismissing this. And, and then the lawyer, the judge looked at him and said, hey, you better go in the military immediately. He was like, yes. And he went in the Marine Corps. But, uh, but if he would have known the condition of his weapon, or he would have known an immediate action drill, he probably would have killed that guy, which for him would have been bad. But, um.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Well, if it malfunctioned after two shots, then it's probably, that's not a condition issue, right?

• 27:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, true. But he didn't have an immediate action drill.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:02Jocko Willink?

  He didn't know what to do.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:03Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, yeah. So.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Well, you used to let me fail all the time in the teams, man. I'd, I'd do something and you were running trade at, and I was floundering. I remember this one op, we were just, it was just mayhem. You guys killed all of our guys. And then you were just like, what are you gonna do? I'm like, I don't know. I'm trying to carry somebody. Like put some down, have someone else carry. You were just like bugging me. And I was like, I didn't have any answers. You just let me fail. And then I remember I failed so hard that, uh, I learned a lot, learned a lot. Probably the biggest failure you let me have was when you asked me, this was actually real world. I came back from op and I didn't know where we were. You were like, show me on the map and I couldn't do it. And, uh, you just sat there while I figured it out. It was, I know you knew.

• 28:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  You just sat there, let me figure it out. And I remember I was so ashamed. I was like, to this day, I always know where I am. And my son knows that story. You know, we walk out if he can't find the car. I'm like, you gotta know where you are, you know?

• 28:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a bad way to learn that lesson. And you know, it's probably one of those things that I looked at and was like, I wonder if he's, you know, I wouldn't want you to roll out into Ramadi not knowing where you are. And I probably didn't really even think of it. And then you, whatever came back from an op and was like, do you know where you were?

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's, you know, very lucky for my career was working in training sales, a young SEAL. And like, recognized the importance of that. I remember the first time I ever been asked an officer, I remember who the officer was. We're out on land nav and, or they were out on a patrol and he's behind his point man. And we were up in, we're up by Big Bear. Doing like patrolling. And I, I said, hey, you know, hey, LT, get out your map. And you got, I was mapping, I was like, I said, you see that mountain over there? And it was the most beautifully articulated terrain feature in the world. It was so obvious. And I go, fine, show me that, show me that Knoll on the map.

• 30:00Jocko Willink?

  And bro, he looked down and he started looking at the map and his first guess was like three kilometers off. And I'm like, bro, you don't know where you are. And he's like, so yeah, it's a most important thing to know on the battlefield is where you are. But it applies to so many different parts of life.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. You savaged me on that. You straight up went through like, okay, so if someone went down, you gotta call CAS. I know you're not the OIC, but you were the next guy. What are you gonna do? You're gonna call it. He's like, you just let everybody down. Like you really, you didn't let me off the hook, you know? And I'm glad you did that because that's a, that was a pretty important lesson I learned. I'm glad I learned it early.

• 30:34Jocko Willink?

  Sure. Well, speaking of that, one of the things you have is passing on skills. Like, man, you did say something, I don't remember the exact quote, but you said something like, uh, skills don't deteriorate. Skills don't disappear. And I was like, well, there's a lot of skills that do actually deteriorate, they do go away. But when you pass on those skills, this is one thing that you kind of get for free that you can give to other people. The skills that you have, if you invest some time in them.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  And a cool thing about that is that, you know, I'm not talking about just what I know, but you've everybody's got skills, you know, and maybe you can play the guitar. Maybe you can draw things. I don't know, stuff that I can't do, but these are things you can pass down to your kids. And maybe you know a language. These are things that they can have forever. And it's part of your legacy and setting your kids up for success. And I think it's my first two, I have to say, I didn't think this much about being a dad. But now that I'm older, I really am focused on trying to do the best job I can, which is how it should be, you know? I'm not distracted by all the things I was in my youth. And when I think about that, I'm like, what do I have to offer? And I, I try to freely give him whatever I can.

• 31:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I think one of the things that I didn't really recognize until I had kids was the inability for kids to recognize what skills actually are. And there's a couple of examples of this. Number one being, and I, and I put this in, in Way of the Warrior Kid, it's in there. But you know, my oldest daughter came home from school one day, oh, I'm stupid. I'm like, why do you think you're stupid? She's like, well, I don't know my times tables. And I was like, oh, well, how much have you studied? And she, she looked at me like, what do you mean studied? And she thought you should just know how to, you should just know how to, uh, know your times tables. It's something you're born with. And so she literally thought she should just know them.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  Or, you know, she should look at them one time and now the other kids know them. So I taught her how to make flashcards and she learned how to study. But guess what? There's so much fighting. Like a lot of people think, oh yeah, you just, you, you kind of know how to fight. No, you don't know how to fight. Shooting, you just don't know how to shoot. I, you know, you watch the movies and you see people, they just pick up a gun and shoot people.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:42Jocko Willink?

  At, with a pistol at, at 20 yards. Although I was watching a TV show the other day, my walk, I got home and my wife was watching something. And this dude missed, like there's like, there's like a guy with an assault rifle who's shooting. And, and this guy has a drop on him with a pistol.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:59Jocko Willink?

  And takes three or four shots.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Oh, and shot the, his, his buddy.

• 33:02Jocko Willink?

  No, he did, he didn't hit the guy that was the main threat. And I'm like, bro, that's like, you got a red dot on there, bro, chill out, get a breath in before you can drill this dude. But, but whatever it is, you know, even this, uh, the basic sports, you know, hockey, basketball, soccer, whatever sport, man, if your kid practices it, they will be better. And this is something I know you kind of like working your kid through to get him a little familiar with jiu jitsu when I show up. It's more fun. It's more fun when you know what you're doing. It's more fun. You got a little bit of that skill. So.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Well, you know, during COVID here in California, they shut down all the schools. They shut down churches and schools left over like left open like liquor stores and dispensaries. It was kind of an interesting paradigm they decided to do here. Anyway, they shut down the school, the public schools. And so I was like, I'm not joking. That's actually.

• 33:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no. I live in California too. It was like funny that you just said that and we just kind of carried over the conversation.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:01Jocko Willink?

  It was like full insanity.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:04Jocko Willink?

  It was full insanity. Uh, we're gonna shut down this mom and pop, you know, hardware store that, uh,

• 34:10Speaker 01

  It's been here for a hundred years.

• 34:11Jocko Willink?

  Been here for a hundred years that that nine people go in a day.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:16Jocko Willink?

  That one shut down, but Home Depot with all these people going in there?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:20Jocko Willink?

  That one's staying open.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:21Jocko Willink?

  Well, why? Because that one stayed open. Like, yeah, it made no sense. It was total insanity.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  What's the, what's the rationale behind a strip club? Like if anything?

• 34:30Jocko Willink?

  Were strip clubs open?

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I heard they're open. I didn't go, but I heard they were, I heard they're open. I knew, I knew, I could see your face. I'm like, I'm trapped. But no, they didn't shut those things down. I'm like, what?

• 34:40Jocko Willink?

  How did they not shut down strip clubs?

• 34:42Speaker 01

  I'm sure it was like, uh, it was probably, I don't know. I can only imagine it was probably like, hey, this is a required business or something. Cause why wouldn't you shut down liquor stores or marijuana dispensaries? I don't know, but they weren't. But anyway, we, we, they shut down a school and so we did the homeschool thing for a while. Dude, I'm not dumb. I tried, but I'm not a professional educator. Like I really did. I'd like go over the whole curriculum I was supposed to go through and then I'd even add something cool. Like we're gonna change a tire or something, you know? Like I tried to throw something else in there and teach him. He was getting, he was falling behind. And so we got a slot for him at Rock Academy, which is like a Christian private school here. This is the best thing we ever did. But the first, when he first got in there, he came home and he's like, dad, I'm dumb. I'm like. Oh buddy, you're not dumb.

• 35:27Jocko Willink?

  You're like, you're not dumb. I'm dumb.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  No, you're right. I'm like, I'm like, listen, it's my fault. I didn't do a good job, but also the public schools are behind the private school. So they thought about rolling him back. Some teacher there, she was so sweet, took him under his wing, under her wing. She straight up did like, you know, lunchtime and dude, he, he struggled for that first year. And the next thing you know, he's doing, he's getting good grades, but that summer was key. And like the warrior kid book with the flashcards, we did that. We did this. I called ahead. I'm like, hey, what's the next year's stuff we're doing? And we did like, we got ready on capitals ahead of time. We, we got on the multiplication table, everything we needed. He went in ready the next year. Now he doesn't think he's dumb. And I was just, you know, it was interesting. He's just, he's not dumb. And it just broke my heart for him to hear, hear him say that, you know?

• 36:11Speaker 01

  And really we just didn't have him prepped right. After that, we, you know, he's doing great now.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  And that is something that will catch kids all the same way it caught my daughter, the same way it caught your son is like, and, and it happens, you know? I'm not good at this. I'm not good at that. The first time they go play baseball, the first time they go play soccer and they've never done it before. Guess what? You're gonna suck. And by the way, this is true. And there's, there's a, there's a, uh, there's like a point in, in things that you have to get past to see what it's going to be like surfing. Like if you don't stand up and ride the glass on a surfboard, that, that might take you, that might take you one session, but it might take you five or six sessions, might take you two or three sessions just to stand up. Some people don't even stand up the first time they go surfing. And then, so what, do you like it? No, I don't like it. It's, it actually sucks.

• 36:59Jocko Willink?

  I'm in cold water. I'm falling down. I can't breathe right. Like I don't want to ever want to do this again. In jujitsu, I always say you have to train jujitsu until you submit someone for real. Like if you train jujitsu until you submit someone for real, the entire journey up until that point is pretty much miserable. You're like, yeah, this, I'm terrible. This sucks. I don't like it. And there's so many different things that if you have to get enough of the skill, that you can actually enjoy the activity before you decide whether you don't want to do it or not.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  And you know, jujitsu is, it's a perfect example because when I, I was just intrigued. I showed up, I was a good wrestler. I had a background. I was getting whooped. I'm like, what the hell is happening? Like, I didn't even know I had to tap and they're like, you want to tap? I'm like, I don't think so. Like, oh, they're just being cool. Like, I just had no idea. And then, actually, that happened again when I met you and Ramadi and you're like, you want to go roll? I'm like, yeah. And then I'm like, what is this? Cause I, you know, I was, I think I was like a blue belt by that time. So I kinda had some time on earth and, and on the mat. And it was a level I was not prepared for at that time, but.

• 38:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the jujitsu. Uh, but record for kids and adults, by the way, cause a lot of times adults avoid things. Because they try it one time, they go, I don't like this. I'm not, I'm not good at this. No one's good when they start, like very few people are good at something. Okay, I would say one out of every 100 people are kind of good at something. Like, like jujitsu, like sometimes you roll with someone, you go, this person's never really trained before. But they're gonna be, jujitsu's a tricky one. Jujitsu's kind of, maybe like shooting. Some people have, they're naturally, probably, probably three out of every hundred people, like they're gonna be, they're just naturally good shots, right? And then there's three people that are naturally gonna suck.

• 38:49Jocko Willink?

  And it's gonna take a lot of work and occasionally those kids get dropped like from training.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:53Jocko Willink?

  Um, but most of the time, those three kids that aren't that great, they'll have to practice a little bit more, but they'll get up to speed. And then the rest of everyone's just kind of in the, in the middle of the bell curve, like you're, you're.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  I had a hard time learning pistol. I did. I was jumpy. It took me a while to get it, but I eventually got it. You know, I didn't have to get rolled or anything.

