473: Achieve The Intent In A Manner Best Fitting Reality. With Codey Gandy

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Codey Gandy is a Marine Corps Veteran, and currently a leadership instructor, speaker, and strategic advisor for Echelon Front. Codey spent just over 5 years working as a ground combat leader for various units in the Marine Corps. 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 473 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. The mission of the rifle squad is to locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire maneuver or repel the enemy's assault by fire and close combat. The Marine Corps Rifle Squad is the fundamental maneuver unit of the Marine Corps Infantry. It is organized to provide multiple fire units and mutually supporting combined arms effects on the battlefield. Time and again, the tide of a battle has been changed through a squad leader's decisive employment of their squad. Mission Tactics is a fundamental enabler of maneuver warfare.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  Mission Tactics is a method of command which relays commander's intent to subordinate leaders and empowers them to take initiative on a dynamic battlefield in order to achieve that intent in a manner best fitting the realities facing the subordinate leader. Rifle Squad Leaders are the point at which mission tactics are actually employed in the operational environment.

• 1:08Jocko Willink?

  They must be able to effectively and efficiently use the tools and techniques available to them in order to generate the desired commander's intent. To that end, the Marine Corps has developed small unit tactics and techniques which have proven effective for small unit leaders in past wars and operations to serve as a template to guide squad leaders as they face new and challenging environments. A foundational aspect of Marine Corps leadership is the small unit leader's ability to understand the fundamentals of the profession of arms and confidently apply them in innovative ways. This ability is the core enabler of mission tactics and maneuver warfare.

• 1:50Jocko Willink?

  Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1: Warfighting defines maneuver warfare as "a warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy's cohesion through a variety of rapid, focused, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope."

• 2:15Jocko Willink?

  End quote. I think I could just read those like just kind of continually. That's from a little excerpt, little combination of some excerpts from Marine Corps publication. Three Tac 10A dot four Marine Rifle Squad. Explains how the Marine Rifle Squad operates, how it functions, how it's led, and the Marine Corps does an outstanding job of creating leaders. And we have one of those leaders here tonight, Cody Gandy, Marine Corps Fire Team Leader, Squad Leader, Platoon Sergeant, and now Leadership Instructor and Director of Experiential Training at Ashland Front. He's learned a lot over the years coming up through the ranks. And he's here with us tonight to share some of those experiences and lessons learned.

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  Cody, thanks for joining us, man.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. A pleasure to be here.

• 3:05Jocko Willink?

  When you hear close with and destroy, do you have flashbacks?

• 3:10Speaker 01

  There's a little, little burning inside of my soul there as you read that off.

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so epic. All right, let's, let's get a little bit of your background. Where'd you grow up?

• 3:20Speaker 01

  So I grew up in Northern California, small town called Loomis, California. It's about 20 minutes north of Sacramento, so capital up there and a small town. So you're talking, you know, 7,500 people is, is what you're dealing with, little cow town up there. Small community, but you're close enough to the big city if you want, but.

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  So you say cow town and a lot of people don't understand that. Much of California, most of California is agriculture.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, is that what's going on up there?

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're on the outskirts of the, or we're on the edge of the city. And so as you get a little past the high school and stuff like that, it's all, it's all cows and ag and stuff like that. So definitely have a, rode a couple of cows in my life.

• 4:03Jocko Willink?

  And what'd your mom and dad do?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  So my mom was real estate growing up. So she was a working mom and my dad was a was a cop. So still is um all kind of billets was on the sheriff's department, small town PD. And now he's still a he's a homicide detective out in California right now as well.

• 4:18Jocko Willink?

  Where did he did he grow up in California as well?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's from San Jose.

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And what about your mom? Same thing?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  She's up in Auburn area. That's where my my grandparents grew up.

• 4:27Jocko Willink?

  And then brothers, sisters?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  I have a younger sister. Yeah, so she's four, five years younger than me, depending on the the the time of the year.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, check. And so you're growing up. What were you like a kid? What are you into?

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Pretty quiet, pretty reserved. Um, I know you know me, uh, pretty a reserved person. Got that from my dad and kind of growing up that way. Uh, heavily involved in sports. I was that that weird kid that would watch SportsCenter three times in a row and I would give you all the stats. And I knew everything about everything sports. And so I was wearing.

• 4:58Jocko Willink?

  Was your dad that into sports?

• 4:59Speaker 01

  No, it's just I I fell in love with it. I wanted to do football, baseball, sports year round is what I wanted to do. So I was that was that was my life until I until I went to the Marine Corps later on.

• 5:08Jocko Willink?

  So a as you're growing up, did you get, did you like go play travel ball or?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so baseball was a year round thing.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  Was that your best sport?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  I was better at baseball, but I liked football more. And then I supplemented wrestling in there to help with with football.

• 5:24Jocko Willink?

  How many years did you wrestle?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Uh, three. Once I got to uh, high school, I stopped just because it was. I know.

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  Why?

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Football, it was just too much in my head.

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Cause I went from football and then it was fall ball for baseball. And I thought I had a chance to go in, you know, college for one of those two. And so I had to pick and choose.

• 5:44Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, we're playing football.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay. In part of football, a big part of football is to grab another guy and pull him to the ground, right?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 5:54Jocko Willink?

  So if you start, but then there's other things. There's a ball, there's throwing a ball, there's kicking, like there's other things. But really, what a lot of people like about football is you're gonna grab a guy and pull him to the ground, right?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's part of the gig for sure.

• 6:06Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with football season and there's another season that starts that we could participate in.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:13Jocko Willink?

  There's no ball, there's no throwing, there's no kicking. All there is is grabbing dudes and pulling them to the ground.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  Why isn't wrestling more popular?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Well.

• 6:21Jocko Willink?

  Why did Cody Gandy quit wrestling?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  It's a good question, because what you're talking about literally is like half the appeal for like half the people. So you're talking about tackling somebody. Yeah, so first off, only defense tackles. So a lot of people, actually, I would say, and tell me if you agree with this, did you play defense, offense, both? Yeah, so most people I think like offense, because you can get to score. And the objective of the game is to get on offense and score.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay, but let me say something else. There's also people that are trying not to get taken down to the ground, right?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, fully. And, and yeah, continue running.

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, continue running and getting away.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, fully.

• 6:58Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, to be honest, I don't, I mean, sure, there is translation for sure. Oh, man, I can see how it would help or whatever. In fact, jujitsu and rugby. There's like, I told you, I made like this little documentary, mini doc, whatever, Australian Rugby League. But they take jujitsu to get better at rugby. Anyway, it's a long story, but. Um, to answer your question, they're completely, it doesn't seem like it if you don't play football, I guess, but they are completely different, different experiences. One is like, yeah, you're fighting the guys and just more of a combat scenario. The other one doesn't feel like a combat scenario. It's more about like.

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  It's a game.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, it's, the combat part of it is more of a means for something.

• 7:40Jocko Willink?

  Wrestlers go hard. Wrestlers are like, they say, you don't play wrestling.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:44Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Yep, that makes sense. That feels correct.

• 7:47Jocko Willink?

  Go play football, you ain't playing wrestling.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I understand.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  All right, so I fast forward a little bit there. So you're, so you're pretty good, pretty good at these games?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Good, not great. I had the ability to do that, but I didn't take it seriously. So the practices, workouts, I would show up and do good and.

• 8:05Jocko Willink?

  So you're watching SportsCenter three times a day, but you're like not putting out on the suicide sprints? Is that what's happening?

• 8:12Speaker 01

  I guess at practices, yes, but it's, it's all the stuff outside. There's a difference between being good and great. I wasn't putting in the work. I was more worried about other things in life.

• 8:20Jocko Willink?

  What other things are you worried about?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Girls and parties was, uh, was that it?

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  So you're quiet and you're reserved, but you like girls and parties?

• 8:27Speaker 01

  I was the introvert in a group of extroverts, and so they kind of brought that out of me. And so, um, that was where my head was at, at, you know, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

• 8:38Jocko Willink?

  So now we're in high school.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:40Jocko Willink?

  In high, so you're in high school and how's your, how's your like, uh, schools? Are you guys going to states? Are you guys winning CIF regionals? Like, how's it going?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, CI, uh, nothing to state. Um, went to the, uh, CIF championships in baseball. My junior year, football, my junior year, senior year, we, we weren't the best in football. And then baseball, we were pretty decent. Um, but nothing, nothing to the state level.

• 9:07Jocko Willink?

  And are you starting to get looked at for college? Were you thinking that's an opportunity for you?

• 9:12Speaker 01

  That's what I wanted to do. So I wanted to go, my goal was to go NFL. But I weighed like a whopping 165 my senior year and, uh, wasn't really on the cards. So I had some looks on some D2, some D3, some smaller schools and had some D1 baseball, but I really wanted to play football more than anything.

• 9:30Jocko Willink?

  And how is it when you're growing up in a small town and your dad's a cop? How's that, how's that work out?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  A little challenging. Uh, it's pros and cons, right? So everybody knows my dad. Uh, my mom and dad are kind of life of the party. We're always doing big things. We're doing, you know, camping with 50 people and going out in the woods and doing stuff like that. So everybody knows my dad. My dad eventually transfers to the neighboring city. So he's in Rockland Cop and I live in Loomis. So everybody knows him. He, he coaches me in football and his, you know, full kit as a kid. And so I get dropped off at school in a squad car, which I don't think you're supposed to do that. But that was, that was cool growing up. Um, so it was, people knew, but I was a bit of a knucklehead and got in trouble a couple of times. And so that was, uh, the classic cops kid causing trouble.

• 10:18Jocko Willink?

  In trouble with the cops?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Majority of the times, no, able to, to get away, but I got, uh, I got arrested when I was 16. So I was, I was a younger kid. I, I graduated when I was 17. So my, my junior year, hung out with a lot of older kids, playing football, dated an older girl. And we were going to one of the dances and got caught underage drinking. And, uh, they're like, hey, you gotta call your dad.

• 10:45Jocko Willink?

  And this was when your dad was a cop in that town?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. My dad's been a cop pretty much my whole life. That's all, that's all I've ever known. And so I call him and I'm just like, I let him down was the thing cuz he's like coached me and guided me and don't do this stupid stuff and learn from him etcetera. I remember making the call and he's like, hey, just you what are you gonna do? Um, cuz the cops there and he wants to, he's asking everybody questions like, who did this? Who's drinking? And there's like two sides. It's you drank or you didn't drink? And I was like, well, I'll just tell the truth cuz one thing I learned growing up is like the truth is that's it. I never got in more trouble for telling the truth is when I lied is when I got in exponentially more trouble.

• 11:23Jocko Willink?

  It's exponential. I'm here to tell you as a dad, you lie, it's gonna hurt. Tell the truth, it's gonna hurt a little bit. I like that exponential is what we're dealing with.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you told the truth. Told the truth, still got in trouble, but there was no punishment at home for what happened.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  Did they lock you up?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:43Jocko Willink?

  Cuz I feel like if my, if I was your dad and you got rolled up, I'd tell like, you know, I'd be like, hey dude, freaking throw him and throw him in the, throw him in the clink for the night. Just let him see scared straight, dude. Is that wrong?

• 11:57Speaker 01

  It's harsh, but hey, man.

• 11:58Jocko Willink?

  Especially a small town, like they probably had four cells or something in jail.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you probably knew other cops too, probably. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense.

• 12:06Jocko Willink?

  I was always around cops. Get in here.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:09Jocko Willink?

  Processed you in?

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  So, but you ultimately don't get in a ton of trouble because, well, first of all, it's not that big of a crime underage drinking.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:23Jocko Willink?

  What kind of music were you listening to?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  My, uh, my first CD was Beastie Boys, uh, License to Ill. That was my, my first CD. So that's what my dad bought me. I don't remember what age it was.

• 12:34Jocko Willink?

  Your dad bought you that?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:36Jocko Willink?

  Interesting. Okay.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  So I was in middle school. Um, Beastie Boys, System of the Down. My dad was really into rock. I was really anything that had a good beat or just got the blood flowing. Obviously, a lot of workouts for sports and stuff like that, but, um, it was pretty much anything that had a good tune to it.

• 12:52Jocko Willink?

  And so what were you thinking about going to the Marine Corps this young?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:55Jocko Willink?

  What were you thinking about?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely not.

• 12:57Jocko Willink?

  What were you thinking about doing?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  I wanna go into law enforcement. So, growing up, you know, I was born in 91. Watching my dad, it's a little bit cooler to be a cop back then than it is nowadays. My dad was, you know, the hero in the house and it just made sense and hearing the stories and, you know, people gravitate towards him and want to talk to him. It's what I wanted to do. No interest in the military whatsoever. I had a buddy, one of my best friends that ended up going in the Marines and he wanted me to meet his recruiter and I was like, hell no. It's like, that's not, I wanted to serve, but just in a different way. Both my grandfathers were Navy guys, so, you know, I had some family in the military as well, but it just, for me at the time, it didn't make sense.

• 13:34Jocko Willink?

  So, are you gonna go to college to make this happen? Because you don't need to go to college to be a police officer, do you?

• 13:41Speaker 01

  No, you can go straight out of high school. I wanted to go to college to get a degree. Well, I wanted to do football was the primary route, but I wanted to get a degree because certain law enforcement agencies, you have to get a degree to promote to certain levels. That was really the only reason.

• 13:53Jocko Willink?

  Now, are you getting looked at for colleges? You said you got some D2 schools looking at you?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, small schools for, for football, a couple, you know, lower tier, tier two D1 schools for baseball, but I really wanted to play football, but I was just, you know, too small. I, I ate top ramen every day was my, my fuel source, like every single day, that's what I ate after school. Um, so I didn't prioritize the nutrition as I should. Thus, the 165 in full gear is what I weighed.

• 14:22Jocko Willink?

  When you were growing up and your dad, looking at your dad, did you, you know, you get to see the good side of, you know, being a cop, you see him in uniform, you see people treating him with respect. Did you see any of the like downside? Did you see any of the negativity from, you know, the stress from your, from watching your dad?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  I think my dad did a very good job of, of shielding me from that. Obviously, when I'm really young, he wants to not let me know what's going on. But we had a couple instances where he had a undercover car at the house and our tires got slashed and stuff like that. And we didn't really run into any people that he arrested in the past, which was good, but, you know, sometimes we'd be out and he, he would see someone, he's like, we're gonna go, which kind of put two and two together. So, I really didn't see any of that until, in, uh, in high school, my dad's partner got killed in the line of duty. So, one of his partners, Matt Redding, was, um, doing a DUI checkpoint or set up cones on a freeway super late at night about 2:00 AM and a drunk driver hit him and killed him.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  And I just remember after the fact, that was the first time I saw my dad kind of process, you know, something negative in a, in a, from a, from a law enforcement lens.

• 15:30Jocko Willink?

  How old were you when that happened?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  This was, man. I think I was freshman year, so two thousand and five.

• 15:37Jocko Willink?

  So you were like a fully cognizant.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  I was aware, yeah. And I knew the guy, so he's been to the house a couple of times, played basketball with him. He was a younger guy than my dad joined when he was like thirty one, thirty two and for law enforcement. So I knew the guy Matt, so it kind of hit home and it hit my dad pretty hard.

• 15:56Jocko Willink?

  And would you say that that made you hesitate towards law enforcement or made you more move towards it?

• 16:03Speaker 01

  I think it solidified it. Like then I I knew in the moment, I was like, this is exactly what I want to do.

• 16:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's so strange how young men are like that, you know, like we just see stuff like that and it makes us want to go do it. It's very strange. Um, all right. So you did you get any scholarships to college? Did it work out the way you wanted it to?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  No, I had some D two, D three, but I eventually wanted to carve my own path and went the Jocko route, went to a small school in, you know, middle California. And I wanted to, you know, play, you know, get some reps, gain some weight, and then eventually wanted to try to walk on. I wasn't getting a lot of exposure. My senior footballer team wasn't very good. We had a losing record and there's not a lot of eyes on teams that aren't very good. So I thought going Jocko, getting my weight up, getting some reps, getting more film, and then I'd walk on D one was my route. But.

• 16:49Jocko Willink?

  How'd that work out?

• 16:49Speaker 01

  That was a short-lived as I, after my freshman year of college ball, uh, blew out my knee and uh, kind of the the walls came crashing in after that point.

• 16:58Jocko Willink?

  What was the injury?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  MCL, PCL, meniscus.

• 17:04Jocko Willink?

  What did it happen during a game?

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Nope, it was just non-contact.

• 17:07Jocko Willink?

  Just cut in a turn or something like that?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 17:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. All right. And now what does that do to your, you said, you said things a little bit sideways after that?

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Well, I'm in college. I'm away from home, which I'm away like two hours, but I'm on my own, you know, and I'm still seventeen because I graduated when I was seventeen. And so I'm on my own for the first time. I get done with football and my my dream is gone, right? And, you know, at seventeen, eighteen, you don't really have a lot of perspective on life and uh, my my mission's over on the NFL. My my dream's crushed and so I start to. Making one bad decision, which is followed by another and hanging around with the wrong people and doing the wrong thing. And it's just, I'm on a, on a path of destruction at that point.

• 17:47Jocko Willink?

  What, so what are you drinking and partying and are you skipping classes, the whole nine yards?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm failing like just like one-on-one classes. Like you just have to show up to pass and I'm just like, I'm not going. I don't care. This is where I'm at.

• 18:01Jocko Willink?

  Did you think how long you're gonna be able to do that for?

