Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 122 - Jocko Willink

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

Jocko Willink is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer, co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, Dichotomy of Leadership, host of the top-rated Jocko Podcast, and co-founder of Echelon Front, where he serves as Chief Executive Officer, leadership instructor, speaker, and strategic advisor. Jocko spent 20 years in the SEAL Teams, starting as an enlisted SEAL and rising through the ranks to become a SEAL officer. As commander of SEAL Team Three's Task Unit Bruiser during the battle of Ramadi, he orchestrated SEAL operations that helped the "Ready First" Brigade of the U.S. Army's First Armored Division bring stability to the violent, war-torn city. Task Unit Bruiser became the most highly decorated Special Operations Unit of the Iraq War. Jocko returned from Iraq to serve as Officer-in-Charge of training for all West Coast SEAL Teams. There, he spearheaded the development of leadership training and personally instructed and mentored the next generation of SEAL leaders who have continued to perform with great success on the battlefield. Jocko is the recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and numerous other personal and unit awards. Upon retiring from the Navy, Jocko co-founded Echelon Front, a premier leadership consulting company, where he teaches the leadership principles he learned on the battlefield to help others lead and win. Jocko also authored the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, a New York Times Bestseller, and the best selling Way of the Warrior Kid children's book series.

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Click on weekly Q&A, and it should hopefully answer all your questions and send you to the portal if you would like to sign up. And that's it for any of the business side of episode 122. My guest today is a longtime friend Jocko Wink. It's tough to describe. And you guys probably know who Jocko is anyway. But he is a retired United States Navy SEAL. He was probably in his military career, most recognizable for his role as the

commander, task unit commander of SEAL Team 3's task unit bruiser that fought in some of the bloodiest battles in Iraq, specifically in Ramadi. First time in service, he was awarded the Silver Star and the Bronze Star, and he retired at the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He is an author along with Leif Babin. They co-authored the book's Extreme Ownership and the Dachotomy of Leadership. In addition to many more, he co-founded the management consulting firm, Echelon, front. He has a podcast of his own. He releases episodes on Wednesday. It's called the Jocko podcast that he hosts with Echo Charles, who has the most interesting name in the history of names. I don't know anybody else named Echo. Do you? I didn't think so. He's also a black belt in

Brazilian jiu-jitsu, has been for a very long time. And one of the things that I like most about the internet is what you can find about people. And when I was researching the bullet points that I wanted to cover when it came to Jocko. I found a great one on Wikipedia. And it says, as of March 2020, Willink has officially become a designer of a line of luxurious men's denim jeans. Yes, yes, Jocko, you have arrived. He's tough to describe, quite the package,

very accomplished, very intelligent, and I always enjoy sitting down and picking his brain a little bit. I hope you enjoy. Episode 122 with Jocko Willink coming at you. Here's a good start for you. When did you make the video good? I think it came from podcast number three. Okay, so a touch ago.

Yeah. So I started my podcast. I think the first one came out December 22nd, 2015. I listened to it before you guys switched it. You were on mono audio and then you made it stereo? I have no idea. Echo handles all that stuff, I believe. Yes.

Yeah, but let's just say I've made a few mistakes. And by that, I mean every single mistake when it comes to recording these things, to having hour-long conversations and realizing it's not recording, to losing, I found out that some mediums, when the power goes out, it corrupts the file. That's a fun one. That's good to know. To not turning on video cameras. And then, yeah, there's that setting, the audio, it's mono versus stereo.

So it would be really flat versus they'll hear us going back and forth. Did he fix that? He did. Later? He, you actually addressed it, I think, on podcast number two. Okay. Which leads me to believe that he got some work done between podcast one and two. Yeah.

There's a learning curve. I asked that because obviously the current situation we're in. You know, Joe references that video all the time. I love that video too because it's basically allows you to look at a situation differently, as opposed to adversity, you have an opportunity to do something with whatever's happening. So single mother, hourly job, two kids. Those kids rely on the school system to provide them two out of their three meals per day. How should they look at this as a good?

So I suppose that you're talking about the fact that it's March 21st, 2020. Yeah, we might as well address exactly. Yeah, we're in the modern environment. in the corona environment? The beginning of what I think, for us in the U.S. at least. Okay. Well, California's in lockdown. So how does a single mom look at this?

Just in general. Somebody who's in that situation, who would see that video and say, well, this isn't good. Nothing about this is good. I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to lose hours, potentially lose my job. My income is decreasing. I'm going to be behind on bills.

My kids aren't at school. Yeah. Yeah, you're actually, you might think you're giving me like a really challenging one. I'm not, but, but the... I just think it's good for people to think about things. Yeah, yeah, okay, because I mean, when people say, hey, my kids got cancer, right? What's good in that, right? That's, that to me is the one where you say, and, and the fact of the matter is, okay, well, how do you find good in that?

Well, look, your kid's still alive, right? Number one, your kids still alive. So you can address this problem. You can try and work through it. You can do, you know, there's a million things that you can do. the most out of your time in case it goes the wrong direction exactly so so what's your alternative your alternative is to say this is horrible make your kid think um you know let your kid see you totally distraught by their disease by the way that they're suffering and you're

just making it even worse for him so I think also you have to look at it not just okay what good is this but also what's the alternative the alternative is to just be totally negative and that's not helping anyone so single mom two kids like the the alternative is you know hey we have to work i i don't have any job i don't even any income right now well good at least i'm still here at least my kids are healthy at least we can spend some time together even if it's going to suck and we're eating ramen noodles guess what let's make the most out of it let's let's let's figure out some new skill let's let's learn let's come together as a family exactly did you know that you can eat ramen noodles raw yeah of

course well it wasn't an of course to me i discovered that recently when one of my children had it as an appetizer on the couch. Yeah. It's weird that ramen noodles can taste so good. I actually can't believe that you just said that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think you sitting over there lying about not just...

I'm not a fan of ramen noodles. My food range is not great. I would actually probably force myself to starve to death if I was put in an environment where the food was a little awkward as opposed to, I just, I've had bad experiences. So, this is something that I've talked about before. I'm the same, but ramen noodles are in my bucket, right? But when I was growing up, you know, we didn't eat a lot of different foods.

I had, we had a lot of hamburgers. And so for breakfast, I'd have like a hamburger in between two English muffins. For lunch, I'd have hamburger in between two pieces of bread. And for dinner, have a hamburger between a hamburger bun, right? That was sort of the, that was the three food group. but three food groups yeah breakfasts but my palate like didn't develop at all yeah and so I'm I'm horrible at eating at eating you know different types of foods

I'm absolutely horrible at it and you know speaking of Joe Rogan when Joe Rogan had that show fear factor and you know some people like oh you should do that or oh I could crush that show and I never made that claim I never made that claim that I go on there. Sure, I'll go into a coffin with snakes or jump out of a whatever or run through fire, all that stuff. I'd kick ass a bunch of that stuff. I'm not drinking a 12 pack of bull semen. Yeah, you put the eyeballs in front of me where you got to like bite him and chew them. It would be hard for me. It would be really hard for me. Did you ever try a balut in Thailand? No. Yeah. You can just start rattling off. Have you tried? Have you tried? I'd be like, nope,

I didn't want to try one either. My wife. As a new guy, I was presented at Ballute on my first. deployment and they were like eat this and I started projectile vomiting before I even touched my lips so what I first latinous shit I'm just like when I first met my wife like we weren't married but we were we went out for breakfast and um she's like oh do you want some some some yogurt and it was like Greek yogurt or whatever not like American yogurt filled with sugar and strawberry yeah yeah this is some weird and I just I just didn't want to try it. And she's, you know, she's kind of looking at me like, you know, I'm just a total wuss. Because she's, she's saying, no, no, no, just try it. She's like, it's like, it's really good.

She's running a nice hotel. And she's like, you know, no, no, just try it. It's really good. And I said, no, no, I really don't, you know, I'm fine. And she's like, oh, you should just try it. You should just at least try it. I mean, just talking like, like, like, like, I'm a child. And finally, I'm like, okay, you know, of course, she pushed my, she pushed the right buttons where I'm like, okay, fine, here, give it to me. I take a big spoonful and, and, like, gagged. over yogurt, bro. Yeah. Which is like, and I'm sure the yogurt was like just relatively bland.

It was relatively bland, but I almost hurled. So, yeah, I'm a real. That's, that's, if you want to, if you want to know my everyone, so, what's your, what's your weakness? My weakness is weird foods. I don't want to eat them. I didn't try salad dressing until my 20s. I didn't even like steak. You know, I mean, I love steak.

Yeah, I know. It's crazy. I didn't even like steak until probably I was in the teams for like two years. years or three years. Yeah, I know. You hadn't, you just hadn't eaten much of it? We didn't eat steak growing up. Well, it was ground up steak.

Tube steaks. Ooh, yeah, that's a different, that's a different buffet platter. I just didn't, we just didn't eat it, you know? And it just, I would prefer to have a hamburger because I was so used to it. What's the craziest thing you've ever eaten? You know, going through Sears School, I ate like a bunch of squirming larvae. Yeah. And you go through the one here.

Yep. Where do they do that? Warner Springs. Yeah, there you go. I did that, and I ate a bunch of, like where my, and this was, you know, I had to go into a little bit of the mode of like, okay, we're going to get some. And my buddy was, you know, some kind of air dale of some kind. You and I, so far were on a parallel path on our experiences here. And then I just, yeah, it's like turned over some moist log.

And underneath it was these squirming, basically maggots. They look like maggots. And I just, just. and you know at this point it's only been two days you're not even actually hungry if two days you're not even actually hungry but i was just you know i was whatever 19 years old just had to maintain the rep so i just scooped a bunch of them up and just slapped them in my mouth so your school was an interesting one uh i was paired up with a i think it what was it at the time it was a it was a airdale as well it was a backseater though and uh man the difference in land navigation skills obviously i mean but much like the difference in

me flying that airplane would have probably been vast. But same thing. And we got separated, you know, because they launch you off. And first of all, this person didn't listen to me when I said you should move or not move. And I didn't know much at the time, but I understood covering concealment. Or at that point, just concealment. So, and this little son of a bitch had the map. But we had looked at it before.

And you know how you got to navigate point to point. So I think I was just doing my best in person person nation over like a bush and some leaves. And he was scurring off. and he gets caught. But I still made it to the checkpoint because I had looked at the map and I have always favored terrain navigation. So when I, you know, get a map,

orient a map. This is some, you know, map and compass 101 for people. I just kind of looked at it. I'm like, oh, okay. And then I looked at the train and I made my way there. And it was like one of those checkpoints

where you got to do like the bona fides where it was some one of the Seer instructors sitting there and you had like the code word or whatever it was. It's a nice day for, a game of golf. The desert sand is warm in the summertime or some shit like that.

And he's like, where's your partner? I'm like, oh, I don't know. He's like, where's your map? Oh, I don't know. It's with my partner. How'd you get here? I looked at the map like three hours ago. And the guy rolled up in the back of the truck fully like, you know, because right

towards the end of that, they eventually catch everybody. Yeah. I was one of the last ones. I was just like, I looked at him. I tried to light him on fire with my eyes, just disgust. But they couldn't figure out, like, to them it was this magical. power of how I got there without a map. I looked at the map.

I followed the terrain. Serious school was an interesting one. I don't know if I got anything out of that. When I got out of when they, you know, they mandatory capture you or whatever at the end, they just sent off a siren. They're like, all right, you have to report to the trucks. That's what I did because I had evaded successfully.

Same thing. I mean, that's basically what happened at that point at the tent. Yeah. So I get out of the truck for the first time. And some guy comes over to me. He's like, he's probably about a five foot nine because he was a little bit shorter than me, black dude with a crazy Russian accent. And he's pretty, he's pretty jacked. Like he's a pretty big dude.

And he said something to me. And I don't know what I did, but, you know, being a 19 year old idiot, I'm sure it wasn't appropriate. And he just smacked me in the face. like fight level like legit brought the sticks a little bit yeah and I was so surprised I was like and I remember thinking

that was awesome like this these guys are not playing around and they were into it man was it still old Eastern block when you went through yes it was great did they put you in that box oh yeah the guy next to me in the box next to me I

probably almost broke the box from convulsing laughing so hard Because I'm just like, oh, fine. Like I look at those situations. I'm like, if I'm in this box, you can't fuck with me. I don't mind this box. The person next me did not have that headspace. And it was like rattling.