• 39:11Jocko Willink?

  I was, I was on the range with some people that are not too, not too firearms familiar. And again, I was watching him. It's like, bro, people are like shaking and, and like, just, it just, I probably.

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I wouldn't do this for real, but I would feel pretty confidently, pretty confident about just attacking them even if they had a gun. You know what I mean? Like, I think I could take them. Like, if I saw, if I saw some of these folks on a range and I was like, oh, bro, I got this. Like, you give me a hundred bucks, I'll, I'll take this fool down right now. Cause it's not, cause if you don't have that natural skill and you've never done it before, bro, you're gonna have problems.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Well, I, so one of the things that made it executive, we'll talk about that later, I know, but like, I do a lot of shooting ranges with people. And I, like, have Canadians down here that never touched a gun and, man, they're literally shaking when they do it. And you'll, you can see them like they, they just can't stop. And it's like, hey, guys, it's a shovel. You pick it up, it does what it said. It does exactly what you, it can't do anything else. It only does what, what you do. And if you, you know, the big three safety rules, you keep those things in mind, we can like go. And usually by the end, they're pretty good. I've had guys trying to load the magazines the wrong way, like putting the bullets in the wrong way. But by the end, I'm, I'm not joking, but by the end, you know, the, I had these, this Canadian group and they were like, wow, we thought guns were bad, but actually if everyone was trained by you, it'd be okay. I'm like, yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  You know, it's just, people just don't know and they just, they freak out, man.

• 40:42Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy. Uh, so pass on skills, learn skills and pass them on. By the way, learn skills and pass them on. There's little things that you can learn how to do. And, and, and by the way, this is a good for your neurological health is to continue to learn new things. So learn skills, pass them on. Uh, the last one I want to talk about that I noted was defeating learned helplessness. And this, I don't know, do you know any, do you know much about learned helplessness and what it is?

• 41:14Speaker 01

  I heard that from, uh, Mark Schaefer. And, uh, the problem was people were just like, they would see something and it would just be like, oh, it's too hard. And they, instead of trying to fix it themselves and then this learned, I, I haven't heard it anywhere else except for.

• 41:27Jocko Willink?

  So there's a experiment, it's a kind of a famous experiment or whatever, not famous, but it's an experiment that was, that's gets done. And you take a classroom of people or whatever, 20 or 30 people and you divide them into two groups and they have problems to solve. And one group, the first, let's say five problems are relatively easy. And the other group, the first five problems are impossible. And so they go, okay, they give them the first problem and like one group's like, oh, they get it. And this second group can't get it. And then they give them the second problem, third problem, fourth problem. And then on the sixth problem, they give them like a medium level issue or medium level problem. The people that have gotten all these other ones done, and by the way, they know that they got it done.

• 42:12Jocko Willink?

  And they also can tell that the other people couldn't get it done because they're like, you know, put your pens down when you're done. And the other people are still trying to figure it out. Well, the people that had achieved repeatedly, they get this medium level problem. And the people that have been defeated, they can't get it. And this is very common. It's kind of like that, uh, you know, when you, when you have two, they would take two mice. And you put them in it to fight each other.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:38Jocko Willink?

  And the winning mouse has like an 80% chance of beating the next mouse. Cause it just gets confident and then it starts walking around just being like, oh, I can kick ass. So the idea of learned helplessness is a real thing. And where this plays in is when you go and swoop in to solve problems for your kids.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:00Jocko Willink?

  And they think that they can't do anything themselves. What was the example? Do you remember the example you used in this?

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Uh, I, the one that comes to mind, I don't know what, I can't remember specifically, but he, he high centered his four wheeler. It was before I got him a dirt bike, had a four wheeler and he high centered his four wheeler. And he's like, we're on columns like, hey dad, you help me get this? I'm like, sure. I go up like, hey, so what I think you should do, he's like, dad, you can lift this. I'm like, well, I know I can. He goes, are you gonna help me? I'm like, I am helping you. I'm telling you. Which I want you to lean forward and try and rock, then hit the throttle. And it took a while and he had some tears going. He was frustrated, mad at me, you know? He's like, no, you could just dig this. I'm like, I am, I'm helping you right now. And they'll, later on I heard him, his friend was at our house and they were like, oh, let's, let's get your dad to help. And he's like, dad won't help us.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Dad will help us. We gotta figure it out on our own. And I was kinda laughing. I'm like, that's right. That's right.

• 43:52Jocko Willink?

  Exactly right, dude. That's where it should be. Awesome. Well, check those out. LinkedIn, you do these posts like, I don't know, like, um, maybe once a week or once every other week, you do something. And you got a bunch of other stuff on there, but I, I thought those were interesting, not only from a leadership of your family, but of everyone.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think this, I think I would like to see parents take ownership of their home in a way I didn't for my first two kids. And now it's just such an important thing. And I'm just, it's one of the most rewarding things in my life is to get to be part of his life. And, you know, I still work to help my older kids. They're fiercely independent, you know, like they're, it's, I'm proud of them. Uh, but I didn't get to do a lot with them. And so this with, I'm so grateful for my second chance, honestly.

• 44:31Jocko Willink?

  No, it's pretty amazing that your other two kids are so awesome. And it's kinda like, bro, I guess you didn't do too bad.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, it's not that. Think about it this way. My first two did awesome without much help from me. And now I'm helping this one. And there's some pressure. I'm like, uh, what's gonna happen if they don't do awesome? Is this, am I the common denominator? So I got some kinda weird pressure that I, I try not to put on them, but I definitely feel it. Cause the first two did awesome and without me. And now I'm like, oh, you know what I mean?

• 45:03Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you better. No pressure on that. Hey, if you're listening to this right now, kid, Riker's like, no, don't worry about it. You just do, you just, just do a good job, man. You're gonna be awesome. Uh, let's talk a little work activity. So you got May Day Executive. Um, these kinda like our team building exercises, pressure situations, unifying a crew. Tell us about it.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it started off, uh, I went to, I went to business school and I was like, oh, I guess I can do consulting. So I started doing consulting and they're like, hey, can you do an icebreaker? And then it just turned into straight out adventures. And that's what I'm doing now. And it's been a blast, you know, I, for me, I get to be part of someone's biggest thing they've wanted to do in their whole life. And so it's not always companies. It's a lot of YPO, uh, it's Young President Organization, a lot of EO. But also it's a lot of companies that wanna do business development. And so they just come up, they'll dream something up crazy. Uh, you know, like they wanna go shoot a 200 pound fish, or they wanna go crash a car, or learn J-turns, pit maneuvers, or, you know, blow something up. I'm like, okay, like. They'll usually be like, what do you mean? Okay. I'm like, yeah, just let me do some math. I'll come up with a number and we'll, we'll figure it out. And usually they're kind of beside themselves. I'm like, yeah, we can make it happen.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  And then, uh, then we do it and I don't have any advertising. I don't have any, uh, anything going on like that. But I'm booked through February right now of next year and it's just super busy. I got a lot of repeat offender customers and, uh, man, it's just been a really fulfilling thing. Cause little things that we don't think about, you know, it's just a big deal to some people, you know? I, I had a job where we were going spearfishing and these guys, they were just like seven dudes executives. I always wanted to try it. I'm like, yeah, I got you. So we take them out and we know before we pull up on this, it's a floating kelp patty. So we're like, I don't know, like 50 miles out to sea. And we throw this hook in the water and man, we hook up to this Mako shark. It was cool. And it wasn't, it was, I don't know, it was not big. It was three, five feet, something like that. Anyway, it comes up, we get it right to the edge of the boat.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  And then that thing spits the hook and I'm like, that is the perfect scenario. Everyone got to see the shark and none of us have to mess with that tooth monster, right? So then I'm like, let's go check for fish. I jump in and I look up at the dude and he's looking at me. I'm like, I was like, hey, is it getting in the water? He's like, well, is there a shark in there? I'm like, you saw it? It's not big. Get in the water. So the dude like gets in the water. We swim up, we check, no fish. I'm like, this is a disaster. We haven't seen any fish yet today. This whole thing is just sucks. We get on the boat, the dude gets out and he's like, I just got in the water with a known shark. And I'm like, you did? That is what happened. That's actually factual. And, uh, what I had learned from that was like, you know what?

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Everyone has the things they're overcoming. I didn't think much of it. You probably wouldn't have thought much of it. But you know, for him, that was a really big deal and it was really cool for me to get to be part of that. You know, I think for, I remember the guy's name, you know, cause I just could see the light in his eyes. And I was like, that's what we do every week. If we come over, we overcome something. We're jumping out of a plane or we're doing something out of a helicopter or whatever they want to do. And, uh, I get to be a part of that and it's been a really, I don't know. It's been just a joyful thing, you know? It's, it's cool.

• 48:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's awesome. I was, there's a documentary out right now and it's called The Dark Wizard. And it's about a guy named Dean Potter, who is a rock climber, bass jumper, free solo guy.

• 48:18Jocko Willink?

  And at one point, and he Alex Honnold was coming up behind him. He's a little bit younger. And this guy Dean Potter, like, wasn't quite as skilled as Alex Honnold was. And Alex Honnold is just kind of, kind of doing things that this guy wants to do. And Alex Honnold was just kind of doing them. And so he's feeling a lot of pressure. And at one point, he kind of signs up and he started doing this thing that he called freebase, which is free, free solo climbing. So no ropes, but wearing a base rig. Like a little tiny base rig. So if he fell, he had a chance of being able to pull.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  But not a whole lot safer.

• 49:01Jocko Willink?

  Not a whole lot safer. But you know, when you're 2,000 feet up in Yosemite, then you know, if you can, if you think you're not going to make it, you can kick off, you know, track away and hopefully be all right. So that, that was his plan. And he had this one, this one climb scheduled. So you've been to Yosemite?

• 49:20Speaker 01

  I have.

• 49:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So he's planning to do this like top part of LCAP. He's gonna do this little rappel down, traverse across and then climb up. Maybe 700 feet, something like that.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if you haven't seen LCAP, it's a scary.

• 49:37Jocko Willink?

  It's 3,000, it's 3,000 straight up vertical. It's what, it's what, it's what Alex Honnold climbed. And in free solo. And yeah, when you look at it from the ground, it's totally insane. That's why, you know, that's to me is the greatest human physical act voluntary that's ever been done. Cause I think people have done more extreme things involuntarily. Like the baton death march, or there's a bunch of them you could go through. But for as far as just volunteering, rogering up to do something, I think that's it. So he's planning to do this with the base rig. And they were at odds with Yosemite because base jumping is illegal. And they said, listen, you're not allowed to, you're not allowed to wear a base rig. You can't, you can't base jump. You can't have a base rig when you climb.

• 50:23Jocko Willink?

  And so he kind of just, they're like, well, you've got the film crew here. You were going to climb this with a base rig. You're not allowed to wear a base rig. What are you going to do? And he sends it. But when you watch it, you're, you, the look. And I think you and me will be like more familiar with the look of. The same guy getting in the water with a shark like I do not want to be doing this right now. And you can kind of see it and it's really, it was really hard for me to watch. I was like, dude, he does not want to be doing this right now. He is, he does not want to.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  And he's doing without the base rig.

