Jocko Podcast - 320: Counter-Attack The Problems Around You and Solve Them. With Eli Crane.

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

0:00:00 - Opening0:02:52 - Eli Crane. Navy SEAL, CEO.2:44:20 - How to stay on THE PATH.3:11:37 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 320 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So there's a common set of metaphors that get thrown around a decent amount. Something along the lines of we as people, we're authors of our own book and we're the star of our own movie. You heard these things before? I have, yeah. And they, when you hear them, when I just said them, and even the way I said them, they seem kind of trite and they seem cliched.

And I guess they are, but like many cliches, they are true in many ways. And there's an analogy in those statements with the idea of extreme ownership. Take ownership of your life. That's similar to, hey, you write your own. book you get to create the plot is the is the is the underlying theme which means that you have control and obviously I like that idea I like that that attitude and I agree with the idea of creating your own plot and writing your own book that you're in but it doesn't quite correlate a hundred percent

because here's the thing if you are truly writing your own script, then you actually have control over everything that's happening. You have 100% control over everything that you're writing. You're writing it. But in life, in real life, there are things that are beyond your control. In war, the enemy gets a vote. In life, life gets a vote. life gets a vote bad things are going to happen the things that you don't expect disease accidents misfortunes mishaps catastrophes and it doesn't matter it doesn't matter who you are or what situation you are in these things are going to impact your life at some point no one gets out of life without these things happening no one truly gets to write their own script so the

the question is what do you do you do you do you face these challenges how do you actually take ownership of your life it is not an easy thing to do we are lucky enough today to have someone here that has taken ownership of his life and has dedicated his life to service he served in the seal teams once he got out of the seal teams created an incredibly successful business He serves his family, serves his wife and his two daughters. He serves his faith. And now he is looking to serve his country again. As a political leader, his name is Eli Crane,

and he is here tonight to share his experiences and pass on some of those lessons learned that he got along the way. Eli Crane, thanks for coming down, man. Thanks for having me, Jock. Appreciate it. Long drive out from Arizona. I know.

five and a half hours, but it was a good one, though. Let's jump into this. So speaking of Arizona, let's start at the beginning. Let's start about your past and where you came from. Yeah, I actually was born in Tucson, Arizona. My dad was going to pharmacy school out there. Both my parents are from Iowa, and they moved out here, go to a good pharmacy school, and there were a lot of pharmacy jobs in the West. So my dad went through pharmacy school, then moved us down to. to Yuma, Arizona of all places. Dang. Yeah.

And so. Was there a job or something down there? There was. And that's why he did it. And it's cool because I remember a lot of my, a lot of my buddies in the platoon were always complaining about, you know, Iraq and the heat. And I was like, this is like where I'm from, man, you know, except Arabic street signs and maybe an extra dust storm here or there.

This is like, kind of like Yuma without the good Mexican food. But, but yeah, so grew up in, grew up in Yuma. and, you know, just, you know, love playing sports, was a football player, played a little bit of basketball and stuff like that, wanted to be a pro football player, but then I realized, you know, I ran into reality and realized that I didn't have, didn't have the skills and started looking at other options. Was your, so your dad was actually completed pharmacy school when he was a pharmacist? Yes, sir.

And what about your mom? Was she doing the same thing, or did she start raising the kids? Yeah, she was raising the kids. And she was also, she also did some part-time work at our church as a secretary. So you were spending time in church then when you were younger? Yeah, I did. How was, how was the attention span in school and whatnot? It wasn't, it was a horrible student.

It was funny. I remember, you know, thank God, you know, Jocko, you talk about dynamic leadership. Sometimes they're like, hey, what works for this individual, doesn't work for that individual. But it was interesting because I remember my mom. Thank God she, you know, tried to be dynamic in parenting me and my brothers because my older brother and younger brother were good students. But me, on the other hand, not so much. Well, you're the middle, right?

I was the middle. And I remember my mom coming home from a parent teacher conference, and she's like, you know, Eli is in the classroom, but he's not really here. And like I was always daydreaming. I was out at recess. chasing butterflies or whatever I was doing. But yeah, it didn't. And it was interesting because as I went down that pipeline, you know, I started to think, you know, people would tell me, like, especially my brothers, you know, you always rash your brothers, give each other a hard time.

And my brothers, you know, I probably dished out more than I received. But, you know, they would tell me that I was stupid because my grades were awful. And so you hear something enough time. You're stupid, you're stupid, you're stupid. You start to internalize it. And, you know, you can easily make that a part of your identity. So I did. And, you know, I started to think I was stupid.

And then as I got further along in life and I started, you know, finding what I was passionate about, I realized that I wasn't stupid. I just, you know, needed to have that energy and my attention funneled in the right direction towards something that I really cared about. So you played football? Did you say football and what? You know, I played football a little bit of basketball, but most of my focus was football. And you played all through high school?

Yeah. How good were you? You know, I was decent, but I wasn't good enough to move on to college. I played, you know, I played quarterback. I loved, you know, playing quarterback. I loved the team dynamics of football. But it was interesting. And, you know, I got to take extreme ownership.

of this, but my coach, we had like three slow white quarterbacks. And in high school, our coaches decided to switch us to an option, you know, running football team. So it was kind of like, you know, none of us were even really in a system that, you know, really highlighted our skills, our preferred skill sets or what we were even good at. But, and there was, there was one guy that ended up starting over me and unfortunately he was juicing at the time and I was like a scrawny like hundreds you know wasn't unfortunate for him apparently he was like I was six one like 170 pounds just really really scrawny hadn't put on any weight yet and he had he could throw about 15 yards further than me and he he got he started so it is what it is didn't get you know didn't didn't get the opportunity to really

start once I got deeper I started all the way up to like my junior year and then, you know, I got benched. And the bottom line is, you know, I wasn't good enough to make it happen. And I'm looking back on it, hindsight being what it is, I'm kind of glad because I'm pretty, pretty thrilled about the route that I ended up going down. And then you, you stayed in Yuma. Is that where you went to high school? Yeah, that's where I went to high school, Subola High School. And your parents were just continuing to work and get you ready for, Life? Yep, pretty much just raising me and my two brothers. And yeah, I mean, you know, I feel pretty fortunate to grow up in the home that I did. You know, my parents loved us. They provided for us,

et cetera. And, you know, I realize a lot of folks don't get that. So I'm pretty grateful for that. And then were you planning to go to college? Was that part of your plan? Yeah, I was planning to go to college, but I was hoping that I could go there and play football. Like, that was my focus. That was my goal. And I also wanted to be in the military at some point. And so the advice that I was getting was, hey, Eli, if you're going to go to college, you know, or if you're going to go into the military, go through, go through school, get your degree, become an officer, you know, and you'll get a lead man, the pay is better, et cetera. And, you know, that wasn't the path I ended up taking. But Did you get better grades as you got older?

I did. Did your brother scar you to the point where you were just not doing any schoolwork at all? No. So when I got out of, when I got out of high school, I started working some like odd jobs, like construction. You know, at one point I was like a scorekeeper down at Parks and Rec, you know, for like softball games. Stuff like that. I was working at a restaurant as like a bus boy, you know, definitely not on the path to success. When you got out of high school.

Yeah, when I got out of high school, you didn't go right into college? I didn't. Okay. And then I was kind of lost. And it was right after my parents' divorce. And my parents' divorce was pretty tough. And so it kind of rocked my world. I was definitely, you know, a little bit rattled.

So I was trying to figure. How old were you and your parents got divorced? I was 17. So, you know, thankfully, like I said, I got my parents together for most of my, you know, upbringing. but it was a pretty brutal divorce. And so it just really rocked my world. And I was, you know, took some time trying to figure out who the hell I was, what I was going to do. And then I started going back to a community college called Arizona Western.

And I started studying criminology. And that's when I started getting good grades because I loved it. I loved it. And, you know, I wasn't getting straight A's, but I think I had like a three, three five average or something like that and, you know, I enjoyed it. And how long did that last for? So I did that for about two years. I think I was one credit away, like an elective away from getting my, my associate's degree,

and then I applied to go to the University of Arizona. Unfortunately, when I got to the University of Arizona, they didn't have like a criminology degree. They had like some criminal justice degree, but I'd have to go to the Eller Business School and I didn't get into that one. You had to have really good grades to get into it. And so I ended up being like, okay, I still want to finish my degree, still want to have the opportunity to become an officer if possible. And so I was like, okay, being the typical, you know, I was like, okay, what's, what path

can I go that allows, allows me to do that? And so I looked at sociology, the study of society and culture. And I started, you know, working on. my major and that I switched my major at that point because because they didn't have the criminology major were you thinking about the seal teams or were you just thinking about the military in general did you know yeah so at that point I knew I wanted to be a seal um even when I was back in Yuma before I came to Tucson um I was never a big party or anything like that and I remember when I was even when I was doing the odd jobs one of my favorite things to do at night was to go to barns and noble

and just like, you know, really go through the military history section that they have there. And I would just read books on Special Forces, PJs, Rangers, Delta. And I was just fascinated by the Special Forces community. And I remember my dad gave me a piece of advice in high school. He said, Eli, the trick to being happy in your career is basically to pick something you would do for free. Don't pick a career because of money. It won't make you happy. And he told me if I could go back and do it again, I wouldn't be a pharmacist.

He said, I could have gone and, you know, been a forest ranger or something like that, I would do that. And so I took that advice on board and I was like, oh, man, I was reading the books. And I was like jumping out of airplanes, blowing stuff up, you know, shooting, you know, being with, you know, being in a team environment, dude, I'd do that for free for sure. And so I started setting my mind on special forces. Is there something that particularly narrowed it down to the SEAL teams? Yeah, because all the literature that I was, almost all of it said that it was the toughest training in the Department of Defense. And I don't know, there was something about that that just appealed to me. Like I wanted to test myself and see if I could, if I had what it took to make it through the toughest training in the world.

And then I loved the water, or I thought I did. That notion gets tested. Yeah. That notion gets tested big time. How old were you when you were figuring all that out? Was that when you were already at the University of Arizona? Yeah. So it was even when I was, you know, definitely thinking about it,

even when I was at Arizona Western. I was also thinking about would it be cool to be a Fed because I was studying criminology, you know, federal law enforcement or something like that. And then as soon as I got to U of A, you know, I started studying sociology, which I really did. I was back in that. I really don't like this that much.

And I really, I could even see kind of the indoctrination within academia at that point. And I was like, I'm really not on board with a lot of this extracurricular stuff that they're putting out here and kind of the bent that a lot of academia has. And so I started, I found a program in ROTC.

I realized, okay, there is an ROTC program here. There's a lot of military folks. I should go get hooked into that. And so I did, and I found that they had a Ranger Challenge program at U of A. And so I was like, oh, cool, man. I want to see if I can join and get into that. Maybe I could learn a little bit and, you know, network and just figure out, start working towards getting in the right type of shape.

And so I started doing the Ranger Challenge program and, you know, we'd have to, you know, wake up, do early morning PTs and, you know, just get some exposure to that culture and to leaders within that culture. And so I started doing that. And that was helpful. So what year is this? So that would have been probably 2000. So were you in college when September 11th came? I was. I was just starting my senior year at the U of A and I was doing that Ranger Challenge program. You know, my grades were decent. I was a lifeguard at the U of A rec center. And 9-11 happened. I just finished to Ranger Challenge workout early in the morning, got my car, turned on the radio, and I was driving back to where I lived, and it was all over the radio, and I was like, damn. I was actually in a

agricultural fraternity called Alpha Gamma Row at the time. So I drove home, and I was like, I woke up all the guys who were still asleep, and I was like, dude, you guys got to get out here and watch this. And so we all got up, watched it, and everybody was just obviously stunned and surprised and pissed off at the same time. And so I remember wanting to join, you know, obviously I wanted to join the military and I remember, you know, taking a couple days to think about it, but I'm just like, I got to go, you know, and I remember calling my mom and my dad and telling him, hey, look, I've decided I'm going to go join the military. I'm going to drop out of school and join the military. Because I just really felt like, hey, there's never going to be a time like this,

you know, where the nation needs the next crop to step up and serve. And so I actually dropped out that week, went and, you know, dropped out all my classes and then went down, started talking to the recruiter and playing those games with the recruiter. And then within probably, I think, seven or eight days I was, we were driving up to Phoenix so that I could get on a plane and fly to Great Lakes. And it was pretty quick. Dude, that's really quick. Yep.

And was it like a seal contract? Was it a seal contract? Yeah. Was it called dive fair? I don't think. I don't think. That's what I did back in 1820. No, it wasn't called that.

I can't remember what it was called, but they did guarantee me the opportunity to do a screen test and try out. Yeah. Which is, if you think about that is the shallowest guarantee you could ever get to sign your life away. Right. Hey, here, you signed this piece of paper for six years in the Navy, and you will be guaranteed a chance to take a screening test that might get you picked up for buds. Right.

That's a slim offering. I know it. And you rogered up. I did. I did. And, you know, I'm looking back on it now, I don't think I would change it. even though I never have still to this day never finished my degree, you know, for a couple different reasons.

And but I think this, I think it was the right thing to do. And I'm glad that, you know, there were a lot, there were thousands of Americans that did the exact same thing. Yeah, Tim Kennedy was saying that same thing. He went down to the recruiter like September 12th or whatever. Yep. And he said the line was around the building and everything. So you showed up to boot camp?

Yep. In Chicago? Yep. And was it, was it a shock to the system? Well, big time. Big time. Yeah. I don't know who doesn't get a shock when he showed the boot camp.

Even Navy boot camp, which is, you know, relatively mild, I guess, compared to, like, let's say the Marine Corps boot camp. But just the immediate loss of all your personal freedom and personal space is kind of a, it's kind of a little bit of a shocker. Echo. I understand. And what were you going to be? So I, back then... I mean, obviously your goal is to be a seal, but you had to take a rate, right? Yep.

Gunnersmate was a seal source rate at the time. I think they were only five of them. So I was like, Gunners, man. Yeah, cool. That sounds awesome. So I chose Gunners' mate. And thankfully, I chose a cool one because I was going to spend some time in that rate. Yeah.

Did you take the screening test? I did. You passed it? Not the first time. The second time. Yeah, man, this, you know, this is something even before. How old are you at this point? I am 20, I'm 21 years old.

Okay. So I didn't pass my first one. I passed the second one. Like I was running in like steel, you know, back when you had to run the screen test and like steel-toed boots. Boondockers. Yeah. And I had gotten some, what I would consider today,

probably some pretty bad gouge from a team guy that I talked to because I didn't know any seals but my recruiter he was like hey man there's some seals out at ypg umma proving ground her at jump school we can go talk to him if you want i was like yes i'd love to go talk to him so i remember going out he drove me out there and i talked to one and uh he was like he's like look man the only way you're going to know is if you if you have what it takes it's just to show up and do it he's like can you passed a screen test and I was like yeah I think I can and so that is that is that is the worst advice ever so that's what I was rolling I'm like this guy's a Navy SEAL dude this is what he told me so um and then so I you know once I got to the level where you know I could do like I could pass

the screen test I was like okay I'm good to go let's do it and then when I got like I was but even when I ran the screen test on my own I was never running it in steel-toed boots and pants and I don't and like a fool when I did when I did this stuff I didn't I didn't do it together and that's a big deal that a lot of people don't we people don't yeah dude I can do 42 push-ups yeah I can do I can do six pull-ups I can I can do all these things individually but you're not running them together and when you start running them together with with the time requirements in between it'll gas you pretty quick so the first time I ran it man I was dry heaving coming across the finish line and failed. But I got a chance to go back and do it again

the next time like I came in with like maybe a second left. And they're like, all right, sweet, you get your seal contract. And I'm like, yes. And so graduated from boot camp, went to GunnersMate A school right there in Great Lakes. And at that point, they let us work out with some actual seals. We got to do C.O.P.T. I think three times a week.

So I started doing that. And it was kind of funny. I had, I have hairy legs. And so there was this instructor. You and Joe Biden, apparently. Right. Wow. Wow.

I didn't realize. You've seen that video, right? I have. I mean, is there a crazier, like, combination of randomness that you can put into a video besides that Joe Biden and hairy legs and the kids and the blonde hair? It's the most insane thing. Yeah. Yeah. So anyways.

All right. So you got hairy legs. Yeah. So one of the instructors, his name was instructor Hatter. He wouldn't even let me speak English. He made me speak in wookie. And I used to be real good at like doing the cheap, but it was like, he made me run around and like, you know, go report to so and so over there.

I would run up to him and he'd make me report like that. And they loved it, but whatever. And yeah, so did the COPPT thing, graduated Gunners Made A school, and then went immediately to Buds and classed up with Buds Class 242. Did you get what you expected at Buds? Yeah, and more. And more.

And, you know, it was really, it was really interesting because I actually made it through Hell Week on my first, on my first attempt. And, you know, definitely not heroic, more like hanging on by the, you know, hanging on. What were you having trouble with? So, well, yeah, yeah, I was, I was having trouble with buds.

So when I was born, I was born with, some doctors say that I had asthma. Some said I had exercise-induced bronchitis, whichever diagnosis is correct. At the end of the day, my lungs only functioned at about 60% and that, you know, of what they're supposed to. And that's after even like an albuterol hit or treatment. And so, you know, you can imagine, you know, if your lungs are only functioning at 60% and you've trained to the bare minimum, you're going to have a tough time. And so I was having a really tough time. And so I made it.

And I walk around at about 225 pounds. I had, because my lungs don't function at the level they're supposed to, I had to get down to 175 pounds just to pass the screen test, right? It's like a car, right? We can't put a bigger engine in this thing. You know, we can't do a lot to it. How do we make it? We start stripping weight out of it, throw the back seat, you know, like get rid of weight. Yeah.

