418: Keep Your Eyes on That Target Because That's Where It's Happening. With Mark Coch "Cochiolo""

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Mark T. “Coch” Cochiolo has over 30 years of Naval Special Warfare experience ranging from Special Warfare Operator, Operational Tester, Combat developer, Officer In Charge, Training Officer and Weapons Instructor. Coch has four operational SEAL tours of duty to the Western Pacific (WESTPAC) under his belt and has spent eight years as an assaulter and breacher on the US Navy’s tier one counter-terrorist unit making operational and combat deployments to hotspots in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. 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 418 with Kerry Helton and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Kerry. Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  I was, I was raised in the SEAL teams and, and I know that, at least I say that, right? And I know that I wasn't actually raised in the SEAL teams. But when I consider who I am today and what my values are and what my principles are, what my driving forces in my personality are, the vast majority of them came not from where I grew up as a kid, but came from the SEAL teams, or more specifically from my fellow frogmen in the SEAL teams. And there's all kinds of different guys in the teams. There's the guy that worked hard. There's the guy that makes things happen. There's that tough guy.

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  There's the chief that looked out for the boys, the officer that kept us out of trouble. The guy that was awesome in the field, the guy that knew how to fight, the guy that could fix any engine. The guy that asked really good questions, the serious guy, the professional guy. There's just all these different individuals in the SEAL teams. And they, and they say that, there's that saying, I guess, I don't want to say they say, but there's a saying that you are the average of your five closest friends. Well, in the teams, you got a lot of friends and all those guys leave a mark on you. Especially when you're young, right? I, I've had many conversations with people about the impression

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  that gets imprinted on you in your first platoon. And a lot of times you think that that's the way the world should be, is the way it was in your first platoon. But it does continue to develop and you continue to change and you continue to grow. But you really get, you really get formulated a lot in your early days in the SEAL teams. And everyone leaves a mark on you that you work with.

• 2:04Jocko Willink?

  And of course, there's some guys that you don't like. There's some guys that you reject. That you look at them and think, I'm not going to be like that. These are the slackers or the lazy guys or the incompetent guys, but the good guys.

• 2:18Jocko Willink?

  You try and do what they do. And that's what I did in my career. I tried to reject the bad examples and I tried to emulate the good ones. And there were a lot of good ones along the way that made a mark. And one of them was a guy named Mark Coch, Coach Iolo, who spent thirty eight, thirty years in naval special warfare, actually more than thirty years in naval special warfare. He served in all kinds of different SEAL commands, including the JSOC Command. He rose up through the ranks, eventually retiring as a warrant officer. And even after that, he continued to work in the teams. And he had an attitude that I always remembered and

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  I always admired when I was a new guy. A positive attitude that was just always ready to go. And it's an honor to have him here with us here tonight to share his experiences. And lessons learned, Mark Coch. Thanks for joining us.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Wow. That's an intro. I was, I was getting worried there when he says, there's those guys you don't like. I'm like, oh, is that me?

• 3:23Jocko Willink?

  It was a setup.

• 3:26Jocko Willink?

  And it's a dishonor to have one of those guys here tonight to tell you guys how not to act.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, there'll be plenty of that, I'm sure. Plenty of not acting good, but yeah, whatever.

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. No, I always remember, we'll get to it. But I always, you know, you definitely left a mark on me when I was a young, new guy, because you were not a new guy at the time. I think you were four or five platoons deep. And four and five platoons deep, guys can act a bunch of different ways. And the way that you acted, the way you tried was, I think I might have turned twenty one. Yeah, because we were on deployment. So I was twenty one. But I mean, I was like, young and dumb and full of motivation. And, and you were just a great, cool guy that set a great example for me and some of the other new guys that were out there at the time. But we'll get all that. Let's start at the beginning. So where'd you grow up?

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Um, California. I did all my, um, elementary school in a little place called Pismo Beach. Pismo? Yeah, Pismo Beach. Yeah, we were dirt poor. Uh huh. Me and my mom, dad and four brothers and, uh. Damn, four brothers. What number are you? I'm two. Number two? Yeah. What did your dad do for a living? Um, well, at the time, um, he was going to school. So was my mom. So they were both getting their teaching credentials and stuff through Cal Poly. Oh, so you were up there. They were up there slow. Yeah, yeah. But we lived in Pismo Beach. Um, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but you know, there's a, a restaurant called Mc, uh, McClintox. Okay. It's up off of Matty Road, right? You know, looking over the ocean, million, million, multimillion dollar view.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, we lived in a little green farmhouse, almost a bunk house. Um, I think the rent was like ninety bucks a month. It'd be, it was, we were just, yeah, yeah. And so were you kind of like a free range child that was just running around doing whatever while your parents are going to school? Yeah, big time. That was, that was the thing. You know, we, we went to school. We got dropped off either by the bus or, you know, whatever, you know, landed us back at home and we were just there. You know, running around the hills and chasing cows and, you know, all that. We didn't have any money. So it's like, you didn't get to like, learn how to ride a horse or anything like that. But yeah, you run around, chase the horses and, you know, yeah, get chased by the bull and just, just, oh God, it's amazing. I'm still amazed.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  That all my brothers grew up with all our fingers in sight and both eyes. Cause, uh, we did some really stupid stuff. And how long did you live there for? Um, well, kindergarten through sixth grade. So about seven years. So when you're in sixth grade, what are you, ten years old? Um. Maybe a, actually you're eleven, twelve. Also you had some legit time there. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I mean, right there at the beach, you know, of course it was, you know, almost three miles to get to the beach. So we didn't have any money or transportation. So. I grew up watching the ocean, never learned to surf. No, bummer. Yeah. Swam around in a bunch and, you know, we'd ride our bikes down there when we were a little bit older and we'd swim around in our Levis or, well, they weren't even Levis. It was tough skins. You know, remember those Sears tough skins? Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  And we would swim. We just wearing our pants and when then we'd get back on the bike and ride home and you'd dry off on the way home and wonder why you're chafed, you know?

• 6:41Speaker 01

  So then what, where'd you move to next? And why? Well, the folks graduated and got a job in San Jose, California. Wait, so your parents, they're, they're going to school, but they already had four kids? Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, yeah. So was this bad planning? No, my dad made a course correction. He found himself in this really horrible job that was driving him crazy. He's like, screw this. What was it? Um, he was working for the California Youth Authority. Okay. So he was dealing with just, you know, troubled kids. And, and it wasn't the kids that were the issue, it was the administration. The bureaucracy. Yeah, and he was like, I can't do this.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  I hate, you know, he'd come home and he would just be just completely pissed off. And I was too young to remember all that, but he was like, you know what? Screw it, we're gonna go back, get our, you know, teaching credentials and, uh, you know, they took turns, you know, uh, you know, working on our job. And the other one would go to school, back and forth. And so they both got their teaching credentials there at Slow? Yeah, yeah. Um, my dad got a job, but actually at the high school I went to. Okay. And, uh, my mom worked at a continuation high school in Gilroy. Okay. But yeah, so we, we rolled up there and, oh, when was it? Uh, like 79, 78, something like that, I don't remember. Um, but junior high and high school was all in San Jose. Okay.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  East side of San Jose, which, you know, it makes like the, or back then, I don't know what it is now, but it was always made in the top 10 for murders in, uh, in the United States. You know, a lot of gang activity and crap like that. And, you know, most of the guys that, um, that, you know, lived around us were either dead or in jail. You know, um, but, you know, it kinda stayed it, kept my nose clean out of that as much I could. What were you doing in, in like high school? Were you playing sports? Um, well, my folks got us into, uh, taekwondo. Okay. So that's what I was doing. And it, they also taught, um, our niece, which I really liked. Okay. Stick fighting, knife fighting type deal.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  It teaches you angles, it keeps you on your feet, you know, it was a... It's it's treatable stuff.

• 8:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  So I kinda and then later on, I I trained in when we're in the Philippines with the Filipinos. And then in San Diego, we found a place called Sepita Brothers and my brother and I trained there for a bit.

• 9:08Jocko Willink?

  What what are you doing at school? Are you getting good grades? Are you like a knucklehead? Are you just passing and getting it done?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  I was just passing, but I I really like photography. So I was the, you know, one of photographers for the school newspaper and yearbook and all that crap. And, you know, I thought, OK, I could probably, you know, do this for a living, you know? And that, you know, it was just, it was pretty easy for me. And if I liked the subject, I did good in it. If I didn't, then, uh, yeah. So I think I graduated with a mean two point three, you know, GPA.

• 9:38Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Art, had you heard about the military? Like, what was making you think about the military? Did you? Had you heard of the SEAL teams yet?

• 9:46Speaker 01

  No, no. In nineteen eighty-four, there was no, you know, unless you knew a SEAL, you didn't know anything. But, you know, both my folks being, uh, you know, high school teachers, they were big on, you know, hey, you're going to college, you're going to college. Uh, but we can't pay it, so you gotta find your own money. And, uh, the Navy had this cool deal where they gave you money for college and, hey, hey, photographer's mate, you know, I can go be a Navy photographer for a while. So that's what I did. And, um, yeah, so I I graduated, um, on the fourteenth of June nineteen eighty-four. And on the fifth morning of the fifteenth, I was on my way to Orlando, Florida.

• 10:30Jocko Willink?

  Rolling right in.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:31Jocko Willink?

  Did you know what to expect because you'd never been around the military?

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Oh, I had no idea. Dude, I I walked in there, it was like complete culture shock. It it was exactly what they wanted to do to you.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, all of a sudden you just walk in, oh, yeah, here it is. Shut up and sit, you know, stand there.

• 10:46Jocko Willink?

  All that stuff.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was, um, it was eye opening, but it was also really stupid. You know, and that's honestly, that that's how I got interested in the SEAL teams. Cause it, you know, boot camp, I was expecting to be a challenge. It was gonna be this, oh yeah, you know, DI is gonna come in and yell at me and throw shit around. No, no, the lights came on, okay, guys, get up. I'm like, what the hell? And it was just about folding your clothes and you know, just stupid stuff like, I was like, dude, this is dumb. What else you got? And one of the guys was like, well, we got this UDT SEAL program. What's that? Well, you get to jump at airplanes, shoot guns and blow stuff up. I was like, dude, sign me up.

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  Did you find out about that in boot camp or was it after boot camp?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  I found out about that in boot camp.

• 11:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  But I, so I, um, my mom, I was 17. So my mom had to sign for me to get into the military and she wouldn't sign active duty orders. So I had to go reservist at first. So I spent.

• 11:48Jocko Willink?

  Your mom was smart. It's actually a smart move. You're a 17 year old kid, you're like, you don't know what you're getting into. How about we do this reserve thing? Yeah. That's actually not a bad move, mom.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and it turned out probably pretty good because, um, when my son in law was going through training, he said that half of his class, half of the 200 guys were 18 years old and none of them made it. Not a single one, because there's just not that maturity level yet.

• 12:14Jocko Willink?

  But Gardner, you know, Jason Gardner, he was like, of course you know, Jason. But yeah, we, we heard some stat that if you're under 20 years old, it's a 5% chance of making it through. So, yeah, it's like, you gotta have that little something, I guess, extra little bit of moto. Me and Jason Gardner, we were both like 18 or 19, so get some. Jason was actually, I think he was actually, he might've been 17 turning 18. He was pretty freaking young. So did you like do, so did you go to photography's mate school or something?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Yep, I did boot camp and photo mate school, six months in Florida. And then, uh, came back and I was a drilling reservist for about a year.

• 12:56Jocko Willink?

  What do you do as a drilling reservist in the Navy?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Well, I'd drive up to, uh, Alameda from San Jose. Take some pictures? One weekend a month and work in the photo lab there. And we have take pictures of stuff and develop film and and just do stupid Navy stuff. And yeah, I was like, okay, how do I get active duty orders? And no one had ever gone active duty from that place. So they had no idea. Turned out all I had to do was just not show up and they would activated me. But I didn't want to be that, you know, a black mark like, oh, no, now I gotta go to a ship. I can't go, you know, be a SEAL. And it took, God, it took a long time, damn near a year of just drilling back and forth, hitting the my recruiter up. And this is trying to get to go active duty. Trying to go active duty and get buds.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  So I drove, you know, I did the screening test. So I drove down to San Diego, took the test and ran back and then went home in like two days. Were you doing anything to like train? Well, funny you should ask. Yeah, it was like, okay, what's the, I was training for the PST because that's all I knew. So underwater recovery stroke, you know, use the school pool because my dad was still, you know, you know, a an instructor there. So I could, you know, just practice the breast stroke and I say, okay, you gotta run. So I ran some, gotta do some calisthenics. That's never been hard. I could do pull ups and push ups and stuff like that.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  But yeah, the first time I ran with with boondockers on was was that day. So you had, back then it was a mile in seven and a half minutes. And I made that sucker in seven 23. So, yeah. And it was good enough to get me through the door, but okay, I'm gonna have to up that number, you know, make that better. And then, yeah, I drove back and kept training and, you know, they finally figured out, you know, that, you know, how to do it and activated me and I rolled back in and I got.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Got to San Diego too early, like three months too early from the class.

• 15:16Jocko Willink?

  So you're on active duty, you get activated and they send you down here?

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Sent me down here, they had to go through two weeks of NAVETs training, you know, it was for all the guys who tried to get away with not going to their reservations and stuff. So, yeah, that was a little anti motivational. But yeah, so they stowed me over at EOD Mobile Unit 3. And so we just did slave labor for those guys for like three months and then, you know, classed up with 141.

• 15:49Jocko Willink?

  And how'd that go?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Well, it was buds, man. I mean, yeah, had its highs and its lows, you know, and people always ask me, what was buds like? Well, it's the worst time in your life that you'll ever miss, you know? Cause it's so pure, you know, it's like just survive this next evolution, you know? And that's how you make it through hell week. You think, okay, you set these little goals like, yeah. There was one guy, Fred Swanson, he was a chief and I was like really, really cold, you know, right at breakout. I was like, holy crap, I don't know if I can do this.

• 16:32Jocko Willink?

  Were you like 145 pounds?

• 16:33Speaker 01

  I was 143 pounds. I graduated high school there, that was what was buds. I came back from my first deployment.

• 16:40Jocko Willink?

  Zero body fat?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Oh dude, I was so negative. What came to drown proofing? And you know, they're talking, oh yeah, no, we're going to tie your hands, you know, okay, but no one's negative. You just gotta relax, you know? I'm like, okay, I believed it, I bought into it, you know? Like, okay, you jumped in the pool, okay, John, just relax and you'll float. And so I could close my eyes and I'm relaxing, relaxing, and then I feel my feet hit with some authority on the bottom of the pool. I'm like, I look up, I'm like, well, I'm gonna have to figure something else out. So while everybody else was floating, I was kicking the whole time, you know? Because otherwise, yeah.

• 17:17Jocko Willink?

  Do they really say no one's negative?

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what the

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  That was the rumor was that they're trying to tell everybody?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  That's what the instructor would say, oh yeah, no one's negative.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had a kid in my class, he was from Africa. He was like, he was an American citizen, but he lived his first, whatever, 10 years in life in Africa. Super nice guy. Like a physical stud. Bro, they pushed him in the pool for drown proofing, he just went literally straight to the bottom. With a lot of authority and he didn't come up. Like whatever position he landed in, like they had to go get him and he never, he never made it. Like he was just too, he had no body fat whatsoever. And if you don't have any body fat whatsoever, you are gonna be negative and you're going down.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I mean, there's, there's ways to figure it out. I was comfortable in the water because I grew up around the water. So it's like, okay, I can, I knew I could figure it out. But I mean, you gotta, you know, swim the length of the pool, you know, the long way and back, you know, with your hands and feet tied. Well, that was after, you know, kicking for, you know, those, those 20 breaths or whatever the requirement was. So it was a lot more energy that I had to put out, but yeah.

• 18:22Jocko Willink?

  And so you say, you were saying you were freezing and some chief was gonna hook you up?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, so Fred Swanson, he was the, the SEAL motivator. Okay, that was there for that class. And if any other instructor had heard me just, you know, whine a little bit, it was, would have been a full court press to smash me, right? But he just kind of, nah, here's what you want to do. Never quit during an evolution. Always tell yourself, you feel like you're gonna quit, quit after the evolution. I'm like, okay.

• 18:50Jocko Willink?

  Uh, okay.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  So yeah, I mean, you're freezing cold and then what's the next thing you do? Oh, a race, we'll warm you up again. You know, like, okay. And I was like, all right, and then that was it, man. Whatever it was, it could suck, it would just be the worst possible thing. It's like, nah, I'm gonna make it through this and then I'll see what's, you know, if, see what I want to do, you know? And you want to see the sunrise, you know, it's like, okay, there's my goal, see the sunrise or make it to the next meal. I mean, getting, you know, four meals a day and still just losing weight. Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  But yeah, you, um, so I, I've been in one hell week and I've seen one hell week.

• 19:31Jocko Willink?

  You only worked one hell week?

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Only worked one, because I was always on the island when I was, you know, an instructor.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  But watching a hell week right there as things are going down, you're like, oh my God, we are killing these kids. Somebody is going to die here, you know? But yeah, there's a method to the madness.

• 19:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  And they're still doing it right, you know, you're never going to get everybody that needs to go. I mean, it doesn't take much training to motivate somebody to just survive through whatever that next evolution is.

• 20:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there is like a, there is, you know, people are going to make it through hell week, just talking hell week. Definitely there's people that are like, oh, they made it through because they were super motivated and they want to make it happen. And they bring together the team and there's a bunch of guys that are like part of that team that's getting brought together. There's some dudes that are literally just trying to make it through for themselves and it is a group of people. It's not huge, but, and I actually had this conversation, I was working with the admiral when I was the admiral's aide. And he said something along the lines of, he's like, you know, we went down scared of hell week. You know, I didn't, he went down scared of hell week. I stood there like a freaking jackass, you know, giving him whatever he needed. And, but, you know, when we're coming back, he's like, you know, the one thing is, he's like, you know, one thing, Jocko,

• 20:49Jocko Willink?

  it proves these guys are tough. And I was like, hey, sir, sometimes I go, sometimes it proves they figure out a way to sneak through the system. And he was kind of like, that's a good point because you know, it's true. There are some guys that figure out a way, they do just, they in the right spot, they get in the right spot on the boat. They get in the right spot on the log, they get in the right spot, they, they're good enough to, they, they sit out that one evolution. They can tell when something count, like they just skate and there's definitely a group of guys like that.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  And it's easy to do now because there's information out there.

• 21:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, I was going to say that too. With, look, there was very limited information when I went and I went in 1990. So 1991, I was in BUDs. So the amount of information for you was just like, there was nothing. Now the, these guys, they have like the class schedule, they watch the movie, they seen the videos, the documentaries. So they, they kind of know what's coming, but I also, but I also know that the instructors now, they, they have countermeasures for all this shit.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:52Jocko Willink?

  They have fake schedules. Like it's, they're going to get you, they're going to get you. Hell week's not going to be easy. BUDs is not going to be easy. Anyone that thinks it's gonna be easy is gonna have a real hard time. They're gonna figure out how to make it hard, you know. Summer hell week, winter hell week, they're gonna figure out a way.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  You're gonna get cold, you're gonna be cold. It's just how long do you stay in the water?

• 22:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  You know? Um, yeah, I mean, BUDS for us, it was basically the same thing.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Was just, you know, first phase was a kick in the nuts. And the second phase was an underwater kick in the nuts. And then third phase was here's your gun and your bomb. Oh, and you're kicking the nuts. Um, when we figured it out, as I became an instructor, we wanted to make it so that we're actually training them. And that was, that was the big focus then at me being an instructor.

• 22:42Jocko Willink?

  What year was that?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Um, geez, I got to BUDS as the third phase training officer in December of 2007.

• 22:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so we were well into the war and everything and we needed guys to be better.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, guys, you know, and I, looking at myself, I was still fighting a lot of training scars because I didn't learn how to shoot in BUDS, you know. I did okay, I, you know, got my, my two E ribbons, but, you know, I had no idea. And it wasn't until I, I, you know, got to that SOCOM unit that you're talking, JSOC? Is that what we're calling it?

• 23:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  That's, that's when I learned to shoot.

• 23:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  And I was fighting all of these really bad habits. So I figured, well, if we could get these guys early on, no bad habits, and drill them up, you know, I'd tell them, hey, look, I'm not trying to make you as good a shot as me. I'm trying to make you way better. Because I'm still fighting these training scars from years ago.

• 23:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Because the, what I was talking about in the opening there, the first impressions that you get in the teams, like your first platoon is hard to shake some of that stuff. You're like, you're get, you get a mold on your brain. You're like, alright, it's just in there. And that's what you think is right. And you got a, that's, you know, you talk about the training habits of like, your shooting position and all that stuff. But also just your mindset and the way you think, if you're not careful. You can think that what you learned in your first platoon or your second platoon, you can think that that's the right way and every and it's like, man, it's first of all, there's many, many, many, many different ways to skin a cat. And anytime someone says, no, this is the right way, I'm all, I always get a little bit suspect.

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  Like, man, there's a lot of right ways to do this.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:29Jocko Willink?

  Lot of right ways.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  When they say it's the only way, it's like, no, no, no. Okay, I'm immediately skeptical of your, your intentions.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any challenges in BUDs? Was anything like super hard for you? Did you fail? Did you get rolled back?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Uh, no, I didn't get rolled back. Um, I made pretty much everything every time. The one, the one thing was the, the tread. Um, my legs cramped up and I sank and I mean, cause I was, like I said, you know, had no fat on me and I got cold and the cold was, was just, it would go right through me. And, you know, you know, when that happens and you're like, now you're required to put out this extra effort. And, you know, when both your, your thighs just ball up on you, it's kind of hard to, to tread with your hands out of the water and the tanks on your back. Um, so that I came back the next day and did it, but right then it was like, holy, you know, ate a bunch of bananas, you know?

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Get that potassium in there, yeah.

• 25:23Jocko Willink?

  That was the extent of our nutritional information at the time. Add cramps, eat bananas, all good.

• 25:30Jocko Willink?

  They weren't even really telling us to drink water yet. Like, I think drinking water as like a performance or health thing was kind of coming in around when I was in BUDs. Like some of the instructors would be like, oh, you should drink some water. Like it wasn't, hey, man, you really need to drink water. You know, you're going to get dehydrated. It's not good for you. It was, it wasn't really a thing yet.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I can't remember ever taking a drink of water in BUDs. You know, in how we, we had these like nurses that were following us around, trying to figure out what the X factor was. They did for three classes, you know, they, they measured our, you know, they watched what you ate when you went through the line and you estimated how much you were drinking and all this. And, um, yeah.

• 26:12Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't mean anything.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, what they, they found out, you know, the, the results of that was, um, the guy who quits and the guy who makes it through are exactly the same. You know, the difference is, you know, neck up, you know, it's whatever your brain can, can make your body do. Um, and they just confirmed it for us. We knew that already.

• 26:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you were all good in the water because you grew up swimming, so like pool comp and all that stuff, no factor?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, it was like the, um, when they did, uh, I think I was the third guy to go. So they were still the instructors motivated, you know, as the day goes along, you guys, okay, we're just gonna do this. No, no, this is like, yeah, uh, the guy who did me was, uh, was very motivated. But I remember, uh, you know, using a breathing technique as I go, okay, calm myself. All right, here we go. And as soon as I got in the water. They were playing the, the, uh, the themes, the song from, uh, from Jaws.