• 50:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no base rig. He's free climbing it. He's free soloing it with no base rig. And, bro, I mean, Alex Honnold, when you watch him climb, you're just like, you're, you're, you're feeling when you're watching Alex Honnold climb. My feeling when I watch Alex Honnold climb is, he's got this. Like, that's literally when you watch him, you're just like, he's got this. And even when you talk to him, like he was on this podcast, you know, you could like, you can see that he's just very,

• 51:25Jocko Willink?

  methodical and logical and he's got this, you know, and if you, you get the feeling that if you said, hey, do this and you assess and be like, well, I'm not, I'm not capable of doing that, or I am, and I can do it, and so I'll send it. And you get, you're watching him like, dude, this guy does not want to be doing this. And the dude, it's a great, great documentary. It's called The Dark Wizard. But when your life isn't at stake, overcoming those things like is a really positive thing, which is exactly what you're talking about. And that's what you do with these groups. And what I like about it is it's a, it allows, there's a vulnerability there within a team. People see each other at a, at a moment of weakness. They get to see that each other step up, power through.

• 52:08Jocko Willink?

  Maybe they see people's limitations and you know, there's nothing wrong with that.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Absolutely. We had a guy that freaked out in the water, like he had a little water in his snorkel, you know, little things uncomfortable. And you're in the middle of the ocean. It looks like you're up high and he just panicked. And I was like, hey, man, I grabbed him, drug him to the boat and we kind of got up on the thing. And I was like, what happened? He's like, well, I had water in my snorkel. I'm like, there's always going to be water in your snorkel. There's always going to be all these little things. And I think that's been kind of my teaching points with, with spearfishing is like, hey, all these little things are going to bug you. But you've got a mission to do and you have to focus on that and kind of tune all those things out. And just know they're going to be there. They're always going to be there. Incidentally, he lost my spear gun, which was a.

• 52:52Jocko Willink?

  That's a bummer.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  I didn't, I didn't, I didn't beat him up for that. I was like, hey, I'm glad you're safe, you know? Yeah.

• 52:57Jocko Willink?

  They don't float. The other thing is, the more you do something, the more comfortable you get with it. And you're gonna have water in your snorkel and people are gonna ask you hard questions at your board meeting. And your employees are gonna get mad about, it's like, these are things you have to get used to, you have to get conditioned to. You got to get that stress management so you can, so you can overcome it. And figuring out, you know, that's, when you, when you figure out, that's one thing you figure out in the water, man. And, and I think Bud's does a good job of either showing this to you and you figure it out, or you don't figure it out and you don't make it. If you freaking panic in the water, you're not gonna make it through Bud's. You think that's accurate?

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Oh, it's absolutely accurate. Yeah. Cause there's, I mean, during pool comp, you definitely don't have any air. You're out of air. Like, they grab you and they swing you around and you don't have any air left and you're, there's nothing and you just, you have to relax and solve the problem. Because as soon as you start thinking about, oh my gosh, I don't have air, then you just, you missed a step and you're gonna fail anyway. And I think that's an important thing that really sets our people, our, our guys apart in the teams is that, that water aspect is, is nasty, man. It was actually the hardest thing.

• 54:01Jocko Willink?

  Yep. You cannot panic. And then it's not a very, it's not a very far stretch to get to, oh, I'm getting shot at. I cannot panic. Oh, I'm jumping out of an airplane. I cannot panic. Oh, I've getting, uh, I'm confused about what's happening right now. I cannot panic. That becomes the nature of it. And I'll tell you what, there's been a couple of times, there's one time on a swim.

• 54:28Jocko Willink?

  I was on a swim and I almost pulled my UDT life jacket. Just massive waves. It was, it was in Coronado. And I was, you know, caught a wave trying to come back in. And I caught the first wave and was a little bit like, God, I got like, All flustered and discombobulated and went deep. And when I came up, I was like, oh, I was like, oh, that's boom. And I got hit with something else and all of a sudden I'm down there and I'm like, oh, wait a second. I haven't taken a breath in quite some time and I was already tired. And this could be bad. And I started like thinking, am I going to pull my UDT life jacket right now? But the cool thing is, I was like, no, you're just going to relax and you're just going to float.

• 55:12Jocko Willink?

  You have your wet suit on, you're going to be okay. But that, and then there's, there's been probably two, maybe three times surfing where I had to detach a little bit and go, all right. You gotta relax right now because the, you don't know which way is up. You gotta freaking chill. You don't have any air, but panicking is not going to help the situation. That's probably happened two or three times for me surfing.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know, I see it a lot of times during the week and what's cool is I'll see people panic. And if I can get them right back in that same situation, like, hey, listen, calm down, come back to me. You know, we, we were doing a pit maneuvers with cars and I had this lady and she just, I mean, she just couldn't relax. She was like, and she nailed that car like so hard. And then of course, if you hit it in the wrong spot, it goes up into the engine, up into the compartment where the people are at. And I, you know, she's just got out and she's like, I just can't do this. And I'm like, all right, come over here. I was like, breathe, check this out. And we had, we had to watch another couple. Then we had her do like a practice approach or two. And then she nailed it, you know, and it was just so cool to see. And you could just see her be like, oh, what was I so worried about? I'm like, it's because you just didn't have any experience and now you got it. You're good.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  And watching people go through those kinds of things, it's just a powerful thing. So I love my job. I love it. I do it every week and, uh, you know, I always tell people like, if I'm, if I say I'm going to do it, I'm the world's worst negotiator. I'm going to do it. So whether that's like, I'll give you a price, Brian said, I'm going to do it. We're going to do it, you know? So we'll figure it out.

• 56:39Jocko Willink?

  The crunching sound that cars make where they hit is is such an interesting sound and it's almost like a visceral sound when people hear it for the first time when you hear the the crunching and folding of metal.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it freaks people out and you know, there are things when they get in that car, I gotta tear all the airbags out because you can't get hit with an airbag and airbag opens at 200 miles an hour. You get hit with that thing, it's no bueno. And there's a lot of them. There's not just like one in the front. There's like in the seats behind you. There's like side curtains. So I'm like cutting this. So when you get in this car, the inside looks like tatter, like it does not look like like what you're used to see. And so people get in this thing and they're like, what is this? And I got like metal bolted on the front like Mad Max because I can kind of make these cars last a little bit more. So it's an exciting thing when people see it and then they get in there and then they start bumping around and because we just have this that we don't want to like actually make contact at first. And once I start I force people to start doing that, it kind of opens up the aperture a bit. You know, after driving

• 57:36Speaker 01

  school, we go home with the worst drivers ever. You know, I'm sure there's a little bit of that that goes on.

• 57:41Jocko Willink?

  It's a good thing too. When when I would teach and all my kids to drive, I would bring them down to the Marine Corps base and there's a big giant parking lot and I would just make my kids drive to the limit of a Dodge caravan.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Like just I remember that thing.

• 57:57Jocko Willink?

  Like tires would be smoking, brakes would be burning. But the thing is then when you go back and you drive normal, like you're just so much better. Anytime you can up the intensity of a situation, people get used to that higher intensity. Now you come back to normal. It's like, oh, that's why we shark tank people in like MMA training. You're gonna you're gonna be in this shark tank and it's gonna be absolutely freaking awful. And then you go to a normal fight and you're like, oh, okay. There's not going to be another person and then another person and another person, another person. I can handle this.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Well, dude, I had these cars dropped off for an event I was doing. So I have all these cars dropped off and I had someone to help me take them up because I gotta drive them like a mile down this dirt road. And then I had one coming the next day. I didn't have anyone to help me do it. So I'm like, all right, so Riker and I go up there and I've got like my my e-bike and I'm gonna my plan is to drive it up there and then drive the e-bike back and get the, you know. Anyway, I look at him. I'm like, hey, you drive this? He goes, yes, sir. I'm like, you sure? He's like, yes, sir. I'm like, show me. So we sat and we drove down the dirt road all the way there. I'm like, pretend a car's coming in front of you. And I was like, it's coming now. And like, he pulls over. I'm like, okay, good. Drive us back. He drove us back. I'm like, follow me. And we just drove it down there and he set it up.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  And then he was like, Dad, can you know how to drift? I'm like, yes, sir, I do.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  So we had a little fun with it after that. But, you know, he, once he proved to me he could do it, and he got over that initial, you know, he pulled it off. It's been kind of cool.

• 59:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, anytime you can get people familiar thing, teach them a skill, but then also when you can elevate the training scenarios to be harder and more demanding than what they're going to face in real life. Like when you get somebody out spearfishing at 70 feet on a breath hold, and shooting at an animal that's going by him and trying to get control of that thing. And like, then they get to go back to a boardroom and they got to present something like, you can, you're gonna, you're gonna take some good positive lessons away from that.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. I had one of these executives shot a 130 pound bluefin tuna. So this thing's coming by him at, I don't know, 40 miles an hour. And this thing came in and, man, he shot that thing. I was so excited for him. He was a little overwhelmed. He got up. He's like, it was a lot. But I don't know, man, he immediately booked two more trips with me. He's like, we're doing this again. So I'm taking them out here in about a month.

• 1:00:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, sick. Hey, you also got this thing, this invention.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is kind of a new thing. So my, my little brother, I mean, he finished high school at like 17. He hated school. Just didn't make good grades, but he's super wicked smat. And he, man, he came up with this little, it's this little thing that you put on a, on a cell phone tower between the wire and where it's called the, the splice of the tower, the tower pieces. It's such a simple thing. And I've showed it to you. When you look at it, you're like, why wouldn't you do it this way? It's obviously the superior way to do it. Anyway, we got that moving. We got the patent done in November. And so we're working on that. And, you know, I'm just kind of working ops for that piece. It's, it's a, it's a really cool way to do it. It'll make the whole industry safer. Because now you've got guys hanging off, you know, 300, 400 feet up in the air. And they're got like trying to tape this, this.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Cable and like put this little loop in it on the top and bottom where now you can just lay it the cable pilot on it and just pull it right up and it's about 25% faster, less time up on the tower is safer. And so I think it's only a matter of time before ANSI and OSHA start getting a hold of this thing, but it's going real well and I'm proud of my brother for coming up with it and I'm just kind of like helping set all the the business pieces in motion.

• 1:01:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we work with a lot of construction companies and power companies. So all my linemen out there that are out there, check this thing out. The website is, what's the website?

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  It's www mayday solutions.

• 1:01:43Jocko Willink?

  Mayday solutions.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  There's no dot com or anything.

• 1:01:46Jocko Willink?

  What's the thing called?

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  The cable pilot.

• 1:01:48Jocko Willink?

  The cable pilot. And again, it just, it just helps you route those cables around around the splice plate. So it's not, the cables also aren't now rubbing up against the splice plate or the splice plate getting all chafed and stuff like that. So yep, that's cool. I'm looking forward to that. I know I tried to be an investor, but I think you denied me for some reason.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  We didn't deny you. I talked to the boys about it yesterday. They were like, they're like, it'd be cool to have Jocko involved, but I don't think we need it.

• 1:02:16Jocko Willink?

  Don't need it. There you go. We're gonna edit, will you edit that out of the podcast where I told all the linemen company in America?

• 1:02:26Jocko Willink?

