479: First Troops On The Ground In Afghanistan. With Green Beret Scott Neil

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Green Beret, Scott Neil. Task Force K-Bar. First boots on the ground in Afghanistan after Sept. 11. 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 479 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. For extraordinary heroism and an outstanding performance of duty in action against the enemy in Afghanistan from October 2001 to March 2002, during its six-month existence, Task Force K-BAR was the driving force behind myriad combat missions conducted in combined joint operations area Afghanistan. These precedent-setting and extremely high-risk missions included search and rescue, noncompliant boardings of high-interest vessels, special reconnaissance, sensitive site exploitation, direct action missions, apprehension of military and political detainees, destruction of multiple

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  cave and tunnel complexes, identification and destruction of several known Al Qaeda training camps, explosions of thousands of pounds of enemy ordnance, and successful coordination of unconventional warfare operations for Afghanistan. The sailors, soldiers, airmen, Marines, and coalition partners of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force South, Task Force K-BAR, set an unprecedented 100% mission success rate across a broad spectrum of special operations missions while operating under extremely difficult and constantly dangerous conditions. They established benchmark standards of professionalism, tenacity, courage, tactical brilliance,

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  and professional excellence while demonstrating superb esprit de corps and maintaining the highest measure of combat readiness.

• 1:39Jocko Willink?

  By their outstanding courage, resourcefulness, and aggressive fighting spirit in combat against a well-equipped, well-trained, and treacherous terrorist enemy, the officers and enlisted personnel of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force K-BAR reflected great credit upon themselves and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Armed Forces.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from the Presidential Unit Citation for Task Force KBAR, which represented some of the first troops on the ground in Afghanistan after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. And it was an impressive start to the war. But as we found out, only the beginning of the war. And some of the men that were there, especially some of those frontline troops, some of the more junior men, went on and continued to fight around the globe for the next two decades. And it's an honor to have one of those men here tonight, Scott Neal. Scott is a former Green Beret, Special Forces soldier

• 2:46Jocko Willink?

  who fought both in Afghanistan and Iraq and other parts of the globe. And he's now president of one of the most successful veteran companies in America, Horse Soldier Bourbon. And it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned along the way. Scott, thanks for joining us, man.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. It's an honor and privilege. And I'm just looking at a KBAR right in front of me, giggling.

• 3:13Jocko Willink?

  Task Force KBAR, which was a post, what was the northern area?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Dagger and sword. So three kind of main thrust elements. So dagger, obviously, was the unconventional side. Sword was the special unit side. And KBAR was this idea of joint at the time. So multinational, multi-forces.

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  We'll get into that. That's, it's really interesting to think about, you know, from my perspective, having spent 20 years in the military, having worked a lot with the big Navy, with the Marine Corps, with the Army, and knowing the, how challenging that can be. So for you guys to get thrown together like that, I bet that was good times.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  It was as ad hoc, but necessary at the time, right? And it's kind of grown into what we take advantage of now. But I don't know if it's going to be enduring because big Army, big Navy likes to break things apart and make it what it used to be.

• 4:13Jocko Willink?

  Well, we'll get there eventually and, and I, I don't know, I haven't figured out if you and I were ever in the same time. And perhaps there's chance, there's a chance that we did missions together in Iraq and I'm sure we'll figure that out if we did. Uh, but let's get a little background on you. What, what was growing up like?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Rough and rowdy kid. I grew up in central Florida. My family had been, uh, in Florida on cattle and citrus groves since the 1830s. I think my family history, we've got roles in the Civil Indian Wars, uh, the Confederate cavalry they were known for at the time. So it was just very rural and very poor, but very happy. So my grandfather, he was well known for long cattle drives and he played the fiddle. So everybody from Nashville would come down and he would make fiddles for them. And I grew up around the bluegrass out on the range.

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  So your grandfather was alive while you were, uh, while you were alive?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you were watching him play the fiddle?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  All the time. And, and I remember, you know, a red barn with lots of cousins. Every Saturday, big potluck, you know, things you admire as a kid, you, you, you don't realize that you don't have a lot because you had a lot with family, but I always loved cowboys and Indians and cops and robbers and army men and everything like that. So I, I kinda set my pace to what I always wanted to do, and that's just join the army.

• 5:42Jocko Willink?

  And that was, was there any, uh, thing in school that led you in that direction? Did you play sports or anything like that?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  All of them mediocrely, right? So my brother was the champion, right? Always the all-star, always the team captain, everything.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  Was he older or younger?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  He was older, six years. I, uh, I loved football. I broke my collarbone actually racing motocross, which kind of ended playing football. I wrestled. Um, but I was at the weight class of I think 155 at the time and every other kid was, so. You know, I played in between. I was on the high school drag racing team.

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty speed.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Awesome. Who knew? But yeah, it was fun.

• 6:21Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys build your own cars? Like, what was this all about?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  I had a-

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  How'd I miss out on the high school drag racing?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Well, you had the shops, right? You had the wood shop, you had the car shop, so, and then my-

• 6:30Jocko Willink?

  They don't have that stuff anymore, by the way, which is a damn shame.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  I know. And it was just, you know, what's that stupid musical Grease? You know what I mean? Where the guys got together and they went in there and they built white lightning. It was like that. So I had the car that was a 327 in a Chevy Vega, so crappy, nothing little thing. And you'd go down to the track, tune it up, and you'd race other high schools on the weekend.

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  Damn. Good times.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:56Jocko Willink?

  And, but you knew you always wanted to join the army?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  That's it. I had no other aspirations. Back then, they had the GI Bill, you know, join and go to college. But for me, it was like, eh, you know, I wanted to be an airborne ranger. Airborne ranger is what I want to be. You go to recruiter. I did delayed entry. I waited till I graduated and four days later left. Never looked back.

• 7:15Jocko Willink?

  And did you have some kind of contract? Or what did this recruiter hook you up with? Okay. But you wanted to be an airborne ranger?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  I wanted to be an airborne ranger, because that's all you would hear in movies or whatnot. So I went to one-stop-unit training where they trained the entire battalion. So at the time, you went to Fort Benning in the infantry and the entire basic training battalion, all training together, then went to its first duty assignment, and that was Fort Ord, California.

• 7:43Jocko Willink?

  So wait, so like, when you say the whole battalion trained together, what about the senior NCOs?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  No, all the privates.

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  So all the, all the new guys, all the privates?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  When we got there, they had a whole cadre ready to receive us. So I don't think they do that today, but back then, it was kind of this idea that we would form. That way, everybody would grow senior to the point where, after about the third or fourth year, those who get out, get out. Those who become sergeants, go on. And it was good, because, you know, you have lifelong friendships with somebody you started basic training with. And then you go to Fort Ord, which was light infantry, which meant you walked everywhere. Hundred-mile road marches. It's like, wow.

• 8:26Jocko Willink?

  And then what was your job? Was you a rifleman?

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Just regular rifleman, assistant gunner, right? Mule.

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  A gunner, get some.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  You know, 70 pounds of lightweight, you know, backpacks and you sleep out of it in the elements. And our first kind of conflict was Panama.

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  Did you get to jump in or did you get to go into Panama?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  I was in Panama back in June. So if you look about the conflict, it started rustling. You know, this idea that, you know, we had issues now that I'm senior and can read history. It's a lot different, but we deployed to Fort Sherman, then Fort Sherman to Fort Espinar, which is across from the locks. And it was a Panamanian base and we dug in at the officers' club because Americans were staying there and for four months stayed in that foxhole. And then we rotated out in November.

• 9:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you just missed it.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Yep. And like, ah, man. So.

• 9:21Jocko Willink?

  Now, did you feel at the time, because I joined in 1990, right? And so in 1990, it was like, you know, we, we would hope that there would be one mission. You know, I guess when I first joined, we were hoping that the Gulf War, I thought, you know, we were hearing news reports that there's going to be 40,000 casualties in the first 48 hours. I thought a hundred percent, I'm going to go to war. It's going to be all said, I'm going to get good. It's going to be World War II type scenario. Let's go. So when that was over in whatever it was, 96 hours.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  A dust up.

• 9:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I was pretty heartbroken to say the least.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  I was in training when it happened. So imagine I just missed Panama, right? I get to another infantry unit and I say, okay, I want to go SF. Start going through the training and then the war begins.

• 10:08Jocko Willink?

  How did you, when did you hear about SF?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  I heard about it because we're sitting in a foxhole and 7th Special Forces Group was living at Espinar. And then you'd see these guys run by in shorts, UDTs at the time with, you know, big mustaches. And you're like sergeant. They're not Panamanian. Who are they? Shh. Don't look at them. Don't touch them. Don't say anything. And after four months of just watching these guys run by, I'm like, I want to be on that side. I don't want to sit here in a foxhole. And so the recruiter came around, you see this, you know, video of you out of helicopters into water and, you know, world peace and, you know, lightning fast and all these things, the young man, I said, that's it.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  And you go through the first physical fitness test, you pass it, then you finally get orders to brag for selection. So at the time, there's no Google, there's no book on how to win, how to get through special forces.

• 11:04Jocko Willink?

  What year is this? What year did you show up there?

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Ninety, ninety-one-ish to begin training. Yeah.

• 11:14Jocko Willink?

  And you, did you do anything to prepare for it? Somebody must have told you like hump a rock or something?

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Like that piece of paper in front of you is all you got was a printout at the time, right? It says here, we recommend that you, you know, run a lot. We recommend that you walk a lot. And special forces selection, I learned then and meet myself going through it and then post, is there, there's no encouragement. There's no nothing. It's all on you to get ready for it. It's all on you to present yourself as you're going through these tasks. So at the time, I couldn't call anybody. I didn't know anybody. They said, don't talk about it, that you're going. So I'm like, okay, I show up. And if the sergeant said, start running, I started running like Forrest Gump. And at the end, he said, stop running. I stopped running, right? Climb the obstacle course.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  You know, yes, Sergeant. And you, that was selection the whole way through. I don't know how much you want me to talk about it, but it's, it starts off all individual, right? How you run now, you know, five miles, you don't know what the time standard is, you just run it. You do a 12-mile road march, you do an obstacle course, you do a land nav, you do all these individual things. And you're, you have no name. It's just a number. And you look on the board that morning and they say, show up at area X, you show up, they read you your task and you execute. And they say, get back on the truck. And you go back to the barracks, take some intelligence tests, go to bed. You can quit at any time.

• 12:46Jocko Willink?

  And, and as you're going through that, are people dropping out? So you must have people quitting and then people not making the standard, whatever the standard is that's unknown?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you get up in the morning, you find, you know, whatever board your number's on, it's always a different group. You go to that task. When you come back, things are gone and people are gone. So you don't know at the time who quit or who got hurt because sometimes some things people will twist their, their leg or maybe fall off an offical course. So you don't know, you don't hear the hubbub because you're in your small task at the time. And then in the morning, because most people self reflect and they'll sneak out on fire guard or something like that and, and leave and they're just gone. Yeah. And now you're, we started with about 360, we ended with about 56 and out of the 56, 42 were selected.

• 13:39Jocko Willink?

  And, and that final selection that they're making, what are they basing that on? Like you got a kid that showed up, how long is it? Three weeks?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:48Jocko Willink?

  So you get a kid that shows up three weeks, completes all the tasks and gets done and you go, yeah, no.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  So there's, once again, I've learned this afterwards, Bob, who you want to have on here as well, he ran selection as well. Right? And so one is physical, obviously it's a, it's can you pass? That's it. Not can you be faster passer? Do you pass the minimum standard? Okay? And nobody tells you what it is. You just have to pass it. So next is can you work as a team? So these team tasks, very dynamic, you know, you apply sweat and in possible conditions and can you operate in a task? So the sergeant has a kind of list as they're observing. You go through these things, right? Do you help when you help? Do you, are you being noticed? Do you help harder?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Right, these kind of things and next is the aptitude portion. So after all these physical tasks, you come back, you'll eat your chow, you go back to the classroom, you start taking psychological and memory tests and general aptitude test and that'll start to put you in a bucket, whether you have skill sets to be a medic, a communications sergeant, dumb like me, weapons sergeant, right, bang. All these things, they start to filter that out through the process. And actually, I learned that this selection process is part of the Army Human Behavior and Sciences Department. So it's very calculated as you go through this process. So at the end, what do you want? You want somebody that's physically,

• 15:20Speaker 01

  morally, right, mentally capable of expeditionary entrepreneurism for the military, right? Remote, low resources, high stress, you know, solving your own problems because there is no solution other than what you create. So at the end of it, once you're selected, that just begins the training.

• 15:41Jocko Willink?

  Did you have anything that really challenged you in selection itself?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 15:47Jocko Willink?

  Or were you just kind of a gray, gray man type scenario?

• 15:50Speaker 01

  I would say gray man. My last name is Neil. So I always lined up in the center.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  That's true.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  And so, you know, I always kept quiet. I didn't try to game it. I didn't try to read my way through it or ask for advice from others. I just took it every day and did what I was told, like Scotty Gump. And, you know, what I went through mentally though, luckily, I was a poor kid that worked really hard because your brain is the enemy. And it starts lacking sleep, it starts lacking physical capability, start to doubt yourself. So your losses come from within. And those that surrender to it are the ones that walked off. But there's a reason. Because once again, in a small team, alone and unafraid, you can't walk off the mission. So that part was good.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  It worked. I mean, the people that have come out have been very successful. Some have escaped through because maybe they were physically gifted. You don't have to be a rocket scientist, but you can't be totally stupid because then the the the skills training will weed out the stupid.

• 17:04Jocko Willink?

  Then you get done with that and then it's into the Q course.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:06Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, so now what we were talking about was so the Gulf War happened at some point and you're all looking at that going dang, you guys were all looking at each other go, we just missed that whole thing.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Turn it back on. Hold on a second. You know what I mean? I'm the one. Don't you realize, you know, what's going on? And you can only watch it from afar and maybe a few media sources. And you don't understand what Green Berets are doing, let alone SEALs or any, you know, others mission, anything. You don't know that. And you just know that you're missing. So let's accelerate this. Isn't there some presidential finding that we could be pulled out of class today?

• 17:41Jocko Willink?

  And they need me.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  They need me now. I mean, do I got to write a congressman? But no, and it was over.

• 17:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  And, you know, then you graduate and you think you're the most capable, physically fit, you know, you're the right tool on the team and they can't wait for you to get there.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  And I get to my first special forces team and here are all these legends that had just, you know, worked with the Quaidi underground. They had, you know, fought exceptionally. And here I was, a young kid.

• 18:15Jocko Willink?

  So what were you guys, where'd you end up at?

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Fifth Special Forces Group.

• 18:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, awesome.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  So in Special Forces, you're aligned regionally. So Fifth Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, we're aligned towards the Middle East. So when I say Middle East, think about Muslim religion and cultures, all the way up to the stands, which has just become open, mid eighties, all the way down to Saudi and Kuwait, Yemen, then into Africa with Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya.

• 18:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a great AO.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Yes. And at the time, though, I hated it because everybody was going to Okinawa, right? They're going to first group in Asia, the fun places, right? Europe, South America.

• 19:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Here I am, going to the desert.

• 19:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, that's so that the SEAL teams used to be oriented geographically as well. And we changed that luckily, I think it's luckily, luckily, we changed it prior to nine 11. And to where they started to, they started to change it to where a team was a team and you could deploy that team wherever. But the geographical locations that it used to be was SEAL Team One was Southeast Asia. So think the good times of what you just said, Okinawa, Thailand, Philippines, Guam. And then SEAL Team Five was supposed to be winter, which on the west coast just meant, it just meant one word, Korea.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  And I guess Northern Japan as well. SEAL Team Three was, was the Muslims areas that you just mentioned. So that was supposed to be over in the desert in Southwest Asia. And then the east coast, SEAL Team Two was Europe. SEAL Team Four was South America. So that, you know, SEAL Team Two, everyone want to go to SEAL Team Two. And everyone want to go to South America too.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:12Jocko Willink?

  So, and then SEAL Team Eight ended up being sort of Africa, Africa areas. So it was geographical for a while and there is still a remnants of that.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:21Jocko Willink?

  There is still a remnants of that in some form, at least versus east versus west coast. But guess what? I sat, I was had guys with me from SEAL Team Eight in Iraq and, you know, everyone worked together. So we had to get over it. But at the time for you, were you thinking, well, at least I'm in the area of operations where we will most likely have a conflict?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Um.

• 20:43Jocko Willink?

  Or were you?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Yes, this and no.

• 20:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Young, excitable Scotty, you know, wanted.

• 20:48Jocko Willink?

  Because just FYI, I thought I was going to Vietnam.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:50Jocko Willink?

  I thought I was going to Saigon and I thought I was going to the Mekong Delta. And this was in 1990.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  When I first got there, you see the legends there.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  You know, literally a year and a half out from the Gulf War, but then Somalia was kicking on, right? And we had guys going in and out of Kenya and driving up humanitarian assistance into Somalia. So there's always something. Every year, we would go back to Kuwait for three or four months in a rotation, just in case there was another invasion. So it was free for all training, all the ammo, all the demolition, anything you can't really do back in the States because you're isolated within a military base, right? Over there, free for all, right?