Because just saying it is only going to go as fast as it goes. And so started really, you know, getting really thin, really thin. And that had that. This is while you were in buds? I had to get really thin before even going to buds just because, you know. Was this while you were at GMA school? Yeah. So while at your GMA school, you're just dropping weight.

Yeah. trying to get trying to get be able to run faster yep and you show up at buds and you're hurting yeah and it wasn't honestly it wasn't just that it wasn't just that like I was immature as well um you know I had uh that's one thing that like I when I talk to people about steel training and buds and the fact that they're trying to form you into a team guy um when I first showed up I was immature and I was like I was looking out for number one I was looking out for number one I was looking out from me. I was like, man. And it wasn't like I was a jerk, but if I'm struggling, if I'm on the struggle bus over here and I haven't grown up and matured yet, I'm like, man, I got a, I got to,

I got to focus on myself. I'm not going to, I'm not going to volunteer for that two spot under the boat. Man, I'm, I'm hurting, right? And so after post-Hell week, I failed a evolution called life-saving, which sometimes is a pass or fail, sometimes it's a weed out evolution. And so life-saving just for people to understand this is where the students have to rescue the instructors who are allegedly drowning and they're actually not drowning. They're actually just getting ready to kick your ass. Yep. So, and they have different levels. The first one is kind of passive and then it goes up to the fifth level, which is you're in a fight with another dude in the water.

And you mentioned that it's past, fail, but. you also mentioned that there's a decent amount of subjectivity to it where if you have a guy that's coming through buds that maybe he's meeting the standards he might even be crushing the standards but he's not a good doesn't appear like he's going to be a good teammate doesn't it doesn't appear to be the kind of guy you'd want your platoon as an instructor yep they can weed that guy out yep at least that's the way it used to be yep and that that that that's what it was and it's I I'm glad. I, you know, I look back on it. It's one of the best things that ever happened to me. You know, I got, I failed that event. They give you, like, in most evolutions of buzz,

they'll give you like two or three chances to pass it. I failed it three times. So they sent me to an academic review board. When you were, when you were failing that, was that just, like, horrifying? I can only imagine that failing, life-saving would be kind of like drowning. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It, you know, it was horrifying. Like I remember we had one instructor who was a very large man, very large man. I remember getting him back to the pool wall, pinning his hands on the side, and I was just smoked. And I got up on the pool deck, and I'm still holding his hands on the pool wall so that, you know, he doesn't, because he'll just, he'll just fall into the pool if you don't, if you don't pin him to the wall.

And so I'm pin him to the wall. I get up, I get out of the pool deck, and like, I'm supposed to, like, cross his hands as I bring him up. You know, you know what I'm talking about? So he can like spin the other way? So he can spin with his back towards me and then I can put him on my legs and slowly let him down. So if he was a real drowning victim, I'm not creating more trauma. And I remember I spun him the wrong way. And his junk like landed right on the pool deck.

And I heard him go, ugh. And this, he was as big as jockey. And I'm like 170 pound bud student on my third try. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm done. and went to an academic review board. And yeah, they were, I remember walking in. And they were like, all right, young man, we've looked over your record. And this is post-Hel week.

This is post-Hel week. Yeah, me and my roommate were both, I think we both got boarded that day with one other guy. And they were like, look, you're obviously tough. You made it through whole week. But we need the best of the best here. And you're not meeting up to that standard. They were like, you fell to run, you failed to swim, you failed a no course, and here is the big, here is the big one. And you're ranked in the bottom 25% of your class because in sealed training, even back then we were doing peer evils.

And so that's a big deal. And so they're like, we're going to recommend that you come back in a year. And I was like, okay. And so, you know, that was a tough, tough blow for me because they actually ended up keeping my roommate who had basically the same stats that I had was ranked the same the same way so that why did they keep him do you know honestly I don't know but um they didn't tell me but he actually made it all the way to third phase couldn't pass his final swim and he got he got booted and he was a he was a little dude as well but I felt really bad for him because he never went back when you were going through hell week what were you

solid in hell week in terms of mentally? You know, I would say, I wouldn't say solid. I would say my mentality was hanging on for dear life. And I think that was, you know, the difference between my first hell week and my second hell week. So when you say hanging on for dear life, you mean you're sitting in the water on Tuesday night and you're like, like, can we get a little bit further? And you just did that the whole time, basically?

Yeah. So the interesting thing is that I never thought about quitting. However, I remember we broke out Sunday night, and then Monday night, I remember standing in line with, you know, the class, you know, where they're coming around with flashlights looking at you. And I'm thinking to myself, I've never been this cold. I've never been this wet. Never been this tired. And this is Sunday night? This is, no, Monday night.

This is 24 hours in. And I've still got another four and a half days of this. No, and I'm starting to think to myself, there's no way. And what I was trying to do is I was trying to eat that elephant, you know, in one bite. And I mean, that's, I think that's probably the thing that gets most guys in training is that, like, when you've got a five and a half day block like that and you try and eat it in one bite, it's just mentally overwhelming, you know. But if you're able to break it up into, I'm not even going to worry about Friday afternoon. I'm just going to focus on, I know I get to eat chow in two hours. I'm just going to make it to chow.

And if it gets tougher than that, I'm just going to make it through this race. And if it gets tougher than that, I'm just going to put my right foot in front of my left foot and you just break those goals down. And that was something that you think you're decent at doing until you get into the eye of that storm. And you're like, that was a big difference between hell week one and hell week two for me. But bottom line is extreme ownership, I got what I deserved. And it ended up being a blessing. How, were you not just super freaking angry when you got dropped?

I was. I was. I remember, you know, you probably know Dan Tabor. So I remember talking to instructor Tabor at the time. He was there in my board. He was the proctor of my class. And, you know, he pulled me aside. And it was really cool because he didn't have to do this, but he was just really encouraging.

He was like, hey, don't let this. He said something in the fact that don't let this be the end. Come back. Do it. You can make it. And he's like, and don't, basically he's like, don't feel bad about this. Just make it right. And that was really cool coming from a guy like that who at that point in my life, I didn't

even know if he cared about it because you know the persona that Bud's instructors put on. But it was just really cool. It was like an older dude who'd been there, done that, Sealed Chief, and just a mentorship moment. And that was really cool that he did that. So then it's trick-or-treat to the fleet. Yep. Give me something good to sweep.

Oh, yeah. Where'd you get stationed? So the detailer gave me, hey, your options are you can go to Japan or you can go to Virginia or you can go to Jacksonville, Florida. And so Japan sounded kind of cool, but I was worried that if I went there, it'd be harder to get back. and so and I really didn't want to go to Virginia because I heard a lot of bad things about being in the fleet there it's a lot colder I was like Florida's kind of nice I mean Ron DeSantis wasn't there at the time but I'd still heard good things and so I was like yeah I'll go to Florida I'll go to Mayport and I remember Jocko I drove I drove across country and showed up there and I looked at that ship and I was like and I knew I was going to be sleeping on that ship for the next at least a year or so I actually slept in my car man I was like, oh my God, dude, this is going to suck.

And it did. It sucked. Were you an E3 at this point? Yeah. So you check on board your ship. Did you get scullery duty out of the gate? Like, like, messed X? Yeah.

No, I didn't. Matter of fact, I got hooked up on that regard. I never went crank. We call it cranking. Yeah, mess cranking. Yeah, that's true. Mess cranking. And my rotation didn't come up for probably until I'd been on the ship, like a year.

like a year or so. And instead of going cranking, I went and did something called the HAB team. And we were just rehabilitating spaces. It was the easiest duty I'd ever had on a ship. I worked for the post office clerk. And like they would just pick a space or two every week. And we would just go in. We would tape off the space. We would tape off everything that couldn't get painted. And we would just paint it. And other than that, like, that's all we had to do. And they pulled me out of my division. So I didn't have to do any of the divisional work. I wasn't standing watches. And it was like the easiest duty I ever did. And all my buddies that were, you know, and the Gunners Made Division were so pissed off at me. They couldn't believe that I was getting a good

deal. So we had this little gym on board. It was probably the size of this room. No kidding, maybe a little bit bigger. What ship was it? It was the USS Gettysburg. It was an Aegis Missile Cruiser. C.G. 64. And. there were over like 450 people on this ship, Echo. So there were two gyms about this size, 450. 10 by 10 rooms, basically. And they would close it down if like the ship was rolling too much. And so it was like you would show up hoping to get a workout in two treadmills.

And then, you know, they were almost always busy. And the food you're eating is garbage, you know. And so it was like not only that, but you would typically underway, you would work your regular day. Like, let's just say, you know, six in the morning to five in the afternoon. And then every single night you would have to stand to watch. You would either have the eight to midnight or the balls to four, as we called it, or the four to eight. And so your sleep was always interrupted. You were always getting treated like crap in the fleet.

And, but again, it was good for me. It's what I needed to grow up. And even in those circumstances, I said that I was. mature when I went through buds the first time. And I still think I'm a little immature now. Yes, sir. But it's a progression. But it was cool because I started, I started looking back on, okay, what did I do wrong? How do I make this? How do I make this right? How do I improve while I'm out here? And even in those circumstances, I think I wasn't under a boat anymore, running with that heavy boat or, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't step up for my buddies in that

circumstance but there were times where we were all tired nobody wanted to take the watch or nobody wanted to take the trash out or nobody wanted to do this and there were times where I could practice you know taking it you know taking one for the team and that's that was part of what I needed to do and just learn how to be that guy you know when um when the team needed you and so and just grow up a little bit but so so how long did you spend on that ship two and a half years did you do one deployment or two deployments too um they said the seal instructors and the recommendation on on my exit eval or whatever it's called was e like we recommend he comes back in a year but the CEO of a ship won't get a replacement yeah if they if they let you go to a special program so that they were like

no it's just we're you're staying here we can't be undermanned and so at what point did you commit to like i'm going back to buds i'm going to make it so this is an interesting story And it talks about, you know, it's all about taking risk at times because Jocko, when my orders came through to go to BUDs, I still had a year left on my current contract. So I could have gone to Buds either passed or failed and then, you know, whatever. Or if I failed, I could just get out. The Navy was like, nope. You're going to reenlist for another four years if you want those orders. They dropped that on me the day that I was scheduled to leave the ship.

I was so pissed. And I was just like, I can't believe it because I'm face, I'm staring down the barrel. So are you at the four year mark now? I was at the three year mark. Okay. Oh, so your first enlistment was like three years because you didn't get through buds? Well, it was, I had a four year enlistment, but when my orders came through, I was at my three year mark. Got it.

Got it. So I had enough time on my contract where even if I went to buds failed out, I could just, get out. I'm out, clean escape, don't have to come back to the four. but the Navy is like, nope, you're signing a four. They knew. They know how much of leverage they have on kids that want to go back to seal training or do seal training or special program or whatever. And so, like, I remember calling some mentors in my life.

I was like, hey, man, this is what I'm staring at. What do you think? And I also, I was just praying. I was like, Lord, this is the only thing. This is the only thing on my heart. And I was even praying while I was underway on the Gettysburg. I was like, Lord, if this is not what you want me to do, please take it. from me because I don't I want to walk in your favor I want to I want to be the man you want me to be

and I want to do what you want me to do but this is the only thing on my heart and so if it's not what you want me to do please like path me out of here you know you know you know send me down the path whatever path you want me to go down because I'm a knucklehead and if if you don't help me and guide me and direct me in this I'm going to probably make a bad decision and so but yeah it was still it was still the fire still burned you know to go back even knowing that if I didn't make it I was going to be right back in the fleet so that's one of the hard things about the Navy all you young men that listen to this show you know is it at least in the Marines are in the Army man it's like if you don't make it through a program you can go being a conventional unit and fight bro

you're going to be fighting some rust and some dust in the Navy bro polishing some brass Sweeper, sweepers, man, man, you're brun, dude. It's bad. And it must have been super hard to prepare now since you're on a ship underway, two deployments in two years. You're eating food that sucks for your health. Chili dogs, baby. Chili dogs.

How did you stay in shape or how did you get in shape? Once I got, once I knew that my orders, once I submitted my package, I went right back to you. Hey, I got to drop a bunch of weight. I'd gotten a, a little bit stronger, put on a little bit more muscle, but I started dropping the weight again so that, you know, I could keep keep up on the runs and whatnot. Sometimes they'd let us run around the ship. Sometimes, you know, sometimes they wouldn't, but, you know, I just did,

anytime I got the opportunity to work out, I did. And, you know, I was hoping that the increased maturity was really going to help me out a lot. But, you know, I just worked out whenever I can and I definitely don't feel like I was ready just because of what I came out of, but I was more ready mentally to go back. And I think that was where my biggest issue was. And so you get back to Buds. Easier this time or maybe not easier, but you were more mentally prepared. Yeah, it was easier in the fact that I was mentally prepared and I knew, you know,

I'd seen a lot of the movie already. The difference was, is that. when I got back the second time right off the bat, I got pneumonia. And so I fail. So I already have horrible lungs. And now I've got pneumonia, like, just ravaging them. And so I failed my first two runs. And like, so they were like, look, if you fail one more run, you're done.

We're dropping you. And I hadn't even got back to Hell Week. So I'm like, oh, my God, dude. I'm not even going to get back to where I was, where I made it to the first time. And so thank God. I passed my third run and got an opportunity to go into Hell Week. And so thankfully, you know, I made it, you know, past that run, made it through Hell Week. And then, but I was on the bubble, the entire rest of SEAL training for runs.

Yeah. And I was a horrible runner. Every time, like came in like, you know, four, three, two, you know, one second. Eli passes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Was hell weak? Was it better going through the first time when you didn't really know what to expect

or the second time where you did know what to expect? Which one was better? Which one was worse? For me, the second one was much better. Just because I think that there's a lot of fear and anxiety going into something like that that you know has taken out so many men better than you or perceivably better than you and stronger than you and faster than you. you can't argue with the data.

I mean, so many guys don't make it through that. And so I knew I could make it through it. And I also knew there was a part of me that was like, I'd only stayed awake for maybe 48 hours before going into Hell Week the first time. Maybe, probably not even that long, probably like 30, something like that. And so there's a part of you that's like, if you've never done something, okay, how am I going to stay awake? How's the body even do that?

Stay awake from five and a half days and just get destroyed the entire time. And so there's always that part of you that's like, okay, I know they can't kill me. But this just doesn't make a lot of sense. At the end of the day, I'm exhausted. I'm tired. What would things look like if I didn't sleep for five and a half days? How would I function? So the fact that I'd already done it and gone through it, I was like, I know I can do this.

I know that one of the things that I like to tell people, this is how it felt for me was, you know how echo you always get like a even today you'll probably get a second wind you'll feel tired and then you'll get a second win that's how i felt i felt like every time like you know five six seven hours into you know into it my i'd get tired i'd just wait an hour and then i'd get a second wind and i'd be right back in it and that's kind of cool that your body works that way but um they also said that your body will stop like shutting it'll start shutting down uh functions that aren't necessary to survival like growing finger nays. or facial hair.

I don't know if that's true, but that's what they told us. Yeah, that's crazy. And then that's it. I mean, you make it through buds this second time, even though you're on the bubble the entire time for runs. Yep. But you make it through. Mm-hmm.

I make it through, and then I'm told I get orders to Seal Team 3. Most of my class got orders to the East Coast. There were only six of us that stayed on the West. Coast. I was one of the fortunate ones. So you get through it, you graduate, and where'd you get orders to? Still team three. Did that, the most your class get West Coast, East Coast, even split? How do they do that? So only six of us stayed on the West Coast. Everybody else went to the East Coast. Dang. So I was, I felt lucky. Dang. And where was Team three at the time? What was going on? Team three was already deployed at the time. You got, it was you got. This was

This was Rameh. This was Ramadi. Oh, six. Yeah. So what they told us, Jocko, is it, all right, team three is deployed. You guys are just going to stay here and go to schools. And so it was interesting because I had just married my wife in between Buds and SQT. And so I'm like, this is awesome, babe.

I'm just going to, you know, hang out at the team and like maybe, you know, sweep for a little bit and, like, go to a school every once in a while. We can start our life together. So why don't you move out? She had just graduated from University of Arizona. Like, why don't you move out when we can start our marriage together? Did you run that plan through the U.S. Navy? No. But Chaco, the chief in charge of us was like, no, you guys are good to go.

You're not deploying. We've talked it through, blah, blah, blah. And so she moves out, and we move into this little apartment here in Point Loma. And then two weeks later, they're like, hey, change of plans. You're deploying as soon you're going to go through Sears School and then you're going to deploy. And so I don't remember what it was. It wasn't happened, but four of the guys went through Sears School the week before I did, and then they deployed. And so I went through Sears School by myself and then flew over by myself on like a civilian airplane.

And I'm just like, oh my, dude, I was so stressed out. First time going to war. Don't know any of the guys at Steel Team 3, but my instructors have told us, hey, listen, you guys, when you get there, keep your mouth shut, do what you're. told you're about to swim with some great white sharks. That's that's basically the advice and so I don't know anybody. I'm flying to war by myself. I don't even have any guns and it's just like you don't know I had nothing to compare to. I'd I'd been I'd been on a ship before but I'm flying into a war zone with no guns like I don't know what's gonna is the plane gonna land and like I'm gonna have to

PLF out of the plane because there's like people shooting at us like I have no idea or no context for what that's gonna look like and then I'm gonna have to like integrate into this platoon of guys that already did a workup together and so anyway we were what 30 minutes down the road from you guys in bravo platoon i think there were four or five of us four of us that went to bravo platoon and so we started immediately you know doing the new guy job you know making sure the hummers are gassed up making sure they're clean making sure the windows have all the moon dust wiped off of them making sure the 240s and the 50s and the 50s are clean, oiled up, ready for the op.

