Jocko Podcast - 396: Leadership in The Marines, Google, Facebook and CrossFit. With Don Faul

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

Don Faul, a former U.S. Marine Corps platoon commander and accomplished executive with more than eight years of CrossFit experience, is stepping into the role as the company’s new CEO. Prior to accepting this position, Faul held key operational roles at growth-oriented consumer technology companies, including Pinterest, Meta, and Google.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 396 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. According to the Marine Corps, quote, physical fitness includes a set of characteristics that people have or can achieve relating to their ability to perform physical activity. Our service members must demonstrate the ability to physically accomplish all aspects of the mission while remaining healthy and meet the criteria for deployment, retention, and continued military service. Many components of physical fitness are shared across the services.

The common threat among them is that service members and their families benefit from a holistic approach to physical fitness. A well-rounded physical fitness program should include varied cardio training, balanced strength training that includes core strengthening exercises, flexibility, speed, and agility training, appropriate amounts of sleep and recovery, and effective mind-body programs such as yoga, martial arts and meditation physical fitness is a fundamental element of one's physical and mental health mission performance and readiness and quote and that is what the Marine Corps says about physical fitness and similar statements to that are made by all the military branches and special operations these ideas are taken to an extreme in many cases but these philosophies are not only applicable to the military. The same things can be said for any human being in any walk of life.

It is better to be stronger, faster, and healthier. And there are always people out there and companies and movements that try and share this mentality and help people find this path of health and one of those movements and really one of the most, prominent of those movements is CrossFit, which is a methodology that's made a huge impact on people around the world and continues to help people to get on that path to improve physically and in all those other aspects. And CrossFit right now, currently is being led by a veteran Marine Infantry Officer who graduated from the United States Naval Academy who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Got his MBA from Stanford, worked at some little tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Pinterest. His name is Don Fall, and it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to share his experiences and his lessons learned along the way. Don, thanks for coming down, man.

Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, guys. The honor's mine. Yeah, pretty wild little story you've been on. A little wild ride you've been on. Never would have predicted. From the Marine Corps to Pinterest, I say Marine Corps to cupcakes and ponytail. So you can't write it.

We might have to dive into Pinterest a little bit because that's the one social media thing that I don't really get too well. Not made for people like you. Let's leave it at that. And then what bothers me is I'll search an image and I'll want to and one of their images will pop up and I won't feel to get it for some reason. You know what I mean? It's telling me to sign in with something. Once again by design. Yeah.

They're trying to keep me a fan. They know you're coming. Awesome. Well, we'll get there. In the meantime, I was like to start at the beginning, which is how you got to where you are. So you were born in what? In New Jersey?

Yeah, little town called Allendale, right outside New York City, about 15 miles, Burton County, New Jersey. Is it, so New Jersey, is it far enough to be in the woods, or is it city? Supper, like full on suburb of New York City. Yeah.

Because there's places like the pine barons that are full on woods in New Jersey, people don't think of. Oh, yeah. I mean, New Jersey Garden State, most people scoff at that, but there are big parts of the state that are beautiful. Yeah, and then there's the Jersey Shore, of course, as well. So there's a lot of variety in Jersey, but you're in a straight-up suburb.

Straight-up suburb of New York City. And what'd your parents do? So my dad was a environmental engineer back in the 80s, like early days. So when the EPA was first established, started cracking down on companies. My dad worked for a company that would take process waste, toxic waste and process it. My mom was a nurse, so she went to nursing school, was a nurse

until she got pregnant with me. And did you have any veterans in your family? I had an uncle who had been drafted in Vietnam, but was never talked about. I had both my grandfather served for a short period of time during World War II, but also it was never a topic of conversation. So I grew up in a family and in a town where the military service was not a thing. And I remember I was talking to my parents about this the other day. When I decided to go to the Naval Academy, I remember friends of mine asking me, like, hey, what happened? I thought your parents could afford college.

My mom was telling me several of my teachers called her and said, how could you let your son do this? Dang. Yeah, which is really unfortunate. That's why. So before you got to the academy, you're growing up, what are you doing in high school? Are you playing sports? You playing all sports? What are you doing?

I was. I was super into sports as a kid. Unfortunately, not really great at any of them. played football, basketball, baseball, soccer, really wanted to be an athlete, but was never great. I knew I had no shot of playing at the next level. So I graduated, it's funny, Castro, Dave Castro and I have a really similar story. I graduated high school with a chip on my shoulder because I was never as good an athlete as I wanted to be. Did you train hard?

I would say I was somewhat disciplined, but I didn't really learn true discipline until I went to the Naval Academy. And what about just the training programs back then? I mean, there wasn't like kids now. Kids now, they're going to like special camps so they can work on their freaking forehand for tennis. They're doing their three-week camp for forehand and tennis. They're doing a three-week camp for single-leg takedowns. Like, they're getting real specific with these kids now.

They've got multiple coaches on the side who are training them in strength and conditioning, who are doing mental training. No, that was not the thing for me. obviously. No, I, you know, I, you know, played high school sports and, you know, our football coach was our, you know, gym teacher. That was the standard thing. And, you know, that's where I learned to do the bench press and bicep curls, which was the extent of my strength of conditioning training for the next 15 years. So I didn't really learn any of this until I got further down the road. What were your grades like? I had good grades. I was, I had pretty decent grades.

Were you, what else were you into? What about music? What music were you listening to? I was a disaster. Much to my parents' grade, I play, oh, listen to. Well, I was, gosh, going way back. So I was a huge Bruce Springsteen. I mean, being from the Jersey, obviously. Do they issue those albums? I wish, I wish.

Or something. The tattoos when you turn, you know, 13. Big John Mellencamp fan, Bob Seeger. And then the full 80s crazy. So I was a child of the 80s and still an adult of the 80s. It's when I train now in the mornings, I beg the coaches to put the 80s mix on. Everyone else hates it. And so at some point, though, you figured out, you saw the naval cab.

How did you see the naval captain? Yeah, I got exposed to it, actually. There was a weekend visit when I was a junior in high school. And I was thinking a little bit, you know, my parents definitely drummed into me the importance of service. So I, you know, I volunteered with the ambulance corps as an EMT when I was in high school and I, you know, did Boy Scouts for a short stint. So my parents were really big on giving back. You know, we knew growing up that we were very fortunate. it. And so my parents certainly emphasized service. And so I went checked out the Naval Academy. I thought something the military might be

interesting, went down for a weekend, had absolutely zero exposure to the military before this, no understanding what I was getting myself into. But I remember going down for the weekend and just being struck by how fundamentally different it was from every other college experience. So the other visits that I did, and it totally clicked to me. So I came back from that and said, this is my thing. This feels really hard. I have no idea if I'll want to do this for the rest of my life. I'm 17. I don't know anything. But even if, you know, I do my five years after graduation and get out, I will have had exposure to a bunch of life experiences that'll be good for me. Did you understand the difference between the Navy and the Marine Corps? No, not at all. And when I went to, I really did my homework. I mean, it's not like

it was a big decision. I was just committing a decade of my life. Yeah, so I showed up and I thought, you know, if you had asked me on day one, I would have said, I went. wanted to be a backseat pilot. I didn't have the eyes to be a pilot. So I thought, maybe I'll be a naval flight officer, backseater, you know, and then got to the Naval Academy and got exposed to, you know,

they exposed you to each of the different parts of the Navy and the Marine Corps. And, you know, once I experienced the Marine Corps, it clicked. How was the check in plebe summer and all that stuff? Was it a shock to the system? Did you have,

in the first 48 hours? Did you think, why did I do this? Oh, within an hour. So I remember first day, they call it induction day. And they, you know, they structure it, right? It's a shock to the system, just like the first day of any boot camp or basic training.

But, you know, they shave your head, put you in line, take all of your possessions away, right? The standard stuff. And then they start. I remember we had a session where we could say goodbye to our parents. And then you walk back into, there's one big dorm that everybody lives in, 4,000 people in one dorm. And up until this point, the pressure was like a six and a half. And then we walk in the door to go back to the dorm. And then it's a full 12.

And I remember just if I had any hair, it would have been blown back at that point. And, you know, by the end of that first day, I was really, you know, given a second thoughts. I was in complete, you know, paralyzed retreat mode. You know, they structure it. It's very obvious now where you can't succeed, right? Like you deliberately fail in everything, making your bed, your uniform, et cetera. I had never been in that type of environment before. I was used to things coming relatively easy to me, and I just could not deal with it.

And then I remember on my second day, it clicked. I was like, dumb ass, you're not supposed to succeed. You just got to make it through. You just got to keep your shit together. And at that point, it got a little bit easier for me. So once you get into, so PLEEB summer, you go through, how long are they messing with you in Pleeb summer? Is that like six weeks? Or is it the whole summer?

It's the whole summer. And actually, you know, they mess with you for the full first year. So it's most intense for the summer. And then the rest of the class, the brigade comes back and you get treated like shit through the end of your first year. And are you doing sports? Because you have to do sports, right? So you do.

You have to do some sort of activity. So, you know, if you're not a varsity athlete, they make you go out and do something else. Again, I had no shot of being a varsity athlete there. And I had an uncle, actually, who was a rower, total stud. And, you know, I really admired him. So I went, Navy's got a good crew team. So I went out there for like a couple days. I'm like, I'll go give rowing a shot.

I give that about three days. And I was like, this sucks a lot. I have a lot of admiration for rowers because you got to love suffering in that sport. It just didn't click with me. The culture didn't click with me. And then I had an upper class. This was fall in my first year. It came in my room.

He was a junior. And he said, hey, do you play sports in high school? And I said, yeah, yes, sir. And he said, you played a sport here? I said, no. He said, you're playing rugby. Show up tomorrow. And that was it.

There was no choice. And so I was like, geez, you know, I had never thought of it before. I didn't know a single thing about it. Hadn't watched a game in my life, showed up. And that was my thing. I played for four years, you know, thank God for that moment. Are they playing against other colleges? Is it like a D1, D2, D3 type thing?

They have the whole nine yards? It is. Back then it was largely a club sport. So every school, but Cal Berkeley was club sport. But we played, you know, mid-Atlantic regions. We'd play Georgetown, Loyal. Catholic, et cetera, and then they'd have a whole national finals kind of playoff system as well. And the Berkeley Bears just got to be league champs because they were the only ones.

Such bullshit. It was such bullshit. And their coach, I mean, they won the national championship for something like 18 years in a row. Their head coach at Cal was also the U.S. national team head coach. So they just had the deck stack. But they were really, really good. Check. So what did you end up studying?

So I studied systems engineering, which is kind of a control weapon system. thing. Was this something that interested? You're like, why the fuck would you do that? Yeah, I was a, I was a more of a math and science guy. I didn't, didn't like, you know, the language arts as much. The math and engineering stuff resonated. My dad was an engineer. And so for me, as a kid, that was something that I had always aspired to. It just made sense. It made sense. And I enjoyed it, actually. And then at what point did you hear about the Marine Corps? So after my, after Pleeb year, every summer you basically get sent out to get exposure to a different part of the fleet of the naval service. So first summer, I think it was after the first summer, did a little bit with the Navy and they did a month down in Quantico with the Marines.

And after a week there, totally resonated. You know, every service has a slightly different culture. And the culture in the Marine Corps just really resonated with me. How hard is it to get a Marine Corps slot from the Naval Academy? So it's varied a ton over the years. I think I can't remember if all the slots went out. There was a period of time during which they had to force people to go Marine Corps. So there'd be slots left over.

And then I think after post-9-11, I can't remember my year whether all the slots went out or not. But post-9-11, they were really sought after. So it was a really competitive thing. I think it's somewhere between 17 to 20 percent of Naval Academy grads going to the Marines. And when you're at the Naval Academy, looking back now, what are you learning from a leadership perspective there? Oh, gosh. You know, I think first and foremost, the biggest thing I learned really early on was how to think about others and not myself. You know, I grew up as a kid, you know, going to school, even playing sports to some degree.

The first orientation is like, you know, thinking about myself. Am I in the bright spot or my grade's good, et cetera? And, you know, that first summer you learn, you know, it doesn't matter if your room looks good, if your buddy's room doesn't look good. And that was such a foreign concept to me when they asked me, why is so and so jacked up? Ask him. Why are you talking to me? That mindset shift was massive for me. So like really learning what it means to be a great follower in service of understanding

how to be a great leader was formative for me there. Yeah. At some point, I'm going to have one of my roommates from Buds on this podcast. And he's going to tell the story about we had a room inspection and a, you know, bed inspection and a locker inspection and a knife inspection. And so our knives, you know, we had to be sharp and rust-free and all this stuff. And I, of course, was super militant about everything and doing everything. And I'd spend all weekend just sharpening my knife and polish my boots and all this stuff.

And so the instructor comes in and picks up my knife and they would shave their arm with your knife. You know, and if you could shave their arm, it's a pass. And so he takes my knife and shaves his arm. He's like, you know, basically good job. And then he grabs my buddy's knife. And it's just dull as hell. And so, and I'm thinking, like, I, I'm pretty much awesome, right?