• 18:04Speaker 01

  No, very, very short sighted, living day to day.

• 18:08Jocko Willink?

  And so who, who turned you on to the possibility of going in the military and possibly going in the Marine Corps?

• 18:14Speaker 01

  So it was a collection of events. So I, this was the summer of 2010. Suffered the injury in the spring. During the summer, there's not much going on, doing a bunch of wrong things. I end up going to a party and I,

• 18:33Speaker 01

  at the house, this guy tries to pull a gun on somebody, pulls a gun out, there's all this chaos and we're in a not so good part of town. He's flashing around, he ends up putting it towards his head and pulls the trigger, but it's a misfire. And guys tackle him, take it away. And from that moment, I'm really just sitting there processing like, like, what am I doing? Is the question I'm asking myself, like, where am I at? Like, why?

• 18:54Jocko Willink?

  So let me just, just real quick, you told that pretty quick. So you're at a party and a dude has a gun. And he's like flashing his gun around, acting like a tough guy.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  People are mouthing off. It's, we're in a not so good part of town. People are mouthing off. They, they pull it out to, you know, show that they're tough and stuff like that, waving it around.

• 19:13Jocko Willink?

  But then he decides he's gonna kill himself?

• 19:15Speaker 01

  I don't know if that was the master plan or whatever, but that's how it ended up.

• 19:18Jocko Willink?

  And when you say misfire, like click or misfire, like partial discharge of the weapon?

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Click.

• 19:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And now people tackle him.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  People tackle him, take it away. Please show up. I'm long gone before then, but as I'm leaving and everybody's kind of running away as they see a gun and stuff like that.

• 19:38Jocko Willink?

  You're reflecting on your life.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Reflecting on the life choices and how did I end up here within the, in this moment? And so that was kind of the, the self-reflection moment on like, what am I doing?

• 19:48Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's a really good thing to think about. You know, every once in a while, you gotta, if you're lucky, if you're lucky when you're 18, 19, 20, 14, 17, 37.

• 20:01Jocko Willink?

  You can take a step back and look around and go, hold on a second. Why am I here right now? Is this the right spot to be in? And I think that some people feel that you get to a point where you doesn't matter anymore. You know, if you watch someone kind of self-destruct in their forties, fifties, like the for them to dig themselves out of the hole that they dug, it's going to be too much. And so they just keep going. But I still, I've seen people recover from those situations. Where they step back and said, you know what? This, this is not working out. Well, I need to stop doing this. But that's a, it's an important thing to, you know, so we talk about detachment all the time at Echelon Front. Cause when you're in the shit, when you're a kid, you're in it and you're doing it.

• 20:46Jocko Willink?

  You don't, you're like, that's just another night. You probably had other nights like that where there was a fight. There was a knife. There was a thing. People got arrested, DUI, like the whole nine yards. This stuff's happening. And when you're in it, you don't recognize like, oh my gosh, I'm, I'm on the bad path right now. And what's crazy is your parents recognize it. Your parents like, what are you doing? You know? And any of your friends that kind of move forward in life? They're like, dude, what are you doing? Why are you, why are you still doing this kind of shit? So? Yeah, that's a good little lesson learned. Assess where you're at sometimes. Take a little look around. Hopefully you don't need a traumatic event like a dude getting for, uh, possibly killing himself. That's kind of it's a bit much, but that's what it takes.

• 21:27Jocko Willink?

  So then how did you, so now you're, now you're kind of open to suggestion of of another path.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  I see the, the football path, at least in the moment, the card, like it's a path that's really long. I'm trying to figure out what to do. I'm thinking of going into law enforcement. Uh, but there's my knees all jacked up and I, I call one of my buddies, the marine that I went to high school with that tried to bring me the career and I was like, hell no. Ended up calling him. I was just seeking advice from, from anybody. Um, and he just got back from Iraq at the time and I was like, hey man, like, I really don't know what I'm doing. Like I'm in the pits right now. Like, how's the Marine Corps? And he was just like, you could hear him like perk up on the call. He's like, oh, this is my moment.

• 22:04Jocko Willink?

  He was like, uh,

• 22:08Jocko Willink?

  Ace Ventura and he's like, you're asking that question? He's getting ready to give you a 30 minute answer? Yeah, so this dude did that. Okay, cool.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  And it was good. He was, he was honest and upfront. He's like, hey, it's tough, it's challenging. What really painted the picture on what I wanted to do? He was like, I look at where I'm at and what I'm doing and the rest of our friends. And it's different. He's like, I've made great strides in life. I'm gonna get education when I get out. I have all this experience and he's like, look at our friend group right now. What are they doing? And I was like, and I'm that person. He's like, what are you doing right now? And I'm like, they can't compare. We're on opposite sides of the spectrum. And like just in a conversation, it was like click. And so just that relationship, that, you know, influence that he had. Were peers, were friends, were the same age. It just, the path opened and that's what I wanted to do. And literally like the next day on crutches, I went to the recruiter's office.

• 22:57Jocko Willink?

  Did you need to get surgery or did you already get it?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  I was gonna get surgery. So I, I moved up the surgery.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Got surgery and they gave me kinda like, hey, you can't really do anything for about six months. And I was like, watch me, kinda thing. Went to the recruiter's office, like, hey, we can't touch you till it's healed.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  So I'm kinda on the back burner for a while. I'm not really looping in my parents to, to what I'm doing on the decision.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  My parents are kinda opposite. My dad's very stoic, very reserved. My mom's very emotional and so I fear that my mom's gonna have a very hard time with it. So I was like, I'll just wait close to my bootcamp date and then I'll let her know. Which I didn't really loop her until about a month out. I was supposed to leave April 2011. I got a call October 2010, like on the first. He's like, hey, man, can you leave in two weeks? And I was like, sure. And I was still enrolled in classes. I'll, I'll drop everything. I'll do everything. And I believe in October 2010.

• 23:57Jocko Willink?

  How's bootcamp?

• 24:00Jocko Willink?

  We can go to San Diego, right?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  San Diego.

• 24:02Jocko Willink?

  How was it?

• 24:03Speaker 01

  So, being a fall class, uh, not too bad. Obviously, we don't do a lot of water stuff like you guys do. Um, the physical activity, I'm pretty used to in terms of, you know, being in sports my whole life. The mental, I'm definitely used to being yelled at and screamed at and stuff like that. I did get some advice from that marine on what to do and what not to do. Uh, the hardest part for me was, you know, growing up, I, I never really thought myself as a leader. I'm very, I don't talk, I don't speak, I just kind of just watch and, and, you know, act that way. I was always kind of the action guy. So if somebody wanted me to do something like I would do it and that would be how I led. But for whatever reason, you know, about two weeks in, you know, in each platoon, in about a hundred guys is your boot camp class. There's a guy called the guide.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  And they carry the flag. They're like, they represent the group. And our guide was at dental, doing some dental thing. And the guide almost sitting on our quarter deck. And all our instructors are getting pissed off, like, somebody go and get it. And there's like a hundred of us just sitting there and nobody's moving. And I don't know what it was, just I had this pull. I was like, I'll go. And so I grabbed the guide on and now I'm, I take over this position. I'm the number one guy in a hundred, in charge of a hundred people, which was very foreign to me. Very challenging as I'm 18, they're all 18 and, you know, I pay for everything that they do. But that leadership component initially, that was challenging to say the least.

• 25:18Jocko Willink?

  So when you're the guy, when you're the guide in the class, do you do some, is this just during marching?

• 25:23Speaker 01

  It's during everything.

• 25:24Jocko Willink?

  During everything. So they'll be like, God, get, get your class assembled and stuff like that?

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 25:28Jocko Willink?

  Get, God, give me a head count, that kind of thing?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Yep. You're starting off, well, there, it's all overseen, especially at the beginning. You're very like, turn left, turn right type of thing, but everything the class does is a reflection of you. So when somebody's locker is jacked up, like, you're gonna pay as well and you're gonna meet that quarter deck and you count for the class at the end of the night, like you say the things.

• 25:46Jocko Willink?

  So you're basically a class leader?

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 25:50Jocko Willink?

  And did you stay the class leader the whole time?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 25:52Jocko Willink?

  That must be rare. Well, it was, when I went to officer candidate school, I was the president of the class. And like the other classes, they'd go through like three, four, five presidents, but I was just president from day one until we graduated. But most people just cycle through because things are just jacked up and it just sucks. Uh, but were you, so were you the guide the whole time?

• 26:13Speaker 01

  From whenever I picked up that guide on, like two weeks until, until we finished, I was.

• 26:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, did you have anything that was challenging for you in, uh, in boot camp? Was there anything that was hard for you?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Not really the physical or the mental like it was fun like you're getting all the stuff I did in my previous life like that's training and I'm getting paid to train uh that's the fun aspect to it I wasn't the challenging part wasn't the you know missing family or friends like I was ready to do this it really just was that leadership component that I wasn't really prepared for I never was in a leadership role I never was told to like speak up I never was told to motivate people I never was told like or taught hey you know these two guys like they're your peers you need to get them up to shape like I didn't know how to do that and I'd find myself like doing a lot of things that I I couldn't figure out like hey this guy's jacked up like you need to fix him and I was like I don't know how to do that like we had a guy

• 27:07Speaker 01

  wasn't really all there and like I'd have to shave his face every morning like that was my responsibility like like stupid things like that but also hey this kid's not gonna make the run or he's not gonna make the weight like you need to figure out like how to get up to speed I didn't know how to do it at the time and it was just kind of a learning curve month after month until eventually left on it's it's a lot harder than it looks in terms of getting people towards this common goal

• 27:28Jocko Willink?

  Did the kid learn to shave?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Well for about a month I had to do it for him but uh and which was weird he was older than all of us he was like super old like 28

• 27:37Jocko Willink?

  Damn I didn't know they let 28 years old 28 year olds in the Marine Corps

• 27:41Speaker 01

  I don't know the cutoff I'd have to check but he was definitely seven to 10 years older than all of us

• 27:46Jocko Willink?

  Damn uh what was it like you know you you probably had a bunch of combat veterans as your drill instructors did you pay attention to that did you notice that was there like were they talking about those kind of lessons learned because you were going to infantry from the beginning right you're going 0311?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  So the recruiter right recruiters are recruiters um when I went to the recruiter in office and I was like I want to go be in 0311 want to be in infantry they were like we can't all the billets are filled like if you want to become an infantry you have to go this other route which is called security forces which is 8152 in security forces there's three billets in there there's a fast team which I was told was like the SWAT team I was like that sounds cool there's a

• 28:29Jocko Willink?

  Sold that

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Sold that one

• 28:30Jocko Willink?

  Fast team is cool but yeah

• 28:32Speaker 01

  And then there's uh like presidential security and then there is like basically uh people that guard nukes so high priority basis those are the three routes you can go security forces so I was told And I believe like, hey, in order to go infantry, you have to do the security forces route, which means you don't do a four year contract, you do a five year contract and you gotta, you know, give two years to security forces before you go to the fleet and be a part of the infantry. And I bought that sweet, sweet life from the beginning.

• 28:59Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy. Check. Okay. So, but you still have to go to school of infantry, don't you?

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yes. So after boot camp, that's the first school you go to.

• 29:07Jocko Willink?

  How'd you, did you graduate number one in your class in boot camp?

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:10Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm talking about, Echo Charles. See that right there?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I see that.

• 29:14Jocko Willink?

  You underestimate Cody, dude. He's over there graduating. There's a hundred freaking dogs in there trying to get that. Do you get promoted because of that? Do you get like a stripe because of graduating number one?

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 29:26Jocko Willink?

  Damn, dude. Okay. All right. Um, so now you, how, how's, how's the school of infantry?

• 29:33Speaker 01

  It's a different beast, right? Boot camp's all about discipline. It's, it's drill and things I like, like, why am I doing this? But it's, it's really to instill discipline, brain cores. It's discipline. That's, that's really all we care about. When you go to the school of infantry, there's two paths. So if you're in oh, three, you go to the school of infantry for the whole three months, or you go the MCT route, which is everybody other than infantry. You do the same month and a half, but the last month and a half is, you know, it's, it's not.

• 29:59Jocko Willink?

  Specialized to your thing?

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so the oh, three route was, um, that was fun. You know, you're in, you're at Pendleton, you're hiking the mountains up there, you're in the field all the time, you're getting dirty, you're doing the camel paint and stuff like that. Like it was an absolute blast.

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  The, um, the Pendleton mountains, like you think of climbing mountains, right? You don't think of Southern California, San Diego mountains, but I'll tell you what, dude, those mountains, those, they're like hills, but dude, they feel like mountains.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Never ending hills.

• 30:29Jocko Willink?

  What's, what's the attrition rate at school of infantry? Do you know?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  I don't know. Majority of the time, it's just people getting rolled back for injuries. So, you know, it's, you know, for us, it's you don't go to sit call unless like it's mandatory. A lot of people are trying to escape there and they don't want to do, it's, it's a lot of hiking and you're hiking with like a hundred pound packs. Like stuff you're never ever gonna use, but it's like they just want to teach you how to carry this heavy load and you know, those hills, they, they get you. And it's week after week after week and it, it sucks. And some people, it's a lot of attrition, but you just get rolled back and you start over again. You know, the quickest way to get through bootcamp, the quickest way to get through SOI is you just.

• 31:07Jocko Willink?

  Keep going.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  You just keep going.

• 31:09Jocko Willink?

  Jack, so you did a month and a half of that and then you get turned over to the like specific fast company security forces training?

• 31:17Speaker 01

  School of infantry is three months. So for the first, first month and a half is it's all generalized. So everybody does the same thing. The last month and a half, cause I was an 11, that's a rifleman. You go that route and then you have your 31s, which are machine gunners, mortarmen, and they learn those individual skills.

• 31:32Jocko Willink?

  So what was, but you were 0311?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you, so you did, you did get the infantry MOS, but, but they slaughtered you for the different job of security forces?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Yep. Cause that's where you start. And then after school of infantry, I went to Virginia and then I went to the security force of school.

• 31:50Jocko Willink?

  And then how's that?

• 31:53Speaker 01

  It's, it's unique. So it's very specialized. As I was going in the fast company, like it's, it's a SWAT team as what I was told. It's a lot of specialized training. So we got to do a lot of cool stuff, but it was just another school. So it's another three months. But you're doing, you know, advanced urban combat, which was really cool. Got to go to designated marksman school. That's her, you know, mini sniper course. So some of the platoons I wanted to go do, but it was a lot of stuff. And I look back when I got to the inventory, like I'm really thankful to go to the, that, that way and that path. Cause I learned a lot more than the inventory was given people. So it was, it was a fun route. It was in Virginia. Never been to the east coast, really close to damn neck. We trained on that. So I got to see a lot of cool dudes with beers riding golf carts around and stuff like that, which I put two and two together.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  But cool opportunity out there.

• 32:39Jocko Willink?

  And so just for people that don't know the fast company, it's fleet anti-terrorism, security teams. They were only formed in like the eighties, I want to say.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was in response for like embassy attacks. So that was really why they built it. And so each, there's three fast companies out there. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and they're designated to certain parts of the world. So you're really the, the QRF, the quicker action force to get sent out to those places.

• 33:03Jocko Willink?

  Um, did you have any problems or anything or any challenges going through all these different schools that you got to go to? Or was it pretty straightforward?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Schools are pretty straightforward. Um, but initially trying in that first platoon, it was still that that peer to peer that I couldn't really figure out. I I kept getting slotted to for leadership positions. I was a fire team leader at eighteen and I'm leading a bunch of eighteen year olds and I couldn't find the mix on being friends and being a boss. And then I I learned the hard way that, you know, if you don't draw that line and people are going to take advantage of your position and they they think that they can, you know, oh, Cody's the boss, like I can get away with stuff. And I kind of had to learn that the hard way on like where to set the line, specifically with friends as you promote from peer to leader.

• 33:43Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. So you were a little bit too nice in the beginning.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  I was. I'd rather be liked was was the mindset.

• 33:52Jocko Willink?

  Was your attitude. And I always say it's easier to like if you become bros first, and then you have to reel that back in because you went too far, that's a lot harder than, hey, we're going to be professional first. And then over time, the trust gets built and it's like, oh, yeah, I can give you some slack and we can be bros. But we all know that, you know, what what the scenario is as far as work goes. Whereas if you're just like rolling in, hey, I just want to be everyone's friend. Cool. They want to be your friend too. A lot.

• 34:23Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so then what what did you guys do? So now you you get you're actually trained up. You're like, what are you going standby? Or are you on permanent standby?

• 34:32Speaker 01

  So we're out in Virginia. We're in Norfolk is where the it's called Camp Allen out there. They've moved it. I think they're at Portsmouth right now, but that's like my first official unit. Is a I'm in first fast company, Alpha Company, fifth platoon. So we're A five. Um, so we're there. We're doing a typical workup. Um, and the deployment schedule we're supposed to go on is we're gonna go to Guantanamo Bay is where we're supposed to go. So we do this six month block of training, then we go to Guantanamo Bay. That's the first place. That is, you know, I think three to four months and you're really just stationary security on the fence line. So you're still doing the fence line rotation where you're just up in a guard tower for, you know, twelve, fifteen hours a day and you're doing that month in, month out for three months.

• 35:11Jocko Willink?