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  On the underwater.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Underwater speaker, yeah. So immediately that put me at ease. I was like, okay, this is funny, right? And they're like, okay, I just swim along that line and then they come and they'd hit you and they'd do this and it just got progressively worse and I just. It was, you went through the process and it was like, no problem.

• 27:24Jocko Willink?

  No factor.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  No, no, I am, you know, being comfortable underwater. I liked being underwater. I could hold my breath for a long time. So it wasn't, you know, that big a deal. And I was just like, hey, you do what they tell you.

• 27:35Jocko Willink?

  I failed pool comp the first time and the instructor was, he was also highly motivated. And you know him, uh, he's a warrant officer, uh, old UDT guy and. So he, I'm underwater and he just, he doesn't, he doesn't like hit me and start rolling me. He just comes down and knocks my mouthpiece out. And then he goes up and he comes down and as I'm putting it back and knocks it out again, and then as I'm putting it back and knocks it down again, and as he comes and put it. So I'm getting like a quarter of a breath each time by the time I suck the water out of the tube and all this stuff. And this goes on for 17 minutes and I'm not, I'm just, I just keep dealing with it, you know, getting up.

• 28:14Jocko Willink?

  And then he just comes down and pulls me up and he's like, you failed. You looked uncomfortable down there. And I was like, you know, I was so bummed. And I was, you know, but what are you gonna say? You're like, because I came up, I feel fine. He's like, well, you didn't look fine. You looked uncomfortable. And I had literally stayed. You know the slant of the pool where it goes from four feet? I, I had only taken like one step forward. So I was right there the whole time for 17 minutes. And pool comp was only a half an hour long, but I had 17 minutes. So pulls me up, he's like, you, you failed and, and you'll go to the wall. And so I failed and I ended up passing it the next time, but you know, fast forward. Twenty years or something or seventeen years or eighteen years and he now we're at Trade at

• 28:55Jocko Willink?

  Together and I'm the Trade at OIC and I was like, hey, man, you remember failing me in pool comp? Because, oh, yeah. And I go, why'd you fail? Because I was just fucking with you. I was like, bro, that's jacked up, man. This is like my whole life and I could have like freaked out and gone into some downward psychological spiral. And he's like, ah, you'd be fine. I was like, okay.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  That was the real test for you, Jocko.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  That shit was not cool. I was like, yo.

• 29:23Jocko Willink?

  So you get through second phase, no factor, third phase, island.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Well, actually.

• 29:27Jocko Willink?

  You guys did it backwards, right?

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Was the, yeah, yeah. And that was, that was interesting.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, island wasn't, you know, you just, okay, think tactically and they're teaching this stuff and you just kind of do it, but it wasn't really training. It's like, like I said, you know.

• 29:44Jocko Willink?

  It was like hell week with a gun.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, honestly, it's what it was. I mean, hell, we did surf passage on the rocks out there, you know, by bird shit rock, you know, with IBSs in third, it's in second phase. I'm like, what are we doing out here? And we did full, I don't know if you, they were still doing this, the, the full UDT casting recovery and.

• 30:08Jocko Willink?

  And obstacle loading, you know, we're down there and the obstacles were at like twenty three feet. I'm like, bro.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:16Jocko Willink?

  Hey, everyone, this is not an obstacle at twenty three feet. No boat's gonna hit this. We're good. They're like, oh, well, you still gotta blow that shit up.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Still gotta get it.

• 30:24Jocko Willink?

  And the weird thing about buds is you never have, you're never, it's kind of like going to an MMA fight. You're never going to be in perfect shape. So in buds, even though like, oh, I can hold my breath for a minute and forty eight seconds. You get to buds, now you have like, you always have a little bit of a cold and some kind of weird lung thing and nose full of snot. So your breath is always shitty. Your breath holding is always shitty. So going down to twenty three feet to load an obstacle, you're getting like one half of a knot each time.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's, um, I, I went down on one and the search was, was really good. It was like at 20 feet plus. And I get down there, I'm like wrapping my legs around the horns and I'm tying this knot and I'm tying this knot and then all of a sudden I don't have to breathe anymore. I was like, oh, I was like, well, but that was a symptom of something, but I couldn't think of what it was right then. Cause your brain's already like, and the knot was like, it was there, but it wasn't a good one. I was like, okay. And then I saw bubbles came out of my mouth and went up and I kicked off and followed the bubbles up. And, uh, the next day I know I was laying on the, on the

• 31:33Jocko Willink?

  In a zodiac?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Well, no, no, it's a zodiac. So it was a long way out. I was just laying on my back and floating and I was warm. The water was like 50 degrees, but as the oxygen came back in, it was like, oh yeah, so did the, the cold, you know? But yeah, had I been caught, if it, I, I, yeah.

• 31:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, they, a bunch of guys have gone to the, some of those breath holding schools. And it really helps them a lot. And there's, there's like a, there's like a knock at the door. Like the first, they teach you like, oh, the first knock at the door, like you want to breathe, you don't need to listen to that one. The second one, you don't need to listen to that one. The third one, pay attention because you're about to blackout. And, and you know, when you do it, you can feel it and they learn how to get through those things, but it's, it's definitely, guys improve their breath hold. They'll like double their breath hold in three days by learning what the real signs are and what they can push through and what they can't push through. So it's pretty cool.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  I've done a little bit of Wim Hof method. That's, you know, and then that increases, but you're relaxed at that point. You're not like

• 32:39Jocko Willink?

  Trying to not on the freaking Japscowey.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which is so useful now, but honestly, while I was the warrant officer there, the third phase training officer, they, they wanted to get rid of it out of training. I was like, dude, well, what are you going to call the school?

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Basic underwater demo. Oh yeah, that's right. And the thing about it is it's a really, it's a perfect exercise for like the little microcosm. What you're going to do with the rest of your career. You're going to plan this thing. You're going to do a dirt dive, you know, and then you're going to take this into this hostile environment and execute. And it's going to be different and you're going to have to figure some stuff out.

• 33:17Jocko Willink?

  And it's so much of the SEAL teams is learning and training to have an open mind and to figure shit out. And I was talking to a guy the other day that's, you know, in ULT type scenario. And he was like, I don't focus on this or focus on that or focus on something else. And I was like, hey, this, the training that you're going through is to make everyone be able to look at a problem and figure out how to do something with it. And it doesn't matter if that problem's in the mountains, doesn't matter if that problem's in the desert, doesn't matter if that problem's in the jungle, if it's in the city. Where that problem is, you're going to learn how to look at that problem, apply our basic tactical principles to it and come up with a solution. And that's what you're doing. And all your guys are doing that too.

• 33:59Jocko Willink?

  So, and you know, a good example is when SEALs ended up doing security for the Iraqi government. Like, none of those guys had done that specific mission before, got tasked with a mission, like, okay, we're going to figure it out. And they made it happen and kept those guys alive for a long time. I was just talking about this with Bobby Holland. You know, we did over a hundred urban sniper over watches in Ramadi in 2006. And, yeah, I was like, do you remember how many we did in workup? And he goes, uh, zero. We didn't do one. But we did, we did, uh, whatever rural sniper, sniper hides, recons. And so the principles, we just took those principles. Okay, yeah, well, here's what we got to do. Here's what we got to set up.

• 34:43Jocko Willink?

  We got to make sure we have good security, be in a good spot, check our, our, you know, escape routes and we'll be good to go. And that's what we just took that and applied it to an urban environment and you're good. So that's what it is. And that's one of the best things about the SEAL teams is you learn how to solve problems and you take the fundamental tactics that we have and you can apply them to any situation. And we started doing in training out here, we started doing key leader engagement training, right? So you're going to meet with the key leader of a village. And the first platoon.

• 35:16Jocko Willink?

  We're putting guys, so guys had started doing this overseas and now we started training guys to do it back here. And the first platoon that did it, they were kind of confused like, well, what should we do? And basically I looked at them and said, if this was a target that you were hitting, how would you set it up? And they were like, oh, we'd have security over here and we put this over here. And I was like, well, so you're going to meet a guy. It's the same thing. Do you want to have security? Yes. Where would you put it? Same spot. Okay, great. So it's the same thing. It's just a little bit of a different posturing when you roll into the target instead of rolling in guns up, ready to kill people, you're rolling in there, you know, weapons down, ready to shake some hands and, and meet and greet some kiss some babies and it's all good. And if something goes south, no factor, take you half a second to turn things around. So that, that mentality of looking at problems and really training and what you're talking

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  about, obstacle loading, something that we did in World War II, but it's a skill set. You're going to work together with your friend. You're going to figure out how to do it. It's hard. It can get confusing. You have to coordinate with the other people because you got to tie that whole thing together. It's just a big, it's a basically, and I've been saying this a lot when I talk to companies right now. It's everything you're doing is, is basically a big team building exercise. And that's what you're doing. Oh, we're going to work together because if you and I are going through land warfare together, and you think you should do something, we should hit a target one way, and I think we should hit it another way. Now you and I start like arguing about it. Now we're getting to fighting. You got your guys on your side and my guys, the platoon's falling apart. And so we're testing the team to see if they can, you and I can go, you know what,

• 36:45Jocko Willink?

  coach, your idea is better. Let's go ahead with your, oh, cool. And we can figure it out and we move forward. It identifies the egos and it identifies the, the fissures in a platoon when you put them in these situations. And it happens in a class, but that's so much of what the SEAL Teams is, is can we as a team, look at a problem and apply our fundamental tactics to it, come up with a solution, go execute. And, and that's actually, if you think about it, that's actually what we're kind of good at. And the reason we're kind of good at it is,

• 37:17Jocko Willink?

  If you can figure out how to get off of a ship with a Zodiac boat with four Zodiac boats, transit 14 nautical miles, drive across or insert swimmers, have them swim across in wet gear, come across, unwaterproof all your gear, set up your, like, there's so many little problems that have to be solved by every, go hit a target, capture somebody, have a life jacket for that person and a dry suit, you can swim this person out through the, like, there's so many things you gotta figure out. And, and if you can do that in the water, everything else is easy. Every, you take, take me in a helo, take me in a vehicle, take me on foot patrol, that's all a joke compared

• 38:01Jocko Willink?

  to saltwater, six-foot seas, sand, mayhem, like, it's a disaster.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  That surf zone is, I mean, you know, oh, yeah, look, it's just a couple lines of surf. Yeah, and I'll drag all this stuff through there. I mean, you know, and it never stops, you know, but that's, that environment right there, that's what puts you in that, it's the worst place in the world to actually have to get across and, and do it, you know, if you can't solve it with technology, you can just solve it with, you know, planning and, and, you know, just guts and just go do it. And, and, and we did it enough over here. We got a lot of, a lot of beach space and a lot of surf here at, on the, on the strand. And, man, you just learn so

• 38:50Speaker 01

  much, you know, going through that. And, you know, okay, it's big surf. All right. So what's the best way to get through big surf? You know, and then you, you figure it out and it's gonna tumble you, you're gonna be all screwed up and then finding your guys, getting everybody back together again. I mean, not everything's like that, that cool commercial where they're like, oh, yeah, there's footprints and then they're gone. You know, it's like, no, no, no, yeah, yeah, the reality is.

• 39:14Jocko Willink?

  There's one set of footprints, they're gone, no one knows where he is.

• 39:18Jocko Willink?

  When we started getting away from the water a little bit, so like mid-war, right? Uh, you know, all of a sudden, in, in. ULT and training like all of a sudden the the mar ops goes from four weeks or five weeks down to three weeks, down to two weeks, down to like a week. And some people go, you know, we're losing our ability to work in the water. I said, hey, we'll get it back. Like if the if the war turns and we gotta get in the water again. Hey, the first night that a platoon goes out and does OTB, they're going to be a disaster. And then someone's gonna be like, hey, we need to have waterproof signaling devices. Oh, yeah. So that's what they learn that night. Then the next like, hey, we need to make sure we have long tow ropes in case someone gets stuck inside

• 39:58Jocko Willink?

  the surf zone. That's like a little, here's a little detail. You have a couple Zodiacs. You put really long tow ropes in them, like 100 yards, and somebody can swim out a tow rope to the other boat. You can tow the other boat without having to go in the surf zone. Those are like, they'll learn that lesson day four, right? And all of a sudden, you fast forward, you put them through five weeks of mar ops. And what they'll have done is they'll have done what we just talked about, which is they'll take that problem set, they'll apply fundamental tactics, and they'll make stuff real, they'll they'll get good at it again. And that's what that's why I think like, our breachers are so good, our snipers are so good, our our JTACs, like, our guys just get into stuff, and they just keep peeling back layers until they get it to its core principles. And then

• 40:43Jocko Willink?

  they just build it out. So that's the mentality that we get. And some of that comes from loading obstacles at San Clemente Island at night. That's what it is, dude. So you so now you graduate, buds. And what year is it?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Um, this would be early, like, February 87.

• 41:06Jocko Willink?

  So what's going on in the world?

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Well, um,

• 41:09Jocko Willink?

  Not much.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Not much at the time. Um, you never know. But what what did happen is the Iranians started shooting silkworm missiles at at the shipping going through the strait there.

• 41:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. This is when the um, like, they put the barges out there.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:29Jocko Willink?

  Did you do that?

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Well.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  The guys who manned the barges left unit one in the Philippines and went to man the barge. And that left a hole there. So I had just got into this platoon, right?

• 41:45Jocko Willink?

  So where'd you go, team five?

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Team five. And we were doing our, our workup and it was August. So I got there in February and in August, they deployed us.

• 41:57Jocko Willink?

  No kidding?

• 41:58Speaker 01

  No Trident.

• 42:00Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, just over to unit one to, to basically sit in that place and, and be that, that, that check mark, you know?

• 42:08Jocko Willink?

  How old are you at this point?

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Uh, 20.

• 42:11Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:12Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's right. Cause you came in right out of high school. Then you spent a year.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:16Jocko Willink?

  Doing jack.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Just.

• 42:18Jocko Willink?

  But so you're still pretty young. I mean, 20 years old, freaking outstanding.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I had just turned 20 when we started BUDS. Um, so yeah, I was still doing that. Um.

• 42:28Jocko Willink?

  What was your job in the platoon? Were you a gunner? Or you a point man?

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Uh, well, it couldn't be a point man, cause I was a new guy. So I had rear security. And, um, so I, that kind of helped out with everybody. And I was like the intel guy. So I had to have the, the Blu-ray machine was up and all the pencils were sharpened and you know, cause you, I was a PH, right? Oh, you're the intel guy. All right. Cool.

• 42:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Being the intel guy in a SEAL platoon sounds so cool. When you're an intel new guy, like you're literally sharpening pencils. Where's the freaking maps?

• 42:58Speaker 01

  And, and this is why I got good at other stuff because I was always helping somebody else, you know? The ordinance always needs, you know, someone to help, you know, move the guns and count the guns and you know, whatever. Prep, that kind of stuff. Um, air when that happened, I'll be in there, you know, learning to pack shoots and whatever else. Uh, building ducks. That was a big, you know, group, um, you know, deal anyway, but we were, I was, I was still going through, back in the, in those days, you went to BUDS, six months long. And then you get to, uh, uh, your platoon and you had six months of carrying your little P Q S book around, you know, performance qualification standards. And I was on you after a day of work, you know, going in the air loft, hey, chief, uh, can you sign me off here?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  And it's, oh yeah, sure. No problem. Just empty my shit cans and, uh, sweep and mop. And then we'll talk. Like, damn, okay. And that's how you kind of, you had to make that happen. You had to get those signatures. And then you had to get the, your, your board at the end of that six months. And that's how you got your Trident. I think it was the same for you, right?

• 43:59Jocko Willink?

  Same with me, yeah.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  There was no SEAL tactical training, STT stuff at the, you know, there was no SQT, nothing like that.

• 44:05Jocko Willink?

  We had at Team One, I went through STT. So I showed up there and we didn't have our tridents, but we immediately, not immediately, but after a few months, they let a couple rounds of new guys show up and then they put us all through STT SEAL tactical training. And it was basically like a limited platoon workup, but we went and did air, we went and did land, we went and did MAROP. So we did everything, they just gave us a higher level, gave us some actual skills.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Kind of the model of what SQT is now.

• 44:33Jocko Willink?

  It is what, well, SQT is awesome now, but it was a, yes, it was a

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Early on, of course.

• 44:38Jocko Willink?

  Neophyte version of that.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  But, no, we didn't get any of that.

• 44:42Jocko Willink?

  Damn, dude.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  None of that. Went to nine with my platoon and yeah, you just had to kind of figure it. There was no training going on. It was just, you know, you were, you figured stuff out as you went along. And I think part of that, we've lost a little bit because, you know, the guys are like, you know, thoroughbred horses from boot camp all the way up. They know they're going to go to the teams and, you know, so they're given a lot of stuff. Back then, I mean, my idea of SEAL prep should be like, okay, here's your workout. You make it happen. No, whereas these guys are like, they're showing up in the morning, they're getting their workout, they're getting, which is good. You'll learn how to do stuff and, you know, maybe not, you know, injure yourself.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  But you're kind of missing that self-starter.

• 45:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  You know, because you had to do that. If you had six months and if you didn't get that done and you didn't get your, your board done, or you failed it, you had one more chance and then you're gone. So, I mean, yeah, so we did that, you know, in, in the Philippines.

• 45:47Jocko Willink?

  So you go on deployment, you're backfilling these guys that were over in the Gulf, taking care of the, the oil platforms is generally what they were doing.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:55Jocko Willink?

  And you're, you're on your, how long was that deployment?

• 45:58Speaker 01

  That was a, it was supposed to be a short one, but

• 46:02Jocko Willink?

  Heard that before.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, we got in some trouble.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  We went to, at the time, they thought the Philippines was going away, so they're looking for other beaches, other places. So we went to this little island called Palau. And I wasn't even in this fight, but my platoon was. I was sick as a dog and I didn't go out that night. And so they had big running with the locals. So I'm banned for life from the island of Palau. Me and the rest of my platoon. But, so that, that caused some issue. You know, we got home from that one and then immediately, there was a target, a real world target that was supposed to have silkworm missiles on it.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Wait, you came home from deployment? No, no. Oh, you came home from Palau. So you go back to the PI? Back to the PI and immediately get tasked with this, this target that's moving silkworm missiles. Damn. Yeah. That, that, you know, the first Charlie Sheen movie, you know, Navy SEALs, where they go and they get on the boat and they, that was, that was us. That was our, that was what we were supposed to be doing. We were in a VBS at sucker. And so they flew us out there. And meanwhile, the admiral, who was kind of in charge of this area, he really liked the Palauans. And he went to the CO at, you know, unit one. And he's like,

• 47:33Speaker 01

  sorry, they're on a secret mission. This admiral did not like, he was the wrong answer. So, yeah, he was real motivated to hammer us. And, yeah. So anyway, the op came down to the last minute and Reagan decided he didn't want to, you know, do any, you know, high seas piracy or whatever. So they solved it another way. Not us. How, like, did you load helos? Did you? Well, okay, for three nights. We, you know, like, okay, if we're gonna wake you up at two o'clock in the morning, if we don't wake you up at two o'clock in the morning, then just, you know, come up at seven and have breakfast and we'll talk about it. And

• 48:13Speaker 01

  for three nights, it was like that. And we were doing runs and, you know, just, and again, CQB's in its infancy and we're just, you know, we're figuring stuff out. How to, oh, we're gonna land here, fast rope onto this part of, we had pictures of the boat and... Ideas of like, what is that? Is a gun in placement? And it turned out it was a Fire hose or something. No, no, it was a swing set. Because on the, the, the, the list of people on the, on board, apparently there were people that brought their kids. They're, you know, as part of those, they work and bring their transport. Well, I don't know what the hell, but yeah, I was like, what the hell is that thing? Get him. No, it was a playground equipment. Did you get your Trident while you were overseas then?

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we got a Trident overseas. Um, and, um, and then, well, after all that came back, we went back to PI. And then, uh, they started the, the, the hammering of us, um, over the incident in Palau. And they would send guys back, um, like, okay, the platoon's going home. And then they said, well, we're sending the, the married guys first. So they'd go. And they're like, no, no, we're gonna keep you guys. So they had us, they were interrogating us every day. Over, I think there was some alcohol or something that we had brought with us to the, I, I, there was some trumped up horse crap. But anyway.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  So yeah, this would, this went on and they're like, okay, go to the pool, study for your, uh, your Trident. Until 1600, if we haven't called you, then you're, you're, you're good. So from like 10 o'clock until 1600, we were at the pool. You know, studying our, our PQS books and whatever else. Um, and then 1600 roll around, we go out in town and drink our faces off. Um, and they finally got bored with that and, you know, it took a while. Um, but we were the last two, me, Jeff Payne, um, and like two other guys, uh, and our chief, Fred Swanson. That, who had helped me out earlier, who was the chief of my platoon. They basically had to drag us kicking and screaming onto the bus to send us home. Cause PI was, uh, A was magical place.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  And, um, so we went to XOI for that one. And, uh, as the, I'm being, and painter in the back. And we're getting read the riot act by the, uh, The XO and at the end he's like, but I would feel that the extra time that you had to spend in the Philippines was punishment enough. And I'm looking over a side eye at each other.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Anyway, but that was my first platoon and that that put the hooks in. It was like it had everything. It had partying in the PI. It had a real mission, even though it didn't go down. It was like, no, this is, this is me. I'm staying. And

• 51:00Jocko Willink?

  So you're rolling your next platoon?

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, so we rolled back. Team five had put in a gym. They didn't have any, you know, the little weight locker or whatever. Now it's full on gym. So I was like, okay, it's time. And I started lifting and I went from 143 pounds to 175 pounds in about six months. Every time, it's like 22, whatever. Every time I walked into that gym, I left, you know, I walked in, I could lift more than yesterday. It was like, yeah. And, you know, that's nutrition. Yeah. Okay. I drank a lot of beer and microwave burritos. I mean, that was

• 51:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but you're 22 years old. You're freaking dead. Basically, your whole body is just a big testosterone producing machine.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. And then

• 51:50Jocko Willink?

  Just getting jacked.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  I put it out, man. And it was like, yeah, just got bigger and stronger and not faster. Always kind of sucked at running, but you know, whatever. Um, yeah. Then we got

• 52:01Jocko Willink?

  Did you step up to be in point man in your second?

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, second platoon, point man. Um, and it was an arg. So

• 52:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Got to ride the ship.

• 52:11Jocko Willink?

  What ship was it?

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Uh, we spent time on the Denver and the Duluth.

• 52:15Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I did a whole six month deployment on the USS Denver.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Probably slept in the same damn compartment we did. Yeah.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  Wait, was it 117 degrees? So yeah, that's the one.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, right at the waterline. So splash, bang, bang, bang, all night long. Yeah. Yeah, it was us. Yeah. And it's funny because like regular Navy guys, they've got a job on that ship. We're just cargo, you know. So that's when you really learn to like drink your motivation juice, you know, like, oh, coffee up. And then go lift or whatever. You had, otherwise you just sit in your rack going, oh, my God, you know, what the hell's going on here?

• 52:53Jocko Willink?

  Did you hate it?

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Um, being on the ship sucks.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Going different places. I mean, we hit, you know, Australia and Hong Kong and, you know, the Philippines a couple of times and Japan and Korea. And, you know, so there was a lot of, you know, stuff that we got to do.