And the instructor's like, he's like, what's up with you, buddy, fucker? You couldn't even help your friend. And he takes my knife. We had the bunk beds with the, there's like a metal rod across the bottom. And he takes my knife and just like straight into this rod. It's like 10 times. There's just big giant like sea shape divets on the whole knife.

And then I had to go hit the surf. So yeah, you learn pretty quickly that just taking care of yourself is not going to work out too well. Yeah. And then on the summer cruises, so once you decided you're going on the Marine Corps, did you go to do something with the Marines every summer? I did, let's see, yes. So, you know, following summer then, so after your sophomore year, and I'm probably screwing up years here, I think I did every summer something with the Marines. I did that initial session, and then I went back for an intense a month where you did a month in Quantico, and then I did another month in the fleet. So you would do a couple of weeks.

I did a couple weeks with a ground unit and then a couple weeks with the Navy Asian Squadron. That was after my junior year to then set up graduation. Did the dream of being a pilot or a backseater just die at some point? Yeah, it did. It did. I didn't have any interest, you know, two reasons. I didn't have interest in being a backseater. For me, you know, it was for me, front seat or nothing.

And actually just, you know, being an infantry, Marine infantry. leader really resonated with me. How bad was your vision? Real bad. Did you get LASICs eventually? I actually got PRK when I was in the Navy. Okay. So it was like 2,400, something like that in my left eye.

Real bad. Did you got that while you were at the Naval Academy? I got that actually on active duty, right at Balboa. Check. Yep. So you decide to go Marine Corps and you get selected. And then once you get selected, you graduate. You graduated, by the way, I got to make a mention, you graduated with a bunch of people.

We have a bunch of mutual friends because we're actually in the same officer year group. So like all the Naval Academy guys that graduated in 1998, I was in the same year group because that's when I got commissioned, it was in 1998, including a bunch of mutual friends that we have. And then Laif, Laif Babin, he was also part of that year group. So you graduate and then it's basic school. That's right. Yeah. So down to Quantico.

I spent almost just under a year in Quantico. So all marine officers go through this basic school. So, you know, the philosophy of a marina rifleman where it doesn't matter what you do, you're going to go learn how to be an infantry Marine. Do you know you're going to be an infantry officer when you go to the basic school? You do not. So you know you're either grounds or air contract. And then while you're at the basic school, about two thirds the way through, they stack rank the class.

You put in a bunch of lists and then you get assigned your MLS. Yeah. And they do that by what do they call that system where it's by thirds? Quality spread. Quality spread. Very controversial. Yeah. So they cut it in thirds.

They start from one up to the top of the first third. Yeah. To me, whenever people want to ask me about the Marine Corps and they want to get some details about why the Marine Corps squared away, I will talk to them about quality spread because there's nothing that you could do as an organization that could more clearly show that what is important to the Marine Corps is the entire Marine Corps than quality spread.

So quality spread, Echo Charles, what they do is they got 100 people in the class. they cut it up into thirds and the first person in the first group gets the first pick the first person in the second group gets the second pick the first person in the third group this is ranked on order of achievement

so you could be a really really great person and still get one of the last picks you could be in the top third of class and get one of the last picks in the class so that's it shows that the Marine Corps puts the Marine Corps above the individual always without question when you're at the basic school did was there any challenges that you faced oh for sure yeah what was hard um I mean you know a new level of I'd say that that was the

first time I really got exposure to uh you know being in the field and and playing even though you're you're leading peers doing it under quasi adverse conditions hadn't really been exposed to that at the Naval Academy per se so you know being sleep deprived being out in the colds trying to motivate a bunch of peers who, many of whom could get, you know, if they're going to go be an admin officer or a pilot, could give two shits about how the patrols going. So, you know, keeping folks motivated and focused was a real challenge. How much time do you spend in the field there? In the basic school, so we did TBS first. I'd say, gosh, probably maybe 10% of the time.

You do a lot of class stuff. And then I did infantry officer course after that. So all the infantry officers then. Once you get your MOS, you go to your secondary specialty school. And basic school is like six months, right? Correct. And how long is infantry officers? I think Osses 12 weeks.

I think it's three months. So you get in there and what are you, what are your challenges when you get to infantry officer school? So infantry officer course takes most of it, I'd say, you know, much higher percentage of time is in the field. The bar is much higher in terms of kind of leadership, ratcheting up in terms of the adversity around, you know, sleep, food deprivation, cold, that's all dialed up. And then you're learning a bunch of, you know, strategy and tactics, employed under pressure again for the first time. So just lots of mistakes on that front, lots of learnings, again, surrounded by your peers,

all of whom now you've got, you know, a bunch of infantry officers. So, you know, within this cohort of officers, the most probably type A and learning how to lead in that group was definitely a big, big challenge. I had James Webb on the podcast. And he went through his, you know, he did the same thing. Academy, basic school, infantry officer course, nine days leave or something like this, straight to Vietnam, gets to Vietnam. They take him out like in a Jeep.

They point to a ridge line and they say your platoon's up there on that ridge line. He walks up to this ridge line. There's no officer to relieve because the officer had been wounded or killed. There's some sergeant that's been running the platoon. He takes over the platoon that night They get into a significant firefight and he has to call for fire And I said did you feel like you were prepared? And he looked at me and said I was prepared So that's that's pretty freaking outstanding that you can take someone that's never been in combat before and the day the night they arrive in combat

They're doing significant call for fire and that that shows you once again the Marine Corps is a is a squared away entity without question. No doubt. TBS was a great school. IOC was outstanding. The curriculum, the cadre, the leadership, the program, in that relatively short time period, they got you about as ready as they could.

Do you do a lot of live fire? You do a lot of live fire there. How about force on force training with like either paintball or laser systems? I don't think we did it back then. That probably has changed. in the meantime. I know it's definitely changed. It changed in the SEAL teams.

So what is this? What year is this? 90, 99. 99. Yeah. So yeah, that's around when we really started going very, very heavy with force on force training in the SEAL teams with sim munition with laser tech. We got a, did you ever use Ditz?

No. Sorry, not Ditz. What's the old one? I forget what it's called. But there's an old laser system that the whole military used to use. Yeah, we used that in the fleet a little bit. Yeah. And it's not good.

No, it was terrible. Yeah. So we got a system that was super high speed, and it really allowed us to come as close to simulated combat that I can think you could get to. It was just awesome. And it really helped us in the SEAL teams get better at everything. You know, it's really easy to assault a target

filled with paper targets that don't move and don't shoot back. Yep. When those targets are moving around, running and flanking you and shooting back it it you have to figure out you have to you have to really learn leadership and that's what we found that that's how we were able to start to improve our leadership was by putting people in pressure situations and having the enemy do what the enemy's gonna do yep so so then where did you head so you graduate obviously so I graduated I got stationed out

of Ken Pendleton so I got assigned to a unit called first force or sorry first light armored reconnaissance battalion so it was a mechanized infantry of effectively. I got assigned to a platoon of 30 Marines, four armored vehicles, these light armored vehicles. They look like a Bradley but have wheels. So big 25 millimeter bushmaster cannon, pretty badass, less walking. So I got a lot of shit from the straight leg infantry that it was a real infantry. Yeah. And so showed up at my first command, you know, thinking, you know, after four years of the Naval Academy year in Quantico that I knew what I was doing. And then cold reality hit me in the face when I got my first platoon.

30 guys in your first platoon and you're going to be on deployment. Are you going on like an ARG deployment or what was the situation? So it would have been a MU. And we had some time, I think out about a year and a half before, you know, chop into the mu. So I had some time. But I came into it, you know, I came into a platoon, you know, normally as a brand new second lieutenant, you come in, you've got a seasoned staff NCO who basically unfucks you, right,

and teaches you the job. I came into a unit with 30 Lance Corporals. I had two newly promoted corporals, so super junior NCOs. That was it. So it just happened to be at this point. I think this unit had just come off the muse. So you had a bunch of folks rotating out. They hadn't fully staffed it up yet.

And so truly the blind leading the blind. Again, showed up on day one. And I was like, holy shit. And first, I was very fortunate in that my first commanding officer, first company commander was prior enlisted, exceptional. and read me the riot act after about two weeks. And then I, it was very fortunate. Got assigned a supersedes, a sergeant, platoon sergeant, who was a retread.

So he had been a sniper, Marine sniper during the first Gulf War, had gotten out and then came back in and basically taught me the job. And so then you go through a workup? Go through a workup. So I spent some time with that unit, go through a full workup deployment, and then chop to the Mew. You go through, yeah, basically the mute workup cycle about six months. And then I deployed in, we left in August 2001. Oh, dang. Yep.

When you're in this position, this is something that gets talked about leadership all the time, you're in this position. You're obviously not experienced and yet you're in charge. What are some of the mindsets that you and some of the strategies you used when trying to lead these, you know, these Marines. the, you know, I mentioned I had, I was really lucky to have this pretty amazing commanding officer. And he, he, after a couple weeks, called me in and asked me the question you never want to get, how do you think it's going? You know, like, oh, shit.

And so I, you know, I can't even remember what I said to him. But he basically said, you need to stop running around and trying to do your brains jobs for them. Your job's to lead. You need to give them the space to make mistakes. So I'd come out of this, you know, world. growing up part of the Naval Academy where largely my performance was within my control my grades even military performance of the Naval Academy there's a little bit of leadership but it's largely how you show up and I show up here wanting everything to be done well because I've got a high

bar a high standard I don't I haven't learned yet what it means to lead under those conditions and so I was micromanaging the shit out of my Marines and we were failing everywhere and so I had a very tough very necessary conversation from the CEO saying you need to get your Marines to space to learn and make mistakes. And thank God for that lesson. So that was a really big one for me of, but it was still hard, honestly. Like I was not wired to be comfortable with mistakes

and things not going well. So, you know, being able to get a little more comfortable with that, give my Marines a little bit of space, make mistakes was a really big, big learning experience for me. I've been explaining that to people quite a bit lately when you use decentralized command. There's risk involved. There's risk involved that, hey, the people

People that are on the front lines, they might do nine things right, and that feels great. And that 10th thing might not be quite what you would have done. It might even be a little bit outside the box. And if you decide, okay, well, you see, decentralized command doesn't work. I just need to control everything. Then you're going to get back to the point, which is what you just talked about, which is another thing, people have a hard time understanding. You can't control everything.

There's no way you can control 30 Marines in a gunfight. You can't do it. You can barely control them, you know, loading up of ship. So if you think you're going to be able to control everything in a pressure situation, you're not going to be able to. You have to develop young leaders. You have to have decentralized command. You have to be able to let go. Yep.

And it's hard. Yep. And you have to learn how to create clarity for people. And it's not telling them what to do. It's making sure they have the context, making sure they've got the intent. What does success look like? Make sure they have the skills. Making sure they're getting feedback when they make mistakes.

That was just a completely new skill set for me. I had never learned to experience that. It's interesting that in five years through the Naval Academy and then basic school and then infantry officer course, it wasn't quite there yet. For sure. I'll be honest, it's still not quite there yet. Remain a work in progress. Jack. So you're going deployment in August 2001?

Now, is this a shipboard deployment? It is. Yeah. So this is. This is a muse. You've got, you know, call it 3,000 Marines, get aboard, Navy ships. At this point, so this is, yeah, this is 2001. And so up until this point, it was go see the world.

It was go to Australia, go to the, you know, go to the Far East, get some cool little ports and come back. And obviously that changed. What ship did you deploy on? I was in the USS Pelaloo. Oh, I did a cruise with the Pelaloo. Yes, I did. I did a good weight room.

What was it? I wasn't on the Pelulu. Unfortunately, I was on one of the. I think I was on either the Cleveland, the USS Cleveland or the USS Denver, which did not have that nice of a wait room, but we did the best we could. Echo, you would be happy.

We brought a cruise box, and in the cruise box, we had dumbbells. Hell yeah. And we had 120s, 1-10s, like 100s, 90s, and 80s. And then the ship had the rest. But obviously we didn't carry the cruise box and we brought the cruise box

and we locked the cruise box. And then if the Marines were, We're the cool Marines, we'd give them the combo. What's the cruise box? It's just like a little big, like floor locker. It's like a treasure chest. Oh, damn. Just made a metal.

It's a heavy ass job. Yeah. You get a forklift or something like that? No, no, no. We've loaded the weights individually. Yeah. Individual breakup. So you're out there on deployment, August.

Did you make it overseas by September 11th? Yeah. So we, you know, we headed out straight from, left from San Diego, went to Australia. So went to Australia and we did a week of training in Darwin. So up in crocodile country up in the north with the Australian Army, we had a week out in the field, came back first night off, first night off since we had left San Diego. So almost a month. So as you can imagine, Marines are to the winds. I think it was 10 o'clock at night.

