Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 412 - Dave Berke - From fighter pilot to fighting on the ground in Ramadi

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Dave Berke is a retired US Marine Corps Officer, TOPGUN Instructor, and now a leadership instructor and speaker with Echelon Front, where he serves as Chief Development Officer. As a F/A-18 pilot, he deployed twice from the USS John C Stennis in support of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He spent three years as an Instructor Pilot at TOPGUN where he served as the Training Officer, the senior staff pilot responsible for the conduct of the TOPGUN course. The Need to Lead: https://echelonfront.com/leadership-books/the-need-to-lead/   Today's Sponsors: Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com LMNT: https://www.drinklmnt.com/clearedhot  

Okay, got the red smoke. Oh, west of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on, one minute, baby. Okay, there's only one place to start this. Of all the things you can do in an F-18, what's the coolest?

Actually, so coolest, which I'm going to give, that one's obviously going to be subjective. What's the most technically complex thing you can do in an F-18? Oh, man. You like setting me up for what to say or not what to say, what to think about. You're going to ask that during the podcast? We're already going. That's a hard question, man. There are a lot.

Pull that mic a little closer, keep about a fist away. Yeah. So as I'm saying, subjectively, what do you think the coolest thing is? The coolest thing in an F-18, certainly the beginning of your career is landing on a boat. Okay. So when you're like- Has to look like a stamp. It's crazy.

And I know you've had guys on here and I know like the Navy, you know this. The Navy makes really hard things look routine. the Navy will make like, oh, landing on a boat. Yes, for sure. But you've done things that you get good enough at it. People like, oh, that doesn't look that hard. I'm like, okay. Do you start that?

Because you, I'm assuming, do they paint out lines of where the cables are on a regular runway? And they can, they can obviously paint the rear and the front. So you get some practice, but I'm going to tell you in a lot of things in life, the way I have practiced. Then you get out to the old ocean. That's right. Yeah. You sit exactly right.

You do field carrier landing. They paint the field to look like a ship. And you do it 100 times or 150 times. And then you get to the boat and like, but the thing about an F-18 is it has all these incredible attributes of all these other fighters. It's fast. It's nimble. It's all these things.

But there's a ruggedness to it that flying around the ship, but you can't replicate in anything else. And so it wasn't even my favorite thing. But the fact that you can take that plane onto that boat and go kind of anywhere in the world, it was always remarkable. the other man there are so many things you can do in that jet

that are kind of technically what's the one that's almost going to kill you actually at the top of the list of the way yeah other than the boat night lat is pretty wild

low altitude training on on night vision goggles when you're down 300 feet going 450 knots on goggles does it have ground looking radar giving you a heads up as well no it does not

there's other jets that that the Hornet does not. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. It is close enough. Let's start thinking about Christmas. Let's head to the website. This is actually a cool gift. I have gifted this to people.

It is the Coffee Club subscription. Right now you can get 20% off of subscriptions. Just use the code Juliet Tango Charlie 20, also known as JTC 20. And what looks like all they have on the non-rotating banner at this point? point. Here we go. The limited time roast, this is definitely holiday season stuff. Pack up on some of that if you want my wife personally loves pumpkins and PSL, also known as Pumpkin Spice Latte Time, which we are in right now. Fall product launch, a lot of really cool apparel. This bag just came out. This is part of the ECS. This is also another great gift. But look at this right here. Sold out already. So this is one

bag per month, assuming you do one membership. This bag, 250 year anniversary for the United States Navy, super cool. Evan is heavy handed in this. They have come with tasting notes, roasting suggestions, or making suggestions, all of those things. Really cool. Down here, stickers and all sorts of good stuff. And gear. Like, this is what I'm talking about when it comes to holiday season type stuff. It's going to be here before we know it. I'm already looking at things like check this out if you like people who have like little k cups i have a espresso machine here in the studio stuff like that t-shirts things to drink coffee out of things to make coffee with head over to black rifle coffee dot com and start knocking out your santa list right now back to the

show night let's kind of wild pointing your nose at the ground and then flying really low at night on nvg's by yourself is kind of crazy yes i have about one point a seven, five hours in the backseat of at F-18. Right on. What'd you do? It was at Naval Air Station, Oceana. We had a liaison at the command. They said, would you like to do a backseat ride? I said, don't ask me, stupid questions.

I made the smart move of not eating that morning. Female pilot, they were doing simulated cast runs, which was awesome because I got to sit in the back. I actually was doing the J-TAC calls for them because I was a J-TAC, so I was simulating the ground controller. And then after that, as they pulled out, they were doing. surface air missile evading, which meant my head was bouncing off the cockpit.

I felt sick for two days. And it wasn't in the G. It was about two seconds after when your inner ear caught up. Yeah. And obviously the lady up from was like, I am going to destroy this dude, which she did. And by the end, when she asked me if I wanted to fly it back to Ocean, I'm like, yeah, absolutely.

It just held it completely level. It's awesome. Yeah, surface air countertacks Can scramble you up pretty good I mean, as somebody in the back Who didn't know which direction the turns were coming Nor did I understand the maneuver she was doing Yeah

All I heard was the engines getting really loud Yeah And just, it what seemed like full deflection Yeah So I don't know what the hell she was doing up front Other than messing with me Because I believe that's actually What the entire purpose of the evolution was

Two days I felt like garbage That's a wild Yeah, I could see that I'm surprised they didn't give you The standard advice of eating eating the banana and didn't tell you to eat a banana? No. The old joke about the eating the banana is it tastes the same coming back of as it did going down.

So they told me to eat a banana. My flight was in the morning and I just, I had never, I have never felt G's like that. I just did a backseat ride though in the only privately owned mig in the U.S. right in Bozeman. That was, he did a unrestricted climb. Nice. Holy cow with full burners on that thing and then just rotate it over the top. And I'm like, oh God, oh God, here it is again.

Just athletic sweat in the back, 45 minutes later. He's up there having the time of his life. And I'm like fighting off this athletic sweat, which I know the next step to that is rip the mask off and puke. That's awesome. So good. Those Gs, man. Yeah.

It gives you an appreciation. And maybe people don't know this, but the, uh, the blue angels are up there without G suits. Yep. That is wild. It's wild. Yeah. I'm surprised more of them don't die, to be honest.

Not that it's the safest job on earth, but I mean, it's, it's, That's kind of what's getting at. They can make the impossible look routine. They make that look easy and you look up and like, oh, that looks an incredible. And as you know, like what is going on inside the cockpit is remarkable, man, 100%. Yeah, I really like there was a blue angel, not at Blue Angels. It was a, what's the Air Force team? Thunderbirds.

That documentary that just came out. Just watched it. Fantastic. Yeah, super cool. Have you ever seen the down the runway? This one trends on social media sometimes. It shows an Air Force pilot coming up. Yeah.

And they just. absolutely just kiss it and that's F-18 which is full deflection of the land that's at Nellus I've seen that video I know exactly you're talking about yeah one's stuffing it in because the pilot's obviously not doing the maintenance on either of those and the other guy is just like

chef's kiss cruising down may not have even left any rubber on the runway totally man how do you do you fly at all now that you've been out of the military I have not flown I've not flown since I got out of the Marine Corps what was your last flight My last flight was in an F-35, 2014, as I was leaving my last flying command to get ready to go to school. At the time, I thought I'd be back to flying, and I was planning on going to go back to flying, but it turned out I did not go back to flying.

So that was my last flight. And you didn't know it was going to be? I did not know. In fact, I was pretty sure it wasn't. I was pretty sure three years later I was going to be back flying. What would you have done differently on that flight? Had you known? I'm thinking eject.

I'm not so sure that's good for you. That thought. Yeah. No, we don't want to do that. When in Rome, though, it was going to be your last flight? Yeah. Have you seen the recent video where they were doing a passenger flight? I believe it might have been in an F-15. It was. And a backseater said, what is this hand to do? I have seen that, yes. That was also her last flight. So we don't want to do that. What is it really? As in unplanned last flight?

Physiously. Like, I think she was an incentive ride, like giving her a chance to see something that she hadn't seen. and that did not go well. That was a bummer. That's a lot of people. It's a crazy video if you've seen that video. You're like, holy cow, tackling out to the runway like that. It's amazing that the parachute actually inflates at that altitude.

Yeah, the zero zero seat. Yeah. No, I did not have that experience, thank God. How does that happen? I mean, obviously a handle that was supposed to remain for emergency use got pulled, but why? Why would you pull it? Yeah, I don't know.

I suppose there's a chance it got like tangled up or misunderstood, but that's one of those you look at that and you're like, I don't know how that. Something like that happens. for the guy with the mig he i got strapped in we were still up with the scaffolding and he comes back and he's we're just going to talk about this handle you're going to demonstrate to me that you can arm it multiple times and that you can disarm it because as soon as i get up front you're on your own back here buddy he goes i can push us both out if we need to but if for whatever reason

you grab a hold of this which by the way i'll tell you when to do that please don't try to make up your own mind when that should be happening. Yeah. But yeah, it was a full-on individual brief on just, which also was quite wild. I mean, it was finger to move it, to lock it into place, one button detent, pull it out. I would hope it would require a little bit more pull power. Yeah. Yeah, I don't, I've written a lot of things.

I don't need to ride one of those. I agree. I agree. And I never did. Obviously, new guys that had, but thank God I didn't have to do that. So what would you've done differently, though? If you knew was your last flight, like just spend most of it upside down? I probably would have been in a little more of aggressive flight.

Probably takes something out and fought. Yeah. It was more of like, it was a flight that was, it was fine. I don't even remember the details some time in the pattern, but it wasn't a BFM flight. Had I known, like the last flight, I would have bent the jet around a little bit more. But that's right. How much time do pilots spend up there? You were Marine Corps aviator. Yep.

How much time are Marine Corps pilots up there doing dog fighting type stuff? Man, it depends. In the Hornet and now in the F-35, on the fighter side, if you end up in like the top gun track, which is with the Navy, the Weapons School track, you'll do a decent amount. You can also end up on a track where you're kind of much more heavily air to ground and don't do as much.

If you're in the Marine Corps in a fighter, you're going to do some, but it can very greatly depending on which platform you're in, and then which track you end up. I was very lucky to be in a single seat, carrier-based, top-gun-based. So a ton, a ton of dog fighting. How do they teach that?

Where do they start? Man, they start in flight school, these very fundamental just called ACM. How to put on G, how to do tactical turns, how to be aggressive in the airplane by yourself, and then just kind of formation with another jet in a tactical sense. And then they just start you off slow.

Like, hey, you're going to start behind this guy. Just stay behind him. Okay, he's going to start off behind you. Try to, try to shake him. And it just builds on top of each other until you get to a point where you understand the geometry, And then they just kind of throw you to the wolves, which is just more and more flying. A lot of academics, they teach it really well.

But to see it, you got to, you have to be in the cockpit and look out and see it visually and understand it. And you just do a lot of flying. And that starts in flight school, more in flight training. And then once you get into the fleet and you're flying, and those blocks of training, you just do it a ton. It seems like a lot of angles, speed and G management. They were, they were.

Perfect. Well, not that I know. No, you're a spot on. I conceptually can describe all those three things. let's not go up and get in a dog fight because I'm like, like this. When we were in the mig, they did a, there is Jared Isaacman.

He owns, he did a lot of the, what would you guys call it, op four or the basically, he has a full civilian collection of aircraft. And they would go fly around. And so he had a bunch of pilots there and they were doing a dog fight. And I'm like just leaving my,

he's like, he's like, he's like, so of course, no idea what's coming. But he basically went over the, top and it just seemed like he was trying to have a shorter radius in the turn than the guy he was going after. Dude, you got it, man. Well, I didn't have it. I'm like I said, this is me.

Oh my God, I'm sweating again. That seemed like, and then, yeah, it just, I don't know. I mean, that sounds conceptually pretty easy, but I feel like, especially into that G load in the cockpit, and then, of course, if they change their orientation, that just seems hard. It is, it's, your description of is correct. And in some sense, it's not that complex. And, and, and, in some sense, it's not that complex in terms of, hey, this angle, this G, this geometry. What the complexity of it is, you hit the one is that there's a lot going on under G and trying to keep up with the airplane as you're aggressively maneuvering the jet. And also, too, the geometry is really easy to describe on paper. And you're looking for, oh, you look for this cue for line of sight to pick up or

aspect of change. And it all makes sense. When you're trying to perceive that in your brain, when things are literally going four or five hundred miles an hour, it's really hard. And as you can imagine with most things, the margin for air is really small. And there's kind of a saying, like, if by the time you see it, it's too late. So you have a really narrow window to identify, okay, he's doing this. I need to react this way. And that's what makes it tough, is recognizing it because you're just, things are happening so fast, the geometry is so narrow. But your description of what you're trying to, that's it. And it just takes some reps. You get used to it. And after a while, you learn to see things and maneuver quickly. But your description of that is spot on.

it's just a very hard thing to do in real time. How awesome, though, would it be to be a P-51 Mustang pilot? It would be the awesomest thing in the world. Because, again, I don't know anything about missiles, but I feel like in the modern era, I've talked to some modern-era pilots. Like, yeah, I just pointed my head in that way. And the heads up picked it up,

so I'm just launching stuff off, and I think people are dying. I don't think that's what it was happening in the P-51. I think you were about 27 inches from the back of this. Because then it was all, I mean, obviously, you had to calculate where you were going to, but it seemed to be it was all. machine gun fire and it was straight analog like just the closer angles. I mean, come on. And you're wearing a scarf. I mean, come on. I'm with you, man. That's an area to look back.

I'm like, I would kill to have done that. And leather hat, pull down goggles. And I'm not talking night vision. I'm just talking so the grease doesn't get your eyes. A hundred percent, man. A hundred percent. I'm with you. So do you think those guys would be able to hold their own in modern aircraft? think they actually might even be better airmen because of they were, and I'm not, I don't know much about the 51, but I don't know how much of it was hydraulically controlled. How, you know, I wonder what that feedback actually felt like. Yeah. You know, those, I think the mentality of those guys had, uh, they're also really smart. I think they would thrive. They would thrive in, in a current fighter because, you know, the technology is something you can learn. Um, it's really

hard to teach the mindset. It's really hard to teach the attitude. And I think one thing that I've enjoyed, you know, I did a podcast with a guy named Bud Anderson who just passed away recently. He was a 16 and a half kills and a P-51 in World War II, Triple Ace. Hold on. Did you say one-half kills? Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. How does this work?

Well, when you and your buddy, tag team a kill and you each get half credit for that. Okay. 16.5. I mean, I feel like you can go to a bar and be like, hey, buddy. This one's yours. I think they kept everything they could back then. But to your point, I mean, that's, that's a lot of kills. And the guy was just awesome.

But the thing about talking to him was the mindset and the mentality of a single-seat fighter pilot, I think those guys do extremely well today. I really do. What are the odds, like the dog fighting you guys are talking about when you guys are fighting? Is that mostly at the missile range or gun, or is there an overlap in that? Yeah, there's a big overlap. So like the long range to missile to the short-range gun, covers a lot of different ranges.

And you can, obviously, you know, there's technology now. You can be really effective far away. But the movement from weapon, short-roins missile to gun, you know, from long range to short-range to gun, there's different overlaps there. The out-of-still stands, if you're going to shoot someone with the gun, you've got to be really close. And, you know, that's hard to do, but that's certainly the most fun to do. But there's technology now, like, as fun as that sounds, you kind of want to avoid it, because getting in a super close dog fight

makes you really predictable for other people. You talk about evading Sam's. The last thing I want to do if there's a threat on the ground is getting into a dog fight with you because it may be a lot of fun, but the guy on the ground is like, this is awesome.

They're slow, they're predictable. I can see them. You can't maneuver. And so you have to really think about the value of those enclosed fights. You have to be good at it, but you kind of want to avoid it if you can because of all the things

that are out there, that could be a problem for you. Given the state of the technological world, I mean, I don't even know who would be, I know Russia has, what would it be at this point, fourth or fifth generation? I'm sure China has the same thing. What are the likelihood, let's say we were to have an air-to-air engagement with them, it terminating in a dog fight at that range? Or do you think people would be lobbing stuff at each other over the horizon? I think they are going to do everything they can to avoid that in-close fight.