• 21:37Jocko Willink?

  Udari range.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Udari range. I mean, tanks and T-72s and close air support and all of these things, it prepped you, you know, for the conflict. But then I spent six months in Africa with doctors and vets treating rare cattle diseases in tribes that were being attacked by Somalis rustling their cattle. It was awesome. I mean, lions and tigers and bears every night. And you're trading beads and you're trying to eat with the locals. I mean, it was

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  Full on SF.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  I did six, seven months in Pakistan with the DEA, you know, learning the drug trafficking and routes. So Lahore to Karachi to everywhere. Once again, small team, Alone and Unafraid. Those were the perfect, you know, pre-war missions that I don't think even anybody realizes the value of being in those environments and the networks you create and the interagency came from before 9/11 and how we had to rely on them post.

• 22:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, those are, those are great missions for a peacetime military, going out, living amongst the people. And like you pointed out, that's how we build those relationships with those host nations. And we learn about the cultures. Hopefully, we capture that information so that we can utilize in the future and we don't do dumb things. So those are great missions, really.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  And I wish. I suspect they're kind of getting a little bit back. We're turning back into a peacetime. So the ebb and flow and but we have to remind ourselves and our commands, you know, what we did in between, in between, you know, peace in Colombia, we worked heavily with their security forces, special forces, everything to defeat the FARC. It took 30 years. So we're now have friends, you know, deploying down south and working with those same forces we did before this. We have friends now going back into Africa. What I'm not certain we're ready for is to capture those relationships, right, and keep fostering them. So young commanders,

• 23:44Speaker 01

  keeping up with the young commanders that eventually become three star, four stars of whatever country. And if something happens, you plug back into the software life network and you pull them back into that relationship.

• 23:57Jocko Willink?

  So you rack up a bunch of deployments during that time. Again, those sound like really good quality deployments for for that time period. I, in that time period for me, I was doing, I did, I did one deployment that was what we called a spec ops deployment. We deployed to Guam and then did exercise out of Guam. But then we had SEALs that were in combat in Somalia who had come from a Navy ship. And you could volunteer because no one wanted to be on a Navy ship as a SEAL. And so it's very easy to get that spot if you wanted it. So I looked at it and said, oh, those are the guys who are going to combat. Then me and some of my buddies were like, let's get go on that kind of platoon. So I

• 24:41Jocko Willink?

  did two of those platoons and spent a bunch of time driving around in circles off the coast of Somalia, driving around in circles in the Persian Gulf on both those. And then eventually I did a aircraft carrier deployment as well when I was out on the East Coast. And then finally, when I was kind of wrapping up my enlisted time, I was working in the in the training, as a training cadre at SEAL Team One. And that's kind of was, was where I spent the 90s. And

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  Did you, you ended up as a drill sergeant, didn't you at some point?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  That had to be interesting.

• 25:14Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  It's not. So, you know, SF, just probably like the SEALs, mid-career at schoolhouse time. So typically, most go back to Fort Bragg or they go, you know, wherever some of these schoolhouses are. And every year, special forces was required to give four green berets to drill sergeant. And so I got notified about four months previously and I was trying out for another element. And I'm like, eh, I don't need to go to that. I'm gonna go to this. And literally, the week of, the, the head of the post-school said, hey, you know, you know that your drill sergeant school's coming up in a week. I'm like, what are you

• 25:58Speaker 01

  talking about? I have no idea. I thought we got rid of this. He goes, no, no, no, no. Well, let me call this other sergeant major. Oh, you're good. Don't worry about it. Comes Friday. Hey, you need to pick up your packet to go to drill sergeant school. I'm like, hey, this thing's solved. I don't know who you're talking to. You need to talk to this guy. This guy calls me up about an hour later and says, uh, yeah, I can't work through this. And I picked up my orders to go to drill sergeant school Friday afternoon at 3:30. I showed up on Monday and you sit there in a big room and they start yelling at you and they say, if you don't want to be here, stand up now. So I'm like, that's easy. I don't want to be here. And he goes, shut up, sit down.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  And so for two years, I went to Fort.

• 26:44Jocko Willink?

  How long is drill sergeant school?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Six months. Uh, maybe it's shorter. I can't remember. I blocked it in my special place, right? It's just repetitive. This is how you march, private, stand up, march, you know, it's just barking this repetitiveness. And so I went to Fort.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Leonard Wood, which is honed with the artillery. So I'm like, ah, I didn't get infantry crap. I went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then it was the brand new gender-integrated basic training. The Summer of Love.

• 27:15Jocko Willink?

  What? So this is like 1999 or something like that?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, 99 and 2000.

• 27:20Jocko Willink?

  So this was the, you were there for the first integrated men and women together in an open bay barracks type scenario?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  No, you had men on one side of the open bay and then you had a door. You had women on the other side. But I call it the Summer of Love because you're intercepting love letters. I mean, they're just out of high school, right?

• 27:35Jocko Willink?

  It's insanity.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  And these are the band members, the cooks, all of the other soft side of everything. And I was a senior drill sergeant, so I had other, you know, drill sergeants that were, you know, infantry or mechanics or whatever. And you're just teaching them the basics of basic training, right? How to march, how to organize, you know, you fire a leader every other day. You're just, I tell them, "Private, you paid for this, right? This is your experience. We're going to give it to you." And, um, you know, half the time, you're just trying to take something that's clay in a mound and just mold them into something before they leave on and, you know, go to whatever specialty they're doing. So every eight weeks, a new batch, every eight weeks, seven days a week,

• 28:22Speaker 01

  3:30 in the morning till you put them to bed at 9:30 at night.

• 28:26Jocko Willink?

  Now, did you get the, I mean, how many, how many people in a, was it a company you're putting through?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  No, I'm putting a battalion through at a time, so maybe 600.

• 28:35Jocko Willink?

  How many suicide attempts are there?

• 28:38Speaker 01

  There.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Boy.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  None successful, right? Because you have constant touch and watch. Usually it's in AIT, where they have time to slow down and think. They got a lousy weekend. Their first girlfriend's left them. You know what I mean? They're in such a managed culture of go, go, go. You know, there's, there's all the doubt and all these other things that you just force it out of them, right? There's no breath.

• 29:06Jocko Willink?

  The reason I ask that is because I remember.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Lots of AWOLs.

• 29:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I remember kids like in my boot camp, there was like a couple of suicide attempts, which is weird, you know, you're kind of like, whoa, like this kid's four bunks over from me and he just tried to kill himself with a safety razor or whatever. And it seemed like if you had 600 people going through at a time, you would see a lot of that stuff.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was mostly towards the end when you finally, you know, you have no time off the first four weeks and then maybe four hours to go to church on Sunday, you let off the pressure and then by close to the end, you might have a full day to go to the store, right? You got a couple bucks. And then literally the last week is when you see people, they see the train tracks, as they call them, right? They, there was no phone, members all payphones at the time. They'd all stand in line, a drill sergeant there and mommy and daughter and family. And that was it. It was all scripted. Today, you know, I can't speak for it, but I

• 30:07Speaker 01

  can only understand you have kids, unfortunately, that maybe didn't disclose they were on medication or something. So by the time the third, fourth, fifth week comes about and they don't, they don't know how to handle themselves anymore. They were a little chemically, you know, blocked and they don't know the structure of life. They don't know how to take an ass chewing. They don't know the difficulties of these things. And that adds up.

• 30:36Jocko Willink?

  Did you get any like major insights into human nature when you were doing this? Or is it just, did it become so repetitive?

• 30:46Speaker 01

  It becomes repetitive because once again, control, you have a very scripted format, right? So big army doesn't let you deviate. This isn't make it up as you go. So every day as a drill sergeant, you have to emotionally break them, right? Take them individually down, make them hate you collectively, right? So.

• 31:07Jocko Willink?

  Is that what they teach you? Do they teach you like you want to make them?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  I know it. You know what I mean? Because if I get them to focus on me, they want to outperform me. They want to be up earlier before I get there. You know what I mean? They start plotting and scheming. They know my personality. Then I got a unit. Then I remove myself and I give that unit or that cohort to the military that then shapes them for the new foundation.

• 31:31Jocko Willink?

  And you did that for two years?

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Two years.

• 31:34Jocko Willink?

  Is that, and then you, so you go back to fifth group?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  It's the summer of 2001.

• 31:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, so now I'm communicating, I was only on one team for, since 91, 92, until I left in 99. So do I go back to the same team, but they had started a new unit up in, uh, fifth group. That was more of a direct action kind of, uh, they called it the commanders in extremist force. So each group has this regionally oriented kind of SRDA team that's already in the area in case things happen. You could respond to your capability or you can prep for somebody else. And, uh, I'm like, oh, I'll do that. Sounds good. Blow stuff up, shoot things, you know, punch people in the face. That's, that's America. I'm angry, you know, two years of being a drill sergeant and I wasn't happy.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  And, uh, we got there and it began the cycle. You now had new funds, new capabilities. You were doing-

• 32:32Jocko Willink?

  Did you go to the SIF team?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So it was the very beginning. And we got to pull in the best from fifth group, right? We, uh, started doing exchanges with other units. We started getting on the national exercise program. So doing more complicated things, you know, now you're like, oh my God. So we were ready on one October to go in the Middle East and begin as a SIF company. And-

• 33:00Jocko Willink?

  Got it. So you were, you guys had done a workup-

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:04Jocko Willink?

  And a training cycle, then that was the first fifth group SIF to go through a training cycle like that?

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:09Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. And then you were prepared to go on deployment to the Middle East. Where were you going to go? Bahrain or Kuwait or something? So you're going to go there and be on standby for four months or six months or whatever?

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:20Jocko Willink?

  And do a normal deployment?

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:23Jocko Willink?

  And you were going to leave on October 1st?

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So what, we, we want pre-deployment leave or something on-

• 33:29Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 33:29Jocko Willink?

  September 11th, what were you guys doing?

• 33:30Speaker 01

  September 11th, uh-

• 33:34Speaker 01

  595, which is now kind of our sister team and they had just got back from Uzbekistan. They were training the Spetsnaz in, as you know, the Soviet Union fell apart. They had a lot of nukes and other capabilities. They had Al Qaeda and other elements trying to enter and, you know, sneak through. And also you had the kind of drug markets that were getting into Europe and Russia. So they were training their forces and capability, typical security force assistance training. And they got home, Mark had just left the team. Bob and Will and they took our snipers. We had an exercise that weekend and we were inserting snipers on this faux terrorist

• 34:18Speaker 01

  training compound and they were sending back signals and digital and all kind of other things.

• 34:23Jocko Willink?

  And these were SIF snipers?

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  And when the morning of nine 11, we're in probably the second day of our exercise. And I remember the intel sergeant walking in and on the whiteboard, he said, the World Trade Center has been hit. And we thought it was just part of the exercise.

• 34:39Jocko Willink?

  Part of the scenario.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  An escalation, right? The curve ball. And an hour later he came in and right, the second one's been hit. So we started sending out RFI's, request for information. What does that mean? You know, exercise, exercise, exercise. You know, what's the complication? So it wasn't until four hours later, then Mulholland came in and said, stop, this is for real. And if you did see the movie, it was the chow hall. Everybody went to the chow hall and saw CNN and they're like, holy crap.

• 35:09Jocko Willink?

  Cause you guys were in isolation.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:11Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. I remember they'd put us into, they'd put us in Echo Charles back in the day. They, for, for an exercise, they would, part of the exercise would be to get put into quote unquote isolation.

• 35:25Jocko Willink?

  And in an ISO fac, an isolation facility. So you'd go in there because you know, you weren't allowed to talk to anyone. No one was allowed to talk to you. You're focused on the mission. You can't be, you don't want anyone to, you know, talk about what you're going to be doing and all this. So they put you in this ISO. That's where you guys were. And the only information that you're receiving is from the people that are controlling the exercise that you're going to do.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Their handler.

• 35:46Jocko Willink?

  So these, so you guys thought this is just part of the exercise.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Why was it?

• 35:52Jocko Willink?

  That's right crazy.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  All of a sudden, we've got a cell in America. We're uncovering the cell. We're sending back information. We're, um, you know, doing assets. We're doing all the things that on this checklist of capabilities you're supposed to have. And, uh, when they put, the World Trade Center's been attacked. It's just, does this accelerate timing? You know, you start thinking, you know, what does this mean? What are these, these, uh, shocks and patterns of, you know, not normal. And so you start thinking through them and request information and you go further. So we literally thought that was it.

• 36:30Jocko Willink?

  So now you go to the chow hall.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:33Jocko Willink?

  And you guys, like, I'm sure we all knew we're, it's time to go to war.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  It's time to go to war. Um, so we were already packed and ready to go. So now what to do? The world's in chaos. They shut down the airways. Presentations need to be presented to multiple commands to remind them, you know, that we're a capable competent force. We work for you. So you have to do a little bit of salesmanship again, because everybody's in chaos. You have, um, you know, obviously national forces, you know, in theater forces, all these other things. You start to see that it became, you know, who's going to get what, uh, Mark and Bob, their team was put back together again, because they just came from the area. So you start to see two parallel paths,

• 37:21Speaker 01

  where the unconventional side was being formed. They didn't know exactly what to do at the direct action side. So we moved forward into Kuwait and then we moved into, uh, an island off the coast.

• 37:33Jocko Willink?

  Were you married at the time?

• 37:34Speaker 01

  No.

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  So you were just a young, single dude, not getting a shit about anything.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Say this is how it ends, right? This is how legends are made.

• 37:41Jocko Willink?

  Let's go.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  And but to move, uh, a company of our size with our capabilities, it requires a lot of airlift, right? We don't. We don't move lightly. It's no more one team, one seat. You know, we have vehicles. We've got platforms. We got things. So to get us over to the playground, it took a lot, but luckily we had it done. And ahead of time, I actually went into Yemen first. So

• 38:07Jocko Willink?

  Prior to, prior to getting to Kuwait, you went to Yemen. Like, how many guys should go to Yemen? Was it a site survey to see what was going on there?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  At the time, everybody wanted to help America and everybody realized they had an Al Qaeda problem. So if everybody came on the network, they would get funding and fighters and they would, you know, it was the time. And so Yemen had reached out. They had their own cells and problems and they sent a small team to work with our counterparts to see what we could do to provide, you know, aid and capabilities, not only on the, the close family protection side. They're always worried about themselves, these leaders. And then what kind of force, what could they get, what kit, what lethal aid packages, whatnot? So we went in there, evaluated them, went all over Yemen.

• 38:55Jocko Willink?

  So this is you and one other guy?

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:57Jocko Willink?

  Who, who's like, is it your team sergeant? What's your role in this? What's your position?

• 39:01Speaker 01

  At the time now, no, I'm a, what they call a cell leader. So now we're, we're organizing troops. So three teams, you know, 12 for sniper, 24 assaulters, headquarters element. So I'm a cell leader with about six, seven guys. But this was such a pieced together opportunity. They just needed a couple of guys just to go evaluate.

• 39:24Jocko Willink?

  So did you, how'd you find, how'd you get to Yemen? Was it civilian aircraft?

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Flew in. Yeah, flew in. You know, you have your linkups meet you at one side of the airport and you get the shakedown. You say nothing, you do nothing. The embassy, you know, comes by and picks you up and then you're gone.

• 39:42Jocko Willink?

  How much time do you spend in Yemen?

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Probably a week and a half, two weeks.

• 39:47Jocko Willink?

  And it's still so, it's so, it's hard to look at things in a pre nine eleven mentality. Because in post nine eleven, and as we began to actually fight, like we all got so much experience that to think about what it was like going into, for you going into Yemen.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  The beginning of the beginning.

• 40:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Right? So, I mean, here I am going into gun suits, you know, looking at can you buy off the black market or market and equip people, what resource or value, you're looking at, at the time they were called the Rangers or we called them the Rangers, you'd see them do a couple of things, you'd watch them go on a mission. It's just, that's the old OSS, Lawrence of Arabia, right? They don't know what is needed or what's going on or whatever. Big people are thinking about big things. We need you to go just evaluate and assess, build some packages, work with the elements in the embassy and hold fast.

• 40:42Jocko Willink?

  Heck, how long did you spend there?

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Week and a half.

• 40:45Jocko Willink?

  Week and a half, and then you?

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:47Jocko Willink?

  Go to Kuwait?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Well, we go back to Kuwait, then we go further into the Gulf, and that's when the war had begun. So in the beginning of the war, it was really an air campaign, and they tried to bomb anything that they thought was relevant. But once again, big air force and big targeting planners are looking for bridges and tank depots and things of conventional forces.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  After about two days of that, they don't know what to do now. And so, you know, as, as we start hearing the chatter come in, the unconventional side, you know, it was proposed that, hey, we used to work with the Mujahideen. Let's find some resistance fighters. A couple had reached out because they had saw some congressional delegations and other people when they traveled abroad, so they started using literally an old business card.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  And called an individual, an individual called a buddy in the Pentagon, the Pentagon called him back the next day. He called him back and said, I'll take fighters. And that's how the unconventional side started.

• 41:51Jocko Willink?