And then it was cool because they threw us in to turret gunning immediately. And I was like, this is fantastic, man. Because all of our buddies, you know, are doing whatever they're doing on the East Coast. And we're already getting to go on ops with these guys. Yeah, that's freaking awesome. And the culture was, and that platoon was really cool in that the rule was this. We're not messing with you unless we need to. And then if we need to, we're going to tighten you up.

And, you know, but it was just like as long as you, as long as you walk around on eggshells, do the new guy thing, you know, we'll leave you alone. But you're going to, you're going to do all the crappy jobs that nobody wants to do. You're going to do it standing tall with respect. And, you know, I was totally, totally all about that. Things changed a little bit once I came into Bruiser, the very next pump. I'm trying to think of how many guys came to task unit, bruiser, and. Ramadi you guys got you guys got Sal DeFranco I know he got Sal and another dude name Sean okay Sean H yeah um Sal was he he was he's such a nice guy and he had and he smiled

all the time this is the this is the this is the invention of normal face so I had this thing I do with Sal where I had taken the the cardboard like innered from the spools of paper that we would print maps on. Yeah. And I'd sit there and I'd be like, all right, Sal, listen up, bro. You can't be, you're like supposed to be a seal now. You can't be having this big smile on your face. You look like a dork.

We don't look like dorks. And of course, this is all, like, hilarious. So he's smiling even more. And I'm like, okay, so here's what we're going to do. You can't smile. If you smile, I'm going to whack you in the head with this thing. And, you know, so then I'd say, I'd go, ready? And he'd be like, yes, sir.

And I'd go, go. And he couldn't keep like a normal face for a half a second. I'd have to whack him in the head, but he was a freaking good guy, funny, and just had a good attitude, but he just smiled a lot. And, of course, whatever you're going to do, if you don't smile, you're going to get beat for not smiling. If you smile too much, you're going to get beat for smiling too much. So you're going to get beat. I mean, that's basically what the whole concept was when you rolled out. When we get to, when we get to it, remind me to tell you a funny Sal DeFranco story that involved you in skits.

Okay, Jack. They made us two skis. It was hilarious. That must have been good. Yeah. So you ended up, I mean, that's still, even for Sal, for you, for you guys to roll out on a deployment. You haven't even done a worker before you guys get to go out. You guys get to do some ops, get some experience, get to know what it's like to drive down the road in the middle of night waiting to get blowed up.

Yeah. Which is, which is fun. Then, then what? So then deployment's over? Yeah, then the deployment's over. And I flew back on the last bird. And so... I wonder if we were on the same bird.

I don't think so. If it was the last bird, we were on the last bird. I don't think so. I was relaxed, so he wasn't there. But, yeah. So anyway, I get back, and it's weird because all the guys had already been back. They were already, like, selecting the new platoons. I was on the last bird, so I get in late.

And then I remember, you know, getting back, me and my wife, we, we schedule our first, like, date night. Like, we're going to finally get a go out and celebrate, hey, hanging out, made it back, all that. And so I'm, we're, she's getting ready. I'm already ready to go, like, you know, that goes out on date night. And I get a call from one of my other new guy buddies that just came back with me, but he came back, I think, before me. And he's like, hey, you need to get down to Danny's right now. And I'm like, what? And he's like, yeah, bro, we're in Delta Platoon now.

Get down here right now. And I'm like, no, dude, I'm, I'm off. He's like, Eli, I'm not asking you. I'm telling you, get your ass down to Danny's now. So I got to go tell my wife, like, hey, there's going to be no date night. I don't know what's going on, but it sounds serious. So I'm rolling down to. World War III is apparently broken out.

There's a situation. It happens to be in a bar in Coronado. Yeah, and so like I jump in my little green Honda Civic and I drive over the bridge as fast as I can without, you know, getting arrested. And he's like, he's like, just when you get the Danny's come out behind the bar. And I'm like, oh, this sounds fantastic. He's like, yeah, we're in Delta Platoon. Chris Kyle's our LPO. And I'm like, awesome.

And so I get there. I walk through the bar, all the new guys that I just like graduated, you know, SQT with, some of which went downrange, some of which didn't, are now standing at a. attention in lines behind Danny just getting screamed at and I'm like holy holy cow dude so yeah that that was and so that night you know we were you know it was the in inductor in the end docking the T you bruiser right and so this guy this guy you know he he wasn't there but it was just yeah it was it was interesting because the culture had completely shifted to hey man totally new new group of dudes new rules and yeah I I realized real quick that this was going to be a

interesting two years and you better be locked on like we would come in like we would come into rooms like the new guys like back-to-back like fire hands ready to go because you didn't know what was you didn't know what you were going to be get hit with but they definitely they definitely loved having new guys around I'll tell you that right now. Yeah, I guess that answers my question. I was going to ask you if you got treated like a new guy since you kind of would like had a little bit of a deployment. I guess the answer is a solid yes.

Oh, yeah. They were like, yeah, that's like a little bit worse because they're like, you lucky bastard. You got to go over there and you didn't even do a workup. That was the thing. They're like, hey, that didn't count. You're doing a full workup. You will be a new guy for a full two years. It was like, Roger that.

And, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? So it's all good. Did you, uh, did you, uh, was we? What position did you get in the platoon? Were you A-dub? A-dub, turret gunner, yep. And it was cool, but I like to talk about my failures because I think that's where the gold often is.

Chris actually sat down with each and every one of us with his little green notebook. And he's like, all right, tell me, what are your goals? What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to do? And I said, I want to become a sniper. And so he actually, you know, I think there were a couple other,

But that was other guys that wanted to go to sniper school, but that was my number one thing. And so he actually sent me to sniper school, my first as a new guy. Damn. Yeah. And I failed. Oh. I know, man. I made it through pick and then scout.

And then I didn't qualify expert on the M4, the 200-yard qual that you have to do before you actually get to go to sniper school. And so I was, that was hard walking. Can you imagine coming back and telling Chris, hey, I just blew that. And so they didn't get an extra billet because I failed. So Chris wasn't happy about that. It definitely went in the book of woe. And, yeah, so, you know, paid for that pretty dearly, but, you know, I mean, it is what it is. It wasn't like I wasn't trying.

Yeah, the people, I guess it's hard to, it's hard to see from the public persona that got put out of Chris of like how, how funny he was and how like shit talking he was and just like and the other thing that sounds crazy is the the prank like he liked to do like pranks on people like a little kid you know he did that was when people ask me all the time they're like so what do you think of that movie and I was like oh you know the movie's you know it's decent whatever but I was like the number one thing that they screwed up was like that they missed like how funny he was and his sense of humor and he was always doing something shady, always doing something shady.

But I guess I don't, maybe it wouldn't, maybe Hollywood didn't think it'd be as cool of a movie as if, you know, they portrayed him that way. Yeah, I guess they would have had to make it into a, like a mini series or something where they could, where they could develop the character, develop his personality so you could see all sides, which would have made it more impactful because then you'd see, hey this guy that is very funny loves his family and likes to clown around also can be totally

serious and has a very has the most serious job but you know they got to take all that stuff and like you said they got to make it into a movie that's an hour and a half long and that's what they did yeah they took like 15 20 years of his life and condensing it into an hour and a half so I mean you know that that can't be easy to do yeah how was that work up good so I was I was I was running your workup. Yeah. Thank you, by the way. My God, dude. Unbelievable. Do you carry any wounded guys anymore? Yeah, we actually, dude, it was so crazy. Like, you know, and it was cool to see you because you'd come out all the time. And I can't remember which ones, which years you were even out for, but it was, I do remember doing like, you know, seven-click insert in, you know,

you know, hit, hit the target and then on the way next fill, this guy would put half of our guys down at least. So I mean, I wouldn't, you guys would. You guys would get tore up by their op for. All right. Hey man. I think there might have been a little. I wanted you to win, bro. I wanted you to win. I think there might have been a little bit of a suggestion from this guy to make it as hard as humanly possible just by reading some of his stuff. And but I, you know, it was interesting because like you would, you know, you do your op. You do your mission. and then like you've got another, you know, click or two to ex-fill out and, you know, trade it's putting down over half of your guys. And so, you know, you're, it's already, you've already got your body armor on. You've got like a machine gun. You've already got like, you know, you're loaded for bear and now you've got to carry, you know, another 250, maybe even depending on his size. We had some beasts in my platoon. So, you know, maybe another 300 pound dude. And it was just like, brutal. I remember

one time I was getting ready to pick up a down seal and it was Chief D and he's a big muscular dude, the type of guy that was, you did not want to piss off. And also let's say like he's not going to be super light. He is not

super light. Yeah, he's really heavy and so I... And he's a freaking stud like he just want to be like everyone just wants to like do good, especially his guys You know, they want to kick ass for him. And so I had my guns on my back, but I didn't, like, have it retention or anything.

So I went down to, like, grab his upper torso and my gun comes over top and hits him on that. And I was, he was like, oh, my God, who did that? Thank God it was nighttime. And he couldn't see who did it. And I got, Jocko, I didn't take extreme ownership because he would have killed me. And I just like, I just, we got him up and we, you know, we started moving in it. But extreme ownership might have cost me in my life right there. So, yeah, we didn't, I didn't tell Chief D that it was me that didn't sling my gun and just smacked him in the face.

But yeah, it, it was, I think the good thing about the way that you ran training was that there was nothing that I ever faced that was even close to the training. And I think that's a good thing. Yeah, that was a good thing. Yeah. I wasn't always happy with you about it. I remember one time you were out at, I think you were out at San Clemente or something. And instead of like, okay, we do the day runs, we do the night runs, we go to sleep. You didn't let us go to sleep.

It was just like, okay, TST, here we go. We're going back in the town. We've got to go hit this. And I'm like, oh, God, dude. Well, I always thought of like day runs, night runs, morning runs, at mid-afternoon runs. Brunch runs. How's that sound?

We'll get a little bit of that. And Stoner was your T.U commander? Yeah, he was the TU commander there from 06 to 08 right after you left. Yeah, yeah. Yep. And that's when he got hurt. Yep. He broke his neck.

Yeah, that happened. Luckily, he didn't break his spine. He just broke vertebrae in his neck when a dude fell off, fell off. One of the other new guys fell off of the shipboarding and landed on top of him, broke his neck. I remember I was at I was at trade at and I get the call like hey we got an injury and I'm like all right Roger and then I got like a text from someone's like hey it's stoner and I was like check went up to the hospital

but thank God he he didn't break his spinal cord so he was able to yeah put on a neck brace kind of walk through the rest of until that was healed up and still able to go on deployment because he wasn't going to stay home I mean come on no no well that brings up another funny story because remember I don't know if this guy's still in anyway our LT during that period Texan guy Jimmy mm-hmm he he made us roll he made us do jiu jitsu three times a week yeah right these you know all of them you know

following following this guy's footstep and it and so we would we would roll we do jiu jitsu before before the day started. And I remember one time I got somebody, I can't remember who it was, another LT in a triangle choke. And I was tying it in good. And he picked me up, stacked me and dropped me on my neck. And I heard something go pop pop. And I was like, okay, you know.

And we did a quick timeout. And I was like, okay, I can still move it. And then we finished the day. I'm okay. We finished the rolling. I feel okay. And then it is take a shower. And then it starts getting real.

real tight and real stiff and I'm like man I don't this is this doesn't feel right maybe I should go say something so I made a mistake and I went and said something and I told Chris I was like hey I did something while I was rolling I heard some pops in my neck and it's starting to get really really tight and he's like okay go over to medical so medical made um called an ambu who came to the to this you know three picked me up put like put me on like a bed or whatever they took me to about Boa did x-rays or whatever and they're like you know they're like oh you're good you're good to go so they brought me back and but they made me put a neck brace on and so I walk in to see Chris and uh and I've taken the neck brace off and he's like so what would happen and I'm like I'm good to go they did x-rays

he's like did they give you anything and I'm like well this neck brace but you know I don't need it I'm good and he's like no put the neck brace on so Chris had the guys paint it pink and they made me wear the neck brace for like the next week. And I was like, even when we like, because we were just getting ready to go to Pendleton. And so he made me wear it out in town. He made me wear it everywhere. And I was just like, oh, man, dude, I'm never saying anything ever again. Like I said, you like to have some fun.

Yeah. Yeah. And then, so how was that deployment? It was, you know, it was, I think it was good. I know a lot of guys weren't happy about it. But we started on the Syrian border in Al-Qaeda. We turned over with an SF unit. And the deployment started out by, with our primary focus,

trying to stop foreign fighters and equipment and, you know, all sorts of money and stuff flowing in from Syria into Iraq. And so we did a lot of desert patrols. And, you know, that it's not, I don't think it's what team guys really love. doing but it you know it is what it is and then probably and we actually spent a lot of the first month and a half building up a structure to live in so we called ourselves seal bees like we had two CBs that were like constantly telling us what to do how to build this structure and so we built that and then after we got that finished that's when I think the army called and said hey we're

we're gonna we're gonna cordon off solder city And we need some seal snipers and some guys to come in and help us do that because Al Sauter's militia was killing the Iraqi contractors that were building the wall. And so that's when Stoner and Chris and several other guys, some were RG33 techs, some were some more comms guys and many of them were snipers from Seal Team 8. And then from Seal Team 3, they formed like this super troop, which Stoner was. was in charge of. And so they went and left us, I think four of them went from our platoon. And then the rest of us stayed back and we just went all over, you know, went all over the country. We flew some Humvees up to Missouille. And then towards the end of deployment, Chris came back and I actually got to go and, you know, be a part of that for like the last month and a half

or something like that. But it was a decent platoon, but we were all over. I mean, instead of operating out of one place, we spent time in Al-Assad. We spent time in, I think, hit Haditha. We even built a new base in Rawa when Al-Qaim got shut down. So we were just, like, transient all over the place.

Yeah. Yeah, there's, it always sucks when you're not, like, with your whole platoon. It's also there's cool things about traveling all over the place. My first deployment to Iraq, we lived in Baghdad the whole time, but we would go out to all over the country. So that was kind of, you know, you just get to see different areas. And we'd stay for day here, two days here, some random like SF outstation in the middle of nowhere and hang out with them, do whatever we can to support and then come back. So that's kind of cool.

And then my second deployment to Iraq, I didn't leave Ramadi. Like I was just there the entire time. And that was also cool in a different way. So kind of different experiences, they both have something cool about them. They also have some things that kind of, you know, might not be as cool. But what was like the big lessons learned on that deployment for you as a human? Oh, man. Let's see.

Be, you know, be flexible, you know, be adaptable. I found that that was so key in that job is just to be flexible, adaptable, and try and keep. a positive mental outlook at all, you know, at all times. And the other thing, too, I started to see, like, I started to see how negativity complaining could affect the morale of the group. And it, you know, it could be detrimental. And so always try and, you know, be a part of not bringing people down, I'm bringing the group down, but just being positive, you know, because there was some, there was some of that going on in that group, like, you know, some real negativity. And, you know, I get it.

I understand why. But at the same time, I don't, I don't know that it, you know, was very productive in making us the most cohesive, you know, fighting unit that we could possibly be. Yeah, and when that real simple idea of complaining. and it's so bad. And that's one thing I picked up from wherever in the teams was like, hey, don't complain.

Don't ever complain about anything. Don't complain if you're cold. Don't complain if you're cold. Don't complain about anything. Just don't complain. Just don't complain. And obviously not everyone gets on board with that program, but it never, it never,

complaining just never helps anything. It just doesn't. Like if you, hey, if you want to joke about it, that's cool. If you want to jokingly, you know, bring something up because you're going to make, you're going to make fun of the situation you're in, man, that's a different thing. Yeah. But if you're going to, if you're going to seriously say it's too hot, it's too cold,

we're not getting the support we need, this is bullshit. Like those attitudes, they're just, they're just, they're just, they're just not good. And that's why I always liked that, that team guy that you just never hear him complain. Or when someone does complain, when you get a, when you get the right crew, someone starts to complain they get shut down you know and that's a good attitude to have is that where good that is that is 100% where good comes from that's that's freaking stoner that was stoner coming to tell me coming to complain me about something yeah and me saying and him saying like i know what you're going to say and i'm like what and he he says you're going to say good because that's

what you say about everything and it's true i'd be like oh we don't we don't oh we're going to have to stay out freaking at this desert warfare training facility for an extra two weeks. Good. We're going to get better at you. Whatever it is. Yeah. Let's not complain. That's not the deal.

So you get home from that deployment. Yep. And it's another platoon because you're a new guy still, kind of. Now you're one cruise wonder. One and a half cruise wonder. There's always something, man. Did you go, did you end up going back to sniper school? I did.

Yeah. Where? when you got home? Yeah, so thankfully, I just got to go qualify, and then I got to pick up where I left off. I learned a little trick that really helped me. You know how on our pistols, you know, front-site focus, you have that little green dot and whatever,

or the little white dot. Well, I was like, I was looking at the front-site post on my, you know, M-4 iron side, and I was like, it's just straight black. I mean, aim small, miss small, and I was like, I took a little paint pin, and I just put the tiniest little white dot on my front side post. And that really helped me to put it where I needed to.