Yeah. Because just like you said, the technology is out there. They're going to be lobbing things. That said, you're starting to get to a place where I don't know. know if parody is quite the right word yet, but there is undeniable, like, they see what we can do and they want to be able to do the same thing. And what parity ends up doing is that all these advantages that we have, if you do have parity, they kind of neutralize each other out and eventually what it gets to is you and I are going to scrap. So I think there's an eventuality

we are always thinking about. We're always working really hard to have that technological advantage to avoid it. But the good news is, you know, just generically speaking, like I've been asked this question before. I'd be extremely confident in a situation like that. Yeah. That we can do well in that environment, even though if it's not, I would still want to avoid it. I don't want to be in that situation. But the parody thing kind of makes us revert back to kind of the basics, the fundamentals,

and we have to be good at that stuff. Yeah, if you take all the advantages away and it's an equal fight. Yeah. What is the best fighter pilot ever say? His name is Pete Mitchell, by the way, call sign Maverick. It comes down to the man or woman in the box. There you go. How awesome is that movie for you to watch?

Frikin totally awesome. I love that movie. I absolutely love that movie. Technically accurate in every respect, right? How many times would your career... I mean, I love the one where he's flying underneath and then rotates over the top with another dude in closing... I just feel like you would leave that day without having your wings.

Yes. There's a lot of moves that would also be his last flight in that movie, but it's still awesome to watch. Oh, I mean like, take that day. Taking a jet on his own and going to arrange the ones. Yeah. There's a lot of things. Yeah.

A lot of things. I can see why the Navy is all about supporting both Top Gun and then Maverick. Totally. Yeah. It's that first bar scene in Top Gun where they're in their whites. Can you imagine the line of the recruiting office the next day? Dude, I was 14 when I saw that. And I'm like, and here we are again.

I'm going to do that. 100%. To this day, I think, you know, you get kids these day, watch that movie. I want to do that. I want to do that. Act of Valor didn't do us that well. You know, you guys did better with the top gun. Why did you side the Marine Corps over the Navy, though?

So I grew up in a town called El Toro as a kid. Very familiar with where it is. Okay, right on. Not with, I'm from California. Yeah, so yeah. Perfect. So there used to be a Marine base there. And I was a little kid.

I moved there when I five, my parents moved there for my dad's work. And I was like a mile from the flight line. So I grew up literally looking up seeing the jets at El Toro take off and land. Went to the air show every year. So I was just around the Marines. And it just got in my bloodstream, man. I had no, no family members, no experience, no background in the military. Nobody I knew was in the military.

But growing up, seeing the jets, it just at some point, I'm like, and then the movie comes out. And the thing about the movie was like, planes are on ships. I'm like, that's awesome. When I made the connection about a year later, about 15, I go, oh, the Marines land on ships. That was it. I'm like, I am doing that. So by 15, I'm like, I am 100% going to. be a Marine Corps fighter pilot.

And I think had I not live there, there's no way that happens. And then I'm assuming Annapolis is your commissioning source? Oh, God, no. I went to the local state school. I barely got into. I like you so much more already. I was in the, um, how did you survive in the ring knocker environment?

I've been in rooms. I don't think they meant to do it. But have you ever been in one where they're just, they're running their fingers on the table and you can hear it? I don't, I don't know if they mean to do it because I was a fake officer too. I was an LDO. I got commissioned.

I don't even have a college degree. Not a single second of higher education and somehow I'm in rooms. And it's like, hey, you don't actually need to knock that ring on the desk because you and I both know that I probably don't belong here anyway. So we can skip that step. We violently agree on that assessment. Yeah, I was the definite local boy made good. The nearest school to me was Cal State Fullerton.

It was I got into Fullerton. The Marine Corps requirements at the time, which is awesome, was, you know, I had to take the physical fitness test to get to OCS. OCS was certainly a challenge for me. It's not buds, but it was not easy. And yet I have a 2.0 GPA in anything you wanted. The thing I loved about the Marine Corps was you didn't need a technical degree. There's, I couldn't, there's no way I was smart up to get like an engineering or an aerospace degree. I got a degree in political science and and got commissioned, you know, finished officer candidate school, finished college, got my degree. And the Marine Corps didn't care. I went to the basic

school to compete with 250 other guys for my primary MOS. and the Marine Corps did not care where you came from, which was perfect for me because there is no chance I was going to get like a Marine Corps Rotsie scholarship and there's no chance I was going to get into the academy. And no judgment on that. It was not part of like my life growing up. It's not for everybody.

The service academies are not, I have nothing but respectful, but they're not for everybody. Same. I was, you know, a solid B-minus student in high school. That's much better than myself. And, you know, I had plans to get a commission in the Marine Corps

and I took the platoon leaders class, platoon leaders course path, and it was perfect. It was perfect for me. And then when did you finally realize you were going to get to fly for the Marine Corps, though? Yeah, that's a good story too. So I got commissioned. The Marine Corps commissions you either as a ground

or an air contract. I really wanted to fly, but when I applied for the OCS program, the ground slots was all they could give me. So I got commissioned as a ground officer. And so when I went to the basic school, everybody goes to the basic school. be a lawyer. You could be guaranteed to go to flight school or a ground guy. You go to the basic

school. And for the six months of the basic school, you compete against your peers. There's 250 guys per class. And each job, each MOS has a certain number. There could be 15 infantry, 10 tanks, 14 artillery that were two pilot slots. And so I competed in my class to get one of those two pilot slots. And I got the second of those two slots. So like the last couple weeks of the basic school, they announced what your MOS is going to be. That's when I found I was going to flight school. It was a stressful five and a half months, man. So not to reference everything to social media, but let's just acknowledge what era we live in.

We're controlled by these six-inch-tall robots in our hands. There's videos that come out where I think it's the Air Force again, where it's up on a TV. And they, what would they call it? They're basically letting them know what air flame is a selection. Yeah. I've noticed. I could call it the drop.

I've noticed a difference between, say, an F-22 reaction. and a KC-135. Yes. The KC-135 does his best to put his happy face on, but I think inside a portion of his soul died. I've seen those same videos. What a horrible way to get news

that you really don't want. I'm like, oh, that is a rough object. Yeah. They piece those together too, and the guy will get the raptor, and the next one is the 135, and they're kind of acting like the same level. And then there's like the C5 guys,

just like, Yeah. Good. Yeah. Big powerful jets, which is true. They are awesome. And God, God bless all those guys who are doing that stuff. I just do without them. I don't know. And I'm open to being wrong about this. How many people dream of flying a KC 135? It has to be done. Somebody has to do it. And I get it. And I, is there a way to, because you flew the F35 too. Yeah. Is there a path for a 135 driver to get into a. fighter one day or are they more along in the mobility track? I think it's pretty rare. They don't do a ton of of platform transitions between type. So you can fly the F-15, F-16, end up in the Raptor or F-35. A lot of that is because of evolution of airframes, though, right? Like they have to. Yeah. It's not impossible, it's not impossible, but I think it's very uncommon to end up in a track where you're flying a heavy and end up in a fighter. You get select. I flew a lot with the Air Force. It didn't exchange. I flew the Raptor with the Air Force. So I flew the F-22. That's like...

Is it cool? It's the coolest thing in the world. It's awesome. God, I love the videos of that where they take those angle. What do they call it when I'm going to call it? I want to call it smoke, but I know that's not what it is. When it's not what it is. When it deflecks off the leading edges. What is called it? trail? The vapor. Yeah. What causes that? It's really just the air pressure and just the moisture that's in the air and just the violent pressure. It's called a great photo. It's what it is. It's freaking awesome. But those guys get tracked, you know, in flight school and they end up in either heavies. You could, you know, there's different platform helicopters and then the fighter track. So they kind of know relatively early on it. They don't transition a lot. Obviously, you know this. Like there's not a platform out there that isn't absolutely essential and critical. Yeah. But I will say certainly for me, and I think it's true for most people, not all most.

That dream is usually I want to fly a fighter of some variety. And then sometimes it works out where you're not cut out for that. And sometimes it works out that you are and there's just no opportunities. And so it's really hard to differentiate that. And for me, all the things that I got to do, you have to recognize, like some of it's just good luck and good timing. Other things, you know, got to work hard and prepare, but the opportunity has to be there too. So it's a blend of both of those. but once you get into that track,

it's hard to jump out of that track. I wonder if there is a retention difference between the heavies and the fighters. I feel like if you're fighting around in the sky, just banging it out in a fighter, you're going to, like, 30 years might sound great. If you're watching other people do that, and, I mean, again, I'm not,

I never flew airlines and stuff, but those heavies, a lot of that, I bet you that is very valuable types of flying where you could roll out and pursue a different career. I wonder if there's a difference in retention. Yeah, that is a good question. And, you know, if you're in a C-130, a C-5, a C-17, a KC-C-1-35, I mean, you have an incredibly valuable skill that's very, very marketable. Oh, you're going to get snapped up instantaneously by a major when you get out. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know.

Yeah, that would be tough, especially if it was your dream. And yeah, you're like, sweet. We're flying in formation across the ocean. I am flying an aircraft carrier, and they are flying a Bugatti. man the f22 looks awesome it is it is it is is every bit as awesome as it looks is that one of the ones that has like the half a million dollar helmet it just what are you seeing through that thing

other than everything f22 is just very normal helmet the f35 what you're talking about and I was lucky enough to fly both the f35 has that just totally insane helmet that's got everything built into the visor there's no head up display in the cockpit anymore so it just follows basically the head the hud is always with you

everywhere wherever you look the hud is with you to include like we have something called the Das, the distributed aperture system, which lets you look through the skin of the jet. Stop it. Yeah, dead serious. And it looks real? It is real.

It's amazing. So probably the best analogy is if you have a brand new car and you put that thing in reverse, it's got that live camera or it takes the camera. Yep. And if somebody gets out of the car, you'll see them walking. You know what I mean?

That is what you have in the F-35. It's wild. Is that the latest and greatest what we have right now? That is the latest and greatest. It makes me wonder what? skunk works has stuffed out in area 51 other than obviously alien bodies. I hope so deeply there's alien bodies. I want aliens to be real so badly.

I think it would just calm human beings right down. Like, hey guys, we're not the biggest baddest dude on the block. Maybe take it easy. I have my doubts, though, because even though they have this amazing technology and ability to travel through space and time, they crash a lot when they get here. Yeah. So I'm not so sure about that. That's awesome.

It's like, really? They can travel a light speed. All the way to the end and this is how you get aboard here. Like seriously. And then they just can't stop crashing when they're here. Okay. Okay. I want to believe, though.

I want to believe so badly. The F-35, man. Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, how do you even evolve off of that airframe? Yeah, it's, I mean, the F-35 is undeniably the most advanced thing. And I think when you're looking at the sixth gen, the next man fighter. Is it just more of everything? maybe a little bit faster, a little bit smaller signature for stealth.

I mean, you're definitely going to get those things. And I think there's a blend of like knowing what's going on, like the information that you have, which is super important, infrared, laser, electro, optical, all these different spectrums, you know, out of band type stuff, like jamming radars is a big deal. Like, okay, I'll operate in the infrared spectrum. All these different spectrums. We did a really good job in the F-35 with that. I think the next evolution is a broader range of spectrums.

But I think the most important thing about that. that is sharing that. Is it, can you get that information, and it's still a very low detection? Can I share that with you on the ground? And you're like, holy cow, you can now see what's going on. And the information gap that you have over another,

and you guys know this well, if you have a big information gap, if you know what's going on and they don't. You get to crush them. It's, and that's how a- Or if you can make them think something's happening that isn't. Even better, right?

And so that's where I think you're going to see the advancement. I don't know if it's going to be like that much faster, turn that much better. and the stealth will probably be improved. That thing you just talked about, I know what's going on, and I can make you think something, that advantage, as you've seen it,

that also helps, too, with a smaller, lighter, maybe less firepower organically. Yeah. But if you have the information advantage, surprise, stealth, all those things, that I think is what the evolution is going to look like. I've heard they greenlit top gun three.

All right. I heard the premise was manned versus unmanned. You think it'll ever go fully unmanned? Oh man, you were putting me on the spot here. I'm going to give you. No answer you give is going to, you're going to get heat either way. I'm going to get heat either way. Here's in a fighter world, I do think so.

I think in the fighter world. And I'm talking about single seat fighter. I think the evolution is eventually you're unmanned. I don't think that for all airplanes. And yeah, I know, I know. And I understand. And I'm torn a little bit. I am. I'm torn on that.

And it's not going to be tomorrow. It's not going to be in 10 years. But the arc of that in terms of what you want that platform to do. And what I'm basing it on is, and my limited understanding is the evolution of technology is so freaking rapid right now. Like, okay, what's technology going to do in 40 years? And if you think about in those terms, like, can we replace in those platforms? My answer is unpopular is I think so. Yeah.

I do. I mean, we're both old enough to remember 40 years ago. And I remember rotary telephones, cradling, having a shoulder pain, cradling a phone while dialing. Even that thing, that thing. Well, that's what I was going to wait for to. Yeah. I don't maybe the most creative. Also, at that time, I was eight.

But so, you know, maybe the most creative minds at their, in tech had some idea. But did they ever have that idea? I mean, we have access in those devices. do I think 95% of known human knowledge. Totally. And for good and bad, the social interactions. I mean, you're walking around with a device that has multiples, the power of the first space shuttle.

Yeah. Or what landed on the moon. Sorry, people. I believe we actually went to the moon. Maybe we didn't do as much as we said we did. But I believe we went to the moon. And also I believe the Earth is round. So whatever.

So, I mean, I couldn't have fathom that 40 years ago. I am I also feel like technology is evolving at a more rapid pace that it was for the last 40. Yeah. So who knows? My guess would probably be wrong four years from now, let alone put in the zero on there. Yeah. The evolution tells me like in that world, the man fighter is on the clock. That's what I think.

As unpopular as that might be. Well, with a very small, very, very small subsection of people that will be unpopular. Yeah. How many fighter pilots do you think there are in the U.S.? Oh, jeez, I don't know, man. 1,500 maybe? Yeah, there's, I mean, there's a couple, there's thousands, yeah. Not that many, though.

No, no, not that many. And I don't think the fighter community would be like, no, we're always going to have. I think they're wrestling with that right now. I mean, even just UAVs, just in the last 15 years in the variation of how long it can stay up, what it can carry, the technology that's allowed us to operate that. And you just put that on a timeline and go, all right, what's that? going to look like in 30, 40 years. I think there's a lot of open-mindedness that it's going to look, it's going to, we can't even think about or fathom what it's going to look like. And to me, it aligns with, can you take a person in this mission set? Can you take a person out? Yeah.

Would you want, yes. Why would I want to put that person in that spot? So I think the arc is there. It's going to take some time, but I think that's the path wrong. You know, I look at the the ISR platforms we have when I was in and I'm well dated at this point. No, but predators and reapers and the sensors and occasionally you'd get an armed one. And then I fast forward that to what's going on in Ukraine. And essentially, not to reduce this too simply, but they're taking a DGI drone, a commercial off-the-shelf item, weaponizing that. And honestly, some of these cameras, like these DGI drones have like Hasselblad cameras in glass. And yeah, you can get thermal optics. I'm looking at some of this. Like, man, that was cutting edge military technology 10 years

ago. Clearly it's a different platform and it's in its boundary by batteries and FAA and all these things. But that was the cutting edge of warfare 10 years ago. You can get that with a credit card now. I don't even know what that looks like a half a decade from now. Yeah, we're on the same page. You plot that growth curve in the future 10 years. Like, dude, it's hard to imagine that. So I've talked with a bunch of guys I serve with. I always ask him the same thing. Did you ever think about an armed small drone chasing you down while we're on the bat. Not a single one of my buddies ever even considered that to be an option. I am very happy to not be trying to figure out that

problem because that's a real problem. And then you can go again on social media and watch these drone demonstrations from China where they have dragons breathing fire fighting each other in 3D space. And then I only think of is what if they targeted that towards infrastructure and weaponize that. Or like, I really like the sea whiz. I hope we have something better. And just hosing that thing down. I love that sea whiz.

That thing's awesome. It is. So I think it would probably do okay. But what about frontline troops on the ground? And 10,000 drones, which are launched by a submarine just off the coast. And honestly, if I was China, I would still have him do the dragon display when it was on the way in. Because that

is going to be in it. I mean, why would you not? It's not like they're going to stop them anyway. Scared the living crap out of them as they're on the way. We're living in a different world, man. 100%. 100%. Man.

How was it teaching at Top Gun? It was awesome. Especially at that point in my career. It was only my second tour. So I'd done four years in the fleet, you know, two regular deployments on carriers. And my next job is I'm an instructor at Top Gun.

So I'm pretty, you know, relatively young. I'm a Marine captain, 2003 when I get there. And to have that kind of responsibility and that kind of dedicated training at that point of my career, it was, it was the best. It's the best flying you can do. It's the best environment. And you have this

incredible responsibility of we're at war when I was a top gun. So we're training guys to go to war. It was awesome. I loved. It was the best job you could have at that time on your career. Did you open speeches by taking the F-18 Natops and throwing it in the garbage in front of a 500 square foot American flag in an open hangar bay? Where do you think they got that idea for the movie from? I mean, that's directly from me. I love that. No, it's, it is a cool place, man. It really is. So what's different about the flying there? And why don't they teach that flying to everybody? Is it just, does it require more a smaller group to actually get it?