And they're just like, oh, I made the fuck out of here. And I'm in there just like, gah. Chlosterphobia is a weird thing. It is. I wonder if you can overcome it by exposure. Probably. Probably you can learn to relax. Can you imagine that journey, though, from terrible claustrophobia to exposing yourself?

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's not a fun. But it should be, you should do it in such small steps that it's okay. Yeah. But have you ever, have you ever felt any level of claustophobia? No. I think, I think a couple times where I've been in tight spaces, I've been like, okay, you need to chill out.

You know? Also, I had a friend of mine who you actually know, but I'm not going to mention any names, but we were, we were both new guys. And we went to some Army Mount school. Tunnels. No, it wasn't even tunnels. We had to go through one removed cinder block in a wall. So standard cinder blocks, and there's one removed, and you had to go through it. And it seems so impossible.

Looking at you right now, there's, that's, and I was smaller back then, but there were some other guys in my platoon that were big guys. And, um, you know, I was all fired up when I was young and shocker. Yeah, I know. But so I'm like, okay, cool, we're going through the cinder block hole. So I get through, and they have a little technique. You know, I think it's, I think it you put one arm through. It would have to be.

And then probably, yep, and then your other arm. Yep. And so I get through. And then I like run around to see everyone else go through or whatever. And my buddy goes through and he starts freaking out. And I start like pushing him and like, no, come on, you got this. And he starts like kicking at me, you know. But where were cell phone cameras in that day?

Yeah. That's Instagram. That's what I think Instagram was. designed and created for. Yeah, it's weird. And I'm very, very, even though it would be cool to have that video, there's so many videos that it would not be cool to have out there. Instagram got mad at me the other day.

I posted a video apparently that's outside of their guidance. It was a moge holding his rifle between his legs, like trying to figure out what was going wrong and then his hat goes flying off. So after 30 minutes of laughing hysterically, which don't judge me, people. I have a different sense of humor than most. I put it on Instagram And people are like And your page is banned

And three, two, one And then like 20 minutes later I got a message Did your page get banned? Is that how it works? I have an Instagram page Completely dedicated To making fun of people with guns

It's called tactical asshole actual Yeah Charlie Sheen is the The Premier guy Well no he's just a cover photo It's him with the telemarketer headset on From Navy Seals Check

And I only follow Stevens Because I usually devote Fridays to making fun of that fuck stick I got I guess had a YouTube video that I didn't make but somebody made it but it's me talking and the video is called pawn and the question came on Tim Ferriss's podcast and it was you know someone trying to pick a fight with me saying how does it feel to have been a pawn in the in the military industrial complex I get that one all the time yep so I gave an answer and you know explain the fact that I was like proud that I could support this incredible country

and you know this guy put together a great video of it And I just, people started posting the other day that when they, that video came up, it says, you know, warning this video might be offensive to some people. There is nothing offensive in this video at all. In fact, I was pretty surprised. It's pretty interesting to think that that video could, could make people upset. I mean, it really is. It's crazy. I get that one actually relatively often.

Anytime I'll talk about military subjects or post a military picture, there's at least one person that will say that. Did you ever at any time in your career feel the pressure or creep of politicians or a military industrial complex? No. I didn't either. No. Not a single time in the execution of our job. Did I ever feel anybody's finger on the wheel from that greater, higher mustache-twisting economic-based decisions? Yeah, I mean, it definitely takes place.

I'm not going to say it doesn't. I think, but the people who they bitch to about that are not the ones who are actually steering the wheel of that ship. They're doing the best they can to execute the job they have in front of them. Yeah, one that I remember, and I don't, I hate to even bring it up because I'm just, I don't know the facts, like, I don't remember the facts clearly. But when it came to body armor, when it came to body armor and it was either body armor or Humvee, this is how foggy this is, either body armor or Humvee armor, as they put the contract together,

instead of just being like, hey, who can get this done now? It was a bunch of people saying, well, we can build this part over in our, you know, in my, in my area, in my political region, and then you build this other part in your political region, that way everyone gets jobs. Like, there's, sometimes that happen. Oh, what do they call that? Pork. Pork belly, something like that? Yeah. Yeah. They try to get it inside of their districts. They try to get it in their districts. And so I think that happened with body armor where they were like, okay, well, we'll make the plates and you make the cover and you make the soft stuff. And then same thing with the armor kits for the Humvees. Well, it certainly happens with shipbuilding, right?

Because there's these massive. Yeah. And there's all kinds. I mean, you know, this is just government waste, right? There's government waste that happens inside of a bureaucracy. That's what governments are. They're a big giant bureaucracy. And if you don't think that that's in the military, well, you're just wrong.

And especially in the acquisition systems of the military, yeah, there's a ton of it. I mean, you know, this is where you see like toilets that cost $8,000 or whatever. And it's because there's, you're not spending your own money. When people aren't spending their own money, man, they get crazy with that stuff. I saw that even as a, I was a supply rep when I was out on the East Coast. And a lot of that would be, you know, trying to write sole source contracting because we wanted to get a particular person. And to have to navigate through like, no, you have to bid it. I'm like, I don't want to bid it.

I want the world-renowned, recognized fucking expert at what I want to learn. They're like, no, open bid. And so one time, I just, I floated it out there. And the people that bid on it, it's like they downloaded Microsoft PowerPoint and then read a book on repelling tactics and submitted a bid. And we, and they went with the vendor we didn't want. And so then after that, I just would have to navigate through these sole source. carmints get a hold of people like Mark Twight and be like, can you give me your exact bio so I can write someone between the ages of 51 and 52 who has climbed this route in this period of time

and then you had to list 10 of those things and they still would give you, you know, they'd him and haw at you. It was a pain in the ass. Yeah. But again, that's the system that we had to navigate inside of. Yeah. So, but I guess from a broader perspective as far as feeling like, you know, some big political decisions were getting made or there was decisions that were getting made that I didn't agree with. Not really. And, and, and this is, this is a question that we'll get asked is, what do you do if you get ordered to do something you, that you know is wrong? Well, first of all, people act like that's like could have, that's happening all the time. That's the, the, the impact of cinema. Yeah. Like, no, I'm not going to do. Go kill the babies. Like, no, no, no, it doesn't

happen. Yeah. Like, I, I've, I've, I've been turning my brains and, there's one that I talk about in the dichotomy and leadership, which is when we got told, look, we're going to work with Iraqi soldiers. I was cool with that. But then they said, okay, you're going to work with Iraqi soldiers and you have to take seven Iraqi soldiers for everyone American. And it was impossible to do that in the Battle of Ramadi because there were some of our units. I only had 15 Iraqis. And so that means I was only going to send two guys out into Ramadi? No, not doing it. And so what did I do? I just respectfully wrote a email point paper up the chain of man, said, hey, boss, this is a situation on the ground. I would like a waiver to send as

many guys as I feel safe with. My boss was like, yeah, absolutely, do whatever you want. And that's what happens. There's no, there's no, these crazy ideas of getting ordered to do something. People don't understand that the avenues communication are probably much more open. Um, than it is portrayed. You know, a top down, rank driven rock paper rank organization, which it is to some degree. There's a time and place for that.

But I had a similar situation that in 2010, that last appointment, uh, I went on. I think you were leaving trade at it at that time. We land there in the first, you know, piece of paper, you know, figurative piece of paper that they slide across the table is, hey, night raids are shut down. You can no longer make entrance into villages at night. And the guys were like, what the fuck is this? We own the night.

This is not like, why we don't want to do anything of that. And I basically went in and it was like, can you explain to me why? And he's like, well, yeah, we just had a massive Civcast incident where we thought it was a bus full of Taliban soldiers. Guess what it was? A bus full of normal people. So there's going to be a reaction to that. And I already knew this, but it helped me explain it to the guys.

Like, you know, we have got to get the fuck out of here at some point. Mind you, this was 2010. We're doing an excellent job with that. But I digress. And they're going to have to provide for their own security that, you know, the A&A, the Afghan National Army is going to be comprised of adult males. The number one thing that's offensive to adult males in Afghanistan is entrance into their house without permission at nighttime. So we're trying to find a balance.

So I'm like, oh, okay. And then I asked for a little bit of clarification. Like, can we put ladders on walls? Can we go to the threshold of the structure and got some really clear guidance? And then went back and talked to the guys and we were fine. Yeah. Well, that's a classic case of not, when you don't understand why you're doing something. If you don't ask that question, well, then the leadership doesn't know what the shortfalls are.

So that's a real problem. So I had the same thing happen. My first deployment to Iraq. And I don't know if you were caught up in this, but, you know, We had done a lot of explosive breaching. And, you know, we'd hurt some people. And eventually, it wasn't just us. It was everybody was doing explosive breaching.

And all of a sudden they said, you know, hey, don't do that anymore. Probably because they were still going with the theory of overloading is better. Yeah, true. And underloading. Yeah. Which is, if you want a breach to work, well, you want it to work. A Haversack will work on a hollow corridor, but also a door kicker will work. But same thing, you know, and it's just like, okay, they're like no more explosive breaches.

And so then what I said was like, okay, well, are you sure that you mean no more or you just mean don't, you know, don't use them if you don't have to? Because there's some situations where you're an idiot if you don't use it's supposed to breach. And there's some situations where you're an idiot if you are, you know. There's another op that, you know, that I think Leif wrote about it in either extreme ownership or dichotomy of leadership where, you know, he's got a breach or putting a breach on the door. And he rolls up, you know, as they're about to breach and he sees a. bunch of kids' shoes outside the door. And he's like, no, stop. And of course, you know, what does the breach you want to do?

Lighten the load by blowing shit up. Yeah. And, you know, so. Same as a 60 gunner. Exactly. So, like, we're in a firefight. Give me your extra rounds. Actually, you don't have to ask for him because the guys are thrown them at you

anyway. It's, uh, it's, it's one of those situations where, and, and on that particular case, that was, you know, how. in Iraq and make no sense whatsoever. Well, this was like a concrete, you know, whatever, concrete mud building right next to the main building. But it had no, had one door going in. That's where all the, all the women and children were in one enclosed concrete room,

sleeping on those little lame kind of mats, mats. I mean, if they would have blasted that breach on it, which was a metal door, which is more frag, you know, it would have been a nightmare. It would have been a total nightmare. Yeah, let alone the pressure inside of that concrete room. Let alone the pressure in the, concrete room, the frag, I mean, it would have been a total disaster. And, you know, that's the kind of thing where you have to take a step back and make sure you're doing the right thing.

They never cut us off from that. I mean, during that time period, I was at a pretty amazing place where we had a lot of latitude. And guys were still trying to innovate. You know, that's where I first saw the extrutable breaching stuff, you know, where they're literally going up there with a syringe and a popsicle stick. I'm like, what in the hell is going on? They're like, yeah, you need to back up. I'm like, this is some Jason Bourne shit.

But at the same time, I've seen that same situation play out where the breacher is so saturated in the problem, six inches in front of their face. And I was almost always the near or far security on the breaching charges because I wanted to be up there and then make the initial entry. And there were a couple times where, you know, and this happens in training all the time too. Different type of door. But they'll be putting up a breaching charge.

And I'm looking either in the window. And, you know, you can see. And it's like there's just a hasp holding this door like or a lasp. And the window's open. It's like, hey, man, check this out. Yeah. Ketink. Yeah.

The classic, my favorite training one, though, is when guys call for a breacher. and it's like an outward opening door, and they're sitting there with the locking mechanism that, you know, because they put the door on backwards, and they're like, Breacher! You walk up and you take a look at it. Unlock it. Unlock it and just open it.

Like, there you go. I'm like, there you go. and I'm watching him. And, you know, as I'm watching him, he's getting the breach on and, like, a light comes on in the building. And I'm like, oh, God, here we go. And then another light comes on and I see movement. And then I see him, like, kind of hurrying a little bit. And he's trying to back away and he can't get any good distance.