  All right, let's get to, let's get to beyond the brotherhood. So because there's been a lot of really great stuff going on there. And you know, first of all, just refresh us on why you started it.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Okay, so beyond the brotherhood is, that's the major mission in my life, aside from my son and my, you know, my kids and, and Kat. But beyond the brotherhood started within four months of my retirement, four of my teammates killed themselves, two of which I knew really well. You know, I knew Bobby Murray's pretty well. And then Mike Day, you probably knew Mike, he was older guy. Anyway, I just didn't know, I was kind of beside myself, you know, I'm like, you've got all these people. Essentially getting rich off the SEAL ethos, whether they're, you know, I mean, I'm not gonna talk bad about people, but the actors or the, the movies they're making and these people are getting rich and the guys are actually built that ethos that they're capitalizing on.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Are suffering, struggling and killing themselves. And, you know, with Bobby, I spent all weekend with Bobby before, the weekend before, and then it happened on Monday and I didn't know what to do. Like, uh, my, my best friend Bo and I went back over our conversations and it just didn't seem, we didn't know what to do. And so I couldn't even spell five oh one C three, but I'm like, we're gonna do it. So we, we just started this up and with the goal was like, hey, let's, you know, screen and select Navy SEALs a character for the next mission in life. And just to give them a chance, cause these guys are getting out and they don't know what to do, you know, I didn't have social media. Luckily I went to business school, so I had kind of a little bit of a network, but these guys don't know, they don't know what they don't know. And they get out and they're like, I'll do executive protection. It's like, these guys have made the, made it to the pinnacle of warriorhood. And you know what?

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  The same traits it took them to get there are gonna help them in business and that's gonna help them in other walks of life. That they don't have to carry a gun for people all the time. And, uh, that was something that we wanted to really start with. So I didn't know where to start, but I just started. And so the plan was to take in three to five people that first year. And we screened them, we took in 23. I couldn't, I didn't, I didn't know the demand was gonna be like that. I ran out of money. I had to shut down, uh, admissions. And then we had to like build a pipeline, cause now I'm like, okay, this isn't just like, hey, bro, what do you want to do? I got enough people where I have to make a pipeline. So we kind of built a pipeline. I brought Sean Murphy on, uh, he's been on your podcast, uh, and we, so we started building this whole thing out. And the next year we opened up and we took in 22 before we ran out of money again.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  And, you know, I'm like, okay, we gotta throttle this. We can't, I mean, it's important that we do it and, you know, I, I cut my pay down to the very minimum the board would allow.

• 1:04:56Jocko Willink?

  You say, just real quick, when you say take someone in, just kind of explain what that means a little bit.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Okay. So we start with the screening process. So we will ask one superior, one peer and three subordinates and those lenses should align and.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  If they don't, that just tells us we gotta pull the string, you know, like, uh, everyone should see you up and down the chain, the same kind of person you are. The person above you shouldn't think you're the super nice guy and squared away and the people beneath you shouldn't be like, no, he's a dick. Like, we see that all the time. It shouldn't be that way. You should be the same person across the board. And we've already talked about that today, actually. So, we screen them. Once they get in, the first thing we do is we give them a personality assessment. And that personality assessment is not just like a, hey, you're ESTJ. It's like, hey, this, here's the results. Oh, sit down with, you know, the guy that made it and we're gonna go over this assessment and make sure that, open up your aperture about what you might want to do. Then we've got, you know, a medical aspect of it, because a lot of guys come in, they're on, you know, I mean,

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  in the teams, you know, you get shot or you get a ding on you, like, hey, here's some white pills, take these, take a shot, get back on the line. And, and we're happy to do it because we don't want to get pulled off the line. And so, at the end of your career, you're on all sorts of stuff, you know, I was on every NSAID because I had fake hips. I couldn't even walk. I couldn't sleep. And so I was on NSAIDs and then guy, that's, that's a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, so like Mobi, stuff like that. And then I was dabbling in opiates because it was just, I couldn't sleep without it. And so you can, I can see that spiral and a lot of these guys, they're on stuff to make them sleep, stuff to make them stay awake. And so we get them off all that. And I'm on nothing anymore. Like I actually, they use CBD to grad, to bridge a gap for me and now I'm off of everything. I don't even take that.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  So it, we have to get them healthy again. If they need time to reconnect with their families, we're gone 300 days a year. Jocko, you worked till your last day in the Navy. I know you did. I know, like, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be doing some VA stuff? And you're like, I've just gotta finish this. I'm like, you know, um, and a lot of guys are like that. They don't take the time for themselves. And so we kind of help them with their VA claims. We help them get their CRSC, Combat Related Service, connected, which means you get tax-free on, uh, on your, on not your disability, but on your retirement. These are big things for guys who don't, you know, your retirement. You can't necessarily raise a family and live on that on the backside. And so then after that, we start introducing to a mentor. So someone in the business world, a non-team guy,

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  someone that can be like, hey, that thing you said is aggressively stupid to say. You don't say that in a freaking boardroom, right? So like someone that will like, you know, understand how to like coach them to greatness. And then we give them one opportunity at a time. Hey, try this. Try the steel industry. Hey, give this shot over here in the insurance industry. And then we just start kind of like getting them started until and it doesn't work the first time all the time. You know, sometimes, but I would say usually it takes two or three before we find them a niche that's important. You know, of all of our guys, we've got like 60 something guys now, not a single suicide from the highest, the highest, the highest probability guys of doing that. And I, when I say highest probabilities, because the guys that kill themselves are not the turds. They're the guys that we put on the line over and over. Who goes to combat over and over?

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Your best guy. Where do you put your best guys? Right up front. You know, they're the ones eating the blast. They're the ones right up in front getting shot at first. And these are the guys who have got the most damage and that we need to care for the most. And so I knew that I couldn't like, I wasn't going to be able to cast a net and just help everybody at once. But I'm like, what we're going to do is we're going to focus our shots where they count, which is on those guys who are most at risk, which is on those best high character guys. And so that's what we do. And it's worked out really cool because to my partners, the people that are hiring, they're mentoring, they know what we got. When they start seeing these guys, they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you got more of them? I'm like, well, I can't mass produce them. But they're screened, they're selected. And now let's say you get a job as you want to be in realty. And so we, you know, we set you up in real estate.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  We'll, we'll set you up with a team. We'll set you up with a mentor. We'll get your real estate license. We'll get all of, because it costs money. You can't just like show up and be like, hell, I'm a Realtor today. There's like little things you have to, we'll take care of all that for you. We'll set you up and get you on a path. So it's a, it's no one size fits none. Some people want to be entrepreneurs. We help them find money to get started. There's lots of different ways to do it. They've got search funds that will hire our guys and our guys will go out and they'll spend a year looking for a job, looking for a company to buy. And then they'll, they'll buy it. They'll get a 25% stake. And so now they'll build this company and the goal is within five years to sell it. Within beyond the brotherhood, all of our guys are team guys running it, you know, Drew Forsberg is our executive director.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  He's going to get poached. That's what happened to Sean Murphy. Sean Murphy was phenomenal. I tell you what, I had a spiritual Hiroshima when they, when he told me, he's like, hey, they got this. They made this offer. I looked at the offer. I'm like, I can't match that. And he's like, well, I mean, I don't want to leave you high and dry. I'm like, you need to do this for your family, Sean. This is a good thing for you. Like, I'm gonna go be sad for a while until I figure out what to do. But you need to do this for your family. And so, you know.

• 1:09:53Jocko Willink?

  And shout out to University of Health and Performance, my, my friend Matt Hess down there running that thing and Sean Murphy, great fit for that. And what they're doing, by the way, is also a really positive thing, trying to take care of veterans and, and get them into a new life when they get done with their military career. So it's a great fit for Sean. And yeah, like you said, it's painful for you, but you know, it's better for him and, and good, great for his family. And it's going to be great for the University of Health and Performance. So.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  It is. And actually they're looking to hire some more guys. And I think that Sean is laying the groundwork there and Sean didn't quit. And when he, before he stepped down, I'm like, hey buddy, I need you to number one, prep Drew. Number two, come on the board. He's like, yes. So he came on and now he's, he's still contributing, still working, but he, that was a call he had to make for his family. So. Anyway, what all that was to say, the guys are working for us and they get poached and that's good. You know, it took me a while to eat, swallow that jagged pill that you know what, we're going to lose guys. But this is just a stepping stone because we don't pay them what they're worth in the market. We just can't afford it. We're a nonprofit and then we're trying to like, put every single penny we can towards the boys. That's what we do. So the guys know that. So they're going to get poached and that's okay.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Because we got guys coming in behind them and these guys aren't going to leave me high and dry. They're going to train and train the next generation and we'll get this flywheel moving.

• 1:11:09Jocko Willink?

  The last time you, you were on, did we talk about like the, what happened with the whole board, the old board and all that?

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  No, no, we, we talked a little bit about it, but you know, I have full respect to those guys, you know, what they wanted out of BTB was not what I wanted. And you know, a couple of board meetings in a row, I was like, hey, you know what? If if that's what you want this to be, then you need to like change a mission statement because I'm gonna execute this mission statement. We screen and select maybe still the character of the next mission, or you should fire me. And you know, about the third board meeting, they were like, hey, we see what you're doing. It's not, it's it's good. It's not what we had in mind. So we all quit. And when they stepped down, I felt like a gut punch. I didn't know what to do. I was like, these are guys I respect. These are guys that are friends of mine, and they

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  don't want to support this. And it was a it was a jagged pill to swallow. It took me about a week to figure out what to do. And then I had like a tombstone moment, like, you know, when tombstone, when they're just, they're guy, you got pinned down, and he there's a shooting at him, and he just goes like, no, no, like, that's, I was at MIT doing a job for some folks, the ROM crew. And when I I just walked out, and I called you first, the first number I called, I'm like, hey, buddy, I need some help. And you're like, I don't have time to talk about it. The answer is yes. That's what you said to me. You said, call me tomorrow. I'm like, all right. So, one, you were in. And then I called Steve Guttena. And then I called Gio. And then I called Greg McClelland.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  Everyone said yes, everyone jumped on board. And now, man, it's just, it's been growing exponentially under this, just y'all's leadership is amazing. And, yeah, I remember that conversation.

• 1:12:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I do, too. I think I was actually driving to trade. You're like, hey, I I gotta talk to you. I need, I need a favor. I'm like, I don't have time right now. But the answer is yes. Call me tomorrow when we have time. That's freaking, friendship dues, you know, when your one of your brothers brothers calls you, you gotta just step up. And sometimes you don't really know what you're stepping up for. But if you if it's your friend, and you know, they do it for you. Well, then the answer is yes. Let's do this thing. Okay, can you now tell me what the thing is? Yeah, I didn't know. Yeah. But so that that's awesome. There's also, and so you got Drew stepped up, and Drew's a stud.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Sean and Sean and I are kind of similar personalities. Drew is completely 180 for me. He is very analytical, very data-driven, very much an integrator, whereas I'm more of like a visionary. And that's exactly what we needed. Like I, you know, I was sick over Sean leaving, but you know, God had a plan and Drew is delivered in spades. The guy is so organized. All the things that I wasn't, he is, and he's just really helped us get to the next level. So I mean, you see the products on my board meetings were nowhere near as good as his. His are tight, you know, and I'm just really proud of the job he's doing and happy to have him.

• 1:14:06Jocko Willink?

  So you got 60 plus fellows have have gone through, they're getting placed in all kinds of different businesses, all kinds of different things. You got, like you got guys, like you said, already said in real estate, people that are doing, you know, 15, 20, 25 deals a year as real estate agents like already.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  In a bad market.