Or do you think it is something that could be taught and they just want to keep that place as something more elite? I think it's a similar scenario to what you probably dealt with. It's very hard to mass produce special operations. Yeah. And I don't mean to call Top Gun Special Operations, but it really is a very niche. Yeah. It's so I think why you have to have a relatively small number, it's really hard to mass produce that, is you're not just teaching the skill. And by the way, like the skills that we teach Top Gunn, that is what you teach in the fleet.

It's all the same stuff. Is it refinement then more? It's it's that's one is you're exactly right. It's refinement. The other part is what you're expecting someone to be able to do when they leave is not just be refined, but to be able to explain that to other people. So you're using it as like, so if you come to Top Gunner, you're the student, you come from Squatron. One, you come to Top Gun for 13 weeks. The time that I'm dedicated, we might spend 45 minutes to an hour flying,

and we're going to spend five, six, seven hours debriefing. Much of that debrief is that you learn the skill of identifying what happened to teach you to a relatively young pilot who may not ever go to Top Gun, but he has to be good enough to fight in combat. So the skill of teaching, it's really hard to be a good teacher if you don't really know the nuance of what's going on. And just like your description earlier, dog fighting, it's all nuance. It's little small things.

If you can pull up those small errors, that takes a lot of reps, a lot of experience, a lot of flying, which is hard to mass produce. But we're taking it beyond a top gun to not just be good at that, but to be able to teach it. That's really hard to do. So you have a limited number of people in a relatively short period of time to get them back to their squadron to take the other 25, 30 people in their squadron, depending on what it is so they can get better. So, and they are expected to try to pass.

that knowledge. That is their charge. So there's a force multiplication aspect of this as well. That's exactly right. That is exactly why they're there. I didn't know or, again, let's be honest, my complete optic on Top Gun is Top Gun and Maverick. To me, both documentaries. That's why I'm here.

It's all good. Yeah. And so it almost seemed as if in those movies and it probably, how can you unpack an entire career, that experience in two hours anyway. It almost seemed as if it was, it's a fight to get there. And then once you get there, you're part of that elite. There was never the leap in either of those where, hey, your job is actually to go back and make everybody else better as well. It was more like, hey, I don't know if you guys know this, but on my patch here, whatever Top Gun looks like is on there.

The differentiator for a Top Gun graduate. And then, of course, a Top Gun instructor is the ability to teach it. That's the hardest part. And you probably saw this too, guys that were really, really good. And you go, hey, teaches other guys. Yeah, and they can't. Yeah. That, this, you talked about it.

the force multiplication of the scaling, if you can't teach it, you really don't contribute the way that we need you. So small number of guys, super intense. And then the expectation is you go back and scale that to the fleet. That's what we're there for. How many students come through at a time? We typically put through, and I'm dating myself, it's probably pretty close. We're going to put through eight or nine crews. Okay. So some single seat, some two seats are probably, you know, roughly 15 guys at a time, 15 piles of time. And it's about 12-ish weeks, 12 to 13 weeks for the course. Do they bring their own planes or do you guys have top gun planes? Both. It's funny how I can imagine some military aviars developing a sense of ownership over a gray F-18 that's going to be shared very widely. Oh, yeah. They get emotional about it. That's Uncle Sam's plane.

I'm pretty sure. I was wondering if you have like, okay, we're going to be in the top gun planes. These things have been written hard and put away extremely wet. So a little loose around the edges. Yeah. I mean, it's people don't think about, even in the SEAL community, I mean, we would do turnovers overseas. You'd think that everybody has a complete weapon system.

And every time and a lot of time, you're hot swapping that stuff. Yeah. You would want to have, in a perfect world, sure, every military aviator could have their own aircraft. But man, imagine the, what people also don't get is the maintenance. Yeah. God. Yep. What is on an F-18?

If you fly for an hour, what is that equivalent to a maintenance time on the ground? A couple hours for a crew of probably six. Yeah. And it probably varies a little bit of like, you know, cycles of you can fly to a bunch for a couple days with no, almost no maintenance. I shouldn't say none, but very limited. And then there are times we'll tear airplanes down to the bone, man. Like you'll tear, you'll go in and like the engines are gone. The wings are, I mean, so the depth of maintenance, it's not necessarily every day, but in aggregate, the lifetime of a jet, the amount of work that goes into the keep those things falling

is crazy. Those, the maintainers, I mean, you want to talk about unsung heroes of like, it's crazy what they, what they do. It's incredible. Climbing inside of a turbine to switch A gas tank. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I've actually recently seen some pictures of people climbing inside of airplane gas tanks. The hardest of passes ever.

Crazy. I mean, absolutely not. It takes spolunking or these caving psychos to a whole. Yeah. And then do that on a carrier at night hanging out. And we need this jet flying tomorrow morning. What those people are doing is just, it's remarkable. And I was very fortunate.

I spent a lot of time in the maintenance department as a Marine and I loved it. those guys are the best. So one of the things I appreciated about the Air Force documentary, they made it through a season without a single down day. And they did highlight the maintenance crews. Deservedly so. Working all night long.

And I don't know much about the F-16 specifically, but I'm like, that looks like a really major component that you're taking out in the middle of the night with headlamps on. I watch that same documentary. The Blue Angels have one as well. And I can't speak to the details of those two teams. but to have the amount of flying they do all over the country and the world. Yeah, because they shuttle those things too, don't they?

Everywhere. And so for them to do an entire season with that, that is a remarkable thing. I love that you highlighted that because that's on the backs of people you don't know their names, they don't see their face. Like that is just hardworking people that are making things happen. And that's the military though, right? Like that's the beauty of the military. So one of the things that I wish was different about the special operations community

is they, you might be involved. is something that makes the news and it's going to be, everything is going to be focused on such a small, concentric circle of people. Yeah. But the pyramid that that little circle sits on top of, if you pull any one of those chunks out there, it doesn't even,

you can't even operate. Like special operations cannot operate without conventional support, period, full stop. It's just not going to happen. No. But they never make the movies. I learned about, I learned that lesson on the carrier when I was landing early in my career and by

myself landing a jet aboard the carrier thinking like, I'm the man. Look at what I'm doing. And then one night I had a landing in a really bad weather situation where basically I get talked down by the ship and the LSOs. I'm like, I don't even know how I landed. I literally do not know how this happened. And I realize, I'm like, that's probably not good. It was rough.

Yeah. But what the lesson I took away from was like, I couldn't, I couldn't move my jet one inch on the flight deck if it wasn't for literally hundreds, if not thousands of people, takeoffs, landings, armament, wetment. So you can, in your brain, you can think, oh, yeah, this is me. And I was fortunate early in my crew to learn that lesson like, dude, take a step back and look around. What you're doing is great. This is awesome.

But to think like you're making this happen on your own is crazy. A carrier at sea, every single person is doing something. And if they don't do it, you're not going flying. So I learned to get away from my own ego of like, hey, check me out. Look what I'm doing to. I don't think I couldn't do any of this without the crew. So you got to learn that at some point in your career. It's hard to see that sometimes.

But I totally agree with you, man. Yeah, it is a tough one for sure. I spent about 30 days on a carrier. Actually, no, it wasn't that long. We went from Guam to Australia. Okay. It's an interesting crew. The Kitty Hawk.

Very, very unique environment. Indeed. It got lost many times. I do not know how to. People think I know everything about the Navy. I think I've spent a total of 18 days on a naval vessel in 17 years. You get turned around in that thing. Yeah.

And it's like, hello, sir. Yeah. can you tell me where I am and also maybe walk with me until I can get back to where I'm going. I don't know where the daylight is. But the deeper you go, the more interesting it can become. Indeed. I have slightly more time on a carrier and I had the same experience. So you probably can read the hieroglyphs.

I know how to get around. It took some time. I didn't read. I know how to operate. I probably have a year and a year and eight months of total sea time. So you get used to it. But what you're describing, how many times I'm just like, can you help me get to my room. Like I'm lost on this thing. And you get used to it. But yeah, that place, the care is

crazy. It's crazy. I feel like the deeper you go, it becomes more like the Lord of the Rings. There's Middle Earth people down there. And you open doors and you're like, oh, hey, I'm just going to close this door because you scare me and I don't know what's going on in here. It is wild. Yeah. I mean, a floating city doesn't even capture it. No. It's so much more than that. Yeah. Yeah. How all that works. I think most of the time I was on that boat, I was thinking about Are we really sure that all the welds on this thing are good that are holding it together? Are we really sure this thing's watertight? I'm telling you, like we said earlier, the Navy makes the nearly impossible look routine.

They make it look like no big deal. But it is the things that are happening to make that thing function is crazy. Yeah, but we their reactor. Yes. Steam catapults. Yeah, that seems like two great things to have on the same vessel. Crazy. Yeah.

How did your military service come to an end? I was so I finished my F-35 command tour I went to school which was awesome I love my school experience and I went to the Pentagon and I was it was that which one the school or Pentagon I've never set foot in that building which I have heard is the home of the Illuminati I don't believe that's the case yeah I have I'm not going to say horror stories I'm not going to say I've heard horror stories but I have heard that building described is what would be the best word odd slightly maybe detached from reality at times yeah very very senior officer heavy yep yeah what was your experience all accurate yeah you know the pending on is an interesting place because certainly at my level and our if we went at you know at your level like all you want to do is get back to an operation squadron you don't want to be there no um and then you get insight to things you know how things happen and like again, most of the people there are working their butts off to do good things.

It is a crazy place. I did two years there. I would have never wanted to go back, but I don't look back and like, that place sucks. I look at him like, man, there's a lot going on there. In my mind, most of the people on the clock to get out of there to go back to be around Marines and be around a fleet squadron. But you do get some perspective on how things happen at the most senior level. And I was on the joint staff, you know, honestly, I interacted at certain times with this

and is fairly senior folks. And you know as well as most of the people are working hard to do a good job. That's what's going on. And then there's some craziness. But for me, the interesting about my Pentagon tour is while I was at the Pentagon, I got selected for colonel and I got selected for command, which meant I was going to finish up my two years of the Pentagon,

and I was going to go back as a colonel to fly the of 35 again. And kind of an odd situation, but it was the first time in my career, that I was going to go do something that in my mind, I'm like, I've kind of already done this. And it felt a little, for the first time, it felt stale. And I had this thought that I was going to be at the bottom of the ladder of an F-35 looking up and being like, yeah, okay. And I'm like, that is an unhealthy way to fly fighters. It's actually in anything. And when I, and I told myself, I'm like, hey, you can't go fly F-35s if you don't have, every other time I got into an airplane. I'm like,

I cannot wait to get in this airplane. As I thought about it, I'm like, okay. And I knew something had diminished in terms of my passion to do that. And as soon as I had that thought, I talked to my wife, she was like, she didn't care, whatever you want. She was super supportive. I came back into work about two months before I pinned on Colonel, because he pinned on Colonel, you owe them three years. And I declined promotion to Colonel.

I declined command for F-35, and I put in for retirement. That has to raise some eyebrows. Well, at least those first two. All three. Yeah. And what's interesting about that, and it's just kind of this weird administrative thing, all three go to a different chain of command. One's like manpower.

One is like... Describe the military in one sense. Yeah, there you go. All three go to a different chain. All three go to different chain. And one's like the first general in your chain of command, whatever it is. So I like had three PDFs up on my screen, send, send, send, and I'm just like, and then I'm just waiting for the phone to ring, who's going to call first.

And the first one was the command slate guy, the, I think it's called manpower. I can't remember what it's called. but he calls, he's like, what the, what the effort are you doing? Anyway, long story short, I just knew I was going to go back and I'm like, this is not how you're supposed to feel to fly an airplane. So I submitted for retirement. And I, and that was it. That's how I got out.

And it's a weird time. Most people are 05s over 20 years. It's a good time to retire or 06 over 26, kind of the next retirement leap. That makes sense, yeah. I left at 05, 06 select at 23, like a really odd time. But I just, I just knew. And I didn't, I didn't, never thought I'd fly four different airplanes. I never thought it'd be a ground fact with a bunch of things.

I never thought any of these things. So at that point, I wasn't, I certainly wasn't doing it for a retirement. None of those thoughts were in my mind. It was, this is the first time since being a Marine, I didn't have the same excitement I used to have about being a Marine fighter pilot. And I'm like, okay, you got to go do something else. I had no jobs, no thought. I hadn't put any consideration on what's next, but I knew I needed to go do something

different. So that's how it ended. Not a lot of people would make that choice. The easiest, not the easiest, when people are in that spot, the known easier in air quotes, whatever that means for people is really enticing. Yeah. Sticking out, you're already past 20. What is it?

Every year past 20, it's 0.5 on your retirement on your base pay only. Thank you, everybody. Special pay is not included. Yeah. Yeah, that's a tough one, especially not knowing what you wanted to do after. No plans. I just knew I needed. to figure something else out. And I had had time. It was the fall of, I think, 16 of my math is right.

And I was going to, you know, I had until the following April or May. I, I didn't, I didn't like the next day. Yeah, they don't boot you out the door. They give you some time to offer. But it was a, it was a big move. It was a big decision and certainly unexpected and something that, to be quite honest, I didn't really wrestle with it. I was like, hey, I don't feel this way. My wife and I talked, and I just knew. And so the next day, I just said, hey, I need to move on to do something else. That's kind of awesome. It was. Myself, I would have toyed with that for 18 months while I re-enlisted. And then made it just deeply ingret for the next three years.

I made the wrong choice again. Why can I never learn from my mistakes? That's awesome. How long was it after getting out before you started working with Jocko again? Because we're going to get to what you did with Jock in, but I'm just curious how long that gap was. You want to hear something crazy is. So I'm in the Pentagon. I, that's the day I, I don't remember what the day was, August, whatever.

I submit for all that stuff. I get out or I saw him going to get out. That day, I'm on the Pentagon bus taking me to the parking lot because that's how it is at the Pentagon. You get on a bus to get to the parking lot. And the phone rings in his Lafabin. And he and I stayed in touch. We were obviously in Ramadi together.

And he's really good about staying in touch. And he's just a guy that we'd say connected to in the previous year. The book Extreme Ownership came out. He invited me to like a book thing in D.C. where I was. And he just stayed in touch. he called me on the bus. And he's like, hey man, things are really growing here. The book is being well received.

Or a company that he and Jocko had started was a two-man show. He's starting to pick up some traction. He's like, we'd love for you to come back with us. And I'm like, Leif, funny you should call. Funny you should call. And so like, no joke, man. Like that evening, I call him back.

And I'm like in my, in like my living room, doing basically a handshake deal with Clay Finjaco, like, hey, I'm getting out. I can start working in January. I go in terminal leave in April. And they're like, cool, come to an event. Maybe they were going to do an event in Virginia. Come to an event. Come to an event. Come check it out. Let us know what you think. I go to the event. I'm like, this is cool. And then I started working with him. It's like, the coolest thing has ever happened. And I cannot take credit for any of it. It just sort of fell in my lap. So that transition, and it happened very quickly. And the timing of that just sort of sequence in a way

that I'm like, holy crap, I can't believe this worked out. But it did, man. It's funny that you describe it like that. I turn 48 on Friday. And I think I've learned very little at my laps around the sun. My performance in life would be indicative that that's a very true statement. But I have, I don't know if I've ever really been successful by trying to force stuff. What I have learned, specifically I'll say I think in my 40s. I don't think I realize this.

But the less I try to control the outcome, the more. Often it seems that I arrive at that place and I have no explanation as to why, but now I am and constantly working on this because I my superpower is the ability to worry about things. I can't control. It's real fun. Really useful bandwidth just sitting there just crushing anxiety staring at a ceiling fan at two o'clock in the morning. I'm sure I'm the only one's ever done that. but if I can put it down and actually stop thinking about it, the number of times that within the next few days, or in the timeline that I probably would have tried to square peg the round hole,

it works itself out that way. And I don't, I mean, I don't have enough faith in myself to truly recommend that approach to anybody else. But I tell you what, it's uncanny. And the less I try to control, the more the else.

outcomes seems to be aligning with what I was looking for in the first place. Which is scary to tell people. I think you're right though. Like, hey, just let go of the wheel and let the Tesla auto drive do it. Well, to your point, though, I mean, like, it's part of it putting faith in yourself. Like, hey, you've put yourself in this position and you got to trust that it's going to work out. You know, just like, you don't just close your eyes and hope for the best. But it's also the volume of work you've put in.