And just I started doing a lot of dry firing and the positions that I was going to have to shoot and did well on the test. And then went out to sniper school. I did really good on the shooting, but I was really bad at the stocking. And I was like on the bubble the entire time. And but, you know, made it through sniper school, got my sniper suite. and then unfortunately by that point in 2010 we went to Fallujah and they wouldn't allow us to take sniper weapons on ops they were trying to de-escalate the war and snipers don't typically do that they typically throw gasoline on things so so that were you still a pig gunner in that or do you

move to point man or something yeah I moved to point man and lead navigator as well I was also running ordinance department. So yeah, I mean, it was, it was good. You know, and I was, I felt, for the first time I felt like, I didn't feel like I was some great operator, but I felt like, I felt confident for, you know, because it takes a while. I mean, there's so much that you, there's so much from like comms to,

you know, understanding maps to, you know, the physicality side of it to, you know, small unit tactics that you're trying to pick up and learn, but in the, in special forces, you'll spend two, two weeks doing this and then you'll spend a month doing that. And then sometimes it'll be four months before, before, before you shoot your gun again, you know? And it's like, so I feel like, um, by that point, you know, in my service, I finally felt like I was, you know, okay, I feel comfortable doing this.

I feel like I'm decent at it, you know. The learning curve of doing platoons. I think exactly correlates to the learning curve of having children. And your first kid, you have no idea what's going on. You're a total idiot. But you learn so much by your second kid. You're like, okay, we kind of got this. By your third kid, you're like, I'm dialed.

I'm ready. By your fourth kid, you're like, I got this. Like, we're making shit happen. But you see guys in their first platoon, man. It's a lot of stuff, especially nowadays. Like when I was in my first platoon, it was like, okay, you're radio, man. there's three radios like it's it it was just we weren't doing nods we didn't have lasers on a weapons everything was easier and guys now they have a lot more to learn just even with the

technical side they have more to learn and then from the operational side there's more to learn that's the way it goes um so that what'd you do on that deployment so as you're as now we're de-escaling is this like 2010 now yep it's 2010 we're de-escalating uh we were partnered up with Fallujah SWAT team. We were still doing, you know, some DAs here and there. We were doing a lot of FID with them, making sure that, you know, they knew what they were doing. And we actually started, me and one of our JOs kind of ran the FID, and we were just making sure. We were trying to turn more and more of the op over to them.

So by the time, by the time that platoon was over with, we would go on an op, and there were only allowed to be four seals on the ground. You had to have, for every one SEALs. I think you had to have five Iraqis. That was the ratio it had to be. And so the, you know, the closest call I ever had was a night where we got ambushed by three dudes. And we only had four seals on the ground. We had, I think, three gun trucks.

So we had three RG33s with those remote weapon system, the remote 50 cows. But, yeah, I mean, it was interesting getting, you know, in an ambush like that where you only got four dudes and then a bunch of a bunch of a lusia swat team guys and you're like you know at one point uh our a o i see at the time he was like he was on my side of the street just give us like give us start to finish a little bit okay um so it was really interesting jaco because as we were turning over things to the iraqi so that they could hopefully stand on their own once we left um one of the one of the very last things that we turned over to them was the actual coordinates for the target we were going to hit.

And as a point, man, I was sharing that responsibility with another one of my, you know, another guy in that platoon. And so we were, we were like doing blue and gold shifts. It was my night. And so they gave me like, hey, this is the, this is the eight-digit grid we're hitting. These are, you know, maps, you know, of the area that we're going to. We were actually going to Abu Ghraib. which is like a suburb of Baghdad.

And which is like a 45-minute drive from Fallujah. And so they were like- Notoriously nasty part of the city. Yeah, the prisons there that everyone's heard about Abu Ghraib prison, but it's also like a part of town. And it's notoriously a pretty bad part of town. Yeah, it was a real bad part. And anyway, so they, I can't remember who told me,

but they were like, hey, Eli, this is the first night we're going to give these guys a great coordinate. So I want you to walk over there with an interpreter, go outside our main base, go to there where they were sleeping, the Fallujah Swat team, give them the grid coordinates for the target we're hitting tonight, ask them, make sure that they know where we're going because they're actually going to lead us out. And so I walked over there. I gave them the grid coordinate. I gave them all the maps and pictures. I was like, do you guys know where this is? And they're like, yeah, we know where this is.

And so I was like, and at the time we had- Did you feel funky about that? Very. And this made it worse too. We knew that there was one of them that was every time we left the wire that he was calling and telling people which direction we were headed. So, you know, you always, you always feel really, really shady about that. And so gave it to him and then probably at like one in the morning or something, we took off.

Started driving there. And I noticed as soon as we drive into the neighborhood, there's like sirens on all over the neighborhood and like like we're already blown and so we we did like a video a video drop off like vehicle drop off like 600 yards from the target because the args are pretty loud and we didn't want them to hear us like foot patrolling in or the vehicles and so we get out and there's four seals on the ground and then there's like 20 felusia swat team members and we we start taking off and I'm also point man that night so it's like a 600, it's only a 600 yard patrol into Target.

And so we're walking down this really, really wide street. And so I put us into like a file formation so that at least a couple of us can engage if we get a contact front. And so we're walking and probably halfway to the target. And I noticed that like as a staggered file. You said fire. You meant staggered file. I'm sorry.

Yeah. All good. All good. I'm just trying to make sure I'm tracking. No, no, no. Thanks. And so we're walking. And I'm noticing as I'm walking, because you're always, when you're patrolling, you're always looking for, like, cover, concealment.

Hey, if we get contacted from the front, where can I duck into? Is there a wall or a door or something like? And I notice everything's boarded up. Bars everywhere. Nothing is open. And so halfway there, all of a sudden, dude, three dudes with one had an RPK machine gun, and then the other two, I think, had a K but we had a we had a predator overhead we had I think two Apaches and we had an AC130 gunship overhead I'd never we'd never gotten that much air in any op I'd ever been on it and so three guys

opened up on us and it was surreal because the guy with the RPK no kidding had probably 200 rounds belted together of tracer so it was you could see every bullet flying over us and you know in training And you're taught, okay, you hit the ground, make yourself as small as possible, make yourself a small target, and then return fire, gains fire superiority, and then somebody's going to, you know, we're going to maneuver whatever the call is going to come out is going to be. And so I remember hitting the ground and just watching, you know, trace around fly over us for probably a minute and a half before he had to reload. And then I could see the other two, the other two guys muzzle flashes.

I'm thinking to myself, I thought, you know what, if I can see their muzzle flashes, even though I have a suppressor on my gun, because they're shooting high, I was like, if I open up right now and the suppressor doesn't work as well as I hope it does, and they pinpoint my location, I'm dead. Because it was, when we went back and looked at the footage from the Pred feed, it was only 110-yard engagement, so he's very close. And so I did- Were they in a building, or were they on a roof or something or not?

They were coming around a building. So I got to watch like the bread feet. So they were external. So you could actually see them even from the pred because they were outside of the building. You could see them from the pred. I couldn't see them, you know, even on nods. All I could see was their muzzle flash. And so anyway, like I wait and I noticed that the lull of the fire dies down.

And so as soon as it dies down, like I get up and like I said, I'm really slow. So, but I'm running back, you know, I must have been cooking, Echo. And I'm, like, I'm moving as fast as I can. And I'm pretty light. I only have, I think, four mags on me, you know, and four mags on me. And I'm running back. And the AOC is over here. And he had found, he's like, I got, I got an out.

I got an out. And that for us means, hey, man, I got some cover. Come over here. And so I come over and I start, I bump him off. And then, you know, start, I start returning fire. And the gun trucks by this point pull up next, you know, next to me. And then this fight, I don't know, goes, this gun fight goes on for, I don't know, maybe another couple minutes. And then the gun trucks start, you know, blasting these dudes with 50 Cal and it like ends like that.

They're like, no, we're done. But it was, it was interesting because, like, the AOIC was like, hey, let's flank. let's let's and I was just thinking to myself I was thinking to myself hey we were already blown when we came in these guys knew the gig was up they knew we were coming here because there were sirens all over the place we've got a bunch of our you know flusia swat team guys we know at least one of them is working on the other side and they're not like they're not a good fighting force at all I'm like I was like bro I don't think that's a good idea and I say we hold what we got and get the hell out of here And thankfully, you know, and I don't know how it would have worked out if we would have done, you know, what he wanted to.

He was just being a hard charging, you know, O, who was, he was, he wanted to make moves and, you know, go just smoke these dudes. But I had a real bad feeling about it. And so, you know, thankfully he was like, he listened to me and he was like, let's hold what we got. And we, you know, jumped in the trucks and we got the hell out of there. And then it was crazy because, because, believe it. or not, it was actually an Iraqi policeman that ambushed us. And so then they roll up. And it's like this, it gets this heated exchange, like what WTF are you guys doing?

You know, because we had to pass, you know how that works where you have to pass up to, you know, their hire. I was like, where we're going to be operating. So there's deconfliction that goes on. And it got really, it was starting to get a little tense. And I remember there were, we had some guys. in the trucks, you know, just some shooters in the trucks. I'm like, hey, you guys get out of those trucks. If this goes down, we need to make sure that we finish this. And so anyway, nobody got hurt on our side, which I couldn't believe because like I was watching hundreds of trace around

stream into my chief's position. I thought he was done because he didn't come up over comms for probably 40 seconds to kind of make a call on what what he wanted. But anyway, we got back. We He drove back to Fallujah after that, and it was kind of wild because the ROIC at the time, who was actually my swim buddy and buds and a really good friend of mine, he, you know, thankfully he didn't bring this up in the debrief, but he was like, he came to me in the team room. He's like, Eli, what were you doing? What were you doing tonight? And I'm like, what are you talking about, dude? he's like I was screaming at you from inside the RG 33 to get back because I was once I bumped that guy out I came out on the left and I started trying to engage their muzzle flashes with my laser and he was like he's like bro he's like the wall right behind you rounds were exploding right over your head they had a total beat on you they were just shooting like a foot high and I was like dude I'm sorry bro I could not hear you and that's one thing I learned on that

deployment is that those cool silinks that we have that like work as comms pieces but also ear pro you can't hear the crack over your head because they cancel that anything over like 105 decibels or whatever they were canceling it out so I couldn't hear it I didn't know they had a beat on me but um you know thankfully you know it worked out shoot too well no thankfully moose shoots a little high at night thank god man but but yeah that was that was interesting that because of the situation and we had so many jundies or, you know, I rat, flusia SWAT team members with us. It really limited our ability to do stuff when we needed to.

So you wrap up that deployment. Yeah. And then what's your plan? Because now you've got two platoons. You maybe could do a third platoon. You maybe could go to training cell or trade debt. maybe you know what's your options what are you looking at what do you make up your mind to do yeah so i was looking at a couple different things my body was pretty tore up at that point i'd i'd hurt my back

really bad um you know weightlifting and i had the navy wasn't able to diagnose it at the time turns out once i got out of the navy and went to like a civilian dock um like laser spine institute in phoenix they were like hey man you got um you know you got some stress fractures in your spine You've got some, you know, some stuff going on. We can either give you a fusion or we can just give you shots. And I was just like, okay, I'll just wait. But my back was pretty messed up at that time. It really, you know, was pretty excruciating just to even wear body armor.

And so I'm looking at that. I'm looking at the fact that I've kind of done what I came to do as far as, like, I wanted to go serve my country. And I had little, you know, I was kind of watching my little kids grow up in pictures or my oldest grow up in pictures. And I was just like, man, you know, that was kind of tearing at me a little bit. And so I was like, I was like,

I'm either going to go through our like ASO program. I need something new if I'm going to stay and do this. I'm going to either need to go like ASO or screen or something. But I'm not, you know, I need to, you know, I need to some change. And so started thinking about it. I was definitely praying about it. And while I was on that deployment, I actually was like, but I want to make sure that I give myself enough time to make a good decision

because my family's counting on it. And so I actually re-enlisted on that deployment. And at the time, you could give your kids the GI Bill if you re-enlist it. You had enough time in. And, you know, and so I split, I gave my daughter my GI Bill and re-enlisted for four so that I had enough time to plan the exit. And at that point, I was pretty confident that I was done, you know, you know, deploying and I was, I started focusing on, okay, I need to, I need to exit. And I did, I did, you know, talk to some folks about ASO. I looked at it a little bit. I never really looked at screening. And then as I went to the recruiting directorate after that. So that's when you got home from deployment. Yes.

You went to the recruiting directorate. I don't even know what that is. Right. No, most people don't. So when I came into the- NSW recruiting director? Yep. Got it. When I came into the teams, we only were filling 60% of our billets at the schoolhouse. So that's why guys like me could come, you know,

I knew guys that went to Buds three or four times. But now if you, even if you come, well, I'm working off old information, but when I was at the recruiting director, even if you, like were an Olympic athlete and you came in there and you crushed the screen test like it'd never been crushed before, earliest spot you were getting was nine months out.

You know, and so what the Navy did was, and the reason I took the job is because my old platoon chief, an old, you know, master chief, JT, you know, JT, you know, JT. Yep. He said, hey, Eli, if you come work for me, I'll let you go to school in the afternoon. So you can finish up that old degree, start working towards getting out. And I'm like, that sounds like pretty cool. and so I took that job, started doing that, working for him. And, you know, it was interesting because the Navy sent us all over the country.

They had done a Gallup survey that showed that there were seven different sports that young men were playing that were enabling them to be more successful at a higher rate than others. What were they? So one was water polo. I think two was swimming and three was wrestling. and that's where we spent most of our time. And it made total sense to me because football players weren't doing well.

And it made sense to me because I was a quarterback and they were like, you know, they put a red jersey on me like, don't hit that dude. Or like, you know, it was like it was so position driven in football that and when you look at it like wrestling, water pool, swimming, you know, types of sports like that where it's like, it doesn't matter how big you are,

you're doing everything. You know, and you're going to be held to a standard. You know, I mean, you look at big old Echo or what position do you play Echo? Wide receiver. That was a lot small. Are you got to be kidding me. He's only 185 back back there. Oh my God.

We've been through this. Long time ago. Holy cow, bro. Did you like eat a cornerback or something? Like, how did you get so many? But yeah, like even as like, you know, as a wide receiver, like they would make, you know, you know how it was. It was like, okay, this is your position. This is what we want you to be good at.

But we're not going to focus you in, in the, in the, in, in the, in, in, in the, in, in, in, in, in, training bro it's like nobody cares how big you are what position you played it's like you're doing you're doing everything you know so those are the sports that um the nsw director it was trying to raise awareness but you said seven sports that's three what were the other four do you remember it was yeah it was like crew cross country um i think lacrosse wrestling water polo yeah So it was, but that's where we spent the most of our time on those three. And they would send what they called seal scouts around to those type of events in high school, college. And what we would do is we would show a video of like, you can't recruit a seal.

If you have to talk somebody into showing up to that and then they see it for real, they're like, no, I'm not doing this. So what we would actually try and do is just raise awareness like this is an option for you. and then leave and then let them, you know, self-select themselves into it. And so we'd go around the country doing that. So I did that for about a year and a half and then got an opportunity to go over to trade at and be in Mar-Ops. Got a spot in VBSS and I started, you know, just learning from the guy who was the LPO at the time. I actually got to go by his house last night and have a beer with him and have some dinner with him.

but after that is when he left, he turned it over to me and I became the OPO of VBSS. And so honestly, that was the best training I got to go into entrepreneurship because, as you know, like you have like a hundred times more of this than I ever did. But I never got put in a leadership position like that where there were so many things that you had to account for, so many things that you were tracking on, making sure things are going to be in the right, place and then also when things don't go as planned how do we flex what do we do what's a contingency and so you know that was a phenomenal opportunity for me because I was even running my small business bottle breacher out of our one car garage in point Loma while doing that and just working stupid hours but

you know that was really helpful in you know you know helping me learn how to be a better leader But it was also cool to see too just, you know, being a part of being on the other side and watching, you know, the training cycle, how much goes into it and making sure that these guys are prepared when they go downrange. So you're teaching VBSS and you just mentioned this is when you started Bial Breacher for the first time. Yeah. How'd that come about? So it came about. I was actually, I knew I was getting out. I probably had, you know, two and a half years before my time was up.

but I'd watched a lot of my buddies get out before me that had the same credentials, same qualifications. I watched them struggle, like to find something that they could actually sink their teeth into. And I knew that wasn't even an option for me because I had a daughter or two at the time. And so I was like, man, Eli, you got to figure this out. And so it was a little bit of fear that was driving me. But also going back to that identity early on, like, you know, I didn't,

I didn't want to, you know, that one of the things that my brothers used to call me was a fuck-up. They used to call me that all the time. And I'm not trying to throw F-moms on your show. I know this is, you know, some kids listen to the show, but, you know, it is what it is. And so there was a part of me that, you know, still had that identity in the back of my mind like, hey, well, maybe you got lucky and became a seal, but this is when you're actually going to show the world that you are, you know, that F-up. And so, you know, not only did I not want to be that, but I also wanted to make sure that my little girls and my wife were provided for.

So, like, I was doing that, you know, the VBSS thing, the LPO thing, and running bottle breacher at the same time. But the way it actually came about was I remember my little brother, who is a Marine Corps pilot, he is a Cobra pilot. He went to the PI and one of the outdoor markets there got a 50-Cal bottle opener. and he brought it back and he gave it to me. And I was like, dude, what is this thing? It opened your beer? No way. Try it.

Yep, sure enough it does. And I was like, dude, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. And so I put it in my junk drawer and then when my buddies would come under my house, like watch a UFC or something, they were like, dude, that is badass. Where can I get one? And I was always like, I don't know, man, unless you go to the Philippines. But I started thinking about it. And I actually went up to L.A. for Thanksgiving that my, my, some family members were having up there.

And I remember on the way back, I was like, dude, that thing is cool, but it was real generic, just plain brass, all dinged up. And I was like, but it could be way better. And so I came back, and I went into my garage, and I spray painted it black. And then I had bought a bunch of Punisher stickers because I made platoon DVDs for my last platoon.