• 1:14:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in a crap market with a freaking seven and a half percent interest rate, by the way.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  And you're talking about Aaron Pena, by the way, the great Aaron Pena. That dude was one of my first class guys. You know, Aaron. And man, he's coming over here. He's stepped up big time for BTB. He does, he puts on his own fundraisers. He's like, he gives back as fast as he can. He's another guy I call. I'm like, hey, I need to, I didn't even finish my sentence. He's like, I'm in. I'm like, okay, so, yeah.

• 1:14:52Jocko Willink?

  You've got, you've got a guy running for Senate. Yeah, Schwartz running for Senate.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  Adam Schwartz.

• 1:14:57Jocko Willink?

  Schwartz running for Senate in Minnesota.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  There's a lot of problems in Minnesota here, so.

• 1:15:03Jocko Willink?

  It seems like there could be a couple things that could get straightened out of there.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  There are, and, and you know, Adam is a guy that we stood beside. So we talked about it, you know, they, they ended up, they took his trident from him. And the reason why is because he was trying to run for Congress when he was still active duty. And, and he's like, okay, well, so he had to withdraw that. And that's why they took it. And so he's since had it reinstated, but the dude is a heart of gold. He's working hard. And I think that his heart's in the right place in Minnesota. I would love to see term limits come through on these people. We, he's going to be a new, fresh guy. And you know, it's like when you're a new guy, you're fired up, you're in there, you want to do good. Man, these guys who were in there for 30, 40 years, I just don't think they have that same fire.

• 1:15:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, no. You know what they do have? Fat bank accounts after thirty or forty years.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Ridiculous.

• 1:15:50Jocko Willink?

  Somehow they have the fattest bank accounts. Bro, that, that, that corruption up there. And by the way, now they're picking apart California too. And this is, it's

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  Stand by.

• 1:15:59Jocko Willink?

  It's as bad if not worse. It's just heinous.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  Oh, actually, you know, Nick Shirley was up there and then they just made a law right here called the Nick Shirley Law, which means he's not allowed to do that here. They're like, you're not allowed to expose our corruption.

• 1:16:13Jocko Willink?

  Totally insane, man.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  I, I don't know, man. I, is there a way to spin that another way? I don't get it.

• 1:16:19Jocko Willink?

  No, there's no, we don't want you to hear to expose the disgusting. The thing is, you know, our forefathers in America got taxed on tea. And said, you know what? No, they had a tombstone motor. No, we're not gonna pay tax on tea. This is our thing. You can't, you can't tax us on this. We're gonna fight and we're gonna fight. We're gonna have a revolution. We're gonna fight a war because you're trying to tax us. If you think about what is happening with the taxpayers' money in this country right now, it is absolutely disgusting.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56Jocko Willink?

  And look, we're in a, I, I, maybe it's because we're in a, a good spot as far as quality of life goes in America. But A, are we really? And B, the founders of America, they were people that were in good spots themselves. That's one of the few revolutions in the history of the world where the revolutionaries actually had something lose. Most of the time revolutions take place because, you know, I have nothing. I don't own anything. I'm hungry and I'm gonna go kill people until I get what I want. That's what happens most revolutions. This revolution here in America, we, we, a lot of the, the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, they were people that had land, people that had money, people that had companies and businesses.

• 1:17:41Jocko Willink?

  And they risked it all because they wanted freedom. And they also didn't want to pay tax on this dumb ass to this, to this king, right? Why are we paying a tax to a king? Are you kidding me? So now here we are and you know, we get swamped with taxes in California. And you look around, you say, huh, you know, I guess, you know, okay. Maybe if someone's a really positive thinker and they're an optimistic person, they say, you know, I don't mind paying taxes because, you know, the kids need education and got to take care of the public schools and I like to have a paved road and we're playing for the fire departments and we're paying for law enforcement to protect us. And, and so, okay, you know, I can pay some money. And then you start seeing where that money is going.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:24Jocko Willink?

  And it's not going to the police. It's not going to law enforcement. It's not going to the fire departments. It's going to the things that are not just, um, maybe things that I wouldn't consider important to me, but things that I would actually consider to be the antithesis of what, where our money should be spent. I just saw something before we rolled in here today that California, the state of California has spent a hundred and sixty million dollars to give iPads to prisoners.

• 1:19:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I want my hundred and sixty million dollars back. I do not, if you are in jail, you do not get an iPad. I'm not buying you an iPad and neither should anybody else. So, and that's one little item. That's one, like if that's happening.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:23Jocko Willink?

  And now you hear about some of this hospice care scams. Like it's, it's gonna be, it's, there's a reckoning coming. You know, it's kind of, it's, it's interesting, you know, organized crime, when I grew up on the east coast, organized crime, when I was a kid, it was a real thing.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Good parallel.

• 1:19:37Jocko Willink?

  It was a real thing and it was a real, it was a real thing and it was deep. And there's some, a number of things that happened that really disrupted it. Number one, they made laws, you know, they made laws, the, the Rico laws where, you know, if you got rolled up as Jimmy May. But you were connected to me and you were a low level street guy, you would still end up getting thirty years or forty years or fifty years. So guess what? Jimmy May goes, you know what? I'll tell you about my boss and that's what they did. So that really hurt the organized crime, but then the other huge part of it is just the electronic accounting. Like you can't hide money like you used to be able to.

• 1:20:20Jocko Willink?

  And so now that's what we're seeing. That's why a guy like Nick Shirley, you know, his original leads were like, wait, wait a second, where's all this money going? Wait, how many, why is there a seven hundred percent increase in autism treatment in Minnesota? In three years? Wait, what? Does that make sense? So the technology is starting to reveal all these things that have been hidden in the past. So I think just like organized crime has a much harder time being organized crime. I mean, it's not even close to what it was in the forty's, fifty's, sixty's, seventy's. Eighties is kind of when it got cleaned up. That was a huge business. Billions of billions of dollars in organized crime, billions.

• 1:21:01Jocko Willink?

  And now, but it got stopped because of technology and and law enforcement. Laws got changed. So now there's laws being passed and not I'm talking about the Nick Shirley, don't. You're not allowed in California to expose things, but there's other laws that are being passed, anti-fraud laws, those things come on board, plus we have technology. And plus taxpayers going, look, man. Well, I'm an American, I'm feeling pretty, you know, I got my house, you know, I got my house and I pay my mortgage and I got two cars. And I'm pretty happy about that and I understand I gotta pay taxes. That's kind of, that's kind of a pretty general American attitude. Not all of us think that all taxation is is theft, a hundred percent. Not all of us think that. Some of us do. Some people go, oh, you know what?

• 1:21:45Jocko Willink?

  I don't mind paying a little bit, you know, I got a fire department, want to take care of my law enforcement, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

• 1:21:51Jocko Willink?

  But at a certain point they go, wait a second, I'm paying for for what? For iPads for people that are in prison? Why am I paying for iPads for people that are in prison? Why am I paying for a hospice, a hospice?

• 1:22:05Jocko Willink?

  Hospital that exists in a motel somewhere where there's, you know, supposed to be 70 people there and there's zero. Why am I paying for that? And it's just going to go, and by the way, in California, we also have that, uh, the high speed rail.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Jocko Willink?

  A high speed rail, right? That's a real thing. That's, that's billions of dollars. Billions of dollars for something that is, first of all, dumb. It's just dumb. And second of all, there's no progress and it's behind and it's billions of dollars over budget. At a certain point, that American blood will say, you know what? Uh, I'm not paying this shit anymore. So hopefully, you know, we'll just, uh, elect some people that will straighten it out.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I don't know. And I, I don't even, a lot of people don't even trust the elections anymore. I definitely am skeptical. You know, I don't know.

• 1:23:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, and you know, they had a really good idea. I think it's a good idea. They were like, hey, we'll put, uh, these solar panels to cover up this whole canal. And you, you know, it's real estate with, and it's a good idea, but everyone's like, there's no way you're going to pull this off. You can't even build, you know, a train. How are you going to pull this off? Like, we're not going to give it, if this, the government has lost credibility here.

• 1:23:23Jocko Willink?

  Oh, a ton of credibility. I mean, they're, well, already what we already talked about today. How much credibility does the government get when they were, you know, shutting down schools and keeping liquor stores open? What, what? What are you talking about? What is wrong with you? Why, why did you do that? And the whole thing, the six foot of spacing and the, the, put the mask on your face, all those things, all those things. And you know what? It'd be one thing. It would be totally different if someone said, hey, you know what? We didn't really know. I didn't really know. Like, I thought that the putting cloth on your face was going to be, make a difference. Turns out it wasn't. Hey, I'm sorry, I was wrong. Hey, the schools, we didn't know and we just shut them down and you know, I was wrong.

• 1:24:09Jocko Willink?

  No one said that.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:10Jocko Willink?

  No one has taken any ownership of any of it. And so it's very disturbing.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  You know, the SEAL teams had they, I was running opposite group when this went down. They were like, hey, what do we do? And I remember I looked at the calendar and like, you gotta be ready for like other operations downrange. And I looked at them like, okay, we can take three weeks off and not disrupt anything. And so let's just take a knee for three weeks and see, because I don't know, I don't know, tell you. So the boss did, okay, we'll take a knee for three weeks. Then three weeks, I'm like, we've had a bunch of guys get it. Everyone's fine in five days. These guys are young and strong. The best thing we could do is probably have a big chicken pox party for COVID and it'd be over with. You'll have SEAL teams back online in five days, but I know we can underwrite that. So let's just train. And we did, and we know that's what we ended up doing.

• 1:24:57Jocko Willink?

  Good job. You got my vote. You got my.

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  I'm not running for anything, but I would vote for you, Jocko.

• 1:25:03Jocko Willink?

  Check. Some of the things that you do beyond the brotherhood are kind of a little bit of a reflection of what you do at May Day Executive. Meaning you got Apex Assaultor. What goes down with that?

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you helped us with Apex Assaultor. It was huge. I was our best fundraiser ever. Thank you, Jocko. Basically, when I started, I don't know how to raise money. I don't know how to ask people for money. I'm terrible at it. And so I decided I would just do like a May Day Executive event and I'd do a couple of them a year and that's how I would fund BTB. So we started off doing these things and then it, the idea for Apex Assaultor got, got launched from my friends at Limitless, Charlie Arbor and Ken McElroy. They're like big time investors that had me come up there and do a job for them for something. And they, they're like, hey, let's, let's bust this Apex Assaultor and do you think you could Jocko to help? I'm like, I'm pretty sure I can get Jocko to help. Let me ask him.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  And so it turned out we did, we did some like pit maneuvers and J turns. We had half the group. Initially, I was going to sell 12 slots. We ended up selling 24 and so I split it half and half. So we did, you know, half the people up on the top shooting a range and the bottom, the bottom half doing like car crashing and they flip flopped. They got to meet you, have a conversation with you. And then the last day, this was actually super cool. A company called DNI, which is a it's a Delaware Nation Industries. They are they they do government contracts. Their leadership was down here and those two guys at the end, I was like, hey, thank you, guys. We raised more money than ever raised. You know, we're at 240,000. We're gonna be able to clear almost everybody off of our queue that we couldn't bring in. And one of those guys named Lance is like, how much more you need?