Yeah. Right? Because, but, you know, by the time you hit your fourth decade, I don't care who you are or what you're doing, I mean, you've got some time in the trenches somewhere. You've got a dossier. Maybe you got a couple, you could separate them out into things that you've done. But in all of that, the things that are going to come are through all that volume of work you've put in as well. 100%.

I agree with you. I totally agree with that. Yeah. It's just, I don't know how to teach that. Yeah. Because it's a little scary. Yeah, and it's on someone else too, too. And if I had told myself that, my 20s, I'd probably be dead.

Oh, it'll be fine. Yeah. Oh, here's the key. don't worry about it. And then when I didn't make my mortgage payment, like, you told me not to worry about it. There is a balance indeed. But I think we said it's spot on. And I did that. And, you know, doesn't, things don't, and also, you know, things don't always work out exactly the way you want. Yeah, that's okay. But this one, I cannot, I cannot take credit for this. I cannot say that I certainly didn't maneuver and set up. I didn't. I just kind of just did the things that we did

while we're on active duty and the opportunity was there. And the smartest thing I ever did was take them up on their offer. And I knew them. I knew them from Ramadi. And I knew who they were. I had not talked to Jocko since I came back from the deployment with him.

I went to a party at his house, maybe two weeks after we got back. I had not seen him in 10 years. And he's like, hey man, getting the band back together. Come to him. I'm like, Roger. That was kind of it.

That's the difference between men and women. Of many, let me be very clear on that. I have friends who are dudes. If you give me two minutes and we haven't seen each other in seven years, we're pretty much caught up and back to speed. 100%. I have watched my wife.

That does not work with my wife. She will need three years to get caught up on the two years that she just missed. And I say that with no negative judgment whatsoever. It's just fascinating to me. Guys, we just don't communicate like that at all. Jack, when I picked up where we left off like it was the day before.

100%. Man, do you think that extreme ownership, I enjoyed that book? it is still my lifelong goal to make, I'm going to write a book that is a parody of that book. It's called extremely limited ownership. I've told both of them this to their face. Chapter one, there are no bad leaders, only bad teams. Leif actually recommended chapter two, which was nobody told me that.

Because I had him on a text threat and I was messing with him because their book is fantastic. Yeah. I don't think. And I, and I, and I, we both know. Mark, the publisher we work with at St. Martin's, because he, I think he was the editor for that book, too. I think so. I don't think they realized that one was going to be as successful as it was. I think that might have caught them.

I have actually asked Jock Or Leif about this, but I'm curious if they thought it would be as successful than it was. Yeah. I would assume they, and I put in words in his mouth, they knew it was a good book, but to predict this. You can write a good book and have a good nowhere or nowhere in your lifetime. 100 years from now, they're like, hey, guys, we just found this ancient tech. Yeah.

It's called extreme ownership. Apparently you need to wake up at four and be exhausted all day and be, have very disciplined and it reshapes the humanity into the arc of human kind. Yeah. I think predicting this like nobody could have known, I mean, what it's done. Even when I read it, you know, I, after that call, I like got the book. Yeah, like, Dan, I got to do my homework now. And I'm thinking like, oh, I'm going to hear some stories or catch up with my bros.

And I'm like, oh, man, when I read it, I'm like, holy cow, this is nothing. nothing like what I expected. So, yeah, the arc of that has been remarkable. Yeah. Okay, so how did you meet Jocko live? We're skipping all over time, but I love it. Yeah, so I leave, I'm at Top Gunn, and I'm thinking, like, I had done everything I ever thought I ever wanted to do, flying fighters.

But you asked me earlier, and I think it was a good question. It was like, I was a Marine. I wanted to be a Marine. I didn't want to just fly airplanes. I wanted to be a Marine. Now, it was interesting as I joined the Marine Corps, I got selected to fly airplanes. All the flight trainings with the Navy, I was. was in a carrier base squadron so all the flying with the navy and I go to top gun and I wouldn't

have traded a second of that I loved my time with the Navy it was the best but there's this little nagging thing in my head like okay I was going to get out I'm ready to get out I'd flown f18s f16s I was topkin all that stuff been on combat deployments I have to do something you in my mind I had to do something uniquely Marine Corps when you were at those squadrons did they lateral you how did that work did you go back to a home unit that was a Marine Corps unit or were you attached to the Navy squadron? I was in a Marine Corps squadron. Okay.

In Miramar that was attached to a Navy carrier air wing. So. I love the military. Yeah. So many. Of course, let's complicate this. And of the house. So your chain of command was still back at Miramar, but you were operationally over with the Navy? Back and forth.

So when we're in Miramar, we're in the Marine Corps chain of command and at some point like six months before deployment, it's, they call it you chop to the, Navy. And so we are then on the carrier. And it might as well, we might as well have Navy painted on our jets. Says Marine, we're Marines, of course, but we are on it. We are one of the squadrons in a Navy carrier air wing. So for all intensive purposes, operationally, we act just like a Navy squadron. Let's be honest. If anybody, you're close enough for them to read that writing, they're having a really bad day. They're having a bad man. And actually, you probably are too, because you probably need to do it punched at that point because you're real, real low.

So I spent all that time. And it was awesome. I wanted to do something Marine. And, And the Marine Corps is the only service that does this. They take their pilots to become forward air controllers, which is essentially a JTAC that's a pilot. We call it a fact. Same idea. Same idea. Yeah. I used to talk with them all the time.

They were for a ground controller. If I could offload the stack and you know what I want, I can tell you what I want. You can manage the stack and like, and I'm trying to think like, okay, is it a thousand p. Per this type of aircraft or two? I have a better idea. Let's let it do. The airplane handle all of that. So what you're saying is exactly how Laif Jocko and I got to end.

end up working together. So I volunteer to be a four-air controller. They send me to Japan. The Japan unit is like, hey, we need volunteers to go to Iraq. I volunteer for that. We get to set up for Iraq. Long story short, my best friend was in Ramadi. I'm the one filling out who goes where. So I send myself to Ramadi with my team. So I end up in Ramadi. I'm back in Ramadi. Not what I was thinking. I want to be a Marine. I get to Ramadi in maybe a month. It's some relatively short period of time that I'm there that tasking or bruiser shows up. And exactly what you described. They had this incredible mindset, which was they had J-TACs.

They had dues that were fully qualified and capable of controlling airplanes. They were also SEALs. Yeah. And the question was the SEALs, my Anglico team, my team of Marines, we were all there to support the Army. And when we got together in these briefs, you know, Jocko and Leif and I would talk and they're like, hey, why don't you do all the air stuff? and my J-Tax can be seals. And I'm like, this is perfect because I don't want to be a seal.

I want to control air. And what that meant was my team and it was mostly Laced Platoon because Jocko split up his task unit between East and West, but we had an Anglico team with them too. So I'm doing most of my works with Charlie Platoon is

I essentially just connect with them so all the operations they were doing, anything involved there, which was just about everything, I'm the fact. And it makes sense. For what you said is, I understand how,

I'm literally talking to friends, old squadron mates doing type 1 gun runs in F-18s. And to that point, like, who better to do that than an F-18 pilot? So it just turned out that we both realized that we could help each other out by just doing what we are really capable of doing. And we had to do it together because we were supporting a larger 5,500 dudes soldiers in a brigade. And it just made more sense to work together. So I end up doing tons and tons of operations with them. And so, you know, how it is you build a good relationship? and you learn to trust each other.

I never thought in the summer of 2006 as a fact in Ramadi with Jocko's task unit that 10 years later I'd be working at his company. You don't have those thoughts. Well, he probably never thought he was gonna have a company no, no way, not then. But it was all built on in Ramadi and in 2006, Ramadi was a brutal place.

There was a lot going on and we were busy and he was crazy. And I, to this day, I was really lucky to have those guys around me, to have those guys around me because I was in over my head, man. I was a fighter pilot that got dropped down in the middle of downtown Ramadi in 2006. Yeah, what could go wrong? Yeah, what could go wrong? And listen, I understood airplanes. I knew Cass.

I understood all that stuff. But urban battlefield in Ramadi in 2006. So I'm surrounded by I could not have been more lucky to be around those guys. And so I really, I revered working with them. We had a great relationship. And so fast forward 10 years later, we had that connection. And I think there was just this natural sense of if they wanted to bring someone in. And I was someone they knew as a known quantity having our time been together.

That's my, that's my, how did I get to work with Laf and Jago? That's the story. So you were out on patrol and on missions with those guys. All of them, ma'am. So I'm trying to think of the schools that I went to. The first one I got sent to was comm school, which I wasn't super stoked about. And then I realized, oh, hey, you always need to calm guy. This isn't bad.

Then I got to go to sniper school. Like this is a classic parent, getting even better. Then out to Fallon for the J-TAC course. And I've talked, you know, people, their optic on war is the same as my optic on aviation, which is movies, right? They, I've had people ask me, well, when they're shooting at you, why don't you just drop a bomb on them? And I'll just Google on my phone, overhead image of Ramadi, put it out there and be like, where would you like? Yeah, where you want to put that? Where you want to put that?

Oh, and by the way, how are you going to describe that to a dude that's at 10,000 feet? Yeah. A little bit more complex. Indeed. And that's the answer why. Yeah. That is the world that I lived in. You were describing that exactly right.

Big to small can be real tough. Yeah. Yeah. The world at 10, 20,000 feet looks very different from the world on the ground. When I went up in that backseat ride, that's actually what it was designed for, was for JTax at the command to go up. You want to talk about, you know, I've heard pilots talk about it because they'll ask us, you know, Hey, I'm like, I told you to put it in the red building. Yeah.

They're like, come on, dude. Cool. Where's the red? It's next to the tree. Yeah. How can you not see this? Getting my ass handed to me. Save me now.

They're just like, I'm like 80 kilometers away. I'm looking with my sensor. Don't see a red tree, which by the way, it's black and white camera. Yeah. Going up in the back, it actually, even when I was simulated in the calls, it changed the vernacular instantly because I could talk off of what they could see versus what I could see. see on the ground. And they are not the same language. No. Or same template. I mean, and how could they be? I could see, you know, I can see, you know, I can see, you know, what is it, 12 miles

with horizon, but realistically, you're going to, you could see two blocks. That's way different than a guy who can see the curvature of the earth. It's a challenging problem, man. Your description is so good, man. And that's exactly, that is exactly what I was thinking of. That's exactly what I was trying to do. And that was the world that I lived in. Yeah. And And I can tell you, I went back to flying after being a fact. And I was way better in the cockpit understanding what that perspective was. It made me so much better. Here's a real radio call I'm not super proud of.

I may or may not have told an aircraft to just drop a bomb in a field one time. So I could at least talk them on from there. Because I was so unsuccessful at explaining where we were. Like, listen, I don't care where you put it. Don't hit any buildings. drop something from your aircraft and I'll at least give you a cardinal direction because this isn't working. From the mark.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, I didn't know what else to do. I tried everything the big to small. I'm like, we're not. And another thing to remember, I'm stationary. These aircraft are orbiting. Like, come on. And you know this too from being in the airplane.

Both guys, the guys in the ground, everybody's doing their best. Yeah. And you're talking past each other. It's not like the person up there's having a Machiaado. Yeah. And you're getting the frustration. And especially, and I learned this too, obviously being on the ground in firefights, like, you know how imminent that is. And so every second you're trying to explain something is just another second going by, like, that time.

So your description is exactly right. That was the world I lived in with Laf and Jocco for that time in Ramada. It was a crazy time. Yeah, it's a little different optic getting in a gunfight in an alleyway or a street. Indeed. I couldn't do what you guys did, mostly because I would probably eject when I couldn't find the aircraft carrier. I definitely would have been retired for multiple ejections. It's like, it's not looking good.

I've got to punch out. Like, sir, you're at 35,000 feet. And it's a VFR. I'm like, I feel like I'm lost. I'm out. But, man, I tell you what, the upfront on the street, like you said, the snaps, the whizzes going by your head. It's, it'll get your attention. It will.

There's a lot more than I bargained for. Yeah. How was your first experience with that? I mean, terrifying. It was awful. You know, I certainly never. And then it never got not terrified. Welcome to the real world.

Well, that was Ramadi, right? And that was what that was, is you got there. And once, once the first time you're in a firefight, you know, you're like, holy cow, I mean, I have these vivid memories of bullets, crack, all that stuff. But it just, it was just so persistent there. And it got to a place like, we were doing a ton of movement to contact. And if you just think about what that mission is, just like, this is crazy. Like, we're just going to walk until we find people to get no fight with.

I was really busy, which helped because controlling air is a busy thing. you're pre-planning, you're coordinating, you're working with them before things happen, when things happen. Were you trying to keep their eyes on you or your general area before it kicked off? As often as possible, right? That's the only way to do it.

It's often as possible. Sometimes you don't have it and you have to be a reactionary, but the good news is you're very busy as a fact and it's good to be busy. You don't want to spend a bunch of time just doing nothing waiting for bad things to happen. So I learned how to function in that environment.

I learned how to operate well outside of my comfort zone, but I'd be lying to you if I ever told you like, yeah, I got used to it. I didn't. And, and, and, you know, nobody, I know in some ways nobody ever does, but dude, those, the seals that I work with, like, those guys were awesome. And the soldiers, too. I don't mean just the seals, but there was times that I was operating like, thank God these guys are with, or I'm with these guys. Thank God. Because I had a niche, a niche, whatever that word is. I had a narrow skill set. I could really contribute. What I did really helped and mattered. Yeah. But I honestly, man, And I operated those seven months there thinking like, what the hell is, how did I get here?

What am I doing here? And I can't tell you how many times bullets have snapped over my head. I can't tell you how many times I went through that. And every time I'm like, what am I doing here? You know, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Here I'm on the ground. And certainly the most dynamic combat I ever experienced was on the ground. So it was a trial by fire for the entire time.

It would be a reasonable thought to go through your head of where do they find these idiots who want to do this job. Exactly. What kind of IQ waiver was required to find these gentlemen that are walking the streets? It's a unique community. I don't know if it's niche or niche either. I have heard it said so many ways. I went to a state school.

I don't know. I didn't go to any school. Fortunately, I mean, I know what they both mean the same thing. So when I hear it, I just go along with it. But yeah. Crazy times, man. That's my history of those guys. Lucky to be there.

Or yeah, or unlucky. I mean, I go back and forth on a lot of my military experiences. I was either, for me, it's all net positive. Even the worst things that I've experienced in my life have made me the person I am today. But I wonder, are those experiences, are we lucky to have them or people who never have to even consider them? Are they lucky? I don't know the answer to that. Yeah.

It's a fair question. I know we don't get a choice. And I certainly look back and we kind of have a choice. We both volunteered. Yeah. We had a choice. Yeah. That's fair.

We had the faint outline of a choice. I certainly look back and know, like, I am certainly who I am now because of all those things. Without a doubt. And that experience, too, a ground fact in Romagna in 06, you're like, okay, that is the most influential year of my life in my military career, no doubt about it. What do you think your life would look like without those experiences?

Because this is one thing I've thought about, because people, the SEAL community, actually, I'll take that. I'll go even broader with this. the military profession, a profession of arms, as dumb as I truly believe it to be, they use time in combat and in some elements, the number of people that you have killed is the ultimate metric. And what's lost in that is the community of people that put me through training existed in between Vietnam and 9-11. They were some of the most tactically proficient operators that I've ever seen. They never got to express that in real life. But I would ask guys this,

when they would poo-poo on the previous generations. I'd say, hold on a second. Who put you through buds? Especially my era. They're like, oh, instructor so-and-so. I'm like, yeah, you know, he actually got out before 9-11 and never experienced combat or never got the chance to take somebody's life, which is a good thing that he didn't have to make that decision.

But he helped you become who you are. So why is it that we're here using that as a metric? Because we're either lucky that we got to experience this or unlucky that we have to bear the burden of the people who are serving during this time period. And I wonder what it would have been like. I mean, do you think you would have, your life would look differently

if we had just served in peacetime? I do. I think that. And the irony in my combat experience, certainly in the time with task unit bruiser, is I think without that experience, and I think without a lot of the other military experiences that I had later in my career,

I think the irony in that is, how do I say this? Today's episode is brought to you by Element. You can say it Element or you can say LMNT, which is actually what it says on the products, some of which I have here right in front of me. This is all about your hydration recovery electrolyte game. You guys hear this?