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  Dude, my first, so my first deployment, I was with you or I saw you, we hung out, I was in Guam, right? That's my first platoon and I was 21 years old and it was, you know, you're basically, you know, you have this fat per diem checks and you're doing whatever you want. Like we, and that early time in Guam, we had great relationships with the police. We had great relationships with like locals. It was all, it was just like awesome. We do everything, hang out. It was great. And then I, my next deployment was in our platoon and I was in E4 and it was like, E4 back on the ship by 10 o'clock. Like there was almost no rules whatsoever in Guam when I was 21. So now I'm 22. And they're like, you know, E4 is back on the ship by 10 o'clock and I'm kind of like, hold on, bro.

• 53:54Jocko Willink?

  What are you talking about? I'm, I'm in the freaking ship.

• 53:58Jocko Willink?

  And they're like, mm. Does that ID card say E4? Cause if so, 2200. I mean, in, in Guam, we weren't even getting warmed up at 2200. The party was starting at 2200. So now they're saying, oh, you gotta be back on at 2200. But I found a good way around that. I'd go out. I'd bring a, my running shoes and my shorts and a t-shirt, go out till whenever, come back at five o'clock in the morning, go on a two mile run with that backpack on that was filled with my going out clothes. Come running back up the ship. I always went for a run because the change of shift was whatever, like six. So, yeah, I left at 5:30. Just did an eight miler. Your breath smells a little alcoholic.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  I live from, you know, from 2200.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotta run that stuff out of my system, man. I'm sweating it out.

• 54:49Jocko Willink?

  Just freaking dummies. Uh, so, so you're on this ship. Anything happen on this while you're on this freaking shipboard deployment?

• 54:56Speaker 01

  No, nothing, nothing really that mentionable. I mean, there was a couple little things that, that were, everything, you know, the spin ups that happened. But, um, yeah, nothing. Um, so that was the first half of 1989. And we come back. Our gear is getting taken off the ship. I come back into, uh, into work one morning and, uh, the executive officer calls me in. I'm like, oh shit, what's going on? I'm expecting, you know, a problem. He's like, hey, coach, can you be ready to deploy again in like six hours? And I was like, I looked at him like, well, let me think.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  You let me go home and get my pool cue and then I just moved my stuff from the incoming pallet to the outgoing pallet. What had happened is, uh,

• 55:49Jocko Willink?

  Guy got hurt or something?

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Not really hurt. He, uh, last night, all he had to do was not get in trouble. And he gets drunk, steals a bike, has a fight with the cops in Coronado and he's in the can and he can't deploy. So I get, hey, there you go. Oh yeah. You were the intel. Oh yeah. Yeah. Your first lieutenant guy now. Okay. Awesome. You're doing motors. Like, okay.

• 56:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I can do motors.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Yep. And that's what, um, you know, that's how I got my second, my, my, my first or second two deployments were back to back. Basically I spent 10 days of 1989 actually in the United States and went and did a spec ops platoon, um, in the Philippines for, uh, for that six months. Yeah. It's like, woo hoo.

• 56:35Jocko Willink?

  I was, I'd been in training cell, so now I was at team one, done three deployments, and now I just got put in the training cell, and of course, no one wants to go to training cell, we want to go on deployment. And the master chief of the command comes down at quarters, and he's like, hey, we need two guys to go, we need two guys to go on deployment like tomorrow. And me and my running mate, we're just like hands up, like didn't even look at each other, just roommates, we're just like hands up. And the freaking master chief that was in charge of trade at was like, and then, you know, we proceeded to get our ass chewed, like you guys are in freaking trade, you're not going anywhere. We're like, all right, they just said, you know, they just said they needed someone to go on deployment, like us two have our shit in cruise boxes right now, we're ready to roll.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Right now, yeah.

• 57:22Jocko Willink?

  There's nothing better than being that kind of e-dog at a team when they're like, we need volunteer, your hand is up. Where are we going? Don't care. Send me, well, let's go, let's get it on.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't have anybody to, had to call at home to, you know, hey, honey, is this gonna, nah, I was like, oh, let's go, let's do it. And that was, that was the good attitude that, that, I mean, the higher up state, they noticed that stuff. It's like, ah, he didn't even, he didn't know what the hell that was, and he's like, I'm game, like, all right, note to self, if you need somebody, go to him.

• 57:51Jocko Willink?

  Yep, that's a hundred percent it, man. And then what do you do over there on that deployment? Was that when, uh, did the volcano go on that deployment?

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Uh, no, that was the next one. Uh, this one was the, uh, the revolution.

• 58:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  In PI, yeah.

• 58:05Jocko Willink?

  What was going on, what was that like?

• 58:07Speaker 01

  So Corazon Aquino, she was the wife of the, it was, it's politics and the PI is all screwed up, but yeah, they decided they were gonna do a coup on her. And, um, so we, we were there and we were, um, kind of locked down on the base. The guys, they were guys that were training with the filmars, it wasn't our platoon, another platoon, they were over on Green Beach. And, uh, when this came down, they were like, just quietly took all their guns, because they didn't know which side they were gonna be on.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, but then we uh, we got ready. Our mission on that one was gonna be uh, if she requested extract from the palace, we had to go get her. So there you go. Back to the surf zone, right? Figuring out, figuring this stuff out. So we're gonna have to drop a boat, because there was no place to land a helicopter where the palace was. But across the river from the palace, there was a ball field. So we had to figure out how to drop a duck, basically, in the river, get it inflated, and get it over so we could ferry her and like her bodyguard over here. It was like nobody else and us. And then

• 59:21Speaker 01

  we're gonna combat loss him and, you know, fly out. Well, no one ever done that before. You know, the limp duck is you kick it out and it takes you 15 minutes to get, there was no time for that. So we figured out how to do it. We just honeycomb the crap out of a full, full-blown duck, or full-blown zebra, only one. You put it on a, a big piece of plywood and, you know, tied it all together, keep it all together. And you went out with your stuff on and your flotation, but uh, you know, um, so Brad Cooper, he was the air guy, and he came up with this. And the CO asked him, he's like, can we do that? He's like, oh, yeah, we did it all the time. It's like, okay, cool. And so

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  we do this on a dry run. And of course, I'm the, you know, I'm the first Louis guy. So I gotta be the first guy in the, in the boat to, to get the engine started. And so I'm the sea anchor. Because as the helicopter's hovering at, you know, five knots or whatever, and they kick this thing out, the rotor wash would have just blown this empty boat away. So then I was holding on to the bowline as they kicked it out. And it's like, and I'm like, head first, boom, into the water, climb up the line, get in, cut the lines, get the motor down. By then, the other guys have gotten close, they pull the, um, the pallet, basically, from underneath, get the thing started. It was like three minutes

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  and we were running. And we could do that with two of them. And right after that, Brad's jumping up to going, I knew we could do it. I knew it would work.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  And yeah, so now it's, um, actually they, um, they do that. They practice those now. So anyway. So you guys are on standby? Yep. Did you ever get the call? No, never got the call. We stood by, we bounced around, we were ready to go. Um, there was, you know, a lot of, a lot of moving parts. That was our part of that was, was going to be that. Um, some other guys were going to go, and there was a, uh,

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  oh, a high rise that had, um, journalists in it and they were going to take that down, you know, land on the roof and just clear it to, you know, but none of that ever came through. They, um, they worked out another, uh, another way. But you were spun up for a while. Dude, yeah. It was spun up, ready to go. It was like, all right, chomping at the bit. Let's do this. Let's do this. And you come home from that one. What's next? Yeah, another platoon. I dropped into, um, uh, Delta Platoon at that point. And, um, in the first, geez, what did we do? Uh, we did a, a night combat equipment jump. Um, on February 14th, 1990. Static line? Static line.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  In the desert out here? Where? Amigo DZ. Okay. And, uh, um, so when I hit the ground, my left ankle snapped and I was out of the platoon. And, uh, I mean, I, I got out of the airplane. It was, I had a lot of twists and stuff. I'm, I'm bicycling out of that, getting all that stuff going on. You know, you gotta get the combat equipment off of you. I never did. By the time I was getting to that, I was, I was seeing the, uh, the horizon come up. I'm like, oh, here we go. And I hit and it snapped. Boom, right there. So I'm laying there. I'm like, and immediately I'm like, oh shit. They're, they're gonna, you know, they don't know where I'm, it's night, you know?

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  So I'm, I'm yelling, hey, I'm over here. I'm down. I'm hurt. Yeah. And then, uh, Dano gets over and says, hey, coach, quit screaming, you pussy. Get your ear pro out. Cause I couldn't hear myself. It's like really, really loud. So Doc gets over there and he cuts my boot off and uh and he's like, he's poking at it. He's like, oh, and I go to lift my leg up and my foot stayed on the ground. My leg came up and he's like, oh, don't do that. And so as everybody who came over like, hey, what's going on? What's going on? Hey, check this out. Stop doing that. Yeah, so I got pins and plates and all that crap. So it took a little while to um to get better. And right as the Gulf War was kicking up.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  So I missed going, I I just got my cast off.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  There was, in fact, there was a guy, I forget who it was, that couldn't go with their platoon. I was like, oh, I'm in, I'm in. And I'm like, Master Chief's like, Coach, you can't even stand up. You know, yeah, but we're not going to do anything right away. I'll get, I'll get better. I'm, I'm good. No, no, so he had, he put me down for that one. And uh, and then I uh, got in another platoon right away, you know, and just started the workup. And that was when Penatubo blew up.

• 1:04:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay, were you on deployment for that one?

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:04:04Jocko Willink?

  What was that like?

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Dude, um, it was funny. You hear this thing, you know, the, the rumblings and like, oh yeah, there could be a, you know, volcanoes. Like, okay, whatever. Um, you know, thinking it's a long way off and it was. Um, and the wind normally went from Subic the other way. So it was going to push all the ash away from us anyway, right? So it's rumbling. The volcanologists are like, oh no, this is gonna happen. So they move all the Air Force guys from Clark, just descended on, on Subic Bay. Uh, and you brought their cars and parked them on the ball fields and everything. And then just raided the damn PX. So that, you know, they, it was like locusts showed up. You couldn't get toothpaste or anything else.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  And when the, when the, the mountain blew up, it was during a typhoon. So the wind changed and blew everything our way. So it was like concrete, you know, it'll just falling down, sticking to everything. Um, and of course. You know, um, the American buildings were built like bomb shelters so they could, you know, handle, we figured it was probably about forty or fifty pounds per square foot. Damn. That was, yeah, because we cleaned all that crap off the, uh, off the roofs with paddles. We wore them down to nubs, you know, just in case it was gonna happen again, we didn't know. But town was, was not built for that. You know, everything, it was like. Just collapsed?

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, collapsed. So because this is going on, we're like, all right, well, nothing for us to do. So we went out in town. As this is happening, right? So you're like, as ashes are falling? Well, I mean, what else are you gonna do, right? You go drinking. Did no one say like, hey, this is gonna be some kind of a big natural disaster? Was it kinda like, oh, there's gonna be some ash, no big deal? It was a tycano quake, man. There was earthquakes, there was lightning that was orange because it was igniting all the stuff that was in the air. Um, and it was at noon, it was dark like midnight. And you guys were like, party time? End of days. Yeah, we're like, what else are you gonna do, man? Yeah, like Guam, you have, you know, the typhoon parties, right?

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  It was like, but here it's like, all right. So we go out in town and, um, you're drinking in your favorite bar and you hear some creaking and grinding and you're like, hmm, you need to run outside and the bar collapsed? The roof had just come in? And like, okay, well, I guess, uh, Rolling Stones is done, let's go to Slim's, you know?

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we spent some time out there doing that and, um, yeah, uh, the, the next day, the next time the sun came up, um, it was hard to navigate because all your landmarks were gone. Um, even the, you know, palm trees were just like peeled down like, like bananas. Any, any palm frond that was horizontal, because it was wet, it made this stuff stick and just, it, the weight of it just tore everything down. Hundred year old trees, just, you know, the, the branches had fallen off. Were people getting killed? Um, nobody that I knew.

• 1:07:14Jocko Willink?

  But like out in the villages were like

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:16Jocko Willink?

  There was stuff collapsing and

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Jocko Willink?

  Was there a humanitarian disaster that you guys had to be like, help out?

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Not well, the, the, what we came up with, they came down with it for us to do was clear all the, the ash off of the buildings. So there wasn't a shovel. So we used our paddles and we just, you know, scoop that off just so that there would be less weight on there. And you know, we, we did officers houses. We did, uh, the barracks. We did.

• 1:07:43Jocko Willink?

  It was the big mission, bro.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  Yep. Working all day, just

• 1:07:46Jocko Willink?

  That's the big mission.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Scooping ash, yeah.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then they figured out that, hey, you know, and we had just gotten back from Australia. A good Australia trip, right? And then, uh, or no, that wasn't Australia. That was Thailand even better, right? Um, and then this happens and then they go, okay, well, we, we were supposed to be worldwide operational. We're not, cause you couldn't take off, you know, the, uh, the, the dust was eating the jet engines. Okay. So what they would do is like, once they got the runway cleared off, they would basically tow your plane to the, you know, cause you couldn't run it, you know, couldn't run the engine, you know, to taxi.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  So they would tow the airplane to the, you know, the, the base of the runway and then they'd wind it up and go, and that was okay. Right. That wouldn't damage the engines too much, but that wasn't good enough for being this worldwide capability that we were, uh, you know, supposed to have. Um, so they decided to move us to Guam. And it was my platoon. They got moved to Guam. And that's, you know, that wasn't the Guam that you remember. That was the Guam prior to that, when there was like

• 1:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Nothing there.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Nothing there. There was no, no unit, no debt, no nothing. They set us up in an abandoned building. And we moved all our crap in there and we just, you know, it's just basically so they could say that we had a capability. Um, but yeah, we were, we were just out on our own.

• 1:09:18Jocko Willink?

  And it was just your platoon?

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  Just my platoon. Yeah. Uh, and then there was a, a team one platoon that joined us. Um, and, uh,

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  But they did like separate stuff. They were, you know, whatever. They did theirs. We did ours.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  But we were just sitting there waiting for the balloon to go up. Living in open bay barracks and it, yeah, it sucked.

• 1:09:40Jocko Willink?

  And so the PI gets shut down. You finish that. Or is that when you're, when you were in Guam, you're like, hey, wouldn't mind coming to the unit. It's coming over here. Or did that, did you get

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  There was no, there was no unit.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  And there was no idea that that was gonna happen. You know, there were no idea. They've been talking about moving the unit for years, you know, so, whatever. So I got back off that deployment. I was like, I'm gonna take a break. I'm gonna go over to the Philippines and hang out for two years and work the, you know, the, at the unit.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  And I got the orders and then they switched the unit to Guam. So my orders said Subicay Philippines, but they didn't, you know, yeah, I went to the, went to Guam for two years. And that was,

• 1:10:33Jocko Willink?

  What was your job?

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  I was the current operations petty officer. I was E5.

• 1:10:38Jocko Willink?

  That's insane.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Dude, I was in E5 for seven years. Cause I was not a rate grabber. I was like, I want to, you know, show up with my gun and my bomb and let's go to work, you know? Yeah. So, I mean, we did, we set up targets for the teams.

• 1:10:53Jocko Willink?

  Operate, what'd you say?

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  The current operations petty officer. Yeah.

• 1:10:59Jocko Willink?

  That is freaking awesome.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  I know. What did you do? Well, I write some stuff down and, you know, and again, it wasn't that hard. So I, you know, worked out all the time, you know? I led PT because it was more fun than just, you know, just doing it on our own. So we had to, you know, three days a week, you're out there like, well, I'm out here. You know, I'll do the counting and yelling and whatever.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Now you just do you do for those two years it uh you know we set up targets for the you know when the guys deployed out there we'd set things up for them and all that so you know your unit stuff.

• 1:11:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we I know when I deployed there as soon as we got on the ground they like gave us a target and we had to go hit it was a training op but they gave us the target we had to come over the beach we had to go up in the kill house you probably set it up we went there shot a bunch of balloons or whatever and pretty cool you know and then that was that we got ready for whatever exercise was next but yeah that's when I first remember running into you and I just remember you being you know there's a lot of guys that would have two three four platoons that would kind of be

• 1:12:10Jocko Willink?

  uh it's one thing for a guy to be like an asshole to you because you're being an idiot which is not only understandable it's actually justified but then there's some guys that would be assholes because they're assholes and like you were a guy that was cool and you'd like teach and like hey you should do this or hey try this or hey come over here just like give good guidance to a younger group of guys which was me and my buddies so I always remember that I always remember you you having a good attitude and and you were like uh doing what I think it's Tony Tony Frady says like just being mayor just like

• 1:12:46Jocko Willink?

  just having good relationships with people whether it's the cops the bouncers the girls you're like you just could kind of maneuver and know a lot of people which is important thing build relationships.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  That was that was my actual job you know the current operations I was like okay that's what I did at work but yeah I mean whether it was you know the bars in town now all the all the girls would you know hang out at the beach so yeah you get to know their names you get to know the bartenders you get to know the bouncers we worked with the cops you know we trained with them in the with the the kill house so I mean we could do no wrong you drop uh drop a name like everybody knew this I forget his name but he was like famous on the island and he was like their big SWAT guy so I got pulled over a bunch.

• 1:13:30Jocko Willink?

  Get a police escort after you get pulled over.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:32Jocko Willink?

  If you build good relationships and you don't act like an idiot because eventually. Actually, we SEALs wore out their welcome, welcome there pretty bad. I think they've recovered now.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  But the, the other side of my job there I saw was to help the teams out. I wanted to make better team guys. And I know from my experience of just being thrown into stuff and having to figure it out, that kind of sucks. You know, so that being able to pass, well, I didn't know that much at the time, but I knew enough that I could, you know, I wasn't, you know, I'd had what, four platoons under my belt. So, you know, I did what I could to make anybody that would wanted to listen that much better.

• 1:14:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's, that makes an impact, you know, on a guy like, like I said, me and my buddies that were kind of knuckleheads and we all wanted to like be better, you know, our attitude was like, we wanted to be good SEALs. That's all I ever wanted is like, I want to be a good SEAL. So someone can show me something about shooting or someone can show me about breaching or someone can show me about whatever. I wanted to know because you don't know jack. And so I always appreciated that, that attitude. And I would love to tell you that I really did a good job of that. And I will say it, I did that. I, I was too much of an asshole. If people weren't doing good, I was a little bit too much of an asshole when I was younger.

• 1:14:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, like my second platoon, my third platoon, I was not, you know, if you were jacked up, I was a real asshole. So, so were all of us, you know, we just had that bad attitude. But we also really wanted the guys to get better. So when there was a good guy, we would like invest. We, what it is, we care, we just cared about the teams and cared about the platoon and we wanted the platoon to be awesome. And so when a guy was doing, a guy wanted to know something, we'd freaking, we, we didn't go home. You know what I mean? We didn't go home. We didn't have anywhere to go. We didn't have anything. So, oh, you want to do more runs? Well, cool. We'll stay here and do more runs. Oh, you wanted us to show you how to set up your gear? Cool. We'll show you how to set up your gear. But if you wanted to go home or you're, you didn't want to take the time to get your squared away,

• 1:15:37Jocko Willink?

  you were like an enemy. And, and, and I was mad, you might, me and my buddies, we were like mad at you. Because we were in the freaking team. This was our family. And now all of a sudden we got someone in the family that doesn't want to carry their weight? They're like, wow, this is a problem. And I probably went, I, instead of like nowadays, I would have been better at like saying, hey, man, here's, let me show you how this works. If you don't show up without your gear squared away, that tells us that you don't care about what's happening. Do you care about what's happening? Yeah, I care what's okay. So part of caring about what's happening is make sure you got your shit squared away. I would probably be more like that now. Back then, I was a little bit more, uh, you know, of a dick.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, age and maturity, man. I mean, you learn how to talk to people and get the effect that you want. You know, and the effect is like, I want to make this guy better. If he's not going to listen, he's not going to listen. But you've got to give it that that best chance because you you come in hard.

• 1:16:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  And remember, he's a team guy too.

• 1:16:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  And, you know, you just start butting heads where if you come in a little softer and like, hey, here's what we're seeing and we don't like that, you know, so you fix this, please.

• 1:16:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  And, you know, and here's how to fix it, you know?

• 1:16:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  And, you know, give, yeah, you can't say, hey, don't do that. It's like, here, do this instead.

• 1:16:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I I definitely had some growing up to do in that respect. I have had those guys. I mean, because of course they all stay in the teams are all and we all became friends and they, you know, I'll see him at the reunion or I'll see him wherever at a memorial service and they'll be like, I'm so glad you guys were like that, you know, they're they're fired up now. But still could have been better, you know, could have could have done a better job. And I I wish I picked up more of that from you than I did. But, you know, I also had other influences, you know, there was other guys that were like, that's how it's rolling. Like you, this is a family. This is, you know, in my mind, like, we're counting on, I'm counting on you to keep me and me and my friends alive. You're part of this. We're all keeping each other alive.

• 1:17:38Jocko Willink?

  And there's not even a war going on, by the way. This is just like me being crazy, but it's also like what the job is.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and, you know, the guys that put me through training, most of them were Vietnam guys. And so that was big. I was like, no, you know, you have to do this, you know? Um, they came from the war, you know, so there was like, you know, yeah, you're you're gonna be there for your your buddies. And this is why everything, you know, they say, oh, yeah, it's all our SOPs are written in blood. No kidding.

• 1:18:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  They are, but. Guys tend to forget that and you know, it becomes more personal.

• 1:18:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  So it's not you just being, you know, screwed up like, oh yeah, we're going to, no, you gotta be ready for it though.

• 1:18:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's a def- it was a definite gang mentality for us. For me and that crew of guys and you know, all the guys, cause that crew of guys have new guys that in that platoon where I was over in Guam when you were there, we all stayed, well, a bunch of us stayed together. And we were tight and we stayed together for three straight platoons. And so, you know, and a bunch of us, we went to Bud's together. So it was like, you know, seven years of 24 hours a day.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:45Jocko Willink?

  Doing shit together. So it's us against the world, you know, and that's what you end up with. And if you're part of the platoon, you know, that means when we're going, we're going. That means when someone calls you at three o'clock in the morning, like, hey, we, we're going. People should get, you got 15 minutes. Like, where are you at? Oh, you don't care about us.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  It's hostile. Yeah. And, and better or worse, I never had that. Every time I moved, I moved, the, the guy I did the most deployments with was Jeff Payne. He was my first, my second, and then he was, while I was on a platoon, he was doing the SEAL oh, support debt, you know, SSD or whatever the hell it was. So he was over there at the same time. We just weren't doing the same stuff. So I, I kinda was just, I never had that, that clique.

• 1:19:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  To, you know, to hold on to.

• 1:19:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I hate to use that word clique, but I use the word gang. It's kind of a clique too, to be all, if we're gonna be all, keep it real around here.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Jocko Willink?

  I don't know though, do cliques beat the shit out of each other if they step out of line? So we, we had a great time and, and even, even those, you know, my second and third platoon, like the guys that we were with were just, we, I still talk to them, I still see them, like, when I see them, they're fired up, you know, so.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:03Jocko Willink?