No minimum safe distance. So he just lays down. I mean, he's so close. And I'm just like, oh, this is going to suck. Yeah. And, you know, I hear him call it. And, you know, I hear turning steel and I duck behind the wall. and I jump over and, you know, the assault team's heading in and I immediately just like, get to him.

And I'm like, are you all right? And he's totally concussed. Oh, yeah. And just, you know, I'm all right, sir. And I was like, Roger, take a step over here. Yeah, go sit down on the wall. Here's a gatorade. I think I've told this story before two, so talking to somebody.

But that happened. Again, so being on the security, you know, you're kind of like the last guy is that breaching element comes back. And there was one very distinct. in Iraq. This day was awesome. We were flying little birds through downtown Baghdad and they like skid these things in.

Like they're like race car driving at the end just right to a wall that we breached and then threw it into a courtyard and we're getting ready to breach that. So everybody was all set and I was walking backwards just looking at the door and I'm like finally get my turn to turn around. I was like you sons of bitches.

They took all the good hiding spots. Didn't leave me once. So I just just bawled up and they sent it. that thing. Fuck. I don't even, I mean,

I know I went into the structure. My clearance was probably terrible. I don't remember doing it. I was completely bell rung and then head hurt for three, four days afterwards. When I got to team one and went through STT, which became SQT, but it was like the indoctrine.

I went through STT as well, yeah. So we would, we did Claymore training. And I'm not kidding. I, I, A, can't believe we did this.

And B, can't believe we did this, we would put Claymore's like basically on our on our rucks and be in a little depression four feet away. I would have liked to see the ORM on that. The ORM on that, yeah. Yeah, the operational risk management. I, I'm, that's inside of any MSD that will ever be published. Totally insane.

Totally insane. I don't know what to tell you. Like, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to confer with some of my buddies to like, you know, because I'm sure my memory's wrong. Yeah. But I don't just remember like, oh, we did it want. No. Like it was, hey, all right. All right.

It's you two this time. And then you two go up and you, there's like a little rock and you put your rucksack there. And so. Did you guys ever use Claymore's for real? Other than setting up up for security, but never, never clacked them off. I never carried one for real. And those things are, I wish I would have been able to now that I look back. It's an interesting explosive offensive slash defensive weapon.

Did you hear the podcast I did with the SOG guys, John Stryker Meyer? Dude, I was going to talk to you about that. First off, my man was obviously an early innovator in the base jumping scene. Yeah. Just reaching for jungle canopy? Yeah, that's Dick Thompson. Yeah. That's the one that I just recently listened to.

What in the actual fuck? You know, yeah, yeah. And didn't he get a beast? V you got a BV. I knew it was coming. I was like, here he goes. He's going to come because look, I'm not a person that, you know, is, is qualified to judge who, what metal someone should get. Uh, yes, you are. Maybe a little bit. But yeah, when you jump, when you slide down a rope with the air cruise gun with whatever six mags, you slide down a rope, then you into 150 foot jungle canopy, you drop 10 feet into the top of the jungle. I mean, he dropped, he did that and saved, you know, multiple people, two helo's worth. By himself. It's freaking crazy. No radio.

Yeah. Can you imagine going out with no radio? In addition, the two things that you would feel probably the most, well, three, the most naked without. I would say in order, gun. Gun. Radio, night vision goggles. Yeah. And then body armor would be probably after that.

Well, they didn't have night vision goggles. They didn't have body armor. Well, so that means there's. He still was missing the top two. He's over two. He's 0 for 2. How could you... You know, people...

I bet you get this a lot, too. I actually was talking with this about Joe a little bit yesterday. I'm firmly convinced that the biggest threat to the veteran community is veterans. And you listen to... What percentage of the military

would you say engages in direct combat? There's actual numbers around that. I believe it's 15%. Yeah, I think it's less than that, but it's not big. And having said that, And I'm in no way talk about that step pejoratively towards the people who have a different career path because they enable and make everything else that we do possible. But if you go to a social gathering, it's funny how many people from that 15% are present, as in all of them are telling war stories.

And obviously that's an over-exaggeration, kind of, because I've experienced, because I just sit there and I listen to it. and everything is so wildly blown out of proportion and people then start sticking their hands out. But people who don't know any better, a lot of times I look at your military background and the awards, even though they have no understanding of an award. Nobody knows really the difference between a BS and a BV. They don't realize it's the highest award you can go to

for both meritorious and valorous. Or, yeah, how's it go? For meritorious achievement or for heroic achievement? Those are the two options. And I've been there when people are like just spinning this tail. I'm like, that's awesome. tell me more because I just want a little bit more rope to put it on your fucking neck before I snatch this thing tight but in my even my own experience I saw the award system

in the modern day military when I was in start to attach itself to the rank structure yeah well or I should say the advancement system not the rank structure but the advancement system for the LPO who's getting ready to make chief the previous LPO who had come off of the tour before them got a BV and if he's going to compete with him at the next chief's board he needs to have to have to have to have a chiefs board he needs to have a BV too, right? And then some stuff started getting really weird around like the Silver Star level as well, too. And it's like, fuck, man.

Like that, what that dude did, he, first off, should have about seven medals of honor. And Ford should give him a new car every week. And like, grow, it's like, that dude is, he should be the most decorated, you know, human being that has ever come out of the military. And he gets a BV for that. Imagine that BV. Like, so I have a couple BVs. I don't want to read my citation anywhere next to that citation. I can't even imagine.

I can't even imagine that, that, yeah, that operation, which, yeah, it's just, it's just, it got the award system, I feel like it got off track a little bit. The award system's always been off track, and it was definitely off track, and I was, I was horrible, and, you know, I got guys, I got guys in tasking a bruiser that were in, 50 firefights and um yeah they got a they got a combo of the v you know and were you limited by the number of awards you could have given that were higher than that did you not have you know what i would say that it was looking at what was going on and there was there was it was what the way the things turned out were not the way that i envisioned it coming out right so

You know, like, I was getting pushback for submitting guys for like four awards. Yeah, because it was one per operational cycle, right? Yeah. And I'm like, hey, hey, you know, so let's say I put in a guy for whatever, for two comms with V and a BV or whatever. I mean, the dude got in, you know, multiple fire fights, you know, worked on people, whatever, whatever the case may be, all kinds of stuff. man it's just it's just all unsat man and i i i you know i people would it's also has to do with how you write it up

and how well you write it up and and and you know i had things get moved up you know i had things get moved down i had and you're just like man if i want you know they say well this sounds more like i like i put bv there you know that's what i mean and if i don't i'm sorry if i wrote it too much or too little. Like, that's what it should be. Yeah. And you know what was cool, though? A bunch of guys, not a bunch, but I had a few guys that just had some of their BVs

get upgraded. Nice. Yeah. Like, just without any, just by their own, you know, by themselves. I'm saying, I didn't. Yeah, they just basically took a look at the- People looked at them and read them. They were like, okay, this needs to be, this needs to go up.

How would you recommend, I see sometimes, our background is interesting. It opens doors. Not all doors should be entered, in my opinion, because not all guys are qualified to go through, even though the opportunity was presented to them. And I find that it can be dangerous because, say, an employer will open a door for an individual, provide opportunity because they look at their background and they read these things like, oh, my God, this is amazing. They have a bad experience to that door is probably closed the community from that point on because they don't know. So how would you recommend somebody from the outside viewing that stuff.

You know what I mean? It's a broad question, but you understand what I'm asking? Yeah, I totally understand what you're asking. The answer is with a grain of salt. Because, and there's a couple times where guys in the military get, you know, they do something wrong. And all of a sudden, they pull up their evaluations for the past three years or five years.

And they're the glowing evaluations. Well, let's not forget that the individual wrote 90% of said evaluation. Yeah, you just, you just, the evaluations, look, 90, you got to screw something up to get a bad evaluation. You got to, you got to screw something up to get a legitimately bad evaluation. You actually have to have a history of screwing things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because one, like, glowing failure, it's not going to make it on your yearly evo. I probably wrote, I mean, I wrote hundreds, if not, yeah, probably, let's call it 500 evaluations in my time.

Oh, for sure. Because you know, at Trade Ed, I had 150 or so people and then platoons and task unit. Like, okay, it's probably around 500 total. Guys leaving command, you know, so there's probably, just guess 500. I would say I wrote too bad, legitimately like this guy should not get promoted. And it was because they should not get promoted. These guys were not, you know, just, other than that, it's like, okay. And then also you got to remember this.

There's a little hierarchy of adjectives. Oh, for sure. And then there's little, little, like, marks that you can give someone that indicate, hey, this guy, you know, I'm being nice, but this guy's not a front runner. In fact, when I put in my officer package, there's a, they rate you from one to 10 on a bunch of different things. And the secret code is that the box to put an X in for each number is wider than an X. It's like you could put five X's in there. So if you want to give a person the strongest one,

you put them in the 10 box all the way over to the right. This is some deep Illuminati shit. That is Illuminati stuff right there. And so, like, and I didn't know it. So when I got to look at my officer evaluation things for this officer program, you know, my guy that was helping me put the pack to my executive officer, he's like, oh, these are great. Look at how far.

He goes, every one of these, they put them all the way over to the right. And I'm like, what do you mean all the way of the right? And he goes, yeah, if they did. If they were just trying to say you're a good guy, they put him like in the middle or maybe a little to the left. He's like, you knock these out of the park. And I was like, what a bunch of passive aggressive shit?

Totally passive aggressive. What commissioning program did you go through? I did the semen to admiral program, which was. That's right, because you detached and went to school, got your learning on. No, no, no, but don't forget. I went to OCS first. I was an E5 at Seal Team 1.

I went to officer. In Rhode Island? No, I was an E5. seal team one no college went directly from there to officer candidate school in Pensacola florida for 13 weeks got commissioned went to seal team two was an ensign stayed there did two deployments out there got done and then went to college after that yeah it doesn't make any i was gonna say that doesn't sound like a logical progression best best program ever and ho i went through the best program ever i don't know we could we could i'm i we could debate that because my

was pretty ridiculous. I went as an E-6 who had their LPO tour counted as incomplete due to Medivac out of country. And so therefore went to the bottom of the pile. My chief package got swiped off twice. And I was like, I fucking hate all of you people. So I'm going to put in for an officer program. I was an E-6 on September 30th and an 01 on October 1st. I went to the exchange and got new uniforms and had to ask people,

am I putting this on correctly? Yeah. Then they sent me to Rhode Island. That's more ridiculous. I don't know if it's better, but that's definitely more ridiculous. They sent me to Rhode Island for, I think it was a four-week course, of which the instructor said most of this material doesn't apply to you. Come back in two weeks.

And so I went to Starbucks and worked out with one of the warrants who was going through the same thing and came back and they're like, you're the training of Team 3. I was like, yeah, okay. Yeah, that is awesome. And then the LDO program got completely shut down, right? I believe only in the SEAL teams. Yeah.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the SEAL teams. And I believe that was due to lack of participation or interest in the program. So everybody did get converted to the LDOs that went, because it was the same pipeline for our package submission for LDO and for warrant. So the warrants stayed warrants and the LDOs got switched over to 1130s. Yeah, that's, that is ridiculous. That's the way to do it.

That was, that is good. I get asked a lot about the enlisted, should I enlist or should I? I do too. You know, should I be an officer? And, you know, I think you've got to choose your own path. I can, I will say this. I would not change anything about my career at all. Like it was ridiculously, I was ridiculously lucky and it was an awesome, awesome time.

I don't think I could change. I don't think I could change anything about mine either, to include getting hurt and the recalibration of my headspace and the time off and the changing of path from the officer to enlisted. because at the time I became an officer and went to Team 3, the experience gap between where I had come from and then the newer people that were with me and actually allowed me and then being an officer and being handed Lieutenant Barr's

and being told to shut your mouth and go and try not to get anybody killed. Which, of course, I upgraded to, you know, Lieutenant Commander Velcro Patch as soon as I saw one. It's fine. I would just, you know me. I'm fucking idiot and I would just like roll around and change it based on the meeting. Did you legitimately do that? Yeah, absolutely.