That's what one of these little satchels sounds like. In this thing, which this one is a watermelon salt, one of my favorite flavors, even though right now lemonade salt is even better. 1,000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, 60 milligrams of magnesium. I'll be going back to Costa Rica with my, wife and family in December for a jiu-jitsu seminar at Hiro BJJ. And the temperature there is always

the temperature there. It's a minimum of two of these per day. They absolutely make me feel like I can be a functional human being after hours of jiu-jitsu in very hot temperatures comparatively to where I live in high humidity. Even outside of exercise, one of these per day is what I go with. Usually it'll start in the morning. If I'm going to do jiu-jitsu that day, I do it at after class. This isn't the only expression, though. They have sparkling water. out cans and they just came out with 12 ounce cans as well. And with that, they came out with some other flavors. Pineapple salt. It may not sound good. It's my favorite 12 ounce can. And in there they did the lemonade, which is one of their newer flavors. The 12 outs cans, I believe,

have half of what's in one of these little satchels here. So you can find all of that, though, at drink, LMNT.com slash cleared hot. And if you go over there, I suggest ordering the sample pack because that'll let you know what flavor you like. They make spicy ones that are great in margaritas. They make chocolate flavor ones that are great in hot chocolate or seasonal beverages. The summertime, they went with the lemonade salt, which legit tastes like lemonade you used to drink in the summer. It's fantastic. You're knocking out, again, and every one of these things, 1,000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, 60 milligrams of magnesium. The best description I have, if you're old enough to remember the old Tron movie, they go and they drink from the water with

their little frisbee disc and they start glowing more. That's what it feel like when you rehydrate with one of these bad boys after a strenuous exercise engagement. Drink elementi.com slash cleared hot. Your body will thank you. Back to the show. I learned to not be so full of myself. Like 21 year old Dave Burke, flight student Dave Burke, first fleet tour Dave Burke, even Top Gun instructor Dave Burke, there's a self-centeredness that I, my ego has always been a challenge for me, always trying to keep my ego and You're talking about mirrored aviators and ascots? There you go.

You can't and you have this sense of like, you are the center of the universe. And I struggle with that. And the more experienced I got, the more I realized like, man, there's so much more going on around you. And I think the lessons that I learned is to help me look at the big picture, take things in, not take things for granted

and not, and recognize that you are not the center of the world. The more difficult, the things that I did in my time in the military, certainly that combat fact ground deployment, I think it was the ones that taught me the greatest lessons in humility of, hey, dude, you are, you are one of a lot of people. And you could not do any of this by yourself. And I learned that along the way, but it really, really got hammered in me in Ramadi. I think it compresses the timeline. Yeah. That's a good way putting it. You know, to use Jacques-on-Late's book as an example, extreme ownership, let's say they had

their careers, but it was during peacetime. So they could have used stories that, you know, involved training environments, but I don't know if that would land as well with the audience, nor would there maybe have been the appetite because it would have been a peacetime environment. Yeah. The lessons are still equally as valuable. I just, I wonder where it would have landed. And again, I don't have any answers to this stuff, but this is stuff that I think about now looking back into the fishbowl.

The way you described that, the compression of that, the amount I got from that short period of time. Yeah. It was a decade's worth of experience smash into six months. That's right. 100%. Yeah. I think, yeah, I would say that those same experiences as well.

But I also think, man, if it had been peacetime, God, I might still be in right now. I don't know. I'd be, let's see. Would I have even switched. I wouldn't have gotten shot, so I wouldn't have switched over to being an officer when I was rehabbing. Yeah, I'd have been an E9. I would have been a real leadership challenge. E9 over 30, definitely red hash marks.

There'd be no gold on the uniform because I would have gotten in trouble. Well, rephrase that, continued to get in trouble. first time I was on the jaco show he goes uh what rank did you get in the most trouble at and I sat there I was like I think an equal amount at all to include distributed and to include when I switched over to be in a because he I mean he's known me for a while he's like God I don't know how you possibly survived in this stuff amazing that's awesome yeah I mean I'm not recommending anybody take my path I'm just saying I had a pretty good view as I was cruising along and tripping all over the place and falling off of it sometimes indeed yeah it's compressed that's a good

It is compressed. I do think, I think you can get there, but I think it would have taken a lot longer for those lessons to land. And I think that's a natural part of getting older to. I think we probably would have learned those lessons later in our life. I'm very thankful for that compression. The cost of that compression, I don't have the vocabulary to describe, especially on the families I've seen destroyed through loss and all those things. I mean, there's a cost to that compression for sure, but impactful. I'm appreciative of the experience. that I had for sure. Yeah, same. Yeah. So what do you do with the echelon front now? So I am the chief development officer. Really, I get to, it's a fake term. It's a made of names. All names are made up. That's 100% of made up name. Does that even mean? I develop. I'm the chief at developing stuff. Yes. It's like, what does that even mean? It's a total made up name. But what I do get to develop is how do we teach this stuff? So the book is awesome, right? The book, and that book is the foundation of all the things we teach. But you can't just tell us how, hey, read this book and do this stuff in this book. You got to figure out, and Leif and Chonko built all this. And I've been with

them from the very beginning. I'm super lucky to have been there from really the ground floor when they started to grow beyond. The two of them is, how are you going to teach this to people in a way that makes sense and resonates to them? And you said this well. Like you at 18 is different than you at 48, right? Oh, God. And I actually struggle to even recognize. And if I'm being totally honest, remember the 18 year old. I have been hidden ahead a few. times. You know, a slight exposure to a concussive blast. Some of it's my own doing, some of it, somebody, you know, other people were doing, but it adds up over time. It does. I, I, I wish I could get a hold of my 18 years. Oh my God. You know what the problem is, though, I wouldn't have listened.

No. Neither of us would have listened. That's right. But what I think I would have listened to is the advice I would have given myself about Bitcoin. Okay. First reenlistment bonus, but it all in Bitcoin. I would be a billionaire right now. We wouldn't be doing this show. We share so many similar regrets. Because I'd be flying my own personal jet to my house in Aspen and then flying my A-star around. That's right. I'd be like, listen, mess up as much as you want. But please just figure out a way to buy Bitcoin. You're going to be okay.

And then you've got to figure out a way to live too because you're going to need that Bitcoin money. Good advice. Get back in that time machine. Short of that. I would have ignored everything else. Yeah, totally. Same with me. So in that vein, like we have gotten to.

figure out how do you deliver. Like you said, it's all the same lessons. They all apply. Homework. It's all the same stuff. But you have to figure out a way to communicate this in a way that will reach people at different places in their life in different industries and different jobs. Frontline leaders versus CEOs.

I know it's all the same stuff. But as you know, too, like you've got to communicate that. And so we have developed a way to do that. And that's essentially what Jock has allowed me to do is like figure out how to do this. And so there's a lot of different ways to teach what we teach. But you got to maintain the core and the root of it. Yeah. But I'm talking to 18-year-old Dave,

18-year-old, you know, Andy, whoever, what that job is, what that role is, what that person's open-mindedness is is going to be a little bit different from someone else. And we have to cover all those bases and reach them in the same effective way. And as you know, that can be a challenge. I, uh, since I've gotten out, I, of course,

people think I have the, uh, overarching structure to my life. And I just had a list at some point. At first I will do this. And then upon successfully completing that, I will make this decision and do this role and then this role. I literally, I trip over stuff and I lose things along the way. And it's like, oh, I guess I'm pointed in this direction now and my life is falling apart. So let's make this choice. And then that wasn't good.

Maybe we'll go back and find that. I didn't just like a blind dude without a cane walking around through traffic, like real life Frogger. But, you know, I've been able to accomplish a lot of the things along the way. And one thing that this is a realization I came. So I did a good amount of public speaking after getting out of the military. Fell into that 100%. A buddy mine owned a company in San Diego. And he had the speaker fallout.

And the speaker wasn't going to talk about teamwork. And he goes, hey, man, here we're at a place called the SEAL teams, right? And I said, technically, yes. He goes, would you fill in? because obviously the name of the building says that you know everything about teamwork, right? So completely put them on mute and just started laughing out loud. Like, sure. Did this speech, don't even remember what I said.

I bet it was not great. And another person in the crowd, and this was right as I was getting out of the military, and for zero dollars, free, you know, zero free 30. And there was a guy in the audience who was his friend, who had their own business. And I think the first speaking gig I did was for him. It was like $250, which at the time, I was like, I am pretty rich right now. Nobody's ever spoken for an hour and got $250. But it built over time and, you know, people want to know about leadership.

Yeah. If there's any topic, and it is actually my favorite one because I do believe it is the most effective weapon that humans have access to. And you know I've been around some pretty awesome weapons. Like the Moab, I really like that thing. That's an awesome weapon. Never seen one in person, but it's deeply in my feet. I have a few say videos of it. Leadership, it exceeds the capability of all the stuff that we are around.

But the mistake I had is I thought that the SEAL community had it dialed and figured out. And they were this incubator for only amazing leaders. Then I had the experience while in the SEAL community of working for the single worst leader I've ever experienced in my entire life. And I realized from the outside, if you were to line up Seal Team 5, say it's in the falls, we're in our dress blues. Little uniform inspection, my favorite, as the shifting colors. And you were to bring in 50 CEOs. We all look the same to a degree, right? The same color, uniform, different flare pieces, all that stuff.

So to those 50 CEOs, let's say they're the top CEOs of Fortune 50 companies, they would look out there and they would say, You guys are amazing. You are probably the best leaders, have the best understanding of teamwork. But meanwhile, everybody's standing in those rows knows exactly who is an absolute piece of shit, who can't lead, who is driven by their ego, but it's invisible.

And I realized I used to open with talking about the military leadership model. And oftentimes I still do, but now it's more of a way. warning. Be very cautious trying to jam the military leadership model into your organization. I'm not saying it can't fit, but if you think horsepower is the answer, you're in trouble. And I talk about that. The best leaders I've ever been around and the worst leaders I've ever been around, they wore the same uniform. The reason that they succeeded, though, is the people that work for them wouldn't let them fail because the mission was more important than anything. And I have never seen that level of buy-in

replicated at a civilian company. So if you try to force that and you have a leader that sucks, people are going to go like, oh, I was trying to catch you, but I missed. Whereas that's not allowed in the teams. So it makes it look like it's this community of unicorns. I have had my fair share experiences of leaders from the outside looking successful in spite of who they are, not because of who they are. It was the people underneath them that prop them up and then would go let the air out of their tires at the end of a training evolution. But from a performance perspective, you would never know.

Yeah. These two things I think are so good. One is the bell curve is everywhere. Yeah. Even the highest performing team, guess what? has a turd in comparison. Now, first off, the highest performing team, their turd is going to crush everybody else. But in comparison to that team, these still sucks.

Yeah. But you said the other point too is that leadership, like that is the most powerful thing. And how often that is overlooked that people think, oh, you know, you were born like that or you were, that was bestowed upon you and like, no, no, no, no, no. If you got someone in your life, you look up and put them on a pedestal as a good leader, they learned that. They learned that. And so I think that comment about the power of that is exactly right. I mean, and that is something that, you know, even raising kids like, hey, this is a tool that you're going to use and need in every aspect of your life. Yeah. Every aspect of your life. So the coffee shop I met you at. I'm a partial owner of that. Our average barista age, 19. Let me tell you what a Montana 19 year old is not, really bought in on. Nobody wants to huck lattes across the counter as a vocation in life. So I know it's going to be transitory. In the seal teams, I could be so directive with what I told people to do.

And they had no choice. Now, that's not the model that I chose, but I could have. And they would have done it. Not maybe because they wanted to, but because they had to. If I took that approach at the coffee shop and I said, hey, guys, I'm going to lead you like I led young seals and boats are We're in the back and we got hoses. All I would have is no call, no shows. Leadership at that coffee shop, people don't believe me when I say this, is more difficult than leadership in the SEAL teams because they're all there for different reasons. They're not contractually obligated.

They didn't go through some, I mean, don't get me wrong, we'd train our staff, but it's a little bit different than Buds. Sure. So they go through the requisite amount of training, but I'm not putting them through a crucible or a course that's designed to weed them out because I would like to make money at some point by selling coffee. Totally. And I barely know how to use the point of sales system.

And you definitely don't want me making your, actually, I can make a latte, but if you ask for anything else, you're going to get a latte because that's what I know how to make. And I could probably do a pump of syrup. I got that part figured out too. You do the syrup first, then you pour the stuff and you got to, it's, you got to whisk it. But I can't take the model that I was raised under and apply it there. Yeah. And people, they don't get it.

And when I try to tell organizations, I'm like, listen, you guys ever met a military member that didn't meet the expectation that you had when you hired them. And everybody says yes. Because you guys ever hire somebody because of their role in the military and you put them in a leadership role at your civilian organization. And it just didn't go well. And they'll all say yes. Like, listen, if the military service itself was the secret sauce, you would never see that. So there has to be something more than that. And that's where we have to dive in and figure it out. Like I, it's tough. I mean, every one of those employees is motivated in a different way.

Yep. And so I approached them in a different way and different vernacular and some I can joke around with. Others I can't joke around with at all. And some, it's like, you're having a really bad day. I am actually just going to go back out the front door I came in because I don't feel comfortable being in my own business. I don't want to deal with that. Yeah. I mean, you said it too, like telling people what to do and imposing your will on them is not leadership.

And it's a strategy. Yeah, right. See how that in the long term, how that has that can work out for you. So I think that's a great example. Like, you got to lead those people. And you just are telling what to do. They're like, it doesn't work. And that's what people think the military is, though.

And you're right. That's that image and. Well, and again, their optic, I don't blame them. And whether it's a, it's a book or a TV show or a movie. Yeah. Oh, God. And I get the, I've done a little bit of technical advising. There's always this balance between authenticity and entertainment.

Right. And the way I have seen it, entertainment went out more often than authenticity. But they think it's full metal jacket. Yeah. The drill instructor, which, by the way, that guy's awesome. And you know the backstory behind that, right? Yeah. He was supposed to train the actor who couldn't get it.

And they were like, how about you just do you? And he goes, hold my beer and just fires off. It's so cool, man. But that's only, that's your jump from being a civilian to being a Marine. Yeah. The mistake I think people make is that they believe, that that's how leadership is applied after those environments. And the best enlisted leader that I ever worked for

would never have to yell at me ever. If he did, it actually would probably diminish my performance. All he needed to do was explain to me what needed to get done and why. And I would kill myself to make sure I lived up to his standard. It is the opposite of the gunny sergeant in full metal jacket. because that's not the environment after that transition. You have to break people of me and turn them into a wee-centric person. That's the role of the gunnery sergeant.

Except for that particular guy, I feel like he might have been like that in all leadership roles. And that's okay. Sometimes you have a black swan, you know. Everything you said, I think, is exactly right. And that image, when you live it and you're like, oh, that's not how it is. And that's not what good effective leadership is. And you realize, like, oh, my God, this stuff is the same everywhere. And you said that an hour ago.

It's the same everywhere. I understand you got to deliver it differently. You got to communicate a little bit differently. But the lessons are the same. And leadership, the image we get is like, I stand up like, hey, everybody, do what I say, follow me. And it's sometimes I'm almost like, hey, that looks so cool. But it actually doesn't work. You tell people what to do and force your will on them and impose on them and make them follow what you want.

And listen, I'm raising kids. Try that on your kids. Oh, I have three myself. You want to talk about your journey and leadership? Totally. And you said it earlier too. Like I can impose my will on my son for now, for a little while. When he's physically.

If I wanted to. Yeah. And when he's physically in my presence. But you know what happens in the long term. Yeah. Or even, you know, whatever, I lock him down in the house and I force this, that or the other. I remember what happened. And of course, I never deserve that to happen ever.

It was never based off my behavior. It was my parents being. That's right. They were being unfair. I was framed. Probably not. But it just doesn't work. But the second.

Well, works when you physically are in the same proximity. The second I left the house, I was probably pissed at the way that I treated. And it might actually get me to exhibit behavior the exact opposite at a spike because I was an idiotic 17-year-old kid. That's rebellion, man. That's exactly right. You hit the nail on the head.

That's exactly right. So, yeah, try that. Well, you're not going to watch. You'll get knocks on the door from the police. Let me tell you how fun that is. That's how it's a good. You can't impose your will on people. It just doesn't work.

It does not work. No, it doesn't. But that is, it's crazy how that is what people think it is. Yeah. The best leaders I ever worked for, I don't think they were trying to speak softly. But it was a normal tone of voice or softly because people have to listen more intently. Yeah. And you can set too.