And I remember being in an Irish pub because there's Irish pub everywhere around the world and watch 9-11 on TV through this haze of, you know, X number of beers that we had at that point. Then what happens? So we... They recall everybody as quick as they can. It was this insane trying to recall 3,000 Marines from across Darwin to, you know, to leave the next morning at 07. We, I think we got everybody but one or two Marines. They had to meet us. They were doing something that shall not be disclosed.

And so they, you know, flew ahead and eventually met us and we headed out. We actually went to East Timor. So if you remember, there's a little bit of some ethnic cleansing issues. issues there. And so we were doing some humanitarian stuff. We spent three days there. And then we headed straight for the URAAMC at that point. And then where were you going? So we ended up sitting off the coast of Pakistan. And so this is probably now, gosh, late October of 2001, starting to do the planning for the invasion. And so we did the Mew basically. We took our hovercraft into little town, a little Air Force base in southern Pakistan and then flew from

Pakistan into southern Afghanistan just outside Kandahar. How was the how was the attitude of the troops? I'd say you know a mix of excited, anxious, afraid, but not willing to admit it. Lots of lots of speculation. I remember one morning, you know, one of the other platoon commanders came in and said, I heard this morning that Congress declared war in Iran were like, holy Jesus, this just got real. Fortunately, that turned out not to be true.

And then it was just like, get ready. You know, I think there was the nervous anticipation. What was your tasking? So we originally, so we did a little bit of planning for a while they were looking at, we thought we might have to do an evacuation of the U.S. consulate in Karachi. That didn't go down. Fortunately, our tasking was we flew into a little airfield called Rhino in the middle of just about probably 60 miles south of Kandahar, I think.

We flew into there and then we drove into Kondahar and secured the Kandahar. airfield. And then that became a hub where we started bringing in, you know, other conventional units, humanitarian supplies. And we essentially did security operations in and around, Condahar, looking for, you know, al-Qaeda, Taliban. What was the atmospherics on the ground when you get, when you got there? I mean, at this point, they were super disorganized. It was, it was surreal. I remember, you know, we drove, we landed in this airfield where there was no one. and then we drove through the desert, didn't see a person. And then as we started getting closer, we were literally just driving through farms.

And these little mud huts, right, as you see over there. And, you know, we had a translator with us. And you remember talking to there, like, oh, yeah, we haven't seen these. And it's been 20 years since the Russians were here. But so there's an element of like we've seen this movie before. And then, you know, a lot of, I said, kind of, you know, uncertainty around what was happening in and around. Condahar. So you're where are you

based in Condahar? We're based at the airfield. Yeah, so we secured the airfield. We were basically sitting in fighting holes around the perimeter of the airfield. How are you getting? MREs. How long are you in there for?

We were there for, I think, about three months. Once you had the airfield secured, now are you, they send you out on patrols to go make contact with the Taliban? Are they send you out to make contact with the local villagers? Like what was your mission? It was a little bit of both.

Yeah, so we did a little bit of it was secure. operations in and around the kind of hub of the airfield. So we would do a mix of just going out and trying to gather information intelligence. So talking to local farmers and villagers about what was happening. There were a couple interdiction operations around one of the major highways that Randy's trying to catch some of the Taliban leadership that was still there. Were you thinking about IEDs, really? We were not. But we had a, unfortunately, we had a Marine step on a landmine at the airfield. So there were, you know, I don't know how many thousands of landmines there from

who knows when. They could have been Soviet era. And unfortunately, we had a Marine step on one. And he fortunately survived, but lost part of his lower leg. So that changed the calculus really quick for folks. But that you were looking at as if it was some old, could have been some old Soviet, you didn't really know. Like maybe the Talmud left it this time or maybe it's just been here for 25, 30 years.

Because you would drive, you know, as you drive around there, you'd have these villagers would mark the minefields in the area. They put white rocks there for cleared minefields and red rocks for ones that were not cleared. And so you would just, you'd see old ordinance sticking out of these farms. It, you know, it was crazy. Yeah, it's, I, I got to kind of see the escalation in Iraq. I didn't fight in Afghanistan, but in Iraq, you know, between my first, between like 2003, 2004, 2006, like the escalation of the threat of the IEDs went, went crazy. And in Afghanistan, was worse in a lot of ways from what I can tell the way it went from sort of like IDs weren't really a thing and when they happened you're like oh it might have been some

to you know this is an absolute horror show that we have to be completely paranoid about every step we take yeah we were lucky I think we were we were there at a time where it was very offensive for us they were it was still very early so there wasn't much of an organized counteroffensive at all so we didn't have to really think about her deal with those issues. And then what was your opt tempo like? Was it going out every night? Was it going out every other night?

We were going out, I'd say probably once a day for kind of limited work in and around the area. But it wasn't crazy. And then it's back MREs. Did you have any like bathrooms, shower facilities, anything like that? We did not. Big negative. Big negative.

And I will say, I got the privilege there of serving. General Mattis was the task force commander. Amazing. So he actually came and he met us in the middle of the desert and rode in with us on our lead. He insisted on being the lead L.A.V. Driving into Condahar. What was his job? He was the task.

He got appointed Task Force 58 commander. Hell yeah. Amazing. So he came in with us and he was, I mean, like, what an extraordinary guy. I remember so many moments from, you know, we were, our Marines were sleeping in fighting holes. They had the headquarters element in the terminal. We had a bunch of Air Force come in. Of course, the headquarters element gets the terminal.

Well, but General Mattis early on, he said, nobody will sleep on cots for Marines sleeping in the dirt. You will sleep in the dirt. Marines will cold weather gear. Not a single senior leader will get cold weather gear and wear it until every single junior Marine has it. He personally supervised it. You hear stories.

I would walk the lines at night, you know, doing the check on my Marines. And more, you know, frequently, General Mattis would be there two in the morning sitting next to Lance Corporal, you know, talking to him about where he's from. and asking a very thoughtful questions around, hey, what's your mission? And it wasn't just getting to know him. He was inspecting us as well. But that is a guy that Marines would walk through fire for.

Hell yeah. So any significant events that left an impact on you as a leader there? I was, I remember at the time having this moment of, you know, I think when you were in a, for me at least, I felt like you've got the, the privilege of being in command because it on for a host of reasons, but being in a position where you had the the ability to think about others first. So you almost didn't have that I didn't have as much time to think about.

I mean, I was scared. Of course I was. But being in a position where my first every day was, let me make sure my Marines are taken care of. Are they focusing on the right things? That was a really big, uh, uh, takeaway for me as well as, you know, look as we know, like at the end of the day, my Marines were largely 18 and 19 year old kids. Kids you were, I had a Marine who was six months out of high school.

You know, these are kids. And seeing how they showed up under the most stressful and adverse of circumstances, man, what a privilege to get a chance to witness that. Yeah, the amount of responsibility that some Lance Corporal has sitting out in a fighting position, making decisions that only he is going to be able to make at that moment in time, it's it's in freaking pretty amazing thing to witness. It is. It is.

So how do you guys redeploy out of that situation? Do they fly you on helicopters back to the ship or something? We flew on, I think we flew on C-17s back. I can't remember. Oh, we flew to Bahrain. So I think we flew on C-17s out to Bahrain. and then redeployed from their backouts of the ship. And is it what year?

So that's early 2002. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Exactly. So did you feel like we kind of just did it? I know like my first deployment to Iraq in 2003, got back in 2004, got home in 2004. I felt like, man, I'm lucky I got to do this. Like this war is going to be over soon.

And, you know, we'll all carry on with the rest of our careers. Did you have that feeling? For sure. Yeah. And we, you know, we were lucky in that I just happened to be on deployment. So when I got back, we were the only Marines in the Marine Corps who had served in combat for 20 years. Yeah. And so, you know, came back from that.

We got relieved by an Army unit. And so, you know, I got, I came back, transitioned to my follow-on unit and, you know, thought that was it. Hey, but you had that combat action revenue, yo. That's right. Big time. Eating a lot of MREs earned that combat action ribbon. So then you went to First Force. Is that right?

I did. Yeah. So when I got back, I transitioned over to First Force and then I went into a school's phase. So Force does, you know, you do an infantry tour. Most folks will come out of the infantry and then go to Force and then they'll do all their schooling. So, you know, we have a, I don't know what they do now, what they call it, but we had

a basic reconnaissance course, dive school. The reconcornado? That's right. Yeah. At the amphibase. Yeah. So we did a three month course there. I went to dive school in Panama City.

Wait, how's that reconcourse? It was great. It was great. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Is it indoctrination, like beatdown situation? Or are they teaching you? They're a little bit of both. It's probably 50-50.

It's hard, you know, it's definitely some suffering. But it's not like buds. And people aren't quitting because they've already been. I don't think so. I don't think we had anybody quit. Is it hard to get selected to go to force rec or was it because? Yeah, as, you know, on the officer side, the Marine Corps, you know, back then, we only had, there's only three Force Recon company size elements in the entire Marines.

And each of them probably has three or four platoon commanders. So at any given time, there might be one or two open billets for officers, company grade officers in the Marine Corps. So a lot of it is timing. You know, does that line up for you? And then they had a mix of, you know, you've got a physical test and then some interviews that you do as well. Did you cross the physical test or what? I did well on part of it. I almost did not pass the swim, actually.

There was a rifle carry, rifle toe, and my form was shit on it. And I did like the last 10 meters underwater. Just breath hold. Breath hold just guttinent this route. So, yeah. But you had, obviously, you had a good record and you'd been in combat and you were like the first people on the ground. I mean.

Yeah, I was lucky. I was lucky. And I was really fortunate to have, I had a battalion XO executive officer at my first unit that was great mentor, an advocate for me. So he went out on him to write letters of recommendation. He talked to the monitor. He talked to the company about making sure that I spot lined up. Are you thinking about Marine Corps for life at this point? I'm probably, I didn't think I would serve for life, but I was open-minded around when.

So going to force, the Marine Corps has this philosophy. where they want to build really well-rounded officers. So, you know, unlike some of the other services, even on the force recon side, as an officer, you could not spend your career there. You could do a company-grade tour for maybe three years if you're lucky, and then maybe you come back and command one of the three units

as an 05, lieutenant colonel. That's it. And so I knew that I, you know, going to that unit was also kind of a strike against you in terms of the career path. Because they'd say, actually, if you want to be well-rounded, instead of going to force,

you should go do a recruiting tour. You should go learn this other side of the Marine Corps. I personally didn't have any interest in doing that. And I knew going to force that it probably meant it was a little bit of a step back. But I didn't have aspirations of staying in for my career. But I wasn't, you know, I also didn't say, hey, I'm going to get out after this tour. I was kind of, look, as long as I love what I'm doing, I'll stick around. That was the game plan.

Yeah. So you go to the recon school and then you go to dive school. Yep. Is dive school hard for you since you suck at swimming? It was hard for me. I am. So do you actually suck at swimming? I do suck.

I am comfortable in the water, but in terms of like stroke and speed, I'm awful. And I got really unlucky, actually, because I show up there and, you know, they pair you with a swim buddy. And the way they pair you at the swim buddy is they have everybody swim. And then they just go by speed. Okay. And I was a decent swimmer, not a really good swimmer. And so I ended up second in our class in terms of space. The number one guy was a former competitive swimmer, lifeguard in Hawaii, Ironman triathlet,

total stud, not the guy you want as your swim buddy that you're tied to when you're doing these underwater swims. And he dragged my ass all over Panama City. It was brutal. So wait, I said you sucked at swimming and you were number two in the class. Yeah, but I didn't say there weren't that many of us that were great swimmers. We had one guy that was great. I was enough to kind of get by.

I could get my way through it. Do you learn closed circuit when you're down there? Yes. Okay. So you get your full diving package. You're going to be a full-fledged combat swimmer. That's right. When you get done with that.

And then what? Do you go to airborne after that? So you normally go to airborne. You go to airborne, then you go to free fall. But I got pulled out at that point of my school's phase to go to Kuwait. So this is now end of 2002. And they say, hey, just kidding on airborne. Why don't you come back?

Do a really quick workup with your platoon. And then deploy to Kuwait. I think we deployed and maybe. February of 2002. February of 2002. Is that right? No, 2003. February of 2003.

Because now they're getting us over there. So now we're left to get Iraq. That's right. So yeah, exactly. What did you done with your platoon before deployment? Did you do a normal workup? We did a very hasty three-month workup.

So I think we went out to NTC at Fort Irwin. We did a mini shooting package. We did a patrol package and that was it. So it was really hasty. And how's this force reclass? So you're a platoon commander? I'm a platoon commander. Yep.

And how many guys you got in your platoon? About 30. Okay. So it's about the same size. And how's this platoon? Amazing. But I, you know, I entered this platoon now as I think I had two Marines who were younger than me.

Everyone else was more experienced, had a bunch of tours under the belt. I was the, the FNG for sure. And very intimidated coming into this. I had, now I had the, you know, the combat deployment under my belt. So I had a little bit of experience. but I also hadn't gone through, normally as a new Patoon commander, you're going through a full shooting package, a full weapons and tactics package. You're going through all of this.