  And then where, when did you, what were you hearing you were gonna do? Like, how did that, how did the planning and preparation for you going into Afghanistan? How long did that take and what did it look like?

• 42:03Speaker 01

  It started in, uh, so October 19th, the first two SF teams went in. Then you had a national force, which is now disclosed, went in to Omar's compound. You had the Rangers that jumped into South Kandahar. So you start thinking strategically, how are we going to move forward and position forces? Because things were landlocked. They didn't really have a relationship in Pakistan to maneuver. Uzbekistan was still on the edges, right? Still remnants and influence of Soviet. So they realized they needed some, you know, on the edges airfield capability. So that's what you saw go for. So initially, the two teams, one was maneuvering towards Kandahar.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  The other Mazra, Sharif in the north to capture that airfield, which was a heavy lift capable airfield. And then we started planning for central Afghanistan. You know, airfield seizure, hold, resist, you know.

• 43:04Jocko Willink?

  So it was kind of in a way like you guys were going to be utilized for what you had trained to do.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:12Jocko Willink?

  Which is kind of nice.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what started happening, we started seeing through messaging and human intelligence that all of these unconventional battles, you now have chaos within the Taliban and their al Qaeda brothers. They're over communicating. So now you have capabilities that would hear this chatter and they would start meeting up behind the scenes, trying to figure out how to contain, resist. They didn't know what's going on. So now you've started to figure out that they're meeting in certain areas. So that becomes the picture perfect. We need more surgical. And a capability that can strike precision behind the lines versus unconventional Mad Max front of lines things. And that's what got us into the game.

• 43:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because that's really just so everyone understands. So that's, that's like absolutely the capability that your unit was.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 44:03Jocko Willink?

  Direct action. Oh, we, we're going to know the locations of bad guys through various intelligence sources. And when we know where they are, we need to go send people to go get them.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  We followed the script and the script, you know, usually you'll try to put eyes on, whether it's electronic or human eyes. You get pattern of life. You communicate. You determine whether that is false, right? By pattern of activity. It could just been a rival saying, I don't like this person, or none of the indicators at the time would, would warrant a package or somebody coming in. Then there's a trigger event. You go, you hit all around it because you can't. At the time, we weren't very good at saying that's the compound because there's 40 compounds. So you have to isolate all of it. And then smart men make smart decisions.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  You could, I could run into an objective and know this isn't it. Or you could run in and it's the hornet's nest. And so you use all your dark arts to speed, finest of action.

• 45:11Jocko Willink?

  I forgot to ask you this. Did you have a language?

• 45:13Speaker 01

  I did. I had.

• 45:14Jocko Willink?

  Because back in the day, does SF still go to language? That's still part of the pipeline?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Persian Farsi, which is Iranian. And then never spoke it. Because I was always in the Middle East for Arabic, modern standards. So I took modern standard classes, then in Africa Swahili. So if you learn 20, 30 words, how to count to 10, do you speak English? Does your friend speak English? Can you call somebody who speaks English? You can get around. And you always will find that English is the business language. There's always somebody. So you just learn to be conversationally and pleasant and whatnot. You're never really technical.

• 45:52Jocko Willink?

  Dude, they, they threw. A language program into the pipeline for SEALs for a little while. It's just was such a

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Hands up. You know what I mean? Stop.

• 46:03Jocko Willink?

  We were so bad. I, I think it's part of, you know, the, the culture of green rays. When you know that's the, that's what you guys do. It's like, we go and work with the indigenous forces. But it's a level of pride that you can speak a language and speak it well and all that. SEALs are just like, yo, well, I don't want to learn how to talk like them, you know?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Just distracting me from my other test. I was like that too. But there's a difference between speaking a language and growing up in the culture and understanding the nuances of three cups of tea, you know, the book about, sit down, get to know each other, talk about your family, where's the weather, you beat around the bush. And it was the same way, uh, when you work with indigenous forces, I mean, they're humans, they're gorillas, they're part time ish, you know? They're a little slow on wanting to go charge down the hill and take a battle and you have to, you know, it's like talking to your cousins, like starting a cousin army, right?

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  So a, as you guys are recognizing that, okay, they've got targets. We're gonna go. I mean, how freaking pumped are you guys at this point?

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Um, now, our first mission was like everything you train to be, right? You get on a helicopter, you get off the helicopter, you run to the objective, you explosively breach outer perimeter, inner perimeter, you start encountering people. Um, you move through the objective, you start doing SSC, you could, it could have been training, exercise, or how we operated. Now with two way gunfire.

• 47:41Jocko Willink?

  So, so this is, so you get, you get to Afghanistan and how do you guys get there?

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Uh,

• 47:47Jocko Willink?

  Like C-17s or?

• 47:49Speaker 01

  A, from the location, um.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Kandahar was starting to fall. They just took an over the airfield. They wanted a a precision team because displacement of leadership and they they wanted to find them, right? So we loaded up that day. I remember they called in a 130 that was doing a milk run, diverted him from going to Qatar. He landed. He had two nurses in the back. We backed in our trucks, our gun trucks loaded for bear. And we said, here's the destination. And the nurses are like, what are we supposed to do? I'm saying, well, you could stay or you can get off. But we commandeered a 130 and that was it.

• 48:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you had to just be so freaking fired up.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  It was so same thing. You land, it's still rolling, the tailgates down, you roll the trucks off and you you go for it.

• 48:46Jocko Willink?

  Then you you get there and did you already have the like your first target package? You knew what you were gonna hit. So you get on the ground, you have a little bit of time to establish.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, Kandahar.

• 48:56Jocko Willink?

  Traveling light. So you didn't have any.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  We had anything.

• 49:00Jocko Willink?

  You were just a a mobile assault force.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Yes. So.

• 49:04Jocko Willink?

  Which is kind of awesome. I mean, like, how many computers did you have with you?

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Enough. At the time, you had those little Panasonic tough books. That was it. And enough to write us something up and put it in to digitize it and send it off.

• 49:19Jocko Willink?

  Nowadays, Echo Charles, that damn assault forces showing up with 500 people, PowerPoints, printers, the whole nine yards, lamination machines.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  You're in a different war when you see the printers come out. You're like, yeah, there it is. Change. But it so it was on the fly. You start doing what you do. You build train models out of cardboard boxes for ammunition and styrofoam and you kick open a crate. And I could show you photos of just areas of of where they start hearing chatter. So as they develop it more, you start planning, you know, who goes left, who goes right, start coordinating your aviation offsets. And then one night, it's you put in the SOs and you see what they they see.

• 50:03Jocko Willink?

  And you show up there and you are part of this task force K bar. And task force K bar was actually being run by a SEAL, a captain, I think it was a captain at the time, Captain Harward.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:16Jocko Willink?

  And interestingly.

• 50:19Jocko Willink?

  The whole, the whole thing was also being run by a SEAL, by a guy named Bert Calland, who was an admiral at the time. And it's interesting because Calland was my second CO at SEAL Team One and Harward was one of my Commodores along the way. So here it was, what are the chances that both those guys are in the senior positions for the kickoff of this war? That's because there's not a lot of SEALs compared to, compared to SF for sure.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  I think it was a sign of the times that came about from the relationships in Somalia. So if you look at, you know, Black Hawk Down, for example, but then how many SEALs that eventually went on to leadership with Olson, right? The dynamics of this joint operation changed it. And culturally, you could say one thing, operational, how do you report up? How do you get approval? You're always trying to win the yes. So all you want to do is present factual, demonstrate that you're capable and competent, and earn trust within the leadership that they give you the go, right? And I think that became the first thing. We had our very first mission. It was, we were starting to get in other elements.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  They didn't know what to do with the Dutch, the Germans, the New Zealanders, the Australians that were coming in, right? So all of a sudden, you'd put together a mission, they're like, no, no, no, not your, let's do the New Zealanders today. And it's like, okay, let's plan. Obviously, they got lots of mountains and they know about heights and okay. So we started doing what I call old fashioned Green Beret confidence targets around the area of Kandahar. Don't know exactly this thing, we've got some intel, let's put some eyes on, let's do pattern life. So you're practicing, rehearsing like a kindergarten band, right? To make sweet music and then people are getting more trusting of each other. And then finally, I think the first couple of-

• 52:18Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you guys were doing? You guys were going out and doing little recce's?

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:21Jocko Willink?

  Now, were these rural recce's or urban recce's?

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Rural.

• 52:25Jocko Willink?

  Rural. So you're going up in a mountain somewhere?

• 52:27Speaker 01

  In the mountains or outside the edges of Kandahar, you know? Once again, the militias had already taken over inside of Kandahar and, you know, there's a whole nother story of the hospital. Where some Al Qaeda were holed up. So there's pockets and you don't know where people have fled. So now there's total unorganized chaos on leadership and where are they reconsolidating is what you want to find. So you don't want to find masses of two, three hundred. They didn't exist anymore. They were four commanders. You know, three people seeing each other, couriers, you know, dispatching information, trying to find out, you know, caches, things like that. So the first couple of missions were, you know, more confident.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  They weren't really, okay, there's 20 bad guys and these are the bad guys and they're going to resist you. So you're going to go in guns a blaze. And it was, we don't know, we don't have the assets. We're not mature back then, like we have today and where you have 360 of, you know, capabilities. Then it was like, eh, punches.

• 53:30Jocko Willink?

  I was sitting here thinking about the maturity level of the US military at the time. And it was like,

• 53:40Jocko Willink?

  not super mature because it just, when you're doing it for real, it, there's so many things that come into play that you're just not, you just, there's not there. And every training exercise in the world, it just doesn't bring the same element to it. There's like, there's something that you can't train for.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  No, because it's real, right? And I could sit here and tell you the first times of thing, first times you shoot at a vehicle and the tires don't explode. You know what I mean? It's like, God damn Hollywood. But come on now, you know, and the first time you breach into things, you get a missed breach. It doesn't open up all the way. You're trying to crash yourself through and out. You know, all these things are like, note to self, okay, that was stupid.

• 54:21Jocko Willink?

  The first time I got shot at, I was in a Humvee and I'm looking at the Humvee in front of me. And all of a sudden I'm looking, I'm like, who the hell is smoking? Because I'm seeing like little sparks coming off. I'm like, who's flicking their cigarettes out of that vehicle? Like, what is wrong? Why is someone in my platoon smoking? No one smokes. Why is someone smoking all of a sudden? Oh, sure enough, they're getting shot at. Cool, got it.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the first time you shoot a.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  A rocket, you don't have your hearing in. You know, it's these things. Combat becomes, you know, increasingly, first time you shoot at somebody, but you got suppressors. You know what I mean? You're like, it's, it's, they're all things we all collectively needed to learn. You know, now, 20 years later, I wonder if the new elements coming up have received those lessons, that we put those things in place. So, you know, after I got back from that deployment, I also had the Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat Committee. And we tried to program these things in because we had learned a lifetime of lessons in one deployment,

• 55:25Speaker 01

  but we had Special Forces guys redeploying in urban environments now, especially Iraq, that they didn't have the depth we had and we couldn't solve, we couldn't race to everybody else's urban problem.

• 55:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. So going back to this, you guys do some recce's, you guys are out there, you're getting your feet wet, you're getting, you're developing a little rapid maturity of like, okay, I'm up. I went outside the wire, we maintained communications, we didn't have any accidental discharges.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  Yes, Ranger Sergeant, we passed this stage. We all came back with, you know, men, mission and material complete. And then we did our first, this is it. And it was about a five compound spread. And we had some partner forces with this that were going to be the outer court on. And we realized that we couldn't use, typically you have one sixtieth, which is, you know, very well known, very precise. They've played this game a while. Because of the distance, we had to take Air Force 53s. And they're not known as combat landing capable. So we're flying, we're flying, it's about four hours at altitude in weather. You know, you're trying not to freeze, you're getting fueled.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  And you land and it takes off and you do not know where on God's green earth you exist. And it's like landing on the moon. And you realize that your night vision only sees so far.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  And then what do you do? Pull out your compass?

• 56:56Speaker 01

  So we turned on one GPS, can't find itself. You say, gotta move. It's like the ranger sergeant in your ear. You know what I mean? What you gonna do, private? What you gonna do? So we start moving up to high ground and somebody goes over the radio and says, what about landmines?

• 57:13Speaker 01

  So do you crouch on the ground and look for the three little sticks that you see in a movie? You don't know what to do. Then we start moving out once again to little high ground and then a helicopter flies over us. We're like, okay, let's follow the path of the helicopter. And then somebody says on the microphone, what if they're taking off and leaving or we're running? It just starts happening. You're like, now you're in total blackout chaos. You just don't know what to do.

• 57:37Jocko Willink?

  This is your first mission?

• 57:38Speaker 01

  This is the first one, big, big, yeah. This is it. This is how it ends, mission.

• 57:43Jocko Willink?

  So how far away from the target were you?

• 57:46Speaker 01

  We were, uh, they put us 300 meters off.

• 57:50Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's actually not bad.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Right. But there was a rise, a hill in between us. So we couldn't see the compound because of limitations. And as soon as we got to the top, you can look down.

• 57:59Jocko Willink?

  By the way, Echo Charles, I'm saying 300 meters isn't that bad because I've gotten out of helicopters and been like, oh, damn it. It's, it's, it's two clicks away with a ridge line and they landed, you know, when you're in a helicopter, by the way, like a thousand yards is like, a thousand meters is, is, is 30, 20 seconds. It's like, oh, you want to land? Oh yeah, we're in the spot. Yeah, this we, we there? Yeah, we're there. Okay. Boom. They set you down. You just, you just traveled, you know, two kilometers, which is going to take you six hours or four hours to cover on the ground, which you could have covered in 30 seconds out of a helicopter. So 300 meters and there's a rise there.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  I get to the top. I look down. Uh, I was part of the breach element and then the assault element is gathering on the outside of the compound and there's no breachers there. You know, for the heavy outside. So I take off running, you know what I mean? And running at them, but then I'm trying not to yell. You know, it's me, it's me. I'm coming behind you. Please look, you know, don't turn around and smack me. And I run past him and I see, uh,

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Tony and Jay trying to put some small charges up against this big massive outdoors. So Afghanistan was very compound where you had an outer 20 foot wall, you know, three feet thick, like dungeon medieval times and it took a lot to penetrate it effectively. And I smacked their hands. I put on my charge and I said, run, because I did the short fuse one where you know what I mean? Where it's not the, we've got a plan. This is

• 59:27Jocko Willink?

  The big one and the short fuse.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 59:30Jocko Willink?

  Those are two, two things that go together.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  I just look in them both.

• 59:33Jocko Willink?

  Equal run.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Whites of their eyes glowing green and I said, run.

• 59:35Jocko Willink?

  You pull it and as soon as it goes off, you run in, there was a, they had a log on the

• 59:41Speaker 01

  back of the doors, the two outer doors. I see it flipping through the sky. You know what I mean? And then you're like, and you're crying because this is, this is how it ends, right? This is, this is everything you had hoped for. And you run into the compound and you begin, you know, your, your process of just making your breach. And I came up to the window, I raked and braked and threw in a flashbang and it hit something and dropped right into the threshold there and exploded. And then the salt element runs past me and goes to the first door, blows in and it was a donkey inside the building in a small area. So there's, you know, ten assaulters.

• 1:00:23Jocko Willink?

  But you took that donkey by surprise.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Until he started kicking. I mean, how do you treat, how do you put that on the Purple Heart, right?

• 1:00:30Jocko Willink?

  I had this, I had this, I want to say, we come on this building, we're in Iraq, we come on this building and you know, we had this big plan and you know, I'm the assault force commander. So I'm probably the number two guy to get to the door. I kind of stepped back, let the boys go in and you know, all of a sudden I hear like, you know, ah, I get in there. It's a stable. It's, it's like they had been using this building as a stable and there's a bunch of freaking donkeys in there and the target was approximately 12 feet to my right, the actual target building. So we did a little transition, but yeah, those animals be funny sometimes.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Well, it gets weirder.

• 1:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  This, no, no.

• 1:01:08Jocko Willink?

  Just getting warmed up.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  More happens. So Tony, who was my team sergeant.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Root of a man was the all-army weightlifter in Europe, hands as thick as sausages, smart like tractor, brilliant guy.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  We finally go around, because it was a failed breach. I like him already. Go around the other side, we breach in, it was a long hallway, and then you go to the first door, and it had a blanket over it. So, once again, what training exercise is that, to even conceive it? So, you push it aside, you rush in, and it's just nothing but just squishy, and there's no furniture, and you're just like bouncing in a bouncy house. You're like, what the heck is this? And they had stacked carpets up, and that's how they had beds. And there was no person in there, but all of a sudden, we started seeing movement in the corner. We're like, oh crap. And now, you're under nods, your visions are differently, depths are differently. And we go to drawback, and we see these little hands pull this carpet,

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  which is a blanket up, and she sits up, and it's a little girl. And she starts screaming and crying, you're like...