And I took one of the little Punisher stickers once the paint dried, and I put it on there. And it was like, I was like, oh my God, this thing is insane. And so I took it to work, you know, the next, you know, the next day or so I showed it to my buddies. They were like, dude, this is maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen. Make me one. Make me five for every guy in my family.

And so that's when the light bulb like came on. Like this thing is cool, but it could be way better. And nobody that I knew of or any of my buddies knew of was selling them in the States. And so it was at that time, my wife was, she was running a, couple online or one she she she'd had success with some online businesses just small little online businesses like boutiques and stuff but she knew how to work you know the store the internet and she graduated with a degree in you know business from uva university of Arizona so she was definitely had that part down where i was extremely weak and i was like babe babe do you think you can help me

sell these online she's like oh let me do some research and, you know, I'll let you know. And so she comes back and she's like, yep, I know what we're going to do. She's like, we're going to sell them on Etsy. And I'm like, Etsy, what is Etsy? How about eBay or something I've heard of? And she's like, no, trust me. She's like, women shop on Etsy all the time.

It's like an artisan, whatever, artisan, you know, website. And she's like, they will buy them for their men. And so we started them. And the first ones, after that one that I already had, So I started buying dummy rounds online, and then I would, you know, I'd start practicing cutting them with a Dremel tool, you know, just like crawl, walk, run, right? That's what we used to say in the SEAL teams all the time. I was like, I just have to figure out. And I didn't know anything about manufacturing, cutting metal.

I was just a dude in the garage. How do I make that cut? And so I cut, like, I figured out how to get it down. And this was kind of cool. It would take me, it would take me about, I think, 25 minutes to cut. when I started and they looked like crap, but people still bought them. But then I started getting real squirt away with my manufacturing, and I realized Jocko that the tip of my broom handle that I cut off with a Dremel tool

fit perfectly over a 50-cow round. So now I could make a fixture, my first fixture, and I cut the cut into the broom handle, and then I take a Sharpie marker, and I would actually draw the cut on there. So that, because it was taking me seven minutes. I timed myself to actually like take a tape measuring cloth, measure out all the dots, then connect them, and then I would take my Dremel tool, put it in a vice, and cut them. And so that was my first fixture. And then now we were, now we were cooking, right?

And so they were still really rough. Like I would prime them, then I'd paint them. And then I was like, okay, if these team guys who, you know, get everything, you know, people think they're the coolest dudes in the world. They're willing to buy them. Anybody would buy them. I just have to figure out of market it. to somebody else. So I started thinking, okay, these are going to be big in the military units,

firemen, cops, etc. And so I started buying stickers online. And I started painting them and putting stickers on them and we would market them that way. And it was interesting because, you know, when you start selling stuff, typically you want to start your price point high and then work down until you find somebody that will buy it. And so I remember looking at what everybody else was doing. They were selling them, you know, like really generic cheap ones for like 20, you know, 20 bucks and I'm like I want to see if I can start mine at like 28 and make more profit and so I started at 28 crickets nobody bought them brought it down waited two weeks brought it down to 2499 a couple people bought them oh cool got our first sale and then you know let it let it hang out there

for a bit and then brought it down to where everybody else was boom floodgates open people are buying these things non-stop and you know we're in business and so at that point I just kept you know working it working at trying to improve you know our fighting position or the product found somebody that was an actual machinist that could cut them professionally found a professional powder-coder that could put instead of putting paint on them actually like powder coat them and we just i want to get one of the old school freaking spray painted one of those that's what i want my boy i've got like i've got like probably a hundred bottle breaches from people give them to me and we have some that we give away.

Yeah. And so I have, but I want, I want one that's spray painted with the gnarled cut that barely works. That's what I want. I saw one last night. Yeah. My boy, my boy Mike, he was the LPO at VBSS before he passed the job over to me. And he had, he broke out one of the old ones. I was like, damn, I was looking at the dermal cut and nix and crappy cut.

And I'm like, God, I can't believe it. But, you know, honestly, and I am big on my faith. And I remember that point in my life. And I was definitely afraid of failing my family. And, you know, I was still seeking God in the things in my life. And I was praying. I was like, Lord, how do you want me to provide for my family when I get out of the military? And it was funny, man.

He's like beer openers. Well, right. But here's the cool thing, man. You know, they are bottle openers. And most people use them to open their beer. But, you know, the cool thing is, is like even something like that, if you give God the glory, dude, you'd be surprised at some of the doors he will open in your life. So, you know, and it's just, it's crazy, man, because when I told people, especially Navy guys, they were like, Eli, what are you going to do when you get out? And I'm like, hey, I'm selling Bobloopers.

Jock, I'm surprised somebody didn't send me to you, bro. They were like, yeah, that's probably not going to work out, man. Let's get this guy to a psychological eval ASAP. But it was cool because within six months, my original goal wasn't to build like a multimillion dollar business. It was like, hey, I want to make some extra money for a date night or to save up for, you know, my next firearm or whatever, just some supplemental income. And then as it started growing, I was like, dude, this could be something.

And six months into it, we were doing $7,500 a month, which blew me away. thought we'd even get there and then at that point I made one of the better moves that I ever made in business and I sold my chopper I had a motorcycle that I used to drive over to your gym and do jiu jiu jitsu with but um and uh I sold the chopper and I bought a laser I took the funds and I bought a laser engraver and that is when things just went because I was watching an episode of Shark Tank and the sharks were tearing apart an entrepreneur, primarily Kevin O'Leary, who became one of my investors. And he was ripping apart an entrepreneur

because this guy, he had decent sales, he had a pretty cool, unique product, but he had no brand recognition on the product. So, like, he had the brand on the packaging, but as soon as it left, the packaging. What was the product? It was like a green neon suit that you would wear at a football game or like a ski, you know, like skiing or something.

something made you stand out, right? And the guy, Kevin and Mark, there's a market for that? For a green neon suit with like a skin tight suit? Yeah. Like spandex suit? Exactly. Yeah. And so the guy had, he was doing 300K in sales and, you know, annual. I've never seen a human in a green neon suit. I'd never seen one either, but he, he had this, he had the sales. He had the product there and they were looking at it. And Kevin's like, you know, he's like, is the brand on on this anywhere? And the guy's like, He's like Kevin just starts ripping him up. He's like, this is the dumbest thing that, you know, you can do as an entrepreneur. He's like, what if somebody's looking at it and outside the package and they want to know who made it?

But they can't find your brand on there anywhere. They can't go Google it and look it up online. And so I was sitting on the couch with my wife, Jen, and because we had two small kids, I was in the Navy still and we were running bottle breacher. There wasn't a lot of free time. But we did allow ourselves, like, that was our, like, you know, one show that we'd watch together. and I was like, babe, we got to figure out how to get Bar Breacher on each and every one of these units leaving the garage. And so I started doing some research, which led me to laser engraving.

And so I had about $30,000 in the bank from like a re-enlistment bonus. And I was like, we're getting out of the Navy. I don't want to risk our little nest egg on something and unknown, right? And so I was like, I'm going to sell my bike. And San Diego is the best place in the world to have a motorcycle. I mean, just the best place. And so that was hard for me to do. but I later read Rich Dad Poor Dad with Robert Kiyosaki,

and he talks about all the time, you know, and, you know, he talks about his book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, what the rich teach their kids that the poor don't. Basically, the summary is, you know, wealthy people teach their kids to buy assets, not liabilities, right? Assets, something that makes you money, liability, something that cost you money. And I hadn't read the book at the time, but that was basically the move that I made. and you know by doing that our sales went from $7,500 at the six month mark to a month and a half later

we were doing $22,000 a month out of that same one car garage to the point where like I couldn't keep up with it I had to start like moon like bringing guys in from the military that were like you know doing whatever job and they'd have they'd work in the garage and help me out and then you know I think you know a year after that point we were doing $80,000 a month out of that one car garage and that's when I pitched a shark tank. And, uh, so you were still on active duty when you pitched a shark tank? I was. Yeah, I was, I was right at the tail end.

Okay. I was right at the tail end. And there was an open casting call down here in like Mirr Mesa. And, uh, I was sitting with one of my advisors in L.A. And he's like, Eli, you got to get on that show. And so found an open casting call went down there. They were like, hey, first 500 people get to pitch to a casting member. And so I went, got in line at like one in the morning.

I was like number like 125. God. And then came back the next day once I got my little wristband badge and, you know, knocked it out of the park. And then they were like within a week. No, within, that was on a Saturday, Monday morning. They sent me an email. They said, hey, we loved your pitch.

We need, you have one week to make a video. And I, you know, made the video. They loved it. We kept moving on. And it was funny because they, when you get in that process, they assign you a couple producers and who are kind of coaching you through the process and they were like it was funny me and jen would have to hop on the phone with them every friday at like four p.m. to have a like a conference call with them how's the pitch going where you guys at in the process and uh it was funny they were

always telling jen we would practice our pitch on the phone with these guys and they're like jen elize just not excited you've got to get him excited he sounds like he's not enjoying this and i'm like guys I'm not a cheerleader like when I when I need to get excited like all but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna I'm not gonna I'm not gonna ra ra r sysgubba like I'm gonna tell you hey this is what we're doing these are what the sales are this could be something and but you you got to keep in mind it's a TV show so they want you to like you know they want you to be all they want that drama bro they want that drama yeah but anyway we got we got an opportunity to go on the show and we you know it went really

well and got two sharks, Mark Cuban and Kevin O'Leary, and, you know, it just started blowing up, and that created another leadership challenge to work through. So then once it came out, how much longer did you have in the Navy once the show came out? So I actually pitched on the show. I feel weird telling the SEAL commander this, but I was on Terminal Leave when I pitched. So that's legal, dude. Is it? Yeah, yeah, totally.

Okay. Well, at least as far as I know. I've been out of the Navy now since what? Since 2014, so maybe there's a statute of limitations, hopefully. But anyway, so yeah, I was on Terminal Leave, so I wasn't even going into work, but I went and pitched in L.A. And then the show, the show actually aired the month after I got out of the Navy, my final month in the Navy. So it was like perfect timing for us. And, you know, we started, we started working, you know, we started working, you know,

did you move back to Arizona? We, yeah, as soon as I could even, even on terminal leave, I moved my family back to Arizona. So what did you get, did you get a building for production? Like, what did you do from that aspect? We did. We rented space. We rented a couple different spaces and we just ran it out of there. And it was interesting because when you go through that process, there's no guarantee that

even if you go to L.A. and you shoot the show, there's no guarantee that your episode's even going to air. So this goes right back to kind of like the situation I talked about in my second time, taking those orders coming back to Buds. It was a big risk because at that point we had like $70,000 in the bank in our business account. And I remember knowing that, you know, if this show airs, we need a lot more inventory. We need more machinery. We need to hire some people. But if it doesn't air, we just wasted all of our money or we're going to have to figure something out. And so we, again, we went big, we gambled. We spent every last cent we had. My wife who ran the numbers, who's always run the numbers, she was like, hey, if the show doesn't air, we're not going to make

payroll. You know, so it thankfully it aired when it was supposed to air. And, you know, I think we did like $450,000 that night of the airing. And that was, it would have been way bigger than that, but we got so much traffic on the website, I was told it was like 13,000 hits a second because there was like 12 million people watches the show. Dang. And they were like, the website crashed within seconds of an airing on the East Coast. And so thankfully, one of the things that I learned in the teams, guys like Jocko was one is none, two is one.

Always have a backup. So we had a redundancy plan in place. We put up a banner on the website. Hey, go to Etsy. We still had our Etsy store. people were still able to buy there. And so we limped through it. And then we were all like, yes, this is awesome.

You know, great exposure, great sales. And then I'm like, now we have to make this stuff. Right? Because we don't call, it's not like we're calling China. Like, you know, and so we were before Shark Tank. We don't call China around here. That's right. That's right.

That's right. My man. So, um, we were making like 135 bottle breaches on a good day before Shark Tank. I think when we woke up the next day, we had to make like 60,000. auto breaches. And we had 20,000 emails to answer and, like, people are pissed off. Like, this is the day and age of Amazon, man. Like, we're this little mom and pop shop that we're like, we're not making with germal tools anymore, but I mean, we don't, we're not making them that fast. And so it created a real leadership challenge where, you know, that lesson of, hey, what we did

yesterday, you can't say this is how we, we've always done it. Because how we've always done it ain't going to work anymore. And we got to think outside the box. We got to get creative. And thankfully, I mean, it took me longer than I would have liked to have figured it out. But thankfully we finally figured it out, got things up on step, and we're able to handle national television airings and stuff like that. And so what year was that?

That was 2014. How long did it take you to get caught up with 60,000? Bacon of 135 a day. Three months. It took us three months. And people were pissed, man. And the worst part is if some people somehow we're finding Mark and Kevin's, you know, emails are Shark Tank investors. And they were like, I can't believe you did a deal with this company.

These guys are idiots. You're stupid. And like me and like at that point in my life, nothing was worse than getting an email from, you know, Mark Cuban, like WTF. You guys need to get this stuff straightened out. You know, and it was just like, I mean, that's the type of thing that would just ruin your night, you know. But, you know, going back to just like working for Chris Kyle, dude, hey, that don't cut it anymore, man. You're, you know, so I think it's been, I think it was a blessing and it's definitely prepared me for what I'm doing now. There's a, I watched the, they have a YouTube video that's like after the shark tank.

Beyond the tank. Yeah, beyond the tank. And it was pretty cool. O'Leary, you know, he was talking about you and talking about veterans. You could see he's a patriotic guy who's getting like, he's getting choked up talking about. talking about what you guys were doing and just thankful for your service. So I thought that was, to me, that was awesome to see because I don't, I don't watch that show. Echo is like, big time, watcher of Shark Tank.

Yeah. Did you watch this like when it happened live? Oh, you did. It's my boy, dude. In the game. In the game. Yes, sir. Over there.

Oh, yeah. Were you nervous before you walked out there? A little bit, but I was more excited. I'm not going to lie to you, I was a little bit nervous because, you know, it's like, you know, that you're about to either be a hero or a zero on national television. And obviously, too, like all those entrepreneurs, like they have more, you know, business acumen in their finger than I did in my entire body, but I knew we had something. And I knew that if we could just get on the show, obviously it was a controversial product because it was a bullet, you know, bottle opener. So I was

worried about that. But it was funny because one of the things that we'd rehearse was we were going to get each shark their favorite beer and then, you know, hand out the personalized bottle breaches that I'd made for each one of them and then let them, you know, open their beer with it. We were all going to cheers and whatever. Well, last minute, the prop director guy, he's like, hey, we're not going to use their favorite beers or whatever. We're going to use these beers that we have backstage. And I'm like, hey, your call, your show, whatever you guys want to do.

And so I don't know if somebody was playing a joke on me or what, dude, but I went and I, you know, took my bottle up my bottle breachered up and this thing starts foaming all over the place and I look at it and I'm like you know this is like they're opening their beers I'm opening you know my beer and I'm supposed to cheer up you know do the cheers thing and I was like whatever dude I just you know take a big swig of it and it was funny because we start our pitch and Jen like leans over to me and she whispers to me she's like there's and I was like whatever dude I just get you Charlie Mike, right? Just keep going, dude. So we did it, you know, and it was a blessing. And I think it's led to, you know, so much, so much other stuff. But, you know, it definitely isn't always roses.

And one of the hardest things about it was working with my spouse. You know, I mean, you know, I hadn't even learned to barely live with my spouse at that point because I'd been gone a lot. And, you know, we were both kind of like type A's, like button heads all the time. And it definitely took some learning to what we call stay in your swim lane, you know, and like you do what you do. I do what I do. And I'm in trying not to sleep on the couch. It's been a lot of time sleeping on the couch. But, you know, I probably deserved it. So you're talking about the fact that, you know, like with your faith with, you know, you basically a couple times in your life at critical times have been praying and saying, hey, look, if I'm supposed to go to Buds,

open the door. If not, close it. You know, I need a way to help my family. If I leave the Navy, open a door. I'm knocking. Let me in. Let me, let me know what to do. Yeah. Serious guidance for you. Yeah, it was. And it was interesting because after the shark tank, and I know there's a spectrum here, and I try not to compare myself to other people, but I knew, just by knowing myself, I knew I wasn't in a good spot mentally. Like, you know, done five deployments, and I'd gotten out, and I felt this, like, anger and this rage inside me. And, yeah, I tried to keep it under wraps because, like, I didn't think it was cool. I didn't want, you know, people to know that, like, I was struggling with certain things.

and, you know, and then all the stress of being a dad to young kids and then running this, running this business with your spouse, who you've just barely learned to, you know, work with. And so I felt like, you know, I was on the struggle bus. I felt like I was failing as a husband in many ways and even as a dad. And I was laser focused on this business because I was like, took the same mentality from the SEAL teams like, hey, just go as hard as you can, outflank your enemy, you know, stand up this team and you know sometimes when you're laser focused on something you start dropping other important priorities and when it really resonated with me like the spot that I was in

probably probably two years after shark tank I think it was 2016 a buddy of mine here in San Diego who was in that VBSSSL with me just a good dude I'm pretty sure he's still active he was an e-dog and then got his commission. And he called me up. And usually when he called me, it was just to talk shit to me. We called it banter therapy. We'd just, you know,

tell each other how worthless they were and we'd laugh about it. And then, like, it felt like you just did, like, you know, an hour-long intensive therapy session or something. And so I was like, oh, here we go. You know, his initials are KP. KP's calling.

We're going to get after each other and then, you know, you know just see catch up see how he's doing and i could tell immediately he wasn't calling to you know banter therapy give me a hard time and he's like hey man i got bad news and i'm like what's up dude and he's like hey man chuck is dead and i'm like what and he's like yeah chuck is dead he uh he got killed um fighting with the peshmurga you know fighting ISIS i think it was yesterday or something you know like i don't remember what else he said um but we got to We got off the phone and I was just in shock because Chuck Keating was one of my new guys at a Steel Team 3 and Delta Platoon.