I had a compressed piece of that. So that was a hard transition for me, but I was really lucky to have an exceptional platoon sergeant and amazing team leaders. So when you get to Kuwait, the invasion's imminent. It is. And we don't know how long. So we basically show up and say, hey, hang out in Kuwait in this tent city. and train and at some point, you know, we think the invasion's coming.

And I think it was maybe two months, something like that. Yeah. If you got there in February, it must have been like two months. And so what was your mission tasking when the invasion happened? So we did, we put some teams in really early in the first couple days. I think first day we put a team up near, I think north of Alcutt looking at. So these were deeper condescents. The Marine Corps, Force Recon, basically had, you know, kind of dual mission set.

They did the Greenside Deep reconnaissance mission. And then there was the direct action piece. We did all deeper reconnaissance stuff. So early on, it was looking at major highways, keeping an eye on major Iraqi units to get advanced intelligence on things. And then we did a similar mission in Al-Hawah. So we ended up in Al-Hala for a while. We spent a little bit of time on the Iranian border basically staring at sand, doing nothing. So let's say Hala.

Yep. So you guys go into Hala, or you're out on the outskirts of Hala? We are right in, we are right next to the ruins of Babel on there, like literally sitting right on the river. So are you guys dug in? Are you hiding? Are you like that kind of mode? We're in a relatively secure area, going out and doing kind of missions in and around that space. And you're reporting back what you're saying.

Had the push already gone past Hala at this point? It had. It had. Okay. So you guys were like a stay behind force that was going to check things out. and see what the atmospherics are there. And I think at that point, looking back, I don't think we necessarily had a really good, clear mission. Like we were supposed to be,

forced to be a meth asset out, way out in front. And we ended up after those initial few days of the war, I think with a little bit of a question mission for the next month or so. How was the mentality like once the war kicked off? It was, you know, I think excitement, a little bit of campaign. candidly frustration. So we got into a couple places like sitting up on the Iranian border, sitting in Al-Hala,

where we were twiddling on our thumbs and felt feeling like, gosh, we could, we could be doing a lot more. We could be adding a lot more value. A lot of frustration from folks on the team. Yeah, I didn't know, I didn't know that you guys did those like kind of straight reconnaissance missions in that war. I didn't know that until you just told me. And that was just the initial kind of roll up.

So, you know, the division moves so fast. So it wasn't a long period. It was maybe a week, maybe. And then we ended up where, you know, essentially behind forward lines doing kind of local operations. Any significant thing happened there that not really leadership lessons learned? Well, definitely some lessons learned. We had, you know, during that period our, so I came into force and I worked for my boss was the company commander, which that bill was in 05, Lieutenant Colonel and the Marines. I had a great

lieutenant colonel when I came in and checked in, and then he got replaced. And the guy that we deployed with, our commanding officer there was challenging. I'd say from a leadership perspective, very self and career oriented. A lot of decisions that were transparently about him and his advancement in his career, some decisions that put Marines lives at risk. And so, we had this really, really challenging and fraught scenario where, and all the Marines could see it. You know, in the general, right, in force reconnaissance, we were dealing with more season, more experience. They all see what's happening. And it led to a very, very tense, very challenging environment where you had a lot of Marines,

get very, very frustrated at the leadership they were seeing with, you know, a few of us sitting in the middle and trying to deal with it. So I just wrote down, we know. And that's just a message out there to everybody. If you're in a leadership position and you're doing things that are for yourself, we know. We know what you're doing. Everyone sees it. No matter how smart you think you are, we know what you're doing. We see right through it.

You can't fool us. What did you do to try and buffer this guy from your troops? It was, I look back on it. Actually, it was, I mean, this is cliched, but true. I think I probably learned more from working for that leader. than I did from working for the great leaders. I think there were some things I tried to do to protect our Marines. So I did my best to when I was in front of them,

I didn't express my frustration with him. You know, I supported the mission. I supported the decisions that we were making, even the ones that I disagreed with. So I didn't want them to see me undermining decisions that were being made. We already had enough challenges with confidence in the chain of command. At the same time, he definitely influenced my, the way I showed up in a way that was not as constructive.

It became, I got to a point where every day I was like, fuck this guy. Whatever comes out of his mouth, it doesn't even matter if I agree with him. I'm going to fight him on everything. And, you know, we would sit as peers, you know,

in our tent at night and just bitch about this guy. It did nothing to help us. It was so, you know, we finally got to a moment where I think it finally hit home for me where I was like, Jesus. I get to choose how I show up.

And I'm letting this guy affect the type of leader I am, my mentality, my mindset. And, you know, I look back on that as one of probably the most profound learnings I've had as a leader. Like you can go through shit circumstances. You always have a choice in how you show up. Yeah, I get asked that question probably 10 times a month. You know, I've got this bad person that work for. And my answer is always the answer that people don't want to hear is like, oh, yeah, you have a bad leader. Cool, build a good relationship with them.

It's the best possible thing you can do. The best possible thing you can do is try and build a good relationship with them. So you have some kind of influence over them because if you don't have a good relationship with them, you have no influence whatsoever. Yeah. So the best thing you can do, try and build a good relationship with them. And then you can maybe sway, sway him in one direction or another a little bit. But just deciding that, oh, this guy's an asshole. And so I'm going to be an asshole.

You're just not going to be, you're going to be in a worse spot. That's right. Essentially. Yeah. And by the way, that, you know, that was, I was relatively young, having the benefit now of, you know, a couple decades, you know, in your career, this is going to happen you multiple times. Yeah.

Guaranteed. Oh, military, civilian, business. And I remember someone saying to me once, you know, the goal is being able to look at every scenario, be proud of how you showed up. No matter what the circumstances are, do you look back and feel good about how you showed up as a leader? Yeah, I always tell people that you can go meet. There's leaders that I worked for that I definitely did not like very much.

And they never knew it. You know, like I was just professional. Okay, sir, that's what we're doing. Yep, sounds good. Let me do, let me see what I can make happen here. That's, and again, no one wants to hear that because everyone thinks, well, you know, someone's taking care of themselves. You should stand up to them.

Cool. It sounds cool. It does. It sounds cool. It sounds heroic even. But then what happens? You get fired or you get dealt, even worse hand and you didn't take care of your guys.

You have less ability to take care of your troops. You have less influence on the mission. So your ego feels good. It's an ego victory. But it's essentially in the big picture and a strategic picture, it's a loser. That's right. I was very lucky. So I was a prime enlisted guy for eight years.

So by the time I was an assistant platoon commander, I was 28 years old or 27 years old, which might not seem like that big of a deal. But compared to 22, that's a big deal. So I was lucky in that respect and I was starting to learn these lessons. So I was a little bit, a little bit. I always feel like I was just ahead of, just ahead of some of the stupidity I would have pulled off three years prior, two years prior. I was like, I'm glad. I'm glad I was in that position when I was, you know, 22 because I would have been, you got to be kidding me.

This guy's a piece of shit. You know, and I just was like I said, I was just lucky enough to have been a little bit older and. be able to pull that off. So how long were you guys, how long do you guys stay? We were there through, I think probably July of 2003. So I think I rotated back in July of 2003.

And at that point, you know, so I'd been with the unit for a little over a year at that point and was about, would have gone into, you know, workup cycle. So deploy Gumpthamu,

probably go back overseas, finish my school. Would you stay with force recon? Yes. So I would have been able to finish out my tour there. And I decided at that point, I'm not working for this guy for another year and a half. And I spent a lot of cycles since thinking about that decision.

And, you know, it was I, for me, that my career in the Marine Corps was about trying to create the opportunity where maybe I could have a shot at being that platoon commander. And, you know, walking away from that was a hard decision. But I felt like it was the right thing for me at the time. And again, lots of mixed feelings looking back on it. So what's your move? when you decided to get out of the Marine Corps. So, you know, I had, I decided at that point, hey, I'll get out. And, you know, initial emotion is excitement.

You know, I get to think about what's next, not being a Marine. I've been on active duty for 10 years. Don't have to shave every day. I can go more than a week without getting a haircut. I'll grow a goatee, everybody. If I could do that, I would do that. And that was followed very quickly by terror of, holy shit, I have to get a job. And I don't even know where to start.

And so I enjoyed a little bit of the San Diego summer. And then I thought, well, maybe I'll just go to grad school. I don't know shit about business. I actually spent some time here in San Diego interview. There's a bunch of military recruitment firms. And I met with some of them. And nothing that I saw there was interesting. And I went through this crisis of like, oh, shit, what did I just do?

They offer you. It's like, they show you the entire menu. And you're like, I'm not hungry. Oh, dear God. And so I decided to go apply to grad school. So, you know, studied for this test and applied and put my application in. And that would have been this was summer of 03. So it was to start in the fall of 04.

So I basically had a year. What'd you do for a year? Moved to Colorado and ski bummed. Did you grow up skiing in New Jersey? I did. Yep. So ski with my parents up in the northeast and had a buddy of mine. We would go to Killington, Pico, J's,

peak and just the whole the whole gig the whole you know she device here she device there you know for sure sharpen sharpen those edges freeze your ass off um and so yeah I figured hey I've got some time when am I going to have the opportunity like this I was single uh and so moved to Colorado with a buddy who I served with and we had a great time how long was your hair uh it got pretty pretty long my hair does not look good long I start getting these like wings on the side it's pretty bad But it was awesome. Where in Colorado? So I got a, I worked at a bar at Keystone.

And I was lucky my employer was Vail Resorts. So I had a, you know, with that job, I got a season pass to, you know, four or five resorts there and got a job bartending, which is hands down the best job in a ski town. You show up for work at 3 p.m. You work late. You make decent money and cash tips. And you can ski every single day. So I skied 100 something days that year.

And then ended up starting grad school the following fall. all. And this is up in Stanford. Correct. Yep. And then how's this go down? How's this? You learning stuff? Is it cool? So I, you know, went through another like similar moments of like, you know, you show up. This was for, you know, business degree and show up and most of my classmates are coming out of investment banks and consulting firms. And I, you know, know, know the lingo or raising their hands in class. They've seen it all before. I knew nothing. And so like huge, crisis of confidence at this point of like once again, shit, how am I ever going to find a job? You know, the way business school setups is you do your first year and then you apply for an

internship in the fall of your first year for that follow-on summer. And then you come back for your second year before you go work full-time. And, you know, so I applied for a bunch of jobs. At Stanford, they have this system where you companies will come on campus. So let's say it's Morgan Stanley comes on campus or Google comes on campus and they say, we're going to interview 20 people. You submit your resume if you're interested. They pick 10 of them.

And then Stanford says, you know, we want to give people who have non-traditional backgrounds a shot. So we're going to let people bid on the other 10 spots. So in my two years there, I can get picked for a single interview. So, you know, kind of reinforcing this shit, this isn't going to work out. That seems weird to me. You know, there's a lot of, I'd say I was in the very early wave of like post-9-11 veterans. Okay. So, you know, today, tons of veterans who have done amazing things in the Valley.

But at this point, there were not that many. And a lot of these companies that are up and coming are only a few years old. So, you know, I applied to Google in 2005. And Google hadn't been around that long. So you're dealing with... We don't need some freaking Marine here. They're like, we need this tech dude over there. Totally.

So you've got a recruiter that's well-intentioned, has respect for the military, but looks at my resume as like, I don't even know what this means. Platoon commander. We don't need a platoon. That's right. Pretty sure we're not looking for that. Exactly. So I got lucky at Google because I had submitted my resume. There was a Naval Academy guy who was working there. I reached out to him. He was kind enough to grab some time with me and literally handwalk my resume to a recruiter and help translate it. What was his job at Google? He was working on the team that supported advertisers. So he was managing kind of a sales and operations team that supported advertising clients. So this is after your first year at Stanford? So you, you, no one's, none of these companies select your resume. Stanford gave some of these companies your resume like, hey, can we throw this, can't throw this dude a bow?

This knuckle dragger. Right. And, and so one of them was Google. So Google actually came through an outside. So I applied to a bunch on campus. Google, I had to work through this veteran. So I reached out to him and said, hey, would you mind? Is there anything you can do?

I think I had applied directly, didn't hear anything. This is 2005. Google's grown like crazy and was super disorganized. So the only way I got my foot in the door there was through this other vet who was nice enough. That led to an on-campus interview. I met with a guy and went through the interview and things worked out. And so this was for your summer internship? That's right. Okay.

And then how's that summer internship? It was great. I mean, it was, you know, it's funny. I had not worked a single day in technology. You know, my last job was besides bartending. I had to experience, you know, tending bar and, and you know, lugging an M4 around. And so I show up on Google's campus.

And Google's campus is like, for me, it might as well be a carnival. Like there are pool tables and ping pong tables and it's this beautiful, spectacular and incredibly intimidating for me. I remember I did my interview and, you know, they had made me an offer for the internship, which I pretty, you know, was pretty sure it was a mistake.