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  You ever watch Cops, you know what I mean? And you're like, oh crap, dad's probably in the other room. You know, what do you do now? There's no scenario where you now have civilians. And Tony starts moving into another corner, and they had something stacked, and he think it's a body, so he start kicking and, you know, beating up grain sacks. But then you go, and you say, do you leave the person there? Or do you keep going through? And so, when we get out to the middle, other assaulters had come in, but then the building's, you know, has a fire going on.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  What are you gonna do? Right? So, I ended up with this little girl on my hip outside, you know, directing the cell during combat, you know, they're finishing off in the corner. Now, you're in SSE, part of the building's on fire. All of a sudden, you recall that there is a bank of computers, and the right cell phones, you know, now, let's get back in the burning building. This is why we're here, and let's start picking our way through that, right? Then, you start your collection points, and you find mama had abandoned everything, so you bring the kid over to mama. It's all these things become the truth that we experienced from then on.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  And, you know, from before that, it was always, you know, let's train as you fight. No, no, that's not how you're gonna fight. And so we had to adapt very quickly.

• 1:03:42Jocko Willink?

  Yes, some of those things, you know, eventually, because I ended up running the training out here for the West Coast SEALs. And we had civilian actors we'd hire. We had women, Arabic speaking women, middle aged women that would, you know, be yelling and screaming.

• 1:03:58Jocko Willink?

  Then we got to a point where we would just want to do things that the guys would not expect. So I'd, you know, I'd tell my cadre, like, hey, you know, let's get, give them something to think about. I remember I, I'm standing outside a hallway and I see where is a target out in the desert. And I see like the assault train get to a room and they like, open the door and, and like, there's a couple stutter steps, which you don't see a lot of stutter steps, you know, at this point in training, you don't see a lot of, I see a couple stutter steps. I'm like, and then like, oh, hey, uh, uh, and not, not, no, not a get down, not, I'm like, what did my guys put in there? So I walk up and I, my guys had two guys in there dressed up like clowns and they were having a pie eating contest. So that's what these guys walked in on. And the thing is, as funny as that story is, isn't as stupid as it is.

• 1:04:44Jocko Willink?

  Just like you just said, what do you do?

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Jocko Willink?

  Is if someone's sitting there with a clown outfit on and they have a pie in their hand, what do you do with that person? How do you handle that? And the fact of the matter is, there's going to be things in combat that might as well be a clown, two clowns sitting, even eating a.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Cause it shocks your brain the same way.

• 1:05:05Jocko Willink?

  It shocks your brain. You, you couldn't have conceived of this idea and you're going to have to do something about it. And like I said, we're talking about the maturity of us as warfighters. You went into a room. There's a little girl in there and you're like, wait, well, how is this even happening? It shocked your brain because, and it's so obvious, what, there's children in Afghanistan. I know that's like, of course, there's going to be children in these buildings. We didn't think of those things as obvious as they are. And so I thought that was, that was really important. And that's why I think, you know, the way that we eventually adjusted our training was, it was, and I was having a conversation with some SEALs the other day, is the training might not be exactly what you're going to see in theater,

• 1:05:49Jocko Willink?

  but it has to be training that provokes you to have to think and make decisions. And if you can make a decision in this urban environment, and you can make a decision in this jungle environment, and you can make a decision in this CQC environment, well, then when you get in this environment that you haven't quite been in, you still can go through the same protocols to make a decision at that time. So it's a lot of lessons that we learned.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Well, one thing I took away is on an objective, if you're the assault leader or the, you know, troops arm major or whatever senior level leadership is resisting the temptation to be the leader in the door, because you need to be the logic leader. What's going on, I'm smelling things, this is going too easy. Uh oh, let's start coordinating, let's move people to the left and right. Because, you know, everybody will get sucked in to the noise. And if you're not a mature logic leader sitting back, you know, letting and hearing and smelling, and I call it, you know, the X ring and the 10 ring and this eight ring and nine ring.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  It takes a lot of leadership and experience to, you know, look at those as well.

• 1:06:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and even that story I just told about we were hitting that target and it ended up being a stable. Even when I told that story, I was like, I was probably the number two or three guy, get to the door and you, there's, you can't, sometimes you just end up there, but like just taking a step back and my guys knew if they saw me and I was doing something. That it was going to engage me in a minor tactical scenario, whether it's prisoner handling or doing room entries. Look, you gotta do room entries, of course, but we're approaching the target. It's really easy for me to take a step back, guys will fill in that spot. And that way, I'm not the number one, two, three, four, five guy.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Jocko Willink?

  And now, by the time, oh, they're shooting inside, or there's not shooting inside, or there's donkeys. And I can say, okay, if there's donkeys in this building, it's probably not the building we're supposed to be hitting. And there's a building right next to us that looks almost the same. Let's hit that one. And I can make that call. Whereas if I'm in there, in a, in a, in a donkey fight, I'm not making any decisions. I'm not thinking. So, those are important things to learn about. Um, so that's, that's the first big mission. How did it, how did it conclude? Did you guys roll up a bunch of computers and therai phones?

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  A bunch of things, and it turned into a special forces selection event, because one of the events, you have to carry these crates, right, full of, you know, ammo and stuff, and your hands are bleeding. And so now you're, you're, you're post-mission, you're consolidating. Uh, you only have one hour to be there, right, because of the distance and everything. And if you didn't make the helicopter in one hour, it's 24 hours later, reset. So you're like, okay, you know, now you're the time master, right? And that guy's calling out time. Uh, we move to our, our rendezvous location. Um, you don't know who else is encountered, or what's going on. And the first helicopter that comes in crashes, his, uh, front landing gear takes off. So now you're down one. Okay, let's cycle in

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  the second one. Who's the priority? Let's put, you know, some people on here and some objects. It comes. Uh, the third helicopter quit in the air, refused to land. So now you're down to three helicopters. So all these scenarios were true. And then luckily, we had one Marine 53 with triple engines that could go, you know, beyond tort, that stuffed the rest of the assault force in there. And we took off and went home. And,

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  Unwound.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  How was the op tempo after that one? Every third night. And so you guys got into a good groove? Yeah, every third night, some, um, one objective was the hornet's nest, right? And it was very complex. It was multiple buildings. Some went in, you know, behind the mountain because of the helicopter wash and walked in and staged. We took in vehicles because it was in the middle of town. And that objective, we started, you know, seeing there were people on it. So you're starting to hear chatter that you've got active. And then there's the question, do we just bomb it and soup it up? Or do we keep going? So they said, keep going. And we, you know, moved into the compound.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  And instantly somebody came running out. And you grab a hold of them. And so it begins. And there was maybe 24 assaulters, took out 22 guys and it was over in a minute and a half. What, what, what was the 22 guys doing? It was, uh, they, it was a schoolhouse and they had, uh, thought that we wouldn't take it down. So people had learned things we would or wouldn't do, you know, based on how we articulate ourselves at times. They had taken vehicles. So there were 17 SUVs, a couple, you know, anti aircraft guns. So everything said that's a, a meeting place. And, uh, when you go running into the school, it was an open compound. We came into the back

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  and they were already outside talking to each other. And so it was on. So you caught them off guard? Yeah, instantly it was on. And so I went down, got pinned down, you know, with some guys that were firing outside the windows because it's a compound. And, uh, Tony and another guy went in the very first room. And the number two guy is he's going to go in. Somebody came out the next room beside him. So he got caught right then. And there's a Tony ended up in the first room by himself. And that's where he did hand to hand, four guys, killed them all. Basically broke his collarbone. You know, so now the firefight's on. There's probably about seven rooms all together. When he did hand to hand?

• 1:11:39Jocko Willink?

  Where was his weapons?

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  So if you run into a room and somebody's beside you and you're coming this way, they just grab on your gun.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  They got hold of his gun.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  So he shot one.

• 1:11:51Jocko Willink?

  Because the number two man didn't come in, because the number two man was previously occupied.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Next guy came out of the next room. I mean, it was just absolute.

• 1:11:58Jocko Willink?

  Ended up with a one man room entry and somebody literally grabbed his barrel, which we do that shit to people all the time in training, like grabbed their barrel.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  So now you're undernods, right? You're alone. Firefights are happening, you know, simultaneously multiple, everything right then and there. And so I go into the next room. And I remember, I didn't have time to put a charge on, so I kicked, it kind of came open. I threw a flashbang, but as I'm, flashbang's out of my hand, I look down, I see a guy laying on the ground with his gun up at me. So I immediately step on his barrel.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  And then you start going into the room and there's about seven guys in there. And they're all trying to shoot out the window or out the back. And uh,

• 1:12:43Jocko Willink?

  So you surprised them to the point that you got to shoot these guys in the back that they were shooting out the window?

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it was full on.

• 1:12:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's nice.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  By the time we came into the center of the compound and we started our first engagement, they started shooting. I mean, we're talking seven or eight meters. Now, you know, when you start shooting AK, it lifts up, right? So instantly, everybody's squatting now. They're in a duck walk because, you know, the guys are getting shot at. And you, you literally go into this room and they're all trying to face the windows. So you're actually in the center of the room.

• 1:13:21Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Engaging that way. So once again, how do you train to that? Then the next room, the one guy we took off, he had his hands up. And I say proceeded, the gun trucks came around, there was guys fighting on the outside now. So now we had some outside contact, we had to clear through. The 130 started spotting sprinters, which later on you'd learn that the actual leader, they disengage quickly and make a run for it. So.

• 1:13:50Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys have any wounded?

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  Uh, not on that compound. The one up north got somebody shot.

• 1:13:59Jocko Willink?

  And that was, uh, like what number mission was that in the, or how long?

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  Three.

• 1:14:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that was number three?

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:06Jocko Willink?

  So that was a, that was an es- quick escalation.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:14:09Jocko Willink?

  Into, into the.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  So you know when you hit, right? That's it. Other ones we would hit and the SOs were

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  there for 24 hours. A lot of chatter. It was, it was a crossing station. We're waiting for, you know, somebody particular. So you had to do a change out of positions. Uh, one of the guys got a kidney stone. So imagine the medic trying to bring him in and out. Cause he's a commo guy. I mean, just things, it freaked snowstorm. They send back a picture. They're covered, you know, a foot of snow on him. They're like suckers, right? I don't want to be in a SO. No way. So that was Afghanistan until it, it big army came in and said, turn the war back on. Uh, we need somebody to shoot at and anaconda happened.

• 1:15:01Jocko Willink?

  And, and also while this is happening, you had the, the guys from five two five, the, the horse soldiers.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Five nine five.

• 1:15:12Jocko Willink?

  Five nine five.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:13Jocko Willink?

  The horse soldiers, those are your buddies and they're running the whole, uh, what is it? Horse soldiers book, 12 strong book. Well, became 12 strong book, became move, uh, the 12 strong movie. And now there's an actual real book, uh, not, not real book, but there's a, a book that was actually written by Mark.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:34Jocko Willink?

  And Bob who have decided that if there's someone's going to tell their story, it should be the people that do it.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. So the first foray in, once again, cultures, again, it kind of wasn't in our culture to, to talk and, you know, think about storytelling because we were still in, I mean, Iraq war and everything. Um, the first one that came in, actually while we were all still there was Robin Moore. And he had wrote the book, The Green Berets, The French Connection. So he's kind of like the patriot writer of Green Beret stories. So he heard this and he came in, but he was very, very old. And he had, he was co-opted by somebody that kind of led him astray. And so his book he produced was half washed, half made up, half everything, because nobody

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  wanted to talk or say anything. And then when they finally, somebody was approaching the command, this used his name, Dee, you know, started to get about a day's worth of the story. And it was all fake names. And then it was like, I don't know if we want to talk anymore. And they left. So that book is small percent of one position of the story. Nobody's went in and nobody's gone back and took all the unconventional teams and the DA team and tried to place it at one time. So there's never been a totality of stories because none of the guys knew what other guys did. So once you get back

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  to the team room, you know, we don't talk about Fight Club. So nobody talked about what you did, or what you did, or what you did. War just continued.

• 1:17:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And at the time, like you care, but you don't care that much.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:17:14Jocko Willink?

  It's like,

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Well, I got my own story.

• 1:17:15Jocko Willink?

  It's like, oh, cool. Oh, yeah. I heard you guys did some good shit. Oh, yeah. We did. That's cool. That's about the conversation. Like, maybe there's one little, oh, yeah. Hey, make sure you put your magazines over here. Don't put your radio over there. But other than that, it's funny, the SOG guys from Vietnam, like, they had no idea what, they didn't even know each other in many cases.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  Nope. Nope. Same thing with the team room. You're isolated in a, that's, I was only on two teams for 17 years.

• 1:17:39Jocko Willink?

  God, that's.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Twelve guys. That's it.

• 1:17:42Jocko Willink?

  But the book that is out now.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, Swords of Lightning.

• 1:17:46Jocko Willink?

  Swords of Lightning.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Mark and Bob, you know, we've become friends. Mark came over to our unit after he left, 595. And that's how our friendship became closer and closer. So you do know each other and your kids play ball together and you're just in the same neighborhood. And

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Fast forward to when we started this business, um, hey, you know, Mark, do you want to go to a distillery? Yeah, let's go to a distillery. Hey, I know somebody that's in SAS. Let's go to England and see a distillery in England. So this thing organically, but then I was there in Tampa when somebody called up and said, hey, uh, you know, they're doing a movie. I'm like, what? What do you mean? Well, you know, they got actors and everything. Are you guys advising? They're like, what movie are you talking about? And literally flew out there on a Friday, went to set on a Saturday. The lawyer's asking to leave by Saturday afternoon. And that was that.

• 1:18:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, I just was.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  So he wanted to write a book saying, okay, everybody else is telling these stories. Let me put it down.

• 1:18:53Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. I was, uh, I was listening to an interview with Mark and I just was a part of a movie. So I've written a bunch of kids books. I got made into a movie, but one of the things that Mark was saying is the same thing that you just said, which is the movie had begun filming when Mark showed up. And look, are there some changes you can make when the movie's begun filming? Kind of. But, but it's like the frame of the house is there.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:22Jocko Willink?

  And, and maybe you can select what color paint you want on the cabinets, but other than that, man, the whole, the foundation, the room layout, the plumbing, the electrical, you're not moving that stuff. Once it's already been kind of bought and paid for.

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  It's, once again, it's, we don't understand the process culturally in SF. You know, I could talk to lots of other friends that have been in the business and they understand when they're involved and when they're not. The, the movie, they told them at the end, it's a movie, not a documentary. So sometimes you're trying to question, you know, it wasn't exactly like this. No, no, no.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  A movie, you need love interests and you need a little tension and there's about two prime characters, you know, so.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  After the movie was made, it ran into some controversy. Obviously, the name Horse Soldiers the Wayne family had owned IP and they wouldn't release it. So they had to change the name, which was a big no-no.

• 1:20:20Jocko Willink?

  That's why it got changed, huh?

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  And nobody was going to participate after it was done, but the command said, hey, we actually, Green Berets aren't doing so good, you know?

• 1:20:29Jocko Willink?

  Recruiting perspective.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  Recruiting wise and media wise, let's embrace this movie. And there's some resistance. It's like, eh. And then they said, we'll let you go to the red carpet premiere. And we're like, oh. Then the wives were like, oh, red carpet. Did you say Chris Hemsworth? And so it's like, okay, they got us. And then how this business started, we're in today is, we literally were traveling the world just as friends, making some whiskey for fun with some other veterans. And we didn't know if it was going to be a business or not. So we kind of liked the.

• 1:21:02Jocko Willink?

  I hope you were getting, even though you didn't know it was going to be a business, were we getting tax write offs? Were we writing off trips to England and whatnot?

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  We didn't make enough money to get a tax write off. You know what I mean? It's like, okay. But we said, we're only coming to the red carpet party if we can bring some of this whiskey we're making. And they're like, sure. So we literally went, poured some in a bottle, printed off on a laser printer, a label, and called it Horse Soldier and took it to the red carpet premiere. And that's how the business started.

• 1:21:29Jocko Willink?

  Who do you say owned the rights to Horse Soldier?

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  Wayne family, 1959, The Horse Soldiers.

• 1:21:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang. And then how did you print the label off and get permission to use the name for the whiskey, the bourbon?

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  We didn't know what you're supposed to do or not do, that you're not supposed to transport alcohol across state lines and blah, blah, blah. We just learned how to make it and we made it for fun. So we were like, oh, here we go.

• 1:21:54Jocko Willink?

  How about once you were going for it though, did you have to buy that?