And like I was like kind of a C daddy, you know, like looked after him, just loved the kids. Such a, such a solid dude and went on to become just a phenomenal seal. But it was, I noticed how I was in trouble because I remember walking out of Bottle Breacher and I didn't, like I felt like I was getting ready to just. break down and I didn't want my staff to see me you know break down I didn't think that would be professional and uh I remember feeling it like I remember feeling the emotion come up from my stomach into my throat and like oh cool let's let's just get this out and it just like stopped and it wouldn't like I couldn't I couldn't mourn I couldn't I couldn't shed a tear I couldn't cry and uh this happened like I started walking around the the uh strip the uh the like mall that bottle breacher's

buildings are located in happened like four or five times and I was like oh damn dude that's kind of that's kind of weird and uh I kind of it was it was it was so weird that I started thinking about it and that was the first time that it ever happened and there had probably been I don't know to that point probably 15 at least 15 guys that I knew that had been killed, you know, in war. And he was, out of all of them, none of them were closer to me than him. And it was kind of, I was perplexed at why I couldn't mourn him. And so I started thinking about it, and there's a, there's a verse in Proverbs 423, it says, above all else, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life. And I realized, I realized it not only had I not guarded my heart, but

I had built massive walls around my heart to where I couldn't feel anything anymore. I couldn't even feel, I couldn't even mourn like one of my best friends that just got killed fighting ISIS. And I knew I was in trouble. And the other thing I realized was that that wasn't an isolated incident. Like it was affecting the springs of life that as a father and a husband that are supposed to be flowing out of us so that we can love those around us, especially our spouses, our kids, they were broke, man. Those walls that I'd built around my heart so that I couldn't be hurt anymore. Like it was affecting, it was keeping some of the arrows of life out,

but it was definitely affecting that love that was supposed to be flown out. And I just knew I was in trouble. Thankfully, a buddy of mine named Rick, who loves your show, by the way, he invited me to this men's retreat. And it was like a Christian men's retreat. And I was like, oh, God, that sounds awful. But, you know, he kept after me for a couple years. And it's called, it was called Ransom Heart.

It's called, you know, now it's called Wild at Heart. The guy that wrote the book Wild at Heart is a guy named John Eldridge. And he writes some phenomenal books. But finally I said, you know what, man? I want to be a better man. I want to be a better husband, a better dad, and all of that. So I'm going to go with you. And so I went in, I think it was 2017, and the event changed.

my life, man. And I think the biggest questions, biggest questions most of us ask theologically are, who am I? Why am I here? Why is the world so messed up? What can I do about it? And, you know, I definitely got some answers to those questions. And it was cool, man. It wasn't like there was no religion, you know, there was no churchy anity. You would think going to an event like that, you'd be surrounded by a bunch of Ned Flanders types, but it was just a bunch of regular dudes who all came with the same questions that I had. And I think many of them were in the same spot that I was, they hadn't taken care of their heart.

They hadn't guarded their heart. And in the scripture, it also, I think it's First Peter 5,8 says, be alert and of sober mind for your enemy, the devil, prows the earth like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. and I have seen a lot of men devoured. I mean, we got 22 vets every day killing themselves, and that's just the states that report it. And that's just one area of devouring going on.

And, you know, it's like I've always, and I know that not everybody believes the same things that I believe. I totally get that and I respect that. But I've always believed that if, like, if you get something good, and you don't share it with other people. If you have a life-altering experience and you don't point others to it, that's pretty messed up.

And you're not being a team guy at that point. And so I want to share that with people because I realize there's a lot of dads out there and a lot of husbands out there and a lot of vets out there and first responders out there that have a lot of questions and they're dealing with a lot of stuff.

And like me, many of you have tried to stuff it down like a beach ball under the water and you can hold that beach ball down under the water for a couple seconds, you know, a couple seconds, maybe even a minute if you're strong like echo over here. But sooner or later, man, that thing's coming up. And if you don't take care of it, it's going to explode and usually on the people that you love the most. Was there, was there, like, concrete actions that you took when you got home from the retreat?

Yeah, there were. the first thing I did was I apologized to my wife the very first thing because I realized just and this goes back to extreme ownership man I realized how many just how many ways I had failed her you know and how she needed me she needed to she needed me to fight for her and off the time I was so proud jaco and so screwed up in so many ways that half the time I couldn't even apologize to her if I if I screwed up man and I was broken and you know I needed I needed fixing and one of the first things that you need in that situation is to realize hey man I'm broken and it's okay to get help it's okay you know to seek it out that and that that's not how team guys are trained to thought we're taught to BTF Charlie

Mike figured out keep moving forward you know and and we're not we're not we try and stay away from medical. We try and stay from, stay away from any of the touchy, feel, the emotional stuff because we got stuff to do. And that stuff is typically not helpful. But I can tell you after going through that ministry, and I've been many times now over the last several years, but my marriage, I never thought my marriage would be great. I actually have a great marriage now, man. And so much of it was because I was equipped to not go back into my own story and get some healing, but also get some tools on how to move forward. And just understand the bigger perspective of this story that we live in, man. And, you know, it's like one of the things I teach there is that you

were given a masculine heart for a reason because you were born into a world at war. And I think a lot of the stuff that we see in society has spiritual undertones and foundations. And to it and if you don't like if nobody ever teaches you that stuff man it's it's kind of like getting shot at from and you have no idea where you're getting shot at from there's a lot i think there's a parallel there but the first thing i did was apologize to my wife and the second one of the second things that uh there's another scripture and forgive me i don't remember exactly which one it is but the scripture is i stand at the door and i knock and whoever hears my voice and opens a door I will come in and eat with him and he with me.

And that's what I needed, man. I just prayed and I gave it up and I said, Lord, I'm broken. I'm hurting on the inside and I'm inviting you in to come. Rip all this stuff out of my life and my heart that I don't need. That's dragging me down and that's not helpful to my family, to those that even trusted me to love and take care of. And I need your help.

And it kind of goes from trying to do it on your, your own to being like, hey, Lord, come in here and help help me with that. And I say that respectfully, man, because again, I know that a lot of people don't see things the way I do or feel this, feel the same way. But again, I'm not trying, I'm just trying to help other people because I know there's a lot of dudes out there asking the same questions that I, that I was asking, and they want relief and they want to be well. And they don't know how to, they don't know how to do it. Yeah, well, there's a, there's like a route to humility that you're talking about and there's a bunch of different routes to humility and I was actually thinking about that earlier today you know like the

one of the one of the founding tenets of Christianity is hey I'm going to put God above myself well that's that's that's that's humility to put you know I talk about humility oftentimes from a leadership perspective you put the team above yourself you put someone else's plan above your own plan. That's a form of humility. And extreme ownership is, you can't be, you can't take ownership without being humble enough to say, oh, this, this problem was my fault. So I think, you know, the, the route that you take to get to a point where you can say,

okay, I'm going to be humble. I'm going to look at my life and say, hey, hey, wife of 10 years, I'm sorry that I haven't been as good as I can. Right. That what, what it takes to get you there is you can take a bunch of different paths to get there, but humbling yourself, whether it's before God, whether it's before your team, whether it's before your wife and saying, hey, I know I can do better. That's a path that is going to help anybody.

And I think how you get there, there's a bunch of different ways. And the result is going to bring you to an area where you are going to find improvement. Yeah, yeah. No, I agreed and I definitely needed to be humbled, you know, and all the guys that are a part of that, you know, that ministry, John, Morgan, Bart, man, thank you guys so much for everything you've done. Because I know it's not just me. I know that they've helped thousands of dudes through it. And if you guys want to go check it out, just go look up, you know, Wild at Heart. I think it's wild at heart.com or whatever. But, man, wow, just a life-changing experience. for me. And it really, I went from wanting to build the biggest, baddest veteran-owned company in the, you know, in the United States to, you know, wanting to focus on my family more. And, and also just coming back to, okay, God, you know, you've blessed me with so much, how do you want me to spend the rest of my life? Like, where do you, where do you want me to be? What do you want me to, you know, be doing and now here I am man you know doing something that I never ever thought I'd be a part of but

I think that's what happens when often you turn it over and be like whatever you want me to do just open the door and if you don't want me to do it please shut the door you know but I definitely want to spend spend the rest of my life trying to help you know help people and and guide them towards you know concrete stuff that actually helped me And through that idea of serving, here you are now running for Congress in Arizona. Yeah. What, what? I mean, that's just a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a massacistic move, right?

To go and just open up your life, give away your time, give away your privacy, give away, uh, any semblance of civility from other human beings. Right. And here you are. Yeah. You're going for it. Yeah. I am. And, you know, I think we're off to a good start.

But I went into this knowing that there was a good chance that, you know, the outcome that many people, including myself, are striving towards will not. There's a decent chance that that outcome will not become a reality. but at the end of the day, I focus on what I can control. I focus on, hey, focus on your posture, Eli. Don't focus on the outcome. Continue to try and be a man of honor and integrity and more importantly be a guy that's willing to say, okay, I may not have all the experience in the world.

I may not even be the best candidate, but this country's in massive trouble. It's in massive trouble. And I'm willing to go serve again. And if y'all don't want to send me, I'm cool with that. If I'm not a good enough candidate, I'm cool with that. What I'm not cool with is sitting on my couch complaining about it and yelling at my TV. And I'm not going to be okay.

I don't know if you do this, Jacco, but I like to think about sometimes, you know, from a legacy building perspective, like I like to think about my funeral. Like, who's going to show up? Who's not going to show up? what are people going to say about me when when I'm gone are they even going to be talked are they even going to are they even going to are they even going to talk about me or or or bring up my name and you know I'm I'm hoping that at the end of my life people show up to my funeral and be like you know what Eli did some you know Eli was a good dude and he loved he loved people and he wasn't willing or he was he was willing to sacrifice and serve something bigger than himself and if if if that's what people

say about me when I'm dead and gone and six feet under, then to me, I've lived a purpose-driven life, something that I can be proud of. And to me, that's what this is all about. It's like, you and I swore an oath to protect and defend this country from foreign and domestic threats. And right now, I don't know how you see it. I believe we have some very dangerous foreign threats out there, but I think the biggest threats in this country right now are within. and the fact that we can't, we can't unite and we can't, we have a lot of forces working against us, who I don't believe actually want to see a free and prosperous people that still have the power, where our government is of, for, and by the people.

But there's a dichotomy to that. We have, we're so free and so prosperous here that many of us have, many of us have become complacent. we've checked out. We don't think that we have to participate. And you can't have both. You can't have a government and a country that's a foreign by the people and have a complacent people that have checked out and don't participate. And I think that's one of the reasons we're in the spot that we're in

because people don't want to deal with the negativity that goes along with politics. They don't want to deal with the nastiness. I totally get it. But that's one of the reasons we're in such a bad spot because we just think that we can elect these these individuals who look good and they sound good they put on the suit with the little flag on the on the collar tell us what we want to hear and then we leave it up to them and then when they let us down you know we're like oh well I guess there's nothing we can do no there is something we can do we can get involved and we and we can fight for it and that's what it's going to take

honestly was there any issues that was there like a straw that broke the camels back where you said, I got to go. I got to do this. Yeah. There was. And it was this last election in 2020. For so many different reasons. It was it was part the election, what I saw happen in the election. But then it was also watching people that I thought were actually eyes wide open, willing to fight for us, do this number. they look left they look right oh I guess nobody else is saying anything I'm just going to get back in line and you know do you know do my thing and make sure that I don't put myself out there and jeopardize my future political career and so that that was that was the big one for me because

I believe that there was massive fraud in this last election for a bunch of different for a bunch of different reasons. At the end of the day, if we have a government that's of by and for the people, and yet our elections aren't tight, and we're not electing, we're no longer electing our officials, we're in massive, massive trouble. And the clock then starts ticking on how long, in my opinion, we actually last. And so I've said this before. I'll say it again. I would rather we not, I would rather my guy lose or whoever I'm voting for lose than you know have to even question hey how legit what how legit was that because that didn't look right over there and that didn't look right

and what about this over here oh we're not allowed to talk about this or we'll get kicked off of social media too okay yeah that doesn't smell right how about how about if we how about if we the people want to actually audit and check the results of our election what's What does that look like? Is it welcomed? Or is it, or do lawsuits start flying? You know, there's been some interesting stuff going on that are similar to what you're talking about. So, you know, Joe Rogan, who's, do I have to explain who Joe Rogan is?

No, you don't really. Okay. So Joe, he, you know, had these doctors on. talk about COVID and these these are doctors that have a non-mainstream media view about COVID and he just released a statement yesterday because now we have some of these old rock and roll people telling Spotify if you don't pull Joe Rogan off then we don't want our music off and and that's a legitimate thing um so it's like okay so rogan came out he released like a nine-minute podcast last night. I happened to be driving and when it came out so I listened to it. And so this is

what's interesting. Uh, I forget the examples that he gave, but one of them was six months ago or a year ago or whatever. If you said cloth masks don't do anything, you would be literally banned and there's documented people that were banned from social media for saying that. And now it's, Oh, it turns out it's actually true. And for example, CNN has been widely reporting that. There's a whole list of things like that. Oh, here's another example is if you were to say six months ago or a year ago, once you're vaccinated, you can't catch COVID and you can't spread COVID. And if you would have said that, there's people that were banned from social media for saying those things.

and now you look up and those things are actually true. They're factually true. That's what's happening. And you get this with the election results that you're talking about in 2020. There's when people said, hey, I'm not sure about this election. Right. Some people weren't necessarily saying, I mean, there was politicians. There was very few politicians that were saying, hey, not so sure about this.

maybe we should hold off maybe we should check the results there was personality social media personalities that were saying that and they they got shut completely shut down right not for saying hey I think we should overthrow the government but for saying hey don't you think we should confirm this because I I agree with you that to me the worst outcome for a for an American election is people look at it and go I don't believe it right Even if it's, never mind half the population, I don't want 10% of the population to think, hey, I don't believe this is true.

I think that the election results were wrong. I think there was foul play, all those things. What I want to do is if 10% of the people say, or 1% of the people say, hey, we think that there was foul play in the elections, I want to say, okay, well, let's get everything out on the table. You know, a good analogy would be if you're watching, if you're playing a football game. Yeah. And, you know, a team, we think a team got a touchdown. And, and the other team says, yeah, that wasn't a touchdown. You don't say, well, shut up, it was, because now we all leave and we don't really think they want it. We argue about it. We fight about it. And it's a bad

thing. Instead, what do we do? What do we do nowadays when there's that problem? We solve the problem by going, oh, you don't think it was a touchdown? Cool. We're going to go to the videotape. We're going to lay everything out on the table. And then everyone can see, oh, yeah, cross the plane. It was a touchdown or didn't cross the plane. That's it. We can solve the argument so that we actually get the truth out there. And it seems like with this election, instead of saying, hey, here's what happened in these situations. Here's these anomalies that took place. Here's why they took place. Here's the impact that they actually had. Here's some characters that did some things that they shouldn't have done. Here's some things that some accusations were made that

were totally false. But to just say, oh, if you don't think that that election was perfect, then you should be silenced. And the reason I bring up the masks and the masks and the vaccines is because right now it seems like there are some people that are gathering evidence about the election that might not necessarily turn the election over, but they might at least say, hey, this is something that happened. No one agrees that this should happen. No one agrees that someone should be stuffing ballot boxes, right? No one thinks she should be stuffing ballot boxes.

So if ballot boxes are getting stuffed, what can we do to prevent that? And to me, I can't imagine an American that's aligned with America, like with just the, the broad idea of America where we have freedom of speech. We have the right to bear arms. We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I can't imagine someone saying, you know what, I actually think stuffing ballot boxes okay. I actually think these changing these election laws. I think that's fine as long as, you know, it's done for the. right party. That to me doesn't make sense. Right. So I think when you start talking about the thing

that kind of pushed you over the edge, I think there's a lot of people that felt that way. Yeah. And honestly, there's a long list of things that I've been watching for years. But, you know, I, like for instance, look at the southern border, right? We're getting ready right now. to possibly, you know, go send troops over to Ukraine on the eastern, their eastern border. And yet we don't even take care of our own border, right? We have fentanyl and drugs coming over that southern border. We have human trafficking coming over that southern border. You know, we have, we're basically, you know, supporting the cartels by doing that. We have MS-13 gang members coming over that southern border. And you have an administration right now that doesn't even want

address that problem at all. They're actually taking people in the dead of night sometimes and flying them around the country, right? You had a situation where border patrol agents were being fired because they wouldn't take a vaccination yet people that were coming here illegally weren't forced to take a vaccination and then flown all over the country in the dead of night so that you and I wouldn't wouldn't know about it, wouldn't see about it, et cetera. And those are facts as well. And so that's just one, that's just one more issue. How about our how about our debt? situation. We've got like close to $30 trillion in debt, right? Right now you have Nancy Pelosi and others pushing spending bills that are going to continue to rack up that debt. And we don't even have

the money to pay for it. We're just printing money. And basically we're devaluing the U.S. dollar and we're causing inflation to skyrocket. And you have Democrats like the guy I'm running against guy named Tom O'Halloran who will try and convince you that inflation, you know, it's, it's not that bad or it's, you know, I've even heard in the media, they'll say, well, Jen Saki said, well, you know, it's a, you know, it's an, it's, it's an upper class problem, you know, and it's like people that are putting gasoline in their cars, people that are buying, you know, hamburger meat or, you know, any of the, any of the consumer products that we buy, those prices are going up and up and up, and it affects everybody.