I learned real fast that dealing with Army guys, butter bar, it's like shut your mouth and sit over there. Yeah. Silver bar, answer the question if you're asked. Two silver bars, it's like, hey, maybe you can talk a little bit. Lieutenant Commander, what do you think, sir? So were you an Ensign? Yes. And you would put on major, I mean, Lieutenant Commander?

Yeah. Yeah. That is so jacked up, bro. I had been an officer for 1.5 years. I cannot believe you did that. Only for meetings. I mean, I can believe you did it. Yeah.

Only for meetings. Here's where you and I differ. So I got what's called when I, because I was tasking a commander, but I was still a lieutenant. And I was getting ready to go on deployment. And they were, quote, they were spot promoting me to lieutenant commander. And then, but they were acting like, hey, look, you know, this isn't real. blah, blah, blah. And I said, and so I was going to have an ID card. And so I said to my command, I said, hey, I don't want to lie, sit around and lie to a bunch of people and say, well,

I'm a lieutenant commander, but I'm not really. I said, if this is legitimate, then, you know, like, let's do it officially. And to my boss's credit, he was like, hey, Roger that, you know, we'll do it. And I got an ID and I got, I got legitimately spot promoted to lieutenant commander. Did the pay come with your spot promotion? Oh, no. Only the requisite authority. responsibility. Yes. Pay will be 12 to 18 months. Yeah.

Yeah. I felt like, you know, it was interesting. I didn't feel like I had much of a choice if I wanted to have an impact. Yeah. And then don't get me wrong. I sold that shit. They'd be like, you know, Major Stompf, what do you think about this? I'm like, you know, the seal doctrine.

First off, I don't know shit about seal doctrine, but I would sell that. Because there wasn't any. No. But they would ask me, it got to the end. Like, I had a really good working relationship. I started off with that platoon because we had two platoons. We had the issue, you know, the individual getting relieved. They flew over another LT to fill that gap.

So then I moved back to as the operations officer, which is where I started, you know, going up and down the rank structure as I saw fit. And then I would go augment both platoons. It was awesome. My operational tempo actually increased. But I could go the relationship I had with, you know, the Army Battlespace Commander.

By the end of it, it was like I would go and I would talk to them, like, this is what we have going on. I'd get mission approval. In the office. Oh, yeah, for sure. And then obviously all the paperwork would follow up. I'd write all the stuff. And then, you know, I would go to the meetings and they would start asking me, like, you know, what are you guys actually seeing in the field?

It was very specifically, it was a, there was always this talk of, you know, foreign fighters. These Chechnians are everywhere. And everybody's like, well, we believe the intel. And I remember it was a colonel who was doing the meeting. He stopped and he looked over me. He was like, well, you're, you know, you guys are going out in the field all the time. What's your experience? And we had actually just physically legitimately encountered one.

And I gave him that feedback. And they're like, okay. Well, they're like, that seems to be the. most accurate intelligence right now, and he just looked right over to his S2 and was just like tried to light him on fire with his eyes. I'm just like, oh, that was good. Chowhall benefits were outstanding as well. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I'm one of those people that, I guess I have too much of a guilty conscience to do something like that. As lame as that, I'm not as lame as it sounds, but the truth is, I know I'm not good at lying. Yeah, I wasn't, well, I had, I wasn't

lying. I didn't, okay, I was definitely lying about the collar device that I was wearing. I never lied with my answers, with my experience level. I, you know, I never tried to make it more than it was. It just, I mean, shit, the CEO is the one who gave me the lieutenant bars. I mean, that was, I'm like, okay. Once you did that, you're cleared hot. I was surprised you'd break out the stars.

Fuck, I probably would have, too. I didn't, I don't, I'm too, I look too young for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's the other thing is, you know, you know, I looked the part. Yeah. Which, which, again, I got legitimately spot promoted and ran the paperwork and the whole nine yards, had a new ID card. Hey, I got promoted when I got back. JG.

That is so insane. I wonder what, because here's where you're playing with fire. Man, some people in the Army, they don't play around with that. Like, at all. At all. And for you to, and I kind of, I knew that. And that's one of the reasons why I didn't want to have some. somebody go, wait a second, let me see your ID card.

Wait a second. You're an 03 and you're sitting here in the, you know, talking to us majors, calling me by my first name. Like, that can happen. Yeah. So if they found out you were an 01, yeah, that somebody might have gone on high order on that. Slash E.

What? That's too, that's too crazy. Yeah, that was, uh, that was a crazy few years for sure. But it, I mean, otherwise, my access would have been really limited due to some, some people taking that rank structure so incredibly seriously. I mean, towards the end, it would, I would go and do, like, fob tours with the battle space and just basically hang out with the dude. Yeah, but I didn't look the part, and I know this because, and I think I...

Are you still in communication with this guy? No. He's going to hear this podcast and go, you've got to be kidding me. I still, like, talk to some of the battalion commanders that I would... And brigade commanders that I was there with. Well, you had a different working relationship, I think of that. that time. But I know I wouldn't have gotten away with the stars. I think I talked about this when I did your podcast for the first time years ago. I would go to group one offs meetings and my

camis as a butter bar and like these you know sevens and eights chiefs and scene chiefs be like listen sir, you know once you got some more experience under your belt once you're not a new guy you know you'll understand this because I wouldn't say much of the meetings mostly because I despise meetings and I don't have much to say often of use if any if you open your mouth and it makes a meeting go 14 seconds longer. You're an asshole. Yeah. But then I would catch those same guys in my khakis later and I would see it in their eyes.

I'm like, yeah, what's up? Yeah. Yeah, I had that experience a few times when I was a butter bar. I did the, um, I showed up for the chief's initiation, which is like a big deal. It's a huge deal. And they usually only want enlisted people there, right? Yeah. So I showed up to be the, the sea lawyer for one of the guy, one of my buddies that he made

chief. And I made like a t-shirt and I put butter bars on it. And I went in there with a great, you know, defense of this guy. Ensign Butterbar coming in hot. How'd that go for him? It went really great. Yeah, not too good. The military is so fun once you understand how to navigate inside of it.

I went to the, I mean, how many rounds do you think you shot in your career? Oh, unknown. I mean, it's over a million, I think, for me for sure. It's an absolutely obscene number. In grenades, in rockets. Just all in the goose. Glorious and lovely and just awesome. And I had the freedom to also, you know, people, I think, have the misconception

that the military is a one-way radio transmission. You are serving the needs of the Navy. Yeah. Well, I was going to say this earlier. When you talked about top-down stuff, I think so when I was a task unit commander, I would say overall during deployment we probably conducted, I don't know how many operations, but I know that we conducted, I think, 104 overwatches,

just overwatches. That's not including every other type of mission, 104 overwatches, and then a bunch of direct action missions and a bunch of, you know, presence patrols and convoys and everything else. So we're talking several hundred missions, and I think we got assigned top down

two actual mission taskings from above us in the chain command. So less than 1% is how often somebody said, hey, here's a target, you guys go do it. Most of the time I was like, hey, here's a target. What do you guys think? And we'd figure out what we wanted to do if we wanted to do it or not. There's a couple times where it was like, oh, this is actual intel. We got it right now.

Here you go. But yeah, it's definitely not. And especially in special operations and especially in the SEAL teams. I think we are the furthest to the, to the. the to the leaning towards where we're really have a lot of control over our own fate, which, again, the conventionals have less than that. And it causes a different type of stress as well because the type of stress that you get when you're an Army platoon commander is, hey, you're going to go do this.

Yeah. And so you have to just deal with that. The type of stress that you get when you're a seal leader is whatever decision you make is your decision 100% and if someone gets hurt someone gets killed that's all coming back that that there's no there's no denying why you were doing this mission there's no shred of well you know I got told to do this well you know we were actually it's like no you know I decided I I signed off on this and I gave the go ahead and that's why we did it and that's why it's 100% on you I also noticed uh in my interaction with conventional's not only would they get told what they were going to do they would have parameters

set for them oftentimes from somebody who's detached from what was be required of the operation, which again, I think just compounds that stress on that leader. And then also, I think, on the individuals. I'd look back, I would, there's obviously instances of post-traumatic stress inside of the seal community. But I think from a statistical perspective, it might be a touch lower than a lot of the other forces. And I think that is because, and you've touched on it, we are control of our own fate often, versus sitting there going, oh, my God.

I mean, and the best example I have of this was again, back to 2010, where we were based. They were just driving up and down Route 1 in these mine clearing vehicles. And I would see the individuals getting into the back of the vehicle. And the fucking mental geometry that they were having to go through just to climb. And you'd hear these things going on. Boom. And then they'd drag it back and you're torching out. You know, you'd see them torching out fucking bodies or just trying to recover equipment from it.

And then they would just load it up and they had no choice in that. And you could just see the weight of that scrambling their eggs versus I mean, in our experience, or in my experience, specifically on the East Coast, you'd go in and you'd roll in and you'd kind of get a brief and understanding of the direction that the battle space commander wanted to go. And here's a buffet platter of people that we want to get. Rack and stack off of intelligence, plan the missions, execute them accordingly. You know the direction where the vector I'm trying to go on as the battle space commander. Make sure that your actions are commenser with that. And then sometimes, of course, it's like, hey, dude, the number two dudes in a truck, get in the helicopters.

Yeah. You know, and I think you and I are both doing a little bit of a disservice. Obviously, there's plenty of conventional leaders that are just totally, hey, look, you know, hey, platoon commander, hey, company commander, you guys forget how you want to do this, forget your best way. Yep. I guess broadly speaking, though, the SEAL teams leans towards like, hey, you have a lot more control over your fate. The parameters are relaxed often, especially when it comes to creativity, I think. And to that point, I mean, again, in the Battle of Armadi, the conventional commanders were all just really good guys. There was a great flow of information up and down the chain of command. The platoon commanders had a lot of influence with the company commanders who had a lot of influence with the battalion commanders, who had a lot of influence with the brigade commanders. It was about as good as I could imagine it ever being.

And part of that is because you were in a massively stressful, violent fight, and everybody was doing everything they could to say, okay, how can we do this better? So, but all that being said, you take even in that situation where they were pretty liberal and pretty open-minded, and there was a lot of communication up to the chain of command,

we in Tasking and Bruiser were even more so. You know, even more so like, hey, we can make this happen. And again, up the chain of command, you know, I was telling my boss, hey, boss is what we're doing. This is where we're heading.

You know, he wasn't, you know, he was 40 miles away in Fallujah. Might as well be a million miles away because, you know, that's just that that's that road you know driving out to driving out to flusus is not not something you're doing easily we're both playing the same game maybe we have a few more cards in our deck you know as as far as options you know each one of those cards yeah yeah yeah yeah I see what you're saying yeah it's we're we're all trying to accomplish the same thing and I tell I have nothing but respect

for conventional because you know we probably are doing a slight disservice because some of the best leaders and critical fingers that I ever saw were from that world as well oh for sure I mean the like I said, the commanders that I worked with over there, the conventional commanders, I mean, they were just freaking outstanding. And, and I, I mean, I sat through, do I, should I say hundreds of meetings? Probably close to hundreds of meetings, you know, because I was there for whatever, 200 days. So, yeah, maybe, maybe not quite 100 meetings.

But I sat through a lot of, a lot of briefings, a lot of battalion operation orders, a lot of company op orders, a lot of, oh, not a lot, but several brigands. brigade and even division. I think I, I think I sat through one division op order. And every single one of those, from a leadership perspective, me watching all this from a,

from a detached perspective, I would sit there and go, yeah, this is, I wouldn't change anything from the way this battalion commander's acting. In fact, I'm learning from this battalion commander

or I'm learning from this brigade commander. I'm taking notes over here going, wow, he just, you know, he's absolutely executing decentralized command. again, all that being said, are we a little further on the decentralized command? Yes, we are.

When did you decide to take those lessons that you learn and write them down and pass them on? Because I was talking about Joe yesterday. Again, we were on the veteran theme. And I actually, I brought you up a few times. And I said, I think you're probably doing the best job out of anybody that I know of taking the lessons that can be learned from the military and encapsulating them that anybody, regardless of where they are, can do something with them. Because not everything that the military does is great for the civilian world. And there are a ton of people who come from our background who are not capable of taking the lessons.