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, so the, the journey of starting a business, right? So we were in transition. Some guys were still in, Bob was still in, he was the head of selection. Mark was still playing contractor warrior overseas. So we were in different places. And, you know, we started going to craft distilleries because it was fun thing for friends to get together and go see how vodka was made or rum. We take, we'd done a 10 day horse and mule train through Yellowstone. And we gave up the horses and we're going out to Westgate. And we saw a craft distillery sign that said free tours and tastings. We're like, this is what men do, right? We mosey up to the bar. Before they get arrested.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Free whiskey. I don't think that far ahead. I'm in the moment. And it was fun because the wife came out and it's a little bar and she started pouring some things and you're of course sipping it and she goes, ah, this is potato vodka. You're like, sure. Can I get another one of those? No, no, try potato flake vodka. Oh, I could taste.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  But one of the wives and co-founder Elizabeth started looking at the bottle and talked to the wife about the label and the texture and the things on it. And then the husband came out and said, would you like to see the stills? And you go behind the rope and you see mechanical and engineering and what time do you show up to start this? So we literally got back to the Airbnb, checked out and hit every craft distillery from West Yellowstone back to Tampa, Florida. It took us three weeks on a journey. And no DUIs? No, no, no. Cause we would stop. We're mature. You know what I mean? We would, and we called up Mark and he said, hey, I got an SAS buddy that owns a distillery in Scotland.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  So we flew to Scotland, went to Whiskey University, went up, you know, Speyside. Is whiskey, is whiskey university a real thing? Or are you just, there's a real thing? Yeah. So we don't know these things. You don't know the culture. You just scratch your way into it. And so we took official classes on nosing and tasting the history of whiskey without the E, which is the English version, right? And we go to see what tourism sees at a distillery. You kind of walk this velvet guided rope and then you go through the curio shop at the end and you buy three bottles for your buddies. You go to the next one. And then when we got to Thorsoe, the northernmost city in Scotland, where the Vikings came, there's nothing to do but work at that distillery and go to the bar.

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  Work at the distillery, go to the bar, right? It's like oil dregs. And we learn how to turn them on, you know? The Scots are very efficient. There's no task left unmanaged with them. And we left, we came home. Somebody said, what's the difference between whiskey in Scotland and Irish whiskey? So we said, screw it. Let's go to Ireland. Spend a month in Ireland. With the Teeling and Thorso or Kelbagan and just would knock on the door and say, can we work here for a week? Mm hmm. And so we came back, we went into Kentucky. Can I work at a warehouse? On the weekend, we would just go and say, a bunch of broke vets, man. This is interesting.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  Can we just come, just pick your brain? And everybody was open. Mm hmm. And so we started forming a company called American Freedom Distillery. And my business partner, mentor, John Coco, previous generation Green Beret Agency, him and another buddy started an insurance company, highly successful. Daddy Warbucks. Successful, right? And he understood business. So we formulated it and we started making a couple barrels. And that's when the movie hit. Mm hmm. So we went up there, did the movie, came back from the movie. The next day, we went to a charity event and the owners of ABC Liquor in Florida heard that we were somehow part of this movie.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  We heard that he owned liquor stores and he said, I'll take 50 cases. Nice. Now you had to go make 50 cases. Yes. Literally flew a Legionnaire, went back there, filled up some jugo bottles, printed off some labels, licked them on, drove them. Across state lines? No. No, of course not. No. Um, they arrived. What's the statute of limitations on state lines? Son of a bitch. The mistakes. So, but we didn't know. So we just learned how to make it. Now you don't know that the, you know, what distribution is, what sales is. We didn't even have an invoice. You don't know any of this stuff. And that first year, you know, we were educated, we formed alliances, we formed partnerships.

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  And today we're the fastest growing bourbon in the country. I'm building a seven million gallon facility. It'll make a hundred thousand barrels a year, which is a million cases, which is the size of Woodsford. From a bunch of guys who knew nothing about anything. And that's where you guys building that? In Kentucky.

• 1:27:03Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys buy the land already?

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, so you start knowing when you go, there's a, to get started, usually buy somebody else's contract distilling. Um, I have about 30,000 barrels aging right now. And that's a whole separate business because four to six years to eight years has to age. And then I have my Horse Soldier Bourbon as a brand, which we did 150,000 cases last year. So there's, we realized that if we, if I bought a barrel from somebody else and I paid a thousand dollars, if I made it myself, I make for 500. I'm losing that profitability. So at what point in your business plan do you start to transition to think

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  25 years, 100 years out? If I can only integrate all of my production manufacturing and then my sales side takes over once it's age appropriate. So we bought an old golf course in the smallest town in Kentucky, away from all the big distilleries. And COVID hit.

• 1:28:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  So what was a plan to build a distillery, a hotel, 5,000 person amphitheater? Cause we like to think big. Game of Thrones, right? We don't think small. Uh, it would have cost us 150 to build. Then it got up to 450 million. And so we had to break apart the big idea into little chunks. And now the build is about halfway done. We've got the tanks in, we've got everything. We're going to open up the 4th of July, 2026.

• 1:28:39Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  250th anniversary of America.

• 1:28:42Jocko Willink?

  America.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  American dream. Screw it.

• 1:28:46Jocko Willink?

  That's

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  Bad for amateurs. Yeah.

• 1:28:51Jocko Willink?

  Uh, right on, little deviation there. Um, rewind a little bit. Let's bring you back to the military. You're, you get done. So you get done with that deployment. Um, what's your, what's your next, what's your next?

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  We get back.

• 1:29:05Jocko Willink?

  Stay there at the same, at fifth group?

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Fifth group still.

• 1:29:08Jocko Willink?

  Still in the CIF?

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Still in the CIF. Um, already heard rumblings, uh, getting ready for Iraq.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  We, because we had already been in the 90s into Kuwait, we already knew certain elements had, you know, whether it was WMD or whether it was unconventional or regular warfare, strategic reconnaissance, those ideas were probably just blown off the dust. And so by November, teams started getting ready and going into Jordan and Kuwait and positioning. By this, you know, early February, the missions were set and by the invasion, teams were already going inside to whatever.

• 1:29:49Jocko Willink?

  So this is now oh three.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you lead the invasion from multiple fronts. If you recall, it only took 90 days once again. From, you know.

• 1:30:00Jocko Willink?

  And were you over there on the push up?

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:02Jocko Willink?

  Nice. And what were you guys doing?

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  Um, one mission still, you know, sensitive enough. Then that problem was solved and it became.

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  You started picking up either ors, either you were gonna do the Jessica Lynch mission, or another force was, well shit, they got it. There, we started, because the war was just over within a flash. What, what do you do? You know what I mean? They, we were literally in Baghdad, going to the market, hanging out in shops, you know.

• 1:30:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and there was that weird time.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Checking on facilities.

• 1:30:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there was that weird time where it was, like, there wasn't an insurgency, there wasn't, it was kind of, like you said, you were going out in the market.

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was quiet. And we didn't understand, because we had bypassed, you know, a lot of things in hindsight, that hopefully we understand now, but we don't. You know, all these compounds, where these munitions were, that became the feeders and fuels. You know, all of these things we didn't secure, we were such a rush just to exist and occupy.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  And then from there, once you had the lack of structured governance, the people began to revert to stripping things, so government buildings, all these things. So you couldn't go back and reinsert government institutions because.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  You know, they were already degrading. So that lasted April, May, came back for two months and then Jabuti.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  Jabuti, Jabuti. And what was Jabuti like?

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  Take your hand, caught the rim of the asshole.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  And that's Jabuti right there. What we saw was this phenomena of foreign fighters. So if you think historically, how people migrated for the Hajj, how they supplied other jihadi things throughout generation, there's this kind of out of,

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  you know, theater, out of travel, network of people coming across. And as things started devolving in Iraq, elements could fight them there, but how do you pick them apart before they get there and understand the networks that are facilitating them? So the mission was basically Jabuti was the last long landmass before Yemen. So did we have a presence there and could we understand the networks? It was all more deep reconnaissance, small network, disbanding, you know, understand the flow of pattern.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  And then you went back to Iraq again, a couple of times? Yeah, two times. So that was

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  end of oh three, early oh four was Jabuti, had a great time.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Different. Now chaos reigned and they, they decided to break the company apart and put the company down south in a traditional SF, you know, regional orientation. And we had Asghana Ria to Al Qut to Kerbala and Najaf, the whole southern region in the probably starting in July of oh four.

• 1:33:32Jocko Willink?

  July of oh four. Okay. And, and then what was, what was the op tempo like for that?

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Every other night. I think I did 90 complete hits and missions and.

• 1:33:44Jocko Willink?

  And did you have a partner force or just you guys?

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  Mixtures. So if we, if it was something small, local, right? We had either Hill or SWAT.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  Or you had the Swanis. It depended on what fluff, the 36 commandos were just getting started. ICTF was just getting started. And if, if as battles were progressing, whether it was Fallujah or Al Quds on the west side, right? The Iranians coming over, then you would assemble, we would bring a more dedicated element for the precision of the problem. Or if you just need nugs and thugs, you know, you'd bring, you know, some local militia in with you, right? Just to keep the peace and keep people out of your way and do your thing. So, I mean, every third day was, you know, is this

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  a bomber? And we know the neighborhood or is this, you know, people creeping across the Iran? And we're seeing a lot of personalities pop up. And then it just unleashed in Al Quds.

• 1:34:49Jocko Willink?

  And you say you were formulated like a, or you were structured like a normal ODA at this point?

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  We went back to 12 man teams in, you know, regional locations assisting the, the fun term, the battlefield, you know.

• 1:35:02Jocko Willink?

  Why did they, why did they do that to the SIF?

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  I think by then the national elements were so dedicated and they were building their empire of capabilities.

• 1:35:16Jocko Willink?

  So they're putting you guys out of a job?

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, we're just moving you to the other job.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  Other job, back to, you know, but we would then come together when necessary. So the elements down south. So you had, once again, some major battles and a JAF was happening at the time. The cemetery battles, they did the SOs, counter jets and. Doing things. You had the Iranian streaming across Al Quds area. You had, you know, Fallujah just

• 1:35:44Jocko Willink?

  What was your, what was your role in the, in the ODA at this point?

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  I'm back to team sergeant.

• 1:35:49Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  And then troop sergeant major. So when we assemble like the Wonder Twins, you know what I mean? You call up the banner and you say, all right, you know, let's meet somewhere. Let's either bring ourselves, you know, unilateral, or let's bring a hill of swat, or let's bring a marine. The Marines want to go in somewhere. So, okay, let's do the Death Stars, I like to call it and bring in a big package and take over a whole kind of non-compliant village.

• 1:36:16Jocko Willink?

  Was there any major challenges during that, during that deployment?

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  Coordination, cooperation. We're

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  The challenges I look backwards is I didn't know where we're going until a week before we got there.

• 1:36:33Speaker 01

  So now you're blind. How do you set up assets and work networks and do things? You, we were on the tear lines. We were having that discussion. You know what I mean? The, the cracks. So we were on the crack by southern Baghdad, you know, going south. And that's, you know, where people were squirting. They were conducting activity in one area and they were squirting back for rest and relaxation in another. And these elements, because the action activities, they would all storm and put bases and, you know, think that's where the fight, but really the people organizing that and coordinating it were, you know, coming back and back in these remoter locations, suburbs for effect.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  So when we started to unscratch that and uncover that, it awoke in a whole nother area. So it's never, once again, where everybody wants you to focus the problem area. It's where we're humans too. We go back and reset and refight, reorganize, recommunicate, refund each other. And we started pilling apart those networks so they couldn't relax.

• 1:37:36Jocko Willink?

  And how long was that deployment? Were you guys on a seven month? A seven month?

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:40Jocko Willink?

  Was that standard for you guys?

• 1:37:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Cause that's, I know some other elements were doing four month deployments. The SEALs, we've always kind of done what the Marine Corps does, which is be aligned with the big Navy, which is basically a six or seven month deployment. So it sounds like you guys did the same.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:57Jocko Willink?

  Same thing.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:59Jocko Willink?

  And so you get home from that deployment. Are you still a single dude at this point?

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  Uh, I've, I've been lucky in love many times, right?

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  No, I think it was my fourth divorce by then.

• 1:38:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you've been racking and stacking.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  I, I enjoyed being gone a lot, right? I've been married to my wife now since, you know, 17, 18, 20 years. So it also takes the right type of person. When you say I'm here and then, you know, a month later and then you're gone. And the hard part is just getting your relationship back with your kids.

• 1:38:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:38Jocko Willink?

  Do you come home from that deployment and then it's just reload for another one?

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  So in between those times, I ran the advanced urban combat school. So now you've got other teams. So you, you get into the training cycle of getting them ready. And then, you know, things are really starting to downturn. So if you think about, uh, you know, Ramadi, we had lost some guys in Ramadi in oh, four. Pretty hard and they were, some guys were trained, you know, really good and went to the schoolhouse for direct action. They tried to give it to their ODA and they were caught in a circumstance, right? So we realized that if some of these guys are going to fight in this urban environment,

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  they, they needed to advance their skillset, how to maneuver, how to climb walls, how to be surreptitious entry versus explosive. All these things. So we, we really brought our skillset to the other ODAs. And then I went back for another four to five months into Baghdad. So now I'm off the team. I'd been there too long. I'm at the schoolhouse running that, but then the command says, hey, come in and support us with the ICTF and commandos. And help professionalize there. You know, training pipeline, their acquisition pipelines. Now you're making a force not for convenience and partnership, but you're making something sustainable. So I went and helped out with that.

• 1:40:04Jocko Willink?

  And what year did you go help out with the ICTF?

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Five.

• 1:40:07Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Cause I, I was supposed to, when I was a troop commander, tasking a commander, I was supposed to go in, take over this, for the SEALs, because it was both, they had both SEALs and Green Berets with the ICTF in Baghdad. And so they were all working together and then I was supposed to go and take over the SEALs that were there. And I went on pre-deployment site survey, but this was in early oh six, probably like March of oh six, went there, met with the ICTF, went on some ops with them, and then was all ready to do the turnover. And then we came home and then they sent us to Ramadi instead, which was awesome. But that was my interaction with the ICTF. And the ICTF was a squared away unit.

• 1:40:53Jocko Willink?

  Definitely for Iraqis, a squared away unit, but it was interesting because they had like our weapons. They had night vision, like

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Mini me's.

• 1:41:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they were, they were, and, and I'm sure you've heard this, but the, the guys that, the ICTF that went up and fought in Mosul, took massive casualties, but they were also brave and they fought really hard and they fought with a lot of courage, which was a real testament to what all those Green Berets and SEALs did to, and what you guys did to put that force together and give them a culture of courage and commitment that, that you know, we didn't see a lot from other units in, in the Iraqi military. So that was a real testament to that, that idea of making a longstanding

• 1:41:42Jocko Willink?

  group. And it's unfortunate that they did suffer such heavy casualties.

• 1:41:46Speaker 01

  Well, they did. You know, once again, I think we, we build them and there for a while, you couldn't do the mission unless you had a partner force. So people kind of, you know, hey, look at these four, is that enough to get the yes? And then you try to build them as a competent leadership, but then you still tickle the close air support and the intel. You know, they're not ready to be self-sustaining yet. And the first time probably was they're planning their own missions. You want them to go, maybe we'll advise to the side. And then, you know, that's what messed that up.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? We've lost all those lessons. Even to this day, you know, how do we recount? What worked, what didn't, what will we do better? And, uh, you know, now it's gone. Yeah.

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  You, what do you do when you get done with that? So I'm off the team now. I'm a senior E8.

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  Typically, if you're getting ready to go for a company start major, they send you to start major academy for a year. I didn't want to go. I'm, I'm a little out of, uh, you know, we're, we're talking seven months since nine 11. You're in constant combat and this opportunity came up to go to Tampa and I'm from Florida anyways. Okay. So I get assigned to the headquarters. So imagine going from the lowest tactical on the edge level. A major was important, a colonel was invisible, but the God. Yeah. And now you walk into a four star headquarters and there were only, uh, 17 soft NCOs in the entire headquarters. Wow. And they didn't know what to do with us.

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  You had kind of had to find your own place. Crazy.

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  So. I did not know that.

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  How many people are at that command? Thousands. Thousands. All retired, you know, oh fives, oh sixes and you know, four star, two, three stars. Four, you know, two stars. You just go down like the Richter scale just. Crazy. Comes down. So, um, there was an individual I was introduced to, uh, I'll tell you two funny stories. One was a guy named Ed Winters. Mm hmm. And, uh, he had just left, uh, cell team six and he came to Tampa and they started this task force called the interagency task force. Right? So by then you start to see what JSOC was doing with their capabilities and all of the, the reservoir dog colors sitting in one.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  Place sharing the problems of the mission, right? So they tried to recreate that. So Ed was the first one. So we began to take people funding, you know, capabilities and throw them in a dog pile and see how we could support elements forward or support, you know, US had a problem at the time, we could encounter anybody on the battlefield and win. But why couldn't we as a country use whole of a nation and share and support information and degrade networks before they even got on the battlefield? And so that was the big idea. And so that became the genesis of the interagency task force.

• 1:44:58Jocko Willink?

  And how long did you do that job for?

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  2010. So six to 10, four years. So Winters and then Scotty Miller came. That's where we became friends. And then I had an Air Force, Bob Holmes, and then Frankie Schreier, who left the DEA. So I was an enlisted advisor. So people would plug in and out. And we began to have separate cells. And that's where I met Jim, right? We had a foreign fighter cell. We had nefarious network cell. We had defense or counterfinance. And you started picking apart these problems because there was nobody else really unified to.

• 1:45:41Jocko Willink?

  Looking at them from that holistic viewpoint. And then after that, did you retire after that?

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:45:48Jocko Willink?

  And how was that decision?