  Dude, talk me through a day of sitting on a 15 hour watch, sitting on a guard tower, looking at a jungle or something.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  You see a lot of crabs, a lot of iguanas.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  You're, you're, you're hoping and praying for some Cuban asylum seekers to come across the water and approach your post, which happened a couple of times. And that was like, the action that we got was, hey, I got some people moving in the water and we sent our QRF. And it's funny, in the moment, watching, I remember being in a tower and you're watching the Cuban fence line and you see their post towers as well. And this group climbs up, you know, a cliff. And I just see him standing, there's like three of them. I'm like, like this is it. So we called a QRF and our QRFs, all our big dudes, they come out of the Humvee. And it's like a dead 50 meter sprint to just spear these people into the ground because they're like, this is the moment that we've prepared for. That was really like-

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  And these are people that are defecting?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  They're just, but they just-

• 36:04Speaker 01

  They just get-

• 36:07Speaker 01

  And then eventually those, the defectors, they get taken back, we pass them up to headquarters and then, you know, what happens after that, we don't really know. We did a lot of security at the, you know, the base in Cuba fence line to where they do some meeting and trade prisoners and stuff like that, which obviously I'm 18, 19, I really don't know what's going on. I just, I see a lot of things and I'm coming to like, ooh, what are they doing in there?

• 36:28Jocko Willink?

  Jack, all right, what was after Gitmo?

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Gitmo, we come back, we train for a little bit more and then we're gonna go forward deploy to Rota, Spain. So, Rota, Spain, big naval base out there. And that's where we're gonna stay. And basically you're on standby in Spain for anything that's gonna go in on. You're on standby, but you have other, you know, mini deployments where you're gonna go train with foreign allies. So we train with the Royal Spanish Marines. We go train with the-

• 36:56Jocko Willink?

  And you have one platoon?

• 36:58Speaker 01

  One platoon.

• 36:58Jocko Willink?

  Is that right?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 36:59Jocko Willink?

  How many guys are in it?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Thirty, thirty-five.

• 37:03Jocko Willink?

  So like, pretty much a kind of standard platoon you got?

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Standard platoon. It's just, the, the fast mindset is you just have a different capability. So all of us are trained to do a bunch of different stuff. So you're operating at almost like a company. So it's 30 guys, but everybody can do a bunch of different stuff. So we go, we're all Spanish Marines. We go train with the Israeli Defense Force, which was really cool and unique, getting to go to Israel, go to Jerusalem. You get to see the Gaza Strip and stuff like that. And in training with those people was unique because in Israel, everybody serves in the military. And being there, I was one of the snipers for our platoon, got to train with Israeli snipers and they're all female, which that's just what they decide to do. A little more low profile, able to get into place and what like that.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  But you also saw a lot of US citizens. They were US citizens, but they were fighting for the IDF, which was interesting to say. So we trained with those guys. We come back, we're in Rota, and then this is September 11, 2012. On that day, that was the anniversary of 9/11, obviously, a bunch of embassies are attacked around the world. At the time, we think it's a, you know, a joke, like we're, we're doing the whole like, hey, get ready, the get ready drills. Like we did a thousand of those and that night they're like, hey, you guys are going to go down to potentially Libya in response to Ambassador Stevens getting killed.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  So the Benghazi thing starts unfolding and you guys are on the hook as, that's actually legitimately your mission as a fast company is there's an embassy being attacked. That is textbook, we need to send the fast company guys down there to go and secure the embassy and provide, you know, until we can get bigger forces there. That's, that's literally what you're supposed to be doing.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 38:42Jocko Willink?

  And when you say you, so are you seeing like reports of it?

• 38:46Speaker 01

  I mean, we're all in our rooms and we get the message, but we're all checking online. We have internet and stuff like that. So we're checking on the computers and seeing just all the carnage going on. But all of us are a little, I'll just speak for myself, unsure on like what we're actually going to do. Cause it's the whole like, is this a game? Is this a drill? And we really didn't know. We're going to go pack, we're going to go prep, we're going to get on the plane, but we've done that a thousand times to where we actually get on the plane and then we get off like, hey, good job, guys. And so nobody really knew what exactly we were doing until we actually got on the plane and we took off. We're like, oh, this is real. Like this is where we're actually going to go.

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  How long did that take? Cause there's all kinds of, you know, uh, uh, debrief points on this that those guys were on the ground and no, they didn't get any help for hours and hours and hours. And there's a lot of bureaucratic red tape that.

• 39:33Jocko Willink?

  That held up reinforcements from showing up at a reasonable timeline. So like, how long did it take for you guys to actually leave?

• 39:44Speaker 01

  It was a classic hurry up and wait. So obviously at the time I'm a, you know, I'm an E3. I'm a fire team leader. I'm in charge of three guys. So I have like three layers up in the chain of command trying to get information from. So we get all our gear prepped, which is probably a couple of hours. We head to the tarmac, we prep all that stuff, we have pallets. We're bringing everything with us. That takes a couple more hours and eventually we leave. So I would say probably 10 to 12 hours is what it took to get down there.

• 40:12Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy. So, um, but so you already seen the reports of the deaths.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're seeing the videos, the classic, the, the picture that's always shown. It's, you know, the burning embassy and the guys kind of running around.

• 40:26Jocko Willink?

  You got Ambassador Stevens was killed. This, uh, an information officer named Sean Smith was killed. The guy named Ty Woods, who was a former SEAL who I went through BUDs with. He was in my BUDs class. Uh, he was killed and then, uh, Glenn Doherty, another SEAL, um, was killed. And all that took place pretty rapidly. Um, and they didn't get the support that they needed, you know? Again, this has been kind of debriefed ad nauseam. It's interesting to hear your perspective being there. How quickly you could have gone and how much you, how long you had to wait to actually leave. What, what was it like when you got on the ground? You finally get on the ground down there?

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Well, flying over and, and I think what, what took the longest is whoever was overseeing this whole thing didn't know who to send. So I know there was a Mew in the area. I know even talking to some guys on that Sean front team that they were potentially going to go down there as well. So there was like probably five different units that had the potential to go in for whatever reason, we got the call. So I think that's what delayed us initially. On the flight there, there was still just mass confusion. So we really didn't know what we're getting into, where we were going. We couldn't figure out if we were going to be full kit or wearing a little vis there. Like we changed out probably five or six times just because it was just frantic. Like we don't know what to do. And obviously this game of telephone gets down to the troops and we're like, what the hell are we even doing? So that was a little frustrating and.

• 41:45Jocko Willink?

  I, I, yeah, it's.

• 41:48Jocko Willink?

  That's what happens when you have a foggy chain of command, you know, and there's, there's always a little tension between like the State Department and the military. And it's, it's just very, very challenging. And if you don't have people that have experience to be like, oh, we got a problem. Here's what we need to do. Just the little debate that you just brought up of should we wear plain clothes or should we wear our combat uniforms? Dude, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. Like, it doesn't really matter. Like, as if Cody Gandy rolls into freaking Libya and people like, oh. Is he a local? Like a freaking six foot one white dude with blonde hair and blue eyes. There's no one's like, oh yeah. He must just be a, you know, a local, you know, just out on a, on a daily walk.

• 42:31Jocko Willink?

  You know, and he's in shape and he's wearing freaking five 11 pants. You know, Oakley sunglasses, like there's, it's just bullshit. And they're like, oh, you know, we, we might want to go low this. Who are you going to fool? Who are you fooling? You're not fooling anybody. But bureaucrats will get caught up in this kind of thing. They'll get caught up in things that don't matter. What matters is we have people on the ground that are being attacked. We need to provide them reinforcements right now. We should have them overhead assets in minutes. Like 20 minutes to get overhead assets there. And we should have other ground troops there. Dude, this is not a big area of the world. This is like, where were you in Rota? That's not a, that's not a far flight. This isn't a 12 hour flight. This is.

• 43:12Jocko Willink?

  This is, should be happened so much more rapidly, but the bureaucratic people, and there's also a lot of risk aversion. Because, well, if they're, if, if the embassy is under attack, what if the attack increases? Now we send more guys. And now they're in trouble too. Maybe more guys get killed. I don't want to take that risk. It's like, no, wrong answer. This is America. We have an embassy in trouble. We go and we secure that embassy. Period. End of story.

• 43:40Jocko Willink?

  By the way, we have the air assets above to keep the people on the ground relatively safe in most situations. So what, so you finally let, where do you land? The airport in Tripoli or something like this?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, we land up there, we, we deload all our stuff and we have these, we're working with the Department of State, um, which I didn't really know until actually we got there and kind of figured out what we're doing, but we, we land and there's just these souped up SUVs and you're talking bulletproof windows, you got the ability to put like a, um, M240 in the back and pin out the window and it's just all this high speed vehicles that land there. And so we load all the stuff and we head to this main site, which at least my interpretation at the time was this was a designated spot where they're going to rebuild the embassy. So the Benghazi embassy is, it's gone, it's, it's destroyed. You can see the pictures online. And so they designated this new area close to the embassy where we're going to reconvene. Cause you have all these people at the embassy where they have nowhere to go.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  And so the Department of State, I believe, set up this new, you know, satellite place and that's where we were going to go. So we rolled in and it's just, you know, it's just pandemonium. It's just crazy. We're just, you know, crashing into cars, trying to get there, like just whatever you can think of the car and it's like, we're just trying to get there as fast as we can. Cause you know, at 19, I'm like, what's going to be there when I get there is, is the mindset. And you let an 18 year old drive this, you know, indestructible vehicle in the city, they're going to do whatever they want. So we drive there, you know, there's, there's just 35 of us, so we break up into teams. We eventually get there and it's very anticlimactic on the arrival. The whole debate on low vis, full K, like to your point, it didn't fricking matter because we got there, it's super dark. We're clearing these buildings, which have already been cleared, like before we got there.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Eventually we link up with the, the Department of State and now we're just, hey, we need to immediately set security while everybody reconvenes to our location. So that was the initial, you know, on the ground, the first thing that we do is we get to this new satellite campus. Everybody reconvenes at our location and now we're just, we're going to hold fast while they rebuild embassy here, there. That was, that was the mission is embassy's gone, this is going to be the new location for the embassy.

• 45:41Jocko Willink?

  Did, well, so they just secured some, you guys secured some buildings, some random buildings in a compound that have a wall around it? Was it even, no, just sucked.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  So that was part of the mission was you have to be the security while they build the wall.

• 45:54Jocko Willink?

  Uh, sun comes up. What's the, are you guys anticipating like, hey, we're gonna get attacked when the sun comes up? Or did you not really think through that?

• 46:02Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what we're, you know, hoping for at the moment.

• 46:05Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  But, um, obviously like, my perspective at the time is there's only 30 of us. And so really the ROEs are very strict because, you know, in our minds, like help's not coming. So if you do anything dumb, shoot, like we're fucked is what's gonna happen. So very strict on what we're supposed to do.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Sun comes up, there's a lot of intel reports on like, people are moving towards the area. And we hear all these potential riots and gathering the stuff like that. And, you know, the ROEs, it's everything's gotta be non-lethal is, is the course of action, just to not stir anything up. But, you know, for the three months that we were there, it was all just, you know, smokes and mirrors on, on what's actually happened. It was all this what ifs, what's gonna happen, but it was very stagnant and just, hey, we're gonna hold it down while they rebuild the embassy here.

• 46:49Jocko Willink?

  So then how many days do you end up on, on the ground there?

• 46:53Speaker 01

  We got there, you know, September 12th in the morning and we stayed right before Christmas.

• 46:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you're on the ground for a while. Did anybody ever attack you guys?

• 47:02Speaker 01

  No, you had people kind of approach the perimeter and you're sending non-lethal, you know, the, uh, man, what are those like the riot grenades?

• 47:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Crash grenades.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, the stinger, I can't remember what they're called, but those, those fun things. You have your VCPs and ECPs of people coming in, coming out. You had, um, some, some people there, some tier one guys with, with beers. We don't know what they were doing. That would bring people in and interrogate them. And we would hold security while they interrogated in the building and stuff like that.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  But that was really the extent of it.

• 47:35Jocko Willink?

  What was the, were you guys eating MREs or did you guys quickly get supply of local food or something?

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Initially it was MREs. We brought all that. We brought all the water. Um, but eventually they set up in one of the buildings, like a, you know, a place where they could cook for us and stuff like that. So we split into two satellite places. So we broke the platoon in half. So it was really 15 and 15. So it was small enough to where we could feasibly do that.

• 47:55Jocko Willink?

  Check. Um.

• 47:59Jocko Willink?

  Any major lessons learned that you brought home from that and how did that? I'll ask you that question first.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Biggest lesson learned was just information in itself and how powerful it can be. So part of like the flight over and everything was there was just this constant constant theme of unknown and that unknown caused a lot of panic and, and, you know, craziness. And actually, you know, Sean Glass, who you just had on again for the second time, he, I just worked with him up at NYPD. And he was talking about, you know, during training, they were trying to see what stressed out the SEALs the most. And when it being the most stressful thing was just standing on the outside of the door, going into the building. That unknown factor is what stressed people out the most. And I saw that in real time at 18 and 19 and how information can help mitigate that unknown. But oftentimes as leaders, we withhold or our team doesn't need to know, or I don't even know myself and we don't tell people.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Which ends up, you know, that gets down to the troops and they're coming to that worst case scenario on their own on like, hey, my boss is stupid. They don't know what's going on. Like we shouldn't really be here. Like all that can come from not just sharing vital information. So from that, you know, deployment in itself, I figured if I was in a position, whether it was a fire two meter, squally or platoon sergeant, if I had the ability to share insights or information, that could help bridge the gap between the chain of command or keep the troops involved is what I wanted to do.

• 49:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's important. You know, the idea that the high level of stress comes before you enter the door, right? That's, that's like such factual. I can imagine that they got guys with a heart rate monitors and sweat monitors and, and we're watching them like, oh, here they come. They're coming to the door and it's peaking now. And now that once they go in the room, it's like everything calms down. They start to understand what's happening. I, I think that I have been conditioned in like every aspect of my life to open the door. But like, I don't, I don't like that unknown. Just like most people don't, but I think.

• 50:01Jocko Willink?

  I think at a certain point, you realize, I realized, it's better just to open that freaking door and go handle whatever's in there. That's much more, uh, that's much easier to deal with than I'm gonna stand here and ponder how terrible this could be. And the reason that's in a small scale is like, oh, I don't know what's in this room. I'm gonna open the door. We're going in. But on a bigger scale is like what you with through in Benghazi, like, hey, we haven't, we don't know what's happening on the ground. We've got forces that we could send, could we, and instead of going, send people there. Just kick, kick open the door. In this case, it's, you know, send another force. But that mentality, especially again, from like, uh, people that haven't been in

• 50:42Jocko Willink?

  combat, people that are bureaucratic types, they're trying to figure everything out from the outside. The answer's in the freaking room. The answer's on the ground. The answer, when there's a problem with a business, or there's a problem with, with a situation, the answer's like, oh, go, go open the door and see what's happening. And when you don't open the door and see what's happening, you're gonna sit outside and not understand it completely. And then you're gonna, in a worst case scenario, you're gonna get more and more nervous and worried and, uh, paranoid about what's going on. And it's gonna cause more and more problems. And it's gonna cause you to hesitate more and more, which causes things to get worse. So freaking go, you know, I, that's my long way of saying, go, go, just go. I remember we were on this op and,

• 51:28Jocko Willink?

  uh, we were, we had a, we had like a sniper element, or not a sniper element. Yeah, we had a little sniper element. We were gonna, we were hitting a village, um, with like, I don't know, four or five little, it's like a little market, right? It was, but it was in a more rural area, north of Ramadi. And we, so we had an Overwatch team in watching this. And then, I forget exactly what happened, but we were all, the assault force, we were at, uh, not even a combat outpost. It was just like a little forward, like little staging platoon plus army guys that had a little hooch basically set up. They had like one building. And so we're staged there with

• 52:11Jocko Willink?

  them. And we're waiting for our snipers to, you know, give us some intel and tell us what's going on. And all of a sudden, like, shooting starts.

• 52:18Jocko Willink?

  And I'm like, mount up, we're going and that's it. Like, just like that. There was no, you know, I'm sure we got some radio calls on the way in there, but it wasn't like, wait a second, what is happening? We need to know what's going on. Like, no, we'll find out on the way. And if we don't find out on the way, we'll find out when we show up there. I know that my snipers aren't going to shoot dudes in Humvees, you know, they're not going to shoot the dudes in Humvees that have Punisher skulls on their chest. They're not, we're not going to, that's not going to happen. So we're going to roll in there. We'll find out what's going on. But that, that's years of conditioning of like, oh, there's something bad going on. Let me go figure it out. Let's go in there because it's only going to get worse and I will understand more and see more when I get on the ground and when I see what's happening. So that's a really good point. And then what you said is we are all

• 53:03Jocko Willink?

  responsible for conveying up information up, down and across the chain of command. And the more you can tell your troops what's going on, the better they're going to understand because things can be happening with the troops where they don't know why this is happening. And like, if this situation that you were in, if you expand that over time, where, you know, luckily for you, you were, it was done in 12 hours. You guys didn't have the time that it takes to truly formulate the crazy rumors that can happen. And that's what happens. So when we keep our, when we keep the troops isolated from what's, from what's going on, quote unquote, behind the scenes. It shouldn't be behind the scenes. It just is. Well, then they're going to be like, oh, okay,

• 53:46Jocko Willink?

  hold on. Why, why are we making this decision? And this did happen in Ramadi for us where we had some guys that were like in the planning space, like whether it was the point man, whether it was the lead sniper, whether it was the breacher, they're kind of like understanding what's happening. Or the assistant platoon commanders or the platoon commanders, they're going to the brigade meeting, they're going to the battalion meeting with me. I'm at the brigade meeting once or twice a week. I know everything that's going on. But does one of my new guy sixty gunners know exactly? No, dude. You know, he's getting told, "Hey, get jocked up. You're going again. Hey, get jocked up. You're going again. Hey, get jocked up. You're going again." Eventually, some of them are like, "Wait a second. Why? Where are we going? And why are we going there?" So to your point, to say like, "Hey, here's what's happening. Here's what's happening at a strategic level, an operational level, and here's the tactical

• 54:31Jocko Willink?

  level that we're about to go execute on." That is how you prevent people from getting spun off into the rumor mill, the craziness, which is, which is absolutely terrible because the rumors that they make up are not going to be good. They are not going to be good. They're going to be, you know, it's going to be that, uh, you know, who knows, you know, what? They don't want to send us. They don't want to send us from Rota because, you know, then you make up your craziest explanation. Because everyone that's, they think everyone that's going to go there is going to die. It's like, and then what happens when two hours later, like, "All right, you're going, "We're all gonna die."