For sure. Because they're fuckwits. I'm probably on the leader of the fuckwits. But it's, it's, again, it's like I'm trying to figure out a way because I view the veterans community almost at an arms distance. because I don't like a lot of things that I say and a lot of people are doing the wrong thing with the wrong message, in my opinion, and they're packaging it incorrectly,

but in my opinion, you are doing it extremely correctly and efficiently, and I'm just curious, when did you decide that the written word was going to be the path that you would do that? So there's two things that happened. Number one, when I came back from Ramadi, I had a great relationship with the Admiral

because I was his aide for 13 months. What you just described before as your, favorite duty station, correct? That was your favorite tour. You know, it's, it's, uh, what we started talking about, you know, when you're, when you're the, get assigned as the Admiral's aid and it's the last job in the world that anyone in the teams wants. What do you do? You know, what I said is, I, are, good. I'm going to go there and do the best I can. And, you know, you're going to develop relationships with incredibly influential people that will pay off later on. Yep. And, and again, it's important to note that when I'm sitting there developing a relationship

with the Admiral, the reason I'm doing it is, number one, that's my job. My job is to take care of this guy. When you're taking care of this guy, you're taking care of the community. When you're taking care of the community, you're taking care of your teammates. That's what you're doing. If you're making the Admiral of All Seals look good, you're helping everyone in the community. So that's number one. Number two, it's not like, hey, I want to develop a relationship with this guy so I can benefit.

It's like, no, I want to develop relationship with this guy so that he understands what we're doing. I mean, there were some critical moments where I was able to really help out. our community. And I'll give you an example. You know, all the prisoner abuse stuff started coming down and he. A bugerabe type of? No, it was, it was our, it was seals. Oh, I know you're talking about. It was the initial prisoner abuse stuff. And there was pictures, pictures that were publicly available on the internet of seals doing things that looked horrible. And, you know, I was in the room while the Admiral is getting questioned by the chief of naval operations and the secretary of the Navy going what is happening in this picture and and I'll give you an example one of them was a seal holding you know

holding a guy by the jaw and pointing his pistol at the guy's face from you know three feet away and my boss the admiral's going you know the secretary of the Navy the chief of naval operations and I forget it was both them one of them forgive me but it was one of, it was one of the people in charge of the entire name. I was going to say either one of those is it, that's a, that's a heavy hitting meeting. So he's, so my boss is prepping for a phone call. And he's like, Jaka, what's going on this picture? And I'm like, I'll say exactly what's going on. These Mujahideen fighters, when we catch them, do not want to have their picture taken. And so they're going to move their face. They're going to try and look away from the camera. And this guy is

holding his face in position so he could get a picture. And the reason he's holding this pistol there is because the most available flashlight to illuminate this guy's face is on his pistol, and he's got his pistol flashlight point at this guy's head. And it's like, oh, it makes total sense, right? You and I know this in an instant. Well, the number of people who could recognize, though, if you just were to put a picture like that up and say, tell me what you think is going on.

Yeah. There's not, there wasn't a ton at that time. Yeah. So luckily, I had a great relationship with the ball, with the admiral. And when I came home from, from Ramadi, he said, hey, what do you want to do? And I knew, well, at this time, Ramadi hadn't really calmed down yet. It was on the trajectory, but we didn't know. And I just worried about the guys that were going overseas.

And I said, I want to go and train the guys that are getting ready overseas. And so he put me into training and took over the training detachment. And when I went there, the very first operation that I went on with Seal Ptoom is a total disaster. And I watched them fall apart. And I saw a training operation. On a training operation. And I'm watching it. And it's so easy for me.

I'm sitting there watching back, sitting back watching and go. like, oh, what you need to do is do this. What you need to do is that. And I, and I was thinking about the mistakes that they were making. Realizing, of course, it's my responsibility teaching this. Went back to my room at the barracks at night. And I was like, okay, I need to write down the most important thing these guys need to know. And so I wrote down cover, move, simple, prioritize, and actually decentralized command.

That's where it all started. So then I started briefing everyone that was coming through and debriefing everyone. When they, when they came up all to the plan and it all fell apart because it was super complicated, but you need to simplify your plan. Or when you had one element maneuvering around the battlefield by themselves getting torn apart by the opt-for, you need to cover move. You need to, you need to stay close enough to each other that you can actually support each other. You know, if you don't do that, you're going to die. You know, when things start going wrong, which they're absolutely going to go wrong, if you try and do a bunch of things at the same time, you're all going to die. And if you

have one person trying to micromanage everybody and no one acting for themselves, you're all going to die. So that's where it started. And then, okay, so then you fast forward a couple years, the way it got translated into the civilian sector, there's two things that happened. Very, very lucky. Number one was I ended up giving that brief to some government organization that I had to sub, like, Warcom, the Admiral wanted me to brief some civilian organization about leadership and the Battle of Vamati. So I took that whole brief and it got declassified. So I gave it to Warcom.

Oh, interesting. They declassified the whole thing. And I was like, oh, well, they removed a couple things, obviously, but they declassified the bulk of it. And so then I had this, then I had, I was cleared to talk about what I was teaching. When were you teaching that in the trade at cycle? When would you actually sit? I would, I would, at the kick off of every team coming through, the very first thing I do

is like, okay, here's the laws of combat. Here's what. And I, who would you brief it to? everyone at the team. Good. Eventually it got to a point was, I don't know if it did it with your team, but it was everyone at the team.

The whole team would come in to trade at, I mean, every platoon, you know, every platoon, you know, tasking a guy on the commanding officer and everyone. So I don't,

I don't know. I never sat through the brief, but it might have happened before I checked in at T3. Yeah, it might have, but eventually when you're out there, I would tell the guys,

like, here's the things that I taught you. Remember these things? Yeah, every time you guys screw up on a, on an operation, it's going to be because of one of these four things. That's what's going to happen.

And of course, it's like a little suspect, but then you get done debriefing it every single time it points to one of these four things. So since that brief got declassified, and then I was getting ready to retire and a guy that was the CEO of a big company said, hey, can you come and talk to my executives about leadership? And I was like, well, in my mind,

I was like, I can tell them what I think about leadership, but I don't know how that's going to apply to these random civilians. And by the time I, I got done briefing them and they asked me three questions. I was like, oh, every single thing that I've been talking about for the last three years and everything I've learned in my 20-year career completely applies to every leadership situation that you're in. And that's where that's where it started.

Yeah, leadership is leadership. I often get people who say, you know, can you come speak to organization? We sell used cars. Do you anything about use car leadership? I'm like, yes. 100%. Because in my opinion, there's only two types. Good or bad.

Effective or ineffective. The way it is. And the rest of the titles associated with that, I'm like, oh, you're already trying to make some excuses why your sector is so special. Yep, yep. It's, uh... And then what happened is, as I started working with more companies, and now, you know, just like anything else, as you're getting asked more and more questions, you're providing the answers and you're really just connecting things at an even deeper level. Yeah. And that's like the latest book that I came out with leadership strategy and tactics.

That's basically all from the questions about how you apply these principles in, you know, at a strategic and tactical level. Like, what do you actually do? How do you actually communicate with some? The micro versus the macro. What do you tell someone in position, in this position? I don't agree with my boss. What do I do? I don't get that one often.

Exactly. I say just challenge them directly in public. There you go. Come at them. For the love of God, anybody listen to this? Do not do that. Like I said, I'm going to write a book.

I think I hit this up with you, extremely limited ownership. There's no bad leaders, only bad teams. It's so weird. Your chapter's suggestion, I think, was nobody told me that. Yeah, yeah. It's so weird, and it's one of those things that's so difficult. And you can see it all the time. You know, was it Trump the other day?

Somebody asked him, you know, where does your responsibility lie for this? Are you responsible? It's for something, and I don't even know what the thing was, and it doesn't actually even matter. He's the president of the United States. The answer is, hey, look, I'm responsible. for everything that goes on in this country. I think I let that slide. I didn't recognize it.

Here's what I'm doing to fix it. That answer, everyone goes, I'm going to take a snapshot guess and say that's not what he said, though. No, he literally said, I take no responsibility for this, you know? And look. Perhaps he could write a chapter in my book. Yeah. Yeah.

And look, it's one of those things. And here's another question that I get asked. And this is a classic question. Someone will say, hey, you know, I get the extreme ownership. but you know what do you do when you're in charge but it's really not your fault and it's like man the answer is in the question it's always your fault man yeah if you're in charge it's always your fault it's that's really easy to say it's simple but it's not easy it's so i try to you know when people ask me they'll ask me often about the debief process like how open and honest are you

like oh you want to talk about some of the most tension-f feelings angry, difficult conversations in front of a group of your peers that are all A-type. They're all at the apex of what's probably possible. And we're not talking about things that went well. And you're sitting in there knowing in your head like, I wonder if anybody saw me do that wrong. Just sitting there and then your name comes up. You know, I had an interesting... But it's tough to raise your hand in that environment, especially...

I mean, it's easier when you're like a E5. You're like, oh, yeah, I totally did that. That's completely my fault. Yeah, yeah. But when you're the unit, you know, the element leader to raise your hand and be like, actually, you know what, that was my fault because, you know, maybe my guides was a little bit incomplete. Yep. It's one of those things, too, speaking of debriefs.

So, you know, I talk all the time about, listen, if Andy screw something up, I don't jump down Andy's throat and call them out in the middle of everyone and make them look like an idiot because that doesn't, help build our relationship. It makes you feel it's going to make you, it's going to make you defensive about what you did wrong instead of being like, yeah, you know, if I say, Andy, what the hell were you thinking over there? You shouldn't have gone in that room. You'd be like, well, what was I supposed to do when you hadn't sent anybody over there? You know, like, we're going to get into it. So it's more important. A better way to approach it is to be like, hey, Andy, why did you go in that room? Yeah. And by the way, your answer, I have to be, I'm not just saying that because

I want to maintain a good relationship. I'm actually saying that legitimately going, hey, Andy, why did you go in that room. And if you go, well, there was no one else taking it where there was, you know, I knew it hadn't been cleared and I was scared that it was going to, it had access to the hallway and someone, if someone was in there, I could, I actually need to listen to you because maybe that was the right answer. And just because you ended up there going in there and got shot and now we had a big disaster unfold, what were you thinking that made you do that? And what mistakes did I make as a leader? But so I always talk about that. Like, you know, this idea of like this brutal debrief about how, look, if you're really debriefing someone on your team, you don't really want to come

at them like that. Here's the, here's the thing that I had to figure out like six months ago. You sat through many, many debriefs of mine and I came at people like, hey, what were you thinking over there? That was ridiculous. Hey, you, you know, you didn't. I've never heard you say anything like that. And I was trying to figure out, how did I get away with debriefing people like that? And I realized that it was a really, it's a really simple answer. The reason that I, quote, got away with debriefing people like that is because everybody knew that I wasn't trying to make them look bad. I actually wanted to help them because I cared about them and their team and their platoon and their task unit more than anything in the world, more than anything in the world.

I wanted to make sure that they were doing the right thing so they could stay alive and they could keep their guys live and they could complete the mission. And that idea, and look, let's face it, I don't come across as some overtly caring guy. I don't think I ever one time told anyone in the SEAL teams, I really care about you, you know? That would actually be a super awkward statement inside of the six teams. Yeah. And yet, everybody knew. Yeah. And when you get into it. Well, you know because of your actions, not the words. Exactly. And everybody knew. And this is not, I'm not saying this is just me. When you're any good instructor in the SEAL teams, when they go, when they go, you need to tighten up your shot group.

They're not saying that to you because they want to make you look like an idiot. They're telling you that because they want to make sure when the moment comes you can make the shot that counts it's going to keep your guys alive that's what they're saying when somebody says to you hey you need to freaking speed up your breaching process they're not trying to say it to make themselves look good they're trying to say it so that you speed up your breaching process so that you're not exposed for an extended amount of time and that difference when you really care about each other so the idea behind the seal team the seal platoon brutal debrief if it's not if it's not underpinned with hey I care about these guys more than anything else in the world,

then it doesn't work. And when you occasionally get a guy, well, I guess it's not that occasionally, but when there's a guy in the SEAL teams that's an arrogant asshole that thinks he's better than everybody else and talks down to people and doesn't have that underpinning, he's hated and no one likes him.