  I guess it all works out in the end, but I, from like you said, a more mature scenario, being a little bit, having a better understanding of building relationships and cohesive teams, being more positive is a better way to go.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's hard to understand that when you're 22, but that's how we roll, man. Uh, so you're over there in Guam for a couple of years and then you screen to go out to the East Coast.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:20:30Jocko Willink?

  And, and go through selection. You get picked up.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  Yep. I, um. Did my screening and yeah, that was it. It was like, okay, cool. Off you go. And I was looking for a fight. You know, I figured, okay, the I felt felt gypped, honestly, because I missed the go for.

• 1:20:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  You know, I was like, damn it, you know, but you know, my leg was broken long before there was any even rumblings, you know? Um, so it wasn't my fault, but I was still felt like I missed something. So I want to get in a fight. And the best place to get in a fight was over there.

• 1:21:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  So, yeah, that's where my hat and a ring and, uh, yeah, rolled out, um, showed up, uh, and the training officer for selection immediately hated me. Straight up. I'm like, and I'm not used to that. I'm not used to guys hating me. I'm like, I'm, you know, I coach, whatever. And, uh, no.

• 1:21:27Jocko Willink?

  Your nickname Coach is very fitting. Like, like your nickname suits you really well. Like Coach, it's Coach. You know, he's here to coach. He's here to help out. It's Coach, you know, that's what I've always thought of Coach. So that's a weird, that's weird for somebody to hate you out of the gate.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  Dude, yeah. And he hated me. And I know, because at the end of training, he's like, Coach, you know how much I hated you. I'm like, yeah, I know you didn't like me very much. He's like, no, no, no, no, no. I hated you.

• 1:21:54Jocko Willink?

  What was, did he tell you why?

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  I was too happy.

• 1:21:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  Okay. I was too positive. Yeah. And he just had this buck of his ass about me. And he tried to poison every, everybody else in the cadre, you know? And I had to work so hard. Dude, I mean, uh,

• 1:22:13Jocko Willink?

  I hate you because you're too happy.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  He just hated me, but yeah, my attitude was just like, I was just like a happy go lucky. Yeah, yeah, cool, man. I'll show up. Hated it, hated it. And, um, so I had to win over all the, uh, the cadre, you know, whether it was like, uh, Pat Trey was big into Muay Thai and stuff. So I was his punching bag. I got out there and just, and I laid into him. He beat the snot out of me, but I kept coming back. And so, oh, got a thumbs up from Pat. And, uh, Mark Lee, not the one you know, the, um, They're both gone now, but you know, I had to light him up with simulation because he figured I was gonna be looking, you know, in the hallway, not where I was supposed to be. When he came through the door, I wasn't. I was looking right where I was supposed to be and I lit him up. Thumbs up, you know?

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  So I just had to do that for everybody and then, you know, survive, you know, six months of, uh, of selection. And, um, yeah, so that, that was a, that was a rough time. And selection is, is just like buds. They put you in that same scenario, except there's a lot of, at the time, a lot of alcohol involved. You know, you had to be up, you know, drinking with the cadre, buying drinks and then being ready to do whatever we were doing, whether it was diving, skydiving or shooting the next morning. So, you know, that was, that was the, uh, the intent back then, I guess.

• 1:23:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, luckily you at least did some preparation for that.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. My, my, my liver was, uh, was in, in, in good training, you know? Yeah.

• 1:23:42Jocko Willink?

  And then, so you're out there, you, you got, you're out there at that command when the Bosnia stuff was going down.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:48Jocko Willink?

  So that's pretty, that was pretty awesome at the time, right?

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was like our, our best thing, the, the Pifwick operations, the personnel indicted for war crimes. So we're basically kidnapping people off the street.

• 1:23:59Jocko Willink?

  How, how cool was that?

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  It was awesome. That was.

• 1:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Give us a rundown, like, well, how'd it go down?

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  Um, okay, the one, uh, I talk about, um, he called himself the Serb Adolf and, um.

• 1:24:12Jocko Willink?

  Just voluntarily giving yourself the name, the Serb Adolf. All right. You get the down check, homie.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. Um, but he wasn't high enough, uh, of rank to have anybody helping him. He, he didn't have the intel. The higher ranking guys had intel and they would know when we showed up.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  So we went over there to catch these guys and we did some stuff and couldn't find them. And I'm like, okay, so we pulled back and then went back over, but this time they shipped us in shipping containers.

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  So, yeah, forklift, brought in your hanging on the, the Trojan horse, they call it, little straps to hang on to, yeah? And they, they wheeled you into the, uh, the big clamshell, you know, hangar, closed it up and that's where we lived for a couple of weeks and, uh, yeah, we end up, um, we snagged that guy and had another guy that was, uh, a dry hole. Who had, obviously had enough intel to, to know, you know, if something was going on. So they bugged out. But yeah, that was uh, that was cool. We did that for mm.

• 1:25:21Jocko Willink?

  Were they like low vis ops where you like roll out in civilian vehicles and stuff?

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  Civilian vehicles, civilian clothes, everything, you know, you have a bunch of guys, um, you know, the, the guy driving the van would look like, you know, you wouldn't pick him, you know, like till you open your mouth, you just look like, you know, one of the locals. Um, but the back of the van was full of ass eaters with, uh, you know, you know, have our MP5s and full kit, just ready to go, you know?

• 1:25:46Jocko Willink?

  It's funny, we were still using MP5s back then, isn't it?

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:25:50Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking crazy.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, do, uh, when did we get the, the CQBRs? That would have been

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  late nineties, early two thousand, ninety nine, two thousand. So I can't remember exactly when, but yeah, we basically turned in everything except the, the Ks and the, uh, and the SDs.

• 1:26:08Jocko Willink?

  What do you think about this recommendation? I, I don't know why I stumbled upon this idea, but you know, people always say like, what's the best weapon for home defense? What should I get for home defense? How about that MP5 for a home defense weapon?

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  You know? Yeah, honestly?

• 1:26:23Jocko Willink?

  It's so good.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  The biggest problem with it is nobody knows that manual arms. Your manual arms is M16.

• 1:26:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  M4, okay? That's where, you know, you know where the charging handle is. It's automatic. And that was like the biggest thing when we went to the MP5, it was because Princess Gate had happened and the SAS had them. So everybody who was anybody in the, you know, hostage rescue, you know, realm was carrying MP5. Um, but would have been smarter for us to do was go with a Colt commando and nine mil. Cause all, you know, but it wasn't as cool.

• 1:26:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:26:59Jocko Willink?

  But the, the MP5, if you, if you're a normal person and you're like, all right, I need a, I don't really have a weapon for my home defense and I need to get something. The MP5, if you're going to learn something for home defense.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  Okay. How, how much does one of those cost?

• 1:27:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, that costs a lot.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, like twenty five, three grand, you know, for anything worthwhile. What I have for home defense, I made a nine millimeter AR.

• 1:27:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you agree that having a nine millimeter platform like submachine gun rifle type is a good choice?

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  It's a good choice for most people. The recoil's low and then so I built a special one. CMMG makes this radio delayed blowback, you know, system. So it's kind of like the roller delayed, but it's, you know, different, but it keeps everything nice and light.

• 1:27:53Jocko Willink?

  You're saying radial what?

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  Radial delay.

• 1:27:55Jocko Willink?

  Radial.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  Blowback, yeah. This thing's pretty cool. And I took an eight inch rifled barrel and found a, an eight inch, we'll call it a high volume linear compensator. It's basically a suppressor with no guts in it, right? And I pinned and welded it, right? So it's on there. So it makes sixteen inches, which makes it a rifle. So it's California legal, whatever. And it also, because it directs all that blast away from you, towards the guy you're throwing lead at. You can shoot this thing without air pro. It's loud, but it doesn't, it's not going to ring your bell. It's not going to give your wife tinnitus and, you know, deafen your dog or anything like that. It's, you know.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  But it shoots a decent round and, you know, that eight inches, you know, the Germans, they always, you know, over engineer everything. Yeah, that the MP5 barrel is seven point seven something inches long. Like, okay, this is eight inches. I think that's optimized for nine mil. We'll go with that. And then I added that other piece on the end so that, to make it legal.

• 1:28:58Jocko Willink?

  Is there anyone else that makes this recommendation? What do normal people make recommendation for a home defense weapon?

• 1:29:03Speaker 01

  You know, you ask ten different people, you get ten different answers, but shotgun is what they, they come around with.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  The thing with the shotgun, though, I mean, obviously you can't shoot as accurately with a shotgun as you can with. The thing that I always remember, the thing that I always loved about the MP5 is you could just drill nails with that thing. You could put round after round after round after round through the same freaking hole.

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  You can do that with the with the one I built too, and it has AR, you know, function, right?

• 1:29:36Jocko Willink?

  How's the reliability?

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  It's been fine.

• 1:29:38Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  And I put it together myself. I mean, I, you know, I'm actually talking with some people to make one commercially.

• 1:29:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, now everyone's gonna want one. They're gonna hear this. They're gonna wanna order it up.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:49Jocko Willink?

  Coach's Home Defense nine mil freaking. Yeah, get some. But the thing, so you got nine mil, you could use a round, like a frangible round, so you're not punching through your walls and hitting other family members. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Hollow points, you're gonna be shooting super accurate. There's no recoil. They're easy to shoot.

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  And so who's gonna be defending your house? Is it a Navy SEAL or is it your daughter?

• 1:30:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  Your wife?

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  You know, so that's the thing about the shotgun. They're gonna take it out, they're gonna shoot it once and be like, oh my God, and they're not gonna train with it. You have to aim a shotgun. You don't just point the damn things. Plus, you're responsible for every one of those pellets that comes out, right? The AR platform is just so ergonomic, so easy to use, you know, and I set mine up with a light, a red dot sight and a sling.

• 1:30:42Jocko Willink?

  This is a no brainer all day.

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So you can, I can hand that to any one of my daughters, you know, whatever, in five minutes, you can have them, you know, punch in a little, a little tiny group at ten, twenty yards.

• 1:30:56Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  Easy day. No recoil, no, no real, you know, blast issues. My wife's, she's recoil sensitive and blast sensitive. She's sensitive, right? She's a girl. She's awesome. But, you know, that's her thing, you know, she's just not, not good with that. So a shotgun? No, that ain't gonna happen. A lot of people talk pistol. Like, okay, well, pistol's good, but if someone's coming to invade your home, chances are they're gonna have a pistol or a sawed off shotgun, something small. Okay, and if I'm gonna get in a gunfight with somebody, I wanna have the upper hand. And if I'm home, I'm bringing my full on gun, you know? And we have, so I've got one in that's set up that like that in nine mil and one in three hundred blackout.

• 1:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  And they're set up exactly the same, so I can train with the nine mil. But if I wanna throw that, you know, two hundred and twenty grain subsonic round at somebody.

• 1:31:50Jocko Willink?

  In case that, in case that home invasion goes to the streets, son.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, kids gotta reach out, you know, but yeah, that's, that's just me. I'm a gun guy. So I was like, I think about something and I go and build it.

• 1:32:02Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, the thing about a pistol for home defense and look, if it's you and me like all day, of course, no problem. But my wife, my daughter has to pick up a pistol stressful situation. It's night, like there's mayhem going on. You, their group at, at whatever, at 10 yards is going to look like a shotgun blast compared to with one of those with a submachine gun. It's like they're going to dial that thing in. It's game over.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's easy. It's, you know, you've got two points of contact. It's small enough that you can maneuver around. And okay, in, in your, your home defense scenario, you're not clearing your house. Okay. You're going to collapse back on the weakest or least mobile individual's room. And you're going to hold there, call the cops and you know, with the door closed, you know, you let them know, hey, I'm armed. I'm in here. And if he comes through the door, you smoke them and you've given them forewarning. Uh, this idea that, you know, maybe I might clear the house, but I've kind of done that a little bit, but even then one man CQB is not optimal. Okay.

• 1:33:05Jocko Willink?

  Just FYI, I'm a hundred percent clearing the house in my CQC. My one man CQC is optimal. Some people are getting dropped.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you know, you do you, man. I mean, but it, it all depends on who's home and, you know, where I'm at and, you know, what's going on. But yeah, my recommendations for, you know, self-defense shooting, cause that's kind of my big focus now that I'm not working with the Navy anymore. I want to make Americans, I want to make them, um, better prepared.

• 1:33:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  I was going to get into this, um, but, um, so for a long time I was focused on making Navy SEALs better. I'm not doing that anymore. So now I've shifted my focus to the regular potentially armed American. Okay. Now there's plenty of guys out there that want this information and this is what ties into why I did the stuff with tactical hive. Um, you know, and I don't know if we're getting ahead of stuff, but.

• 1:34:06Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  Um, yeah. I, we do, I do videos for Tactical Hive, they're on YouTube. And I don't hold anything back. I don't like tease and then, hey, you gotta come to my, you know, course. It's like, no, I will show you everything that, that I can in that 10, 15, 20 minute, you know, spot. You know, and I, if you watch it, if you do it, you'll get better. You know, cause maybe you don't have the money to come, you know, pay me my price to, you know, go shooting with me. Um, but I want you to come away with something. You'll get better quicker with me. Yep. You know, cause I've done it for such a long time. You know, when we built that course, um, at, uh, at Bud's,

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  I put a lot of stuff together, you know, as a team. We put these things together and you watch it happen. And you see guys making mistakes and you figure out how to fix it, you know, you reverse engineer everything. And then we started training the, the instructors that would come in. Um, they're only there for two years and that's not a lot of time. So I have them ghost me and, you know, watch how I correct, you know, whatever the problem was. And then they would listen to the words that we're using, keeping everything, you know, common. Um, and then in, in no time, you know, they could fix about 80% of the common problems guys had. So it was a big force multiplier.

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  And I look at that, I'm like, all right, how can I shift this over to just regular folks? And, you know, the regular marksmanship training, closing one eye, line up, you know, front sight. That doesn't, most people, if you want to learn to be a target shooter, yeah, go do that. But I'm going to teach you how to point shoot first, two eyes open, cause two eyes are going to be open in that stressful situation. And you're going to have to deal with, you know, using natural point of aim and, and, and, you know, spend enough time on your grip so that it naturally points to where you want it to. Even without looking at the sights, cause you ain't going to be looking at the sights. You're going to be looking at the target, you know, cause that's where the, you know, the interesting information for your lizard brain is, right? It's like, that's the danger spot. So you're going to be looking there.

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  So instead of doing like, we went in Bud's, we had, the first week was all marksmanship training. And the second was combat shooting. And so I've taken basically the, the, the first week off the board and just do wave tops of the second week. And, and get you started there and, you know. I can make you better. We've been teaching cops. I just got back from Chicago teaching or Illinois, little town called Rockford. We did, we're post-certified there now. So we can, we can teach the, the cops CQB. And I think the difference between SEAL teams and cops, you know, the big difference is we train all the time.

• 1:36:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  They don't, that's not where their money is. Their, their money is, you know, on the, on the ground doing the job and almost no training.

• 1:37:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Which is terrible. I've been, I've been for the past many, many years, I've been saying, police should be trained 20% of the time. And if they did 20% of the time, you know, so it's one day a week, or maybe that's two hours a day, like however you want to break it up. But they would be so much better. Cause right now, like that group that you just trained, how much training are they getting a year in CQC?

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  None.

• 1:37:23Jocko Willink?

  There you go. How much, how many, how many rounds are they shooting a year?

• 1:37:26Speaker 01

  Uh, the guys are having a, you know, they get like 60 rounds paid for. So if they want, if they want to, you know, get better on their own.

• 1:37:35Jocko Willink?

  60 rounds. So just so everyone that's not like a person that has shot weapons before, 60 rounds a year for training is not going to make you a proficient shooter in a normal situation, in like a flat range situation.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that was just for the, for the qualification. That's not training.

• 1:37:54Jocko Willink?

  So thinking that you're going to be, you know, have one of these, you know, we expect our police officers to be able to handle these crazy dynamics, especially right now. Crazy dynamic situations where things are going on, people have all kinds of armament, they, they do crazy things. Thinking that a police officer is going to be ready for that, just because they've been on the job, it just doesn't make sense. And we're really, we're really failing, not only failing our police officers, but we're failing our civilian populace as well. Because more, oftentimes the police officer that's not well-trained, doesn't handle a situation right, and it ends up terrible. And you can tell so clearly when a police officer is trained, they just respond infinitely better than someone that's

• 1:38:38Jocko Willink?

  not trained. So I'm going to, I don't know what else to do about that. Uh, hopefully we continue to push that message. And, and people will say, well, they need to be on the street, right? No, well, they need to be out there. They need to be out there. That, so they don't have time to train. Okay. So let me ask you this. Would you rather, in your neighborhood, Have ten cops that haven't trained, patrolling, you know, at two o'clock in the morning, or one, or midnight, or whenever, would you rather have ten cops that have trained two hours in the last year? Or would you rather have eight cops that have trained, you know, 20% of the time? Anybody that has any sense at all will say, I would take the eight guys. There's no doubt about it.

• 1:39:23Jocko Willink?

  I would take two guys instead of, I would take two guys that are well-trained over six guys that aren't well-trained.

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  The problem is that, you know, the guy's paying for it. You know, they're in charge of the training. They're like, they have to have these guys on the street. You know, they gotta fill that schedule.

• 1:39:39Jocko Willink?

  But that's what I'm saying. Somebody needs to say, hey, having an untrained person on the street is not worth that savings. They just don't, they just haven't figured this out yet. And I don't know how they haven't figured it out, because when we do have these negative incidents happen with police officers, it's, most of the time, any common sense person with tactical training will be able to say, oh yeah, if this would have happened, they would have been able to do this, and the problem would have been solved. And we watch, people like, people like you and me, we watch those things, and we're like, it's, it makes me sick, it makes me cringe, because I know, 20 minutes doing de-escalation procedures would have solved this problem. You know, a half an hour on a Monday morning going through, hey, think through this problem?

• 1:40:24Jocko Willink?

  Let's, let's walk through it a couple times, you come up in this situation, what are you gonna do? Well, I'm gonna run up and start yelling at him. Okay, well, let's think about that. What if he doesn't respond the way you expect him to? Well, you know, most of the time, when I yell at a guy, tell him to get down, he gets down. Okay, but is that a great first move? How about we get some cover? How about we yell from behind cover? Now you got some time to react, now you got some time for decision-making. Now you've got some distance between you. So all these things that you can teach really easy, and then you gotta drill them, you gotta drill them, but look, what I just said, you can do that for free, that doesn't cost anything. Take 20 minutes, let's run through the scenario, talk through it, and then let's do it. And then you have a guy come upon, come upon someone that's causing problems, and instead of running up and yelling at him, guy, get down.

• 1:41:04Jocko Willink?

  Cause like they get trained to do that from working, right? Cause most of the time when a cop yells at somebody to go, they don't want to get arrested or they don't want to get in trouble. So they obey. It's that one percent of the time.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:14Jocko Willink?

  That the person's on drugs, they're going crazy. They don't care. They want to die. They want to kill. That person is the one we're worried about. The person that you yell at from behind a car and be like, hey, get down and they get down. Cool. We're all happy. When you yell from behind a car, get down and they don't do what you want to do. Cool. Now we have other decisions that we can make. We have escalations that we can do. We're in a protected position. We don't have to freak out. We have time to react. There's all kinds of things that we can do. So those basic training protocols that aren't happening right now. That's what a lot of these problems are coming from. Very seldom do I see a, a video of a police officer. That is, that something has gone south where you can, you say to yourself, oh, the intent of this police officer was to have this

• 1:41:58Jocko Willink?

  bad situation happen. No one would say, oh, their intent was to solve the problem and they did not have the tools and the training to get it done, which is a freaking nightmare.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, I love training cops. Okay. Um, but honestly, as much as I can, you know, they, they got to pay. By doing these videos for Tac Hive, I want to train everybody. I want to give everybody that, you know, the, the situation awareness you're talking about is not that hard and you can, you can train it, you know, you just, you know, distance gives you time, angles gives you a way out. And then just keeping your head up and on a swivel, you know, and if you can remember those three things. You know, the guy who's looking to grab you or, you know, treat you as a victim, that predator is not looking for

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  a hard target. They're looking for the easy target. And if you're doing stuff, if you're looking around, you're not, you know, everybody's, you know, in their little private phone booth, you know, staring at just, if you got to talk on the phone, bring it up in front of your face rather than looking down. If you do that, you're not going to have trouble most of the time in those transition spaces and everything else. So, I mean, you know, that kind of training and then here's the next level. That firearm that you know you're carrying, all that does is gives you an extra option. It's not I'm armed, so I'm going to go do, you know, I'm a sheepdog and I'm going to involve myself. No, no, that's just you. You have to deal with all these other, you know, like the escalation,

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  de-escalation, figure that out. And if somebody pulls a gun on you and they've got a gun on you, you are not, I can't outdraw them. Okay. You got to figure something else out. You got to wait for your time, your opportunity, and you're just going.

• 1:43:40Jocko Willink?

  How did you get yourself in that situation? How did you get someone get close enough to you and you were lack of situational awareness? That they identified you and that they were able to pull out a weapon without you being able to create distance and, and get yourself into a survivable scenario. That's just a lack of awareness and it's a lack of training. Yep. So.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  And, and then it's the gear as well. Um, you know, these days when, when COVID hit, you know, you couldn't buy a gun because they were just all sold out. You know, everybody who didn't have a gun went and panicked, bought something. You know, there's a bunch of stories about that. It's like, oh yeah, give me the gun show loophole, you know, how much more I got to charge for the, you know. Um, and studies have shown that if that guy who bought that gun came home, put it on his coffee table and stared at it and was like, and got no help from a gun guy, he's now more anti-gun than he was before.

• 1:44:31Jocko Willink?

  Explain that.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  They're afraid of it still. It's like they bought a rattlesnake and brought it home and they, they, because they have no idea what it is. Now it's a gun and they've been told, oh, no, I'm 20% more or 80% more likely to be, you know, killed by a gun in my house because I have one and.

• 1:44:46Jocko Willink?

  So what, do they sell them?

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, they normally sell them or put it away or whatever. But if, if the other group, same guys, you know, probably voted, well, for stuff like this, but now they needed a gun because they, you know, cops aren't going to come there to, to, you know, save them and their toilet paper. Um, yeah. If they had somebody in their life that was a gun guy that could help them out, that gets them past that first, you know, step, okay, I bought the gun. Now what? Well, no, get some ammo. Let's go to the range. Here's how to hold it. Here's, you know. Those are, those guys are now way on the other side. They're on our side now. You know, we're, um, the, the armed citizen. I mean, cops can't be everywhere,

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  but armed citizens can be. Okay. We just need more of them. More guns equals less crime. If you have the right people, you know, that know how to use the gun. So my latest thing, um, I, uh, doing Tac IVE stuff, I got noticed, um, by this company called Lipsy's. And they do special limited edition guns and stuff. So I've been talking with them about taking out the, um, the roadblocks for civilian gun ownership. Okay. You can't change it from the other side of the law, but on this side, guy buys a gun. Okay. Now he wants to carry it, so he buys a holster. Well, now he wants to put a light on his gun. Ain't gonna fit in that holster anymore.