• 55:12Jocko Willink?

  So, good stuff. Um, and you spent, so, uh, like, like, three months there on the ground.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, just over.

• 55:21Jocko Willink?

  September, October, November, yeah, December. Um, you get done with that. How's it coming home from that?

• 55:28Speaker 01

  It's good. Uh, we got ripped out by another unit. So another unit stayed there. The embassy wasn't complete. They got a lot of the walls up and stuff like that, which was good. So we got ripped out by, I think somebody came from the Mew or another security forces element that came and relieved us. But we went back and then from there, that was really the end of the security forces tour for me. So that was about the, the two-year mark that I finished. And then from there, you're going to get to go to the, the fleet. You're gonna, it's what I, what I signed up to do. So it took me two years to get there.

• 55:56Jocko Willink?

  And where'd you end up getting stationed?

• 55:58Speaker 01

  So, there was, there was three places that we were gonna go. So, Rinkor gets what the Rinkor wants. It's just how it works. We were either gonna go to Lejeune, or Twenty-Nine Palms, or to Hawaii. Those are the three places.

• 56:09Jocko Willink?

  When you say "we," who are you talking about?

• 56:10Speaker 01

  The platoon in itself, because everybody's going out there to, to want, to, to some unit. So all thirty-five of us are gonna go out.

• 56:16Jocko Willink?

  So they, they disband the whole thing?

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 56:19Jocko Willink?

  Damn, okay.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  And, uh, they break up majority of the platoon into Lejeune and Twenty-Nine Palms, and they send all the, uh, the NCOs, uh, to Hawaii. So I got promoted to E4 while in Libya. And there was like, I think, four or five of us of the platoon that were NCOs. So us stuck together. We all went to Hawaii together.

• 56:42Jocko Willink?

  We approve of that. So you're, are you a squad leader now that you got promoted?

• 56:47Speaker 01

  I finished, yeah, right before I left Virginia, like the platoon is disbanding. So I get promoted to the squad leader billet before I leave. So I'm holding that bill for a couple of months, which that just elevates me from in charge of four to in charge of 12. Now I'm in charge of three teams. So trying to figure that out. And then when I arrive on the island of Hawaii, I'm part of two, three now, I immediately get thrown into a squad leader position.

• 57:08Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  So that was fun. Hawaii was.

• 57:11Jocko Willink?

  Now are they looking at you like, oh dude, you came from fast company. You know what it's like down here on, you know, on the front lines with the grunts? Or is it like, oh, this guy came from fast company. He's got some experience. Like what's their attitude?

• 57:22Speaker 01

  My team was still deployed. They were, I think in Okinawa at the time. And so when I immediately landed, I immediately went to school. So I went to the advanced infantry course, which is our, you know, infantry course, leadership course. The first leadership course I ever went to was like three years in after I already had all these iterations of leading. So I immediately go to this new school, which gave me a leg up. And after I.

• 57:44Jocko Willink?

  Where was that school?

• 57:45Speaker 01

  It was in Hawaii. So it's.

• 57:47Jocko Willink?

  And how was it?

• 57:49Speaker 01

  It was pretty brutal.

• 57:49Jocko Willink?

  How long is it?

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Probably two or three months. And it's, it's all field work. So you get to operate as a platoon sergeant. You get to operate as a platoon commander. You're writing, you know, mission orders. You're doing offense, defense, you're doing urban and you're in charge. You're the platoon commander running that whole thing, which was really cool. It gave me a lot of perspective on what officers deal with that whole, cause you know, I sit there. I'm like, oh, Jock was writing an order like that should be pretty easy. But when you got to write an order on a weekend and it fricking sucks and you got to handwrite it, you don't get to type it. You have to handwrite two copies. Gives you a lot of perspective on what's going on. So I learned a lot there. It was a very tough and grueling school. A lot of people, they self-select out or they just don't get along with the instructors. Cause you know, majority of us are NCOs and there's sergeants and staff sergeants leading us and there's just a lot of.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Head butting going on, but it was fun. Um, most physical school I've been to, um, the only

• 58:39Jocko Willink?

  Or just humping?

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, they got some, they got some hills out in a, on a Wahoo. There's this, this route we take uh, called the devil's backbone, which is probably the hardest physical thing I've ever done. And we're hiking, you know, a hundred pound packs. It's like 12 miles uphill both ways somehow. They're gassing us while we're out there. Like it just sucks. It was the only time I've ever, you know, not stayed with the instructor from a PT standpoint. It just was, it was intense, but it was fun. I loved it. I love being able to be in those roles. And I think when I was in the school, I was in charge of two different iterations. I was in charge of, um, a defense, which I failed that iteration. Uh, cause you, you learn how you have to lean on other people. Cause I may be the platoon sergeant, platoon commander, but I have to

• 59:22Speaker 01

  appoint a, a nav man and a guy that's built the terrain model and all these different pieces. And, you know, you can do great, but the team could fail. And guess what? You're still going to fail. So I failed the defense, you know, I put us on a elevated piece of terrain, but basically in rock. And so the guys could not dig in and, uh, we got attacked and we did not do well. And so

• 59:40Jocko Willink?

  No, once you got out, did you, did you select the terrain while you're out there? Did you select the terrain prior to getting out to the location?

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Um, it's basically in route.

• 59:51Jocko Willink?

  So in route, but once you got there, you're like, all right, there's rocks here. We should move.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  It was probably like two, once I got like two feet down, then we started to hit that bedrock. And then it was like, um, it's too late.

• 1:00:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's too late.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Dark's coming. Like we're already here. Like figure it out.

• 1:00:04Jocko Willink?

  And then are they, do you get attacked?

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Jocko Willink?

  And what are they using miles gear or, or paintball?

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  No, at that point, we're still using, uh, blanks.

• 1:00:15Jocko Willink?

  Blanks, but with no laser indicators or anything?

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:00:18Jocko Willink?

  But so it's just the instructors are kind of judging.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you get, you get evalued, you get peer evalued on what's going on. And so I failed that iteration, which was humbling for me. Cause I, I never really failed anything in the Marine Corps. I was always elevated even from boot camp to number one. And every place I went, I was like the first person promoted or in charge. And so it was very humbling for me. Cause I, I thought I did great. And then I, I failed. And if you fail twice on anything, whether It's when you're in charge of platoon or you know assembling any piece of gear or calling for bombs and stuff like if you fail twice on anything you could drop from the course. And so I failed that.

• 1:00:53Jocko Willink?

  How early was that in the course?

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  That was probably about halfway through. And so I knew I was going to get another chance, but I didn't know what I was going to get. And luckily I got, you know, urban. So I got to plan an attack on a city, which coming from FAST company that gave me a leg up. Cause in the traditional infantry, you don't get that training. I went through, we call it AUC, CQB, Advanced Urban Combat down in Norfolk. And that was three months where I learned how to clear buildings and there's some high speed stuff out there. When we went to Israel, which was probably the greatest mount town I've ever been to was a gigantic city. So I had a lot of experience in in urban combat from training standpoint. So I had a leg up there and I crushed that second iteration being in charge just because I had that experience in place.

• 1:01:38Jocko Willink?

  How long is that whole school?

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  It's probably like two and a half, three months.

• 1:01:41Jocko Willink?

  And now you you feel pretty good getting out of that thing. I mean, that sounds like awesome training.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  It was, that was probably the best training I went through from a, from a learning perspective.

• 1:01:50Jocko Willink?

  And now your, your battalion two, three, they were on deployment and now they're coming back?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  They're coming back. People are leaving. People are getting out and then I get, I get transitioned to a platoon.

• 1:02:00Jocko Willink?

  And you're ready to rock and roll?

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  I'm ready. I've been waiting because not only do I go to AUC, but I go through our water survival course, which is I think the more challenging course from a attrition rate in the Marine Corps. It's called McQuist. Marine Corps Instructor of Water Survival. I think we like a hundred people tried out. We had like 30. We graduated with eight. It's just three months of swimming, which I'm not really a good swimmer. I just too dumb to quit. This is what ended up happening. Plus I'm in Hawaii, so the water's not that cold. So I went through all this schooling, which was great, which gave me a leg up. And after I got to platoon, it really kind of got welcomed with open arms just because I had this experience. The FAST guys that came in before had a good reputation.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Some of the other security forces that were at like the nuke bases, they didn't have that good reputation and they didn't get the training that we got to. So we were kind of seen as like these assets that we could utilize. So that was nice for me.

• 1:02:54Jocko Willink?

  And then are you starting a workup basically when they show up?

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Yep. So they show up and then you're going on that nine month workup before you deploy again.

• 1:03:02Jocko Willink?

  And how's the workup?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Workup's good. So in Hawaii, you go to the Big Island Train. We call it, I think it's Island Viper. It actually gets pretty cold out there. You're working on lava rock, which is its own frickin beast to try to deal with and move on that terrain. You go down to Pendleton to get certified down there, or sorry, you go down to Twenty Nine Palms to get certified, which is very similar to like the FTXs that we always talk about. That's like the culmination. It's, the names have changed over the years, but after your workup, you go down to Twenty Nine Palms to make sure that you can deploy. So they have these cadre down there called coyotes and whether it's called ITX or CAC, they've changed it over the years. For about a month and a half, you're getting certified by the Marine Corps to make sure you can deploy. And that was really like the first test as a unit on like, hey, are you guys good to go?

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  Which we're being told we're going to Okinawa, which the guys aren't really thrilled about that. You have a bunch of guys that sign up for four-year contracts and in a four-year contract as an O3, you only get one deployment. You get two if you're lucky. So these guys is one deployment. They're going to Okinawa. So that was tough to deal with. It's because it's not the mission that they wanted. So keeping them on task or trying to motivate them when it's, they're gonna do something they don't want to do, or they see all these other teams that are still over in Afghanistan and stuff like that. It was tricky to navigate, but that final iteration was pretty cool to see the team come together and work as a cohesive unit. And you're doing platoon and company and battalion size, you know, operations, which was really cool. And eventually we get certified before we head over to Okinawa. Any other, any major challenges during that?

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  I think in that space,

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  one of the constant themes throughout the Marine Corps has been, you know, people wanting to take their lives. In boot camp, we had a guy try to commit suicide. In SOI, we probably had several guys try to commit suicide. And there's all, there's this really negative mindset in the military towards that guys that try to commit suicide. It's cowards way out, or you know, why didn't they ask for help? And I remember being young and when people don't succeed at taking their life, they get put on suicide watch. I'm sure you know what suicide watch is. You get Echo tries to commit suicide and so at night, there's gonna be four people that watch you. And you know, I don't get to sleep now, I just have to watch you, which frustrates me a little bit. So they have this negative mindset towards this. And so this continues to happen throughout my time in the Marine Corps.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Guys just consistently try to commit suicide for whatever rhyme or reason. And one of the lessons I learned out at two, three was, you know, the power of relationships in itself. I had this Marine that was in our company that was, you know, doing the wrong thing. He popped on a drug test and I basically was one of the guys I got tasked with, you know, getting him back to the speed. As you know, you pop on a drug test, you're getting kicked out of the military. But I spent a lot of time with him, you know? He got put on restriction, which means you can't leave base, you can't change out of uniform. It's like, your life sucks. And I spent a lot of time with this Marine, but I don't really, for lack of a better phrase, don't really care about what's going on. Like, it's taken away from my team. Like, why would I prioritize this person when he, you know, he wants to get out? He doesn't want to be with us.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  And, you know, fast forward a little bit, this guy tries to commit suicide. And this one, I was relatively a part of to where we're looking for him, we can't find him. He's in the barracks, we break down the door and he, you know, tried to hang himself. And the teams got there just in the sake of time to cut him down and resuscitate him on scene. And I remember after the fact, obviously, there's an investigation on what's going on from the head shed. And a lot of questions are getting asked on, you know, who was with this person at this time? Or who spent time with this person here? And a lot of fingers indirectly pointed toward me and the time I spent with him. And I started to think on the role that I played in the situation on, you know, I potentially could have helped this person not make this decision by simply being there for him. And I really undervalued relationships, specifically in the Marine Corps,

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  because I couldn't wrap my mind around, I'm gonna be with Jocko for two years. Like, why should I spend time with him? He's gonna get out, he's gonna move on, like, there's somebody else out there. Or there was more people that are higher priority. And so that really was a harsh reality for me on like, you have to take time to know the team. You have to get to know them, not just on a professional level, but a personal level. Like, like, things matter and what's happening at home and why he made that decision. I potentially could have uncovered that, you know, saved him from making that decision. Because that that mental health piece, as you know, in the veteran community, it's a it's a real thing. There's this this.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  It's not a survey, but it's basically a graph on the amount of suicides in last 20 years, the 20 year war, right? It's it's around 140,000 suicides in 20 years from the from the military. In that same 20 years, it's roughly like 6,600 that were killed in action, like 6,600 for 140,000. Like, that's the difference between killed in action and suicides. And, you know, after that fact, I really told myself that, you know, in life in general, whether it was in the military, when I got a family or I joined a team, like, relationships was going to be the thing I focused on most in life. Because you never know when somebody's going to need your help. If you don't have that relationship, they're not going to ask. So that was one of the biggest lessons in that that two, three before we left.

• 1:08:09Jocko Willink?

  Didn't that when you had that AT4 accident too?

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  I did have that as well.

• 1:08:13Jocko Willink?

  What happened with that?

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  So this was a lesson on complacency. Complacency is a real thing. Complacency is typically a matter of time if you allow it. We were training up at, I think, the Air Force Base or the Army Base on Hawaii, because all the all the branches are up there. And we're running an AT4 live fire range. So we're there for about a week. We're getting guys certified. This is before we go down to 29 Palms to get our our final check. And I'm there as a RSL, a Range Safety Officer. So I don't even get to participate. I'm just checking boxes, making sure guys are safe. And about, you know, end of the week, Friday, we're still certifying guys. And one of the guys comes up to the line and, you know, we're just rushing guys through. We need to check the boxes. For whatever reason, still don't know.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Before he shot, he started to arc his AT4 towards the sky. And as you know, there's a back blast to the AT4. It's pretty nasty. Well, as he aimed towards the sky, the back blast went directly into the ground and ricocheted out of 45, then hit me where I was standing offset. So I was taking a knee, watching. I just remember the blast and I just remember going down. And I don't really know what happened. I come to a couple of seconds later and it's just, you know, my ears are ringing. I can't see. I touched my face. I turned my flashlight on and there's blood and I know something's wrong. So as he pulled the trigger, blast goes into the ground. That blast has to go somewhere. Just offsets at that 45 and that debris and that blast, it hits me right in the face. Hits me in my right eye. I walk up to our lieutenant who's, you know,

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  overseeing the range and I was like, sir, I don't know what happened, but like something's wrong. And I just remember him shining the flashlight at my face and seeing his face told me everything that I needed to know. I was like, it's a oh shit moment. But to see everything play out after the fact, like we trained for that. Like, you know, in the SEAL teams, like you train for things like that. Like, I can't tell you how many times we ran a, you know, a nine line or a casualty. Like, it was seamless. And in the moment, ironically, the only thing I was worried about was like my kit and where it was gonna go. Like, I had all my stuff and, you know, one of the guys that helps me at Echelon Front on the FTX, his name is Joe. I was like, hey, man, like, here's my gear. Like, please take care of it. Don't lose it. Like, that's all I was worried about. He's like, dude, don't worry about this. Just go. And so we go see the doctor on site there that's overseeing the range and, you know, loss of

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  life, potential loss of life, eyesight or limb, like you get medevac'd out. And so we fly from, I think, the north side of the island down to Pearl Harbor down south. And I'm a bit of a mess. I'm concussed and unfortunately for the citizens of Hawaii, I'm throwing up on the chopper, outside the chopper. So if somebody is listening and they reflect on the moment, that was me, because I was not feeling too hot on that bird. Eventually, we get to the doctor and checks me out and, you know, half step left, half step right, you know. I still can't see that well in my right eye. I'm missing some part of my eyelid there, but, you know, grace of God, I just came away a little winged.

• 1:11:09Jocko Willink?

  Then you guys go on deployment.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Then we go to Okinawa.

• 1:11:13Jocko Willink?

  And what are you doing when you get to Okinawa? Like, what's your, what's your, what's the mission of the team?