And they don't listen to his debrief points, by the way. Because you can see the chip on his block from a mile away. You see it in the way they conduct themselves. You see it in their behavior. You see it in the way that they talk. If you had come at those debriefs from a point, position of like, hey, look at me, look at how much I know. This is actually about me. I'm going to leverage my experience against your lack of experience. You would have been challenged on it.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And, but that's not the case. Yeah. A good one is, you know, when, when guys would have blue on blues, which they absolutely would. And I wouldn't be like, I can't believe you had a blue. I'd be like, hey, I had a fucking blue on blue for real. Yeah. And I do not want this shit to happen to you. Here's some things that you can think about. Tell me what it looked like from your first second. That's what, that's what it would be. And that was that's a good example because I mean every task you know I put through we'd have significant blue on blues. I'm talking like squad v squad legit. Yeah.

Some freaking civil war skirmish lines. Yeah. I mean, you could watch it unfold too. I'd be like, oh, I remember one time I see like. You're talking about probably out at an island. Yeah. Out at our desert training, there's a the command group like the task unit commander, you know, his his head shed group, you know, his, his, his art. T.O. His JTAC and two or three security guys, they're coming down off this hill and they're moving

right towards the whole rest of the task force, the whole rest of the task unit. And I'm like this, I go, no one's paying attention right now. I go, this is going to get, this is going to get real good real quick. And sure enough, they, one of their guys lit off their strobe, their IR strobe to indicate they, where their position was. And one of the 60 gunners saw that little muzzle flash, what they thought was muzzle flash, lit them up. when we had a good gunfight going. Whole command unit, dead. Fuck.

Yeah. But, you know, what's the debrief on that? Is the debrief you guys are idiots? No, the debrief says, this shit is hard. This shit happened to me for real. This is, if you don't think about it and you don't prepare for it, it can come sneak up on you in a millisecond. Yeah.

And that'll be that. My favorite question is why. Like you said, talking to that individual. But it has to be followed up also, like you said, with the willingness and ability to take what they say on board for sure you know i laif talks about this a lot layf was in the back of the train uh we're going through through cc and so he's the officer and he's been told his whole career which was you know two years at this point hey you get in the back of the train shut up and getting back of the train so he's getting the back of the train like he's been told and he's writing down the

huts report or whatever and i go you know so i'm up in the rafters at this point and i go hey man why are you in the back of the train he's like well i'm getting hud's right i'm getting hud's reports. And I go, can you tell what's going on up front at all? And he's like, no. I go, can you give the guy's support if they need it? No. Can you give them any direction about what's going on? No. I go, why do you think it's a good idea? And he's like, well, this is just where I've always been told. And I said, well, it's a very dangerous answer. Yeah. Yeah, this is what I've always been told. And I said, well, why don't you try pushing up a little bit so you can actually give the guys support if they need it, you know. And look, does this mean go to the front of the train and run the train? Hell

no, you know, you're the, you're the assault force commander. You need to stay in a position where you don't get engaged, where you are in a, where you can step back and, and be in a room and, you know, talk to other people, talk to the air assets or whatever. But if you are so far in the back of the train, you have no idea what's even happening, like, hey, by the way, when we're going to, when we're going to exit this building and let our external security know that we got people move, like those are very important things to know about. Yeah. So you can float near, you know, a little bit back.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. For sure. You know, unless you're told, hey, new guy, getting the back of the trade. Yeah, yeah. That's different. And then that becomes your personal doctrine. Like, that's, it's bad.

Oh, yeah. Well, I would get told up by trade at sometimes, you know, like, all right, Jocko, here's no more. Because you know, the first, like, for the first week, you know, it's kind of every man for himself. You're not running any leadership stuff. Yes. And so then they're like, all right, jogger, you're not going anymore.

room stop because you know every room I'm going into um yeah they tried to tell me that too when I was going through your training I was like no I have a satchel full of grenades and uh no I'm not I'm not gonna sit in the back a satchel full of grenades and a bad attitude and we're gonna make something happen and also I'm not even technically in charge so I'm just going to be an e5 today and uh run about and do do what I do what I enjoy doing and that's a good you know you being in that position is a good example of where decentralized command when you have some because, you know, you'd be acting as a shooter. Yeah.

But it wouldn't take but one minute of chaos to ensue before you would step up to be in charge of whatever random element of guys that you'd grab and be like, hey, you four come with me. We're going to go, you know, flank these guys or we're going to go assault this thing. We're going to hold down this building. Like, that's what it's supposed to be. Yeah. And that happened often too. Yeah. Yeah, I'd watch it happen.

I'd be like, oh, cool. You know, like there's a problem. There's one problem solved. There's one problem that's off the assault force commander's plate. And he can actually think about this because he's not worried about this. this outlying building that had a freaking machine gunner in it that was laying people down because Andy just grabbed four random dudes and, you know, put down cover fire and flanked him. I distinctly remember hearing you chuckle on one of the, uh, it was a nighttime out in San Clemente,

and I was up on the roof, and you had like guys who were going to pop in out of the window, and I had like four guys with me, and the assault force was going to come up the stairs. And there was the threat from the, you know, the direction down the stairs, but there was a window where they could get hit from. And I was just sitting there And I was looking at it. I'm like, oh, okay, this is how this is going to play out. There's going to be a guy who's going to come to that window.

So I shot him first up in blanks, of course, obviously. And then there was another dude on the roof. And I remember just getting on the roof and I was like throwing grenades in the window and a guy ran out. And I shot him directly down from the top of the head. Then I jumped down. And I just remember hearing just like, ha, ha, ha. Yeah, you get the good high ground.

And the train is like, God, damn it. Because I think that was supposed to be just a dick dragger of an evolution. It was always crazy how if somebody, if somebody led, right? If somebody led, Tradeout would get their asses kicked. Yeah. And if no one led, the platoon or the task unit, by the way, this would be four guys from Trade ette, maybe six guys at the most, they would annihilate a 45-man task unit if there was

not good leadership. If one person stepped up and lead, it would led it with like a you in that situation or whatever one guy was like, okay, I see what's going on here. I need to fix this. If that one person steps up and lead, it would be a pretty good. pretty fair match if multiple leaders inside of a task unit made things happen the trade guys wouldn't be able to do anything they'd be locked down and they'd get their asses kicked and i almost think they have to experience the the first portion of that getting their just teeth

kicked in yeah well it would usually happen i mean there was a matter of fact uh it always happened it always happened especially well and you know because every rotation through you're getting new guys and leadership switches out and yeah yeah to see the that that was just one and you know know in extreme ownership, Leif talks about the where they replace the boat grue leader and all of a sudden they start winning. Well, that's one story. I saw that story over and over and over again. You have a situation, even a singular situation where everything's going crazy and I'd walk up to like an E5 and be like, bro, are you going to let this happen or you're going to make something happen? And like some random new guy,

E5 would be like, who I'd been watching, you know, a guy that I was paying attention to would be like, oh, I got this and I'd be like, well, go get it then. And that's all it would take. All it would take was one guy saying, hey, on me, we're going down this hallway. And like, boom, that would change the whole dynamic. It's amazing the power that has, too. And then if somebody can make it, I try to explain this to people when I speak about leadership too, you can, you have to have your people ready to step into a leadership void because it's inside of parameters, of course, like, that new guy should not be like, you four, let's go stormed. Like, okay, you're slightly outside of the

parameters you should be working with. But if your leader is task saturated, they're just completely compressed. Having that person, you're just, do that will give them some hard drive space and they can like you so that person made a decision that was leadership decision you're still in charge and you need to get back into that shit but it provides the leader that space to make better decisions you got to read this part in uh leadership strategy and tactics i went not not super deep but i explained like all the little dynamics of stepping into a leadership vacuum that if you're good you'll you'll let happen here's like a couple examples like there's a leadership vacuum. If you jump into that thing immediately, there's a good chance that no one else

has even recognized that there's a leadership vacuum. So the first thing you get when you say, hey, everyone get on that, everyone, everyone get on this bottom floor right now. People are like, why are we doing that? They're bullshit. Like, you'll get resistance. Yeah. So you want to give that leadership vacuum just enough time so that other people recognize that, oh, and believe me, like by that, when I would make a call, when I would say, hey, everyone get to the roof of this building now, people would be moving so fast because everyone would sense it for a for two seconds they'd go wait a second this sucks hold on and then boom you make the call and everyone's ready if you make that call a little bit too early there's other people that haven't really calculated what's unfolding yeah and so they

immediately go why are we going to the top floor why we go to the basement right now they're going to resist it yeah where if you wait just long enough then then it'll happen the other thing it's nice you give it just enough time whereas if I give that leadership vacuum enough time and bro We're talking about seconds, maybe three seconds, maybe five seconds. But if I get enough time for Andy, for you to make a call, well, cool. That means you're, you see something, you're going to make a call. As long as it's like a decent call and it matches sort of where I'm going, boom, I'll let you run with it. And now I can start figuring out what the next problem is going to be.

If you and I happen to make a call at the same time, I'm going to, my immediate reactions, I'm going to defer to you. You know what? Oh, hey, if both of us go, hey, at the same time, I'll be like, Andy, take it. You know, I'll just let you do it because any, sense. second that I spend messing around with waiting for this to have, waiting for us to figure out, hey man, no, I said go right. No, I said go left. It's a waste and it's going to kill you. So, yeah, I go into this, I go into these things about how to actually step into that vacuum

properly because if you do it wrong, it doesn't help. If you do it right, it solves problems almost instantly. Yeah, I agree. The letting that, letting it sit for a second is just a critical point. Just a second, just two seconds, just three seconds. Just so you can see people like... Yep, they go and wait a second. Yeah. This sucks and then boom. And then compliance is just instantaneous.

Yeah. And by the way, you've already calculated, which you can only do if you've taken a step back, if you're detached, if you're paying attention to what's going on. That's the only way that you can come up with a good plan is to be there, is to be a step back. Yeah. How many more books are you going to write?

I made some joke about this on Twitter the other day. Because someone's like... Do you know that Twitter is not a good place to make jokes? Because I've tried it and they're just like, fuck you, man, you can't say that. I'm like, well, I mean, I can say it, but you just don't have the sense of humor that I do. Yeah, I think your jokes are, are apt to find, be found offensive in any medium. That's not, that's not completely untrue. You know, it's an interesting question.

How many books am I going to write? I don't know. I'm assuming you enjoy the process. Yeah, it's, it's more than enjoying the process. I don't think I enjoy the process, but I have ideas. things in my head that want to come out and they want to come out bad. And so I just have to get them out of there. That's basically. So you have more in the pipeline, I'm assuming? Oh yeah. Yeah. Will you go outside of, uh, not to pigeonhole it and say it's specifically about leadership, but do you have other

topics that you are passionate about writing about? Yeah, I'm writing a novel right now. You're writing a novel. Yeah. Fiction. Yes. It is fiction. What is it about? Uh, please tell me it's a fucking romance novel. It is not a romance novel. Starring two dudes. No. I hate to disappoint you, but it's not a romance novel. Fine, I'll write that.

Let me, I'm trying to think if there's a good way to do this. Without letting the cat out of the bag. No, it's okay. I can do it. So here's the deal. There are two brothers. One brother, 20, young 20s, smart, street smart, handsome, him just kind of a stud of a person and kind of not doing anything.

He works in a big box store like a Costco. In this case, it's actually called Maxi Mart. And he's a stock boy with his best friend whose nickname is goat. And how did he get said nickname? Well, you got to read the book. So this character has an older brother who, is, you know, early 30s, so older. Yep. And he is, he has some, he has a level of autism. And he's very obsessed with, uh, uh, laundromats and, and cleaning clothes and ironing clothes and washing

clothes and washing machines and dryers and detergents and fabric softens. He has pictures of fabric softners in his room and whatnot. You know, like hanging up and cool washers and dryers. So he works at a Chinese laundry mat for a Chinese couple that own a Chinese laundromat. And he's obviously the best and greatest employee ever. And he's the only employee. It's his passion. He's totally passionate about it.