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  I'm like, well, it costs us about 20K per guy and we got five guys left. He goes, 100K? Hey. He's like, ask for it. I'm like, I don't know how to ask. He said, no, no, come here. I got it. He got to be like, hey, in this room, let's do this. I'll go up 10. And man, we got 100K and we got to clear a whole queue for that year. And I don't know. Good job, Lance. We we. He just jumped up and did it and showed me how to do it. I still can't do it like he did, but it was pretty cool. So that was our most effective fundraiser ever to this point. And you were a big part of it. So thank you, John, for doing that.

• 1:27:11Jocko Willink?

  Always. And then what's what's the difference between Apex, this altar and Triple S?

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  So Triple S is hosted by one of our board members, Gio. You know Gio, Geo Cognitory. And he just gives us this amazing place. It's gonna be in November this year. It's up near Pismo Beach and just inland there. It's this beautiful lavender farm. And he just opens it up for us. Like, if you rented this thing out, it's like, it'd be like 56 grand a day. And just great accommodations. We get up there, we do this. So it changes every year. This year, we did Humvee driving. We did some shooting on night vision and then we did some like escape from restraint. So we taught people how to pick locks and how to pick, how to pick handcuffs and stuff. And we kind of had a big competition. And it's pretty cool, man. It's a super fun event.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  And it's it's been a it was our flagship until Apex and Apex, you know, eclipsed it, which is good. And I don't know how, you know, how long we can keep doing events to do that, but they keep getting bigger and bigger. And we've got a big one coming up this year.

• 1:28:10Jocko Willink?

  The big one coming up this year, meaning the the New York City Swim.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:28:14Jocko Willink?

  So let's get into that.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was, I met this guy named Bill Brown and he's done it seven years in a row. He's a former team guy and now he's a lawyer in New York and he's just a really passionate dude. And that guy has run this swim on his own for years and you know, I met him and he was like, hey, I hear, I know what beyond the brotherhood is. He's like, this kind of grassroots thing is what I want. I want to support this year. And I'm like, okay, what are we doing? We're going to swim in New York. And so he's like, I need you to help me run it. So I'm doing it. And so I'm doing it through May Day and I'm, so I'm helping him to set it up. The permitting process was a mess. I mean, New York is a hard place to get stuff done. We ended up not being able to swim into New York.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  So we're going to swim around the Statue of Liberty and then back into New Jersey. So we're going, it's a three and a half mile swim. You're with the current. So it's going to be, you know, but it's still legit and you swim out.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  You better hope that mar ops guy gets the current, right?

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 1:29:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had, I had, so I'm at team two and we got this big ORE. We're, we're off the carrier. We got all these missions going. It's my platoon and my, the ORE is basically Echo Charles. You're getting graded for deployment.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Operational readiness.

• 1:29:32Jocko Willink?

  Exercise.

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  Exercise.

• 1:29:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So my squad, squad two, always gets the raw deal, by the way. But so I'm squad two. So we're gonna, we're gonna launch off of a carrier and the helicopter. We're gonna fast rope onto a sub where we pre-staged our boats. We're taking the, we're going on the sub. We're beginning, gonna surface the sub, launch the boats, drive to the island, Vieques Island, do a, do a, I think it was a pilot recovery there and then drive to marry up with some other ship.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  On a, on a little inflatable boat in the middle of the ocean.

• 1:30:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, yeah, the Zodiacs were taken. And so there's a guy there. A guy who's a friend of mine, really good dude, like a very experienced, he was a prior enlisted guy and was very senior as an enlisted guy and then became an officer and we're good friends. He's a freaking stud. And he's like, hey, he goes, hey, man, listen, like the currents here always go, you know, south to north. So insert down here and an extract. So insert way down here, south of the island. And then you can hit it and then, and then you can get recovered, go north. And I go, I go, is that the way? Oh, he's like, yeah, it's like the trade winds, the this, that. And, and by the way, also on the east coast, back in the day, you only had, uh,

• 1:30:56Jocko Willink?

  you only had, you only had, on the west coast, we had 55 horsepower motors. Oh, yeah. And on the east coast, on the east coast, you have 35 horsepower motors. And the west coast, you know, you're in the Pacific, you're in the Indian Ocean, you've got big giant waves, you gotta have big giant motors. And the, and the west, the east coast, you're in the Atlantic. And again, there's obviously places, crazy waves over there too, but generally speaking, smaller. So, long story short, bro, the weather's horrible. The submarine, who, the submarine, this is freaking awesome. The, we're in the helicopter and there's, there's waves breaking over the submarine we're supposed to fast rope on. And the, the air crewman guy, he's like, he's like, hey,

• 1:31:39Jocko Willink?

  the sub wants to know if you guys can get on board. And, and I look at the guy and I go, I go, tell the Cobb, the chief of the boat, I go, tell the Cobb, if he can open that hatch, we're coming on board. And he's like, I hear him like, see him like yelling, he goes, the Cobb says he'll do it. I'm like, cool, we're coming. So. Did you go right to the top of the mast of the, on the, on the submarine? No, it was, it was, but it was bad, dude. It was like gnarly. There was water all coming into the freaking hatch that was open and everything. But we fast roped on there, we, and then we are on the sub for 12 hours and then we get launched and the weather got worse and the weather, the wind and waves were just blowing straight in our face. We actually ran out of gas. We had to stop. I had to like, I had to go, you know what?

• 1:32:22Jocko Willink?

  We have to go to the Puerto Rico, whatever unit it was down there, unit four, unit three? No, unit four, maybe?

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  They're shut down now.

• 1:32:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, whatever it was, I was like, hey, we have to go and get more gas because we were burning double the fuel. So we pulled in, like snuck up, filled our stuff with gas, reinserted, got the, and then did the same thing, going to recover our boat. We barely made it. It was freaking hannis. So my point in saying this is, I hope your maritime gurus get the current right. Otherwise it's gonna be a long ass three and a half mile swim, boys.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  I tell you what, Bill's nailed it every year. So it's three and a half mile swim. It is gonna be a long swim, but it's broken up. As you go around the Statue of Liberty, there'll be a barge out there and climb up that barge and then you'll knock out a hundred, a hundred pushups and then 22 pullups. And then once we get a full head count, we'll jump in, take off to the next barge, which is on the other side of Ellis Island, do the same thing.

• 1:33:20Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  And then after that, we're gonna enter back into, right, it's called North Cove, which is near Empty Sky Memorial in New Jersey. And it's super cool. We'll, we'll, we'll get up there, we'll knock out your last set of pullups and pushups, and then we'll have a bunch of American flags for folks and, and then you'll, you'll march back down to, to the hotel. And then we'll have a little reception that evening. But it's, it's such a cool thing. There'll be 50, 50 slots for team guys. And then we've got a lot of police and first responders. There's gonna be 300 total swimmers. And then, I don't know, there's some, I mean, Dakota Myers is gonna come. I'm pretty stoked about that. There's some other, yeah, I mean, just.

• 1:33:57Jocko Willink?

  Bro, he just made it through battalion recon school. Like, what a, what a stud.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. What do you say to that guy when he shows up at your, at your training pipeline?

• 1:34:06Jocko Willink?

  I say, get some. Yeah. Yeah. What do you say? You're like, thank you for being here. What do you want me to do?

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause I think there's something where if you have a CMH, when you show up at the, at a base, you can demand like a band or something, can't you? There's something like that.

• 1:34:22Jocko Willink?

  Maybe. I don't see Dakota doing that.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:34:26Jocko Willink?

  Dakota's the best dude. He's freaking awesome. Yeah, that was.

• 1:34:31Jocko Willink?

  That's badass that he's gonna be there.

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think, you know, this is probably, this will be our biggest fundraiser ever, and it's really exciting for me to see, you know, BTB move. I mean, every year you're pushing against this wall. You don't feel like anything's moving and then you turn around behind you and you can see like, hey, we've gone a long way. And this is just, you know, we've doubled every single year as far as like our intake and we've had to grow our staff because you can't take in more people until you've got the capacity for it. So we're growing in our capacity right now so we can try and bring in more guys. And we're not going to sacrifice quality, you know, it's, it's, everyone doesn't get to play and that's okay. You know, we take the best guys. That's what we want to do. We want to do that for these guys, so.

• 1:35:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the screening process that you set up is awesome because, you know, listen, everyone, I think correctly so, gives a nod of respect to people that have been in the military, right? Okay, this guy served his country. They deserve a nod of respect. And a heightened expectation, right? If someone's, oh, I was in the Marine Corps, I was in the Army, or I was in the Navy, or I was in the Air Force. Like, okay, so that means you've been through some hard training, you know, you've, you've had to be disciplined, you've had to follow rules, you've had to show initiative. Like, there's a bunch of credit that people get, but that doesn't mean that every guy that has been in the military or has been in special operations or has been in the SEAL teams

• 1:35:53Jocko Willink?

  is going to be a good fit for an organization or really good fit for the world outside of the military. It's a, it's a thing. So the way that you've been screening guys and the success that they've had shows that it's a great process. And even, even the depth of going one person senior, one peer, and three people subordinate, that's even the most screening that I've heard, you know, like, hey, and by the way, you can look at someone's record and you can, you can assess what they were like. And you or me can look at someone's record and learn a little bit more, but there's still, man, there's still all kinds of little nuances to your service that paint, might paint a different picture of who you really, who you really were.

• 1:36:38Jocko Willink?

  So the fact that you all are doing that is what I think was what is making it so effective. And then on top of that, the training that you give them and the insight that you give them and the mentorship that they get from, not just from SEALs, more importantly, getting mentorship from people that are in the industry that they want to go into.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they've been powerful as they've they come into these industries, you know, and this has been like a really passionate investment of mine of like my time and you know, I've met some really great guys I didn't know before and you know, I mean, before I came here, we had a guy that came into some trouble and you know, me and his boss and we sat down with him, we went over a plan and we set up a plan for him. And he's a friend of mine, I respect the guy, he screwed something up. But you know what, we're gonna have his back and we're gonna pull him, we're gonna pull him through because he's he's a man of character. Just like what happened to Brad Geary, you know, if you don't know who Brad Geary is, he's a phenomenal SEAL that basically somebody died in Bud's class when he was commanding officer.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  And they tried to pin it all on him and it really wasn't true. There was a lot of other things. I was on the investigation team. I know what went down. And you know, we took him in at a time when you know, he was at a low spot and you know, he's really thriving now. He's got a book coming out. He's a big time. You know, just a good man, five kids, Christian man, just someone that we all we all respect. We talked about it before. And he'll be at the swim too. He'll be representing BTB. He's a he speaks way better than I do.

• 1:38:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, he's he's great and he's very articulate, a great guy. So the 300, the swimmers, what's the deal? They have to raise money themselves?

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:12Jocko Willink?

  So how's it work? Explain that.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  So each swimmer, when they register, they're gonna have to they have to raise $2,000. And so that's they can find someone to sponsor them and but usually they come up with a lot more. Like I think last year, the swimmers raised $850,000. That's a that would be game changing for BTB. We've never had, we've never raised that much in a year. We're a small organization.

• 1:38:33Jocko Willink?

  So the bar is set at 850?

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:36Jocko Willink?

  I think that's cool, but I think raising the bar to a milli? You with me? Echo Charles, can I throw out some slang?

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, this sounds good.

• 1:38:44Jocko Willink?