And I go to meet with the guy who I'm gonna be working for, my host for the summer. And he's like, look, I, what do you wanna work on? I'm like, I don't even know what to say. And he's like, I got seven projects. Let me just read them off to you. And you can choose. So he reads through all these projects.

I have no idea what he's talking about. Like none of them mean anything to me. And the last one, he's like, hey, we're about to launch this AdSense API. And so we need someone to work on that, you know, go to March strategy for the AdSense API. And I was like, that sounds amazing. I'd love to work on the AdSense API. I didn't know what API stuff. I had to go look it up.

So I go into that being like, I'm going to make a complete ass of myself. I know nothing about technology. I can't write a single line of code. My perception. is you've got like the smartest people in the valley working there. And I remember I had this, this amazing, uh, professor at Stanford, um, guy named Irv Grossbeck who teaches a class on leadership there is exceptional. He built cable vision, huge cable conglomerate. And he basically gave this advice. He said, look, just simplify things like be useful and be liked over the

summer, just when it comes down to that. So I showed up and, you know, I worked hard and learned over the course of the summer that, you know, a lot of the things that I had learned in the Marine Corps, a lot of the things I'd learned, like, turns out getting shit done, working hard, holding a high bar, being a great teammate. Those things paid dividends in this completely different and foreign environment. So left that summer, had a great time, loved it, learned a ton, and left with an opportunity to go back there after my second year. So then it's another year at Stanford. What's your schedule when you're at Stanford Business School? So business school, So business school and law school are very different.

At law school, you study a lot and learn stuff. Business school, the first year is like, everyone comes in as like gunners, ready to do a great job. And then the second year is very social. So, and then the class bifurcates into the people that like want to spend their time on the academics. And my second year, I spent more time, you know, with friends and classmates. And we did some volunteer stuff. And so, you know, you had a few hours of class every day, did a lot of training and sports. So he had a lot of former athletes. So we'd get after it together and then a lot of

social stuff as well. What sports are you doing at this point? So we are playing a ton of pickup basketball we're doing. We had this big actually pretty cool. They had this competition between West Coast business schools where it was a mix of charity in sport. So you would compete on raising money for Special Olympics. And then we would host all these schools at Stanford. And it was a weekend of sports competitions. And so you'd play flag football. And and basketball and softball and run a 5K and just get after it. We're not in the best of shape. So you have a lot of injuries after that weekend.

A lot of pulled hamstrings, but it was a good time. Okay. What are you learning? I'd say mostly at, you know, in business school, you know, I tell folks now, like you don't come out of business school with the next expertise to do any job in business. What you get out of business school is like broad exposure into framework. concepts, the ways to think about things. So what is marketing? What is finance? How do you think about it? So if you do a good job, I think you can come out and ask the right questions, but you certainly

don't come out with a level of expertise that sets you up to be really great in any particular role. So for me, I had zero business vernacular, zero coming out. So I learned a lot about that type of stuff. So then you graduate from there and now it's Google. Now it's Google. Yep. So I go back. And how's that? It was great. So I went back to Google and I got a chance to work on. So I worked on what was effectively kind of customer support and sales. And this is 2006. Do they throw you in charge of a team?

They do. So that was really important to me. So when I came out of my first summer, I worked a little bit on an area called product management. So at Google, I would say if there is an internal hierarchy of influence, product management is probably at the top. Product management and engineering at Google. rule. So they're figuring out what the strategy is, what to build. And then I spent the other half

my time working on operations or customer support. On the product management side, really interesting you get to work with the engineering team, a lot more influence. I'd say was perceived within the valley as a much more attractive career path and certainly valued that way internally. But for me, I got to the end of the summer, had to choose, do I want to go the product management route or the operations route and most people thought I was nuts to even think about it. Like, of course you go product management. And I decided to go operations because in operations you had the chance to lead a team. And in product management, you didn't. And someone had given me really good advice around that. And thank God, because I would have been, I'd say, a mediocre at best product manager,

maybe slightly better than average. So product manager means that we're building Google Docs or we've got Google Docs and it needs an upgrade on this and you're going to kind of oversee that. Am I close? You're figuring out what's the strategy and who's the customer and what their needs. So you're working with the engineering team to help them understand what to build. Exactly. And then what's the job that you took instead? What I did instead was answering emails from pissed off users of the product, aggregating

the top requests, dealing, you know, managing a team of folks who are working directly with your customers, dealing with the day-to-day issues that come up as part of it. So customer support. I always said, like, for a long time, I always worked on teams that had the biggest, like, self-esteem issues within these companies. It was the teams that were perceived as, like, our team, our work isn't as important as either other teams. And so that was a really good learning for me early on.

How do I articulate what we do in a way that really resonates with these folks to keep them motivated and excited? And the leadership that you learned in the Marine Corps still works. Still works. I mean, I had a little bit of an adjustment phase. Some of the language and vernacular had to change a little bit, but that was, you know, it seems so dumb to say it. But I learned that like, you know what, human beings are human beings, right? Leadership, there are so many of the principles that are universal.

And I learned that there for sure. So then how long are you at that job for? I was there for only little under two years. So I was there for about two years, loved it, learned a ton. Google was a really fun and exciting place to be at that point. And I was looking at another role internally. and a friend of mine from grad school called me and said, hey,

he was working at Facebook at the time, called me and said, hey, we are building a support team, building an operations team. We're looking to hire someone to build it. Do you want to come over an interview? And at this point,

I'm like, dude, I have less than two years of experience outside the Marine Corps. And he's like, look, you should just come over an interview. So this is 2008. So I went over an interview,

interview with the executive team. So, you know, with Zuck. and a bunch of the other senior leaders at that point and got hired into this role that I was totally unqualified for. It just incredibly lucky that the person who hired me didn't realize how underqualified I was because he was a business development guy,

not an operations guy. And so I came into this role. And at the time, in retrospect, looks like an obvious shift. At the time, people thought I was nuts to leave Google. This is the point when Google's, you know, grown really fast. So you're being extremely humble here. Obviously, you know, I didn't know what I was doing and all this stuff.

But is it that humility you think that is getting you these positions? Because I know the number one quality I tell people to look for when they're hiring people is look for someone that's humble because you take someone that's smart enough. They're getting in there. If they're humble, they'll figure out what to do and they'll make it happen. Would you say that's, you know, instead of just blaming the guy that hired you for not recognizing? recognizing how dumb you were, giving yourself a little bit of credit to say, look, you went in there and when they asked you a question, you didn't know, you said, you know, I'm not really sure about that, but I'm sure we could get it figured out. For sure. And, you know, that's absolutely part of it. The other thing I'd say is I think my, I think coming from a different domain was ended up being a huge advantage for me. So the thing that I was most worried about was I'm going to come in an interview for a role where the requirements are 10 to 15 years of experiencing consumer technology leading teams. I don't have that. I've worked for 18 months in tech in total.

And so the way I compensated for that said, look, I can't manufacture experience, but what I can do is make sure I'm the most well-prepared interview ever. So I would read, I read everything. I read their 10Ks, even though I didn't understand them. I used every product. I would submit support requests for all the products. I'd use their competitors. I got to the point where if I was... Well, you did that for the interview?

Oh, yeah. That's scored away right there. See, I knew there was a little more to this game, right? A little bit more than luck. Well, it's, you know, it would, that's, and that's what I learned in the military. Like, I will be the most prepared. And so I got in and I remember my early interviews, I was lucky to get my early interviews out of the way at Stanford. And I was a train wreck.

Like, thank God, none of those are on video. But I got to the point where my mentality was, if I get asked a question that I do not have a prepared answer for, I've failed. And so I had a, you know, dozens and dozens of pages. I would write out all the questions and I would think about it. I knew I had the challenge of, look, I can't just recite military experience because people don't get it. I have to help them understand how my experience is relevant in this totally different cultural context. So how do I think about the stories I tell and the way that I tell them that aligns with what they're looking for? So what is the culture here?

Okay, great. What's the misperception I've got to overcome? Okay, leadership in the military is tops down hierarchical. Misperception. Okay, I know that that is a perception this person is likely to have. How do I make sure whether they ask me directly or not that that answer gets into the conversation and dialogue? So I got to the point where I prepared, you know, knowing that I didn't have domain expertise,

I walked in just about, and I still do that now. I think I, my aspiration, when I interviewed for the CrossFit job, I'm going to be without question the most prepared person they talk to. You know, this is 20 years into my career. And so that was something I learned early. What year is this? This is 2008 Facebook. So the economy already crashed at this point?

It was just before. So this is February 2008, just before the economy crashes. Microsoft had invested at Facebook, just invested in Facebook. Facebook is making a little bit of money, but is mostly bleeding money. The narrative at this point is everyone told me social media is never. You're never going to make money. You're an idiot. Why do you think you made that decision?

I was still pretty young, and I was the same reason I went into the Marines, the same reason I wanted to go to force. Like, it was hard and new, and I didn't know if I could do it, but I was really seeking, like risk seeking at that point still. I love the people. I love the culture. And I thought, this is going to be an amazing experience. How many people were at Facebook at the time?

Probably about 350, 400, somewhere in that range. and it was probably maybe somewhere 30, 40 million users, mostly college in the U.S. still had just launched internationally. So it's still pretty early. When did Facebook like ramp up completely? Well, it depends how you define that. I'd say that over the next. Because I guess 30 million users isn't ramped up enough.

I mean, now it's peanuts. 30 million users is nothing. You don't get out of bed for it in social media. But I'd say that like within the next year or two, things started to really turn. And we started to build the ad business, started to scale it. We started to put the infrastructure in place internationally where folks are like, oh, okay, this isn't a novelty. When I joined Facebook, MySpace was bigger. So MySpace was still winning at that point.

So within a year or two, it became pretty clear that Facebook was on a really strong path. Got it. So you get there. And what's your job while you're there? So I show up my first week, just left Google. And I'm supposed to come into this job managing this online sales team, which is basically selling medium-sized advertisers, getting them. to buy Facebook ads. So I show up on my first day, excited for the new job, little anxious because I just left

Google after I feel like I finally figured things out. And my buddy who had introduced me there introduces me to another guy and he says, hey, Don, meet so-and-so. And I said, oh, you know, really nice to meet you. What do you do here? And he said, well, I managed a team that supports medium-sized advertisers. And he said, what are you going to do? And I said, I thought I was going to do that. But there's got to be a good explanation for this.

So I go back to the guy who hired me and I said, hey, I'm trying to be diplomatic. It's day two. Hey, I talked to so-and-so and can you help me understand your vision for this role? And he basically says, yeah, yeah, we're basically going to do this guy reported to one of his peers. They did not get along. And he said, we're going to take all the most profitable advertisers from that guy's team and we're going to manage them. Now, keep in mind these two executives, my boss and this other guy's boss, both have a revenue number of the responsible for. for they don't like each other.

So my second day, I realized I have no job. This other guy's like, fuck off, basically. Three days later, my boss pulls me in and he's like, hey, how's your first week going? I'm like, well, a couple of bumps I didn't anticipate, but he's like, yeah, well, I'm leaving the company. So by day five, I have no job and no boss. And he's like, but look, you're going to report to so-and-so, it'll be great. So I talked to this other guy.

He said, in the meantime, if you've got some time, why don't you see if you can walk up down University Avenue in Palo Alto and see if you can get some of the restaurants to buy Facebook ads. And so, yeah, I'm on my first week. Exactly. And I'm like, holy shit. And I just left Google. I have no job. My boss is leaving. And, you know, so that next week I showed up. And I remember there was another inside sales team that they were trying to hire someone for. I'd never done that. And I just came in and said, I'm going to start building this team. And I know I'm not qualified to do it, but when you hire someone, I'll hand it over, and then you can figure out what to do with me at that point. So I brought in my business school textbook on how to build a

sales team. I'm sure everybody was laughing at me and terrified and started building the team. And did that for three or four months. And then a woman who I had worked for at Google came over, became my new boss. She consolidated a bunch of the operations under me. And, you know, things kind of grew from there. But it was a little bit of a shaky first experience. And then how long, how long were you at Facebook for? There were four years. And then what did you grow to? Like what was your senior position

and how many people were you in charge of? So when I started there, the team was probably, the initial team was probably four or five. And then took on some other teams. When I left, team was probably six, seven hundred. And that's probably about 20, 25% of the company. We had- So you grew from five people to, what did you say, 600?

Seven hundred, somewhere in that range probably. Yeah. So we were really really. fast. So insane growth. It's hard to onboard 600 people. When I was at Google, Google grew with a similar capacity. We had no constraints on hiring. They said basically if you can get people through the process, you can hire as many people as you want, which is kind of insane to think about. Facebook is a similar rate of growth. So we had to figure out like how do you preserve quality? How do you put the right process in place? But I got a bunch, you know, I was so lucky. I got a chance to do

so many things there. I got to open our office in Dublin. I got to We got to open office in India. We got to build new functions from scratch, got to deal with governments. Again, a whole host of things I had not done before. And Facebook was really cool at that point because the environment was just, look, we're gonna give you the space.