And this idea that we can just print our way out of this mess that we've gotten ourselves in because we don't have any fiscal responsibility. And we have politicians that want to support a spending bill so that they can go back to their constituents and say, oh, well, hey, look, I just got you guys, you know, great broadband, you know, Wi-Fi or whatever it is. But knowing deep down that there were, you know, a thousand other things in that bill, that wasn't good for the country, but now they can come back and hold this trophy up and be like, look what I did for you guys.

You know, all across the board, how about energy? You know, we went from actually having so much energy that we were exporting energy. We shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, and now we greenlit the Russian pipeline at the same time, right? So how's that good for America? We're talking about defunding police officers. Are you, are you, what? What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what you've been talking about, hey, how about we get, get some of these, you know, police officers, some better training, right? I, I think that's great.

But defunding them ain't going to help anything. It's going to, it's going to, it's going to hurt people and it's going to hurt people, lower class people and minorities more than anybody else. So we've got, this country has gone so, in my opinion, it's gone so far backwards and so. many different in so many different ways that I look around and one of my favorite sayings of all time is evil triumphs when Goodman do nothing. And so again, it's just like, I'll tell you what, if there was, you know, if you were running in my district, I wouldn't be running in this district, bro. I wouldn't. And matter of fact, I'm going to put you on the spot right now. I know, because I know I'm not the only one that has asked you. Gavin Newsom, there aren't too many guys that could take him out, you could take him out, dude. And I know you're building your empire, but I want to put that on your brain, bro, because you could take him out. I know you could. Yeah. Um, think about, like,

think about the platform that you have. Think about your, your reputation in the SEAL teams. Think about what, what you've done as an entrepreneur. And at the same time, you've managed to keep your family intact, bro. That's, that's big time. I don't know another. I don't know another human being that has that all under one roof, man. And so I know you got stuff to do. I know you're working on stuff, but you could take him out. You could. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing, man.

And I hate to even put you on the spot because nobody's done, nobody deserves to like enjoy the American dream more than you have just with everything you've done. But this is an inflection point in this country. That's why echoed. That's why you see seven Navy SEALs running right now. Because it wasn't like, hey, it wasn't like we got on a conference call. Like, hey, you know, it'd be cute as if we all ran for Congress? No, no.

Everybody, they all realized it. I know you feel it as well. But, you know, how badass would that be to have Jocko, you know, the governor of California? Yeah, and look, I appreciate you your input on that one. Yeah. I really don't want to go into politics. That being said, I, you know, what's interesting is, you know, I talked to all my friends that live in Texas and they live in Utah and they live in Montana and they live in Arizona.

And, you know, there's just been a rash of people leaving California. Yep. Businesses leaving California. My friends, a bunch of my friends have left California. And I love California. Yeah. California is freaking awesome. It is.

California has the Pacific Ocean. It has the mountains. It has the desert. It has the redwood trees. It has Yosemite. It is a magnificent place. It is absolutely magnificent. And yeah, it is in a very precarious situation right now that I don't think it can, I don't think it can continue to go this way.

I mean, you've seen the news, you've seen the homeless situations. Yeah. You see the trains that were getting attacked and, you know, robbed from entire freight trains. I don't know what's going to happen, man. I don't know what's going to happen in California. I love California. California is an iconic place. And there's and the other thing you got about remember about California is California is not San Francisco and Los Angeles.

That's not California. Right. That's a small part of California. California is the Imperial Valley, right? California is the agriculture that is the vast majority of this state and hardworking Americans that are out there bust in their ass to make things work. And at the same time, paying an incredible amount of tax. and having the regulatory environment that's that's hostile to business, legitimately hostile.

So with all these things, as they continue to add up, I can't predict the future. I certainly hope I don't have to get into politics. I really just don't know if I have the stomach for it. I don't want to do it, man. I know. It's like just the biggest cop out that I can throw back at you. at this point and you and the rest of the guys that are out there trying to do it for the right reasons is awesome.

Man, I don't want to get into that business. I don't want to get into that world. And, you know, when people ask me about politics, I always tell them that, you know, I don't want to do it unless things get really bad. And people hit me up all the time. Is it bad enough yet? Is it bad enough yet?

Is it bad enough yet? I don't know where that line is for me. I feel a dumb and dumber moment coming on right now where I just want to say, so you're saying there's a chance. There's a chance. Okay. One in a million?

Awesome. Don't like it. No, I hear you. I hear you. It's nasty, man. It's a nasty world and it's, God, dude. And I'm barely even scratching the surface of it,

but even now, like, I don't really like the world. I don't like the soul. self-promotion of going around campaigning and telling people why you're so great and why they should vote for you. I don't like that part of it. I don't like the nastiness of, you know, people lying about you and trying to smear you in, you know, every single way possible. And if they can't come up with anything good, they'll just make it up. I don't like that part of it. I don't like exposing my family, you know, to this stuff as well. I just want my kids to grow up kind of like a normal life.

and but I'll tell you what man it's like if enough of us don't do it we're done yeah that's the way I see it man and I wish I was more optimistic but I watched like just like on a you know a dope sheet as a sniper man I watch trajectories I watch where this country started and where we're at now man and it's I mean COVID if that doesn't wake people up you know to you know the fact that often most often governments aren't typically interested in letting the power rest with the people, I don't know what's going to wake people up, but it's getting bad, and we need to, we need some sled dogs to put their, and maybe a couple leaders to put their shoulder to the wheel. But just saying, am I the only one that's ever called him out on? I don't think so, no. I will say when I speak,

maybe not necessarily on the podcast because it's a small group of two or maybe three yeah whenever I go and talk to businesses companies or organizations I'm getting called out almost 100% of the time good to get in the game to get in that game you know and and and right now I mean part of my cop out part of my uh uh rationalization is you know I'm trying to build businesses in America American made business we're bringing manufacturing. We're putting people back to work. We've got hundreds of employees, American employees that are making things happen. We're bringing back manufacturing. That's, that, that's, it is a part, it's a part of the fight. It's a very important part of the fight. And honestly, that's why I'm

an America first candidate, not because I, not because I hate, you know, any, any other country around the world, but I love this country. And for so long, so many of our leaders and politicians have put America on the backburn. And they've sold out. so many, you know, of our workers, our constituents, and it's just like, hey, you know, I'm all for, I'm all for, you know, free trade, but it needs to be fair. And we need to make sure that we're not shooting ourselves in the foot and shooting, you know, displacing our workforce and taking manufacturing away from many of these folks and families that, you know, count on it. And that was one of the coolest things about bottle breacher is that I couldn't have even done it this long.

I couldn't have even run that business this long if I didn't find a, oh, way to incorporate mission into it. Okay, how do we, how is this bigger than just profits and balance sheets and, okay, so we can support some cool veteran nonprofits, we can hire some vets, we can make our products in the USA, okay, that's enough of a mission to keep me, you know, engaged, you know, for a certain amount of time. But, you know, and I love that you're doing that as well, man. It seems like it's getting hard to keep up with all the stuff you're doing. Well, you took on a bigger challenge, man. You took on a bigger challenge.

So how can everyone help out? How can we help get you elected? What are we got to do? Yeah. So I appreciate it, man. I just appreciate the opportunity to come and wrap with you guys. If people want to go, follow me. They can look up Eli, Eli Krain underscore CEO on social media.

If you want to go to my website, it's EliforArizona.com. You know, I hate to even ask, but unfortunately in this world, so much of this boils down to name ID and for a first time guy in a political race, U.S. Congress race, so much of it is going to come down to do we have the ammo and the resources to run all the TV ads, all the digital ads, all the mailer ads, etc. So if you guys can give us a small donation, we would really appreciate it. I'm asking people for prayer as well, you know, just for guidance, direction, and wisdom. And the other thing I'm asking for is that people share, you know, share the website, share what we're doing here so that other people that don't know about it can pitch in and help to you. So those are the things that you guys can do. Sounds like a plan, man. Probably a good place to wrap it up.

Echo, where you got? You got any questions? Yes. We got football questions. What do we got? I don't want to keep it. here too much actually no I just actually want to say so when I when I when I when we saw the Shark Tank episode yeah you know how like because you guys watched that even before you're on

yeah you know the kind where someone comes out with a product or service and you meet any depends on who you are obviously right and you immediately know like all this guy's gonna get a deal yeah that's what I felt about yours because brad he but you don't watch shark tank I've watched it I mean I watched your episodes over the past like a few days when I knew you were coming out here but no I'm not a regular watcher bro I'm like like a bunch of other people, the moment I saw that thing as a, I was like, did you know anything about, did you know Eli before that? No, no, I did.

This was back in the day. This was like in 2014. Yeah. But bro, once I saw that thing, I was like, bro, that's the coolest shit I ever seen. Yeah. You're that guy, bro.

You're that guy that he was talking about. No, dude, it was, I mean, it was so, it was so cool and such a blessing, man. And, I mean, it's still, I tell people all the time, you know, you know, guys don't really grow up. but we just get bigger toys. Can I tell the Salter Franco story? Oh, yeah. Let's hear you.

All right. So it's so funny, man. You know, Jocko is who Jock is, man. And, you know, you got people that want to be like Jock, right? And it just so happened that a lot of people, you know, in Task Unit 2 wanted to be like Jock. So they made us do, the older guys, made the younger guys do skits. And that's a pretty dicey situation, man, because. By the way, I know where Sal lives right now.

Yeah. I know where he's at. So I might have to go get. him. Sal, he's coming, bro. No, he wasn't even making fun of you. Really, it was just, he was making fun of people that wanted to be like you. And so it was funny. So they make you do these skits. And if you piss them off, you know, you deal with, you deal with that side of it. But if you make them, if you can make them laugh while making fun of them, that's, that's the golden ticket, right? So Sal was always the funniest dude. So Sal came up with a lot of our skits. And so I remember

He did this skit. And it was like he was playing you. And, uh, or no, he was playing, I think he's playing stoner. And he had this, he had this note like this no, like this no, this binder. And he put like, uh, what was it? W. W.W.J.D. What would Jocko do? And he like walks out playing stoner, talking like stoner. He's like, you know, all the acronyms, BTF, Charlie Mike, you know, and the guys are just rolling because he's, you know, he's like, you know, making fun of all these guys who want to be like Jock.

But are failing miserably. And it was just so funny, dude. And so, you know, that became, you know, a joke, you know, a running joke after you left. Like, God, dude, all these guys walking around, what would Jock do? Trying to be like, bro, you're not Jocko. Just be yourself, man. Okay? Just be yourself.

Big tough frog man, you know, over 200 pounds, all this stuff, dude. Hey, what's Charlie Mike? Continue mission. Oh, yeah. It's just another. And it's an unofficial thing, meaning. our status this time is that we are going to Charlie Mike. I mean, it's an official thing.

Like, we are actually continuing the mission, but that turns into just like a, hey, just Charlie Mike, bro. Right, right. You just got to just keep going. BTF, not official. BTF is unofficial. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, all right. BTF is unofficial. Similar meaning, except for BTF has, you know, greater capabilities because it can be used for a lot more things than just continue mission. I understand. So, you know, that's all good. That's all good.

Right on. Eli. Yep. Any closing thoughts? Thank you, man. Thank you for, you know, what you're doing. And thank you for allowing a guy like me, you know, to come on this show. Like, I've listened to this show for, you know, years.

And I understand why you try and keep politics out of it. Because, you know, I mean, it's such a divisive thing. But I just appreciate you taking a risk and allowing a guy like me to come on and, you know, talk about a little, even my faith, man. That's something that can be really divisive to people. And I definitely don't want it to be a divisive to people, and I definitely don't want to disrespect what you've built. But I'm grateful that you allowed me to come on and talk about it because at the end bro, I do not want to be, I never wanted to be in Congress. I don't like wearing suits. I don't want to live in Washington, D.C., but I honestly believe if we don't get some men and women with courage and character that never wanted this job in the first place in key positions, I'm very concerned about what the future for my kids is going to look like.

Thank you, man, for using what you've built to help guys like me. Yeah. Well, again, thank you, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for what you did. Thank you for a job in the teams, man. That counts, bro. Like getting after getting out there doing that job, holding the line in the teams. Thank you for doing that.

And for what you did with what you did and what you continue to do with Bottle Breacher. Like, that's building the American economy. That's made in America. That's freaking outstanding. That's providing jobs. for people. That's awesome. And what you're doing right now going into politics. Look, I don't like politics. I know you don't like politics. And, you know, I'm not like intentionally staring away from politics on this podcast. It's just not the thing that I talk about. And I mean, and I've had other

political people on here. I'll continue to have them. I've had people from both sides. I've had Democrats. I've had Republicans on here. People that have run for Democratic positions, people that have run for Republican positions. People and, you know, talking about your faith, like, that's, that's a wide. I mean, I've, that's wide open. You know, you can't cover books about the military and not have faith in intertwined in those things from people that have, have been to the edge and back. But for me, you know, what I like, what I like, What I want and what I hope is that when people listen to what we talk about here, they actually listen to it.

Actually listen to what people are saying. Yeah. And instead of trying to figure out where I don't like you or where I don't agree with you, I try and figure out where I agree with you, where you have a common goal that I have and you want to see America move in the same direction that I want to see it. And maybe we have some different ideas about how to get there. Yeah. That's okay.

That's okay. You know, in a platoon, you ask every single guy in a platoon to come up with a plan for a mission. They're all going to come up with a different way. And they're all probably going to think their way is the best way. But guess what? We're all trying to do the same thing. And that's what we need to do in this country, is look at where we're trying to go, get on board, support each other, and let's move in that direction. Thanks for coming on, man.

Appreciate it. Thank you. and Eli is on his way back to Arizona and before he left, Eccl Charles, man. You normally aren't quite as hype to get a picture with someone as you were with Eli.

Because as far as you're concerned, Shark Tank is he's a movie star for you. Well, or something. You didn't know him at all when you watched him on it. You would just happen to watch that live. Like whenever it came out in 2014, you were watching it.

Yeah. So I do watch Shark Tank. I've seen every single episode. Really? Yeah. How many seasons have there been? I don't know. One million.

I don't know. Okay. But it's like that you did. Like just like how Eli is like where I don't really watch TV, but there is one show that me and my wife. That's literally the one show that you like. There's two. Well, Hawaii Vow always does not come on anymore. So yeah.

Okay. We're down to one show. Yeah. Um, there's some other ones that are like, cool, I'll catch it if it's like the tail end of the night and then whatever, but the one that we do watch together, every episode Shark Tank. And that was one of them. No, I didn't know him, but he was like, you know, I'm a veteran, you know, former Navy

seal and stuff. So I figure, okay, we must know, you know, kind of the same people and just in general. But the thing that really was like, I was down for the cause is when he showed that thing, man, the freaking 50 caliber bottle opener? Bro, come on, bro. I mean, not, you know, was it the cure for cancer? No. But it was the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Ever? In terms of bottle openers. Debatably. Yeah, it was really cool. And when, you know, after a while you can tell, like, okay, the product alone is such a good idea that he, of course, he's going to get a deal. It was like that thought. Like, yeah, I thought, oh, yeah, he's going to get a deal. And he got a double.

Yeah, you got a double deal. Two sharks, that's a big deal. Actually, three sharks bid because one other sharks. said, I'll do a deal right now. And then Eli said, hey, just out of respect for the other sharks, I want to make sure that just does anyone else have anything to offer? And then the other shark stepped in and made an offer. And then the other shark.

I don't know all the sharks. So that's another little detail. And that's fun. That's interesting because I do remember him saying that. But I totally forgot that he was the one who said that, Which, okay, so a lot was good was how he framed it. I remember that part. He framed it as not as like, and actually they made fun of them a little bit because he said, he said, he said, out of respect for the other sharks, I want to make sure that none of you would like to make an offer as well.

When what he was really saying was, hey, listen, does anybody else want to throw in more to that? And one of the female sharks said, oh, out of respect for us, like she kind of called them on it. But he did it right. He did it right. Perfect. And so good job, Eli. Usually how they say it is kind of like, well, it wouldn't be smart for me as a businessman to, you know, just like taking off for the first offer. So they'll frame it something like that.

Like, hey, out of like my own or our business's interest. It's about me. When he said out of respect for the other, that's undeniable right there. Because this is what the sharks will do sometimes. Cuban will do this. He'll be like. Do they have their own little methodologies that they use? What's Cuban do?

He'll go. if he really wants it, he'll bully the other sharks. So he'll be like this. He'll go, hey, I'm offering you this, this, this, but you got to take it right now. Like you start, and I don't want to hear them. If you start taking there, and he'll totally do it too. He'll be like, well, you know, I should think I should hear an offer from.

And if one of the other sharks starts talking, like, hey, I'll offer you this. Cuban will be like, I'm out. So they miss it. And now he has kind of a little bit of a reputation for doing that kind of stuff sometimes. So now people get really, oh, and they jump at it, you know. But if you frame it like, hey, out of verse. respect for the other sharks he would have to paint himself as a bad guy now for him to really follow through yeah that was good i would and he seems so respectable who he like yeah yeah yeah

no he did good it's cool to have him on here man but definitely cool and even though he's trying to get me to run for freaking governor of california and stuff yeah i'd have to do a bunch of campaign videos oh yeah you got to be a campaign video guy yeah yeah yeah but you might even have to work I really hope it doesn't come to that, man. But I give it up for these guys that are out there doing this. Because look, I can, you know, sometimes people say, oh, I wouldn't like to do that. But you know they're lying.

You know, they're like, I don't want to have to run for this position. But I'm feeling of the need to that my country's calling me. And you know that they're not telling the truth. Like you can tell Eli is like, hey, I don't want to do this. You can tell Eli is like literally does not want to do this. No choice. But at the same time, you can see the past. And he knows that we need help.