He loves it. And the Lees, who are the Chinese folks that own the laundry mat, they decide for various reasons that are in the book that they're going to sell the laundromat and the younger brother gets wind of this and realizes that his his older brother is never going to be happy if he doesn't have this laundry mat, this place to work. And meanwhile, he realizes he's never going to be happy either because he's kind of wasted his life. And you know, this is, I don't know if it's like this for you but you know um i have a lot of friends that that i grew up with that were smarter than me better athletes than me uh uh just just better genetic humans than i you described

every person that i grew up with exactly and and um a lot of them didn't do a lot you know with what they had yep and so that's sort of this this younger brother character well when he realizes that this is going to happen to the laundromat. He decides that, and he convinces his friend Goat, that they are going to buy the laundry mat so that he can, you know, let his brother work there. But he needs money to buy a laundromat, and you don't make a lot of money as a stock boy.

So him and his buddy Goat decide that they're going to rip off the big box store. You know, they kind of know the procedures. They know when cash comes in, they know when cash goes out. And they're going to do a, heist. And that's the story. It's where it starts. How far into this are you? I have written half of it right now, but I will be done with it by the time this quarantine is over.

Yeah, no shit, you got some time on your hands. What was your impetus to write a novel, to go to nonfiction versus fiction? A different way to convey messages to people, a different way to convey, you know because ultimately I mean there's a lot of underlying themes inside this book you know there's there's themes about happiness there's themes about sacrifice there's themes about you know consumerism and and you know wanting to always get more and if you think that's going to make you happy does it really what what makes one person happy versus someone else and yeah I think a different way. And again, it's one of those stories that I had in my head that I just wanted to get out. A lot of the characters, I already mentioned that the younger brother's kind of based on

a conglomeration of a lot of people that I grew up with. The older brother, you know, when I was a kid, I worked at Wendy's. And at Wendy's, there was an autistic. You personally worked at Wendy's? Yep. There was an autistic woman that was probably in her mid-50s. And she ran the salad bar. and it was a very bad it was a very bad situation in terms of the way she was treated you know i i think she was not treated well i think she was taking advantage of and she didn't know it and she wanted to have the most clean salad bar the everything topped off um and and and so that character always stuck with me because, you know, as a person going through life, it can be very hard to find what people call happiness. This woman was as happy as you could ever imagine and she was getting

paid, you know, $4.25 an hour to work, eight hour days in Wendy's. And she was, she was truly happy. I mean, she was truly a happy person, you know, when I would talk to her. Yeah. And I was one of the only people that would, you know, talk to her and be nice to her. How many people do you see on a day to day that have so much more than that and they're so far from happiness they don't even know what would provide them happiness they are chasing what other people have talked about or show on instagram or fucking facebook what makes them happy yeah and then come to find out that those people that are posting those things are some of the most unhappy people yeah it's it's it's sad and it's it's hard and it's a reality of life you know uh you know um i had a conversation i was out surfing

with Seth Stone, who you know. Yep. And, you know, Seth is a very, he's a very, well, first of all, a very, very smart person and a very emotional person. And for those you don't know, he was a seal that worked for me. And he was, you know, definitely one of my best friends. And he, and very, you know, he was very, he was a very complex person. person, we'll say he's a very, very complex person. And we were surfing one day. And, you know, he,

he asked me that question. He was like, I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to find happiness. You know, I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to find it. And I was like, I'm sitting there looking at him and, you know, I'm waiting for a wave. And I said, bro, you're looking everywhere for happiness. And I'm like, I'm going to tell you right now, this is it. Like, this is it. This is what happiness is man we're out here there's a beautiful day there's nice waves like you don't need to look anywhere else what that that's what like life is you know life is and what's odd is if you do it right you can find happiness when things are hard you can find happiness and you know whether or not you every person's going to learn this when they're in the seal teams but how many miserable

miserable, physically miserable, perhaps even life-threatening situations were you in that you had a smile in your face and you were laughing with your friends. Like, almost all of them. Almost all of them, right? That's the way it is. And so that feeling that there's, I think people are chasing that, that happiness a lot and they don't realize that they're in it. They don't take the time to enjoy the moment.

Yeah. And so that's one of the, you know, one of the messages in there, because I see a lot of people that, that go through life and they're, they're like searching for happiness. And, man, you can find happiness in a, in a, in a industrial sized dryer with a, with a four horsepower motor. That's legit. Like that's, there's some people that is all they need. Exactly. But what is it that you're looking for? What do you, you know, what if you can find, if someone can find happiness in that, what are you looking for, man? What do you, what are you trying to, Where are you trying to go? You know, the perfect time to think about this is when people have more free time on their hands. Like right now. Good. More free time? Yeah.

Try to define what you're looking for in happiness. How are you as a Wendy's employee? I was awesome. Yeah, I was awesome. What was the job that you filled? I was the burger guy. So, yeah, I put the in. Can you please have Echo Charles make a video of you today flipping burgers in a Wendy's?

Yeah. You know, it's. A flashed. But you play your former self. Yeah. Have you, have you, you've had Wendy's before,

right? Stop it. It's rhetorical question. They have square patties. Wendy's was my hangover for go-to. And in the previous Jocko years. In the previous Chaco years, yeah,

especially when in Coronado, there was a Wendy's right on the, I don't even know if it's still there, but on the way to work, it was like a kind of under, um, there was like a subway, a Wendy's,

but it was like, it was almost across the street from the whole, Hotel Del. So it's probably gone now. But yeah, you know, I used to hit that Wendy's. Oh, you're right. I think it's a Mexican restaurant now. Yeah. So that Wendy's was there. I used to frequent that Wendy's, but, you know, uh, and I, and I was a good Wendy's employee other than the fact that you get an allotted amount of free food each day. And it was like, and it was like, you know, $4.50 or something. Not nearly sufficient to young Jaco. So a lot of times it was, you know, one chicken tender for the customer.

One chicken tender for me. I thought you were going to say like three. Yeah. But, you know, I was, I was happy to, you know, be having a job. And it's, it's, you should work in fast food at some money. Did you ever work in fast food? No, I started working in construction with my dad at 11, carrying bricks. Well, luckily for me, I got hired out of Wendy's, a construction guy, came.

in and he looked at me and he said you know what are you doing here and I'm like working and he said do you want to work here and I said this is paid this this place pays me money and he goes I'll pay you money if you come work for me as a constructive guy and to tell you what kind of employee I was it was enough of a fired up employee that a guy came in for lunch and hired me all right that actually doesn't surprise me yeah and I went to work the next day you know I was thinking when you were talking about happiness and uh describing the life-threatening situations. I think the happiest I've ever, I don't know what I would describe it as, as the happiness, happiest I've ever been in my life or the most at peace I've ever been in my life

is overseas. And I don't know how to describe, I don't, I don't know how to describe that. I had a sense of fulfillment in purpose that I have struggled to find outside of that environment, a connection with people outside of, you know, blood, uh, connection. but and nothing else matters yeah but I mean how could you be happy I mean I don't know I guess it sounds odd

so like how could you be happy but then I think about waking up and looking at the base of the Hindu Kush in the early winter when there's snow on it I'm surrounded by the best friends of my life doing something that I felt was intimately important at a personal level and at a greater level

and could take your life at any second it's a tough one to unpack but that's those that I mean, if I'm being completely objective and honest about my own life, that's where those things have felt the most solid for me. Yeah. And then what you have to watch out for is, look, those days cannot last forever. Yeah.

And I was pretty lucky in the fact that when I was, when I was on my last deployment, which I, you know, pretty much knew was going to be my last deployment. I knew every single day. Every single day I was so stoked to be where I was. I was so, I was like, you know, I relished every second of it. It wasn't like, it wasn't like I look back and go, oh, I wish I would have enjoyed it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I relished.

You were living your best life. I was living. I was like every second. And even my first appointment, so my first appointment, which was 0304, it wasn't that I, I, I, just didn't know how long this war was going to last so it was kind of like hey look this and so same thing every single time pack it in every single time i got jocked up every time i took a single time i locked and loaded my weapons i was like oh this is this is this is it this is this is this is the this is good as it's ever going to get yeah so i will i don't look back now on the glory days and think

oh i wish i would have enjoyed them no bro i enjoyed their shit out of them i loved them but i also for whatever reason had been able to go like okay cool those days i are over like I'm not living in the past anymore it's like you know I don't I don't I don't daydream and like wish I I okay maybe I sometimes daydream I wish I could go back you don't define yourself by that period in your life yeah like when you were sitting there talking about like coming in daytime you're on the little birds and I was like oh yeah we did an off and downtown Baghdad one day and it was like crowded and we did it during the middle of the day and we hit this place and I was like that's what I was thinking about I was like oh yeah

that was so freaking awesome. Yeah. I remember very distinctly my last combat operation because I knew when I went in 2010, I knew it was probably going to be the end for me, like my ankle and the neuropathic stuff from getting hurt. It was problematic. And I came back early because my mom was dying from cancer. She got diagnosed with cancer about two weeks before I left on deployment.

And this was at the same time period where there was kind of those leadership issues and the AOIC was having a kid. and I probably could have gotten another week or two with her, but I didn't. I chose to continue with the deployment cycle. I actually didn't feel like, I didn't choose to do so. It's what I had to do. And so I came back, I got a Red Cross message.

And I knew, I got a Red Cross message. And I was going to wait, I think it was about 36 hours until the helicopter was going to come get me. And inside of that time period, a mission popped up. So, you know, they asked me, do you want to go? Like, no, no problems if you want to, if you want to sit this thing out. I'm like, no, I'm fucking going. And submitted it through approval to the same, you know, I switched my caller device out and walked over, had a chat, got mission approval.

And packed all my stuff up, got on the helicopter. And that was an interesting day because I was just kind of thinking back a little bit around in the lull time periods of just looking back at everything that had happened up until that point. It was pretty good day. got to fire javelin at some people that were hiding. Didn't understand a top attack mode of a javelin. And a little 300 windbag action. And then a helicopter back. Packed all my stuff up, got another helicopter,

and was home in 48 hours. But it, yeah, it was interesting to close that chapter. As I was packing my stuff up to leave there, that was the beginning of me slowly kind of detaching from that and focusing on that. But I'm in the same boat. I mean, something every single day reminds me of something awesome or horrific that happened overseas.

It's not like this obsessive thought, but I'm like, yeah, I remember that and then just move on with it. It's, I'll never be able to, I'll never be able to leave it behind, but I hope I can put it down when I need to. That's the way that I, I mean, it's just, you know, my brain's a little different.

I laugh for 30 minutes uncontrollably at that person who shot himself in the face. Most people aren't going to have a reaction. I couldn't even post it for 30 minutes because I was laughing so hard. And I'm not saying that makes me a good person. Perhaps I'm a little fucked up, But those experiences shape me into the person that I am.

Yeah. And I think it's interesting when you are wrapping up your career. And, you know, for me, flying home, for sure, flying home from Ramadi, which was a hard flight home because, you know, I know I'm flying home and I didn't have all my guys with me. And that's, you know, that's the worst possible thing that you can ever feel. I guess, other than the loss of a child, but... It probably feels pretty close, I would imagine. I've never lost a child, but being in that position that you... I mean, I bet you at some point in that task unit commander world,

whether or not you recognize it at that point that those people were, to some degree, your kids. Oh, no, not even did I not recognize it. I 100% recognize it. You know, like you are connected to them all, and, you know, they're all counting on you to, you know, do the right thing at the right time. and you're the guy, you know, and there's no doubt that you want nothing more than for them to come home. So when you're coming home and you know you don't have them with, I mean, I was so far from thinking about myself at that point, you know, I was so far from saying, oh, you know, what am I

going to do next? It was like, no, it was just not, I didn't start thinking about me for like another couple years you know I was like okay I need to get guys trained to go and do this stuff that's what I need to do that's the only way that's that's that's what that's a way I can uh that's the best good I can take from this is take what I learned and pass it on because you know I don't want anyone else to have to fly home like this you know so I would say it took me a couple years to where I looked at myself and said okay what what am I going to do you know and then then it was you know, I kind of fell into what I'm doing now, which is, which is random for me to, you know,

Mr. Hey, have plans and have contingency plans and have branch plans and all that. It's like, I didn't plan for any of this stuff that I'm currently doing to happen. I did not have a structured approach to anything that I do in my life. I took the suggestions of people that were smarter than me or had more experience. Yeah. Like Joey's like, you should start a podcast. My actual response to him was, well, if you knew anything about podcasts, I would take your advice, but I'm going to consider it because I'm nitty.

it. And then I was like, he's probably pretty smart. Yeah. You know, I will say this, even though there's been a lack of planning, and again, this is something that I think I instinctively learned from the SEAL teams and from Jiu-Jitsu and from, you know, other things in my life is when I'm assessing what's going on around me, I can identify like, oh, there's the hole in the enemy's defenses. I can,

attack that now. We can maneuver on that. Like, I've always been good at that. Yeah. And so in the civilian sector, It was like, oh, there's people. It took me three seconds before I was like, oh, the leadership principles that I know, everyone should know them. It took me, it took me, I just knew it as soon as I was experiencing it. And then all of a sudden it was like, oh, you need to write this stuff down.