If you demonstrate you can get stuff done, you can earn as much scope as you can take on. It was all about impact. It was very meritocratic and how things were structured. And that was really, really energizing for me. And they went from 30 million users when you started, what were they up to four years later. I don't know the exact number. Just some exponential crazy number.

Hundreds of millions. So what year is it when you leave? So I left in 2012. And then what brought about that decision? So I'd been there for four years, loved it. So I went, you know, went from a job where it was, you know, small team, very hands-on, a lot of early building to, you know, by 2012 had built out. We had an amazing team, senior leaders. A lot more of my job became interfacing with other parts of the organization. And I felt like my personal kind of learning curve had slowed down a little bit. So I was kind of ready for the next thing. At this point, I knew what I was better at and I knew what I was not good at.

And so for a little bit, they said, I want to try something in marketing. Did not go well. Reinforce for me. That was not the right path. And so I loved Facebook. I wanted to stick around. Hold on. You're good at building sales teams, but you're not good at marketing?

Yeah, different skill set. So on the marketing side, I think that the skill set around the storytelling, how to tell the creative stuff. The reason that you were an engineer in college and not an English major. Exactly right. Exactly right. And on the sales side, a lot of it was about team and team building and structure and process. Those are the things that I was more comfortable with. So, yeah, I was, you know, at this point, I talked to my boss and said, hey, look, I'd love it here.

I'm ready for something new. There wasn't a role that really made sense for me. And then had a friend call me who was at Pinterest and said, hey, you know, it's, this is 2012. Pinterest had gone from hundreds of thousands to, I think, north of 10 million users in like four months. Insane growth. And the team was about 35, 40 people. And he said, hey, you know, we're building the team. What do you think?

So it's similar to moving from Google to Facebook. You know, I thought to myself, gosh, this is a great opportunity. to go to another fast-growing company. This friend of mine and some of the other leaders were some of my favorite people from Google and Facebook. So it felt like the team was an amazing fit. And it was a role that had the opportunity for some new learning for me.

So not only operations, which I had done, some of the sales stuff, but managing now a senior marketing leader. So not doing the marketing myself, but hiring a marketing leader, building out early on our human resources and people team. And so it was a chance for me to kind take that next step and learn a bunch more.

Same thing. You roll into the interview, just study hard for it, be ready. And now you had a bunch of experience too. I had a bunch of experience. And actually the founder of Pinterest, I had worked with his wife. She was my, she partnered with me on the human resources team at Facebook. So I knew her well. She was good people.

I knew the founder. And so I had a little bit of relationship. He knew me a little bit through her and through some of the other executives who I had worked with before. You know, in these tech companies, I know I've gone up and worked with a bunch of them and you see like what you were talking about earlier. You know, they've got like the pool tables

and like the Lego room and like all these things. But, and there was a while ago, I guess it was as of the work from home stuff and people were kind of talking about that. There was some video that came out of someone that worked at Twitter and they were like lounging around all day. But what I was, when I work with those companies,

like they're busting their ass. and the reason they have food there is so they don't ever have to leave. And the reason they have like a place to lay down is so they can lay down for half an hour and get back to work. What kind of hours are you and your team putting in when you're at Google and Facebook and then Pinterest? Oh, yeah. Particularly Facebook was an incredibly intense environment. So I was, and it was not a healthy period for me. So I was, you know, five, six days a week.

I'd roll into the office at 6 a.m. would skip the workout, eat like shit, work till, you know, three days a week. I was there probably past midnight back in at 6 a.m. the next day. You've got people there until 2, 3 a.m. grinding. That was pretty common. And when you're at home, you're working. Are you making a shit ton of money at this point? Not, you know, at this point you have, you know, the promise there was was the equity.

You know, so what the company would be worth. And, you know, that was there. I'd say, but what was driving people was the excitement and the end. impact in the culture and early on it was really we can do this we can do this yeah we're going to win this thing yeah it was it was exciting and and so that was that that culture people working hard and you're right like I think the culturally the inception a lot of a lot of those things was in service of how do we enable people to to work their highest level of productivity 15 hours a day 18 hours a day and I think at a certain point companies get big enough where they still have all those

But they don't have that you know same drive anymore and then you can see where it starts to become like oh, you're in the Lego room again Like you've been in the Lego room for two and a half hours. What's going on? And and exactly and I think at some point you know, I think early on we understood the intent behind them. Everyone did like this isn't so you can fuck off for three hours a day. This is it look if you need to create some space if you need to work it off because you're grinding great. we're going to make that available. But the expectation is you're going to be here and get after it. And I think at some point when you lose the why and the intent behind it and you've never heard it before, you have this really dangerous, slippery slope where now the expectation is, wait, how dare you not serve me three meals a day? Yeah.

And the wine bars, the like multiple like, oh, this corner over here is Asian food. This one's Italian food. This one's American food. And this is going like 24-7. Yeah. It's freaking kind of amazing. It is. You see these things.

But then I remember, you know, like you're going, oh, there's a bar here. These people aren't even going to leave. Like they're going to have after work sit around and talk about whatever project they're working on and drink wine. I see what's happening here. Exactly. Crafty. Yeah. So the Pinterest thing, which we discussed a little bit in the beginning, which I'm not a huge.

I don't understand Pinterest that well. But what was the deal? What's the deal? Pinterest, bro. What? Brief me on it. Should I be on Pinterest? I think you're probably safe not being on Pinterest. The idea is, um, is that it's a virtual pinboard, a place to discover and save the things that you're interested and passionate about. It, Pinterest was really interesting on a number of levels. I think it was almost the inverse of a lot of the companies that took off in the valley early on. So if you look at the Facebooks of the world and

the Googles, they took off amongst mostly tech dudes on the coasts. Pinders, Interest resonated with women, you know, Midwest, South, who were cultivating and crafting these virtual pinboards, saving things that they love. And so it was really interesting for us early on. So it's a scrapbooking. It's a scrapbooking. That's exactly right. It's a virtual scrapbooking and kind of discovery thing.

So it's not a surprise that I missed out on this gig. That you missed out on this. And it was really interesting for us over time thinking about like how much of a push do we make in getting men on this? Or do we just double down because it's working so extraordinarily well for women? So where did that go? What was your job there? So I was, my title was head of operations, which was basically kind of managing the business teams.

So it was when I first started, you know, wait, was this the C-O? Kind of. It wasn't that in title, but it was a similar scope in terms of role. How many people were there when you show up? About 35, 35 to 40 total in the company. I inherited a team of, I think, four people. And were you getting offers for like knucklehead.com as well? Like how did you select Google?

Then you selected Facebook. Then you selected Pinterest. Like how come you didn't get a job at freaking we're about to fail.com. Pets.com. Yeah. You know, honestly, a lot of it was, you know, probably luck. And then some, I think coming out of Google, I was exposed being in an environment where you start to soak in what matters. and you start to absorb some of the signal around things.

Yeah, I was going to say it sounds like both Facebook and Pinterest had like a trajectory that was visible. They had a visible trajectory that you saw and you're like, yo. And I was like, again, really lucky. Like Google, the other thing too is, is, you know, looking back on this, really fortunate to get the job of Google. Coming out of Google, Google is one of the only places that had the type of scale in the valley that these other companies were looking to replicate. So if you're at Facebook and you're like, okay, we need to build a team that can support hundreds of millions of people all around the world and build an operations team that combines technology and people.

Where do we find people who do that? Oh, let's go look at Google. So I was lucky to be in that place. And then I got Google on Facebook. And so I get the luck of like a little bit of the double whammy of it and all the lessons that come along with it. And that was a really interesting place where you're at these companies where the product, you know, in the Valley. people will say product market fit. Like you build something that like resonates and then the software things can just take off.

And I joined right after, you know, probably a couple years after things had taken off at Google, a year or two after things had taken off at Facebook, the year things had taken off at Pinterest. And that's a really fun time because you've got the growth and you have to build all of the, you have to build the team and the infrastructure to support it. And so, yeah, I was, you know, I think a lot of it, It was having those different experiences and then known people. And you rolled into basically unconstrained capital into all these companies? For the most part.

You know, it was, yeah, they were growing so fast. Google is, I think, probably already profitable at that point. And then Facebook was growing so fast that they could raise money. Yeah, so you had effectively unconstrained capital and resources. Hire whoever you can. Yeah, for a period of Google, that was the thing. If you can get them through the hiring process, you can hire them. So then you're also saying that at this time you're working so much in some cases that you're not working out.

You're kind of like being lazy. You're eating too many freaking donuts from the cafeteria, the whole nine yards. For sure. Yeah, they had these really dangerous micro kitchens at Facebook and Google. I don't know what this is, but we know it sounds good. Are you salivating right now? But the yogurt covered pretzels were my downfall. So I, you know, when you get tired, like that whole.

cycle. I wasn't getting enough sleep. I was eating like shit. And I remember at a moment where I I was into triathlon at this point and I had done a race up in the city in San Francisco and posted the picture of Facebook and one of my buddies, you know, you know your buddies in the military are. They show affection by cutting you down. And so I posted this picture and just savage comment from one of my buddies about my gut. And I remember reading that and be like, I need to get my shit together. This is embarrassing. And so that was, I got my act together a little bit at that point. And then are you married at this point? Are you, what's more?

I'm not. So I met my wife. So I'm dating at this point. So my wife, I met my wife during my internship at Google. So she was, she had gone to school undergrad in the area. She had just started full time at Google. We met during my internship. And then we dated during my time at Google.

We both work there. I moved to Facebook. And then she moved over to Facebook two years later. So we worked together for a while. And then we got married in 2010. So that was when I was at Facebook. Okay. So you are married.

Now you're at, now you're at Pinterest. Yep. She's still at Facebook. She's still at Facebook. At that time. Yep. And at what point did you get into CrossFit? So I got into CrossFit while I was at Pinterest.

Okay. So I had, you know, when I got out of the Marines, I had gotten into when I was on active duty into triathlon. So played rugby in college, played a little bit after college when I was on active duty, got all jacked up, blew out my shoulder, got into, triathlon did that for a while and blew out a disc in my lower back. So this is, you know, I'm now at Pinterest probably 35, 36. My low back is jacked. I'm running quite a bit and doing the like, you know, global gym, equinox three days a week. And, you know, a couple times a year having like

some sort of back episode where I am laid out on the floor in mobile bad and had a buddy of mine who I used to run with in the city say, hey, this is 2014. What do you think about CrossFit? And I'd heard about it. I'd missed the wave on active duty, so I didn't see it then. I didn't know a lot about it.

And my initial reaction was, I can't do that with my back. Like, there's no way I can do that. You look at the website. It was like kettlebell swings and dead lifts. And you're like, seven thousand kettlebell swings. Yeah.

So I, you know, my initial response was, hey, sounds awesome, but no. And then he was persistent. And I said, okay, like, let's go give this a shot. I'll give it a try. So he and I signed up, went to a box in San Francisco, about a mile from Pinterest, dropped in. And, you know, I would have said walking in that I was in good shape. I was running 50, 60 miles a week, could run pretty fast.

I was doing a marathon about every year, lifting quite a bit, and just got absolutely smoked. Do you remember what the workout was? I don't remember. I wish I had written it down. But I do remember for the first probably. two to three weeks, I came in last in every workout. I remember looking around and like, you know, men, women in their 50s are destroying me. And, you know, my friend and I had, you know, at that point, I was sore as hell.

I could only do like two days a week, but I was completely hooked. That did it for me. So I did that for, you know, about a little over a year in San Francisco. And then when I left Pinterest to go to my next job, found a gym down in Palo Alto. And then what was the next job? So I left Pinterest and went to a really small early stage company called Athos. So I had worked with a guy at Facebook who left Facebook to invest. And he had invested in this company called Athos, which made compression apparel with embedded sensors that track muscle activity.

So really interesting technology. It captured the electrical signal at the major muscle level. So you could look for an athlete as you trained, which muscles were firing, how hard are they working? When you looked at that kind of data, you could look at overall movement patterns. You could look at overall load on the body. So you could see patterns that were predictive of injury. So for me, it was kind of the intersection of two things I was super interested in, the sports, fitness, human performance, technology.

And I had been at now three companies that had taken off. And I wanted to try something earlier stage. And I remember meeting with this. So I met with this investor. And I'd known him pretty well from Facebook. and I talked to a bunch of other companies and came down to Athos and Airbnb. And I had gotten to know, founder at Airbnb, amazing, spent a much time there, incredibly impressed, great company, great culture.

The job was very similar, would have been somewhat similar to what I had done. So another fast-growing company doing operations. And I met with this investor, and he knew me well enough. He's like, yeah, interesting. Maybe he's interesting. But you've done a version of that job. You know you can do it. This other job, but you've never done this.