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  You're continuing to build a relationship out there. Obviously, we're stationed out there. There's two bases. There's Camp Hanson and Camp Schwab. Those are the two sites there. There's a unit that's permanently stationed out there as well. So you're there. You're doing a lot of iterations with the local forces there. You get to go do some of the island stuff. So we went and trained with the Republic of Korea Marines, which was fun and fascinating to see how they train and lead and stuff like that. But.

• 1:11:45Jocko Willink?

  What differences did you see? Because, I mean, the Rock Marine, the Rock, the Korean military has a, the South Korean military has a freaking outstanding reputation from the Korean War, from the Vietnam War. And not just an outstanding reputation. Let me quantify that a little bit more like a, like they're beasts. Like they're, they're brutal. They're, they get after it in a big way. You know, they, a lot of the, even throughout history, like we joke about the kinder, gentler military that we have, you know, now, but America has always been somewhat kinder, gentler than a lot of other militaries. So how was, how was the Koreans?

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  They're pretty strict. They're, they're pretty crazy. They're small, but they're mighty. We had some of our teams do some snow packages with them, which is terrible. Like, I hate the cold and the Koreans would get out there like in the middle of the morning, just no shirts on, getting PT in the snow and like.

• 1:12:42Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Watching them train and watching them fight and then kind of introducing to their cultures. And we're switching food and stuff like that. It was a really good experience because I was a squad leader at the time. So I got paired up with one of their squad leaders. So we're sharing insights. We're teaching them.

• 1:12:54Jocko Willink?

  You speak English?

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  Enough.

• 1:12:57Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  Enough to get along. Like, we, we know what each other are trying to do. And so a lot of, you know, we're like clearing houses together with them. Which there's that language barrier and stuff like that. But it's, but it's fun and I get to learn just a different way to lead. Like, there's some compassion there, like they really care for other people. It's, it's a different military, but it's, it's, it's all just leadership that I'm trying to, to take in. And, you know, throughout my, my time in life, I've really been aware of, you know, how other people lead. Because. You can't be naive and just be watching what other people do. Like, I'm always fascinated how other people treat each other. And I learned a lot on what not to do. And I learned a lot of what to do.

• 1:13:33Jocko Willink?

  What did you learn what not to do on that one?

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  What not to do was, you know, the, you know, frontal direct assault on people, which coming from the Marine Corps and, you know, I've been quiet, but the Marine Corps, like, you can't be quiet. And the Marine Corps, I love the Marine Corps, very rock, paper, rank organization, meaning I'm in charge of you. So guess what? It's your fault. It's your problem. The problem with being direct is initially, I was fascinated because it worked, right? Because I can use threats and I can use consequences. And ultimately, like, it gets things done. Like, hey, Jocko, you're gonna do this or else, like, guess what? Typically, you're gonna do it, but at what cost? So it's this, you know, tactical victory, strategic loser, as we all talk about. So I learned eventually, you know, from that, watching other people and then towards the end of my career, that I was

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  rubbing people the wrong way. I thought I was doing great. I was getting things done, but I found like, people didn't want to work with me or work for me because of how I handled things. And so this direct, you know, frontal assault was something that I could not utilize. There's a time and place for it, but it's, you know, one, two, three percent of the time. Majority of the time, it's that indirect approach, as we talk about. So that was humbling for me, because at the time, I thought I was doing everything right, because that's what I saw a lot of people do, was it's direct, like, and I just see people get yelled at, and they're like, oh, like, that's how you get things done. But then, that person's rarely is leaving, they're like, thank you so much for that wisdom that you imparted on me. So that was a big lesson learned.

• 1:14:57Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I got so lucky in my second platoon, going from platoon commander that got fired, to Delta Charlie, who was awesome. And it was just this, such a contrast. In two days, we went from like, a guy that's yelling and screaming and imposing everything on us, and we get him fired, we have the big mutiny, we get him fired, and then Delta Charlie comes in and takes over, and it's just like, dude, just as awesome and humble as you could ever hope for. Indirect to the point where it's like, I don't even think he, if I was to guess.

• 1:15:32Jocko Willink?

  And I said, hey, you know, Delta Charlie, did you use the indirect approach with us? He'd be like, I'm not sure what that is, you know? I just, I figured you guys would have the best ideas, you know what I mean? Like, it's like what he believed. It was so good. And man, I got so lucky in having that because it's very hard to learn stuff. And a lot of times what happens is you learn, uh, you get a lot of your DNA from your first platoon and your first leadership. So if you've got a guy that's yelling and screaming to you, and like you said, guess what? It worked. We all did it. We all, you know, and by the way, there's also, I had another guy that was a, a master chief that was a, a brow beater.

• 1:16:12Jocko Willink?

  Meaning you come up with your little idea, Echo Charles, but the belittling that you would get before you really even presented the idea was so bad. You're just like, I don't, it's, I'm not, I'd rather not do this. You know what I mean? Think, I'm a grown man. I'm like 22 year old grown man. And, you know, I'd see him talking, I'd be like, dude, I don't want none of that. I don't want, I'm, I'm not, I'm not down for this. Like whatever he, he's, he's a master, master brow beater. And then as I became friends with that guy, of course, formed a relationship with him and figured that out. But then you get older, you're like, dude, you'd see someone, uh, step into his line of wrath. You'd just be like, dude, there's nothing I could do for you. Like Echo, you're, you're my friend. You, I ain't got nothing for you. You know, it's game over for you, dude. I'm sorry.

• 1:16:56Jocko Willink?

  So, and learning again, like you said, then seeing how people, they might submit to him in the moment because there's no choice. It's a freaking SEAL master chief. Like, what are you gonna, like, you're screwed. You're an E4. Like it's, you're, you're literally have no, give 0% chance of survival. Like it's not happening. And so they submit. But the problem is they, those people, they, they just remember that. And they're not giving their best work and they end up leaving. They go to different teams and it's just terrible. So yeah, those are such important lessons to, to learn. And if you don't learn them. They'll come back and bite you. And you know, I can, I try and imagine like young Cody.

• 1:17:39Jocko Willink?

  I, in my opinion, you were, in my, if I was to guess, you'd be like, hey, this is what we're doing today. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Like totally professional, totally squared away. But with a little lack of connection, you know, and a little lack of feedback. And a little lack of like giving ownership away because you're squared away. You know what to do. Here's the plan. Let's go execute it. You're just a matter of fact kind of guy. And I imagine when you were 21, 23, the matter of fact was a little bit more matter. And a little bit more fact. So was there some incidents that you remember? Was there an individual that you worked for that was like a yeller or a screamer or something like that? How did you, what, what, what made you see the light?

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  So for me, it was, you know, we would do P R evals. Um, on, you know, where people stood in the platoon and I started to get some anonymous, anonymous, not so anonymous feedback on, you know, how I was leading. And I started to really reflect and look back, you know, when I was subordinate on like how I viewed my leadership. And you know, there's definitely people in my life that I didn't want to be like. And as I got older and you know, I started to get a squad leader and eventually I got thrown into a platoon and started to roll. I didn't want to be somebody that people didn't want to be like. I wanted to be someone that they're like, I want to be like him. I didn't want to be the name like, don't be like Sergeant Gandy. I didn't want to be that person. And I was trending in that direction just on how I handled myself. And I could see the writing on the wall from some of the anonymous feedback, but also just how like, how the troops were receiving what I was saying.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  It's like, I would give them a command or an order and like just to, you could like, you could just see it, like the culture, the look. And you know, I would, I have some good guys that would come talk to me. I'm like, hey, man, like you can't do that. You can't say that. And also I was the youngest squad leader and I had a lot of, you know, senior veteran squad leaders that were, you know, coaching me and teaching me and stuff like that. So really at the end of the day, I just reflecting on, you know, the time that I was in. I didn't want to be a name that people didn't want to be like, or like, man, that Sergeant Gandy, like, I want people like, yes, that's somebody you want to be like, or learn from him, not don't learn from him. So.

• 1:19:37Jocko Willink?

  That's a huge, um, that's very lucky. Because like I said, a lot of people, they see, they see Sergeant Gandy and he's yelling and screaming. And I literally, I'm one of your freak, freaking Lance Corporals and I hate it. But I emulate it. You know what I mean? It's like the, the chain of abuse, right? I beat up my kid, so then my kid hates it, but what does he do? Beats up his kid. And instead of breaking the chain and being like, oh, I remember how terrible it was to be treated like that. And I think that's where I got very lucky because I had that two days. I, I saw it went from one extreme to the other extreme in, in two days. And I was only, how old was I?

• 1:20:20Jocko Willink?

  This was like 1993, so I was like 22. So otherwise, if it would have been a gradual, like, oh, we work for this guy, he's a jerk for a year. And then, you know, you come home, you go on post deployment leave, then you get another guy. And you, that guy that comes in, he's going to take a little while to establish, but it's all compressed. So I was like, terrible leader, freaking best leader in two days. And I think that helped me so much because it made me go, oh, wow. It's so obvious. It wasn't like, oh, that guy was a dick, but this guy's cool over a long period of time. I was like, oh no, this guy's freaking terrible and this guy's awesome. So recognizing that you shouldn't be the guy that you literally didn't like,

• 1:21:03Jocko Willink?

  as opposed to, oh, this guy, I hated him, but you know what? It was, it worked. I still had to do what he said, so I'm going to be, act the same way. It's just, um, it's a little trap you can get caught in. Little trap, gotta watch out for that one.

• 1:21:17Jocko Willink?

  And now at this point, you're, you're, are you coming up on your, your time in the Marine Corps?

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So after we get back from that deployment, so down to Okinawa, Okinawa and then Korea. So we come back and then I'm probably at like four and some change. And people get out, people do that thing. And I'm told that, hey, this unit's going to go back again to the same rotation. And when I heard that, really the writing was on the wall. It's not, Okinawa was great, but it's not what I signed up to do. So when that moment came, that was when I was, I wanted to get out. I had the opportunity to get out early, but I really wanted to stay and, you know, pay back to the troops and be a part of the platoon. So a lot of people, they call it FAP, which is basically you go to serve another billet outside the platoon. People took that, that route because they just, they didn't want to go do another work. But I really wanted to stay and help my guys, set them up for success.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  Again, kind of the legacy play on, let's set the team up for success, not for failure. So I decided to stay in, um, and help them. And as they deployed, that's when I got out.

• 1:22:16Jocko Willink?

  So right as they deployed, you got out?

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:22:18Jocko Willink?

  And what was your plan?

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  My plan was to go to school and then go into law enforcement.

• 1:22:23Jocko Willink?

  Um, did you, did you save up money while you were in? You're just gonna use the GI?

• 1:22:30Jocko Willink?

  Hey, we are learning some lessons, but not others.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the running joke is I got out with five dollars and a hangover.

• 1:22:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, check. That's, that's crazy. It's crazy. What's crazy is you make, you make decent money in the military and you have really low expenses. But I'll tell you what, you find some expenses. You find some expenses at twenty-three hundred on a Friday night is where you find your expenses.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  I was even living off base. I had barracks, but I chose to live off base and pay. Just why not?

• 1:23:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because you're the richest guy in the world. And the other thing is you get used to that. That paycheck's coming, dude. Paycheck's good, it's going in there two weeks. Doesn't matter you're on leave, doesn't matter you're working, not working, doesn't matter. You're getting a paycheck. So you get used to that thing. So you're, you had a brilliant, uh, financial plan when you got out. You had next to no money, but you're gonna get the GI bill. Were you, you were counting on that?

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  I wouldn't have gone to school if I didn't get the GI bill. In part, as I mentioned earlier, law enforcement, certain ranks. So as you get up and you get some on your collar, you need a degree to get that done. So I was like, I had a buddy that I served with. He was the only guy I stayed with the whole five years. Uh, he was from Texas. I'm from California. So I was like, let's go to school in Arizona together. So moved to Arizona. I was like, what's the quickest degree that I can get? So I got a communications degree in about two years. Um, I did it all online. I did one, one class a semester, which was like that five hour Wednesday night class to check the box on the GI bill. Uh, my run and mate lasted like three months as he tried to take like advanced Mandarin and was like, hey, this sucks. I can't do it. He ended up going contracting.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  So I was stuck there by myself. Um, met my wife out in Arizona and then graduated, uh, twenty seventeen.

• 1:24:14Jocko Willink?

  And, and, but were you still in school when you started coming around EF?

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:24:21Jocko Willink?

  So you did graduate?

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  I graduated in the spring of twenty seventeen. Um, we had our first son, me and my wife Paige had our first son Bear. My wife was pregnant again as we had back to backs. Um, and then the fall of twenty seventeen, yeah. Um,

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  Uh, I got a call from my sister that my parents were getting divorced. And so I decided to move back home to try to help that situation. So.

• 1:24:50Jocko Willink?

  Your parents have been married for a long time, thirty something years or something like that?

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  It was, yeah, right around there.

• 1:24:59Jocko Willink?

  And they're getting divorced. So now you head back, back home.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:06Jocko Willink?

  Bring your wife with you?

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my sister calls me in the fall, like at two AM and she's like, hey, we, we caught dad cheating on mom. You need to move back home. And so I have this decision to make. I kind of have my life figured out and this is a moment where things are going to change. And so we uproot, I take my wife. I was like, hey, we're going to move back in with my mom and my sister. Uh, we moved back home with them, which was pretty humbling. I, you know, twenty six years old to move back in with my mom. I, I kicked my dad out.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  You know, as much as I'm not an emotional person, I tell my dad like, hey, if you don't fix this, like you're never seeing your grandkids again. Is, is how I handled it in the moment. So moved back in with my mom. And at a low point in my life, right? I think, I think getting out of the.

• 1:25:47Jocko Willink?

  And what are you doing for a job?

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think, you know, the world owes me everything for my, my great service to this country, right? And, uh, I find myself struggling on what to do. Um, I'm trying to get into law enforcement. It's taken way too long. Background is taken forever. I just, I need to do something. So I, I start a job, uh, demoing burned down buildings, making five hundred dollars every two weeks. Trying to support a family.

• 1:26:11Jocko Willink?

  So then when did you, when did you start thinking EF?

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  Like a week after my second son was born, I believe. JP asked me to come help out with the FTX program. So JP was like, hey, man, I'm running this hands-on training at Esha on front, which. Living in Arizona, JP did an event at the Phoenician and I've known JP a long time. And he was like, hey, why don't you guys come have dinner with me? So I went and saw him and kind of learned what he was doing. And, um, that was really the first point. But then he was like, hey, I need some people that I can trust, uh, was really it. He's like, I'm running this new training. Jocko is letting me run it. Like, I just need people that aren't going to embarrass Esha in front, in front of the client. So I came out in the fall of, I think, twenty seventeen to help out with a gas and electric company, FTX. And as I came out there.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  I was a little unsure on uh on what you guys were doing. Uh I obviously got it, right? It's, you know, the laws of combat. That makes sense to me, but watching JP and another instructor teach these gas electric companies like those use one in no part. Like they're saying like, hey, this is bullshit. Like this, this doesn't work here. There was a guy that stood up and walked to the wall and like head butted a bunch. He's like, this is what it's like to work here. And I was like, damn, like you guys do this? Like you, you're gonna teach this guy how to lead? But to watch like in a matter of a day, like people just start to like things click and like see like grown ass men after the end of FTX like crying like, hey, I'm a shitty leader. Like I failed my wife. Like I'm like, how are you guys doing this? Crazy.

• 1:27:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is wild. It is wild and it's, it is like so transformational and the FTX is, the FTX is probably the most dynamic because you get to see the morning and afternoon, day one, day two. Sometimes we do two days, some days we do one day, but the difference between the individuals and the group. So someone that's and they do like, you can't, if we were trying to script a Hollywood movie to show how the laws of combat work, if you made it as obvious as it is, when you see like the leader of a company that's like, no one on my team is stepping up to lead. And you're like, okay, go do this tactical mission. And the tactical missions are

• 1:28:21Jocko Willink?

  not like crazy, but then that leader, you'll put him in charge or not in charge. It doesn't matter because he's the CEO of the company. He'll be out there like, don't move. Hey, you like move to that building right there and stay there until I tell you to leave and just complete micromanagement. And then, you know, you record, you know, I'll have like a voice recorder and just like record what he's saying. And then you play it back to him and he's like, dude, I'm a loser. But you don't realize it. Or you'll see people freaking out. You see people raising their voices. You see people yelling and screaming. Uh you'll see people being totally indecisive. Like it is so.

• 1:28:56Jocko Willink?

  blatantly obvious to everyone that's on the team, the Echelon Front team. Like you're like, oh, this is absolutely terrible. Hey, Cody, grab a camera and film this right now because this is an example that we can use from here to eternity, except we won't need to because there's going to be another one on the next iteration. And when people go through those and they make those mistakes, it, it's like it hits them so hard because when I tell you like, hey, Echo, this is what you did during that situation. And, and you can't, a lot of times you can't believe it. This happened in like in the teams, we'd be doing CQC or something and you'd say, hey, Echo, you, you freaking like stutter stepped going in that room and you backed up the chain, train, and it caused a bunch of problems.

• 1:29:41Jocko Willink?

  And Echo would be like, no, I didn't. Like truly in your heart, believe you didn't do something. And then we'd break out the video. You're like, yo. So it's the same thing. Not that we videotape every run at Echelon Front, but, or at an FTX, but you know, in the debrief, they're like, oh, I did do that. Oh yeah, I did. Oh, that's terrible. So they become self-aware many times for the first time in their lives of what it's like to interact with other human beings and how those interactions are perceived by everyone else. Because what I say to you and how I say it to you is often different for, different from what you hear and what you see.