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  And it just, it, if you're not a gun guy, it's a big pain in the ass. So what we're planning on doing, and I think this is gonna happen, oh, early next year. They're gonna come out with, I think, Smith and Wesson first, um, the coach edition, uh, you know, uh, I think there's a couple of revolvers and then they would do some auto loaders. I don't know exactly for sure, but, but what comes along with that, when you buy one of these, there'll be a little code that you can go on the interwebs and there's gonna be me explaining exactly what you got in this box and how to use it. Why we made the decisions on the grip and the sights and everything else. And then when you decide, you know,

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  that you wanted, you know, after you've taken it to the range and got some, some rounds down or some reps, now you wanna carry it. Well, there's gonna be, ideally, there'll be a little dropdown menu. You know, inside the waistband, outside the waistband, red dot, light, and everything will fit together. So it kinda takes that, uh, the guesswork out of it. I mean, I got a box of frickin' holsters that I don't use. Some of them I bought, some of them aren't given to me, right? But, yeah, if you're not a gun guy, you know,

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  It's just that much more of a pain in the ass to to deal with, right? And if you can just buy it in a package and then have somebody teach you how to use it, you know, and in person is always better.

• 1:47:37Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  But if you can go over, okay, this is how you stand and this is why and here's where your natural point of aim is and try these drills. And, you know, I think that's going to be the best way for me to to expand this and and get the, I want people, Americans, to be able to defend themselves.

• 1:47:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  Because cops can't be everywhere and, you know, don't be afraid of the equipment, you know, know how to use it and it takes the fear out of it.

• 1:48:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, now we're gonna have to make a nine millimeter Colt freaking AR-based freaking submachine gun for the house, home defense. That's what's coming next.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're actually, um, yeah. Well, through this company, Lipsy's, they they can work with anybody, anybody in the gun industry. So, yeah, we'll be pushing something like that. Um, and, you know, Coach branded, I mean, I had to come up with a color and a logo and all this stuff. It's like, really, man? Yeah. I I never wanted this, you know?

• 1:48:41Jocko Willink?

  Hopefully, it's just a big smiling dude.

• 1:48:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when when Tac Hive, when it started, um, my buddy, Dore, he he was still active duty. So he came to me and was like, hey, uh, Coach, I I got this opportunity to like do this, you know, video channel stuff, you you, but I can't be on camera. You want to help me out? And I said, no. The last thing I wanted to be was that guy in front of the camera. Um, he's like, oh, no, it's really easy, man. Just just you're basically gonna teach a class to this little, you know, Asian guy and his little Filipino guy and his brother, you know, and his videographer is gonna, you know, shoot him. I'm like, videographer? Who's got a fucking video? He's got a videographer. Um, but anyway, so we did that and did a couple of them as his journey because he wanted

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  to, he was a big BJJ guy. And, uh, he he realized that if somebody shows up with a gun, okay, he didn't know what to do. So he wanted to find out.

• 1:49:36Jocko Willink?

  BJJ is ineffective in that scenario.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, against against firearms, it's, uh, yeah, has its limits.

• 1:49:42Jocko Willink?

  I love jujitsu, but.

• 1:49:45Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't work against a gun very well.

• 1:49:47Speaker 01

  So that was it. He wanted someone to film his journey and then, you know, so we did a couple of those. And then I found out I had this gear. Cause when I, when you, you know, you improve your gear, you get new stuff. I would just take the old stuff off, throw it in a bag and in my garage. So I basically have like gear history from, you know, the late eighties through the early two thousands. And Dor is kind of the same guy as me. He's got everything from, you know, the, you know, late nineties, early two thousands, all the way out to, uh, you know, he retired last year. So he's got all the, all that cool kit. And those videos get a lot of hits because people love gear.

• 1:50:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they do.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  But yeah, so that gave me that, you know, we do training videos, we do gear reviews and firearm reviews and, and basically gear history. But there's a big problem with YouTube. They, they hate guns. So we've got like over 400,000 subscribers. We get fewer hits now than when we had less than a hundred thousand. So it doesn't make any sense. We're struggling with that at the moment, but.

• 1:50:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, you probably just aren't getting into the algorithm.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's something, man.

• 1:51:03Jocko Willink?

  Do you like your, do you do, do you do any pure gear videos where you're just talking about like, I saw one of your videos was like about cold, cold weather, you know, the, the PCU. Does that get more because it's just getting the algorithm or anything?

• 1:51:15Speaker 01

  You know, we did, we did retro, um, like training techniques. And we do it with a 45 and it got like 400,000 views in a couple of weeks. I was like, cool. So we did like a bunch more and they get almost nothing like 20, 30,000 here. And I'm like, okay, that's nowhere near what this one did. So whether that's algorithm, whether it's, uh, you know, just the fickle nature of the audience, I don't know.

• 1:51:42Jocko Willink?

  It's weird. It's weird. I don't even think about that stuff because. I think it's too hard to comprehend what's going down. Do you think about that stuff, K-Dog?

• 1:51:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:51:52Jocko Willink?

  Is there, can you make sense of it?

• 1:51:55Speaker 02

  Um, so there are strategies to improve how your videos perform on YouTube for sure.

• 1:52:01Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:52:01Speaker 02

  A lot of that has to do with what people initially see, how that first pool of people react to it.

• 1:52:09Jocko Willink?

  Clickbait.

• 1:52:10Speaker 02

  Hundred percent, yeah. Is it, is it an engaging title of the video? What's the description like? What's your thumbnail image look like? All these things that contribute to whether or not somebody's going to click on that thing in the first place and start watching it. Then how long they watch it, all that contributes to how it factors into the algorithm. And then how it's delivered to a wider audience based on the engagement it's getting. So there, there's a lot of strategic.

• 1:52:36Jocko Willink?

  A lot of stuff going on. Just make cool videos. That's my recommendation.

• 1:52:40Speaker 02

  Videos, hundred percent.

• 1:52:41Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're trying to do.

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  Put out good information, you know?

• 1:52:44Speaker 02

  Help people.

• 1:52:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, you know, then nobody looks at your backlog. It's like, you know, you, it's like, okay, we got a thousand videos. Cause I'm, I'm not an owner of that website. I'm just a subject matter expert that's been there for four years now from the beginning. Um, you know, and since then, I have this whole electronic realms, you know, come up. I'm like, all right, so, uh, practical firearms instruction, that's my website. If you want to come train with me, you go there and then.

• 1:53:14Jocko Willink?

  What is it? Practical firearms?

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  Firearms instruction. PFI. Yep, yep. Practical Firearms Instruction.com. Maybe she shortened that to just PFI.com.

• 1:53:23Jocko Willink?

  You wouldn't be able to get that. Somebody already owns.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Somebody, yeah, probably.

• 1:53:27Jocko Willink?

  Trying to charge you five million dollars to get PFI.com. That much I do know.

• 1:53:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, um, you know, I'm, I'm kind of branching out. My wife's like, no, you should do your own videos. I'm like, okay. So she just made me a YouTube channel. So PFI Coach on YouTube is going to be, that'll be me. There's no videos there. Now you can look there now. There's, there's nothing, but it's like, we're just, uh, Start filling stuff out.

• 1:53:53Jocko Willink?

  Let me tell you, you better get some up. It's Coach C O A C H, right?

• 1:53:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, C O C H. And the reason I did that is because if you write it like a coach, you know, C O A C H, then when they write out my whole name, it's Coacciolo. It's like, no, I'm not just C O C H. Plus, I could trademark that one. C O C H is trademarked to me.

• 1:54:12Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  And, you know, just it was part of this whole deal. It's like, oh, we're gonna put Coach on a gun. So, okay, better get that trademarked.

• 1:54:20Jocko Willink?

  I know.

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  You know, and I got ideas all the time. So I'm thinking about a smart watch ban. So, you know, commando bands. I got a trademark on that one. We'll see what.

• 1:54:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  How about?

• 1:54:31Jocko Willink?

  I want one. I don't really know what it does, but like I'm in the game. Let's get that commando band rolling.

• 1:54:38Speaker 02

  And that nine mil AR platform.

• 1:54:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That's a totally, we're gonna be hype on that one. Like, you know, I get my algorithm will have all kinds of shooting stuff in there. And, and I don't see that very often. People recommending like a submachine gun for home defense. And I think it's a great solution.

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  Effectively, it's not a submachine gun. It's just gonna be semi-auto. Okay? So, you know, it's not a machine gun.

• 1:55:02Jocko Willink?

  So, okay. What's the proper terminology then? A semi-automatic?

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  Pistol caliber carbine is what they're, that's the new thing. So the P C C.

• 1:55:11Jocko Willink?

  The P C C. A good thing for the home defense.

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And basically, it's gonna save your ears, you know, when it comes down to it. And, you know, it's, we'll figure it all out. I mean, you know, people are coming in. My brother who's on Forge and Fire and he made some cool knives. He's been on it three times.

• 1:55:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  We're like gonna do a collaboration knife. But, you know, he's, he's an artist. So he's up making swords in, in Oregon. I just gotta get up there. We got the initial design. It's been sent out for years. I'm like, come on, we need to do this thing, right?

• 1:55:45Jocko Willink?

  No, I got, I've seen like advertisements for that. It's just dudes out there just hammering on metal, right? Making cool stuff.

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  So Nick, my brother.

• 1:55:54Jocko Willink?

  Is your brother?

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's the only one. He's the one next to me, next down from me. All right? So he's two years younger than me. But. To this day, he's the, his sword is the only one that's cleaved a pig in one go. This big, you know, big nodachi, you know, armor splitting, you know, katana, you know, samurai sword. And it just hacked it, boom, I'm like, cool.

• 1:56:15Jocko Willink?

  Does he do the whole process, like folding the metal over 10,000 times or whatever?

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there's, there's, you know, he could tell you all about it, but yeah, it's, yeah, he heats the stuff.

• 1:56:24Jocko Willink?

  What does he do for a living?

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  That's what he does for a living.

• 1:56:27Jocko Willink?

  Like, but, but you can't just be on that show for a living. You gotta.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no, I don't, not, okay, so, uh, at the time, he was, uh, he was a, a Steadicam operator. And when COVID came around, it killed that. So he's unemployed from that. But by then, he had been, you know, the society for creative anachronism. They basically a bunch of guys that dress in armor and beat, beat on each other with sticks in tournaments.

• 1:56:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, oh, yeah.

• 1:56:53Speaker 01

  It's, it's pretty cool. Livestail and everything else, but yeah, so he.

• 1:56:56Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of gardener, like, you know, out in Patrero, have you seen that stuff?

• 1:57:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Patrero War, yeah, my brother came down for that one.

• 1:57:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they go out there and it's just like dudes in freaking armor, rednecks in armor. Just getting after it, beating the shit out of each other.

• 1:57:12Speaker 01

  Well, Nick didn't have a lot of money to buy the armor, so he started making his own. And then that branched off into making swords and now he makes just absolutely beautiful works of art, you know?

• 1:57:23Jocko Willink?

  And he's selling them and that's how he makes his.

• 1:57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's making his, his limiting is, uh, is selling, you know, belt jewelry basically to, uh, people. Cause they're way too nice to go fighting.

• 1:57:32Jocko Willink?

  Dude, people are like, you know, he's out in the bar and the girl's like, so what do you do? And he's like, I'm a freaking sword maker.

• 1:57:40Jocko Willink?

  He's like, what up?

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:42Jocko Willink?

  And she's either like, I want to marry you or like, get away from me.

• 1:57:46Speaker 01

  You sicko. No, he, he's good to go. He's married. He's got, uh, his whole business is, you know, he moved it all up there and he's got a big shop and 16 ton press where he just, you know, he heats the stuff and he's on Facebook, um, uh, Nick Coachello, Nicholas Coachello, I'm not sure. Look them up.

• 1:58:04Jocko Willink?

  Look them up.

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  But yeah, so we've been talking about doing this collaboration with him and it's just, you know, it takes some time, you know, before he moved to Oregon and everything else, you know. Home defense katana.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. When was the last time?

• 1:58:20Jocko Willink?

  Swipe.

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  Run through. Yeah. How do you, on the corner, yeah, he was run through. Gunshot wounds.

• 1:58:28Jocko Willink?

  Check. Where were you on September 11th?

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  I was at, at Dam Neck and we had the, we had a three letter agency that was there with us, training, and we were in the, in the High Bay and it was, we didn't know when the first plane hit, but when the second one did, they came in and said, hey, guys, you gotta look at this. So we came in and we, you know, they replayed it a bunch and these guys, they packed up and headed back to Washington and they were actually on their way when the plane hit the Pentagon.

• 1:59:06Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:59:06Speaker 01

  And yeah, so we, we just basically sat around watching the TV in a team room going, I called the wife, said, uh, things are gonna change. Yeah. We had no idea. And actually, my particular group, we didn't go to Afghanistan first. We went to Bosnia one more time because they didn't know. They didn't know where things were gonna go. So they sent us over there because there was some rumblings or whatever. So that was the first place we deployed to for a month or two. And then came back from that and we were the second group over and into Afghanistan. We did our, our three month deployment doing

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  high value or high value targets was, was basically we were focused on. So Elvis sightings and, you know, whatever.

• 1:59:58Jocko Willink?

  Elvis sightings.

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Intel was, was, you know, sketchy at the time.

• 2:00:04Jocko Willink?

  So you're just like spinning up, looking, spinning up, looking.

• 2:00:07Speaker 01

  Yep. Ready to go. Flying off, hitting a place, you know, and, um, you know, of course, a bunch of dry holes, you know, cause we didn't get him or didn't, you know, and they didn't have the whole hierarchy of, uh, you know, the bad guys yet. Um, and I was on one of those, um, it was actually the last, the last mission that we're doing in that three months. Um, they advertised a TF160, awesome guys, but they're like, oh yeah, 20 foot rope, then we'll put you right in there. Okay, cool. So I didn't have my big gloves on, my sexy shooting gloves on. And that turned into a big fiasco. Um, they pulled up short. I was in dash three, dash one,

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  pulls up short, dash two, damages his airplane, missing him because we were like 800 yards short of the actual target and what he thought was whatever he stopped here. Anyway, all those guys, they did a crash landing, you know.

• 2:01:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, dash two does a crash landing.

• 2:01:04Speaker 01

  Dash two, tack, crash landing.

• 2:01:06Jocko Willink?

  Dash one put its guys out?

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:01:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay, they're into a target that's 800.

• 2:01:10Speaker 01

  Eight hundred meters short of the actual target. And apparently it looked similar for, I don't know exactly what the dish, the deal was, but I mean.

• 2:01:18Jocko Willink?

  Murphy's law.

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:19Jocko Willink?

  It's coming in hot.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's nuts.

• 2:01:22Jocko Willink?

  All right. So we got guys on the wrong target.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  Guys in the wrong target.

• 2:01:24Jocko Willink?

  Crashed bird.

• 2:01:25Speaker 01

  And the bird's going down. Guys are like, you know, undone, ready to go, rope in hand, and watching the, you know, canyon walls go flitting by and their little, you know, green toilet paper tubes. And then, uh, that pilot found the only place in a square mile that he could put down a, an H60. And, uh, you know, when, when the 60s, uh, rotors are turning, they're nice and flat as they slow down, they dip a little bit. And when they dip, they start hitting boulders and just busted them all up. So they're dealing with that. We watch, uh, dash one puts out their stuff. I'm the last guy off of dash three, last bird. And then we had a 47, we are, the, the idea was they were going to come in and we're get

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  a foothold, you know, control it and then bring in the main force with the 47. Anyway, so I'm looking at this thing and I'm going, this does not look like the pictures, you know, and I looked down and it's a hundred foot rope and there's maybe 20 feet on the deck. And, you know, and the last time I looked down there, uh, the rope was going right to the center of that, of this little square on the roof. So I zip on there, you know, and zzz, hot, hot, hot, you know, I hit the ground, I throw the rope away. And as I'm reaching for my weapon, I step back. Well, I thought I was in the middle. It turns out, uh, my heels were right on the edge of the roof. So when I stepped back, I stepped back into nothing.

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  And I know the last thing that goes through your head before you die, because that was that. I mean, and it was like, I was just really disappointed. I was like, fuck.

• 2:03:02Jocko Willink?

  They're gonna, everyone's gonna think I'm a jackass.

• 2:03:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, you know, bing, bing, bing, things start happening. Um, and then it stops. And I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm not dead. You know, and, um, apparently, um, had I fallen off of, uh, two sides, I would have gone one story down where I fell off, I fell two stories, but I hit the edge of the first story on the way down and spun me around and threw my gear all over the place. That other edge, it was about at least a hundred feet before there was anything that would have stopped me. So there's your frogman luck, right? You know,

• 2:03:37Jocko Willink?

  We'll take it.

• 2:03:38Speaker 01

  Not good enough to, to not get hurt, but, uh, good enough not to die. So I'm laying on my back. Uh, when I hit, my camelback burst. So the guys looked down and they see me laying there in a spreading pool of black liquid and they're like, okay, coach is dead. How do we get off this thing?

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  So I get my crap back together and I'm, you know, uh, there's an animal pen next to me and whatever's in there, it's like, you know, really pissed off. I'm like, oh crap, this cow's gonna come out and stomp me. It's made of sticks, you know, and I'm laying in front of a big, uncleared breezeway of this, you know, made of boulders and, and timber. I'm like, okay, I can't stay here and wait for the backboard. So I did a quick systems check and I got my shit together and made my way over so I could look up on the roof and make comms with the, the comm guy up there and say, hey, look, I'm, I'm, I'm good. Got my, you know, nods back on, but I, I can't move. My, my leg is jacked up. My back feels like there's someone poking me. I actually looked behind me. It was like,

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  ow, what? Okay. No one's poking me. And, and my shoulder was jacked up as well and my face. Cause when I fell on that, my nods tried to poke my eyes out. But for some reason, again, cause I, I want to be able to see. So I would always wear clear eye pro under my nods, which wasn't a common practice. But because I had those Oakleys on, I'm still able to see with two eyes. Cause it would have poked them right out. Anyway, so they finished clearing down and, you know, pretty much everybody on target was uh, right inside that breezeway. But luckily they were just non combatants. So we were on the wrong damn target. Um, so they medevac me the next morning and when, uh, that was

• 2:05:24Speaker 01

  the last mission. So within a couple of days, I was back in the, in the States and they had to do, uh, they cut a big, uh, meatball off of my leg and big hematoma. And then,

• 2:05:36Speaker 01

  my shoulder didn't want to work. It would just impinge. It would come up here and just stop. Like, okay, what's up with that? And so they examined it says slap tear and some other stuff going on in there. We're gonna have to operate. We just found out that we are gonna be the guys going into Iraq and the invasion. I'm like, I am not going on a mission for that. No, ain't gonna happen. So I said, what else can we do? And what he did is he gave me, uh, the doc gave me a, a shot in my arm, cortisone or some magic liquid, but immediately it was like, ooh. Not impinged anymore. Yeah, we are good. He's like, okay, I gave you that one so you can train.

• 2:06:20Speaker 01

  We'll give you another one right before you go out the door. But when you come back, we have to operate. Cause you don't get, you know, two is all you got on that one. And I'm like, okay. So that allowed me to stay with the team and uh, and roll over and uh, and do our invasion stuff.

• 2:06:39Jocko Willink?

  And you got there, when did you get there? Like for the war to kick off?

• 2:06:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, we were, okay. So everybody, all the, the conventional forces were down south. And we were way up north in Saudi Arabia, the northern Saudi Arabia. So while everybody was rolling up, we were doing these deep penetrating missions to the WMD sites that, you know, intel said might have this, that, or whatever. And we were hanging out pretty far. Um, you know, it would have been, had, had a helo gone down, it'd have been days before anybody could have got to us. Not in a helicopter. And we had, uh, we had one real close call. Um, we all got shot up pretty good. We were in forty sevens.

• 2:07:23Speaker 01

  And this little town, we came in and I was in dash one and I think we took half a dozen rounds through the fuselage. But then dash two came in that same track and they got all, yeah. Um, one of the air crew got actually shot in the head. He survived, but you know, um, all our guys were clean. Um, and so we went and did the WMD, you know, we took down the outside.

• 2:07:49Jocko Willink?

  Are you just mop level four?

• 2:07:50Speaker 01

  Well, we weren't, we had the mop suits, but you know, dash one, where I was, uh, we were securing the outside area and then dash two was going to roll in.

• 2:08:01Jocko Willink?

  They were mop.

• 2:08:02Speaker 01

  They were all mopped up and they, you know, they were like sitting there just watching the light show. As the rounds came through the fuselage, like, how are we not dead? Um, my, my bird, uh, the, the hydraulics got hit on the, uh, the door. And, uh, so you know how that ramp comes down and goes, yeah, it went bang. And everybody, they were running off and the guy in front of me slips and falls on his ass and and you know scoots off and Mike laughing at him as I slip on my ass and scoot off the ramp. Hydraulic fluid everywhere. Hydraulic fluid everywhere, like you know scooting like a dog with worms. Um, and then, yeah, we went and ran, did our, did the whole deal, no problems. Well, that bird couldn't come back because the hydraulic fluid, it couldn't, you know, fix it.

• 2:08:47Speaker 01

  They had to just get it out of there. And then the second bird had the injured guy on it and was all shot up. And so they went back out to the desert. We had a flying spare and a QRF, two other forty sevens with us. So after we ran around and, and this is so, so deep in there, our, our time was limited on, on fuel. So we had to do what we did. Turned out it was, it was a dry hole, you know, thank God. Uh, and then we piled back in, you know, and we were able to get everybody on that flying spare and, you know, nut to butt on the, with the QRF.

• 2:09:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, uh, so there's this, um, uh, forty sevens have the two counter rotating, uh, props, right? And there's a drive shaft that goes between and then there's a cover that goes over that. Well, there was a big dent in that one on my bird. And if you were, you had it hit and gone in and messed with that drive shaft, then the, that's what keeps the rotors working together. And they would just ate each other and would have fallen out of the sky. And it would have been a really, really long night for, well, probably somebody else, but, um, yeah, as it was, you know, we had a bunch of little close calls like that, um, hitting a bunch of different targets.

• 2:10:06Speaker 01

  You know, um, tracers of big guns anti-aircraft stuff going between the rotor disc and the fuselage of the bird.

• 2:10:16Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I've had some, I've had some Huey Vietnam pilots on here, both the Sea Wolves and then just regular Army conventional like air assault guys. And man, what they did with those Hueys is they drove things like they were bumper cars at the freaking fair. Like they're going into LZs, fire everywhere, taking hits all over the place, just going in. They don't give a shit, man. There was three, there was 5,000 Hueys sent to Vietnam. 3,200 of them were lost in combat.

• 2:10:50Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 2:10:51Jocko Willink?

  Those guys were

• 2:10:52Speaker 01

  They're getting after it.

• 2:10:53Jocko Willink?

  Next level, man. And, and I'll tell you what's awesome. The Sea Wolf guys, well, the Sea Wolf guys, when you talk to the SEALs, and I've had some, you know, the Vietnam SEALs that have come on here, dude, those Sea Wolf guys were coming. Like, they were coming and they didn't care. And like, we had one guy in here telling a story, they, they just stayed like, oh, we're running out of fuel? Cool. They just ran out of fuel and landed in a freaking rice paddy and used ammo, ammo cans to transfer fuel from another bird that they brought in into the bird. Like, these guys were just freaking legit, man.

• 2:11:29Speaker 01

  Making shit happen.

• 2:11:30Jocko Willink?

  But those birds too, I think because they were less technologically reliant, they were just more durable. You know, it's like, it's like having like a, a brand new freaking BMW right now versus having like a 1967 freaking.