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  Uh, it was time, right? So here I am, I'm working for a three star equivalent. I'm an E8. Half the time I'm in a suit, walking around because as soon as you put on a uniform, people judge you, especially if you're at a lower rank. And my family came, it's the first time they read you off the rolls and say what you did. And then the next day I was nobody. So like most people, I worked, somebody approached me and they had a contract supporting, at the time was McChrystal, overseas, and that was evaluating how Afghanistan was going 10 years into it. So I spent about another nine months in Afghanistan, walking

• 1:46:31Speaker 01

  the battlefield like a Ronin. I could go to any meeting, get on any helicopter, walk any foot patrol, just to assess why.

• 1:46:43Jocko Willink?

  And I think you came up with an interesting assessment. The viewpoint that you took of this was interesting.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  Um, yes, I got to speak, you know, with old tribal commanders, people on the ground, you know, their question is, why are we still here? I thought, you know, in the beginning, you said you would come, you would avenge. We can understand that. Now turn over the country and Afghan will become Afghanistan. And as I would walk the battlefield, I would go on a patrol and I watched some kids get blown up and watched the medics didn't even know how to apply morphine. You just start seeing these things. You're confused on why we're still here and you start going into these jock centers and watching young commanders make decisions and watching people run out of ammo in the first 30 seconds. You're like,

• 1:47:31Speaker 01

  you know, why haven't we evolved? People have transitioned. They show up to the new same location that an American has been at for 10 years, but not know any people or anything. It was just, I didn't understand it. So as I started to to assess myself and what was going on, at the end, I printed this presentation. It was very basic and it was just a US soldier and an Afghan soldier and it was the cost on one side or the other. How much does it cost us to field a soldier? How much does it cost the Taliban? So it was an economic assessment and the American soldier, 1.3 million, you know, education, high school, equipment, whatnot. Taliban soldier rusty AK,

• 1:48:17Speaker 01

  $7. And I just went down the pipeline from vehicles to a Toyota Hilux, you know, a million and a half dollar MRAP versus, and at the end, you know, we're in this battle because we can sustain it economically.

• 1:48:35Speaker 01

  But yet these people who don't have economic, technological, advanced educations, all this other stuff, truly have control of the country. So we need to reassess what we're doing here.

• 1:48:52Jocko Willink?

  Did this make it anywhere?

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  Um, I presented it and I quit government. And vowed never to be a government contractor to do anything again.

• 1:49:01Jocko Willink?

  Did it get received at all? Did anyone nod their head and say?

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  Well, they did. I mean, I had the senior relationships at the end to go, where is this going? And I mean, it was, it was presented at the intellectual level, right? It wasn't like you would do an assessment of a unit after an exercise and, you know, you should make four decisions better and you should, you know, incorporate this technology better. It wasn't that. It was just intellectually, how, how are we still here and have we achieved? Because being there the first time was to root out Al Qaeda, unseat the Taliban from power, which was allowing them to facilitate training and planning in Afghanistan to 10 years later, we've applied, you know, all of these things. We've backed away from some

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  of the simple realities of Afghanistan probably needs 200 years in the oven. And their solution is something they have to create for themselves and manage and fight the way they're going to fight. So if we're training them to look like us, think like us, use our tools and act like us, as soon as we take that out,

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  it reverts back. So.

• 1:50:15Jocko Willink?

  So when you, you say you quit government employment at that time, like it was, was this a, a huge kind of epiphany moment in your life?

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  We were, we were, so how the next phase happened is, uh, I was on the board of the Greenberry Foundation in trying to help them raise money. And we were having, you know, our storytelling problem, right? The SEALs are very good. They have great, um, post SEAL people that'll go out and, and encourage people, you know, to raise money for, do events for, whatever. Special forces are like mountain men, you know, we're huff and we're quiet and we don't want to talk about anything. And so we were seeing more guys getting injured as government contractors because if you get injured or shot or blown up, your treatment and your evacuation is completely different.

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  So these guys were now-

• 1:51:12Jocko Willink?

  So you're saying as the Greenbrier Foundation, you were, you were helping more guys that had been wounded as contractors than you were guys that were getting wounded as-

• 1:51:23Speaker 01

  We had enough problems with guys on active duty, right? And we were finding the cracks like in vitro fertilization. Guys were wanting to store some and if they lost something, they could, you know, still create families, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, all the stuff that VA wasn't ready for, or alternative physical therapies, anything.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  You wanted encouraging, had to pay for it outside of any normal VA or medical system. We had guys shot through the neck, wanted nasal stem cell surgery so it could rekindle atrophy from the inside. He's still alive today. Romy Camargo, business owner, quadriplegic. So all of a sudden, you're getting calls that the guy you talked to a month ago was Sart major something now is mister and he got, you know, a contract with somebody and then got shot. And now, you know, he doesn't have the funds and he's let go by the business and he's trying to get some medical care.

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  So working in comps claim.

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  So you're, you're doing that, and this was after you finished that commander's advisory and assistance team? This is when you go to the Greenbrier Foundation and you're, and, and you're out there raising money, seeing all the problems that guys are facing.

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  So as you're raising money, you see, you know, men and women that are the corporate pillars that become successful entrepreneurs. So you start to get to know them as you develop relationships. So Greenbrier Skill 101, right? Get to know them, you know, help them with your problem and they become generous. But I become fascinated on how they grew their wealth and took advantage of the American dream. And the word entrepreneurism, you know, was an idea, theory.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  And so I created a program called the next ridge line. So metaphorically how I'm getting from here over there through the valleys and the draws and the haulers. And if we can only, you remember the Rambo movie at the end? When you're a kid, Rambo was about the knife. You know what I mean? The, the running and evading and standing up to Johnny Law, but at the end, he's crying, saying, I can't even get a job and fly helicopters and pumping gas.

• 1:53:38Jocko Willink?

  I can't even get a job pumping gas. Echo, you have to run a quote right now? Is that what we're doing? You're talking about first blood. Yeah, he's talking about first blood.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  So now you're older, you're like, well, how can we be this highly trained and skilled? And then the only job you walk into immediately is back into combat. But you don't realize you don't have the support you had. Why aren't we enabling this generation to become entrepreneurs? So I created the program, we put in some money and on the stage, we're in New York City and I had Roger Ailes, the head of Fox at the time, give the richest guy in the room an award. He'll bring his rich buddies. Nonprofit 101. And on the mic, I literally dropped the microphone. I said, I quit. And if I can't walk off the stage and follow this program and start a business with friends, you all deserve your money back.

• 1:54:29Jocko Willink?

  You do that on stage?

• 1:54:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's when we went to Yellowstone to figure out what we're going to do next.

• 1:54:36Jocko Willink?

  And that was the beginning?

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  That was the beginning.

• 1:54:39Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take to go from, you know, when you're like, did you have an idea of I want to start a business?

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:54:47Jocko Willink?

  It was just a business?

• 1:54:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:54:49Jocko Willink?

  It could have been sneakers. It could have been hats.

• 1:54:51Speaker 01

  I did it. I did operator with backpacks and t-shirts and everything you see at the shot show. And your five friends, you're like, hey, everybody else has got a backpack. I just came up with this, hold on a second. And I said, all right. So I talked to my friend who's my business partner now, Coco. And I

• 1:55:09Jocko Willink?

  Coco was a, was a Green Beret.

• 1:55:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:55:11Jocko Willink?

  And but he's, is he older than us?

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  Yes. He was pretty, he was blown up in the first Gulf War. His I'm Alive date is coming up.

• 1:55:20Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  We'll hug it out and we'll go somewhere dark and

• 1:55:24Jocko Willink?

  And probably drink some, some horse. Some horse soldier.

• 1:55:28Speaker 01

  Don't say it too fast. Believe me, I know. I get that all the time. But he, him and another buddy started a very successful insurance business, went public, back down to private, sold it for a lot, started buying Blue Cross, Blue Shield franchises before Obamacare hit. I mean, the epitome of self-made.

• 1:55:47Jocko Willink?

  Nicely done.

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  So I asked him, I said, John, I got these little companies, these ideas. I'm making five bucks here and a hundred bucks there.

• 1:55:55Jocko Willink?

  And these were backpacks and freaking slings and whatever else.

• 1:55:58Speaker 01

  The same, the same. And he goes, what's the margin on that? I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, what are you doing? What's the, what's the, Alan, what's, what's the access to capital you got right now? He started saying these foreign words. I'm like, hey, hey, he goes, no, no, no, wasting your time. You have 12 hours in the daytime. Those things you do, I'm gonna, I'll talk to you about, define the thing that'll make the most value for the time and energy and effort you're gonna put into it. And I said, you're a smart guy, you and me. And he said, as soon as I get back from Yellowstone. So when he was injured, there, back then, there was no PTSD, right? There was no survivor's guilt. There was no things going on, but there was a little

• 1:56:40Speaker 01

  program called Project Healing Waters. And it was started by the Walton family. So the Walton's son was actually a Silver Star of Vietnam.

• 1:56:50Jocko Willink?

  John Walton, yeah. He was a SOG guy in Vietnam. He was with, I mean, there's, he's in a bunch of those books. He's a total stud. Yeah.

• 1:56:59Speaker 01

  So he started a program and John went through it. And every year afterwards, he and his family went to Yellowstone. And he told me, as soon as I get back from Yellowstone, you and I will evaluate your businesses. We'll talk about, you know, is this making money? How, how we can help this? And I said, well, sure. Where are you going? He said, Yellowstone. I said, well, I've never been. I realized I'd never taken a vacation of substance in 20 years. So he goes, well, why don't you come? And I told him, well, I'm unemployed, so might as well. And we fly-fished and climbed the Tetons and horseback ride and.

• 1:57:38Jocko Willink?

  And did any time, did you guys talk about bourbon at that time? Or just talking about just life?

• 1:57:46Speaker 01

  No, you want to know the great brilliant answer? His wife, Elizabeth, who was Snow White, beautiful, perfect, Snow White on horseback with us guys. She's a trooper. And the first night she starts putting on essential oils and rubbing herself down with lotion. You're smelling by the campfire like, and the guy's like, what is that? What's going on? Who's got something? Who's got lotion? What's the bears? He's like, give me all of that. So $10,000 of creams and night creams and stuff. You know, he rice is out in the night and he puts it up in the bear bag. And of course we're giggling, right? We're like, welcome to manhood. And she goes, you men need a line of rugged essential oils.

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? She's like, you would. And so we talked about.

• 1:58:35Jocko Willink?

  Could be talking about horse soldier lotions right now.

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. So you never know. So you're on a horse, you know, you're just thinking about yourself because you can't talk to anybody. And then you get around the campfire at night and you just be quiet and silent with each other. And you talk about some things could we do? And it wasn't until frickin' frac, me and Coco saw that sign that said free drinks. Cause we're brothers and we like to have fun. And we just looked over and saw Elizabeth just talking to the wife about the labels. She was in the perfume industry, so she knew packaging and labels. And that's it. It literally started then.

• 1:59:16Speaker 01

  Then when we got back to Tampa, Coco's parents came over and we just talked more about those distillery visits. And Coco's dad said, you drunks need a hobby.

• 1:59:29Speaker 01

  And just started unwinding the mysteries of how to make great bourbon.

• 1:59:35Jocko Willink?

  What was the first, uh, big step that you took?

• 1:59:40Jocko Willink?

  Cause you know, when you're putting, when you're all chipping in, I don't know, 200 bucks to get the first barrel done or whatever. And that's all just fun and where, at what point did you go, oh, this is a little bit of a commitment right now?

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  When you put in a million and a half.

• 1:59:51Jocko Willink?

  And is that money that you guys raised, is that

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  John's.

• 1:59:54Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  Right. You start understanding, you know, the depth of things. You have to put structure around the idea into a business plan, which we still follow today. And then when we signed our first distributor agreement and says, you have to produce and you have to deliver. And it takes 45 days before you get paid. You start to calculate timing a little differently. Then you got quality assurance because you got a consumer product. So things get serious quicker and you need more help. So do you hire people that know the business or do you hire your buddy? So then you hire a buddy and then there's a learning curve. You figure it out. You meet every day, twice a day. Then you take in another million of somebody else's money.

• 2:00:37Speaker 01

  So now you've expanded the circle. So going from startup to first money in friends and family to outside money or first million. Then we went into three million. Then we went into a family office for 12 and a half with a $20 million, uh, debt instrument. You know what I mean? You can't pretend anymore.

• 2:00:59Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:01:00Speaker 01

  You have to, you know, deliver expectations, not only for yourself, your family, but board outside investors. And so now, um, you're in a competitive mindset, which is exactly where we thrive.

• 2:01:15Jocko Willink?

  That's where

• 2:01:16Speaker 01

  Knowledge dominance. If you know more than me, I'm going to seek it.

• 2:01:21Speaker 01

  So the growth has been, so where's it at right now? Where we're at right now, we partnered with the Gallo family. So we were at a point where our brand was, people were seeing it on the shelves, which means public companies are starting to see you. They're so big, they can't innovate anymore, right? They can't build that enthusiasm and exploratory, they can't hip enough. So they just acquire. So you started seeing George Clooney sell for a billion and a half. You started seeing High West, these monetary purchases by public companies, but almost all of them are foreign. So when we had Campari and Beam Centauri, all

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  these people were like, nah, we're American. And so that left a few. And so we started putting together, which this was Coco's realm, was how to build yourself. And we didn't want to sell outright. Because if we sold outright, you're surrendering the true value of what we could be. But it was ours. And so we went through 30 dating exercises, narrowed it down to 10 exercises, narrowed it down to five. And then can you align culturally? Because once you get into a business partnership, you can't divorce. And One of the companies, some of the companies looking at you, not alcohol companies? Yeah. Like

• 2:02:42Speaker 01

  Hedge funds that have spirits portfolios, these others, you know, it's just a thing in their menu, right? Their, their, their committee is told to buy into these certain areas. So when you talk to them, you get it right away. They don't bring value. So if you look at a business as a marriage, I don't need the money as much as your access to markets, your distribution needs mafia. I say that word, these, your family, my family, we get together, we, we bring capabilities together. So as we went through that, at the final five last one, John, he only has one litmus test. When he meets him, he shakes their hand and goes, give me your cell number. Because if I can't call you at two in the morning because I'm having a problem,

• 2:03:27Speaker 01

  then I'm dealing with a committee or a financial team or somebody, you know, I don't want that. I want a partnership and too balked and hesitated.

• 2:03:38Speaker 01

  Finally made our decision and that was with the Gallo family and the Gallo family, you know, same rags to riches immigrant family build an empire and they started getting into the spirit space. They own High Noon and a bunch of other spirits brands. So he knew he had to diversify and they said, it's your business. How do we help? And so now we're, you know, two restaurants going on three, a hotel.

• 2:04:06Jocko Willink?

  Where are the restaurants?

• 2:04:08Speaker 01

  Uh, one's in Tampa. So the Urban Still House, beautiful. It's so high class, high end. People think you're vets and they think beer pong, ping pong. I'm like, no, no, no. One in Somerset, Kentucky.

• 2:04:23Jocko Willink?

  There's no beer pong there?

• 2:04:24Speaker 01

  No, no, we've got bison. We break down the barrels for wood fire grills. We've got fresh caught fish. It's beautiful. And then the one in Kentucky, we opened before the facility and we just bought a building in the stockyards in Fort Worth.

• 2:04:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, awesome.

• 2:04:40Speaker 01

  So we've partnered with PBR.

• 2:04:42Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 2:04:43Speaker 01

  So we've built this brand and it's basically origin stories, friends that served together, came home, started a business, you know, made something, you know, we're, we're positioned right. So if you think now with Yellowstone and all this other, you know what I mean? Cowboy culture and other stuff. We, we've kind of hit the right timing to remind what an all American company with all American products is about. So either we've been dead lucky or cleverly smart.

• 2:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Or a little bit of both. We'll take it.

• 2:05:18Jocko Willink?

  Awesome, man. Uh, and then you got one little, last little thing. You've got these adventures that you guys seem to go on. It's like, I look at your YouTube channel, you're doing D-Day jumps, you're doing sailing rate explorations, diving in Saipan. Like what's that all about?

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  So you can't take what has been the embers of your life of service, right? And take it out. So every year we always say, we've got to do something together as friends and family. So it started.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  Coco gave us the money because the money he was gonna use was to buy a sailboat and he wanted to have a fantasy sailing for life. So one day, somebody had some sailing lessons, so we decided to take him and they were part of the Warrior Sailing Foundation. Somebody had gifted them a $6 million kind of race yacht. Okay. And then they opened up Cuba, so they had a regatta from St. Pete, Florida to Cuba. And we said, why don't we enter that? Literally took two sailing lessons. And we got second place. Damn, okay. And so, we don't like to lose. Green Bay sabotage activities going on there.

• 2:06:32Speaker 01

  Exactly. Then we hung out in Cuba for a week and had fun. So then the next year, they had us regatta from St. Pete to Isla Mujeres, which is near Cancun. And so, we talked to the same warrior sailing. Somebody had donated a carbon fiber race yacht.