Like if they just explain the why and you go, oh, that makes sense. Cool. I can get after that. Well, and sometimes, and you know this as well as anybody else, sometimes you don't have time to explain the why. There is in an environment where you're prepping for something or and I got this, you know, we went over into theater and they were, they're like, hey guys, by the way, night raids are over and you can no longer, you know, go into villages at nighttime. I'm like, what? We're sacrificing our tactical and technological advantage. And there was going to be a

mutiny of the guys. So I'm like, who wrote this? Like, can I get as high up the food chain as possible? Can ask some questions? Why are we doing this? What can I operate inside of this? You explain that in that time period and it was like letting air out of the balloon. It reduced the stress and we realized like, yeah, we can go into the, we can go into the villages. I don't want to say cities because that's not what they really are. And you know what? We can even put ladders up on walls and get to a tactically advantageous position. We're just not going to make entry.

But you know what? Maybe we're going to surround and call that anyway. So we're going to be able to get around this. If they were just told, hey, no nighttime stuff at all. Just go ahead, you know, make sure you bring your nods, but put them in a pocket. you're going to have an absolute mutiny on your hands. So in that environment, I could explain the why. But if you have leadership capital built up and it gets to a place where like, hey, dude, go left and do this, they're like, yep, Roger that.

Because they'll get the why later on. But if you're already bankrupt with that capital. That's exactly right. It's like, maybe you go that way. I don't shoot you in the back. Yeah, that leadership capital concept. And you better be building that as often as you can. Because sometimes, Jock tells the story.

I always like the way he told the story is, you know, you guys are on a, you know, you guys are on a, you. you're clearing a house or something, he's like, hey, bust that door. And you're like, hey, you know, Jocko, just could take a quick pause. Can you explain to me why we're doing like, yeah, there are times we cannot have this conversation. But the only way you bust that door or do that is,

is if every other opportunity I have, we've talked and explained and understood and gone back and forced and go, oh, this guy, I can trust this guy, Dave. Because you're right, sometimes you can't do it. But if you have no leadership capital, zero, even when you need that immediate reaction, you're not going to get it. And so you've got to be thinking about that.

Yeah. It's brutal. You got to be thinking about that all the time. Build that leadership capital. I describe it as in terms of withdrawals and deposits. Thinking about it like money. Exactly right. It's just, it's like every, and I try to tell people,

if you're in a leadership position, this is another thing that's lost on people too. I was never, I probably only did one true leadership position by actual position of definition, like in a leadership role in a platoon. And my favorite times were I was just an E5. They're like, here's a machine gun and a shotgun. And you just go. I was like, can I stay here forever?

But when I got into that leadership role, I aged in dog years. I had never been more. I was so worried I was going to fall short or say something or do something that was going to cause somebody their life or get them injured. And I was also infinitely aware that whether or not I thought I was in a leadership role, if the people around me consider me to be in one. And this is when I try to harp with people because they're like, well, I'm not necessarily understanding this from a professional perspective. I'm like, okay, are you a parent?

Okay. Do you think that's a leadership role? Because if you don't, I have another brief for you, which is called you're an idiot. And that's the title and it's only one slide. And you can take this home and study it at will. But there's no more important rule. All of my kids bad behaviors, like I love it when parents will say,

my kids have got such a potty mouth. and I just don't know where they got it from. I'm like, really? Because I've known you for years, and I know exactly where it came from. Totally. And I try so hard to set a good example for my kids. I swear, though, they are pre-programmed to only pick up the mistakes

and the negative things that I do. And it's like the positives. Because sometimes I'll have a success. I'm going to be like, did you guys see that? And they're like on their phone. I'm like, oh, my God. And then it'll do something boneheaded and they're not on their phone and they're just all staring.

Watching. Why now? Get on your phone. Don't pay attention to. That's awesome. But if you're in that leadership role, everybody is watching you. Everybody is listening and they're like sponges. And if you don't think about it in terms of withdrawals and deposits, man, I personally, when I hit

bankrupt with people with trust, I've never been able to put trust back in them. You're saying it's exactly right. And to that point, too, this concept of like deposits and withdrawals is another thing. when we talk about this is most people like, hey, how's your, how's your leadership capital account? I'm like, oh, I'm a billionaire. They think they're, they think they're overflowing with it. And actually, meanwhile, they're overdrawn. That's right. And that's all of us is your attitude should not be like, I have unlimited leadership capital. In fact, it should be the opposite, which is every chance I get, I need to be making a deposit.

And we make these little withdrawals. And we realize, we don't realize like, hey, man, you've been taking all this money out and your balance is getting down to zee. And at some point, if you go bankrupt, just like you said, man, especially on that trust account, it is almost impossible. Yeah. I actually canvas audiences when I speak because I talk about it in those terms. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I tell people, I'm not a fan at absolutes. I think as soon as you say always and never, you're very likely, especially just giving it a long enough timeline, you're going to be wrong.

But I'll ask them, like honestly, how many of you, first off, have had the experience where you had immense trust in somebody and then it hits zero. It almost everybody's hands will go up. Usually younger people have it and I just go, don't worry, it's coming. Remember this for later. Yeah. Because life's coming for you. That's happening. And then I ask him again, how many of you truly, even if you have tried as hard as you

can, have been able to put trust back into that person, I haven't had a hand to come up. Yeah. I agree, man. Yeah. Floating checks in the leadership capital world is ballsy. People do it all the time. All the time. Yep.

Yeah. It's, yeah, leadership is tough. And by no means an expert at it. But those, to me, those are the gems from that world that I think we are responsible to try to pay for it. Yeah. Because if you look at our occupation, I mean, the stats are the stats. I think 0.5% of the U.S. population is currently serving. I think peak was in World War one or two.

but a lot of this was from the draft, 6% of the population at that time. So not a lot of people are exposed to that compressed learning time period. I think we are obligated to try to pass those lessons forward. But how you pass them forward, it's, I've struggled with this and I've seen other people struggle. You have to find, I can't take, I can't take somebody and run them under a boat for a week. I would if I could. Don't get me wrong. I'm still trying to figure out how to get somebody to pay me to torture them the way I was paid

because that's what you do with generational trauma as you pass it on. That's what I've been told at least. This is where Jocko looks at me and goes, how did you possibly survive in the seal committee? I'm like, I don't know. How did you survive, weirdo with your English degrees? It's like, where's your quill? Why don't you go write something in cursive, weirdo? But it's how you take that lesson and where I've seen.

seen people struggle is an inability to connect with their team or organization or audience because the lessons are so awesome. But how you get them across, call it the blood brain barrier is the tough part. Yeah, 100%. That is the toughest part, no doubt. Yeah. I'm totally aligned with you, man. What you're saying is exactly right.

Yeah. Well, I need you to figure out an effective way to do that. And then I'm going to steal it and claim it as my own. So I mean, you're the one who wrote a book on leadership. I wrote a book on my mistakes, which isn't even out yet, which means I could probably work on the second book because we now, when the book comes out, let me tell you, there's going to be more. Well, the good news about the book is that every chapter is straight up a failure.

It's like I knew when I was writing it, I had to write if it was going to work. It was going to be the biggest mistake. So in that book, every chapter is a mistake. Did you think, did you, like there's Jack Cars of the world who, and he didn't share this with us while we were in because he was smart because we would have crushed him. He knew he wanted to be an author. And he's slaying it.

His work is fantastic. But he knew he wanted to be an author. I am 100% an accidental author. I'll tell you the story of how I ended up. Dude, I got tricked into this by a friend who told me he was going to write his half of the book. And we were going to do a test two chapters. And it came to the day we were going to share. And he goes, oh, yeah, I didn't write anything.

That's how I got tricked into this. Legitimately thought I was only going to do half. Yeah. How did you fall into wanting to write? Jocko made me do it, man. Nobody can make you do anything. He made me do it. It's like people saying,

instructor stump made me quits. No, I facilitated the environment where your hand went to the bell. He said something to the effect of, if you have lessons that you can share to make other people's lives better and you don't do that, you're committing,

and this is the word of you is, a mortal sin. First off, He's a little bit too theatrics at times. I'll say this to his face. I'm like, Jocko, you're at a 10. I need you at a 6. Let's just back it off.

Let's go Jock, small J. You're Jocko, all caps, yelling at me for some reason. I don't even know why. Like, take it easy. So we'll just take the moral sin and just call to sin, but he's like, hey, man, you have to do this. And I did get to a point where I absolutely did not want to write this book. I mean it.

But when he talked about, hey, are there things that you have learned in your life? And that's how this book became to be a book about, all 10 chapters are just a story of a failure, a mistake, an error, something I screwed up. That's where I learned the biggest lessons, those mistakes. How did you lay out that framework? The 10, how did you decide on that 10? And I ask authors this because I'm actually fascinated by their process.

Yeah. They are, you want to talk about an end state, a creative end state that really doesn't seem to have a single origin point coming back to one way? Dude, every author has given me a different answer. Oh, I wrote Stream of Consciousness. Oh, I knew the overarching, so I laid it out on a piece of paper. I picked a chapter and the rest of the chapters came from that. I've written a book. To say I have a process is probably a stretch.

To look back on it, I thought about, I thought about the, I broke it in down in my head. It's like, okay, if I'm going to write this, I just wanted to think about how best to do that. And the methodology from extreme ownership is you tell a story, you talk about the lessons from that story, and you have an application to life. So we talked, Leif Chaco and I talked about it, and I liked that methodology. So I stole that methodology from them and we did it by design. It's the same as extreme ownership and dichotomy. So this is the third book. He uses that same format.

But as he started, as I started thinking about what I wanted to, what stories I wanted to tell, I first started writing just chronologically. Oh, this happened, this happened. And it was awful. It was not, it just sucked. It was not good. And so I kind of put out. Share the feedback Jocko gave you.

Dude. I mean, what was the first? Did you give him like a, you did a chapter? You slid it to him? Totally. How long was it before you got feedback? Instantaneous, because it was awful. It was, and he was right.

Hell yeah. And I think the first part of that was like, you're not writing an after action anymore. Yeah, he was terrible. But we were, I knew he was trying to help me. It wasn't like he was being a jerk about it, but it was like, hey, dude, the story is, if you want to convey a, if I'm going to teach you something, I have to be to explain it in a story, you go, oh, that's a, that's an interesting, captivating. and then valuable way to do it.

I can't just say A and then B and then C because that's me basically like trying to force something on you. Yeah. Which doesn't work. So I took it, I had to take a big step back. I'm like,

all right, how do I do this? And what I came up with was the things that I have learned in my life that have led me to where I am today, all my successes, all my failures, the things that have led me to where I am today,

I broke it down and how I think about things and what I do, thoughts and actions. And so I was like, all right, I want to talk about my mindset on certain things and I want to talk about my behaviors. Once I had it like, okay, I think about things a certain way and I do things a certain way like, oh, I can start to bucket those stories

in. I learned this lesson about humility. To me, humility is a mindset. That started to make sense. So I started to talk about the things to think about that were really valuable to me. And I put them in the mindsets category and then things that you have to do, actions you got to take, things like listening, things like change, those type of things. I think you've described. the non-fund parts. I prefer to be existential and think about how I think. This action stuff, it seems real difficult. It is indeed.

I mean, let's be honest, that's 100% where all of us fail. Yes. I have this grandiose goal. I'm sorry, what's going to take for me to get there? No, no, no. That's a lot of work. That's a lot of work. Is there a more approachable goal that require no work whatsoever?

Yes, let's see him at that. Well, that was, I guess, my method. But I can tell you, if you read this book, you are not going to read a story about what an awesome dude Dave Burke is. You're going to a story about like those are those are hard life lessons that I learned. And thank God, I learn them when I did. Yeah. Because I apply them and I use them and I benefit from them.

But everyone is like this, God, do I really have to tell the story? And the answer is like, yeah, you do. You got to tell the story. The story of how in my very first time in the Marine Corps in the basic school, I alienated half of my platoon because I, anybody that didn't do as well as me, I treated him like shit. Like, oh, that's a, that's a 21-year-old Dave Burke. I was just about to say, that's a young man's game, man.

But I got the feedback from the, you know, my platoon commander who I looked up and was like, hey, man, your ego is going to be a problem for you. You better start to learn to get it in check now. And I wrote that story. And it is embarrassing. It's humbling. But it's literally how I started to learn that. It isn't like some made up.

It's how I actually learn that. And what I realize, if I can get that on paper and explain it well, that might help. another person going, I think he's kind of talking about me. Yeah. And maybe it can help them get on that path. And that's really what Jock was getting at is if you can explain it in a way that the other person goes, oh, this applies to me. You can help them.

And that was the goal of the book. The first chapter of my book is about the first time I lost my Trident. It's about six weeks after I got it. It's not a big deal. It involves drinking in strip clubs at 10 a.m. It's fine. Classic. seal pre-combat training.

But I have the same theory, but I also have this question of the book is, it's not all about failures. It's probably the lessons learned that I want people to be able to feel like they can survive, right? Because you're not going to thrive without being first able to keep your head above water. The book's called Drownproof, which is straight from evolution in buds. But I also wonder that person that reads your book, the first chapter, and they go, damn, they're talking about me.

Do they need to feel that pain, though, a little bit too? Yeah. Because I don't, and I see this with my own kids, and this could be one of the most difficult things with being a parent. How old are your kids? 16, 14, and 12. I have 22 on Saturday. Nice.

20 and 17, boy, boy, girl. Yeah. Vastly different expressions of DNA. Let me just tell you. I find it so difficult because they think they are so devious and so smart. And I can literally see them stacking the dominoes for a mistake. And I don't want them to feel any pain, but I have to let them. 100%.

So I, and that's where this, I'm like, I want this book to be impactful for people. I want your book to change people's lives. but I also want them to suffer a little bit. And I don't mean that in a mean way. I know what you're saying. You're right. Because there's this Icelandic, I don't completely mess this up because I'm hearing this fourth hand from my wife,

but it's like burnt baby doesn't touch the stove anymore. There's some truth to that. There is. So maybe I'm just, I would like to reduce people's amplitude, perhaps, of the pain. I like that. But I think they still have to feel it to a degree. And that's the hardest part about parenting. I'm like, yeah.

Sometimes it's awesome, though. I'm like, oh. So you're going to do what? Oh, yeah. That sounds like a great idea. I know how that works out. I'd go harder and faster if I were you. What do you think, Dad?

I think, this is what I usually say to them. They haven't figured it out. I say, I think you should go with your gut on this one. And either way, you're either going to have a great experience or you're going to learn from it. They haven't figured out that every time I say that, I'm saying back, I'm like, Leah, get that popcorn ready. Come watch this.

You're right. I mean, you're 100% right, though. It was the same thing said earlier. You can't impose even that. can't even, you can't impose your experience on them. Yeah. They have to learn it for themselves. And as I wrote this, it was, if someone can see how this affected me, they might be a little more open minded to, for themselves, learning that same lesson. You're right. I can't go, don't, don't, don't let your ego get out of control. Like, oh, wow, that's a great lesson.

Like, obviously that's true. It's accurate, but that's not how it works. Yeah, it's conceptually, but if they can go, oh, this guy had this career arc, this is what he did. And he's telling a story about how this, his own ego was a massive problem for him at 21, they might be more open-minded to the idea that they also can start to think about how they can get control of their ego. And if they learn that from themselves through my story, then that's helping them. But to your point, like, I can't just walk up and go, here's all the things I learn. Don't do any of these things. It is not how it works.

You've got to feel that pain yourself. You have to have those same experiences. I totally agree. And I have the same attitude with my kids like, I don't know, try it. Let me know how it goes. I don't want them to fail. I'm not looking for them to get hurt. there are guard rolls in place.

You're going to say, for everybody listening, I'm not saying that with drinking and driving. Totally. Or like, hey, yeah, yeah, just go have a bunch of unprotected sex and let me know how that works. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Guardrails have to be in place. I'm talking about, like, for example, my middle son, like, this is a relatively irresponsible financial decision you're making.

But it's not going to kill you. Yeah. But let's learn this one real early so that can set you up for success later on. Things you learn for yourself are so much more important and more, it's not in the right word, so much more impactful than the, than the lessons that someone imposes on you. You got to learn it for yourself. I'm with you. You have to have. Yeah. And again, I can't wait to read chapter one in your book. Oh, it's so stupid. God, I was such an idiot. You know what it all comes down to is I was insecure in who I thought I was.

I was, it was my first trip after getting my try and we were in Tucson. We had actually just finished doing Cass with Davis Monson. The aircraft canceled the last day something came up. It was like 10 in the morning. We were already on the way out to the range. So they're like, okay, sweet, let's go drinking. I'm 20. Yeah. They carried me in. to the strip club on the shoulder, one of my buddy that didn't even check our IDs. And I just, I, as the day were on, there were so many warning signs, but I didn't feel comfortable in myself. I hadn't had the realization that it didn't matter that I was the most junior dude. And I just, because to me, I'm like, I am serving with my heroes. If they ask me to crawl across coals,

I'll just say, are we doing a quarter mile here or a half mile? What do you want? They could do no wrong, but yet I'm sitting there watching was one particular person who was kind of the, we'll call him the drain of the day that started everything circling. And I could have stopped it hours before it got out of control, before the cops got involved before. It's like it's so stupid. But I didn't because if I looked in the mirror that morning, I would have said to myself, who do you think you are?