The book thing, hey, you know, that kind of came across a little bit random, but, you know, like Leif had a friend that was a literary agent who looked at some of the stuff we'd written, was like, oh, this could be a book. And he's like, okay. So then again, it was like, okay, there's an opportunity. Let's, you know, we need to make this happen. The podcast, same thing. You know, I had Tim and Tim Ferriss and Joe that were like, you need to start a podcast.

Probably a good idea to listen. Yeah, it might be a good idea to listen to those guys. And that's been one of the biggest, you know, one of the biggest, well, for me, it's been the biggest driver of everything. You know, my life kind of revolves around my podcast now. And, which is awesome because I love doing the podcast. It's a. I do too.

And what's funny is I think I'm naturally an introverted person. Like one great thing for me about what's going on right now is I do not have to create excuses about why I don't want to go places or see people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I was going to post this the other day. I need to. I was walking down the street the other day and like people were avoiding each other kind of. And I was like, oh, now everyone knows how I feel because people have been socially distancing themselves from me since I was like 15. But I don't think people would look at either you or I and say naturally an extrovert.

It's definitely not. So this, when I first started doing this, it was a bizarre road, but I find it to be incredibly cathartic and interesting. It allows me to take a deep dive into my own. Like when I'll do Q&A's, I have to really question why I feel the way that I do. And it gives me a better understanding of myself and then getting, sit down and talking to interesting people about interesting shit. Yeah.

And for me, it's been, it's an opportunity to learn so much about so many different subjects and, you know, just realize again when you're looking for happiness and some of the people that I've had on the podcast you know what they've been through give you some context for the lenses that you view the world through yeah everyone from you know people that have been tortured brutally tortured left for dead people that have been in prisoner camps people have been in concentration camps you know i just had a woman on that was in Auschwitz yeah and fuck you know like that that was just it's a different level, you know? It's a different level.

And, you know, I, I went through this with her on the podcast because, you know, she was in Czechoslovakia and, you know, she was a Jew in Czechoslovakia. And then one day they're kind of like, hey, hey, you know, you're, you guys, you guys can't come to school anymore because you're Jews. And they're like, okay. And then it was like, hey, you need to be in your houses by 6 o'clock. And they're like, okay, whatever these, whatever. Hey, you're not allowed to have your businesses anymore.

okay and it was okay you know what get a bag and come to the train station report to the train station and there's you can see and again this sounds really like cold-hearted to say but when i tell you to like hey pack a bag there's a little bit of humanity in that right there's a little bit of like hey listen andy you know i'm going to move you but you know get your stuff together i'm thinking about you right right right prepare yourself yeah pack your mind and your your essentials so then you get on the train and now the train is packed you know with 80 people to car and there's no water and they're pissing and shitting all over themselves did they separate them from their bag immediately no they got their bag still this is and then but even then you're thinking well you know what this is transportation

and obviously they didn't plan it well but you know we can cut them a little slack this is horrible but you know we we still might think there might be some light at the end of the tunnel and then the door opens two days later and the you know another Jew gets on and says this is Auschwitz and you get off and now they now your bag goes into a pile and then you know this girl was she was 14 at the time and um she gets told you know go in this room over here take off all your clothes and she's she's never been you know obviously never really been around a bunch of strangers and now it's naked around a bunch of strangers stripped down and then out comes, you know, a person that shaves their entire body. And I was like, I was asking her, I was thinking to myself, so now you realize that all

humanity is gone. Like this is, there's no light at the end of the tunnel. This is the end. And so with the podcast, getting to meet people like that and getting to hear their stories and getting to learn lessons. realize what people can get through. It's been really beneficial for me. And being able to share lessons with other people, it's been cool.

It's a crazy medium. You can go deep and unpack some very complex shit when you have. I mean, we got 58 hours left on this SIM card. Yeah, just getting warmed up. The four principles, the key principles you keep referring back to, how long do you think those have been key to warfare? We talk in sticks and stones? It depends.

We're going way. back the only the only sometimes i like to make a little bit of a of a of a of a mark in the path is when we got automatic weapons right um when we got automatic weapons you had to start using decentralized command you you you absolutely had to you couldn't you could and and it's proven because in world war one what happened there was no decentralized command and it was just a blood bath and the germans you know at the end they started using decentralized command and it started working so and and same thing with cover and move. Like, okay, cover and move is, is, is, it makes sense. Yeah. When we have muskets or even repeating rifles. But cover and move with machine guns is absolutely mandatory. And if you don't do it.

So those two, I, I usually say it's the modern weapon systems. It's, it's automatic. It's machine guns. But that being said, you know, really good units in ancient world had decentralized command, 100%. Yeah. So there's, and probably mutually supporting positions. Usually supporting this is the whole nine yards. Simplicity in their execution and guidance. Think about this. When you have archers on the field and they're doing a charge, so the infantry or whatever,

the swordsmen are going forward under the cover of archery. Well, that's cover and move. So they've been around forever. They've been, those, they're even more distinct. They became even more necessary when, when machine guns came around.

Can you imagine doing a goddamn trench standoff hearing that whistle and your job is to climb with the ladder and just run towards your most likely impending death? So I did a gig of an event in Indianapolis. And the individuals that set up the event, great guys, totally in the game, totally fired up. And they had gotten access to the war memorial in Indianapolis. And it's this building that was built in 1923. So it's after World War I.

World War II hasn't happened yet. It was built like kind of New Dealish, you know, like they were using, yeah, this was a big project and it's an absolutely stunning building, beautiful building. And so I get there and the guys that had set it up, the main guy that had set it up was like, hey, I want to show you this place. You know, it's amazing. So we, you know, he's showing me around and there's like museum pieces and whatnot. And finally he says, he's like, let's go to the shrine room. So awesome. So we're walking up to the shrine room.

And the answer is always yes. Yeah. Let's go to the goddamn shrine. So we get, we're walking up and along the wall walking up, there's, there's, um, thousands of names on the wall. And they're little tiny in legitimately. And I know you like fonts and stuff. They're just, they're probably like number 12 font like that size.

Why do you assume that I like fonts? I don't know. You made some joke one time. I think, I think, I've gotten into a fist fight over fonts. Yeah. There's only one correct font. And when you know I will have to. go out to the mats if you disagree with this. Well, obviously we're going to disagree because I think

you like Helvec. Don't you dare say it wrong. It's Helvetica bold, you son of a bitch. Helvetica bold. Well, 12. Clearly, clearly, without question, I will go to the mat with you any day on this because everything that I read is in OCR standard A. You know that? That's trash. That's, that's, and you know why? Do you know the layers behind OCR standard A? Do you think I even know what OCR stands for? OCR standard A, right there. Imagine how good that would look in Helvetica. Yeah. So OCR Standard A is the first font that was designed for machines to be able to read.

So OCR stands for like optical computer recognition or something like that. I don't know when I don't really hear that. I forget it. So I'm walking up this passageway and there's thousands of names and some of the names, they're in 12 font. They're small. And then some of the names have an asterisk by them. And as I look at the chart that's explaining to you, yeah, well,

Asterix means killed in action. And it's just vets from Indiana. So we get to the shrine room and I walk in and it's absolutely stunning. There's a giant American flag that is hanging down from the ceiling. There are 12 red marble columns that are 50 feet tall and they're probably six or seven feet in diameter. And there's when you look up at the flag, there's a bright white, white light shining on it, but there's a blue ceiling with a white, like stained glass, white star.

It's a whole ceiling. And then they've got this giant relief statue going all the way around it of the war from the beginning to the end. The first is when Americans aren't there. And then you see the Americans show up. And then you see victory. And it comes around. As you look around the room, you see like the victory flag in the end.

And it's just, just incredible. And then underneath the flag is like the altar of freedom. which we use that term sort of very flippantly sometimes well we use it flippantly we also use it metaphorically right yeah and so here we i'm actually standing at the actual the physical altar of freedom and it's it's by a by a just giant flag and so i'm i'm you know i'm i'm very moved by all this and then as i start looking deep around the room in between each one of these columns they have these big uh almost life size i would say they actually wore life size paintings of, you know, I'm looking at me, like, who these,

and there's, whatever, there's six of them or seven of them in between the columns. I go, I wonder what these are. So I walk over and I look at the first one, and it's like Persian, the American commander, and I go to the next one, and it's the British commander, and it's the Belgian commander. So all these, all these beautiful paintings in a gold, literally the gold frame with an individual light on each one of them.

And there's a, they have a painting, a life-size painting, in a gold frame for each and every one of the allied commanders of the military. And like I got sick to my stomach. Like I just was so, you know, just disgusted by it. Because, you know, these are the guys that were, that, that, and meanwhile, outside, you got the guys that were killed in action in number 12, you know, Times New Roman font with an asterisk next to their name. And this is one of these things where,

when you look at it and you think to yourself these guys sent tens of thousands hundreds of thousands probably each individual each one of those individuals sent hundreds of thousands of men to their death and didn't say hey you know what we tried this three weeks ago and every day in between that three week time period and we lost you know and we've lost 13000 14000 17000 24000 maybe this isn't working maybe we should find a different tactic to do this and so from a leadership perspective like if you're not if you're not questioning your leadership if you're not humble enough to question what you're doing if you're trying shit and it's not working you keep doing it you're wrong and that's just the classic example of you know us to to do that to make that monument

like there should be those guys should not, their painting should not be in there. I'm sorry. Well, it should just be reversed. Yeah, it should be reversed. The people with the asterix should be the ones who are being celebrated and memorialized in that manner.

Yep. And the thing is, if we don't, if we don't take a lesson from that, if we don't learn from that lesson, then we're wrong. And you have to learn from that lesson. And that's why, you know, again, from a leadership perspective,

you know, me, as a as a as a as a lieutenant commander pushing back against my leadership saying hey boss this doesn't make sense for us to only take two guys in the field like that's a bad idea and my boss saying hey roger that makes sense that's the way leadership's supposed to work you know and i'm not tooting my own horn i'm just saying that's the way leadership's supposed to work yeah i'm tuning my boss's horn for actually listening to me right good for him you know when when we as leaders lay the smack down on someone and say no you're going to do it my way you're an idiot and if you're you're Here's another good one.

I'll get asked. People say, well, what if somebody, what if someone on my team ask me why and I don't know? I'm like, then you better figure out your answer. Then you better reassess what you're telling someone to do. Because if what you're telling someone to do, if you can't even explain why something is important, then it's probably wrong.

Yeah, if you're following it blindly and expecting your people to follow it blindly as well, you're on this slow path to hell for sure. Yeah. How much time do we have until Echo shows up? I think he might be here. That's two hours. Cool. I'm good.

All right then. Thanks, bro. Thank you. Thanks again to Duke Cannon for supporting the Cleared Hot podcast. Don't forget, you can get 15% off your first order and free shipping on orders over $35 at Duke Cannon.com with the promo code, cleared hot, all one word, all uppercase. And that's it for this week.

Hope you guys enjoyed the episode. Have four or five more good ones in the queue. getting ready to come right at you. So I'll see you on Monday.