• 2:11:47Speaker 01

  I don't know, man, those Blackhawks are pretty resilient too. My, my oldest brother is a helicopter pilot for Army. And he was actually spent a year in Afghanistan doing dust off stuff. So it's like, you know, whenever there was a tick, he was on his way. You know, yeah, he went to pretty much all of them. And I mean, he had a, a hot LZ and ground force commander saying, hey, we got guys down here, we need to get you down here. We need to get them out of here. And so he disobeyed Army doctrine, didn't wait for the gunship because the gunship couldn't make it, you know, as fast as he could. He got there. He looks around and goes, okay, and there's no traces over there. I think I can get in. So he came in hot.

• 2:12:32Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah. And got lit up. And as he's coming in, the, you know, the army birds have the, the, the wheel is way up on the tail. Navy birds is like halfway up because you don't have to, you know, turn them on aircraft carriers. So anyway, you can hit the ground pretty hard with that sucker because it'll, it'll save the little shock absorber, right? So he had to come in hot. Well, when they laid out the DZ, they laid it out at an angle. It was on angled turf. So when he hit that hard, it slammed his head into the, you know, the canopy, knocked him unconscious. Okay. When he came to, it was probably just a couple of seconds, but hey, you know, didn't know he was in Afghanistan, didn't, you know, it was like, you know, you

• 2:13:15Speaker 01

  were kind of, you know, as the system like reboots. And he was like, okay, you know, all right, we're good. But the, the bird didn't roll over, didn't ball up. They loaded a bunch of guys on there and flew out again with, you know, couldn't wait for the gunships at this point because they'd squirt the ground in front normally and then you fly out. And so he flies out and got everybody back to base. But when he got there, everybody was dead. And so they went from, you know, he was things, when you disobey army doctrine, two things will happen. They give you a medal or they prosecute you. And he would have, he would have had another air medal for that one, but because you guys got hit on the way

• 2:13:59Speaker 01

  out and died. He knew at least one guy back there was, had jumped on to do CPR. And yeah, he got hit and, and expired on the five minute, you know, flight home. So instead of prosecution, he just called it even. You know, it's like, okay, yeah, you tried, you didn't, you know, had there been some success there apparently. And I'm probably screwing the story up a little bit, but I mean, it broke his neck on the, you know, so he, and then he just kind of, you know.

• 2:14:30Speaker 01

  Dealt with it and uh yeah, he actually like last year just got it all cleaned out. They had to go in there and fuse his neck and take out, you know, the the disc that was pressing on stuff because he was going numb and you know, but yeah, again, he was taught by the you know, army Vietnam, you know, heli pilots back in the day and and and he grew up on uh on Hueys. That was his first platform. So.

• 2:14:55Jocko Willink?

  That'd be interesting. You have to ask him which one is more, which one would, which one would do better going into a hot LZ? I mean, I get I'm I it has to be the Blackhawk, but then again, too, those Hueys, man, they're little and probably like you can get in there quick. And but then again, the Blackhawk has better armor on like critical components.

• 2:15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the the the pilot.

• 2:15:17Jocko Willink?

  The pilot.

• 2:15:18Speaker 01

  Titanium seat.

• 2:15:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and like the brains of the, I'm sure the brains of a Blackhawk are and the critical components of a Blackhawk, I bet you they have better armor.

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  And some redundancy as well.

• 2:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:15:29Speaker 01

  But anyway, that's.

• 2:15:31Jocko Willink?

  I do know I was talking to on this podcast, I was talking to a Huey pilot and he was like, yeah, you know, the thing is our birds only cost like $200,000. He's like, those Blackhawks, they must cost like a million dollars. I was like, it costs like 20, 20 something million dollars. So that's why when one of those things goes down, people freak out. They were just great, you know, just go karts with the freaking uh the Hueys. Did you, did you, you must have been on the Jessica Lynch then too, if you were there.

• 2:16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:00Jocko Willink?

  With that crew.

• 2:16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:01Jocko Willink?

  How'd that go down?

• 2:16:02Speaker 01

  Um, that was, we got uh intel, we were working on, you know, a target, you know, that we're gonna hit that night. This comes in and goes, okay, we'll put that on on hold. And they flew us from where we were to a forward operating base and we sat there and got intel that was like, you know, they'd found, you know, that the.

• 2:16:26Speaker 01

  Certain three letter agencies had contacts with, you know, locals and they'd gone in and sent them in with rigged with cameras so they could, you know, identify the last guy they sent in rolled up there and, you know, walked up the stairs, top of the stairs, a big bust of Saddam and gold. He turned right and went down four, four doors and there she was. We're like, all right, proof of life, man. We are going. So, um, we got all set up and then uh, they had the ground assault for us. It was gonna take them like two hours to get there, you know, through Barrick, you know, uh, all that stuff. Ninety-nine Rangers and some snipers and some, some of our guys. And initially, we were supposed to be on the

• 2:17:08Speaker 01

  gaff and uh, last minute, they uh, oh well, we're getting extra 60. All right, cool. So, we all got on that one and we'd just been shot up, you know, on the 47 a couple of nights before. So with this one, the doors are open. You're like, all right, I could shoot back now. Cause that's the big thing about a 47 is like, you just gotta sit there and take it, you know? But now it's like, no, okay. I got guns up, plate pressed forward. Feels good anyways. Yeah, yeah. And um, yeah, as we were getting on, we were like sitting and goes, you know, if, if we die tonight, that's uh, it's worth it. Yeah. You know, cause you just, you know, there's an American out there and um, you know, she'd been reported as, as fighting to the last round and no, that really came through, but

• 2:17:52Speaker 01

  you know, whatever. She was in a car crash and it messed her up really bad. And they, they never claimed that they had her, you know, they, you know, she, she was a prisoner of war, but yeah, this cute little blonde girl that they uh, you know, whatever the hell Iraqis are gonna do. Anyway, so we roll in there and as we're flying in, we had coordinated with the Marines at the uh, at the bridge, it was a bridge just outside of town and they were gonna do a little assault there. So that was going on. We coordinated with them as like a, you know, decoy. And as we're flying in, I'll look over there and you see us, these tracers doing this, you know, going towards each other. And uh, we get the,

• 2:18:35Speaker 01

  DC's clear. I'm like, okay. Can somebody tell them?

• 2:18:41Speaker 01

  But that was at the bridge. I was like, you know, almost a mile away, I think. And they rolled in, the initial breach team dropped in on the little birds and they put snipers on the roof. This is a seven story hospital and we came in, landed in the driveway courtyard thing behind a wall. And just ran up there and as I'm running through this, I'm like, hey, I've seen this on TV. You know, it's exactly the same. And we get up there and turn right and clear down and there's the room she's supposed to be in. She's not there. I'm like, oh crap. Not a dry hole. Come on. So we finished clearing that wing. And, you know, then there's our shitters at the end there and like bust all that out and, you know, looked, nothing.

• 2:19:25Speaker 01

  And so as we're, all right, clear the other way. Cause the, um, the staircase came up like in the middle of the wing. So you had that one side, then the other, right? So as he came back, they're bringing up this doctor who spoke English. He's like, oh Jesse, yeah. I think you see Jesse, no problem, blah, blah, blah, you know? And so one of our guys had him by the scruff of the neck with a pistol in the back of his head. And I was left, left side point man. And there was always big windows all the way down. And I really, really, really wanted to like check my six, but that wasn't my job. You know, so I'm like, boom, you know, set it forward and going, okay, relying on your, uh, your number two. And we get there, door was open through the doctor and just anybody wanted to be shooting, they'd shoot him. Um, and then we entered like normal.

• 2:20:09Speaker 01

  Um, clear, no problems. And then, uh, she'd been like laid down on the bed and, uh, she kind of sat up and I was right at the foot of the bed. I'm like, Jessica, Jessica Lynch. And she looked at me with the biggest, scaredest eyes I've ever seen on a human. And she was scared of me. And that like took me, I was like, oh shit, you know? I said her name a couple of times. She was just non-responsive, just scared as hell. More guys were coming in and I hadn't shot anybody yet. So I, I left, I got back out in the hallway. Figured, you know, that was my best chance of getting in that fight. Anyway, so got to the other end, ended up in the shitter again, same shitter on the other end, right?

• 2:20:52Speaker 01

  Cleared that and that's, we got thin and, uh, So I held there and they brought the medical bird in, brought the doc up, packaged her up, and flew her out. And we found her in six minutes and she was flying away in 16 minutes.

• 2:21:08Jocko Willink?

  Freaking awesome.

• 2:21:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was good. And then when we back cleared down, cleared the lobby was full of civilians and, and then the basement, basically there was a big sand table down there. And I'm like, what the hell's this? And like, well, there had been 300 Saddam Fatiyyin, you know, resistant, whatever the hell, you know, bad guys that went to go fight the Marines at the bridge.

• 2:21:36Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 2:21:37Speaker 01

  Had that not happened, yeah, it'd been a different story. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:21:42Jocko Willink?

  Damn. Freaking awesome. And then, so what happened after that? You wrapped up that deployment?

• 2:21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. We hit a bunch of other places, you know, looking for WMD. We hit Abu Grab, looking for Spiker. You know, he was still missing at the time. So we did a lot of that kind of stuff. And then came home. And when I came home, that's when I had to make some decisions because I'd been, I was banged up. I was in bad shape. You know, my shoulders were all frozen. This one needed an operation. And I knew I was gonna have to go under the knife. And I was at 18 years of been, you know, and I was like, well, if

• 2:22:31Speaker 01

  I'm gonna retire at 20, I don't want to retire in the East Coast. If you like the East Coast, great, but I'm a West Coast guy. So I wanted to find a job out here. So we made the deal and I came to work at Warcom, said goodbye to everybody, sold the house, you know, I've been married to my, my wife.

• 2:22:54Speaker 01

  About six years at that point and um yeah packed up everything and came out here and got a job at Warcom testing guns and ammo and um you know scopes and stuff you know which was it was good um you know I got to be part of the scar program you know help develop that which is which is awesome um and you know just

• 2:23:19Jocko Willink?

  What was your role in the scar?

• 2:23:21Speaker 01

  I was the naval special warfare representative for the scar program.

• 2:23:25Jocko Willink?

  How many representatives were there?

• 2:23:27Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:23:28Jocko Willink?

  Was there one from every special operations unit?

• 2:23:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and then you had the the Marines were just observing and so you had the army special forces, Rangers, Air Force, um you know, they were all part of this thing because they're all part of SOCOM, right? And um yeah, so everybody put their their two cents in and I'm actually, you know, kind of responsible that there was a scar heavy because the scar light was supposed to replace the M4 and normally what you do is you take the you know you show up with all these different guns and they narrow them down to the best two, the closest two, and then you take that and there's money involved in there where you test those against each other.

• 2:24:15Speaker 01

  Well, the scar, the FN model was the only one that didn't have a buffer tube and as you know, water doesn't compress, so if it's full of water and we're shooting from the the water line, the gun's either gonna give you one shot or it's gonna blow up in your face. So I said, guys, you know, rather than, you know, if we can just do this, you know, one because the the program manager had heard me talking, he's like, hey, if we can narrow this down to one, then we can move on to the next phase, which was the 762 version, right? And I got agreement and we uh.

• 2:24:50Jocko Willink?

  So basically the fact that they all had buffer tubes just eliminated every other rifle.

• 2:24:54Speaker 01

  Every other one had a had a buffer tube on it and you know, it's like, well, that's not gonna work from for uh it's not optimum for us. This would be better. Um, and so they they took that money and they put it into the next phase and then it was up and running. When they closed down the uh the Scarlight and they cause it didn't make enough of a uh of a leap forward. But because of the 762 version was much better than the M14. They were like, oh, okay, so we.

• 2:25:25Jocko Willink?

  So the Scar so the Scarlight doesn't exist right now?

• 2:25:28Speaker 01

  Hey, I think you can buy one on the civilian market, but nobody, yeah, I mean.

• 2:25:33Jocko Willink?

  And it that's because it didn't have much enough advantages over the M4?

• 2:25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:37Jocko Willink?

  That they were just like, well, we're not gonna change everything for this.

• 2:25:39Speaker 01

  It was too much to to change. I mean, you know, the thing about the.

• 2:25:43Jocko Willink?

  How did you like it?

• 2:25:45Speaker 01

  Oh, I I thought it's great gun. I mean, we did as much as we could. You know, there's only so much so much so much you can do in in uh testing. You know, and we tested the hell out of it. Uh, and we identified issues and we corrected those issues. You know, so it was it was a good platform.

• 2:26:02Speaker 01

  When it got downrange, um, one of the biggest hiccups in when you field something is that new equipment training. And uh, so when the Belgians put this new space age, uh, you know, polymer coating on there that will last, you know, shelf life of 10 years. But you gotta clean it really good before you shoot it the first time. And you know, Frogman, they looked at it and went, uh, cause it's not like Cosmoline. It's not like this big gooey stuff. Cause they looked at it and went, ah, it looks clean. And they took it out and they shot it and that stuff turns to shellac and it causes malfunctions. And that was the big thing right out of the base.

• 2:26:40Jocko Willink?

  Those things. That was a Scar heavy too?

• 2:26:42Speaker 01

  That was a Scar heavy, yeah. Cause that's the one that actually made it to our guys. Yeah, but I mean, a lot of it's been fixed. I mean, you know, the SCAR is it's a good solid gun.

• 2:26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess the new SIG M7 or whatever that's gonna that's kinda gonna take its place, I guess. I don't know. I'm so far out of the the loop at this point. We did the best we could at the time and, you know, we made a less than eight pound gun that was modern 762 and and we really didn't have that, you know, at the time. There was the SR25, the Mark 11s, but they weren't they weren't everywhere. This is just, you know, gonna be every man's gun.

• 2:27:25Jocko Willink?

  Then, so you do this kinda acquisitions and weapons testing and all that. That was a big deal. I mean, that freaking SCAR was like, you'd hear about it every, it seemed like every day we'd hear about what was happening with the SCAR. Cause everyone's freaking got their, you know, I'll talk about two cents, man. We'd had billions of dollars if we if we could have collected everyone's two cents. It was coming in.

• 2:27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:45Jocko Willink?

  Up down and across.

• 2:27:47Speaker 01

  And we were just doing what we could with, you know, working within, you know, corporations as well as the the big Navy machine, SOCOM machine, you know, getting money, testing, whatever.

• 2:27:58Jocko Willink?

  What's the like efficiency level of the bureaucracy of that?

• 2:28:04Speaker 01

  Well, you know, now having seen a little bit in the private sector, it's actually pretty good. Because you still have that military, you know, protocol stuff, whereas in the private sector, you don't have that. So, yeah, you never know. But yeah, it was frustrating to me coming from, you know, the command where you just think something up and go, hey, let's buy five of them, see what happens, you know, and, you know, COTS, commercial off the shelf. Just buy what what exists now, maybe talk to the guy, modify it a little bit, and then let's take it to work and see what happens. But that's that's not the way it's it's done at the Navy level.

• 2:28:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, definitely not at the giant like force wide systems level. Cause we, there's all kinds of stuff that we were able to get away with COTS for a while and. Then you gotta get caught up. You gotta get something that's gonna work for everybody and it's gonna be integrate with everybody. So, yeah.

• 2:28:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and which, which makes sense.

• 2:28:58Jocko Willink?

  It does make sense.

• 2:28:59Speaker 01

  You know, everybody's gotta be able to talk to each other, get in spare parts and okay, yeah. That's, but that's not where I was. I was the guy at, you know, rubber meets the road. Let's go do this, you know? Um, I explosively tested Humvee armor and that saved, saved some guys' lives. So, um, you know, I was, you know, it was a good place for me to be, for me to be at the time because I was a physical wreck. Um, yeah, I, I tell guys now, it's like, hey, you know, when you're an asset to your team, you know, stick it out, man, you know, be an asset. When you can't be an asset and you start being more of a liability, it's time to move on. And that was what really sent me from there. Uh, you know, otherwise I'd have spent more time at the command. I just would have.

• 2:29:44Speaker 01

  Um, but that, that wasn't in the cards because I was, my knees were starting to, all this stuff was just starting to just show up, you know? Yeah. And

• 2:29:55Jocko Willink?

  Showing up uninvited.

• 2:29:57Speaker 01

  Dude, yeah. Um, but right as I retired, I would skip ahead just a little bit to, as I retired, I'm, uh, met this guy named Joe Hippen Steele, Ultimate Human Performance. And he basically showed me how to mobilize again, you know, to open all this up, you know? And I, I spent a year working with him. Uh, and I got, and he, he was paid for by the, uh, I think the Navy SEAL Foundation or somebody had, you know? And I was like, no, dude, this is, this is awesome. And, um, got everything opened up again. I could stand like,

• 2:30:34Speaker 01

  I'd been working with the regular PT for like six months and no improvement. And 30 minutes of working with Joe, I was like, I walked out of there going, Holy crap. I got extra room in my shoulders. Well, different, it stretches. Okay. And he's kind of unorthodox, but man, you feel it.

• 2:30:54Jocko Willink?

  Was it like, have you heard of active release therapy? Was it that kind of thing?

• 2:30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, he does. He does that where it's like, you know, you, you find that, that spot that's hot and you press on it. And you know, your pain scale is, you know, one to 10, 10 being the worst and one being nothing. You go to like a six or a seven, you can press to an eight, you know, and as you press on it, you, it feels like you're, he's letting up, but he's not. The muscle's just kinda, it'll flutter and just kind of lets go. And it's like, okay. And, you know, and then just through the stretching and opening that up and getting that new blood in there. That, that changed everything for me. Um, and then I started, I'd been doing kettlebells prior to a lot of good functional strength there,

• 2:31:38Speaker 01

  but I was still training like I was 25 and I'm just getting hurt. And then, yeah, still eating like I'm 25. So I have 20 pounds overweight and just, you know, and I'm thinking, okay, yeah, you know, I'm still gutting through this. And did that for a long time. And then about, oh, two years ago, I found this guy called the, uh, the knees over toes guy.

• 2:32:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:32:02Speaker 01

  Ben Patrick.

• 2:32:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:32:03Speaker 01

  Started doing his stuff. Oh my God, next level. Now it's like, all right, I can do more stuff. And then earlier this year, um, Virginia High Performance, uh, through the Navy SEAL Foundation, those guys, I went and did their, uh, month program.

• 2:32:18Jocko Willink?

  Did you do the one that's here in San Diego?

• 2:32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm a plank owner on that one.

• 2:32:21Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 2:32:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you haven't done it, dude, get in there.

• 2:32:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I, I, I'm gonna let the guys that need it bad, you know, get in there. You know, I'm still doing pretty good. Um, so, but yeah, I've heard, I've heard nothing but awesome reports.

• 2:32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, they open things up now physically to workouts a day. They teach you about nutrition. And then they go into cognitive stuff. Cause I mean, you know, we've taken some hits. Okay. Um, when you're a breacher at Daminak, you take, uh, about a thousand, uh, minimum state, safe distance, uh, explosive exposures per year. I was down, I was a breacher there for seven years. Okay. Now my brain scan is clean, but I still have a few symptoms. I like faces. I don't, oh, man.

• 2:33:09Speaker 01

  I've known you for years. I I'm not gonna forget you. Um, but even guys that, you know, if I've you know, a long time, you know, um, so I went there for the grand opening. I'm just getting in the elevator and I see this guy. I'm like, I know you from somewhere. It's Keith Davids. Okay. And he's like, yeah, coach, we're on gold squadron together. And I'm like, oh, yeah. Ah, and that used to really drive me nuts and I, you know, but through working with him, you can't change that. Okay.

• 2:33:43Speaker 01

  No, Keith's like, what, man?

• 2:33:45Jocko Willink?

  Like, he's, he's not a guy that's changed a lot. He looks, I went to Buzz, he looks exactly the same as he did then.

• 2:33:51Speaker 01

  And he's, he's tried it zero one. He's, you know, like, he's kind of a big deal these days. I was like, oh, oh, yeah, okay. Like, damn. Yeah, anyway, but so that's, that's my big symptom there is I, as I, I lose that, those faces and names. That's my biggest thing. Um, other than that, I'm, I'm pretty clean. You know, and it used to like make me, you know, get, you know, this, I should have known that, you know, I'd be pissed off at myself. But now that I understand that there, I've, I've taken a few hits and there is that. It's like, I'm lucky that it's not something that, you know, I'm, you know, raging and then hitting people or going, you know, off the rails. None, none of that happens.

• 2:34:35Speaker 01

  And when I identify that, that coming up, I can just breathe through it. It's no problem. We're all good. You know? Um, yeah.

• 2:34:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's, you know, you hear like the, the guys that were in the NFL or they, and they say, you, you know, they're all banged up now and they're like, well, what'd you do again? And they're like, hell, yeah. Like, that's

• 2:34:58Speaker 01

  Had I known this, you know, the, the, this is now available to the guys that are still doing the job. So, you know, I tell them, hey, use it, you know, I mean, keep being good, you know, stay in that fight for as long as you can. I would have stayed longer.

• 2:35:13Jocko Willink?

  They're, they're, the next generation is going to be, uh, a lot more. durable over the long haul because their nutrition's better, their PT is better. Like you said, man, we were doing bodybuilding or triathlon, like there was a bodybuilding group of guys. There was like a triathlon group of guys and no one was doing anything that really made like true sense. And then, you know, as the things moved along, you know, by the time we got around 2000, 2000, right, right around this, the war was kicking off started, people started recognizing that we could actually be smarter about this stuff, that there was better ways to work out, that there was better ways to eat, like we start.

• 2:35:54Jocko Willink?

  And now, and now I think the final piece is like, there's better ways to train where, for instance, is it really necessary to take a thousand breaches a year? Probably not at minimum safe distance. You know, there's a lot of things that we could do, you know, you know, I would, I always think about being like an RSO on Carl Gustaf day. You know, it's like, oh, hey, let's go out there and take a task unit worth of guys out there and everyone's going to shoot a Carl G. And I'm, there's three of us RSOs, so I'm going to suck start freaking.

• 2:36:25Speaker 01

  You got to eat, yeah, you got to eat the majority.

• 2:36:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, I got a little headache this evening, you know? And so being smarter about that stuff, I think these guys, their durability, their longevity is going to be, is going to be better than ours.

• 2:36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and technology and recovery, it's a big thing as I get older. It's like, okay, I can still do a lot of stuff now, but I can do it once and then I gotta go lay down for a bit. You know, whereas when you're young, yeah, bounce back.

• 2:36:53Speaker 01

  I was introduced to this thing called a shift wave and you have to look it up. I don't know the, all the, the science behind it. It looks like a lawn chair with a bunch of discs in it that vibrate to a certain, you know, it's, they're tunable. And I sit on this thing and.

• 2:37:09Jocko Willink?

  Can I tune mine to Metallica?

• 2:37:12Speaker 01

  Well, it does a little biofeedback thing. So you could listen to Metallica if you wanted to and just, but it goes off your breathing and your, you know, it reads all that stuff. And um, yeah, I've been using it. It's, it's kind of like a, an active um, meditation type thing. You put on the headphones. And it kind of walks you through breathing in, breathing out, and it, you know, you sync with the uh, with the vibrations. And I mean, you know, they can, they can basically duplicate your brainwaves in sleep. Okay. Is what the, the doc was telling me. It's like, oh, wow, that'd be kind of cool. And they built it in this lawn chair so it's, you could fly it away. It's a lawn chair with a um, like a little Pelican case that goes with it. And um, I've been using the thing for about oh, five months now.