You're the youngest, the most junior. These guys are older. They've been seals for longer, as if that means anything, by the way. And instead, I was a victim to the way that I saw myself in the mirror. That was the biggest lesson that I learned from that. And it sucked. I didn't get to wear my Trident for six months. He didn't take my NEC.

My skipper didn't, thankfully. But I still remember the sound of the scissors that he slid across the desk when I was standing there in my cameys and he goes, why don't you cut that off? I'm like, but you just gave this. to be, wow. And then, of course, I had just had my camie starched. So I cut it off. And for six months, I'm walking around.

You can clearly see there used to be a patch there. Gosh, dang. I look forward to that. That'll be good. That'll help somebody, man. That will. Well, I hope so. But then I also hope that it bites them a little bit, too.

I don't want to reduce the amplitude to zero. No. But I would, maybe if I could pull it from a 10 to a 6, I think the lesson could be learned. Yeah. And if they start to learn it a little bit earlier, then the time. timeline of how they mature and who they're going to be will be a little bit faster and and they will win the teams will win like that'll be a good thing i mean otherwise what is the point of all the experiences we got from our military career totally i mean i don't want to be this military guy for

the rest of my life super impactful the my moral compass was set by my parents i won the lottery with my parents great great upbringing um oriented my my moral compass but the community of people I served with from, you know, 18 all the way on until my mid-30s. I mean, they refined that for sure and sharpened it and all of those things. But if I can't do, I mean, like, I just don't do that job anymore. But if I can't find a way to do something with those experiences, I feel like, I won't get crazy like the Thespian jaco, which I think we can call him now because he's in a movie. It's not out yet.

But didn't he play the jiu-jitsu instructor? He does. He is a stretch role for him. Really stretching it. God. I would have cast him as like a taxi driver or like a chef or just something I don't even know. But yeah, it's, I don't know. I just, I feel obligated to try.

Yeah. I agree, man. Totally. So your book falls essentially the trilogy. You're the last in the trilogy. Well, there'll be more. So it's really just the third in the series. I know that there's going to be more because Jocko says there's going to be more or you want to write more.

I think, I think there's, there's more to write. There really is. there really is. I don't think you could, I don't think there's an end to it. I mean, I think you can keep riding and riding and riding. How is an echelon front evolving?

Now, since when you first came on, what's the size, scope and scale now? It's, we're 50 people, 17 instructors. It is indescribable from when I started with them.

It was Leif and Jocko. Jamie was kind of a part-time booking travel for them. We're now 50 people, 17 instructors, Jamie is the chief operating officer of the company. It is night and day. And it's really the foundation of all of it is the book extreme ownership. Obviously, Jock was a massive influence. But it's, it's the ability for them to take that lesson and find a way for us to deliver that. That's universal. It doesn't matter who you are, where you are, or what you do. And that, I think,

is the power of what Echon Front does, which is they can reach an 18-year-old construction worker, front line individual contributor and a 65-year-old CEO of a company that he found it. And the lessons are the same. Yeah. You have to be deliberate a little bit different. Yeah, vernacular matters. But, but yeah. So what they have done with that company and to be along, I mean, I feel like I'm just a

passionate on a fast moving train. It's so cool to be a part of that. It's awesome. Did it essentially, I mean, I'm assuming if Jock and Laf started it, they probably got to a point where they were time maxed out and then just brought people on and what kind of task share 100% yeah I mean you can't scale time right like you can only be in so many places of it's only so many days on a calendar that's right and part of that was you know when jp and i jp didell and i showed up it we just we showed up and like just hit the road it was just

event after event after event he just tried to kill me at origin camp by the way he probably can that guy's a beast he was like hey andy do you want to just keep moving so you stay warm and I'm looking at him like are you lying to my face right now I'm like I'm deeply my I'm like, do you want to keep moving so you stay warm? Yeah. And you said no, obviously. No, I was like, yeah, I do. And I thought I know what was coming.

That's awesome. We went into, we started in first gear. We were in fifth gear. We hit none of the others along the way. Just one to five. 30 seconds. I think we did two rounds straight. And it was like, all right, you son of a bitch.

He's a beast, man. The dude is such a stud. Yeah, we were just hitting the road. And it has grown like crazy, man. It's been a crazy eight years. How do you think it will continue to? scale, just more of the same? Some of it is there's, I forgot exactly what you said before, but like, those lessons are

like somewhat timeless and universal. So in some sense, like you got to, you got to keep doing it. And you probably saw this in the teams. I saw this in aviation. Like you don't ever stop doing the fundamental things. You don't get to. It's like, I don't need to do that anymore. You maybe don't have to do it quite so rigorously as when you're learning how to fly an airplane,

but you never get away from the foundation. foundational things ever. And so there's a component of that that as time goes on, you have to keep re-engaging almost like I use this example when we're talking to clients like the best hitters in baseball. You take your best athletes and you take the guy who's the best hitter in baseball. You know what he does every day? He hits a ball of a tea. Every day. So there's a foundational component to that that does not change. And at the same time, you have to evolve in a way, you know, there's technology, there's different things. But you also have to make. it relevant where you don't want to just rely on the same story and the same experience from

Ramadi's next year it's going to be 20 years and so what used to be kind of prime focal point there's other things going on that you can pull the lessons from what we've discovered too like another example is when we talk about the concept of extreme ownership when we talk about with your families with your kids with your spouses and in the beginning we weren't really talking about that much at all and now sometimes the questions we get are like, hey, this stuff is awesome for my company. I've been using it. It's awesome.

When I walk in the front door, things all fall apart. And so now you've got this understanding of, it's not just professional universal. It's life universal. And so we have to be responsive to that to expand in ways like how you can use this with your spouse, how are you going to use it with your kids, how are you going to use it in your community, things that are super important for us as a nation. And so the time horizon, like, that goes on forever. And so we have to grow and be responsive to that.

But it's not just saying the same things over and over again. And at the same time, it's the same things. And so there's this interesting balance inside there. The foundations, the fundamentals do not change. The people who I would describe as the most tactically proficient, the dudes where it's like, hey, we have something relatively dangerous we're about to do and you can pick an all-star team. All of that performance was based off their understanding and as close to mastery as possible of the fundamentals.

It's not the flashy. And I'm sure aviation is the same way. It is. It is. Yeah. I got into rotary wing aviation about a year and a half ago. It's been fascinating. I have a couple thousand hours of fixed wing time.

And man, you want to talk about different. Different speeds, obviously, different altitudes. Different spinning out of control if you lose a tail rotor. That sucks. Thankfully, we only practice that. But, I mean, go ahead and lose your grip on the fundamentals on a hot and high land. day. Yeah, that's exactly right. You haven't practiced. You haven't gone out and just done laps in the pattern, which after you learn how to fly, nobody wants to go out and do laps in the pattern.

But watch the pilot who has a thousand hours and once a month, he'll go, he'll both bang five. Just bang out the pattern. Five left hand turns. You're exactly right. Smoother landings, better take off, constantly reading up on his equipment, constantly, you know, verbally, even a single pilot, speaking out loud, working on a checklist or working off a flow and back. it up off a chess list, the performance difference in those people, they're unbelievable. Those are the ones who are, they're making contact every time to go back to the baseball analogy. They may not be crushing it out of the park. But their on-base percentage is spectacular.

Yeah. And that requires a degree of humility to go, okay, I'm at the top of my game. You know what I should go do? I should go hit the pattern. That takes humility to go, I am susceptible to complacency. I'm susceptible to getting stale and all those things. You described it. That's exactly right.

And that's exactly, that's the mindset we all should have. We obviously don't always do that. Things certainly creep up in our heads like, that one happened to me or I don't need to do that. Famous last one. Yeah, exactly, right? Especially in aviation and where you came from too with the teams, like the margin for error and the magnitude of how unforgiving it is.

And I learned this in carry aviation. The margin for error is very small. Getting a plane aboard a ship, the margin for error is small. And by the way, if you get outside of that margin for error, it's going to be catastrophic. Yeah. And you know what you do?

When you go ready, you fly the pattern. Left hand turns over and over. And I don't care if you got 100 hours, 2,000 hours, 100 traps or 1,000 traps. That's what you do because of exactly what you just said. I agree completely with that. Yeah. It's the jiu-jitsu is something that I got into a couple years ago, not because of Jocko. No, of course not.

Or Joe Rogan, no. Even though like 98% of the jiu-jitsu world is because of them somehow. The best, you know, origin camp is a great example. They have, you know, stripes on their black belts. At some point, you're like, I can't count how many those are. Some of them have a flashier game. The people with that many stripes are actually generally a lot older, though. And so they have some wear and tear.

You know, they call it the gentle art. And I think only people who don't do jih Tzu call it the gentle art because I'm pretty sure arthritis is real and spinal cord injuries. And you put some miles on yourself. But the best practitioners, yes, they might have a fancy move, but guess what it's all based off of? absolute mastery of the fundamentals.

And so when they're game, they're a little flashy move. Let's say it doesn't work on one particular opponent because there's somebody out there for you. Like there's a flashy game and they're like, oh God, then you hit the other flashy guy and nothing happens because they cancel each other out.

Guess what they go back to? The fundamentals. Every time. Or you encounter something that's flashy and you don't know what to do. Go back to your fundamentals. Your posture. Keep your, like it'll save you almost every single time.

It's a metaphor for life, man. That is exactly right. Meanwhile, people are on YouTube who don't understand the fundamentals. And I'm not a coach, by the way, and I'm not throwing shade at people. But I see this even at our gym. You'll see people who are struggling to progress. And you know that they're mastery of the fundamentals. And for everybody, it's a lifelong journey, but they have a little bit more in the court of ice cream than others.

And instead, they're on YouTube and watching some cartwheel inverted, whatever Japanese term that I don't understand, trying to hit that and focus their energy. And that parallel is the exact same thing is somebody who goes, okay, learn how to fly helicopter. Good, you got your license, which, by the way, is a license to kill yourself. And now I'm just going to go mess around

over a forested environment that has no outs. And I'll take the guy who is like, let's just stay a little bit closer. Let's work on our, make sure that we have things dialed. Stay in this environment. We'll branch out a little bit. We'll come back with a fuel buffer. You know, we're only going to fly during VMC.

conditions. We're not, it's like, that's the guy I want to be around. And that's the aviator that I aspire to be like. That's right. Don't give me along. I do some dumb stuff sometimes. Of course. And that's the fun part about flying. But you hit the nail in head. And what you described is every aspect that's flying hornets and B if it's all the same stuff. It's the fundamentals. And in leadership, the same thing applies. It is the same fundamentals. And if you get away from those, I don't care if you're brand new to it or you've been doing your whole life. If you get away from the fundamentals, you were going to struggle. Period. So the guy who typerated me in the helicopter I have he hit me with this the last time we were up here because you know as it so it's a it's a twin

turbine 40 knots in below you're going to put it on the ground 40 and above you're going to take into the air because it's got great single engine performance even up here and he's always talking about wait until you're out of the green arc of the speed gauge before you make it down winter and just make sure you have enough energy and we did a confined landing and you know he was having me land doing near shore operations just like let's come in at these angles make sure your tail is out over the water. Nobody's going to walk into your tail if it's out over the water. I'm like, sweet. So we take off and we pick up and he's like, all right, just go ahead and turn here. I'm like, but you said, don't turn down when until it's through the greed. And he looks at me and he goes, once you know the

rules, you can deviate from them. But what kills people is they deviate from them without knowing the rules. It's just a different way of saying that the fundamentals are the most important thing. And then once you have a mastery of that, you can be creative. Yeah. But don't forget that those fundamentals are the baseline rule for everything. If you're going to deviate from the fundamentals, fundamentals, you better know the fundamentals. Once you know the rules, you can deviate from them. I think the curse of the novice is they want to deviate before having a true understanding of the rules. Indeed. I was like, son of a bitch, why can't I think of smart things like that? Right that down. That's awesome. He's, he is spectacular. And I mean, he has so many stories of

aviators, specifically in the Rotary Room world. I think he's typed in 17 different, like a unicorn, right? He's over fighting fires in the Chinook right now, I think, in Turkey. Wow. So yeah, He's kind of into it. But the stories he has of the things that he's seen and a lot of other people getting away with stuff. Yeah. You know, and he can only say so much he can't fly it for them. Not everything is required. It's wild.

Not everything requires a license up here, some of the air, so they can get well over their skis. And he can try. And then, you know, just the incident report after incident report after incident report. When people get to that place, it's unfortunate, man. Amazing how similar it is to life in general. I think there's more Venn diagram overlap. especially when it comes to leadership and fundamentals. I don't know of an area of the world where life in general is humanity where it actually doesn't touch or have a pretty immense overlap.

Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. How long to take you to write the book? Forever. I mean, that's not true. It took years. No joke.

Years. So. Jesus. What did your contract say? Did they actually put years on there? I didn't reach out to them until I got to. When I say years, so like the first. First, Jock was like, we talked about the story of writing the book.

Yeah. I don't know. At some point, I like sent him the chapter and I put chapter in quotes. And he's like, this is terrible. And he didn't say it like, hey, dude, listen, man, I know what you're struggling with. Here's some things to think about round two, another relation. And at some point, you know, probably a year into that process of, he's like, okay, you understand it now.

I'm like, yeah, and I did. And I did. I understood it. Then it was, okay, I'm going to write the proposal, which is the first three chapters. and really feel like if I understood what I was doing, then some back and forth, and then we got to a place where like, this is good.

That's when I went to Mark and like, okay, we like this, let's move forward to this. The rest wasn't easy, but I knew what I was doing. Yeah. But to get to a place where I knew what I was doing and was comfortable with, it took way longer than I would have liked. Once I got there and I had that sense of like,

I understand the thoughts and the actions, the behaviors and mindsets, what the stories are going to be, then I kind of got into a little bit of a groove in it. It took maybe six months to get through that. But it was way harder than I thought. I had no idea how bad of a writer I was and how long it was going to take to go, okay, now I know what I'm doing.

But like with everything, once I got that, then I was actually comfortable. And, you know, it wasn't great. And there was plenty of editing back and forth. But I understood what I was doing. That took way longer. And it was frustrating for me because I didn't like being bad at something. I didn't like writing this. And even I'd read them, like, the hardest part about it was,

it was crystal clear in my head. And by the time it came out of my head onto this paper and I read it, I'm like, this is not even what I'm thinking. Like, these aren't even the words that represent what's in my head and that frustration. And so it took some time.

When I got it, it was okay, but dude, it took a while. Yeah. When does it come out? October 21st. Okay. Okay. How long after,

when did you submit your final draft? Because this is the phase I'm in now. Like the draft is, It's kind of locked. I've gone through four editorial passes. I now have looked at it so many times. I don't even remember what I actually wrote. It's a blur.

My final manuscript was December of 23. Okay. And we originally thought it had come out last year, but last year was not a good year to publish a book. Well, it was if it was about politics. Well, it's not. So we just pushed it literally just 365 days. So the same timeline of what 24. So it really is since 23.

And if you just take all 24 and just transpose that timeline of 25, it would have been, you know, December of last year to October this year from manuscript to publication. It's wild. So mine comes out April 14th. I feel like I've now been doing this my entire life. Forever. And I'm like, but the calendar still says six months. What is going on? It's crazy.

And then they sent me the galley copies, which was wild. And they're like, yeah, you know, talk about it. And if you want to try to do some pre-sales, I'm like, pre-sales for what? Something that comes out in nine months? Who buys a book nine months before it comes out? Like, here's a better idea, guys. Maybe let's just step on the gas two weeks ahead of time. So have you seen hard copies?

I do. I have it. When did you get to see it? Like a week ago. Oh, damn. So you just got it. Okay. Well, that actually.

I had the gallery. You know, we did the galley copies. You know, the galley copies are small and there's soft. Yeah, for sure. The hard copy is about a week old to me. Wow. So three weeks before coming out, essentially. And kind of a surreal experience, like doorbell rings, there's like boxes on my front porch.

How many they send you? I think I got 30. How many galley copies did they send you? Because I feel like I got shorted. I probably got 20 galley copies. I get six. Well, you know. I feel like Jock told him not to send me more.