  I think if they can do 850, then getting to a million would be freaking epic and set a good bar. And then being able to help out so many more guys would it would just be epic.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  And there there's some other angles to this that we can get to that milli. If you're going to set that bar Jocko, and I know when you set a bar, we get there. You know, we could, we're looking for sponsors to help us with things. There's lots of things that we got to pay for that. If someone wanted to sponsor, it would help us out a ton. All these, we got to buy 300 buoys because these guys got to pull swim buoys. You know, if you have a company that wants to can make them or that wants to, you know, to to buy them for us. Maybe we can put your logos on them. Whatever it is you want to do. Jocko Fuel just signed up. Jocko Fuel signed up for that one. We've got an after party we need to do. We've got awnings we got to put up. I mean, coolers, I think Jocko Fuel is going to handle. You said you'll handle the the refreshments. But, you know, so thank you for putting your money where your mouth.

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  You've always done this and people don't realize that how much you give back to SEAL community, not just us, but to a lot of, a lot of different organizations. I know it because I know you, but thank you for doing that because this is a very important cause. And the fact that these guys are killed, we had another guy die last week. Another guy killed himself.

• 1:39:56Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking awful.

• 1:39:57Speaker 01

  Not from BTB.

• 1:39:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I know. It's it's I saw it and, um, yeah, it's it's just, it's it's terrible. And, you know, like I I always tell people and I know that you feel the same way, but you know, like the teams gave us everything. And so like the teams gave me everything that I have. It was from the teams, the thought process that I have, it's just everything. You know, my family, I wouldn't have, wouldn't have met my wife if it wasn't for, I wouldn't have my kids if it wasn't for, you know, nothing. And so the teams gave us everything and so we try and get back as much as we can. And especially with a with an organization like BTB where it's, we're trying to take care of the guys or, you know, and I'm old enough now that I don't know, I don't know as many guys that are still in as you do.

• 1:40:44Jocko Willink?

  But these are guys that when you, when you meet them, you're like, oh, yeah, it's team guy. Like, you know, there's generation, people talk about like the generational differences. I hang, I go hang around with young team guys and it's like, oh, yeah, I remember exactly like we could, I could just show up here at 23 years old and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between me and a guy that's freaking 23 years old that's currently in the team. It's like, oh, yeah, they're just, they're just team guys. And so when they get out, guess what? They need some help and that's what BTB does. So yeah, man, it's freaking awesome. It's gonna be an awesome event. It's gonna be awesome to watch you raise a million dollars.

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're gonna do it, man. We're gonna do it.

• 1:41:26Jocko Willink?

  Gonna hype it up.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you so much. And, uh, you know, I just actually, I'm so grateful for, you know, not just you guys, the whole board, the, the work that you guys do. I mean, I don't know anything about this stuff. I've been out of teams for three years. So I'm just like, you know, learning how to do things as we do it. And I'm just grateful for the help that you've given, given us. I'm just grateful for, you know, we have ups and downs, but generally the trajectory is up. And, uh, you know, one of the greatest and best things in my life is, uh, you know, my fiancee Kat, and she has really been a force for good in my life. And I'm just, uh, really grateful, uh, for you, Kat. And I wanted to say thank you for, uh, for the help and the support you've given me on this along the way. Cause she didn't look for credit. She's like your wife. She keeps her mouth shut and she just silently supports me.

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  Whether I can't fix the printer or I can't make, you know, stuff work or I'm about to do something stupid. She's the first to know. And so I'm just really grateful for her influence in my life. So I wanted to make sure I gave a shout out to her.

• 1:42:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, she likes, I guess, to be behind the scenes like my wife.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, my wife, um, people used to say, oh, is your wife gonna come on the podcast? And I'd be like, nope. And well, you know, did you ask her? Yep.

• 1:42:34Jocko Willink?

  Well, why, aren't you a good leader? Can't you convince her? Nope. In fact, I asked her one time, I said, hey, listen, what if I write questions for you?

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:41Jocko Willink?

  You tell me the answers or write the answers and I'll just read them on the podcast. Cause people have questions for you. And she's like, I don't really want to do that.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  I like when you do her English accent, though. It makes me laugh.

• 1:42:54Jocko Willink?

  I don't like to do that. I don't like that kind of thing. I don't like to do that. And I'm like, okay, cool. So yeah, uh, props to the, props to the ladies. Um, awesome. Does that get us up to speed? Is that where we're at?

• 1:43:04Speaker 01

  Uh, I think it does. I don't think we missed anything, but I, I don't know. I'm always, I'm interested in Echo's angle on things, you know? Uh, we were making fun of him earlier because last time I was on the show, we were here for like, I don't know, hour and a half before he realized like, wait, you're Jimmy May. I'm like, yeah, bro. We've been rolling together for years and you just didn't put two and two together. It's pretty funny.

• 1:43:25Speaker 02

  Trying to remember correctly, like I knew your name was Jimmy May. That's the thing. I knew your first and last name.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  And then I knew of Jimmy May, the team guy legend dude.

• 1:43:37Speaker 02

  Just, I don't know, subconsciously, that's just two different people. I'm just talking about Jimmy May, Jimmy May at different times and I'm thinking about other, you know, and I, yeah, it all came.

• 1:43:46Jocko Willink?

  It's an interesting thing, cause we might have talked about it, but for some reason, when I say your name Jimmy, like when I reference you, I always say Jimmy May. I never just say Jimmy. Maybe it's because it's too common of a name, but I always say, oh yeah, you know, Jimmy, like, oh Jimmy May is coming out, or I saw Jimmy May, or you know, whatever, that's what I would say. So I would be talking some story about the teams and I'd be like, oh yeah, Jimmy May did this, or Jimmy May said that, or whatever. But then he's rolling with you and doesn't recognize that the other.

• 1:44:14Speaker 02

  Rolling with you, I did not know your last name.

• 1:44:18Jocko Willink?

  You probably just knew it was Jimmy. And then what halfway through the first time he came on, I said Jimmy May.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  I was lost. I was like, what are you talking about, dude? We've known each other for years.

• 1:44:31Speaker 02

  I was like, brother, I was you the whole time. Okay. All right. Cool. Do I have any more questions?

• 1:44:38Speaker 02

  Thank you. Let's go back, rewind a little bit, Mayday Executive. So you said you do like all kinds of stuff.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  All kinds of stuff, man.

• 1:44:45Speaker 02

  So like, let's say you, you had a potential client or whatever, and they were like, hey, I want to do, I don't know, X, Y, Z, something that you've never done before. You're like, hey, hell yeah, let's figure that out.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  I would be like, hey, I need a minute. Let me make a phone call, because there's someone in the teams that can do this stuff. Lots of, I did a land navigation for a group about three or four weeks ago. I just called the guy that runs land for SQT. I'm like, hey man, you lined me out on this? And because I, we know how to do it. I just, you know, for what points are, and there's a bunch of logistics I didn't understand. So I haven't had to say no. Yet.

• 1:45:18Speaker 02

  Right. Okay. So that was the question. Like, it's not like, you know, you go to certain restaurants, you say, hey, do you guys serve this? And they say, no, we don't serve this, but you're not like that.

• 1:45:26Speaker 01

  Mayday Executive serves so far. Everything that they want.

• 1:45:31Speaker 02

  All right. Solid.

• 1:45:33Speaker 01

  Why you, why you got something you want to do?

• 1:45:34Speaker 02

  Well, actually, I like I like going to take my son shooting.

• 1:45:38Speaker 01

  Oh, we can just do that, but.

• 1:45:39Speaker 02

  Right. That's what I was thinking. I was like, oh, shoot.

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  I'll set it up.

• 1:45:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Um, but you know, my mind starts, you know, working on these types of things. And if hey, if I got a shop that provides these services, I'm gonna take you up on it.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  You know what's interesting is that I think we we start off with the whole that the dad thing. Like, you know, you and I have talked about this before, Jocko. Like, I would love, we talked about, start a school. And we'll be like, have the school that just grows kids to like actual learn things that are useful. And anyway, I've been thinking about doing an event where it's just dads and their sons. And I just, I don't, I'm trying to figure dial in the age group, you know, because not, not all nine year olds are equal. I don't know. I, you know, what can I do with them? But I think it'd be cool to have like day one where it's like I train the dads. Cause I don't want to be the guy. I want to be front center. I want the dad to train their kids. So like day one, whether we're doing like land nav or we're shooting or whatever we're doing, I train the dads. Hey. And then I'll be there just in case they got something they can't handle, you know, and I'll run like the safety aspect of it.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  And then have them, you know, camp out and do this stuff with their kids. I just, I'm not trying to make money. I think it's just something cool to like, be like, hey, look, you know, you're the man. You need to take ownership of your family and uh, and let's, let's do something special with your kids. And I think it'd be a cool thing. So I've been kicking the idea around. I don't know if you guys have thoughts on it, but you know, how, how old's your boy?

• 1:46:55Speaker 02

  Nine.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  That's right in there, man.

• 1:46:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And, and he, he shoots, I take him shooting stuff, but it's just at the indoor range where, you know, he has a gun that he's kind of designated with.

• 1:47:03Jocko Willink?

  Nothing explodes, nothing's on fire.

• 1:47:06Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:47:08Jocko Willink?

  When you start shooting through the windows of vehicles and stuff like that, bro.

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  We can do all that.

• 1:47:13Speaker 02

  Well, he's down for all that kind of stuff. As long as you start slow and don't just throw them into some weird thing to like shock the city. You know how sometimes that's part of the training thing and you want to shock the system, bro.

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  Come on now. I'm not gonna do that to your kid.

• 1:47:25Jocko Willink?

  I will.

• 1:47:26Speaker 01

  He will not be down for that. No, not at all. But he's pretty, he's pretty sharp.

• 1:47:31Jocko Willink?

  Ever since the Warrior Kid book, first book came out, like I've been talking about the Warrior Kid Academy, the Warrior Kid camps. I think there's gonna get a lot of traction when the movie comes out. The movie's uh coming out the day before Thanksgiving and it's, it's such a good movie. It's so good. It's so, it's just awesome. It's funny. It's uh, it's funny. It's moving. It's inspirational. It's, it's everything. It's, it's, it's a beautiful movie, but it's gonna get kids and parents thinking about that Warrior Kid path, you know, and I think there's.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  Maybe I do a collab with you, bro. I'm not here to try to like make money or anything. I would love to work with you on it. That's a great, great cause.

• 1:48:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I think and, and you know, I even on that initial, we did a podcast 10 years ago about what the Warrior Kid Academy would have. Like it's, and we could go back and pull that blueprint. It's good. It's a solid blueprint. So yeah, I think something like that is in my future. Uh, and, and so yeah, we'll see what happens there. People can find you on LinkedIn, Jimmy May.

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Please hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm, I'm, I'm trying to grow that audience and uh, yeah, it's just Jimmy May.

• 1:48:38Jocko Willink?

  And, and then BTB, this is www.beyondthebrotherhood.org for Mayday. Mayday is maydayexecutive.com. And then if you need the cable pilot, and I don't know if we, we'll talk about uh, if we're gonna leave this in or not, based on my ability to invest in the company. If you want, if you need the cable pilot, if you're, look, if you're a lineman, you're out there. Uh, you're one, you're an energy company. You're delivering energy people and you need to do it more efficiently and safer, then check out Mayday Solutions. Mayday dot solutions. That's it. There's no dot com. It's mayday dot solutions.

• 1:49:20Jocko Willink?

  And then finally, uh, the NYC Seal Swims dot com. NYC Seal Swims dot com. We need to, what, we've already uh, got a hundred or a hundred and twenty?