• 1:30:25Jocko Willink?

  And the delta between those things can be great. So these are some of the things that, that you get to see and people really do make like transformations in two days going to an FTX. And you got to see that the first one, you see a guy banging his head on the wall. That's so classic. Yeah, it's, it's at Echelon Front, we're always like, oh yeah, here's the, you know, we'll always have, oh yeah, one guy was standing in the back with his arms folded, you know, looking out the window. And yep, there's your target because you got to get that guy to recognize that what we're teaching is going to help him, it's going to help his team, it's going to help the whole company. Yeah, it's freaking crazy. So when you start off just doing a kind of role playing and then directing the role players and then you just escalated from there?

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so starting off, it was, I think it was five of us and JP was over, JP was running everything. So he was running, like, he was just the only instructor. And then it was just those five kind of friends just trying to figure it out. There was no SOPs, it was, we had no radios, like, it was just thunderdome out there. And it's, we're playing laser tag and, you know, competitive juices are flowing and we're just trying to rack up kills on the opposing side and stuff like that. So that's where it started. And eventually, this was like a two-week iteration that we did with this company. And the client came back, they're like, hey, we love this, we want to double down. And towards the spring, JP was like, hey, man, they want to do like another six months, I think. It's like, in my hand, I have like two decisions. He's like, this is kind of a part-time, full-time role, like, I need you for six months, maybe even a year, or like, because I was in backgrounds for

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  law enforcement, or I can do that. And in the moment, I was like, law enforcement will always be there for the most part. Like, I could, I can go there when I'm done. Seshlon front moment, it's, it's going to pass if I don't take it. So I was like, cool, all in.

• 1:32:06Jocko Willink?

  Give it a shot.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  Give it a shot.

• 1:32:08Jocko Willink?

  And pretty good shot. So you went from being the role player, running the role players, and then it was, okay, running kind of the direct, the backside of the entire FTX. And now, you're running FTXs?

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:32:25Jocko Willink?

  And when you, as you see your growth, and you see, like, the fact that you get to teach these principles, but what I think is awesome is like, you applied these principles. And that's what we talk about all the time, is if you apply these principles in life, things are going to be, things are going to work out.

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  Some truth to it. Look at that.

• 1:32:47Jocko Willink?

  And you you continued having kids, right? That's what that's what we're doing.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Yep, I got four kids. I got a my boys just turned, so we got seven, six, four and two.

• 1:32:59Jocko Willink?

  That's a fairly tight grouping you got going on there. Seven, six, four and two. What are you learning from applying these principles on the home front?

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  It's a hell of a lot harder than any other realm.

• 1:33:11Jocko Willink?

  And what makes it harder?

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  It's closer to the people. It's, you know, it's my kids, it's it's my wife, they my wife knows what to say to get under my skin. My kids are carbon copies of me and what they do is reflection of me. It's that emotional connection and the ego in me, which makes it harder. And I always reflect on that when I when I go teach as I remind people like, hey, if you're going to try this at work like I work with Echo like it's easier to, you know, get along with him, but you know, at home when things aren't going right or or to detach specifically, it's harder to do those at home. So it's it was harder initially and, you know, as I got married and as I had new kids or more kids, it was just a new perspective. I think detachment specifically was something that I thought I was always good at being reserved and, you know, having a dad who was a cop, being very stoic, like that's how I thought you should be.

• 1:33:57Speaker 01

  Marine Corps being detached, you know, emotional decisions get people killed. Ego based decisions get peoples killed. That was always hit over and over and over again as I joined Echelon Front, you know, I was always detached, but I didn't have the word and then you gave me the word and I was like, oh, that's what I've been doing. But when I had kids, it was just different. It's it's harder to detach and my kids are so close and we homeschool and like literally last week, my my seven year old dropped a gallon, a gallon of purple paint on my black tile. And like in the moment, I'm just like, all the things I want to say and do. And I was like, he's seven, he wants to help in his paint. It's not that big of a deal.

• 1:34:35Jocko Willink?

  The the weird thing is so not only is there this, there's these sort of pre-formatted relationship things that you have with your kids. So, you know, you care about your kids and you know. You know exactly what they should be doing. You know it. And, and you know what Echo Charles? You're right. You're actually right. And if you, if your kid was like, all right, here's the, here's the schedule. Here's what we're doing. Your kid could become the, the, the apex example, or the apex capability that they could have, they could meet them all. Like, we all know that. We could formulate the plan and we're right. We're a hundred percent right.

• 1:35:16Jocko Willink?

  But I'm gonna tell you right now, there's a pre-programmed thing in our mind that we've, that we know that we're right and we're, and it's, we know what's best for our kids. There's also a pre-programmed thing in their head.

• 1:35:30Jocko Willink?

  And that thing doesn't always line up, you know? There's, there's something about your kids. And look, there's something about your kids, and it's the same with your employees, the same with people. Like, if I bark orders at you, or I say like, hey Cody, here's exactly how we're doing this. You're gonna have psychological reactance, which is a real term that I learned. You're gonna be like, oh, Jocko thinks he knows how to do this better than me. Jocko thinks he knows how to, you know, what, uh, how to run the FTX better than I do. Okay, we'll see. And you're gonna be negative, man. It's just, what's gonna happen? It's guaranteed to happen. It's guaranteed to happen. I have your best interests in mind, whether I'm talking to my daughter, who I'm like, oh, you wanna be champion?

• 1:36:09Jocko Willink?

  Here's what you should do. I know. Bro, I've, I've trained actual freaking champions, Echo Charles. Yes, sir. Straight up. By the way, let's just get real here. In the, in the sports that we're talking about, I have been down the promised road. I have trained the world champion. Right? I get it. Yep. Know the deal. Know the deal. Hundred, hundred percent. Yeah. Now, let's say I had a daughter that wanted to be world champion in the same sports.

• 1:36:42Jocko Willink?

  I know exactly what to do. I literally know exactly what to do. I cannot impose that plan. It will not work. It will not work. Psychological reactants. I, I want my daughter to be world champion probably more than she does. You know what I'm saying? I know what you're saying. Yes, sir. Probably more than she does. And I know, I know how to do it. I know how to do it. I've walked that road. It's a good dream. It's a good dream. It's a good dream. So, but I can't impose that plan on her. And it's the same thing with like your team. Like I know what, I know what Echo should do. With a video.

• 1:37:26Jocko Willink?

  I know, oh, gonna give me that look? Maybe not the best. I understand what you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I know what, I know, I know what my team should be doing for something. Look, when I was in a, when I was a SEAL platoon commander, dude, I was a, a very experienced SEAL at that time. When I was a task unit commander, I was a very experienced SEAL at that time compared to normal SEAL for sure. Because I was a prior enlisted guy. Cause I had taught stuff and traded, done the whole thing. But luckily I'd worked for Delta Charlie, who was way more experienced than we were when we were those young kids. And he wasn't like, all right, I know what to do. I literally know, I literally know everything. And I'm not going to tell you what to do.

• 1:38:11Jocko Willink?

  And so when I was a task unit commander, I, look, did I know everything? No. Did I know a hell of a lot more than Leif Babin and Seth Stone who've been in the team for two years? Yeah, hell yeah, I did. I knew a shit ton more than they did. Did I then impose it on them? No, you can't do that. So this idea of imposing your plan. And like you said, when you get to your family, dude, you know how to turn your son into the best football player, basketball player, baseball player, jujitsu player, wrestler, like you know how to do it. We know how to do it. But it ain't gonna work. You cannot, you cannot do that. That's a, that's a very difficult thing. And not only is it not gonna work.

• 1:38:59Jocko Willink?

  And not only is our perception wrong, or our perception kind of locked in that we think we know everything, their perception is locked in that you don't.

• 1:39:12Jocko Willink?

  Their perception is locked in that you don't. If I can't tell my 10 year old son where to, where to put his hips on an arm lock in jujitsu, if I can't tell my 10, which this happened, I was like, hey dude, put your hips a little further on. And he's like, you don't need to do that. I'm like, okay, cool. We're done here. It's freaking 10. I've been doing jujitsu for 25 years at that point. Like, that's where we're at. That was such a good wake up call. Because you cannot impose things on people. Now, look, can you occasionally get some, uh, you can occasionally get someone that's more open to it? Sure. Very, very rare. Almost never. It's almost never that you get someone that's like, their mind is just open, blank slate,

• 1:39:57Jocko Willink?

  write what you want to write. It's almost never. And if you do try and write stuff on there, they're gonna freaking like bump your hand and scribble and erase it. It's gonna be a problem. So yes, the fam situation. It's real. Gotta, it's real. Gotta keep it real.

• 1:40:17Jocko Willink?

  When you, as you're seeing your kids get older, and are, do you think you're, do you think, are you starting to see some of the behaviors that you have reflected by them? I mean, your, your oldest is seven. That's, that's actually, I don't know if this is a valid question. Might not be a valid question. I don't think, I don't think the formulations are there yet. I don't think there's enough form of, I don't think their personalities are formulated enough at age seven to where you're like, oh, I see the reflections of me in them. I don't think it's old enough. What do you, what do you think?

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  There's some tendencies coming out, but yeah, there's, there's nothing, we're still building who they are.

• 1:40:57Speaker 01

  I think to your point and really the question at hand, I'll just speak on one thing that we're navigating right now. Since we homeschool, like we can kind of control curriculum. It's my kids call my wife the teacher and I'm the warden of the, you know, the, the school.

• 1:41:09Jocko Willink?

  Wait, they, they, they use the term.

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  The word, well, we taught them what it, what it means. But it's math, English, that stuff like that. And then periodically we throw stuff in there and obviously work in that show in front, like ownership. It's very hard to teach a, a six, seven, four, two-year-old ownership, but the whole, when I mentioned getting arrested and with my dad and the truth piece, like being truthful is something that I'm navigating right, right now. And I think a lot of people, when they read the book Extreme Ownership, like ownership is one of the hardest things we have to overcome. Like where, where does that start? It starts when you're a kid. And I get to see that in real time. When I watch my kid do something, he's like, no, that, that can just spilled by itself. Like I literally watched you do it. And so navigating things like that. And, you know, I always ask questions at workshops or keynotes on like,

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  whose kids, when they do something, do they fess? Like no, nobody raises their hand, but like I have a leg up because I'm getting to this early. And I give my kids a lot of choices. I'm like, hey, I know what happened. Like just tell me the truth. And they still fumble and, and mess up, but we're getting quicker to like them realizing in that the truth is what I need to be doing. For example, we first moved to Arizona.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  One of my sons, my oldest son, he cut all the drip lines in my backyard with scissors. And I remember walking out.

• 1:42:24Jocko Willink?

  Terrorist right there, dude.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  Walking out in the morning and like.

• 1:42:27Jocko Willink?

  Insurgent move, dude.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  Walking on the backyard and the backyard's flooded. It doesn't rain in Arizona where we're living. I'm like, what happened? And then I look around and just all the drips, there's just piles of.

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  What was he using to cut them?

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  Scissors.

• 1:42:38Jocko Willink?

  Dude, that's a freaking insurgent right there.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  And so I remember sitting all four of my kids down. I was just, it was just me at home. Paige was gone and asking my kids like, who did this? And just, I, I actually filmed it to see kind of what happened and all the kids are just like, nothing. And my oldest actually was like, it was me. And in the moment, like there's a couple of choices that I, that I can do, like. Really, it does this really matter? It's it's water isn't the grant like, but what I, what did I want to do? I want to do a lot of things, but in the moment, I'm like, cool, man. Like, we can't be doing that because of A, B, and C. And it was just a moment where it was a teaching lesson for him that I appreciate the honesty. Like, you still can't do this. Like, ownership doesn't just eliminate, like, people mess things up. But in the, and there's been constant moments like that where, so that's where I'm trying to get in early.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  Cause I want them to learn this, this habit, which is going to build into a tendency, which builds into who they are. When they're 10, like, if I could teach my kids ownership by 10, I believe I'm setting them up for success. Like, I don't want them to learn, when I learn, when it's 28 years old, like, oh, this is what you're supposed to do. Like, I want to help them out, so.

• 1:43:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, man, it's a, it's a, it's, it's interesting. And I've kind of been through it now, because I only have one, like, quote, kid left that's 15 years old. My other kids are grown people. Uh, but man, you look back and you think, I wonder if I made the right move right there. It's, it's very interesting. And also, I just got a new dog, by the way. And, you know, so now I'm like, just deep, back deep in with the dog thing, right? Back deep in with the, all of it, the training and all that. And the, the way that you train a dog, like, there's, dude, there's just similarities. Here's one. You can't, you know, this one, because actually, you might have taught me this one. The reward, you can't reward 100% of the time.

• 1:44:26Jocko Willink?

  You can only reward 80% of the time. So literally, you tell your dog to sit, like a puppy. You say, sit, give him a treat. Say, sit again, give him a treat. Say, sit again, don't give him a treat. Say, sit again, give him a treat. And that little bit of randomness, because, because you were talking about this with some kind of applications or something, right?

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:44Jocko Willink?

  Or gambling or what? Applications, apps.

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  Apps and kind of, uh, doing that variable reward.

• 1:44:50Jocko Willink?

  Variable reward.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Whether you're a human.

• 1:44:55Jocko Willink?

  Or a dog, you, you both respond better to variable reward. There has to be some element of surprise. The, the dopamine that you get from the, the surprise is as valuable as the reward itself. So you get, you do the right thing and you don't get a reward. You do the right thing, you get a reward, you're excited. You get a reward, you're excited. You don't get a reward, well, I'm gonna try again, see if I can get the reward again. And that's what in, uh, imprints the behavior. So as you look at the way kids, when they grow up, you're like, oh, I see some little characteristic. What did I do that made that characteristic exist in this human being right now? It maybe it was me, maybe it was a school teacher,

• 1:45:39Jocko Willink?

  maybe it was a friend, whatever. But what, what pattern of life, what lesson did that person did this, what used to be a kid now is an adult and their behavior has been modified. It's behavior modification by school, by friends, by all this other stuff. And this is where they end up.

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  Another tip too, by the way, on the flip side of the variable reward is the opposite with punishment. So you gotta punish every single time, hundred percent of time. So consistent punishment is like, oh, in a dog's brain, kid's brain, whatever, they're gonna be like, I know under all circumstances, not even consciously, all it's already like in state, it gets trained into your instinct where it's like, if I do something, hundred percent, that's like literally just the way the world works. So even if I do choose to do it, I know what's coming, you know? So a lot of times they just avoid it like naturally, you know? But if you do a variable punishment, it's kind of like the, the, the idea of maybe I can get away with it.

• 1:46:35Jocko Willink?

  That's enticing too. Yeah. That's equally enticing. Like I might get away with it. That's kind of fun.

• 1:46:40Speaker 02

  Kind of dope. Yeah.

• 1:46:41Jocko Willink?

  Like, you know, you ever met someone, they're like, oh, when I was a kid, I shoplifted. But you're like, you were rich. And they're like, no, but it was, they kind of do it because they want the excitement of the whole jam.

• 1:46:51Speaker 02

  It's like a dark variable reward, really. See what I'm saying? On the dark side though. You gotta watch out, they double whammy on that one. So yeah, basically, yeah, if you're gonna punish everybody or the people or the, the pets, keep it consistent.

• 1:47:04Jocko Willink?

  True. And this is true with, this is true with the kids and it's true with your team, your employees, your peers. It's like just true. It's humans, the, the way that they respond. It's just very, very predictable. And look, does everyone have their own little elements? Yep, everyone's got their own little thing. Cody might be a little bit more resistant to pain than Echo or whatever, you know, Echo might respond a little bit better to this thing than something else. And that's why I gotta keep, I gotta keep that in mind. But broadly speaking, the principles, like they're not going to change. You have to maybe modulate them a little bit in one way or the other, but they're gonna, they, they remain. And I've seen this now for years and years and years.

• 1:47:43Jocko Willink?

  And every time, every time you think like, oh, maybe it's not, maybe, maybe, maybe this time will be different, it's not going to be different. It's not going to be different. It's just not going to be different. It's so predictable. Predictable within the, you know, degrees of variation, but it's predictable. So that's what we're doing. So that's where we're at right now, huh? You got, you run the FTX. How often you guys doing FTXs right now at Echelon Front?

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  2024, we did 28, 28 total.

• 1:48:16Jocko Willink?

  And some of these, so some of these are companies that hire Echelon Front to give them a transformational leadership alignment inside their world and knowledge and unified knowledge. So someone, let's say I have a company, tell me how it works. I have a company, it's called Jocko Fuel. I want to get my team trained up. There, I can see that the problems that we're having, they're all leadership problems. So what do I do? I contact Echelon Front and then what do I do? Say, I wanna, I heard about the FTX thing, that's what I want to do. Then what happens?