I'm sure he probably texted Mark. He's like, don't give him any. Mark, I'll come find you in your office. Jock won't because he's too busy. He's too busy. Yeah. No, it, it, uh, well, he actually said that there was some demand for them elsewhere, which I'm like, all right, fine, but. Dude, people are going to kill to hear those stories. Tell them, just because they're going to kill to hear those stories. They're not all good stories, but I'm with you on that. Yeah. Neither remind. So there's somebody six and I've passed it around some friends, but it's like, I have to get that back from you when you're done.

Yeah. Hey, when you're done, give it back to me. Because I could let somebody else read it because I am trying to solicit feedback, even though this thing's kind of cooked. I'm totally. Like I changed the author. photo out recently because I had a buddy, a guy who was a podcast guest, like still using old school film. So he'll take these pictures on a non-movable lens. So he has to move himself, sends him off, he sent him back. I actually just send him to Mark today. He goes, oh, these are way better than what we have. So send me the high-res version. Yeah. So I can make some small changes, but I'm just, I don't know what the hell the next six months looks like. Yeah. Not a lot. Well, what does the next three weeks look like for you? So if it comes out, well, actually, hold on, this is the seven So you actually have two weeks from today.

Two weeks from today, it comes out. Okay. It's available. Like, you know, all the pre-orders, like, that's what we're doing right now. Mine's available now, too, but I tell people, I'm like, I wouldn't buy it right now if I were you guys. And I'm not so sure Mark wants me to say that, but that's what I tell people. Just please buy it, but also.

Your authenticity is probably appreciated. Yeah, maybe wait till later because who buys a book nine months out? I'm sure as you get closer. And that's what we're doing. I was on Jocco's podcast last week, and we did two episodes. So we're talking about it more. And it's definitely in the, like, last couple weeks of it's, It's real. It's happening. So it's kind of cool.

What are they going to have you do when it comes out? Are you going to go to bookstores or what does St. Martin's have kind of lined up? Yeah, there's a bookstore down in San Diego called Warwick's, like, yeah, totally. So we're doing that. And I think there's a little bit of, you know, the world from the time extreme ownership came out to now has changed. So podcasts are way more prevalent. Yeah. And then, you know, even like satellite radio, there's different shows. There's a bunch of different mediums. So a lot of that is being done. I don't know, more like in the remotely remote area like that kind of space. So I got a bunch of podcasts lined up and, you know, I'm doing some aviation podcast. Like there's just different areas that try to get the word out.

And I'm just hoping people see value in the book. You write this book and I'm sure you know the same boat that I am is like, man, I hope this thing is helpful. You know, like I'm at the point now where I look at it. I think this thing sucks. I have edited it so many times. I actually had to just say. Yep. I think I might be changing it back to what it originally was because I'm so many.

You've changed it so many times, yeah. And so I am going to hand it off to you people. Well, Mark and those guys do a good job. If they say it's ready, it's ready. And it took me some time to. And, you know, like I said, I was shocked that it's so clear in my head. And I'd write it down. I'm like, that is not what's in my head.

Yeah, it's tough. I can think faster than I type those. It's one of the issues. Yeah. Amen. And all those things got in the way. I did get to a place. I'm like, okay, this is, this sounds kind of how I'm thinking.

And at some point you got like, this is it. And you do have to, or you're just going to over edit it. Like you said, all of a sudden, like, I think this has said what it said the first time. I think it will come full circle. Yeah. Did you do the audiobook? I did. What was that experience like?

Because I'm doing that in January. It was tedious. Where do you go? Sound studio? I went to a sound studio. And you just read? You just read. It was awesome.

I loved it. There's a, like a director. There's a studio person. But it's like you kind of sitting like this. You got a microphone. You got an iPad. And you were reading your book. And it, it was four days in a row.

What? That's wrong. It was two days and then two more days. And I had a couple days in between. And it's six hour days. And you are reading your book. I'm going to call my union rep. Mark, if you listen to this.

I don't, I don't, I don't have a union rep, but I don't think there's a writer's union, but I will start one because I will mutiny over this. The thing that I learned, though, it was not easy. I really enjoyed it. I do not know how someone else, nobody could have else read that book.

You're reading your book, and it sounds in your ear different than how you typed it. And so there's a couple times I'm like, oh, that's terrible. I was too late because that's in the book. They're like, hey, buddy, you're going to read the words in front of you. But you have got to read your own book.

I mean, I learned that lesson. And Jocco said, I was like, you will do the office. And it's 100% the right move. They already agreed to let me do it. It's worth the time. It's a little tedious because you make little mistakes and the guys like, hey, say it again.

You're like, why? He's like, you said the word wrong. You don't even realize it. But I think the power of you to, you know where to inflect. You know how to, you understand what you're trying to say. So you're able to say it in a way as tedious as it was, I really had fun doing it. It was a lot of work. It took some time, but it was really fun.

And you're saying it the way that you're feeling it, which I think would be impossible for someone else. So I think it's awesome you're doing it. Yeah, because you know where the motivation is or where you would want to add tone and inflection to it. Yeah. 100%. Perhaps in my case, a touch of sarcasm. It's hard to say.

I don't see that from you, but maybe. Ask Jocko about that. I'd be like, that son of a bitch. I appreciate it when he wrote the forward that he made up nice things that made me sound good. He wrote my forward and he likes to say, get Dave's book. You know you'll like the forward. It's the best part. So we got that going for us.

We got good forwards in our book. Trust me. He'll probably say the same BS with me too. God, I'll go. I'll go back on his show before it comes out too. God. Totally. Definitely.

Definitely need to. I don't need him bookmarking because I see what he does with books. I'm like, Jocko, can we just talk about how I'm an idiot? We don't need to go literal chapter. He will 100% bookmarks all your idiocy for the whole world here. He should just bring a highlighter then. It's like, sik, sq, sk. You think you'll ever get back into aviation being out?

I don't think so. No desire at all. I know that sounds terrible. Get a Sessna, fly around at 70 knots. He experienced the world. How do I? Yeah. How do I say this without sounding like a total pompous jerk?

But a couple years ago, I got a flight in an Cirrus jet. It was just like the cool. That jet is so, it is awesome. It's glass cockpit. For a civilian to be able to get their hands on that for about two and a half million dollars. That's amazing. It's unreal. I got into that thing.

Like I said, I preface this was, I don't know how to say that sounded like a jerk. Yeah. And I'm like, I cannot believe how slow we were going. Yeah. I mean, I just, my frame of reference, it was like climbing at altitude. I'm like, I can't, it was so slow. Yeah. And a thousand feet, they're like, what are we taxiing right now?

It was crazy. So I didn't, I didn't transition to civilian flying well. Yeah. And that's not even a criticism, it just not. And the other part too is, I know the same thing you know is if I'm going to fly, dedication effort work. Currents competency. And I have, I just, I do not have the bandwidth of the interest for that.

anymore. And so there's no way I could do it correctly. So I'm not going to do it. Yeah, I'm at a phase in my life where I can prioritize time with it. But I also never want, so with the helicopter, I have no desire to become a flight instructor. I'm not going to teach anybody. Yeah. I just want to explore where I live. Yeah. And currency and comp, I don't let it go more than a couple days without going out flying. And that's, and that's what you need. You can't do this once or twice a month. And when I talk in multiple hours, I'm like 30 minutes. I'll bang traffic patterns or literally because I landed on a mobile platform. I'll just lift up. and put it back down.

Just get some reps. That's perfect. I think that attitude is exactly right. I don't have that right now, so I won't do it at all. Yeah. What else do you want to accomplish in life? Dude.

This is a question I struggle with. That's a great question. You know, you talked about like finding the balance of letting the people around you. Obviously, kids are the most obvious one. But in all aspects, finding the balance of what you can pass on. I think as we get older, you have the sense of like,

I want to pass this on. You start thinking about legacy. Yeah, a little bit. And it's tempered with the other point you made, which is really good is they got to feel that hot stove, right? They got to feel that hot stove. If I accomplish anything, if I can contribute to the people around me that I care about,

and it's remarkable how you said it, because I think the words are coming to my mind is accelerate the timeline just a little bit, a little bit, and lower the magnitude just a little bit so they can be successful in their lives, that would be a win. for me. Yeah. And, and I'm always kind of meandering around that, trying to figure that out. And it's not, and I think you're thinking the same, it's not legacy. So like, oh, look at him.

Yeah, it's, it's what, what is, what is the way to get someone else that you care about to find success that they define for themselves with the benefit of that. And if I don't, I do not care what my kids that I'm doing as long as it's important, constructive, viable. Like the things you want, let them find that, if they can do that in a way that's successful and their, and they're, life, that's the legacy I'm looking for. And I think for me, it's how do I balance the lessons that I've learned with their ability to learn for themselves? Do you like travel with your kids? You guys do hobbies together? We, we travel. Which I think is really important for young men and women. That is one of our favorite things to do. Yeah. You know, not to get all cheesy,

but like every year we go to a different national park. Yep. You know, you guys have been a glacier? No, we have. Unbelievable trash. But. I can't believe. Actually, you shouldn't come now. You're not even invited. I'm going to put you on the no-fly list up there. That's awesome. Well, thanks for the invite. I actually think it's better than Yellowstone. It's just, it's not as well known. Yeah.

It's, it is a. Because you're banning people from it, apparently, is why. Only the Burke family, but it is, it is stunning. It is really cool. And to that end, like, look, this technology, you know what, you know the world that's out there. That is an offset to that. And every year the kids, they love it. They're like, oh, I'm so glad we did that.

My kids all do jiu-jitsu. So, you know, we're, I'm trying to expose them to the things I know will be good for them. Yeah. And I will say this. The best part about like my post military life, I had kids a little bit later. So, you know, I'm pros and cons. Yeah, definitely. But I see my kids all the time, which is awesome.

I'm with my kids all the time. Well, I should be careful. I'm with my kids as much as they want me to be around. And, you know, the oldest one, as you know, like she's like, you know, here and there. My son is the youngest. I got girl, girl, girl boy. My son just like, he wants to be hanging around with me all the time. But I'm around with them.

And so I take them to class. I take them to all their sports, football, soccer, all of it. So I am fully invested in the idea of like being around them for as long as I can knowing that that's a fleeting window. So I'm lucky to be at this place in my life with kids at that age where I can do that. What are you doing to enrich your life outside of giving back with your experiences? Do you have hobbies that you like? You have any goals that you're pursuing?

Man, those are really good questions. I know this sounds kind of, I don't know if self-serving is quite the right word, writing the book and thinking about what I would write about next has been really family-centric. So like the next thing I'm thinking about with Jamie and are talking about the concept of writing about how we take these things and apply them in our families.

So we're in this, literally in this, and I don't think it's a hobby. I don't think I'd quite call it that. I think there's a little bit of like, a little bit of like a professionalization of that. Like it's a little bit of like some work. But the skill of taking a lesson or taking something that is resident in your head and capturing in a way that can relate to other people in their home life where I struggle the most. That's where my EU gets challenged the most.

That's where my emotions get challenged the most. That's where I'm most invested in the outcome. So in the last couple years, there's been a lot of thinking about that. And I know, I mean, it's maybe sounds a little cheat. Like that has strengthened my relationship with my wife. And so there's a lot of focus on thinking about that. And it's an interesting blend of like the work that I do professionally, my job at Eschlein Front with.

And again, I wouldn't call it a hobby, but it is definitely like personal. And where the most value of the time invested is with the people I care about the most, there's a really interesting intersection there of how these things that we teach sit in, even like my daughter and her cell phone.

I think about like, how did I do that? or what, you know, she wrote the contract for how we're going to do it. Like all the lessons in a very intimate personal family life. And it's been a really cool blend of taking those two things together. Writing about that, which I've been doing a lot of lately because like I said, I wrote this book two years ago. This book has been done. That writing has been really interesting, a little bit therapeutic, but also a lot of fun

because it's about my kids. It's about my wife. It's really cool. There would be a good parody book around extreme ownership with families too. The parodies write themselves are so good. Yeah, the chapter one would be, but my wife was mean to me. Yeah. I didn't hear what she said.

Yeah. That's her job. Yeah. So there's so much there. It's gold. I actually think that book would crush. Dude. The ownership parody book?

Yes. Winners. And I feel like I could force Jocko to do a promo for it, like a hostage video, like one of his Monday mornings. But he would be reading it like stuttering and hostage and he had to be, say it again. I think, I don't know. If I could pitch it to him as a comedy, I think it would be okay. Let me know how that goes. I think it would be all right.

Are you aware that Eschelon Front for a short period of time was considered to be the bodyguards for Charlie Kirk? I heard some. I saw people posting about it on one of the platforms. This is Jocko and Leith Eschelon Front. I'm sitting there. I almost texted Jocko and said, hey, man, did you guys get into the security business and not tell me about that? Because I don't know where they made that leap. And then I saw Leif actually addressed it.

He goes like, this is not factually correct. Yeah. I don't know how that happened. I have no idea. Fortunately, it came and went very quickly, but there was a post. I can't remember where it was, but it was that we were a security company. Yeah. Or had a security portion of.

I literally, I literally cannot explain at all how something like that happens. We are not a security company. But that got out. That was a thing for a couple days. The internet's a wild place. It is a wild place. You're like, it could be more dangerous than Murmadi. It's a crazy place.

Maybe not to physical, you know, life and limb. But it is the Wild West out there, man. The stats are back. It comes to the malleable nature of young men and women and depression and suicidal ideation. And ensure misinformation and things like that. And what is like assumed to be true? And you're looking like, wow. So that one was crazy.

You know who's getting caught with the misinformation more than our kids, though? As our parents. I don't have enough stored space on this SIM card to talk about the unwinding I've had to do. Oh, man. Yeah. I feel like I remember pre and post internet. You're at the age of you. Yeah, for sure.

There's not that many generations beyond ours that will remember. Right. I don't want to be mean to my. dad's generation. But I feel like at 80, you don't get electronics anymore. Yeah. We're going to take those away. Oh, man.

I have had to make him promise. I'm like, you will never put your credit card information into your phone again. How else is he going to get a free iPad? Okay. He's got to do that. Or a $1,500 toll from California where he wasn't, nor is a toll violation ever $1,500. I have had to make him promise. Oh, man.

I will come wherever you are. I will help you. You are not allowed to put your credit card information into your phone without me or Leah present. Ever. And he was like, okay. And I think he has been doing it. Yeah. It's tough, man.

It's tough to navigate at that age, I think. Where can people find your book? We'll get you out of here. You're going to make your flight today. Dude, you're awesome, man. This has been awesome. I mean, just like, I mean, you can go to Amazon. You could also go to Eschon Front.

Is there, does one benefit you more than the other? Because this is what gets weird, too. sales that count against it? Yes. And I know nothing about that world other than it's a shifty. The short answer is yes. The long answer is too long. I don't care.

If you bought this book, I'm grateful. Yeah. Go to Amazon or go to Barnes & Noble, which would be super cool. Yep. And it's like my name, just type in my name. The book is called The Need to Lead. A little Top Gun nod. Yeah.

But if you just put my name and you bought on Amazon, I'll be super stoked. Should have called it the need for speed and just gotten sued by by Paramount. I wonder if they would sue you. I wonder if they would sue. I feel like they would. It would be an odd name for a leadership book, but I got as close to it as I could.

Yeah, I liked it. I appreciated it. And then echelonfront stuff, that's just echelonfront.com. Eschlonfront.com, you can get everything from like bringing us out to your company to like buying t-shirts. So go to echelonfront.com anytime you want to reach out.

And that's to any, you want to connect with anybody at our company. Just go to our website. It's all on there. And then like the other stuff is just Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Do you do the socials? I do the socials. I'm not the most active social user.

That said, your life is better because of the video. Yeah, it is. I'm most active on LinkedIn and Instagram. The rest, I won't lie. Like,

I'm just not super engaged. And I feel bad, but not really. Don't be. But the other part of the thing, like on Instagram, like my following is like, it's not so big that I would,

I will answer anybody's DM. So if you find me an Instagram, David R. Burke, and you message me, I will answer you on Instagram. And if you make a comment or a post on LinkedIn, I'll get to you. Outside of LinkedIn Instagram,

you probably won't hear back because I just don't stay in touch. We don't get so much time in the day, man. So the beauty and the downside of the internet as well, you can build or be part of a community so far outside of what I think humans were actually designed to do. Totally. You could spend your entire life.

And then there's the dead internet theory where 80 plus percent of the internet is just bot controlled. You want to stare at the ceiling fan. God. Totally. The algorithm is. dangerous. I try to stay away from it as often as I can. Your life will be better for it. Indeed. For sure. Awesome, man. Well, let's get you out here. Thank you for making the trip up.

Dude, this is the coolest thing ever, man. Thank you. I mean, I don't know this coolest thing ever. You used to fly F-22s, but whatever. Right on.