• 2:06:52Speaker 01

  And we were crushing everybody's soul until we didn't release and basically almost crashed. It blew out the spinigula, still limped in, got second, and decided, let's not do that. Strong second.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  And then, a former teammate who was still doing government work in Germany said, hey, I just visited Normandy. Like, oh, I haven't been to Normandy, let's go. And so, you start hearing that they have reenactments and they have events you can go to. So you start hitting the network and they're like, yeah, you know, they have airborne jumps in there. We're like, oh, can we get tickets to go see it? And they're like, I don't know. Who are you guys again? And we told them who we were. He goes, would you guys like to jump into it? Hell, yeah. So, went back, got airborne, round canopy certified. Coco on his jump broke both of his ankles. Oh dang.

• 2:07:47Speaker 01

  And uh, How? Just hit hard, landed hard? He landed on the runway. Oof. You know, those little lights that come up a few feet. You're trying to like lift your leg a little bit. Gosh. It was pathetic. Uh, and so we jumped in, my son jumped with me and a week later he went to Afghanistan for a year. Hell yeah. So it turned into this, you know, our kids. In the army? Yeah. That sounds. He was in the 82nd. Awesome. So this year was the 80th anniversary. So we had, uh, 10 congressmen in the center. Crenshaw jumped, right? Isaac, Mike Waltz. Yeah. You know, we created this every year. We're going to go back to Normandy because, you know, how do you pass the baton from one generation to the next through the eyes of your grandkids?

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  So they need to see, you know, you on the battlefield, you know, sharing something that, you know, shouldn't be in a VFW hall or over a drink, you know? We thought it was important for the kids. The Saipan issue, I have a very good friend, Mark, uh, who's head of Task Force Dagger Foundation, started doing recovery missions. So you can go into Vietnam, you can dive again. Uh, you can, you know, we're the only country that puts resources against recovering lost. And so we went back to Special Forces Scuba School. Old guy Red Bull, right? Dove got certified, went to archaeological dive school, learned how to put the brackets down

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  and, you know, the vacuum, do everything. And then we went to Saipan and spent three weeks on a couple downed Hellcat sites to recover what you can. Very cool, very cool. So you got the distillery coming. What else? Any, what, anything else? What's the next big project? Um, America 250th anniversary. So I had the honor of speaking at the RNC, um, talking about. Yeah, I saw that. You know, passing once again, the baton, you know? Let's always question ourselves. Um, are we doing the right thing when it came to withdrawal of Afghanistan? And.

• 2:09:56Speaker 01

  How do we make small town America important on the 250th? So right now, the entire country's planning for Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, DC. So when I talk to my friends in the administration, I'm like, where's the conversation about small town America, a parade with Jeeps, you know, the Boy Scouts with flags. So I've been weaseling my way because President Trump started a commission on the 250th anniversary. And I've been Don Quixote yelling that this, it's not a celebration unless all of America talks about what it means to have a 4th of July parade in small town America.

• 2:10:37Jocko Willink?

  Freaking outstanding.

• 2:10:38Speaker 01

  So that's where I'm putting some of my energy into.

• 2:10:42Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Awesome, man. Sounds like that gets us up to speed. So people can find you. So you guys are on the interwebs?

• 2:10:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:10:52Jocko Willink?

  horsesoldierbourbon.com.

• 2:10:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:10:55Jocko Willink?

  You got Instagram, horse soldier bourbon. Twitter X is horse soldier USA. You got YouTube and Facebook, which is also, both those are horse soldier bourbon. And then for you, if I got this right, it's you're Scott Neal and you're at AF, which is American Freedom AF Distillery. And that that's on Instagram?

• 2:11:17Speaker 01

  No, no, mine is Whiskey and War Stories.

• 2:11:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:11:20Speaker 01

  Instagram.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  So it's at Whiskey and War Stories?

• 2:11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:24Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:11:25Speaker 01

  We suck. It's not in our nature. Our kids yell at us all the time because, you know, we let them post and do things. We probably need to get better at broadcasting. Like I say, I come from the, you know, don't talk about Fight Club story. So we get into these discussions. And we need to come out.

• 2:11:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, it's good to, you know, that's one of the things about this podcast is, you know, I've had guys on.

• 2:11:54Jocko Willink?

  A decent number of guys that have come on and talked their story, whether it was World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and they died afterwards. And, you know, I've had the families been so moved and so thankful because, you know, these are guys, Vietnam guys, or, or World War II or Korean guys that, you know, they, they didn't, you know, they, sure, maybe they talked about it with their friends when they were in the bar or whatever, but they weren't telling their kids.

• 2:12:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, I even, I even look like my youngest daughter's 15 years old. She, I retired in 2010, right? She doesn't, she doesn't remember me as a, as a military guy, you know? She doesn't know anything about, she doesn't remember me going on deployment, none of that. She didn't, she doesn't, it just doesn't exist for her. So, like, it's not like I, and like I sit around the dinner table and say, let me tell you about this one time in Baghdad, you know? I don't do that, like, they're not going to hear that from me. And that's the same way it was for a lot of these, these older guys that I've had on that have told their story and, man, their, their kids and their grandkids are just so happy that we were able to capture it. And on top of that, you know, military, I mean, all the younger generation of military

• 2:13:05Jocko Willink?

  guys, like, they're going to take lessons learned from, even just from what you talked about today, just the simple lessons learned of, hey, you know, maybe when this person who might not see combat for 10 years, or 12 years, or 15 years, inside the Army or the Marine Corps, hears you talking about, oh, my gosh, you know, it's going to be my first target assault, and there was a kid in there and we didn't know what to do.

• 2:13:24Speaker 01

  Yep. How do you pass on legacy, right? And we grew up 30,000 years ago by the fire, you know, painting on the cave, and I think we've gotten a little bit out of small community, small family conversations, you know, about what made you. So now, as I research my grandpa, my great, great, great uncle in the Alamo, all these things, you wish you could have a conversation or hear them. So that's why some of these adventures are always family adventures.

• 2:13:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:53Speaker 01

  So as we get together and talk as uncles, you know what I mean? The kids get to hear, and now we've got grandkids. And, you know, you have to share, but at the end too, though, I don't want to give my kids a, a footlocker full of dirty boots and war medals and then try to recreate who I was. So trying to be present now as a dad and granddad, you gotta give priority to.

• 2:14:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no doubt about it. Awesome. Echo Charles, you got any questions?

• 2:14:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have a few questions.

• 2:14:22Jocko Willink?

  We got the bourbon expert over here.

• 2:14:24Speaker 02

  So, okay, so just for clarification, um, I used to work in the bar industry, so I know a little bit. But so first question is from.

• 2:14:33Jocko Willink?

  Did you just roll out the fact that you are a bouncer as your qualification to go down this line of questioning?

• 2:14:37Speaker 02

  I was a bartender and bar back, by the way.

• 2:14:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I'll lay my last. I stand corrected.

• 2:14:42Speaker 02

  And manager in training, so that comes too. So I know about invoices and inventory.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  Get ready, go ahead.

• 2:14:49Speaker 02

  So whiskey, right? It's all whiskey. Scotch, bourbon. It's all whiskey.

• 2:14:55Speaker 01

  So whiskey is a category is like saying special operations, right? So whiskey, you have vodka, you have rum as a category, gin as a category, whiskey.

• 2:15:06Speaker 02

  Tequila too, by the way.

• 2:15:07Speaker 01

  Tequila.

• 2:15:08Jocko Willink?

  Wait, wait, wait. Whiskey is above vodka, tequila?

• 2:15:14Speaker 01

  Okay, got it. Parallel. So it's a category, right? And then there's subsets underneath it like tequila. There's Naho and there's in whiskey. There's Scotch, which comes from Scotland. Can't come from Ireland, but it can be single malt, right? You have Irish whiskey, which can be multi-grain or a single malted barley. Japanese whiskey, which comes from Japan, but it can be a multi-grain or a single malt. American whiskey is usually in two categories. One is bourbon and one is straight whiskey. Jack Daniels is a whiskey. It's not a bourbon. Why? Cause bourbon, as enacted by Congress in 1964, is a distinct product of the United States of America.

• 2:15:52Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 2:15:53Speaker 01

  So it has criteria that make it, if you don't follow those, you can't call it a bourbon.

• 2:16:01Speaker 02

  Isn't it because it's made in Bourbon County?

• 2:16:04Speaker 01

  Zero point zero. No. It's a product of the United States of America. Kentucky, 95% of the bourbon's there and they, they like to be known for it. But by the law, it can be made in all 50 states.

• 2:16:19Speaker 02

  Okay, right on. See? Learn something new every day. Okay, so when you said, cause you started this stuff straight up, white belt from scratch.

• 2:16:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:16:27Speaker 02

  All in the field essentially, then you get, then you went to some classes and stuff like that. How long would you?

• 2:16:32Jocko Willink?

  The classes that you went to, they were like kind of a tourist type thing. Like I'm a curious tourist. I want to spend two days at this factory. They're going to show me how to blah, blah, blah.

• 2:16:39Speaker 01

  Then we found another marine who was actually in the Ramadi at the same time as you, Travis Barnes. He has a distillery called Hotel Tango. One of our investors invested in that and said, why don't you go see Travis and Hotel Tango? He's in Indianapolis. And he said, here we go.

• 2:16:55Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 2:16:56Speaker 01

  Get that sack, turn that lever, you know what I mean?

• 2:16:59Jocko Willink?

  What'd you say his name was?

• 2:16:59Speaker 01

  Travis Barnes.

• 2:17:01Jocko Willink?

  Travis Barnes. I'll have to find Travis Barnes.

• 2:17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:04Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 2:17:04Speaker 01

  Great American. He taught us a lot. Same thing. He just started with a buddy and, you know, poof, there you go. But we're a little bigger now.

• 2:17:11Jocko Willink?

  What's his called?

• 2:17:12Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 2:17:13Jocko Willink?

  What's his bourbon called?

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  Travis, see right in my head. Wait for it to drop here. Hotel Tango. Yeah.

• 2:17:22Jocko Willink?

  Hotel Tango. Okay, cool, cool.

• 2:17:24Speaker 02

  But those touristy classes, I feel like those count as part of the education process.

• 2:17:31Speaker 01

  They, they take you into the theory on how to taste it. So if you look at a lot of these podcasts and YouTubers, they're just drinkers and consumers as they wataire about the essence of nutmeg and, you know, like a cooking show person. And then you go into Kentucky or somebody that makes it, they're missing fingers. You know what I mean?

• 2:17:49Speaker 01

  They're making the donuts. So we got to get with some of the most well-known bourbon personalities, but it's never the personality making it. It's the guy that shows up at 6:30 in the morning. It's the warehouse man that's been there for 30 years and can tell you about, you know, seventh floor versus fourth floor, about how ethanol bleeds and his lowers and hovers. That's who we spent time with down in the bowels of the ship.

• 2:18:15Jocko Willink?

  So a warehouse guy in the bourbon world is actually dealing with the product and the manufacturing too?

• 2:18:20Speaker 01

  So you make it, right? So grains, so let's start here. It took 80 years to grow that tree. Right, it took seven months to grow the grains, the corn, the barley, the winter wheat or the rye. Then you truck it into one location, you make, you blend it all together, you heat it up to a certain level, and that's called a mash. And then you put it into a fermenter. And after 96 hours, it turns into probably 8% alcohol. Now, the snipers are gonna listen to this and, you know, try to cut me with precision, but for general sake. If I stop there, it's beer.

• 2:18:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:18:59Speaker 01

  When I go to put it back into a copper still, and I start to boil it, alcohol boils at 177 degrees, whereas water boils above that. So the vapors start to come up, and when it touches copper, it falls back down. So it starts releasing some fatty esters and other stuff. So it gets lighter and lighter and lighter. And as it transfers over, you introduce cold water on the other side that turns that vapor into a liquid, and it comes out clear, and it's called moonshine.

• 2:19:26Speaker 02

  And that's pure alcohol?

• 2:19:28Speaker 01

  To be a whiskey, you can't proof it higher than 160, whereas vodka's 192. Because you still, subatomically, chemically, you have esters and oils that give it the mouthfeel and the taste of a whiskey. So you want to capture it at a certain proof. Then it's clear. Now, here's where Mother Nature and Father Time, when you put it in a brand-new American White Oak barrel that's been charred, so it's burned on the inside, you have carbon, you have the release of vanillins, tannins, everything else. Time has to sit in a barrel, and it starts to change as pressures, environmental pressures, day in, day out, bring it in and out of the fibers of the porous American White Oak.

• 2:20:13Speaker 01

  It starts to pick up vanillins and flavors, and it releases the hard, harsh things that make you go blind. And it changes into something sippable. So you can't microwave bourbon. It has to age.

• 2:20:28Speaker 02

  So even you say the things that make you go blind, that's not like an expression? Like, at a certain point, if you drink the wrong alcohol, you'll go blind?

• 2:20:36Speaker 01

  So when you have a new, young batch, you know, they put it in a Glen Cairn glass, and you look at the color, you kind of get a nose, and you start to smell, and then you put it up to your eyeball. And you could tell if it burns or not, right? Cause it affects your ocular nerve. So when you say going blind, it's because they didn't cut the right heads and tails, the way you, you just don't take it all as it comes out. The first set that starts flowing out is, has all the bad stuff and people that are nefarious, they capture it all and sell it to a consumer. That's why people are dying over in Mexico and everywhere because one fourth of your product, you trash or you throw back in called sour mash.

• 2:21:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, that's so like, I know this because I looked into distilling, right? Not brewing, distilling my own vodka and not, hey, look, I wasn't gonna do it. Maybe, maybe not. This is back in the day. So I looked into the process and in the through that, the beginning of the learning process, this is back in the day. Yeah. Uh, I learned that. So it's kind of like, hey, if you don't, basically what I took from that is, hey, if you don't know what you're doing, you're, you can blind yourself in real life.

• 2:21:45Speaker 01

  And other people.

• 2:21:46Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah.

• 2:21:47Speaker 01

  So the harshness of the, the art of distillation is knowing how much of the heads, how much of the tails, cause that's the dirty sock is the tails, the heads are some of the boldness and then the sweet spot called the hearts. And then you put it in a barrel, you proof it down from one sixty down to maybe one twenty five. And or one twenty, depending where you want to be. And you just put it away. It just sits there. Now here's the bad part. It evaporates.

• 2:22:18Speaker 01

  First year, 10% evaporates, absorbs in the barrel, 4%. So I'm racing mother nature right before it's gone in the barrel.

• 2:22:27Speaker 02

  So eventually it's gone.

• 2:22:29Speaker 01

  It's gone.

• 2:22:29Speaker 02

  Wait, is, does, does that, does that contribute to the price?

• 2:22:34Speaker 01

  Yes. So happy at 22 years old, cause maybe you've got, you know, out of 53, maybe five, seven, eight, 10 gallons left.

• 2:22:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's when you say 80 years to grow the tree, that's for the wood, for the barrels. Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:22:49Speaker 01

  So there's no additives, whereas regular like Scotch, you can add caramel coloring to make it browner. Because it sits in these caves and it sits in Scotland where it's a very mild climate and they're already used bourbon barrels. They're kind of burned out. So it'll come out not as amber as the consumer would expect. So they're allowed to put a certain amount of caramel coloring, just like rum. Your aged rum isn't aged. There's some laws that say I can put, you know, so much of a 30 year old and the rest is one year old.

• 2:23:21Jocko Willink?

  So a new barrel is going to give more flavor?

• 2:23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's what bourbon is. That's the distinction. So there's not a lot of oak trees in Scotland, in Ireland.

• 2:23:31Jocko Willink?

  And it's pretty much a one, a one time use?

• 2:23:33Speaker 01

  That's it by law. I can only use it once. So the secondary bourbon market, soon as I pour it, I sell it on a secondary market. So it either becomes a tequila barrel, or a wine barrel, or a scotch barrel.

• 2:23:47Speaker 02

  So how long?

• 2:23:48Jocko Willink?

  Or a grill or whatever. You said you made stuff.

• 2:23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, wood fire. Heck yeah. Wood fire grill, chips. Hey, I use every input, right? You're talking about sustainable? Give me that. Sell that.

• 2:24:01Speaker 02

  Um, so, okay, so this bourbon, um, how long would you say from knowing zero to the point where you, you can function in a business that you would consider successful? How long?

• 2:24:14Speaker 01

  Two to three years. What most people do, like celebrity brands, they hire somebody that's kind of been in the biz and they become the face so they can get consumers to start buying it. So you can buy existing bourbon, put it into your label with a low investment, and they'll throw it into the market. And if it catches, they're already looking for a buyer, right, to exit. So if you look at the acquisition side, it's typically a threshold of about 75,000 cases. If you can get your marketing and get into bars and get things going, typically a public will buy it, right? And then you've made multiples, 10x's, 12x's in this industry.

• 2:24:56Speaker 02

  So deep. It's obvious that, or it seems obvious from this position that you know more about bourbon than say the vodka, tequila scenarios, Jen?

• 2:25:07Speaker 01

  I know it all. Why? Because, um,

• 2:25:11Speaker 01

  Fundamentally, the process is the same, right? And then you get to the marketing side. So not only do I have a brand, I'm in charge of going to the consumer facing. So I have to do the events all around the country. I have to work with distributors, have to work pricing, incentives, bonuses, all of these other things. As my competitor set on the bar, so if you look at a bar, right? I'm competing against not only my set, but the mind share of that bartender to pour, you know what I mean? More old fashions than, you know, Red Bull and vodka. So I have to be able to articulate why my product is better.