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  So basically, there's two models of the FTX that we run. There's corporate and then there's individual. So the corporate model is, you know, we come to you. So if it's Jocko Fuel, hey, we're gonna bring, I'll bring my team up to Maine, we'll locate a site, which is typically a paintball field, airsoft field. We, we have used hotels, we've used older refineries, like we'll just find something that works. Anything that has buildings is pretty beneficial for us. We bring all the gear and you guys just really have to show up. The FTX in itself, from a company's standpoint, it gives us a couple of things. One, it is a team building exercise, but that's not the point, that's the byproduct of it. You're gonna do something hard together, which, you know, builds a lot of camaraderie. helps with the culture. So that's part of it, but it's really a, you know, it's, it's a leadership lab for, for lack of a better word.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  A lot of people, when they read the book or they come to a PowerPoint done by one of the instructors, everything's theoretical, right? Cover move is about relationships and a lot of people will say like, I'm a team player. I'm good at relationships. A lot of people think their communication is great and they know how to detach and they always are decentralized. The FTX is a culmination. It's a test on, you know, the reality of who you are. Theory and reality are two different things. I know a lot of people that have done a lot of echelon front training that have come to 20 musters and they think they're great at these and they come to the FTX and they blow it out. They, they, they mess it all up because it's, it's different. And so it is a culmination. It is a test of it. It is typically,

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  we do some kind of lean in. So you read the book, you get a workshop, you do a keynote and then we run the FTX and then we tie everything back to what you do. There is some tacticalness to it, right? That's the vessel that we chose to use because that's what we know. It's, you know, part of the military is FTX is it's a culmination event. And so there's a tactical piece, but it's strictly about leadership. We'll teach people, you know, how to walk in a line and how to enter a room, but we don't really care. We're not going to talk about it. We're going to talk about leadership and I'm going to talk about how, hey, Echo on that run like, and I, I killed you as a leader. What happened to the team? Well, the team didn't do anything. Well, yeah, because you told them exactly what to do and when to do and how to do it. We call that, you know, centralized command.

• 1:50:49Jocko Willink?

  We call that micromanagement.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  And so in the moment, it's all, it seems tactical, but it's really, it's all about leadership. And so after each run, we do a bunch of runs throughout the day. Everybody switches roles. So sometimes you're, you know, the jocko in the platoon. Sometimes you're the frontline shooter and you gain a lot of perspective on what the boss does, what the frontline contributor does. And at the end, we're tying it back to what you do personally and professionally. So we're taking this, you know, hypothetical laser tag scenario and we're tying it back to what you do. Typically there's some follow up on, hey, you guys remember run number one, which the mission was go talk to an old guy and you slaughtered the entire city. Like, how does that apply to you at Jocko Fuel? That's the goal of the FTX.

• 1:51:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know, if you took someone that had never trained jujitsu before and you got.

• 1:51:37Jocko Willink?

  You know, the Hicks and Gracie to teach him a class with PowerPoints and maybe videos and theory and all this stuff. And you had and Cody, you can't, you'd never changed your before. You didn't wrestle and you came and took this class from him for three months about how to do an arm lock and what the theory was a balance and all these different things. And look, you're not going to get a better teacher than Hicks and Gracie.

• 1:52:01Jocko Willink?

  When you got on the map for the first time, you would not be able to execute this stuff. Same thing with basketball, same thing with playing the guitar. You can understand the chords. You can understand exactly where your fingers are supposed to go. You can memorize these things with flashcards, but until you get your fingers on the fretboard of a guitar, you're not going to learn how to play. And that's what I feel the FTX is. And it doesn't, unlike Jiu Jitsu or unlike guitar, like even so, once you pick that guitar up, even if you know all theory, it's still going to take you a while to get your physical, uh, to get your physical, uh, dexterity to the point where it'll work or same thing with Jiu Jitsu. Like it's going to take a while to actually learn the muscle memory of the move. But this is leadership.

• 1:52:44Jocko Willink?

  And so it is a wake up call, but it's not like you have to now learn a physical movement. No, you just have to learn a mental movement, which is, which can be adopted much quicker. If you have an open mind and you show up, you'll be like, oh, oh yeah, I overreact sometimes or oh, sometimes I start talking when I should be listening or oh, sometimes I try and come up with the most perfect plan and it's wasting time. Or it says, there's all these things that you can, you can literally learn and you can stop doing them because you learned to recognize them because you learned how to detach. So that is the way it works. So that's the corporate FTX. The individual FTX is basically someone can just sign up and go.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we are, we started to have demand from smaller organizations on, hey, Jocko, if you only has 10 people like. You're not going to come to us like we'll come to you. Or traditionally, it's like people a little skeptical. They see the footage and they think it's, you know, barbed wire and, you know, low crawls. And that's not what it is. So people want to test it out. So we created a, an event to where people can come see what it is. So we open it to small teams or small individuals, which has been successful. And instead, you just come to us. So we typically do this after a muster or we do this in Dallas where we're located. And people come to us and we run it through there. The difference is you're not with your whole team. You're with, you know, potentially 29 other people from different walks of life, but the teaching points are still the same.

• 1:54:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Good point, though. It's not a physically demanding event. It's not like, like you said, crawling under barbed wire. It's actually, there's, there's no physical strenuous activity. It's all mental. Now, look, you're going to be walking around, uh, you know, some buildings, but you'll literally be walking around, you know, the rules don't run, right?

• 1:54:33Speaker 01

  The rules don't run.

• 1:54:34Jocko Willink?

  Now, listen, that's the rule is don't run. These freaking people get crazy and they start running and sprinting and acting like John J. Rambo. But you shouldn't need to run because if you've got someone covering properly for you, you can move in a smart fashion, expedited, but you don't have to sprint. And you can execute the maneuvers correctly. So it's not, again, you're right. Sometimes people see like the physical side of things. And you know, there's like, um, there's like boot camp type things that are out there where you're going to get tested mentally and physically, basically physically. This is not that. This is educational. You, you will not be tested physically.

• 1:55:19Jocko Willink?

  We've had people of every age bracket and physical condition go through FTX. And their performance doesn't have anything to do with physical. It has to do with mental, it has to do with leadership. It has to do with decision making, it has to do with learning to execute these laws of combat leadership. And what's gratifying for us. Is that we get to see those transformations take place and then we get to hear, you know, then people send their whole company or they said start sending the rest of their leadership team. And then we get to see companies transform, entire companies transform because they truly understand these leadership principles and they start to utilize them throughout their company. And we see companies that go from, you know, that massively increase their,

• 1:56:02Jocko Willink?

  their workflow, their profitability, their engagement, everything. They just get better across the board. So that's what we do. That's what you do over there, over here at Echelon Front. Zach, can you step to speed?

• 1:56:17Jocko Willink?

  Yes, sir. All right. Um, so if people are looking for you, they can find you at echelonfront.com. You're on LinkedIn at Cody Gandy. You're on Instagram and you're on Twitter X. You have not been active on Twitter X in the past. I think I looked at it. It was like two years or something like that. The gram kind of took over. The X, Twitter X is coming back. Although there was an announcement made today by,

• 1:56:45Jocko Willink?

  by Mark Zuckerberg that he is moving away from,

• 1:56:51Jocko Willink?

  from, I don't think he would call it censorship. It ended up being censorship and I think he readily kind of said that.

• 1:57:00Jocko Willink?

  He's going towards the community notes model, which is from Twitter, which is now called X, which is if you say some dumb shit, people will be like, no, that's not true. Here's the facts. And it gets tagged as a community note. I haven't done it yet. I haven't done a community. I haven't called somebody out. Because I'm not, you know, to be honest with you, I'm not sitting there like looking to argue with people in the, in the interwebs. It doesn't seem like a move. And it seems like it's like a lot of time. If you're gonna, if you're gonna dedicate your life to that, I get it. Like there's people that that's what they do for a living. I don't do that for a living. You know what I mean? I don't, I actually have other jobs, right? Yes, sir, you do.

• 1:57:42Jocko Willink?

  I know. Like being a, uh, being an online presence is almost, uh, almost accidental in a way. Yeah, yeah. Maybe not, it's, it's a Incidental. Incidental, yeah. Like, yeah, it's like, hey, well, yeah, we're, we're posting some stuff, but I'm not like someone's gonna say some stuff like read, you know, getting into it with them.

• 1:58:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, uh, so that's that. So people can find you there. You're at Cody Gandy, C O D E Y G A N D Y. There you go. That's where you're at. You're all you you you get a lot of, uh, you're posting with your kids, you guys are lifting, you guys are doing pull ups, you're working out. It's pretty awesome. You get the warrior kids in the house.

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  I'm trying to get them in the game. Yeah.

• 1:58:28Jocko Willink?

  They doing jujitsu?

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  We tried it a couple of years ago.

• 1:58:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  When we were doing traditional school and it was just, you know, my boy specifically, it's eight hours of school. And I'm like, hey, let's go to jujitsu. It was not a good recipe. So we've been talking about it. We're going to try again in the spring to get them back in. So because now we're full homeschool.

• 1:58:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you may need to get, and it may be worth it to have mats at the house. You have mats in the house? Yeah. So once you get the mats to the house, it might be worth it to just have someone come in and, you know, get someone that's a instructor to come in twice a week, get them into the game. And then you just, you know, make wrestling and do jujitsu, just kind of like part of what we do for fun.

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:05Jocko Willink?

  That's the most optimal way to get them trained at a young age. So the Gracys did, like, you, oh, you're a little kid? Cool. You don't know that you're playing guard pass, but you're playing guard pass. You don't know that you know that you're holding them out, but you're holding them out. You don't know that you're escaping them out, but you're escaping them out. It's just a game. It's just part of life. And I recommend that as a good way to make it happen. Echo Charles, you got questions?

• 1:59:27Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. A couple of questions. So when your boy cut the the drip lines, did you ever ask him like, hey, why'd you do that?

• 1:59:36Speaker 01

  It wasn't so much a why. Uh, the, what it came down to was like, I provided easy access to scissors. So it wasn't, the why was because he could.

• 1:59:46Speaker 02

  Right, right. Like experimental, you know?

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  This is like, let's see what it does.

• 1:59:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that little water squirted out, right?

• 1:59:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:52Jocko Willink?

  Kind of, oh, there's another one. Cool.

• 1:59:54Speaker 02

  But that's totally real. I mean, actually, you know, it's gonna sound crazy, but there's an element to absolute truth to this, but that's kind of valid. For a little kid, because that's what we do as little kids. We're tinkering with stuff. What happens if I break? So I was a little kid and I'm, I was not a morally like skewed kid. I was like pretty, you know, pretty morally sound as a kid.

• 2:00:12Jocko Willink?

  According to who?

• 2:00:13Speaker 02

  You know, the world, you know, society, whatever. Um, but our neighbors had this, uh, And now as an adult, I feel real bad, but they had this, these big glass jars, right? Full of like fermented meat and, and it was by their garden. And at the time, I didn't know what they're for. They're just these huge ass glass jars, right? Big ones, like abnormally big. There's some weird stuff inside. But as it turns out, it's to attract like bugs and flies away from the garden. It was like a whole process. And we used to make these slingshots when I was young and they were real effective, by the way. So I was like, the neighbor's freaking glass jars over there. Let me see if I can hit it. Not thinking like of the real world consequences, you know, and they're glass too.

• 2:00:55Speaker 02

  So it's not like, oh, they're like a plastic bucket or something. They'll just make a cool sound. That's it. So I hit one and it just freaking, it was a marble that I was shooting and it exploded. Like it was spectacular. I was like, that's kind of cool. Like, but that's what it was. It was out of curiosity. I wasn't trying to be mean to my neighbor. So I hit one and I was like, damn, that's fucking awesome. So I go grab my brother. I was like, bro, watch this. Just ruining this guy's garden or neighbor too. It's not like it's some like foreign place. They'll never see me again. It's our freaking neighbor lives right there. And then, you know, so we destroyed all of them. Just out of like just sheer, you know, yeah, it seems crazy, but at the time, like what goes through your head as a kid, you're just like, oh, that was kind of awesome. Let's see what happens when this happens, you know? Like, hey, see if you can hit it and you just disregard the other real world stuff, you know? So I kind of don't blame them.

• 2:01:40Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I, I

• 2:01:41Speaker 02

  In a way.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  I have an alley behind my house.

• 2:01:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:01:44Jocko Willink?

  And the kids across the alley, this was a few years ago. They just hawked mud, like mud or snowballs, mud balls at my car. Like, and, and they were young. They were too young to realize like what that means. But old enough to be like, oh, that made a cool sound and it left a mark.

• 2:02:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:03Jocko Willink?

  And I'm a little human being and I want to leave my mark on the world. So I come outside and there's just mud balls all over my freaking car. And, and they were standing there with like muddy hands. It just didn't even care that I, you know, I'm like, hey, like, what are you doing? I think I, I think I called them savages. I was like, what are you doing, you little freaking savages? Kind of like joking. Uh, so yeah, you gotta watch out for that. Also, John Bozak. He, this is when I was a little kid. He's at my house and I had this, uh, we had like a, a, a pathway that had little tiny rocks on it, right? And he was, we had a well with a concrete, piece of concrete over the well. So that's kind of like the pathway went by the well.

• 2:02:49Jocko Willink?

  And we used to just kind of sit on the well sometimes. And I was doing something and he was sitting out there and he had a hammer and he was just smashing the rocks. Taking the little rocks, putting them on the well and smashing them. Take another one, put it on the rock and smashing them. Take it and, and you know, I kind of didn't even pay attention to it because you know, I'm a little destructive kid too. But anyways, my mom comes home and now the hammer's sitting there. There's like rocks smashed. And John and I are no longer out there. But my mom comes in and she's like, who, you know, cause it's her freaking house and like, why is some, she's like, who's, who is like smashing rocks with a hammer on the well?

• 2:03:30Jocko Willink?

  And John Bozak's like, oh, it was me, Mrs. Willink. And she's like, well, which she didn't expect that truthfulness, right? She expected denial, maybe. She's like, well, well, why did you do that? And John without, he's just like, to see them be destroyed.

• 2:03:49Jocko Willink?

  Because to see them be destroyed.

• 2:03:52Speaker 02

  I'm like, what?

• 2:03:54Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:03:55Jocko Willink?

  How do you even respond to that? You know?

• 2:03:57Speaker 02

  Like dang, alright. I guess so, right? I could get there, you could get there. Actually, my, uh, you know, solar water heater. So we had a solar water heater on the side of our house. Huge, like huge, just solar panels. And my brother had this big like boulder, like the heaviest one. And he was just like, And he puts and fucking just destroys the whole shit. He got beat for it, but that's another one of those ones where it's like, brother, an obvious human being would know never to do that, to just, just literally destroy the solar water heater. And he was just like, I wanted to see what was happening, you know, like, that's just how, you know, like, and for whatever reason, I don't know if this is a boy thing or whatever, but like the destruction part of things is like, very fun. That's part of it. Yeah, or loud noises. Back to the slingshot scenarios, these slingshots are very effective.

• 2:04:41Speaker 02

  There was a, a pig farm, like acres away and down a valley from our house, right? So, and it had a tin roof. So I, we'd shoot the slingshot, the marble was like way down and you could see the spot, you know, the shine, the glimmer of the marble. And then it'd go down and it hit it, it's a loud sound, right? We'd always do that. And to the point where the owners of the pig farm, one time came out with their shotguns and we're like, hey, then they started firing the shotguns to scare us off or whatever. But it's like, before that happened, we were just like, yeah, brother, shoot the slingshot down there, make a cool sound, you know, just literally ignorant of the consequences, the rules, etiquette, the whole thing, like you just don't know, you know? I could get there is what I'm saying.

• 2:05:23Jocko Willink?

  Check. Any other questions, Echo?

• 2:05:25Speaker 02

  Uh, all right. So JP said you guys were cousins. Is that literally true or is that just an expression?

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  Cousins. So cuz?

• 2:05:35Speaker 02

  It's true, straight up. It's true. First cousins. Dang, okay, all right. Get it. Letting out of the bag. Yeah, I didn't know it was a secret, you know? That's one of the first things I heard about you. So I figured, hey, common knowledge, but hey, good to see you again.

• 2:05:50Jocko Willink?

  Check. Cody, any, any, uh, closing thoughts?

• 2:05:54Speaker 01

  Just one last thought on, obviously I teach this book that you wrote and, uh, there's been a common occurrence on, on a question that I consistently get. And since I shared the story about my mom and my dad. One of the hardest things that I've ever had to deal with, um, just on a fundamental level was that divorce that my parents went through. And ironically, that was when I joined the team. And as I'm joining the team, obviously, I'm reading how to do this. And you know, you guys give us a skeleton on how to teach this. You know, my mom take notes of what I'm doing, what I'm teaching. And then she asked me a question about ownership, which has kind of led me to where I'm at today. And the question was, you know, how do I take ownership of your dad cheating on me was really the the summary of the question. And I've shared

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  this with with you, I think, at a battlefield. But in the moment, brand new to the team, I really didn't know what to say. Like, my first was like, Jocko was gonna FaceTime my mom and tell her what to do. Uh, and the second question, or the second thought was like, you know, what did she do? Like, she had to do something to cause this. But then I simply recognized that there was a there's an action and there was a consequence. And then I was stumbling on, well, what if you're in a scenario where you did nothing wrong, but things still happened? And this has led me to having a lot of conversations over the years, because, you know, we get the question all the time about affairs and, you know, kids with terminal cancer. And, you know, I got a question a couple of years ago at an event where a woman stood up and was like, hey, I was sexually assaulted by somebody in the room. Like, how do I take ownership of that? I think a lot of people

• 2:07:21Speaker 01

  miss, just considering I teach this, a part of ownership is, you know, your response to things. And, you know, the advice I gave my mom and advice to give to a lot of people is, you know, something, sometimes things are just gonna happen, like, life happens, and it sucks. And oftentimes, we're a victim to certain things. Being a victim and having a victim mentality are two very different things. A victim mentality is you're waiting for someone or something to come solve your problem for you, which, that's not how life works. Like, honestly, people don't care. There's eight billion people in the world, and you have the worst day of your life. Like, no one's really gonna take note. So the ownership in that is, you know, what you do next. And, you know, the the grace I gave my mom is, you know, who she was and who she is are two very different people because she took ownership of her life.