And he's right. He's right, man. He's right, good on him. He came at me with the direct approach, which is normally not your recommended approach. But it kind of made me think, man, I'm weak over here. Well, yeah. And even if you don't, and this is all in a big picture kind of way, this is all just the natural course of things where like if things get too extreme and everyone started recognizing, wait a second, this too extreme. it's going to start tipping the other way.

And usually when it tips the other way, just like a swing, right? It's going to tip maybe a little bit more. And hopefully it'll settle, hopefully at some point. I keep waiting for California to start swinging back. And you are starting to see indications, right? There was a female mayor up in San Francisco that she just came out and was like, all right, we're crushing crime, we're funding the police.

and she was, this is in San Francisco. This is like a liberal mayor of San Francisco. She started swinging it back the other way. Yeah. So that's one of the early indications of what's going down. I mean, you see the politicians out here just mandate. They did a man, right now it's what date is it today? I don't know, but like they got, they put another mask mandate on indoor mask mandate.

I mean, meanwhile, other parts of the country are wide open for months. Yeah, even the Denver guy, same. Yeah, and a wide open. England is, England's just saying we're done. We're done with COVID. Hey, more people are going to get it. We know that.

I think Sweden or somewhere else, there's places that are just going wide open. And Florida's been wide open. And Texas, man, I was in Texas for a couple years ago. Maybe it was a couple, maybe it was like a year and a half ago.

I did a jiu-jitsu seminar or like a meet and greet. A jiu-jitsu. There was 200 people there, rolling jujitsu meanwhile California was in lockdown by the way so that that's okay so people are making decisions but here's that here's you know I just saw a picture of the Newsom who he was just talking about at a football game with a bunch of other politicians none of them wearing masks as they have mandated for everyone else you see

you can't get away with that forever no you can't it just doesn't work And that's why the pendulum is going to start to swing back. That's what's going to happen. I hope I don't have to ride that pendulum to the other side. Yeah. Because I really don't want to. I want to surf. I want to do jiu-jitsu.

I want to make the podcast. I want to build the companies that we're building. And if we can do that properly, maybe we don't have to get into this whole freaking political thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, if you're in a bus, we'll say, or van. Let's say we're in a bus. You know what I feel you know the break in case of war break glass? I feel like that's my political

And I joke about it, but like I think it's got to be I'm talking chaos I'm talking I'm talking I'm talking total mayhem and chaos and I don't really think I would be a no I think it's I think I would become a Political leader in an environment when things Are no longer the way they were you know what I'm saying? I think I'm I think I'm more I think I'm more stepping up to a really hostile situation. That's where I'd get that's where I'd roll in hot. Yeah.

And a lot of times too, we have to remind ourselves that or remind ourselves of the question of is it really hostile or is it just hostile like on the internet? Yeah, yeah. That's true. Or on the TV or whatever. And I'm not to say it is or isn't. I'm just saying that's always a good reminder. And I will tell you that there are elements that are hostile in real life.

There's definitely elements that are hostile. And that thing with Joe Rogan was just crazy right now, you know? And the points that he was making in this little nine minute episode that he did, I mean, people got banned from Twitter for saying masks don't work. And by the way, there was people out there wearing three and four masks. When I was traveling, I'd go to the airport. There'd be people with two masks on and a face shield, right? And okay, cool.

Hey, cool. Go go do that. but some people were saying hey this still how does this work and you know the people like dude it's a piece of cloth over my face how's that stopping anything and that was just a kind of a common sense approach okay well you're banned from your band from talking even if you're like it doesn't seem like this does a lot or you're banned from talking so now now you talk about those election things and it's like hey well it doesn't it seems like these states that were like swing states there was the voting stop and in the only four like swing states that

matter the voting stopped counting at midnight is does that seem weird yeah oh you're banned you're not allowed to say that yeah what the right answer should be hey that's a good question let's do some analytics and figure out what happened yeah so and there's i i do know that there's some other information that's coming out right now that is definitely let me rephrase that there's information coming out about the 2020 election that indicates that maybe things should be looked at a little bit more. So and again, if it's wrong and it turns out that the election was squared away, then cool. You go, okay, cool. Now you all can stop worrying about it. All you freaking crazy right wing fringe Trump maniacs can calm down now because look, here's the facts. But instead what

they're saying is like, hey, shut up. You're a conspiracy theorist. What does it do? What do you do? When you suppress that information, what does it do to those people? It emboldened, it doesn't emboldened them it makes them even more suspicious you know and that's not a good move when you won't show the NFL team the video they just go see they don't even want to show us the video that's a bad move air these things out man what's the worst case scenario what's the worst case scenario hey we got we got some we got to fix our elections a little bit that's that seems legitimate to me I want to have everybody's vote count okay cool don't you or do you not

Because if you do not, then we have a, we have a serious problem with our alignment between us two as human beings. I'm American. I think we vote for our people and that's who gets put into office. Don't you think that? You know, and if you don't think that, we have a serious problem. And I don't, I think most Americans, the vast, vast, vast majority are like, yeah, of, yeah, whoever gets voted, that's who should be in office. Cool. We agree on that.

We can agree on that. Should the voting be done method where it's kind of standardized and make sense and it's hard to cheat? Wouldn't that make sense? Yeah. That would make sense. Okay, cool. Yeah, that instant replay analogy was pretty much spot on there. Because it does like, you know, in football as the example.

If, you know, usually it's like a touchdown or an out of bound scenario. or whatever, right, where the line matters. In a critical moment. Yeah, actually, technically, it's never, it doesn't have to be in a critical moment. It can be the first play of the game. The problem is, though, you only get so many of those calls. You can only go to the videotape a certain number of times,

and you might not want to waste it if it's like, you know, if you first and two, whatever. I think that's challenging the, yeah, yeah, challenging the refs call. That's true. So, either way, if the reason that exists is because we, We do, no matter what team you're cheering for, San Francisco 49ers or the Denver Broncos, whoever, I don't know. Whoever you're cheering for, you do want to know the truth.

Like no one wants, like, if someone didn't make a touchdown, it's pretty hard pressed to be like, no, we should just give him the touchdown, even though he didn't make the touchdown. Like that doesn't make much sense. Yeah. And it especially doesn't make sense. Even if you're like, well, you know, my team kind of won, so I just want to let it slide. Yeah. The problem with that attitude, which is understandable, you know, I'm a raging freaking Denver Broncos fan and it looked like a touch.

We think it was a touchdown. We just need to let it slide this time. Here's the problem. You've just now set in place a precedent where we're not going to review things. That's what we're, okay, so now we're just going with whatever that ref saw. That was at a weird angle and he called it a touchdown. So we're good and we're just going to go with that from now on. That's not the precedent you want to set.

You want to set a precedent of like, okay, we have a way of assessing. whether this was actually a touchdown or not. And that's what we're going to utilize. So you might say, you know what, I really want the Broncos to win and it kind of look like a touchdown, but the right thing to do for future reference and for future precedence is to say,

let's go to the videotape and confirm. But the politicians that said that, and a lot of it was tied to the fact that the January 6th event happened. And that made people just go, I don't want to catch any flack for what's going on. This is getting crazy. Let's just move forward and call it what it is.

Looks like they won. Don't go to the videotape. When the videotape will make people say, yeah, you know what? The team won. Or they say, oh, the team didn't win. And now we got some serious issues that we need to attend to. It's very strange times, man. It's a very strange time.

Here's what's weird about this. is me saying what I just said, it seems like pretty normal. It seems pretty logical. Like, well, shouldn't you go to the videotape? No one's going to listen to that and say, no. They're going to say, yeah, if that's the rule and you have the data, then why wouldn't you check it?

But you transfer that exact analogy, analogy to the 2020 election. And all of a sudden, whoever says, hey, maybe we should review the information and the data, is a savage, you know, insurrectionist, whatever. Well, it's like, no, I'm not an insurrectionist at all. What I want to do is review the data. So if someone says that, they get even worse accusations.

So it's very strange times. So do you, and you mentioned something just a second ago about how in the NFL, you only get a few chances to challenge the call. I think. I'm not a freaking NFL expert. And it's been a while really since I've, you know, so that rule could be changed. I don't know. But nonetheless, that was a rule at some point.

Yeah. And that's for a reason because if there's no limit to them, let me challenge every single call and jam up this whole system, this whole game. This whole game is 12 hours long now because I'm challenging every call that goes against me, right? So isn't that part of the game too where it's like interesting about like the election was people are like, well, we don't want to investigate everything. We just want to make sure that these. areas that had voting anomalies that are documented.

Maybe we should check those out. Shut up. Hey, no. Right. So it's almost like a tactic where you could, if you're on the other side, right, you could be like, hey, you're just trying to stop. You're just, what do you call it? You can't let it go.

What were they saying? They were saying like, you can't just accept the truth. It's like that. You know, you want to paint them as an unlimited, you know, challenging the call guy, you know. Well, what makes this really scary, what makes it? all that really scary. It's because I haven't dove enough into the details. But what makes it really scary is that what Joe Rogan just talked about,

which is, hey, people were getting banned from social media for saying masks didn't work. And now it's the reality. People were getting banned from social media for saying the vaccine, you could still spread COVID, even if you had a vaccine. And that is actually true.

And by the way, people were getting banned for saying you could still catch COVID. Guess what? That's true. So all these things, things, we didn't have an open conversation about them because one side got completely shut down, which is crazy. So there you go.

Can't have an open conversation. That's disturbing when you can't have an open conversation. And when what you have to watch out for is people that whatever methodology they want to use, raise their voice and yell over you. So whether that means, I'm not talking. So could that be, if you and I are in a, in a, in a decision. Discussion and you start going I don't care about that and you start raising your voice and yelling and talking over me Okay, but that's just you and me. I realize you're just mad whatever, but I didn't get my point across

But you don't care because you leave That that behavior in social media that behavior in the news that behavior in mainstream media where oh Echo's saying something I don't like So I'm gonna attack him raise my voice but through whatever means that might mean you know retweeting you with hey calling you this or calling you that or doing a personal attack all that behavior now we're

not discussing the topic we're discussing that I hate you yeah which is bad oh you ever watch the movie uh the time machine you ever heard of it I knew you didn't watch it but okay so the time machine is um okay guy pierce who's also the star of memento by the way anyway guy pierce boom he makes time machine he goes way in the future and you know he finds that humans have split

um evolutionarily speaking so they were actually split in three but so so he goes it with the villagers or whatever and like he says something wait a second this could have been Stargate nonetheless they say he says something

and everyone can I take a time machine back to me before this story. Everyone like turns their back or starts walking away or erases what he wrote in the time of something like that. And so like somebody explains to him, hey, like you can't speak of that. You just can't speak of it. Yeah.

And I think later on they find out like, like, you know, what's behind and stuff like that. And that's the thing. What some of these guys got to listen to what they say. And it isn't ironic that Neil Young's song, keep on rocking in the free world. And he's like, don't talk anymore. Right? Like, that's crazy, right? Boy, God.

That's crazy. Yep. That is. That's why we have the underground, by the way. Yeah. We have the underground. Jocco underground.com. Why do we have that?

Why do we charge $8.18 a month to have our own little platform that this is why? Because what we're talking about right now, this may get rolled. This may get bounced. Yeah. This may get edited. Right? And we're not actually making a statement one way or the other. I'm just explaining things that have happened.

Yeah. I haven't. dug through the details enough. I don't spend my time digging through the details of current events. I don't do that. That's not but you know why? Because I'm not that interested and because

other people that commit their time to it, I'm going to let them, let these other people go do that. I'm going to be reading about World War II, Vietnam, Korea, the Peloponnesian Wars, that's what I'm doing over on my side. I'm going to be training jiu-jitsu, hopefully going surfing, playing guitar. Those are the things that I'm doing. I'm not parsing

through the news stories that came out in the last 48 hours to try and get you and catch you on something. But when you let a little time go by, and we talked about this on one of the underground point, so I let time go by and the truth starts to rise to the surface. Now it took six to eight months for the truth to rise to the surface on some of these stories. But again, you know how much sleep I lost over these stories while they were happening? Not very much.

I wasn't freaking. I was like, these masks don't work. or I wasn't like, you better put on a mask. I didn't lose sleep over that. Because I was like, hey, it doesn't seem like going to work that good to me. Oh, you know, I'm going to carry on with my life. That's what I'm doing.

So we don't know when we might get suppressed. So that's why we made jocco underground.com. If you want to, you can help us out. If anything happens to any of these platforms that you listen to this on, we will still have that platform. We do an extra podcast on it about once a week. And we talk about,

Other things that maybe don't fit quite on Jocko podcast, but we want to get them out there to y'all so you can check that out. If you can't afford it, look, if you can't afford it, it's okay. We still got you. You can email, what is it? Assistance at Jocco Underground.com. We appreciate your support on that.

You know, also we're talking about American-made companies. You know, that's kind of my, that's the way I am trying to help America right now by building these companies with the origin team, OriginUSA.com. If you need to get boots, if you need to get a geat, which you probably do, then get, go to origin USA.com. And by the way, you probably, you may have seen we have a hunting line coming out. So we're going to be making clothes for hunting.

That's what we're doing. We've got all kinds of good clothes coming out as well. Workout clothes. By the way, Echo Charles. So we're going to cover you down on that as well. OriginUSA.com. We also have jankofuel. I'm barely, barely on my game today. Why? I didn't sleep last night, probably got two hours,

maybe two and a half. And this is my second jaco discipline go, which is it, which is a drink. It's a drink. Could you call it an energy drink? You could because it does have energy in it, but when you hear energy drink, you're thinking, oh, oh, you're going to ingest some poison that's going to get you jittery and hyper for about an hour and a half and then you're going to crash and be sick and be diabetic. We're not in that category. No sugar in here, sweetened with monk fruit, 95 milligrams of caffeine,

get you on that nice little, you're good to go. Good to go. You're good to go. People go, if you don't sleep, you don't, it's like, no, less than eight hours of sleep is like being a 0.08 D-U-I.

You're mentally impaired. Look, I'm not saying it's good for you, but it's not as bad as, you know, look, should you get sleep. Don't get me wrong. Get sleep. Sleep as much as you can. Sleep as much as you want.

Well. Okay. Don't get crazy. But what I'm saying is you're, if you sleep a little bit less and you need a little something hitter, get yourself some jaco fuel. Joccofuel. Joccofuel.

Yeah. And I will also contend that even if you got a lot of sleep, drink because it is good for you. Yeah. It's healthy for you. Look, hey, look, some people, hey, some people drink coffee, right? In the morning, good. Drink coffee.

Buy coffee. Whatever you, however you drink coffee. If you get eight hours of sleep, what? Should you not drink coffee? Not necessarily because coffee's kind of good for you. Drink some coffee, man. You like that one. You want that, as you would say, hitter or whatever.

The reason? Same deal. And it's healthy for you. So boom, you'll be better off either way. Also, neutropics in there. Yep. Let's not ignore that. That's good for your brain.

That is nutrients for your brain. That's probably why you don't need to overload the caffeine with a go. You don't need to because it's got the neutropics in there. get you up there on step rocking and rolling. There was a commercial and I remember the drink. I forget what it was called because I used to get it. It's juice. Straight up juice.

Like juice juice. Oh, like apple juice or something like that. Yeah, but it was like a mix, I think. I forget what it was. But nonetheless, their thing was like feed your brain. Well, now as an adult, I'm looking at it. I'm like, wait, feed your brain. Isn't there like 50 grams of sugar in that thing right there?

Savages. Yeah. Yep. That's jocofuel.com. Don't forget about jaco's store. We're making cool T-shirts. It's true. Yeah, you want to represent.

Because, hey, this path is not always easy. Yep. Yeah. Good to go. But it is worth it. It is 100% worth it. And if you want to represent, boom, yep, you get your shirts, your hats. The subscription shirts continue to dazzle the senses.

Dazzle the senses. You got some good ones coming out. The shirt locker. Yep, the shirt locker. You get a cool new one every month. We got some. cool ones coming out. Look at that.

They're always cool coming out. Anticipation is just overflowing over there. Subscribe. Subscribe to this podcast, the YouTube, the YouTube channel, psychological warfare. Flipside canvas Dakota Meyer. You've got to get cool stuff to hang on your wall occasionally. Yes.

Unless you want to bear a wall. Which is only applicable in a podcast, in the Jocko podcast studio. But even though it's like conspicuously bare. Yeah. My house, my home, would be bare, were it not for my wife. Because she's hung some stuff on the walls. But that's not appropriate.

You should hang stuff on your walls. Flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer, making awesome stuff. I've written a bunch of books. We got Eshalam Front. If you like what we're talking about here, get some of the books. Eshlamfront.com leadership consultancy. Extreme Ownership.com is our online training. Academy for leadership, you can check that out.

Also, if you want to help service members, retired, service members, active duty service members, Gold Star Families, the families of service members. Check out Mark Lee's mom. She's got an awesome organization. Go to America's mighty warriors.org if you want to donate or get involved. You can also check out Heroes and Horses.com. We got Micah Fink up there in the woods, in the mountains of Montana, helping out. vets. And if you want more of us, you can find us on social. And that's cool. We'll be there,

but we don't want you in the algorithm. Keep out of the algorithm. Echoes at Equitrales. I am at Jocco Willink. And thanks once again to Eli Crane for coming on. Appreciate your service in the past and in the present. Eliforarizona.com. Let's go help Eli win. and to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines out there protecting our flag around the world. Thank you. Same goes to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders. Thank you for protecting us here at home and to everyone else out there. You do get to write the script of your life, but you have to write around the things that don't go the way you want them to.

Let that stop you. Instead, take ownership and counterattack those things that aren't going the way you want them to by going out every day and getting after it. Until next time, Zekko and Jock. Out.