• 2:25:51Speaker 02

  Is bourbon your favorite drink out of everything? Like if you're

• 2:25:54Speaker 01

  Of course it is.

• 2:25:54Speaker 02

  gonna hang out. Yeah, okay.

• 2:25:57Speaker 01

  No, I love tequila.

• 2:25:58Speaker 02

  No, there you go.

• 2:25:59Speaker 01

  There's one thing I want to start and it's my personal quest, Don Quixote quest after the 250th is that to make a shot of bourbon in a beer cool again, like you saw in every old Western. Cause right now, when I go to eat Mexican, what do I get? I get a beer and a shot of tequila. I don't even think about it. For my brand, if I could just bring back, because the number one selling whiskey in the world is what?

• 2:26:24Speaker 02

  Whiskey, I don't know, Jack Daniels?

• 2:26:26Speaker 01

  Fireball.

• 2:26:27Speaker 02

  Fireball?

• 2:26:29Speaker 01

  It's consumed, going out of style. Go to any bachelorette party and there's a bucket of Fireball.

• 2:26:34Speaker 02

  I don't think I've ever had Fireball.

• 2:26:35Speaker 01

  Good, don't.

• 2:26:36Speaker 02

  You ever had Fireball?

• 2:26:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I have, yeah. It's like, it's like, you know, the little Fireballs that you have when you're a little kid.

• 2:26:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's

• 2:26:42Jocko Willink?

  It's like that.

• 2:26:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, what was the other, the mint one?

• 2:26:46Jocko Willink?

  Rumpelmines.

• 2:26:46Speaker 02

  Rumpelmines, is that, okay, alright.

• 2:26:50Speaker 01

  Well, it's about consuming, right? So drinks, there's about one and a half pours per drink. So if you look at the, the, you know, there are 10 top cocktails that every restaurant has on the menu. So it's a martini, or it's a gin fizz, or it's a old fashioned, or it's a Manhattan bourbon. Has two categories. So we're always trying to bump off somebody else to a bartender.

• 2:27:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:27:16Speaker 01

  Hard part is, I'm 57 and I don't relate to 24 year olds. They don't care about the military or we were heroes of nine 11. They want to know what's the price point or my customer's going to ask for it. So we have to have a different kind of business conversation. All of that, we knew nothing about. It's only because we just started talking.

• 2:27:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:40Speaker 02

  You ever had a Long Island iced tea?

• 2:27:42Speaker 01

  Love them.

• 2:27:43Speaker 02

  I kinda love them too.

• 2:27:44Speaker 01

  What goes in that?

• 2:27:45Speaker 02

  About everything.

• 2:27:46Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 2:27:46Speaker 02

  It's basically everything with sweet and sour and some coke on the top.

• 2:27:51Speaker 01

  Soda fountains when you just hit every one of those.

• 2:27:56Speaker 01

  You know, America is still social, right? And we have some challenges in our industry. You have, you know, access to CBDs and things that are the younger culture. That's how they socialize differently. Wine has really gone down. Americans, you know, not too many people are doing red wine and steaks. So we evolve.

• 2:28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:22Jocko Willink?

  Is alcohol consumption going down?

• 2:28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:25Jocko Willink?

  It certainly seems like to me and I.

• 2:28:27Speaker 01

  Beer.

• 2:28:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, even I know that there's non alcoholic beer now that's really, really popular. And also even in the culture of the military, which when I was a young SEAL, it was ridiculous. It was.

• 2:28:40Speaker 01

  Our number one cells are still the military and the Nexcom and AFE's channels. But there is more consciousness for, you know, quality and fitness and everything, right? So we have to evolve into that conversation. Next is people aren't that social anymore. They don't go out like they used to per se. And, you know, out every night, all night. Now it's in, now it's social media. Now I'm, you know, I'm interacting different.

• 2:29:16Jocko Willink?

  Now it's secret Hitler. Do you know what secret Hitler is?

• 2:29:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:29:20Jocko Willink?

  It's a game. It's a board game. And it's, I've played it a few times and it's really fun. And like, I know people that like are 20, 22, 24 years old and they go play secret Hitler.

• 2:29:36Speaker 01

  Wait, in, it's an in-person board game, right?

• 2:29:39Jocko Willink?

  It's an in-person board game.

• 2:29:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:29:41Jocko Willink?

  And it's, it's kinda cool. You gotta kinda lie to each other.

• 2:29:45Speaker 01

  Is it like Clue?

• 2:29:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's way better than Clue, to be honest with you. You basically, you're trying, one person is Hitler, like you get a card.

• 2:29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:53Jocko Willink?

  One person is Hitler, and then other people are either fascist or liberal. And you get card that says you're a liberal, you're a liberal. And you gotta get certain laws passed a little bit. It's not, it's not actually that complicated. Like you can, you'll learn to play it immediately.

• 2:30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:09Jocko Willink?

  But then what the thing is, the secret Hitler, he, if he's the last man standing, you know, then the fascist win. He wins and that team wins. And if he's, or the liberals can stop him by figuring out who it is and you can accuse him like, you're Hitler. And then he can go, no, I'm not. And you can do some way of proving it. But that's like a legitimate thing. I wouldn't have, when I was 22 years old, I wouldn't have thought in one billion years of playing a board game with my friends.

• 2:30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're now, you're now in the bridge category. What do you mean they're all coming over here to play?

• 2:30:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and now these kids are like doing this. And it's kind of, it's interesting. It's a new world. A little, a little bit more focused, like you said, a little bit more focused on health and, and fitness. So, good, good in that respect.

• 2:31:01Speaker 01

  It's what we've chosen. So this is our path. This will create generational wealth for our families. So this is the legacy we have to focus on. And it will be successful. If we wanted to exit today, we could exit and then what is the next question? But, so this is our battlefield. We've shaped it. We're, we're owning it. Mother nature continues to attack us from left and right. Covid hit and the price of materials hit. You know, I've got competitors that are buying my bottling line. So I can't bottle. I mean, it's, it's, it is the game of the business world. And I love every fascinating second, you know, but I don't have the deploy troops button. Secret mission nighttime.

• 2:31:48Speaker 01

  You know, there you go. And then one day, I hope I have a third chapter. So what's the third thing in your life?

• 2:31:56Speaker 01

  Do you give it back? You know, do you, you know, write your memoirs? What's the third phase? And I, I got to talk to President Bush, you know, after he left the presidency, what do you do when you're on top of the world and every day the decision's on you and knowledge is on you? And he took a painting like Churchill did. And, uh, you know, he's focused on veterans and Africa and other things. So I think, you know, I'm, I'm anticipating what the next, the beginning of the rest of your life looked like.

• 2:32:24Jocko Willink?

  There we go. Right on. Any other, any other closing thoughts? That might've been it right there.

• 2:32:29Speaker 01

  America.

• 2:32:29Jocko Willink?

  America. Awesome, man. Well, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for sharing your, uh, your experiences, the lessons learned along the way. Obviously, thanks for your service to the country.

• 2:32:39Speaker 01

  As well.

• 2:32:39Jocko Willink?

  To, to special operations and thanks for what you're doing now to build a business and put people into work, man.

• 2:32:46Speaker 01

  Thank you for giving me a voice today and, uh, I think there's more to come.

• 2:32:50Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Awesome. Thank you.

• 2:32:52Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:32:54Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Scott Neal has left the building.

• 2:33:00Jocko Willink?

  Great conversation. Great stuff he's got going on. That being said, look, we can't always be drinking bourbon.

• 2:33:07Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 2:33:08Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna need other fuel in the system.

• 2:33:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:33:11Jocko Willink?

  So if you're looking for some other fuel, some clean fuel, I recommend Jocko Fuel. So check it out. We got everything that you need. jockofuel.com. We got energy. We got hydrate. We got protein. We got protein shakes. We got protein powder. We got joint warfare. We got time war. Get on the time war.

• 2:33:32Speaker 01

  Anti-aging.

• 2:33:33Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Get on the time war. Get on the super krill. Get on the joint warfare. Get the proper protein into your system. How you fuel yourself is how you're going to perform. It dictates what you're doing in life. So fuel yourself properly. jocko fuel.com. We also have it available at Walmart, by the way. Is there a Walmart near you?

• 2:33:58Speaker 02

  There is of two Walmarts near me, yeah.

• 2:34:01Jocko Willink?

  Check. So, anyone can go to Walmart. There's something like a Walmart. Ninety percent of the population in America lives 10 miles or less from a Walmart.

• 2:34:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:13Jocko Willink?

  So, you can go there and get some chocolate fuel. Also, we got it at Wawa, Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hannafords, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wakeford, ShopRite, HEB down in Texas, Meyer up in the Midwest, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Publix, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere. Where we got the crew, we got the team. Jackson, Jared and Chaz, they're just out there on the road.

• 2:34:40Speaker 02

  Jackson goes hard.

• 2:34:41Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep. They're delivering. And if they don't deliver, well, email J F sales at jocko fuel.com and they will deliver. They'll show up, make it happen. So, that's what we're doing. jocko fuel.com. Go check it out.

• 2:34:55Speaker 02

  Is there, is it true there's some new go flavors for the energy drink? Cause I was, I was going over some labels that were sent to me so from, for various artistic projects. And there were some new flavors in those.

• 2:35:08Jocko Willink?

  I believe we have some new flavors coming. A new flavor on its way. We're not talking about it now at this time. It's not out yet. So, that's that. So, check it out. jocko fuel.com. I just had a go and a half. I'll probably finish this one on the way home. And I had a hydrate. Yep. Cause I was dehydrated.

• 2:35:30Speaker 02

  I understand.

• 2:35:30Jocko Willink?

  From lifting.

• 2:35:31Speaker 02

  Oh, damn. Okay. I understand. Really. I had a milk, you know, avoiding catabolic breakdown.

• 2:35:38Jocko Willink?

  All right. Also, check out originusa.com. You need clothes. We're talking about American companies today. American made companies. OriginUSA.com. What we got is we got jeans, boots, hats, beanies, belts, wallets, hunt gear, rain jacket, wind jacket, warm jacket, hoodies, multiple variations, pants, multiple variations. We just got everything that you need. And it's all made a hundred percent in America. So that's what we're doing over here. We are making things a hundred percent in American from American made supplies. This isn't some free material that we bought from a slave driven environment overseas.

• 2:36:23Jocko Willink?

  It's from America. All the materials are from America and it's made right here in America. Go to originusa.com and check out America. That's what I got.

• 2:36:33Speaker 02

  That's true. Also Jocko's store called Jocko's store. There's discipline equals freedom stuff on there. Some shirts, some hoodies on there as well, some hats and stuff.

• 2:36:43Speaker 02

  This year, what is it? Winter still right now? Spring?

• 2:36:47Jocko Willink?

  It's winter.

• 2:36:48Speaker 02

  When is spring? Next month?

• 2:36:50Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 2:36:50Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, we're coming out with some new stuff, a lot of new stuff. Varying levels of excitement. Either way, you want to be informed on this stuff that's coming in. Go to Jocko's store.com and put your little email in the, in the, what do you call the email list? So keep you informed. I don't spam people with that. We don't spam people with that. But anyway, you can stay informed. The new stuff comes, boom, you got first, first dibs on that one. But yeah, some cool stuff on there. Also on Jocko's store.com is what we call the shirt locker. It's a new design t-shirt subscription scenario every month. I have a friend, good friend by the name of Dave Burke.

• 2:37:31Jocko Willink?

  Good deal, Dave.

• 2:37:34Speaker 02

  And he was like, hey, you know, I've been in the, you know, member of the shirt lock for a long time, you know? And my shirts are kind of piling up and he was almost indicating that, you know, he might put it on pause or something like this. I'm like, hey, Brad, do what you dig, you know, the shirt locker is here for you. See what I'm saying? Two days later, he sends me a text. He says, just when I thought I was out, you dragged me back in. That's it. That's all he said. So I'm like, huh? Okay. I say, how so? Cause I'd forgot about any other, you know, correspondence, you know, plus I was lifting at the time. So, you know, I'm thinking about other stuff. And he sends me a picture of this month's design.

• 2:38:08Jocko Willink?

  Is it fire?

• 2:38:09Speaker 02

  It's fire. That's the, the no drinking X. It's like the doc, Dos Equis, like rip or whatever.

• 2:38:15Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 2:38:15Speaker 02

  Anyway, he just sends the picture of that.

• 2:38:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:18Speaker 02

  And I was like, ah, he's like, dude, this is awesome. So hey man, like I said, some cool designs that are a little bit different and a little bit outside of the, the, what do you call coloring outside the lines a little bit, outside the box, whatever, but I think people seem to like them. Anyway, jocko store.com, click on short locker, you can kind of check them out. If you like something, shoot, get something.

• 2:38:36Jocko Willink?

  Also check out coloradocraftbeef.com and primalbeef.com. This is where you can get your steak, your beef jerky, your beef sticks, your, uh, hot dogs, your burgers, all from American companies, American families, awesome people, awesome companies, awesome steaks. Go get some. Primalbeef.com and coloradocraftbeef.com. Also subscribe to this podcast. Also check out jockounderground.com. It's where we answer your questions directly. Also check out, we have a bunch of YouTube channels. We got psychological warfare. We have flip side canvas. We got books. And now I mentioned

• 2:39:18Jocko Willink?

  a book today, we'll probably cover in the future. It's Swords of Lightning by, uh, Mark and Bob, who were out on these horse soldier operations. And then I've written a bunch of books about leadership and I've written a bunch of kids books. Kids books are being turned into a movie. Already been filmed, by the way. Echo Charles is in it. Plays a very important role.

• 2:39:40Speaker 02

  Sure, sure. Foundational.

• 2:39:42Jocko Willink?

  Foundational. It provides excellence and legitimacy to the whole scene.

• 2:39:46Speaker 02

  That's, that's the word.

• 2:39:47Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. But you know, you're gonna have to wait a while for the movie because it takes a while for these people to, uh, to finish post-production.

• 2:39:56Speaker 02

  That's real.

• 2:39:57Jocko Willink?

  But in the meantime, we wrote awesome books. And when I say we, I guess I mean me.

• 2:40:04Jocko Willink?

  So check it out. The Way the Warrior Kids series. Also, check out Mikey and the Dragons. That's what we got going for you. Also Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. We take these lessons that we learned on the battlefield and we teach them to people who are in leadership positions, which by the way is everyone. So if you need help inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com. You can come to one of our live events or you can bring our company into your company to help with your leadership. We also have an online training academy because people around the world need to get better at leadership. You are not born to lead. You're not born to lead. You have to learn how to lead. These are skills, skills that we can

• 2:40:45Jocko Willink?

  teach you and skills that are applicable, not only to, oh, I'm in a business or oh, I'm running an organization, but also skills that are applicable to everything that you do, every interaction you have with your kids, with your wife, with your husband, with your team, with your neighbors. Learn how to handle all those things. Go to extremeownership.com. And if you want to help service members, active or retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization, takes care of so many of our veterans. If you want to donate

• 2:41:24Jocko Willink?

  or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also check out HeroesAndHorses.org. Micah Fink up there in the mountains of Montana. And then Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. Check all those out. And if you want to connect with Scott Neal, once again, he's got HorseSoldierBourbon.com on the interwebs. He's got the Instagram, HorseSoldierBourbon, Twitter X, at HorseSoldierUSA. And then he's got the YouTube, Facebook, are both at HorseSoldierBourbon. And then he's got Scott Neal, which is Whiskey and

• 2:42:07Jocko Willink?

  War Stories. So check that one out on the gram. For us, you can check out Jaco.com.

• 2:42:17Jocko Willink?

  We're also on social media. I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful, because that thing will wreck your whole freaking morning, morning, noon, or night.

• 2:42:29Jocko Willink?

  I heard a fact the other day, they're saying that the average screen time is seven hours. Come on, people. Don't do it. Don't do it.

• 2:42:41Jocko Willink?

  Get away from it. And that's what we got. Once again, thanks to Scott Neal for coming on here. Thanks for your service. Thanks for your lessons learned about business and about life. Thanks to all our military personnel with a specific salute to our Green Beret brothers from Special Forces. From the SOG guys in Vietnam to the mountains of Afghanistan. Thank you for taking the fight to the enemy. By with and through the host nation. So you guys do it better than anyone. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all of the first responders. Thank you all for fighting crime here at home.

• 2:43:25Jocko Willink?

  And for keeping us safe. And everyone else out there, just because one game is over doesn't mean you can't get in another game.

• 2:43:34Jocko Willink?

  Right? Look at Scott and the rest of his crew. All of them had earned a nice comfy retirement. 25 years in the military, multiple wars. They could have gone to the sidelines, game over.

• 2:43:48Jocko Willink?

  But they didn't. Found a new game, a new mission, and they executed. And you can do the same at any time, in any phase of life, you can get in the game.

• 2:44:03Jocko Willink?

  But that's up to you. And I recommend in order to do that, you go get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.