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Ninety-six as of three days ago, but I didn't check it before I came in.

• 1:49:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so that's gonna sell out quick. Um, if you wanna go up there and swim, you gotta get it registered quick and then help us raise a million dollars to help out all of our brothers in the teams. That's what we got going on.

• 1:49:53Jocko Willink?

  Jimmy, any closing thoughts, bro?

• 1:49:55Speaker 01

  No, I know that when my brother hears this, he's gonna, he'll let you invest because my brother Jeremy May, he's a big fan. He listens to all your stuff. So you may have just got yourself in.

• 1:50:06Jocko Willink?

  I hope so, bro. There I am. Otherwise, otherwise Echo's on the case. He's gonna edit it right out.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  Well, you know what? I do just have just a message of gratitude. Again, I'm just so thankful Jocko for your continued friendship. But even, you know, without all the stuff you do now, you've been a good friend to me a long time ago. You came and fixed my sink when I was on deployment and I had, you know, just, you've just been a good friend for a long time. And, uh, you know, I appreciate it and I appreciate the things you've, you've put in front of me. And, you know, I'm grateful for where I am in life. Uh, got a great woman, great kids. And, uh, I just, I just, just grateful for the opportunity to be where I'm at. So thank you guys.

• 1:50:44Jocko Willink?

  Well, back at you, man. Thanks for, uh, thanks for coming on. And again, I'm always here for you. You know that. You know, what I have is what you have. Uh, that's because what you did for me, what you did for the teams, what you did for the country, and what you're continuing to do right now to help out our brothers beyond the brotherhood of the teams. It's having a huge impact. And so I'm here for you always.

• 1:51:07Speaker 01

  Appreciate you, brother.

• 1:51:08Jocko Willink?

  All right, man. And with that, Jimmy May has left the building. He's about to go get after it somewhere. He's about to go make something happen. He's about to go spearfish after he crashes a car off of a cliff and blows it up. And then he's gonna shoot some guns at the car as he's falling down. And once he gets in the water, he's gonna spearfish a big giant shark.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  Tell you.

• 1:51:32Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. When you're doing things like that, you need fuel. We recommend Jocko Fuel. Hey, we got hydration. We got Go Energy. We got protein. We got a new protein, Raspberry Gelato.

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:51:47Jocko Willink?

  Raspberry Gelato. Now, listen.

• 1:51:51Jocko Willink?

  The term gelato, right? Is that a term that I would use?

• 1:51:58Jocko Willink?

  Gelato? Have you ever heard me say gelato before?

• 1:52:00Speaker 02

  Not that I've

• 1:52:01Jocko Willink?

  I'm pretty sure gelato is just ice cream. A special fancy kind of ice cream.

• 1:52:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:52:06Jocko Willink?

  Fancy is not really my scene.

• 1:52:07Speaker 02

  Oh, right, right, right.

• 1:52:08Jocko Willink?

  But in this particular case, there's a reason behind this word.

• 1:52:13Jocko Willink?

  Cause gelato is like a little extra. It's it's a little extra ice cream activity.

• 1:52:21Jocko Willink?

  So check it out. We got raspberry gelato, ready to drink protein.

• 1:52:24Speaker 02

  Oh, ready to drink?

• 1:52:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's RTG, RTD.

• 1:52:26Speaker 02

  Oh, now you're talking to me.

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  RTD, ready to drink raspberry gelato. We got, we got a bunch of different flavors. What's your favorite flavor powdered milk?

• 1:52:37Speaker 02

  Powdered milk, well, now the, it would be the peanut butter chocolate. But recently I've been into the strawberry. I know it sounds weird because it was kind of on the bottom of the list. But here's the thing, this is what I've been doing. I've been doing that Greek yogurt thing that Coach Hannah taught us how to do. Um, but I've been doing it with a strawberry thing. You see what I'm saying? And then I, you know how you go off on tangents? So, you know, making these weird strawberry smoothies with this and that and all kinds of other ingredients.

• 1:53:04Jocko Willink?

  For my program there, strawberry, which I also do, strawberry and vanilla are morning flavors. For the, for the Greek yogurt.

• 1:53:11Speaker 02

  I could see it.

• 1:53:12Jocko Willink?

  Morning flavors. You can throw a couple of blueberries in there. You can throw a couple of strawberries in there. You're getting like, what is it? 20 grams of protein plus 22, like you've got 44 grams of protein. Boom, right out of the gate in the morning.

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  Yep, yes, sir.

• 1:53:26Jocko Willink?

  Now, and you get a fresh, uh, uh, fruit scenario, right? That's a morning thing, right? Afternoon, evening. Chocolate, chocolate peanut butter, chocolate mint. Put some, uh, some little sugar free chocolate chips in there. A handful of nuts. Mixed nuts. And then, listen, if I'm being quite honest with you, shot of whipped cream.

• 1:53:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 1:53:52Jocko Willink?

  You got yourself a dessert, a straight up dessert.

• 1:53:54Speaker 02

  Rocky road scenario.

• 1:53:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, rocky road scenario. So that's what we got. We got everything that you need at Jocko Fuel. Go to jockofuel.com or go to your retailer. Go to the store, go to the grocery store. We probably have Jocko Fuel in there. If there's not, ask for it and we'll get it to you. Also check out originusa.com. We got American-made goods. We got American-made hoodies, jiu-jitsu gees, rash guards. I just, I just trained today. I know that other people that are in this room were not training today. Is that because you don't have a rash guard? Is that, what's the reason?

• 1:54:28Speaker 02

  No, no, that specific modality of training, yes, I did skip that particular mode of training today, but I did other sorts.

• 1:54:35Jocko Willink?

  It's weird because Kerry came by.

• 1:54:38Speaker 02

  Kado.

• 1:54:38Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And he's like, oh yeah, what's up? And I go, you know, just here, training with Echo. And he goes, oh, he's all surprised. He's like, oh, Echo's here? And I go, whoa, yeah, I'm training with him. And he goes, he goes, what, where is he? And I go, well, he's here in spirit.

• 1:54:53Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:54:54Jocko Willink?

  We got that training in. And you had a spiritual rash guard, right?

• 1:54:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:58Jocko Willink?

  Probably in your mind, your soul was covered, but I was actually in the real world on the mats of justice. Uh, check out originusa.com. A hundred percent American-made, communist-free, slavery-free, built by freedom. Originusa.com. Go get some.

• 1:55:18Speaker 02

  Even in person, the only rash guards I use are Origin rash guards. And I do have a bunch of them. Not to mention a custom one, because they go hard.

• 1:55:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, you should use them.

• 1:55:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're right. You're right about that. I'm not gonna do that. Anyway, also, don't forget about Jocko's story. Discipline equals freedom. As far as representation on the path, shirts, hats, hoodies, other stuff, other accessories. We've got these little cool silicon wristbands. I don't really wear that many wristbands, but when I wear them, I kind of feel a little something.

• 1:55:45Jocko Willink?

  What do they say?

• 1:55:46Speaker 02

  Discipline equals freedom.

• 1:55:47Jocko Willink?

  That's a good one.

• 1:55:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good one. Flags are back in stock, by the way.

• 1:55:51Jocko Willink?

  Good. People need those flags.

• 1:55:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, also, we did, so the Shirt Locker subscription situation. New design every month. People seem to like it. I did go one step further. I've been mentioning it. The One of the designs from the past few years ago that people really liked. And they, and you can kind of tell because when you kind of have it on or whatever, more people than not than than usual say, oh my God, you know, and they make a thing out of it. So anyway, it is released to the public already. Look, you don't have the jump like by this time you don't have the jump on it if you didn't sign up for the email. See what I'm saying? You have the email list or whatever where I let everybody know, but I'm letting you know now. See what I'm saying? You do run the risk of certain sizes being sold out or not, maybe, maybe not, but that's kind of the way it works.

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  But it's out. Sugar coated lies. That's the one. It's out to the public. It's on jocko store.com.

• 1:56:45Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Go get some. Uh, got a bunch of books. Put your legs on by Rob Jones. Need to lead by Dave Burke. I've written a bunch of books, a bunch of kids books. Check them out. Primalbeef.com. If you need steak, get some. Colorado craft beef.com. If you need steak, get some. Also, we have Echelon Front. We have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. The next big event that we have that's not sold out is because we have Battlefield coming out, sold out. Council's coming up. It's sold out. We have the muster in San Diego, July 8th through the 10th. And this is a two day leadership seminar, training course, indoctrination.

• 1:57:28Jocko Willink?

  That's what's happening. It is July 8th through the 10th. If you want to come, go to echelonfront.com and check the events and we will see you there. Also, extremeownership.com. This is our online training academy. You can check that out as well. Also, you know, you can look at Ask Jocko on your application on your phone. You can use something called Ask Jocko. And it's a AI. What's the word here? An AI simulation of my brain, you know?

• 1:57:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:58:00Jocko Willink?

  And it will, it's really good at, it's, it's meant for leadership questions. So check that out wherever you get your apps for your Android or your Apple. You can check that out as well. 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 Americas Mighty Warriors.org. Check out Heroes and Horses.org. And then you heard a bunch about Jimmy May's organization today. Beyond the Brotherhood.org. So check that out. Hopefully you can go to swim or you can sponsor someone that's doing the swim. So it'd be incredible to be able to raise this type of money to put back into that organization. Check out Warriors in Need as well.

• 1:58:45Jocko Willink?

  Warriors in Need.org. You heard from Ben Ingram last week. He's trying to get these veterans that have these skills and put them in the right spot. Let's help them do that. If you want to connect with Jimmy May, go to LinkedIn and look for Jimmy May and you'll find him. Give him a follow or whatever it is you give someone on LinkedIn. And then for Beyond the Brotherhood, it's Beyond the Brotherhood.org. For May Day, it's MayDayExecutive.com. And then if you need the cable pilot, go to MayDay.Solutions. And finally, for the swim, NYC Seals, SealSwims.com. Check that out. If you want to connect with us, check out Jaco.com on social media.

• 1:59:29Jocko Willink?

  And then on the, or that's on the internet, on the social media. I'm at Jocko Willink's Echoes. I'm at Jocko Willink. There's no S on that.

• 1:59:38Speaker 02

  No S.

• 1:59:40Jocko Willink?

  Echoes at Echo Charles. Just be careful because the reason that thing exists is not to inspire you. It isn't to educate you. It isn't to improve your capabilities as a human. It is to take your time and squander it. So be careful. Thanks once again to Jimmy for coming on again. Your loyalty.

• 2:00:04Jocko Willink?

  Is much appreciated to the country, to the teams and to our brothers. So thanks for what you're doing. A salute to all of our military personnel out there around the world right now in harm's way, protecting freedom and our way of life. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for protecting us here on the home front. And everyone else out there, let's go back to this idea of skills. Right? We talked about passing on skills. What skills do you have? You know, can you build stuff? Can you rewire

• 2:00:45Jocko Willink?

  a house? Can you do a little bit of plumbing? Are you a fighter? You know how to fight? You know some jiu-jitsu? You know some Muay Thai? You know some boxing? Good shot? You know some archery? You're good at communicating with other people? You're good at leading? What skills do you have? What skills do you need? How can you build up your skill sets?

• 2:01:06Jocko Willink?

  And maybe most important, what skills can you actually pass on? And do you have that skill? The skill of passing on skills? That might be the most important skill of all. So go get after it. Learn skills and pass them on. And that's all I've got for tonight. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.