• 2:37:57Speaker 01

  So you like have one in your house? Yeah, yeah, they, but they. They gave you one? Gave me one to say, hey man, because, alright, I'm talking to this clinical psychiatrist in uh, um, Tulane University, right? And um, anyway, uh, he shows me this thing. It's like, yeah, I guess I'm, I'm kind of new age. My wife, she's awesome. You know, she finds this stuff, you know, grounding. We've got a grounding sheet on the bed. I go barefoot like all the time. And, and I'm, I'm being the technology with the uh, the smart watch and the, the aura ring and all that stuff that monitors all this stuff. And when he saw that, I was like, huh. And I've got that information, that, that record. So he was like, hey,

• 2:38:41Speaker 01

  sit on this thing and, you know, just play around with it and we'll see how, how things go. And let me tell you, it's, it's eye opening. You, you get on this thing. And it's weird. It's, you know, but it shakes you, you know, and then it'll just stop. And then you still feel like you're buzzing, you know? It's, it's really cool. Um, and there's a bunch of different, you know, settings that you can do and, and, you know, uh, frequencies. It's, it's badass, you know? I mean, look into it, but uh, it's, it's, it's pretty cool. What's it called? It's called a shift wave. Shift wave. Alright, you're gonna check it out. Maybe I have to get in the shift wave. Yeah, yeah. Hey, if you want to try one, come over to my house. I, you know, take a little ride on it, you know, and, and, and see what's up. It uh,

• 2:39:24Speaker 01

  it shakes you. Like, you know, when you're like skydiving, you get out and it's, everything's like, you know, everything's going, you know, the, the, it, it feels kind of like that. But uh, and you can adjust how much, how many, you know, if you're, you know, tone it down. I crank that thing up all the time.

• 2:39:40Jocko Willink?

  Uh, what about ice? Are you doing ice and sauna or anything like that?

• 2:39:43Speaker 01

  I've got a far infrared sauna at the house and that is the key. And my wife's talking about getting the, uh, the cold plunge. I'm like, well, before we spend a bunch of money on that one, cause that's just not, the sauna is like uncomfortable slowly and but it's warm and you know, yeah, that ice plunge thing is like, uh, all right. Maybe, let's try with this, just the tub at first, you know? But my wife, she's a, she's hitting a therapist and, um, you know, she does guided meditations, you know?

• 2:40:14Jocko Willink?

  She's got crystals in your house?

• 2:40:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:40:16Jocko Willink?

  Full on?

• 2:40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:17Jocko Willink?

  We're getting crystals.

• 2:40:18Speaker 01

  Oh, we know.

• 2:40:19Jocko Willink?

  Dream catchers.

• 2:40:20Speaker 01

  She's so.

• 2:40:22Jocko Willink?

  Incense.

• 2:40:22Speaker 01

  Incense and smudge pots and, uh, yeah, yeah. He gets her all the bad energy and you know, she's, she's.

• 2:40:30Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you find her?

• 2:40:31Speaker 01

  Um, okay. So while I was at Dam Neck, I went to go work with the, uh, the special boat service over there.

• 2:40:37Jocko Willink?

  So she's a Brit?

• 2:40:38Speaker 01

  She's Brit.

• 2:40:38Jocko Willink?

  You know, my wife's a Brit.

• 2:40:40Speaker 01

  No, I didn't know that.

• 2:40:40Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna have to link them up. But no freaking crystals in my house, bro. She can come hang in, she can come get my ice bath.

• 2:40:47Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's all good. Oh, yeah, yeah. Maybe we'll trade.

• 2:40:50Jocko Willink?

  You can come over and sit in the sauna and do some shift wave and our wives can drink tea.

• 2:40:55Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, I know. Uh, but yeah, she's got her own practice and she does, uh, guided meditations on, uh, on, on YouTube. So she's, you know, guided by Corey, you know? And she does kids meditation and stuff like that. So she's, she's doing a lot of, a lot of good stuff. And you know, you know, the left brain, right brain stuff, you know, I'm really left brain, logical and she's so right brain and just open to everything. And, and I think it, it, it makes us a good mix, you know? And that's, uh, you know?

• 2:41:27Jocko Willink?

  What was the name of her YouTube channel?

• 2:41:30Speaker 01

  Uh, it's, uh, Guided by Corey.

• 2:41:31Jocko Willink?

  Guided by Corey.

• 2:41:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. C O R Y is her name.

• 2:41:34Jocko Willink?

  Is she talking in ASRM? Is that the right word? ASMR. ASMR. You know what that is?

• 2:41:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that.

• 2:41:40Jocko Willink?

  Does she have that voice?

• 2:41:41Speaker 01

  She's, she's British. Come on, man. I mean, she's, she's exotic straight away. You're like, oh, wow, you know? Yeah. And she's doing some other stuff where there's just like, it's really quiet and just makes noise. Yeah. She's just getting into that ASMR type.

• 2:41:54Jocko Willink?

  That's the thing, dude. That's the thing.

• 2:41:56Speaker 01

  And then she'll just like quietly, you know, give you a little, little boost, you know, like lower your shoulders, you know, all that. Yeah, and yeah, so she's got a couple of, you know, things set up like that. So she's, you know, she's always looking for that, that next thing to be able to, to bring, you know, I mean,

• 2:42:16Jocko Willink?

  Bring peace and surrender.

• 2:42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, to the soul, to anybody who want, who needs it, you know, everybody needs it, you know, the hell.

• 2:42:27Jocko Willink?

  Right on. But, but before you retired, you did some time, what, at Unit Three, went out there for a bit?

• 2:42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, backing up, I, I was working at Warcom and I'm working for three retired SEAL Master Chiefs. And they're like, you should put your warrant package in, you should put your warrant package in. I'm like, dude, if I do it, will you shut up? And so I did, and they picked me up first time.

• 2:42:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:42:49Speaker 01

  I'm like, okay. And that came with a one-year unaccompanied, yeah.

• 2:42:55Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna pay for it.

• 2:42:56Speaker 01

  Off to, yeah, and, and, but I was up for orders anyway. They, I could have said, I could have declined, you know, the warrant and, and they would have sent me anyway, but, anyway, we, I met my wife when I was at the command. So we did like maybe, you know, three-month deployments. She'd never done a six-month deployment. And now I'm gone for a year. Yeah. So, yeah, people are off the ceiling and go, okay, honey.

• 2:43:19Jocko Willink?

  How those crystals work out on me?

• 2:43:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. They, they probably helped out a lot for her mental state, you know, while I was gone. And of course, you know, you know this, every time you leave town, that's when the car breaks and the, you know, the, everything goes wrong.

• 2:43:35Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:43:36Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, so she, she was thrown into the, straight into the fire at that point. And I went over and, and did my warrant officer stuff over there. And I was the, the, the training officer and the combat systems officer. And, you know, whenever they needed something done, that's the warrant's job. You know, nobody knows what a warrant officer does, but we just fill in all the cracks, you know?

• 2:43:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, yeah, you and I were running around Warcom at the same time, because I was the.

• 2:44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you were the aide and I was.

• 2:44:04Jocko Willink?

  So we'd high five each other in the hallway and you'd laugh at me going, you freaking dork.

• 2:44:09Speaker 01

  How many coins you got in your pocket there, Jocko?

• 2:44:13Jocko Willink?

  Thank God it was for, for Admiral McGuire, because he was just like, is, you know, just a great dude, but. Yeah, not fun, but you'd be like, oh, I'm going back to freaking blow shit up again and shoot more guns. And I'd be like, cool, I'm going to write a freaking thank you note to Ambassador so and so.

• 2:44:31Speaker 01

  Go make these copies.

• 2:44:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, go make these copies. And then you closed out your career as a, as a BUDS instructor.

• 2:44:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So when, when you're a team guy, the last place you want to go is BUDS because you might miss something, you know? And that was the last place I went. And I'd been overseas for a year and then made the deals like I'm just going to go back to, to, to BUDS for a couple of years and then go to a team. That's, you know, the deal I made with the, the, the detailer. So I roll back, third phase training officer, and I didn't have to do any of the admin stuff that, that I was supposed to, because we had an admin guy. We had a retiring OSC who did everything. I was like, dude, that's the, so that freed me up.

• 2:45:18Speaker 01

  So I would just, you know, split my time on the island with the, the Master Chief and the, and the Lieutenant. And we got out there and just, I spent most of my time, which kind of matched up with the, uh, uh, weapons guys. And so I do line coaching. I didn't teach any classes, but I, you know, I was still doing a warrant officer stuff. So I get pulled off of the, off the range to go deal with VIPs and whatever else. But I was learning how to teach at that point. And then when 25 rolled around, um, with just prior to, you know, my 25 years, I had this really cool idea.

• 2:45:57Speaker 01

  Admiral had a cool idea about anchor teams and he was going to send me to Bangladesh for four years. I was like, you know what? Oh, look at the time. 25 years, we're done. And he's like, you know, old CB, you know, was like, you sure? Cause you know, once you submit those papers, you can't take them back. I'm like, yeah, I'm good. That would, that's not me. I, I do everything in the Navy. I can't do this. I've got two daughters at home and they're pre-teens. It was not a good time for, for that.

• 2:46:31Speaker 01

  And he goes, okay, want a job? So I rolled out of there and I rolled into the instructor position and um, you know, we started off. And we started immediately making changes. There weren't enough SEALs to be BUDS instructors at the time. Okay, they want them out, you know, doing SEAL stuff. So they decided to do contract BUDS instructors. And they had the first batch was done like a year before I retired. So Gordon Evans, I don't know if you know him, he was at Team Five for a long time.

• 2:47:06Speaker 01

  And he and I were the, the, the guys, he and Nick White were the, the instructors at, for, for weapons. And because we were there, we were just there, the idea was like, I can be there for five years. And then we'll have enough guys and we'll just backfully and you know, send you on your way. Were you like wearing a blue and gold for long? Oh, yeah. Blue and gold, eight point cover, Boy Scout shorts, the whole nine yards. What'd they call, what'd the students call you? Just instructor? Mr. Coach Ilo. Mr. Coach, okay. Yep. You know, and, and it was, we wanted to make that difference between us because when I stepped up to a guy on the line, I didn't want him thinking, oh crap, this guy's gonna hammer me.

• 2:47:50Speaker 01

  I want him to think, oh, it's coach, he's gonna help me. All right. So I was never the heavy. You know, and if guys kept on screwing up, I'd go, oh, hey, so what could you do right about now? That would make you never want to do that ever again. Get wet. Oh, good idea. You know, go hit the dip tank, you know? Um, but yeah, so we, we took this, um, up until then. If you had somebody who knew how to teach weapons, guys learned more. If you didn't, and you guys were only there for two years, so you had a good shooter, you know, and that'd be great. If you had somebody who wasn't that good. So you were kind of relying on how good the class could be, right?

• 2:48:33Speaker 01

  You, you, the class was guiding the schedule and how far can we get the class? And we changed that. We're like, nope, we're gonna reverse engineer this and on this day you will be here. On this day you will be here, on this day, you know? And we started writing stuff down and trying stuff. It was like a big laboratory on how to shoot. And um, so, you know, Gordy and I, we, we wrote things down. We tried new stuff. If it worked, we kept it. If it didn't, you know, and we, we just modified. We started calling the sacred scrolls. It was basically the dailies, you know? And then that grew into, alright, here's the things you want to be looking for. So when we taught the new instructors, like, on this day, this is what they're gonna be doing wrong. Okay? And so be looking for it. And this is the corrections that we want to start. And every day built on itself.

• 2:49:19Speaker 01

  We would teach them the night before, after dinner. Then they would dry fire for forty-five minutes to an hour and get some sleep. And then the next morning, we go to the range and they would, you know, warm up and then do what, uh, what they learned the night before. Have lunch, come back for a range in the afternoon, again, more. Second range there and then they'd come back, eat dinner and then back in the classroom for the next thing that was going. And, and we pushed that along and we built this system. Whereas like when we went through training, some guys could shoot and some guys couldn't. No, everybody can shoot. I can teach you to shoot as long as you listen to what I'm saying and do it.

• 2:50:03Speaker 01

  Okay? If you're gonna fight me, okay, there's only so much I can do. I can't crawl into your head and, and control you.

• 2:50:09Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to some young guys, um, and I was basically saying, hey, there's some people, like you take a hundred people, there's gonna be a person, maybe one or two people. They're not going to be able to shoot a pistol well. Now, very seldom will you get someone that literally like isn't going to be able to pass. How often would somebody not be able to like, like get dropped from BUDs for pistol? How often would that happen?

• 2:50:33Speaker 01

  Um, I think it probably happened in the 13 years I was there, maybe eight times.

• 2:50:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so it's pretty rare that someone gets dropped, but probably a lot more guys would get rolled.

• 2:50:44Speaker 01

  We would roll them. Yeah, we would roll them and then they would come back and if they, you know, they still couldn't do it. And then we designed a remediation forum so that when they weren't on the island and initially it was like, you know, you fail pistol, you're off the island. It's like, well, no, let's keep them around. You know, and they'd shoot more. And so what, uh, week one was, uh, or weapons one. And then we'd leave the island and demo would come in. They do arts and crafts with explosives for a week and then we'd come back and teach them combat shooting. Well, halfway through the combat shooting was their last attempt. So they've got all those extra trigger squeezes. So most of the time they would make, and if they couldn't, then the next time they came through, they would. So occasionally when a guy, one of those eight people, what, what, what are they

• 2:51:29Speaker 01

  doing? What does it look like to you? Okay. If I tell a guy, hey, you're doing, and it's not like, hey, don't do that. I'm like, no, I'm going to show you physically. If I'll put my hands on you and say, no, hold the gun like this, squeeze it like this. I can use all these, all the techniques I could. But if you can't do that, if you're not applying what I teach you, and then, then there's the guys that are great when there's no stress, but just the stress of that stopwatch was enough to just blow their mind. And they're great when they're not under stress. Well, that's not the job you're applying for here, guys.

• 2:52:06Jocko Willink?

  That's not going to be a good team guy. That ain't going to work out.

• 2:52:09Speaker 01

  That, this is the, the least amount of stress we could possibly give you. It's a stopwatch. Okay. Nobody's shooting back at you. No one's yelling at you. Just get up there and perform. And so I would tell them, I was like, look, we're looking for that guy who can compartmentalize, who can take all those noises in his head and put them aside and just get to work. You know, just do the job. Don't. Listen to the, you know, because everybody's got that noise in their head that's, you know, overthinking and, you know, you could tell by the guy's target whether he was an over thinker or whether he was just sloppy, you know, it over thinkers, when we started giving them time drills, their shot groups got better just because they didn't have enough time to overthink.

• 2:52:50Speaker 01

  You know, and those guys were pretty easy to correct. The guys that were like really good, you know, when there was no time limit and then you give them the time limit and they start going, you know, nuts, you know, and they're, everything would open up. It's like, okay, those guys are just trying to, they're, they're racing the clock. It's like, no, no. And I give them techniques and they would work. And then you teach guys how to move and shoot and how to use cover and how to transition from your rifle to your pistol. And there's all this stuff that we're getting on BUDS. I mean, you know, I got, I picked up the gun off of the bench and shot it at the round target and then put it back down again. And that was the training that we got in BUDS. So guys are leaving BUDS and initially,

• 2:53:35Speaker 01

  in the first couple of years, the new guys were showing up to the team and out shooting the old guys because they didn't have any, you know, they had fewer training scars, you know, and we had driven them to this. And, you know, we were still, still working that and it was still, it's still working now. They're now focused more on combat shooting earlier and they, they've moved the qual courses to later on in training. So that's changed up a little bit, but apparently that's, there's some, they're having some good results as well.

• 2:54:05Jocko Willink?

  Right on. So, so you wrapped up with that. You retired in 2010 after you got done with your BUDS career. Then you rolled right into doing that contract and you did that for like for a decade.

• 2:54:18Speaker 01

  Thirteen, thirteen years.

• 2:54:18Jocko Willink?

  Thirteen years.

• 2:54:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I trained, you know, you know, guys I did platoons with, their kids came through and, you know, it was, that was rewarding. I would like, you know, maybe I'm going to take a picture of them and just randomly, hey, what's your, what's your dad's phone number, you know, and just send a random picture, you know, it's like, haha, taking care of your boy, you know. But yeah, it was, you know, yeah, we, we learned a lot and I, and I, I taught pretty much everybody who's an operating SEAL now. If you, if you went through BUDS in the last 13 years, you probably remember my name because Coach Yolo is kind of hard to forget. Actually 16 years because I was a warrant officer for three. So 16 years total that I was a.

• 2:55:00Speaker 01

  And I was working there and it wasn't the best job I ever had in my life, but I'd give it second best, you know?

• 2:55:09Jocko Willink?

  Tough to be being an assaulter, but teaching people how to do the job, man, that's awesome. And then, and so now, now you're done with that and we kind of already talked about what you're doing now, but just, just, so we've got, what's the website that you, what's your website?

• 2:55:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry.

• 2:55:25Jocko Willink?

  Practical?

• 2:55:26Speaker 01

  Practical Firearms Instruction, uh, dot com. And on there, you know, I do individuals, I'll do groups, whatever, um, you know, and it's just a matter of scheduling these days, cause I've gotten pretty busy, you know, I mean, I've been back to, uh, Tennessee and Massachusetts, uh, working with the Smith and Wesson guys, trying to get this, uh, you know, the initial pistol offering from Lipsy's, uh, you know, uh, in fact, I'm, I'm going there, what, after tomorrow?

• 2:55:57Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 2:55:58Speaker 01

  For their, the grand opening, they're moving a lot of their manufacturing stuff down to Tennessee from Massachusetts.

• 2:56:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, there's a reason for that. Pay attention, Massachusetts, come on people.

• 2:56:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:10Jocko Willink?

  Be, be business friendly out there. That's my recommendation. And you're, you have an Instagram too, which is at Practical Firearms Instruction.

• 2:56:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I don't see, I did all this stuff just kind of on the side when I had a day job and I just kind of, I didn't really look at this stuff. Um, but you know, now, you know, this is becoming my day job, I'm, I'm having to make that adjustment, so yeah.

• 2:56:34Jocko Willink?

  You know, you got a lot, you got a ton of knowledge, you know, um, 30 years in NSW, a lot of that really focused specifically on shooting, so for you to not share that knowledge seems like it would be, uh, a bad thing to do and for you to be able to take, look, there's, it's a beautiful time that you can, someone like you can, can share your information with. Anybody that wants it. I mean, that's awesome. And, and then of course, there's, like you said, there's more advanced things if people want to hire you to come out. But if they can't hire you to come out because they don't have the money or don't have the time, cool. There's the information. So.

• 2:57:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or, I mean, tacticalhive.com or just put in tactical hive on YouTube and something will come up. You just got to search your backlog and, you know, I'll teach you how to hold a gun, how to, you know, point shoot and, you know, just give you gear ideas, you know, and, and we've been thinking about this for a long time. So I've shifted this because, you know, some of the stuff I was doing was low vis. So we learned to, you know, go concealed and all that. And that's, that's what people are going to be doing. And what you're going to learn from me is, you know, how to use it. But there's, there's a priority of training here. Okay. So number one for training is be able to employ the gun.

• 2:57:49Speaker 01

  Clearing your garment and getting the gun into action. And then the next thing is correcting malfunctions. Okay. I don't care about changing magazines because you're going to pull that thing. If you get a click instead of a bang, you've got to be able to fix it like right now. Get those reps in and then we'll start talking about other stuff, you know? So employing the gun first and, and, you know, and then worrying about correcting malfunctions. And then we'll go on to other, all the other ancillary stuff. But those are the two things. That's what's going to matter right in the moment. Right? And when we talk about gear, the gear has to work. Okay? Number one, it has to be portable because you can have something that goes bang every time, but it weighs 10 pounds.

• 2:58:33Speaker 01

  Guess what? You know, that, that mark 23, it's an awesome pistol, but you are not carrying that, you know, on a daily basis. So portability is number one. Okay. Reliability is number two. Accuracy is, is a far third because most of the, you know, statistically, most of your encounters are going to be at close range and you're going to be point shooting. You're going to be focused on that target and you're just going to point that gun out there and start squeezing. Now, if you've done that with two eyes open and you understand how to aim with two eyes open, and I can teach you how to do that too, that's not hard.

• 2:59:13Speaker 01

  That, that'll give you a good, you know.

• 2:59:17Speaker 01

  A good starting point. Good foundation for sure. Yeah, you're gonna start with the combat first and if you wanna branch out and do other stuff, fine, but so, you know, portability first, reliability, and then worry about accuracy. And, you know, you know, capacity of the gun, I mean, depends, you know, you have different threat levels, so I carry a different gun depending on what my perceived threat level is, you know, anyway, from a little seven-shot 22 Magnum, you know, revolver, Smith and Wesson, to 38, you know, little subcontact 9mm to, you know,

• 2:59:54Speaker 01

  up to like a Glock 19 or a Sig 320, you know, so, and that's all depends on what your threat level, your perceived threat level is gonna be. And then you learn how to deal with each one, so you dress to the gun a little bit, you know, all these little things that come up, but because I've been thinking about these things for so long, you know, it's now, you know, and I know how to transfer that information to other people, I will give it all to you on YouTube. I want everybody who, whether you have money or not, to be able to understand this stuff. And if you already have a way that's working for you, I'm not gonna say you're wrong, you

• 3:00:38Speaker 01

  know, cuz if I give you something that's different from the way you train, then you're gonna have to understand, you're gonna have to Retrain. Yeah, you're gonna have to invest time. Untrained and then retrained, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's a thing, man, muscle memory, muscles don't have memory, yeah, but they're, all your nerves get myelinated every time you do something, and if you do it same, it's, yeah, those pathways, you know, those neural pathways get insulated and you start moving, you know, a whole lot faster and smoother, and you don't have to think about it as much. But that comes with reps and it comes, you know, so, I mean, I'll get into that with guys, you know. I can talk about it on YouTube, but then you gotta go find it. If you wanna come find me, then you know, we'll go to the range and I'll, I'll fix you.

• 3:01:24Speaker 01

  It's a pain in the ass in California because you know, California is so un-gun friendly. So I mean, we travel to other states. Uh, I don't like to travel very much. I kinda like my, my wife and my kids, my grandkids. Shockwave or? Yeah, yeah.

• 3:01:42Speaker 01

  That burning sage. The shift wave. Yeah, the sage burning and all that stuff, man. It's all good. Um, yeah, so that's what I'm doing now. Um, you know, at the moment, we'll see what happens with, um, with, uh, how well people respond to the gun stuff and, you know, and, you know, the watch band thing, I think it's gonna be a million dollar idea, you know, cause it's not gonna be very expensive, but it's gonna be really cool. So commando bands, you're gonna want one. I already want one. I'll give you a prototype. Right on. I'm ready for the commando band.

• 3:02:18Speaker 01

  Uh, Zach get us up to speed then? We good? Yeah, man, I think so. That's, that's up to today, man. Here we are now. And then I run into you getting gas, uh, "Hey dude, you're not working for the Navy anymore? You should come on my podcast." Like, man, now's the right time to do it, I suppose. Right on. Kerry, you got any questions?