You don't know if you can do it. I don't think you can do it. And that was it. I walked down and I was like, fuck you, I'm taking this job. And so for me it was like doing something early stage that was high risk of failure, totally different environment. Was Airbnb that early stage at this time as well? It was.

Or they were already kind of with the trajectory. They were pretty big. Yeah, trajectory. They were well past product market. fit really strong growth great brands still a ton of opportunity you just figured I don't want to jump on this another incredibly beneficial rocket ship again okay when you put it that way it makes you sell like a complete asshole I wanted I wanted a new experience you know like I was it was amazing and that was really hard because that how many people were at athos at the time probably 50 50 55 and

you know two founders two young founders two guys out of Waterloo in Canada, amazing guys, great culture. And yeah, so I started there. And I figured, hey, this is as close for me in terms of what we're building. This is as close to a 10 as it gets. Sports, fitness, human performance, technology. We were doing some work with DOD,

doing some work with pro sport. Really, really interesting. And it was an opportunity to kind of learn this new stage. So this is like early in the wearables. Very early. So this is exactly. The higher capability wearables. because this is tracking other parts of your body.

So this is, you know, when, maybe when FitBits at its peak. So it was, hey, you got Gen 1 wearables, which was, in my mind was, okay, there's a ton of demand here. But also, hey, Gen 1 is Gen 1. There's an opportunity to build something that's a lot more sophisticated than just movement. And so Athos was this, we had this really interesting data set. Like, we could see what people's muscles were doing. So I thought in that there was a lot of potential and working in a space that was really fun. And then what happens with Athos?

So I, you know, I started there as COO and about 10 months in. So founder amazing, the two founders incredible, one of them was CEO, both amazing entrepreneurs, amazing human beings. About 10 months in, founder and I switch roles. So he moves into a more technology focused role, what he loves, what he's world class at. I moved into the CEO role first time for me being a CEO. and then six years of battling the startup grind. And so, you know, if there's a mistake to make early stage, we made it, I made it. Very humbling.

I'm like, oh, it turns out it's not as easy as Facebook and Google and Pinterest make it look. Doing this shit is really hard. Lots of cultural stuff that was hard, you know, being on the cusp of running out of money constantly, keeping people motivated, focused. So it was, you know, I say Athos was for me by far the least successful in terms of the outcome. But, you know, in my time in technology, my favorite experience and the experience I'd learned the most from as a leader without question. Yeah. So you had some Survivor's bias going into it being that you'd just been a part of companies that were just rocket ships and then you jump into this company.

And it was six years you were there. I was there six years. Where is it at right now? It basically sold part of the team and wound it down. So we didn't make it. Yeah. And that's normal. That's just to let everyone know.

That's 90% plus of startups. And I knew that going in. Right. I was up at MIT and doing some work with them and just the way that whole system works. It's sort of like, so the same things happens with book publishers. So book publishers, they buy. a hundred books they give a hundred people a hundred grand to write a book and the none of them sell well let me phrase that three of them sell yeah and that's

where they make all their money and the the folks up at MIT when they talk about all the money that they're putting starting up all these it's the same thing they're gonna they're gonna put money into a hundred different businesses three and we're gonna make all their money back in a lot more yep so very similar math yeah so you so you end up so what happens at the end of this So we got to a point where, you know, I'd say we were, let's call it a year out. Our focus was we were selling a bit into kind of pro and college sport. And so our use case basically was injury prevention.

So we could see if you're a wide receiver on a college football team, we could see a hamstring imbalance present before anyone could see it. And then we could help with protocols that would mitigate and reduce injury risk. Great for college and pro sports, but college and pro sports is a shitty business. Small markets. very hard and costly to sell into. So it was great from a brand perspective. And then we were doing work with DOD, actually. So, you know, we looked and said, you know, musculoskeletal injuries and DOD are

catastrophic in number and cost. Most of them are repetitive stress. They can be mitigated. And so we were doing a bunch of work there. We had some early contracts with the Air Force with AFSC, down at Lacklands, with some really good outcomes. But unfortunately, just couldn't get to kind of cross the chasm and get to big contract. So then when did the CrossFit opportunity present?

So I left that. You know, we made the decision. You know, we essentially said, hey, we're going to wind the company down, look for a buyer. We did that, you know, wound it down. And then I spent a little bit of time, you know, with family and then had a friend of mine call me and say, hey, you know, I heard CrossFit's looking for a CEO. Do you have any interest? So he had talked to the recruiters. This is probably April of last year.

So a little over a year ago. And I said, absolutely, would love to be considered for it. I knew I was a really non-traditional. I had not worked in any sort of fitness or franchise per se. It worked in technology. But I'd been in the community for a long time. And so he connected me with the board and the executive recruiters. I went through the process, you know, had this very funny experience of my wife and I had planned to be off.

So we planned a three-week trip to Central America. and went through the final stages, the interviews, doing interviews over Zoom from Nicaragua, praying that the power wouldn't go out. And that culminated, you know, that wrapped up right before the CrossFit games last year. When you were studying for the CrossFit CEO role, what was your, what did it say on your flashcards,

on your studying flashcards? What were you looking at? What were you trying to understand about the company? So, you know, I wanted to understand a few things. I wanted to understand just the overall state. to the community. So, you know, how was the average affiliate owner feeling? How's the average coach feeling? How's the average member? Is it growing? Did you reach out to affiliate members and members and coaches at this time? And what were they telling you? I did. So I reached out to you. So I,

I had trained for when I moved from Pinterest down to Athos, I started training at NorCal CrossFit in Redwood City. So Jason Kalipa's gym and C-Fit now. And so I had met Jason a couple times. And so I sent him a note and said, you know, essentially would you be willing to share some advice and feedback? Can I pick your range? So I'd talk to Jason, talked to a bunch of other folks. I'd gotten to know Dave Castro. So I'd met Dave through another friend. And so I reached out to Dave and he was kind enough to kind of share his perspective. And so I wanted to get a sense for, you know, where's the business? Where are the state of things? Where's the team and where's the culture? Where's the state of the community and the ecosystem? And then I wanted to get a little bit of a sense for, I also

wanted to understand the ownership and you know who these investors were worth what their priorities were and then I tried to use that you know to come in with a point of view on okay here's my albeit with limited context here's my perspective on on strengths weaknesses opportunities what does that look like you know going into the conversation because it was trouble at the time I mean when so so what happened was Let's see, Coach Glassman, who was the founder and I think 100% owner of CrossFit. I think so. He had like tweeted a bunch of, he tweeted some things.

He got, had to step down like it was around George Floyd. It was just kind of crazy. He pulled all their social media like off social media, stuff like this. And again, I'm not getting it all right because I didn't track it that closely. But you know, you'd see this stuff happening. I've had a CrossFit affiliate since 2007 or 2008. So I have to know a little bit about what's going on. But so that's happening.

You had a bunch of the affiliates were like, oh, CrossFit's gone crazy or whatever. We're out. So you had that happening. There's, I wouldn't say there's, well, there's always been some level of negative press around CrossFit with people getting injured, with people getting injured, with people getting. Rabdo with people being assholes with people being elitist like these kind of things you you had those things which I think were all these things were sort of Maybe things to consider for you right give me a moment of pause. Yeah things to consider and yet here's the here's the thing that I would I would assume you latched on to Which is the same reason why I still have a CrossFit affiliate you have something that is very very strong at its core It unifies people.

It definitely, if when done properly, it turns people that are in terrible shape into great shape. It brings them together. It makes them stronger mentally, physically. It just has had a huge impact. And very much like Jiu-Jitsu. You ever turn Jiu-Zitsu? Not seriously. Okay.

Well, if it wasn't for the Gracie family, like you can, this is a great guy. Gracie has the same, you can say the same thing about the graces, right? People can say, oh, you get hurt. People can say, oh, it's cultish. People can say that they didn't evolve their beliefs. Like, there's a bunch of negative things you can say about the Gracie family and about Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. That being said, if it wasn't for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, like, well, first of all,

Gracie Jitsu also is an incredible, like, amazing. I know all the people from the Gracie family. They're all good people. So there's that. But also, if it wasn't for. grace jiu-jitsu, the UFC wouldn't exist. And the UFC has now gotten all kinds of people into all kinds of martial arts. And that's undeniable. No one can deny that fact. So for me, it's a very similar thing. You have some, for lack of a better word, drama around this element. But at the

same time, the element itself is so powerful and so good that it just helps a bunch of people. So everyone, you know, you, in California, I mean, in San Diego, you can, there's, do you, Jitsu schools on every corner and and not only that you can go anywhere in the country now and there's a jitza school people email me from wherever East wherever and they you know is there is there is there is there is there a is there a cross is there a jihitsu school in wherever Idaho and I'm like Google it yep there's one so they're everywhere yep so that's because jiu jitu's awesome yeah and I can tell you right now like people that talk about uh Olympic weight weight lifting Guess what brought Olympic weightlifting into the limelight for what it's it's crossword power lifting same thing Gymnastics same thing these were these were and and look I've been do you know what mylo magazine is? No

Okay myel magazine is a strong man Olympic lifting magazine I've been a subscriber of that doesn't exist anymore But I was a subscriber to that since 1994 I was into this stuff but I'm telling you right this stuff has been a niche market Around the world you couldn't go into a freaking gym in 1997 and find an Olympic lifting platform zero I never went into a gym echo Charles back me up no not a public type no not a public type gym like not a 24-hour fitness not a normal gym that you could go into and pay a fee there was no pull-up bars in many cases there might have been one of those like weird like curvy pull-up bars you know that I that I'm against yeah on a universal whatever but there was no

squat rack with pull-up bars yep that did There was no dip bar attachment to it. These things didn't exist. There were certainly no rings hanging from the ceiling. So you had this thing that had issues, but damn, if it didn't have, if it hadn't had a major impact and a lot of people had been hugely beneficial. So is that kind of what you were weighing out in your head? For sure. Yeah.

And I think you could frame that really well. And it's funny, when I talk to people, you know, people who love CrossFit, they would say to me, And more than one person saying, that sounds amazing, you should definitely not take that job. It's impossible. You know, with all of the love for the community, because they saw both sides of the coin. For me, you know, I personally had had, you know, this really life-changing impact. You know, I was when my back was jacked, I thought I was done getting after it in the way that I used to. I was 35 being like, all right, for the rest of my life, every more.

morning when I wake up, it's going to take me 20 minutes to be able to stand up straight. That is just like the price I pay for being dumb when I was in my 20s. And so, you know, for me, totally transformative, you know, not to mention meeting this amazing community of folks now who I've known for 10 years that I train with every day, who are, you know, good friends. And I saw the same thing happen for, you know, hundreds of other people. And so for me, yeah, there was, there were all of those challenges, you know, all of the things that I knew was going to make the job really hard,

but I had never seen or experienced anything that had the type of impact on people's lives that CrossFit does. Never. And I was lucky to work at companies that have billions of people using their product. Not one of those companies has even close to the type of impact. And the last year for me, just reinforcing it, like my wife is kind of sick of me going home and like,

let me tell you another story. I dropped into a random affiliate today. you will not believe this. And so for me, I looked at that and thought, gosh, it's already had a huge impact on so many people's lives. And it's just the tip of the iceberg. Like we have all of these challenges, but those are also opportunities.