• 2:08:03Speaker 01

  That is oftentimes missed in the book and when we teach is, you know, 10%, 5% of the time is things happen to you and your response, that ownership that you have, like that is a choice that you have this ownership, it's a choice, like you have a choice to utilize it if you want to, but I definitely have people in my life, people that I run into where that's not the case and they feel they did nothing wrong or there's nothing that they can do, which ultimately leaves them powerless. And so I feel just to wrap that up, that there is a place for ownership in everything. Sometimes it's in your response, sometimes it's in the problem, sometimes in the solution. And so that really has been the hardest question I've ever received at Echelon Front. And all the people that I've talked to, it's my mom that, you know, caught me off guard, but I like to remind people

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  of that. And it's something that I honestly close with at every workshop that I do, because that piece is typically missing in the context of the book, if you don't read between the lines.

• 2:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's, there's no doubt about it. There's things that happen, well, like you named them, like terminal diseases, someone attacks you, you know, you get hit, you're driving down the highway perfectly normal, like a good 55 mile an hour law, law obeying person, and you get slammed from behind, like this is not, this is not your fault that this happened. There are things that are not your fault. And how do you take ownership of those things? You take ownership in how you respond. What are you going to do now? How are you going to move forward? What are you going to learn from it? How are you going to prevent this from happening again? All those things are, those are things that we can do to the best of our ability, and that is still taking ownership. Yeah, that's a really good misperception that people can have, which is, oh, you know, my husband cheated

• 2:09:37Jocko Willink?

  on me. How is that my fault? It's like, oh, well, we don't have to take ownership of, of your husband being a bad person, but you can take ownership of how you respond to it. And that's one of the things that we teach, and definitely a good point. Another thing that we teach is to get after it. I know, I know you get after it, Cody. What's your physical activities right now?

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  Well, Rob Jones and I just finished up with that marathon.

• 2:10:12Jocko Willink?

  So what'd you do? You did a ruck marathon?

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  So I did a 25 pound weight vest marathon, ran it.

• 2:10:18Jocko Willink?

  What was your time?

• 2:10:19Speaker 01

  Uh, just over four hours.

• 2:10:21Jocko Willink?

  Freaking awesome. How's your knees?

• 2:10:24Speaker 01

  They've been better.

• 2:10:25Jocko Willink?

  Not awesome.

• 2:10:26Speaker 01

  They don't feel like 30.

• 2:10:27Jocko Willink?

  Only slightly better than Rob Jones's knees?

• 2:10:29Speaker 01

  Very true.

• 2:10:33Speaker 01

  I've never, whatever reason we decided to do that marathon, uh, I kinda, I just called Rob. I was like, hey, are you in or are you out? He's like, I'm in. I was like, cool. We're gonna run a marathon. Rob, how's that background? I've never ran longer than like three miles. So I was like, cool. Let's do something hard and let's add a weight vest. The knees are what, what got me. It was about, I didn't tell Rob this until about mile 20. She was like, how are you doing? I was like, dude, like this sucks. Like in my preparation, I never ran longer than 12 miles, but I didn't tell him that. Like I wanted him to just be a part of it. Around mile 20, the weight was really problematic. It was, it was killing the joints, but no, it was good. We ran it up in a DC, DC area around Iwo Jima. Which was awesome. It's hard to, you know, be a quitter in that environment when you have, you know, Arlington there.

• 2:11:19Speaker 01

  And I got to visit one of my old platoon commanders there that died in 2020. But just to be in that area, like you can't quit, like you're gonna finish. So cool environment to be in. But that was the training plan this last year, which was fun to do in the peak of Arizona summers. So there will be no running in my foreseeable future.

• 2:11:38Jocko Willink?

  Time to get jacked? Report to Echo Charles to get jacked. Well, whatever kind of jacking you're doing, whatever you're getting after, whatever you're making happen, you're gonna need fuel.

• 2:11:50Jocko Willink?

  We recommend Jocko Fuel. Go check it out. JacoFuel.com. We got everything that you need. We got milk, protein shakes, ready to drink. We got powder. We got joint warfare. If you run a marathon with a weight vest on, you're gonna need some joint warfare and some super krill. They will legitimately bring you back to health. They're freaking awesome.

• 2:12:11Jocko Willink?

  We got go. You had a go. What are you drinking? Pink lemonade over there?

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  Pink lemonade.

• 2:12:15Jocko Willink?

  Is that your go to?

• 2:12:16Speaker 01

  That's the go to. Arizona summers.

• 2:12:18Jocko Willink?

  It's the sweetest one.

• 2:12:19Speaker 02

  I think mango is the sweetest.

• 2:12:21Jocko Willink?

  You think so?

• 2:12:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, we kinda had a consensus last night, right? But yeah.

• 2:12:25Speaker 01

  You may be a little biased, but it's okay.

• 2:12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's possible. You know, it is good.

• 2:12:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, all the stuff you can get at JacoFuel.com. You can also get it at Walmart. You can get it at Wawa. You can get it at Vitamin Shoppe. GNC Military Commerce. If you're over in Korea.

• 2:12:40Jocko Willink?

  From the military, you can get it right there at the commissary or at the exchange, which is pretty awesome. Uh, Hanaford Dash Stores, Wakefern Shoprite, HEB, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Publix. Publix is another like massive regional food chain down in the southeast. We're rolling into Publix right now. So be on the lookout, clear the shelves. Publix been awesome. Lifetime Fitness, Shields, and small gyms everywhere. No matter what kind of gym you got. You got a jujitsu gym, you got a powerlifting gym, an MMA gym, doesn't matter. We got you. If you don't have it there, go to J F sales at jockofield.com. We'll hook it up. That's what we'll do.

• 2:13:21Jocko Willink?

  Um, originusa.com. You're gonna need jeans. You're gonna need a gi. Your kids are gonna need gees, Cody Gandy, because they're gonna start training jujitsu. Best thing you can do for a kid. The best thing you can do for a kid is jujitsu. More important than love.

• 2:13:40Jocko Willink?

  I say that sarcastically, but you know, like there's some facts. Uh, get your kids training jujitsu. You should be training jujitsu. Originusa.com. We got, we got jujitsu gees for you. We got jeans, boots, hoodies, rash guards, boots, pretty much everything you need. Hunt gear, jackets. I just ordered two of the rain jackets. I don't think there's that many left. But I ordered two because I'm like, I'm gonna have my freaking rain gear. Um, t-shirts, jockos. So check it out. Originusa.com. Made in America, 100%. 100% made in America. That means you support the American economy. It means you support the American worker.

• 2:14:22Jocko Willink?

  It means you support America. Don't go to freaking China to buy your gear. Go to the United States of America. Originusa.com. Check it out.

• 2:14:31Speaker 02

  It's true. Also, Jocko has a store. Cody Gandy. Called Jocko Store. Of course.

• 2:14:36Jocko Willink?

  So you did that.

• 2:14:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. Uh, this is where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom hats and hoodies and stuff. Mainly shirts, though. You want to represent on this path that we're all on. Discipline equals freedom. Good, all the whole deal. So where you can get your stuff, your merch, if you will. Also, on the, on Jocko Store is the Shirt Locker. That's a subscription scenario where you get a new design every month. Different kind of designs, more creative, et cetera. You understand what I'm saying? Anyway, it's all on jockostore.com.

• 2:15:03Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. It's true. Check it out. If you need steak.

• 2:15:09Jocko Willink?

  How many times a week do you eat steak, Cody?

• 2:15:12Speaker 02

  When I'm at home, I don't.

• 2:15:14Jocko Willink?

  How come?

• 2:15:15Speaker 02

  Cause I eat it all the time on the road.

• 2:15:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so what do you eat at home? Chicken?

• 2:15:19Speaker 02

  Big chicken guy.

• 2:15:20Jocko Willink?

  Big chicken guy.

• 2:15:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, when you're on the road, if you need steak at home, right now I got a rack of steak from Primal. Like a rack, they sent, they sent me a rack of steak and and I'm just like full on and then I got prime rib from Colorado Craft Beef Beef for like Christmas activities and I just ordered more because it's so freaking good. So if you need steak, you need beef, go to primalbeef.com, go to coloradocraftbeef.com. You get the, the beef tallow.

• 2:15:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:52Jocko Willink?

  Which is, it's like, it's like the

• 2:15:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, the fat.

• 2:15:55Jocko Willink?

  The fat.

• 2:15:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that you cook with.

• 2:15:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so now you can cook like a hot dog in there.

• 2:15:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:15:59Jocko Willink?

  Or a sausage or bacon. Yeah, eggs. Throw the tallow in there.

• 2:16:04Speaker 02

  It's good, yeah.

• 2:16:05Jocko Willink?

  Did you get the beef tallow?

• 2:16:06Speaker 02

  No, no, no. Actually, that's why I'm all surprised and fired up.

• 2:16:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no.

• 2:16:08Speaker 02

  From what, Primal?

• 2:16:10Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Colorado Craft Beef.

• 2:16:11Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:16:12Jocko Willink?

  Primal Beef does have jerky now.

• 2:16:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I got a bunch.

• 2:16:14Jocko Willink?

  The jerky's freaking good. It's good.

• 2:16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's good.

• 2:16:17Jocko Willink?

  It's ridiculously good. So check it out. ColoradoCraftBeef.com, primalbeef.com. Get yourself some steak. Subscribe to the podcast. Check out the Jocko Underground Podcast. Check out our YouTube channels. We got Jocko Podcast Official. We got Jocko Podcast Clips Official.

• 2:16:32Speaker 02

  Clips, not official, just clips.

• 2:16:34Jocko Willink?

  Just clips. Origin USA has one and then Jocko Fuel has one. Lots of good behind the scenes. Wanna know what's happening? Check those out. Subscribe to those. Psychological Warfare, flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on the wall. I've written a bunch of books. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. Expanded Dish is out. Check that out. A final spin. Just, I've written a bunch of books, kids books. Your kids reading the kids books? How they like them?

• 2:17:00Speaker 02

  Big fan. That's why we've got that pull-up bar. Every time they enter the door, pull up.

• 2:17:05Jocko Willink?

  Imagine how like awesome they're gonna be as humans. You know what I mean?

• 2:17:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:10Jocko Willink?

  If, when you, when you're seven years old and you got a pull-up bar that you have to, every time you walk by, you gotta knock out a couple of pull-ups? Just think how much better you're gonna be as a human.

• 2:17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I think I might incorporate. We have a pull-up bar, but it's outside, so it's not, it's different. Yeah, that's way different.

• 2:17:24Speaker 01

  It's in the door. So when they go in the room, pull up. When they go out of the room, pull up.

• 2:17:27Jocko Willink?

  Fuck, dude, I melted.

• 2:17:28Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 2:17:29Jocko Willink?

  When my son was, I put a pull-up bar in his room, like on the wall, a full like commercial. Pull up bar on the wall.

• 2:17:37Speaker 02

  It's a good dream.

• 2:17:38Jocko Willink?

  It was a full good dream.

• 2:17:39Speaker 02

  It's a good dream.

• 2:17:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the kind of stuff, you know, it's a little bit, maybe, you know. Hey.

• 2:17:47Speaker 02

  The results speak for themselves, so I'm, I'm down. That sounds like a good protocol.

• 2:17:50Jocko Willink?

  Get the pull up bar for your kids, for yourself, for your kids. Uh, Echelon Front, you heard us talking about it today. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com. You want to come to one of our events? You want to go to one of our FTXs? Check that out. Those things sell out. So if you want to go to an FTX, it is an awesome experience. The reason we started doing FTX is, is because that's the way we taught leadership in the SEAL teams and it was freaking effective. So we brought it to the civilian sector. If you want to go to an FTX, go to echelonfront.com and check the schedule. Uh, we also have the muster. We have council. We have battlefield. We got all kinds of stuff going on. We got the women's assembly. So just check all these things out. And then we have online training. We have an online training academy.

• 2:18:36Jocko Willink?

  Extremeownership.com. These skills that we talked about. These skills that you can learn that will make you a better leader and a better hu- human being. In everything that you do, they're gonna help with every aspect of your life. Go to extremeownership.com, learn those skills. And then if you want to help the service members, active and retired, you want to help their families. Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved. Go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org, also HeroesAndHorses.org, Micah Fink. Up in the freaking wilderness with our veteran community, helping them find their souls. And then Jimmy May has got an awesome organization.

• 2:19:17Jocko Willink?

  It's called Beyond the Brotherhood, helping guys get out of the SEAL teams and move into the civilian sector. If you want to connect with us, once again, Cody. Cody's at echelonfront.com, check out, if you want him to come and talk to your company, you want to go to an FTX, check that out. He's also on LinkedIn. Occasionally post things on LinkedIn. The Gram, he posts fairly active Twitter. He's maybe going to get back on, we'll see. He's at Cody Gandy, it's C O D E Y G A N D Y. Uh, and from, for us, just check out jocko.com and then we're on social media, but we're not, look, I'm not there to debate you about freaking some weird topic. No, no, I'm not gonna do that. Echo's not, you can do that?

• 2:19:56Speaker 02

  No, sir, I'm not.

• 2:19:57Jocko Willink?

  No debating weird topics. You can check out Echo's making videos sometimes.

• 2:20:01Speaker 02

  Sure, sometimes.

• 2:20:02Jocko Willink?

  He made a video of Terminator robots trying to steal Jocko fuel.

• 2:20:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, the parallel universe one.

• 2:20:10Jocko Willink?

  Hey, spoiler, does Rana Willink, she got wounded.

• 2:20:18Jocko Willink?

  She, does she survive?

• 2:20:19Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, huh?

• 2:20:20Jocko Willink?

  She's wounded or scared, but I feel like she, I feel like she's gonna be okay.

• 2:20:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, she might recover.

• 2:20:25Jocko Willink?

  I mean, she's gonna have, you know, a scar.

• 2:20:27Speaker 02

  Only, only time can tell.

• 2:20:29Jocko Willink?

  But dude, should she lay it down with those freaking Uzis or what, bro?

• 2:20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, she did.

• 2:20:34Jocko Willink?

  I would like, I wish I was there to watch you direct that. She looked good.

• 2:20:38Speaker 02

  Yep, yeah, that was good. That was a good day for sure.

• 2:20:40Jocko Willink?

  She was laying it down.

• 2:20:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's a natural.

• 2:20:43Jocko Willink?

  Adam did not do well.

• 2:20:44Speaker 02

  No, you know, he, he had his purpose. He had his purpose, you know what I'm saying?

• 2:20:49Speaker 01

  Carrie, Carrie, Carrie in the fire, didn't make it.

• 2:20:52Speaker 02

  Carrie, yeah, yeah.

• 2:20:53Jocko Willink?

  Carrie got, Carrie got burned up too, right?

• 2:20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I wanted to tell you critique. You ready for critique?

• 2:20:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:20:58Jocko Willink?

  So for a flamethrower, there, there's like a little bit of fire on the end of the flamethrower.

• 2:21:04Speaker 02

  Like the tip of the?

• 2:21:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's just kinda there.

• 2:21:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, the pilot.

• 2:21:07Jocko Willink?

  It's like a pilot light, yeah.

• 2:21:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:21:09Jocko Willink?

  But you didn't get that part. Made it very unrealistic.

• 2:21:13Speaker 02

  That's what stood out, okay. Wait, actually, you gave me a good critique about the grenades too on a different video. Remember the grenade? You were like, hey, you should have, you should have talked to me about the grenades.

• 2:21:22Jocko Willink?

  What'd you mess up?

• 2:21:24Speaker 02

  I don't know. I forget what I messed up, but he was just like, he pulled the pin and then he just held it or something. You're like, no, the, the spoon or whatever, like it comes off or I don't know something.

• 2:21:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, when you throw it, the spoon comes off.

• 2:21:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, like there's some technical thing that happens that, you know, I failed to include.

• 2:21:39Jocko Willink?

  Tactical Echo didn't know?

• 2:21:40Speaker 02

  Didn't, yeah, bro. I've never thrown a grenade before, bro. I don't know that kind of stuff, you know, but anyway, we got you, we got Cody Gandy, so, you know, next time we're gonna consult, 100%.

• 2:21:48Jocko Willink?

  Anything else, Fals?

• 2:21:50Speaker 02

  Negative.

• 2:21:50Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Cody, thanks for joining us once again. Thanks for your service in the Marine Corps. Devil dogs. And thanks for what you do every day at Echelon Front, teaching these lessons to leaders and teaching leaders how to lead. It's awesome. Appreciate it. Thanks to all our armed forces who are also out there right now, leading and keeping us and our way of life safe. And thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all of their first responders. Thank you for your service. And a solemn salute to Matt Redding, killed in the line of duty after just four years on the force, 29 years old.

• 2:22:32Jocko Willink?

  Do not forget the sacrifice that our police and law enforcement make. And everyone else out there, just, just like the principles of maneuver warfare and mission tactics and commander's intent allows the Marine Corps to win on the battlefield, the principles of combat leadership that we teach can help you win in business, with your family, and with your life. So take ownership and go lead. And until next time, this is Cody and Echo and Jocko, out.