• 3:02:37Speaker 02

  Uh, no questions. I, I just, I'm a big fan of what you're doing, removing that barrier for gun owners, especially new gun owners, uh, getting them up to speed. That's awesome, man. I want nothing more than a carbine, or carbine pistol now.

• 3:02:53Speaker 01

  What'd you say? What was that word? Is that a pistol caliber carbine? Yeah, the PCC.

• 3:03:00Speaker 02

  So that and the commando band, that's like my Christmas wishlist.

• 3:03:03Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah.

• 3:03:06Speaker 01

  Right on. You got any, any, uh, closing thoughts? Dude, I just wanna thank you for allowing me to come up here. I, I, I've been... I'm a big fan. Honestly, Jocko, you're doing stuff that matters. You know, you're bringing information to people that maybe no one knows about. You know, you interview guys, you're good interview and people want to come and share their story. And I enjoy just listening. I mean, obviously, it's not, there's no like time limit here because you know, you just keep going. You know, start, you know, but awesome. This has been really, really good. And I just want to thank you for that, man.

• 3:03:46Jocko Willink?

  Right on, bro. Well, thanks for coming on, man. It's awesome to see you and catch up and get your experiences, get your lessons learned. And, and like I said, man, thanks for setting a great example for me as a young new guy. I definitely needed it. And, you know, thanks for your service to the Navy, to the teams and to the country, man.

• 3:04:05Speaker 01

  Thanks for making me feel old, man.

• 3:04:09Jocko Willink?

  Hey, that's not me. Thanks for that, man.

• 3:04:15Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Mark, Coch, Coach Iolo has left the building. Good to see Coach, man. Still getting after it.

• 3:04:25Speaker 01

  Still.

• 3:04:26Jocko Willink?

  Still getting after it after all these years. And what I, what I was, look, obviously awesome to hear about his experiences and, and just a great dude. But I like the fact that he went, look, just talking about the health and wellness part of his journey at one juncture. He's sort of like done. You know what I mean? He's like, oh, I got to this point, this many deployments, this much time. I was done, broken. And now back in the game.

• 3:04:56Speaker 01

  All the way.

• 3:04:57Jocko Willink?

  Back in the game.

• 3:04:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. And, and that, that stretching piece, I feel that, man, because like my whole upper body, you know, feels like a clenched fist sometimes, you know? And God, I feel that like cracking and stuff. You gotta stay on top of that stuff.

• 3:05:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and what I like about it is it's not too late. I don't know where you are right now. I don't know what's happening, what's happening in your world, but you might be feeling like, oh, it's too late. Oh, I can't, I can't do this anymore. And you know, this is, this goes back to a conversation I had with Burt Soren.

• 3:05:29Jocko Willink?

  I was talking about overhead squats. I hurt my arm. Freaking Dean hurt my arm. Dean Lister, you bastard, hurt my arm doing a showing a move and I couldn't overhead squat for for months, like 10 months. I could not lock out my arm. Like I could do a pull up, but I couldn't go all the way down. So I could do everything, you know, after a little bit of time, I could do a pull up. After a little time, I could do, you know, an overhead press, but I just couldn't lock it out. But an overhead squat,

• 3:06:01Jocko Willink?

  I couldn't do. So by the time it finally healed, what I had to do is I, I was like, okay, I'm gonna do overhead squats. I'm gonna try it. Oh, I can lock it out. Okay, that's feeling good. But my mobility was so bad that I couldn't do it with like any weight at all. So I said, all right, well PVC pipe. Let's, let's go. And I'll do P. When, when this happened, I was using the frame of the squat rack to keep my, to keep the PVC pipe over directly over my head, like not, and I would just started going, all right, this week I'll go, you know, 50% down. Next week I'll go 60% down, 80% down. Finally got the mobility back. Then I started adding,

• 3:06:44Jocko Willink?

  then I started doing it with the bar. Then I started doing it with, you know, 25. So just slowly build it back up. And what I told Bert was, there's a moment where you think, oh, this movement is now gone. This is something that I'm not able to do anymore. Because I could have said that, like, oh, well, hell, it's really hard for me. It feels uncomfortable, it hurts. Maybe that I shouldn't do them anymore. And that's the wrong answer. You need to put your ego in check and say, okay, time to rebuild that movement. Time to get this movement back. Do not submit to time and age. Don't submit. It's a fight. But keep fighting. Do what you do, gotta do to get back. And what's incredible is the human being, the human body will adapt

• 3:07:29Jocko Willink?

  and it will make progress. This has been proven over and over again. This is just coaches, another guy that's come out and said, I was done. Didn't have any mobility in my shoulders, sore all day, broken here. This is hurt. And then he put protocols into place. He started doing the proper maintenance. He started cleaning up the food, cleaning up the workouts, doing the right things, getting the stretching done. And now he's back in the game. So that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. And it's great to hear Coach, great dude. And thanks to him for coming on. And, and by the way, one thing you can do with this, def reset, right? This is a good way to get yourself back on, on, on the path. The path. And you know, you and I were talking about the path yesterday because we're talking, you know, you and I,

• 3:08:15Jocko Willink?

  a few other people, we were talking about the, what happens in people's lives? What little turns they make, what little decisions they make, what little moves they make? And, and let's face it, every decision you make is gonna, is gonna have an impact. And if you take that little decision to eat a donut versus the little decision to eat a piece of beef turkey? And you start multiplying those and compounding those out, they, they change who you are. If you make a little decision that I'm gonna sleep in today versus the little decision that you know what? I'm just gonna get up and push through this workout and you multiply that over time?

• 3:08:58Jocko Willink?

  These are two different people. These are two different human beings in six months, in six months. In six months, that transformation can take place. And then what else happens? What else happens? What else goes on when you start making one bad decision? You were talking about drinking, actually. You know, we were on that, uh, hanging out and you were talking about, you know, basically if you were drinking, things were gonna go down. If you weren't drinking, things were gonna get better. You're like, hey, I might not get in, I might not have a, a, a chaos night tonight. I might not take some big giant step back tonight. If I have a few drinks, but in the next three times of drinking, something's gonna happen.

• 3:09:43Jocko Willink?

  And I'm going in the wrong direction. Otherwise, you just put that and be like, okay, I'm not doing that anymore. Which is the decision you made. I'm not doing that anymore. And all of a sudden, now my life's not going backwards. My life's going forward. Every, the trajectory of your life changes.

• 3:09:58Jocko Willink?

  And that's what this is to me, it's so important to think about our lives and the trajectory of our lives because that's what's the meaning of trajectory. It's where we're going. It's where it's what it is where we're going. Is our trajectory going up or is our trajectory going down? And every little decision that you make either elevates it or it starts to bring it down. So keep that in mind. That's the death reset, right? Death reset is an opportunity to say, okay, for this, for the next 30 days, I know I'm going up. My trajectory will be going up and that is going to put that trajectory on a, on a pace and in a

• 3:10:39Jocko Willink?

  direction that if you look about six months, you look up in a year, you're a different person. That's what we're doing.

• 3:10:46Speaker 02

  And it comes down to that PVC pipe decision, right? Some people are more afraid of taking that step back of, of picking up that PVC pipe than they are of letting go of the overhead squat for the rest of their, their lives. They'd rather let that go and never do it again than have to sub more subordinate that ego, pick up that PVC pipe and start from square one. And that's where that decision gets made. And there are PVC pipes all over life.

• 3:11:18Jocko Willink?

  All over your life.

• 3:11:19Speaker 02

  Where you, you look at that thing and you, you, you subordinate that ego, pick up that PVC pipe and start at square one again.

• 3:11:28Jocko Willink?

  Little step.

• 3:11:28Speaker 02

  And you start to build and that's where you start to get the momentum, get that trajectory.

• 3:11:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:11:34Speaker 02

  Get back on the path.

• 3:11:35Jocko Willink?

  So death reset, it's, we're doing it in January, but you gotta prep for it now. I just, we posted some videos, I posted a little podcast about it. Just get, start to prepare for it. Uh, workouts and fitness, Jason Kalipa is going to be guiding those things. Leadership with Ashlan Front. I'm going to give some, some discipline directives. And then Jocko Fuel, it, we're all doing it together. Um, the death reset.com. Go check it out. And by the way, Jocko Fuel, get yourself, get yourself ready for it. Get your, get the junk food out of your house. Get the freaking Doritos out of your house. Get the chocolate chip cookies out of your house. Get malt cookies. That's what we're doing. So Jocko Fuel.com. Get your greens. Get your creatine.

• 3:12:20Jocko Willink?

  Creatine is so good for you. It's good for your mind. It's good for your body. Get, get, get these things so that you're ready. You can kick this thing off, right? You're gonna have, you're gonna be working hard during death reset. So get yourself some joint warfare, some super girl. Just you guys know what we're doing. Jocko Fuel.com. Go get the fuel that you need. You can get also get it at Wawa. You can get vitamin shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hanaford, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, Shoprite, HEB, down in Tejas, Meyer, up in the Midwest, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms all over the place. I know we got Victory MMA and Fitness. We're here. Guess what we sell? Jocko Fuel. If you want to sell Jocko Fuel at your gym,

• 3:13:05Jocko Willink?

  email J F Sales at Jocko Fuel.com. If you, if you're going to a gym and you want them to Jocko Fuel, give them that information so they can make it happen. So that's what we're starting off with. Some Jocko Fuel.com. Also, OriginUSA.com. American made clothing.

• 3:13:23Jocko Willink?

  Freedom that you put on your body. Liberty that you wear. That's what we're doing at Origin USA. Anti-slavery, anti-communism, anti-suffering, anti-destruction of the earth. That's what we're doing at OriginUSA.com. You know what they do with the dye and the chemicals that they use in China? When they're, when they're done processing, they dump it in the river, goes into the ocean, kills everything. They're, they're disgusting. It's disgusting. And all these big freaking liars in the fashion industry with their, with their little virtue signaling,

• 3:14:09Jocko Willink?

  talking about how they're for the environment. They're not. They're, they're buying, they're literally paying for the destruction. That's what they're doing. They're liars. They're, they're, they're scum. So don't help them by buying their shit.

• 3:14:24Jocko Willink?

  By American made, by originusa.com. That's what we're doing. Jiu Jitsu gear. Cause if you're not training Jiu Jitsu, you're missing out. You're missing out 100%. Jiu Jitsu workout gear, hunt gear, t-shirts, jeans, boots. That's what we're doing. We're saving freedom. Originusa.com.

• 3:14:46Speaker 02

  We also talked a lot about the path today and you can get your discipline equals freedom gear representing on the path at Jocko's store. That's Jocko's store.com. T-shirts, rash guards, hats.

• 3:14:58Jocko Willink?

  Just going with the script. You're going with the, you're going with the Echo Charles.

• 3:15:02Speaker 02

  With the script.

• 3:15:02Jocko Willink?

  Representing on the path. Going with the script.

• 3:15:06Speaker 02

  Got to hold it down for the Hawaiian.

• 3:15:07Jocko Willink?

  You're just holding, holding it down for the Hawaiian. That's what we're doing.

• 3:15:10Speaker 02

  That's what we're doing, man.

• 3:15:11Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you were going to say something that was your own, let's say, let's say you had the creative liberties.

• 3:15:16Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:15:16Jocko Willink?

  Just to get crazy. What would you be saying about Jocko's store?

• 3:15:18Speaker 02

  Fire one off right now?

• 3:15:19Jocko Willink?

  Fire one off. Let's see where you're at. This is a test. This is a test.

• 3:15:22Speaker 02

  So there, there's something, there's something that happens to you deep inside when you throw on anything with the X flag. This X flag that's on my left arm right here. As soon as I put on a shirt that has that X flag on it, something inside of my brain changes. My eyebrows drop a little bit. My chin lowers. My shoulders come back a little bit. I am ready to go into what I'm about to do. When I throw on any piece of clothing with the X flag on it. I don't know what it is, but that's what happens to me. And I see that with other people too. I've been in the, we've been in the airport and we've seen a death core.

• 3:16:03Speaker 02

  Flag, you know, a death flag on a shirt in the wild and that person is ready to get after it. And they come up and they say what's up and they talk about how they're on the path and how they're in the game. And, and we go and we do work and that's what I like to see.

• 3:16:16Jocko Willink?

  There's, EC got just, it just got left in the dust. He's been saying the same shit for the last five years. And you rolled in, I put you on the spot a little bit.

• 3:16:26Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:16:27Jocko Willink?

  But you were ready. You know why? You had the death core flag on. You were like, what? Oh, you want me to talk to you? You want to say what's up? I'll tell you what's up.

• 3:16:34Speaker 02

  It's the truth.

• 3:16:35Jocko Willink?

  Free the K-Daw coming in hot.

• 3:16:36Speaker 02

  You will feel it. And if you, if you want, if you want a deaf shirt, a new deaf shirt every month, we've also got the Shirt Locker. That's a subscription service. And Echo Charles just going crazy on the designs, just awesome designs. And a lot of good reception from the troopers in the game, too. And every event we're at now, there's, there's kind of a segmentation of, of the, the, get after it, just great shirts. And then you see that Shirt Locker shirt, and it stands out. And there's a whole group of people who are in the game on the Shirt Locker shirts. And we see them and we say, what's up? And we recognize them.

• 3:17:15Jocko Willink?

  Check, check it out. JacoStore.com. Check out PrimalBeef.com, ColoradoCraftBeef.com. You need steak in your life. You need, you and I had steak last night, as a matter of fact. That was some good steak. But I'll tell you what, I could tell it wasn't the best steak. It wasn't Colorado Craft Beef. It wasn't Primal Beef. It was normal steak. Look.

• 3:17:38Speaker 02

  It's a ribeye.

• 3:17:38Jocko Willink?

  I'm not turning down a ribeye. I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get into it. I'm gonna get into it. But now that I regularly eat Primal Beef and Colorado Craft Beef, now that that's just part of the whole scene, you know, the, the normal ribeyes, they don't do it anymore. Yeah, they just don't do it anymore. So check those out. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also jockounderground.com. Also YouTube channels. Check them out. We got the, the Jocko, Jocko Podcast YouTube channel. We got the Jocko Fuel YouTube channel. We got the Origin USA YouTube channel. We got the Acelon Front YouTube channel.

• 3:18:17Jocko Willink?

  We got all kinds of YouTube for you to watch. Psychological Warfare, get that if you don't have it, I guess. If you don't have it by now, you probably, I mean, your life is probably falling apart, you know, so sorry. But if you want to get your life back together, Psychological Warfare, wherever you get an MP3, it's in there. FlipsideCamerast.com Dakota Meyer, out there making cool stuff for you to hang on your wall and keep you on the path. Books, you know, I've written a bunch of books. Get them. The new, the newest version of Leadership Strategy and Tactics. Mod two is out. There's some key information, some key updates in there. The, the Extreme Ownership Leadership Loop. Talk to you about how to make decisions.

• 3:19:01Jocko Willink?

  You and I were in a critical situation the other day. And you know what the, you know what the first thing in the Extreme Ownership Leadership Loop is? What's the number one thing?

• 3:19:11Speaker 02

  It's time.

• 3:19:11Jocko Willink?

  Time. So you and I were in a time critical situation. And we reviewed what had happened. My entire thought process took place in less than one minute.

• 3:19:23Jocko Willink?

  You can tell that if you review what I did, the, the very first thing I thought of was time. This is, I need to make a decision right now. And that's exactly what I did. All in one minute.

• 3:19:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:19:33Jocko Willink?

  A whole game changing scenario was unfolding. And in one minute, I'd already made a decision and was executing.

• 3:19:42Jocko Willink?

  Right? Like, that's a thing.

• 3:19:43Speaker 02

  And we have receipts to confirm that.

• 3:19:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, that's the thing. We went back and I was like, you know, we had a, we had a whole scenario that could have blown up, right? And then we kind of were debriefing it and I was like, let me pull out the receipts on this. And sure enough, everything was done in one minute.

• 3:20:00Speaker 02

  And that, that's, that's the benefit of running the loop.

• 3:20:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:20:05Speaker 02

  Habitually.

• 3:20:05Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:20:06Speaker 02

  Getting those reps in.

• 3:20:07Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:20:07Speaker 02

  You get quick with it.

• 3:20:08Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And it was just all boom, going down. And the time, the immediate decision was made and then it was like, I was running the rest loop. Okay. How do we, how do we support what's happening? Right? How are we going to cover move? We, we need a simple plan right here. Like just went through it. That's what we do.

• 3:20:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:20:22Jocko Willink?

  And guess what? All worked out. Kind of to a hundred percent level.

• 3:20:26Speaker 02

  Kind of really worked out. A hundred.

• 3:20:29Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. Get that, uh, Leadership Strategy and Tactics, the new one. The mod two of that field manual. And then I got a bunch of other kids books. The kids books, adult books. Check out the kids books. Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, four, and five. These are going to help the kids that you know, all of them.

• 3:20:48Speaker 02

  This is Christmas right here, by the way.

• 3:20:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:20:50Speaker 02

  This is what you do for Christmas.

• 3:20:51Jocko Willink?

  This is what you do for every kid that you know. Oh, what do you do? What do you get? What do you get for Christmas for a kid? You change their life. You change the trajectory of their life. That's what you do for Christmas for a kid.

• 3:21:03Speaker 02

  Warrior kid box has the flag in it, has the book in it. This is what you do for kids.

• 3:21:09Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Freaking Santa carry over there putting out war.

• 3:21:14Speaker 02

  My niece and nephew.

• 3:21:16Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah.

• 3:21:16Speaker 02

  Got Warrior Kid stuff. They are Warrior Kids in the game now. And my brother-in-law, my sister and brother-in-law's garage hangs the Warrior Kid flag. They are in the game.

• 3:21:26Jocko Willink?

  How old are they?

• 3:21:26Speaker 02

  Uh, seven, five and seven.

• 3:21:28Jocko Willink?

  How are they doing?

• 3:21:29Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 3:21:30Jocko Willink?

  Focused.

• 3:21:31Speaker 02

  Focused.

• 3:21:33Speaker 02

  Little dude, my, uh, my nephew has to be benched in games because he scores too much. That, that's what's happening.

• 3:21:41Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 3:21:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21:42Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 3:21:43Speaker 02

  Little dude.

• 3:21:43Jocko Willink?

  You might want to get your kids these books and your neighbors' kids. Cause wouldn't it be nice if there's a fire at your house someday? And your neighbor who's nine years old comes over, breaks out a hose and puts out the fire before it engulfs your, your house? Be nice, wouldn't it? That's what a Warrior Kid's gonna do. You know what a normal kid's gonna do? Keep playing video games. That's what's gonna happen. Don't, let's get the neighborhood watch going with the children. So there you go. Warrior Kids. Also, Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. That is what we do. We work with companies. We embed into companies and we help align the leadership around the principles that we utilized in combat,

• 3:22:28Jocko Willink?

  that we utilize inside of all these businesses that you hear us talk about. And that we've helped scores of other companies get increased profitability, get increased efficiency, and get improved relationships up and down and across their chain of command.

• 3:22:50Jocko Willink?

  This is what we do at Echelon Front. So go to echelonfront.com if you need leadership consultants inside your organization. We also have some live events. You can check those out also at echelonfront.com. We have an online training platform as well. It's at extremeownership.com. This is where you can learn these principles that you can then apply to every aspect of your life. I don't care what you're doing right now. I don't care if you're a 22-year-old that's hunting for a job and you're making, you know, 80 bucks a week working in the school library. You still need a plan. You need to put things together. You need to figure things out.

• 3:23:37Jocko Willink?

  You can utilize these leadership principles if you're that person, or if you're the CEO of a giant company with 8,000 employees. We will teach you these principles. Extremeownership.com. That's what we're doing. Comply them across the board.

• 3:23:57Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Also, Extreme Ownership Academy, new course out, Extreme Ownership for Middle Management. Lot of demand for that one. Questions all the time about, hey, I'm a new leader, or I'm a just got promoted to a middle management position. What do I do? That course is gonna tell you.

• 3:24:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I guess I should have made that a little more clear. Yeah, it doesn't matter if you're the lowest person on the totem pole that just got hired, or you're out looking for a job, or you're the senior person at that organization, or you're anyone in between.

• 3:24:31Jocko Willink?

  Go to extremeownership.com. Learn the skill of leadership. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, who want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Markley's Mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate, or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 3:24:49Jocko Willink?

  Also, we've got heroesandhorses.org. Help Micah Fink bring our veterans up into the mountains so they can find themselves. And then Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. And actually, Coach has done some stuff for them as well. So, check that out if you want to help veterans transition to the civilian sector. We appreciate it. If you want to connect with us on the algorithms, on the websites of the world. Well, let's remember what we've got for Coach. Coach is, you can check out PracticalFirearmsInstruction.com. You can check out TacticalHive.com. And also, he's on the gram, @PracticalFirearmsInstruction.

• 3:25:34Jocko Willink?

  And of course, Kerry is @KerryHelton. Straight up, we got it handled.

• 3:25:40Speaker 02

  We did it.

• 3:25:40Jocko Willink?

  Last time you sat in the chair, what was going on? You had an underscore in there.

• 3:25:45Speaker 02

  I had an underscore in there, Kerry underscore Helton. Shout out to Jack Daniel Hill, just getting it done. No matter what, what can you, what else can you throw at that kid?

• 3:25:54Jocko Willink?

  Bro, let's face it, if you got, let's face it, Kerry Helton, you want to talk about the trajectory of your life? When you had that underscore in there, nothing was good. Nothing was going good. It was just like, the whole world was kind of falling apart. Then you meet someone now, we have to talk about you on the podcast. We want to talk about how to connect with you. We just need to say @KerryHelton.

• 3:26:16Speaker 02

  @KerryHelton.

• 3:26:16Jocko Willink?

  We don't need to say underscore.

• 3:26:19Speaker 02

  Back up.

• 3:26:20Jocko Willink?

  The trajectory is looking up. So, check out @KerryHelton.

• 3:26:26Speaker 02

  No underscore.

• 3:26:28Jocko Willink?

  And I'm at Jocko Willink. Just watch out for the algorithm. It's going to grab you and it's going to try and kill you.

• 3:26:37Jocko Willink?

  Am I exaggerating? I don't know. It's going to kill your time. I promise you that. And what are you? You are your time. So yep, it's killing you. Watch out for it. Thanks once again to Mark Cochiolo for joining us. Just awesome to see you. Awesome to talk to you and awesome to share your story. And it's, it's awesome for guys like Mark to be out here and communicate and, and share his lessons. And so a lot of guys like Mark in the shadows, you know, they're not going to be on social media. They're not doing these kinds of things, but they're out there. They're out there protecting America.

• 3:27:19Jocko Willink?

  And thanks to all those folks that are out there right now doing this. We don't see them. We don't see them on, on social media. We don't see them, you know, um, in the interwebs. We don't see them. Why? Cause they're out there doing God's work. So thanks to all the folks in uniform around the world right now in harm's way to keep us free. And the same goes to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders. Thank you all for going into harm's way every day to keep us safe here at home.

• 3:27:57Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else out there, as Coach taught countless SEALs over the years,

• 3:28:06Jocko Willink?

  keep your eyes on that target because that's where it's happening. And that's how you get things done. And until next time, this is

• 3:28:17Jocko Willink?

  and until next time, this is not Echo. This is Kerry and Jocko out.