We know it's not as dangerous as people. It's not dangerous when done well. We know it's not just for young, super fit people. We know if you walk into an affiliate, you're gonna see young, old, folks who are fit, folks who are just starting in their journey. If we can just help people understand that and start to shift those

Oh, holy cow, like we can magnify the impact of this thing even more. So when I look at sort of the the past CrossFit, okay, it seems to me like some of the the problems of it were you had Greg Glassman who was, he's like an ultra kind of libertarian type of guy, right? Like, hey, the best will rise to the top and if you're not good, you'll just fail. So it seemed to me like that attitude look I'm I'm pretty much a I feel that way about most things too. It's like hey, you work hard and you do a good job. You're going to excel and you're going to get credit and things are going to go well for you. And but it seemed like so if you were a person that wanted to open a gym and you were a badass person and you cared about your clients and you learned good technique and you maybe had some background in Olympic lifting or you had some background in gymnastics. You had some back. You had some back. in some sport that you became a good coach and you would open your affiliate somewhere and you would transform people's lives and they'd invite their friends and also they'd have

an awesome gym and doing great and making a bunch of money and changing people's lives and then you got someone else that's like maybe didn't do any sports maybe isn't the best person maybe is not the best coach and yet they could kind of go through the certification become a coach and you know maybe they got a big ego right and they want to completely They want to yell at people or they want to force people to do things that they shouldn't be doing and all of a sudden you have someone get hurt, right? Which certainly if you do stupid things with heavy weights, you can get hurt And I from my perspective because again, it's like the same thing we just talked about because crossfit was so strong Even some of those coaches that shouldn't have been there were still able to bring people in because that you know people saw an article about CrossFit and a person to you know they went on vacation and someone said oh how did you get

shape I do CrossFit and they go back to their hometown I want to do CrossFit too and they roll into this gym and it's not the best coach and they're not getting the right instruction and so things turn bad so when we talk about like the dangers of CrossFit which you just what you just said is if you do it right you'll be okay like you can do a clean and jerk with a PVC pipe and you should when you start doing clean and jerks so what now that now that we're in current days What are we doing to address these types of issues and sort of standardize and professionalize the force? Yeah, so a bunch there. I think the first thing I'd say is, I think we have to make sure that we recognize, I think part of Greg's genius early on

was understanding that that initial model was essential in attracting the type of entrepreneurial, independent, small business owners that may cross-fit what it is today. And so a model in which, which we say, hey, look, we're going to give you the power to run your own business and exercise your creativity and build something that works for your community, I think was really, really important. It also, you know, without a model like that, we wouldn't have 13,000 gyms

today. There's no way. And so I think for us moving forward, we have to be thoughtful about making sure we preserve the autonomy and the flexibility that allows our affiliate owners to do what they do best. It's what you and I learned in the military. It's decentralized command. Decentralized command. And so that is, it is, you know, if you look at a traditional franchise business, you, you exercise quality by control, by very directive leadership. You will do X, you will do Y. Here's the 742 page document that's going to explain exactly how everything's set up. And we're going to come in and check every single box. That will not work for us. So we have to do, you know, what we learn to do in the military, which is, now, we have to be really clear about the

standard. Okay, what is the standard? And, you know, Greg was right, like, excellence in virtuosity. That should be our standard. Excellence in coaching. Excellence in how we run our affiliates. Excellence that you don't have to think twice. You can walk into any one of our 13,000 affiliates and you're going to have a great experience. Now, that doesn't mean they're all going to look the same. They won't. They shouldn't. Part of the beauty is there's something unique about everyone. But what should be consistent is the quality of the coaching. What should be consistent is how you're supported and treated, the investment in the community, the things that we know really fundamentally matter. So the challenge for us is figuring out how do we think about, you know, we have to clearly articulate what the standard is,

and we have to figure out how to create the right incentives in the community that allow people that reward the folks who deliver on that. And then in some case, for folks who are not, it's our responsibility. we have to be a custodian, HQ, we have to be a custodian for the brand. Because every affiliate owner who is doing their part, who is holding the line, is counting on us. Because we know if you walk into, if somebody walks into an affiliate who's not doing a great job, it doesn't just hurt that affiliate and that individual. It hurts every single other affiliate. And so they got to hold us accountable.

We got to do a great job of holding the overall community of coaches and affiliates accountable for delivering that exceptional experience. And then as part of that, we got to make sure they have the resources is to do it. And so this has been a big shift for us. Early on CrossFit was really a, hey, send a sex amount each year, license the brand. It's on you. Over the last year and a half or so, we've invested a lot in a team and in resources that give owners, tools and things that they can use to up-level their coaching, to build a great business, to learn how to support customers through onboarding and all the things that we know to be important. Yeah, it's,

like the restaurant business if you're going to open a restaurant or you're going to open a bar, let's say. You got to be personally invested in that bar. You've got to be in there and like, hey, what's up, Fred? Yeah, you're having your use. You got to build that thing.

And that's what, like, you know, at my gym, that's what I realized almost as soon as we opened up, I was like, oh, this is all about these relationships with all these people that are inside this gym. And you can get to a point where the people in the gym have a relationship with each other. And that's awesome too. But yeah, you got to get people that are going to set things up the way they like them,

which is the way other people coming into the gym like them. They kind of like really care about it. And just like the best restaurants in the world aren't franchises. It's not like Chili's, right? I mean, nothing against Chili's because that used to be like kind of the go-to restaurant back today. But no one, that's not on the list, you know, of top restaurants in the world. Even though it falls a perfect protocol, there's a franchise. They all get the same food comes from the same place.

You know what you're going to get, but that's not the best restaurant. It's not the best restaurant in San Diego. It's not the best restaurant in Chicago. There's chilies in everywhere, and they're fine, but they're not the best. So if you want to go up a little bit higher, you've got to give those people, the people that are there, the people that own it. You've got to give them the autonomy to make things happen with decentralized command. Yeah, couldn't agree more. They've got to feel true ownership.

What was it like when you took over? I mean, what, what, go ahead. I was laughing because my first week was the week of the CrossFit games. So it was insane. It was awesome. But it was six days of, I think I met 2,000 people in four days. It was phenomenal. Very humbling.

I learned a ton. And so I felt I was very lucky, even though it was a crazy first week. I got six months worth of learning compressed into six days. What are people telling you? You know, I think by and large the top points of feedback were from inside and outside the company, hey, we love CrossFit. We love this community. We want it to be successful.

We need to understand where we're going so we can align around it. And so we need clarity of vision. Two, we need consistency. You know, the prior X years had been a ton of, of ups and downs and for a lot of owners, the changes that we were going through at HQ impacted them. Like we cannot be a liability for them. Hard job is to support them.

And so they ask, hey, look, we need stability. We need confidence in where HQ is going, where the brand's going. From the team, I'd say the team was pretty banged up. And I think that the team was candidly probably, you know, let's say maybe cautiously skeptical. Hey, we've had a bunch of leadership changes. You know, we've gone from Greg, this visionary founder who created this thing that has impacted so many people that now foundationally is a part of people's identity. You're now the next new guy. There's been a bunch of turnover.

What's coming? How many weeks are you going to be here for? Yeah. And oh, by the way, we know this is a job that is really hard to come into and be successful in. And so people were incredibly supportive. People were really candid with me. So I walked out of that first week with a lot of excitement, but I'd also say reasonably grounded in the areas where we had a lot of work to do.

What did you get told that made your fears increase? We at HQ were, we at that point continue have extraordinary people. Like the rivaling the Marine Corps and people's intrinsic connection to the mission and the cause, just unbelievably selfless, extraordinarily talented people. We were a shitty team. The company was incredibly siloed. So we have, you know, roughly these, we have our affiliate business. We have a business around sport and partnerships.

And then we have our education. Those teams didn't really talk to each other, didn't really work together. I'd say we didn't have a culture internally that was grounded in high trust and clarity. And so, you know, we were not partnering well. We were not showing up. We were speaking to the same customers from different parts of the organization and ways that weren't coordinated. We were stepping on each other. There'd be, you know, well-intentioned mistakes that blossomed into issues

because there wasn't a foundation of trust internally that really brought it all together. and what I heard from folks is, hey, the higher you get in the organization, the worst it gets. And I had spent enough time with the leadership team that knew that we had great people, but we had some real cultural challenges.

And then the positive thing was everyone freaking loved CrossFit. Everybody was, exactly, exactly. How did you go about crafting, so you hear from the team, like we don't even know where we're going? How did you go about crafting that? What does that look like?

So I spent the first couple months just trying to get out and talk to as many people. So I thought about, okay, I need to spend a lot of time with our team and get to know and hear from them. We've got so much collective knowledge and wisdom internally. Spent a lot of time with owners, affiliate owners, spend time with coaches and then talk to partners as well. And then also, you know, we have a bunch of folks kind of endemic press within the CrossFit ecosystem. So anybody who was willing to talk to me, I tried to just pick folks' brain. And then, you know, I got out on the road. So I went to South America.

went to Australia, wanted to make sure I got the international piece as well. That for me, as I had those conversations, you know, themes started to emerge. Okay, here are the things that, you know, people are saying that are great. We want to make sure we preserve. Here's some of the challenges. And, you know, I kind of put that together into, we sat down as a leadership team and said, okay, our job is to serve and support the organization. We owe them clarity.

And so that clarity needs to be supported first. we need a long-term vision. So we are very short-term oriented right now. People don't understand what success looks. And worse, actually, their worst fears are now that Greg has sold the company and we have a new investor, all they care about is money and we're going to ruin everything that made the special. So we need to communicate a vision to them that they can get excited and rally around.

So we laid that out and we said, okay, on top of that, then, let's call that. It was 2023. So I said, let's round it off to 2030. Let's say a seven year exciting vision. We're going to do that work. Then we're going to do a work at three to five year strategy. So the vision helps us to understand what it looks like. Then we need to do the hard work and figuring out how we get there.

And then ultimately we're going to enter by the end of the year. We're going to have a plan that has a clear set of outcomes and goals for next year that ladder up to our three to five year plan and ladder up to our vision that we can communicate inside the company and we're going to share outside the company as well. And ultimately that'll be aligned against a set of very objective goals. so we can measure our progress against. And so where are you at with that right now? So we did that work in the fall.

So we started as a team. And the way we approach it, not right or wrong, I'll start and write a, you know, I write it down on paper. I'll write a doc. So I think I wrote a, I don't know, five to six, seven page, here's a vision doc and sent it to the leadership team and said, look, most of this is probably wrong or really off, but it's a starting point.

So I'm going to try to outline my thinking and the rationale for it. A bunch of my assumptions will be wrong. Help me inform it. So we spent a lot of that time as a team got to a place where the team felt really good about it. We went then and shared it with the company and said, okay, great. And then we shared it externally. So we went to our affiliate owners. And in January, right in Pleasanton up in the Bay Area, went to affiliate owners and said,

hey, here's our vision. Here's what we're focused on. Here's what you can expect from us. We're accountable to you. We're going to be working on your behalf. Here's what you can expect from us in the short, medium, and long run. And then, you know, that set up for us allowed us to enter this year with a set of goals that we said. So we do like roughly six months.

We'll look and say, hey, you know, by mid-year, we want to be here. We'll take a minute and do effectively an after-action. So we'll look and say, okay, what went well, what went wrong? What were the assumptions we had coming in? And then how do we make sure that we learn from those to adjust our strategy? So we just went through that process for the second half of the year. And we communicated that back out to our affiliate owners up in Portland a couple weeks ago. And how's the reception?

It's been good. It's been really positive. I think generally, I'd say, you know, we've communicated that are, at the end of the day, like what drives everything we do is reaching more people and changing more lives through CrossFit. So it's not about revenue. It's not about profit. It's how do we take this thing that is pretty amazing and reach more people with it. And oh, by the way, if we do that, this should be a great business.

But for us, the financials are not the outcome. And then we talked about, okay, great. What that means is if we're going to get there, if we're going to reach more people, we got a bunch of problems we need to solve. So we got to address this issue around how the brand is perceived, that it's dangerous, that it's intimidating, that it's only for folks who are already fit. Okay, great. We've got a strategy we're going to work on that.

And what's that strategy look like, just generally speaking? Yeah, so it's a mix of, I'd say, kind of two high-level things. One, it's doing a bunch of work on the storytelling side to elevate stories that start to shift that perception. So I think the good news for us is we don't have to change CrossFit to come up with something that works for folks who are older. Like we already know it's already been there forever. It's been there forever. All we have to do is elevate the stories that are happening and do a better job with that. So we got some work to do on that front. So a lot of it is just storytelling and this is an area our team has been really good for some time. The other side of it is we got what

we're not great at historically is measuring the efficacy of our storytelling. So okay, great. We just shipped X pieces of content, which of them are working so we can double down on those that are working and those that aren't. We have a lot of like gut feel. So we need to know actually which of those is driving traffic. How is that traffic converting? We should be accountable to our owners around it. It's funny how wrong your gut can be. Oh my gosh.

And people will say with a thousand percent conviction. I know this is right. Yeah. Watch this video. This thing's going viral. Right. No, you've got nine views and three down votes. Right? But you get that feeling like, oh, this is it. This is a great story.

Especially with something like CrossFit, which people are so viscerally connected to. And so that's one of the areas around our culture that we're trying to shift a little bit. The passion is essential, but we've got to be rigorous. We got to validate our assumptions. So we're doing better storytelling, getting the word out there. What else? Better measurements and then better. One of the things we don't do a great job of now is if you get to our website, we do a shitty job of handing you off to an affiliate. So our job should be for folks who are sitting at home, peek their interest in CrossFit, get them to CrossFit.com, and then hand them to a local affiliate where they can start their journey. And right now, the experience on the website for us

is not as tight as it needs to be. So we're working on that. So are you going to have a map like a geolocator, put your zip code in here? Yeah. So we've had a map for some time. We're about to come out with in the next couple of weeks and update to the map, which has been overhauled. So it's much better designed and most importantly, what it'll allow us to start to do is actually measure the number of people that we're handing off to affiliate. So at the end of the day, we need to be able to understand for the amount of cycles that we're spending on telling the story, how many people do we hand off and how many of those people become new members at a CrossFit affiliate. And so making sure we've got a really well-designed, you know, what we'll call it a

marketing funnel that allows us to see exactly how we're doing that works. So we can hold ourselves accountable and we can communicate to affiliate. it's hey, you're spending money with us every year. We're putting that money to good use. Here's how many people we are sending on your behalf. Yeah. A few years ago at this gym, we all of a sudden, we just like, our whatever new inquiries of people walking in and saying,

hey, you know, I want to train. It just went down a lot. And we spent like two months. And my business partner's like, yeah, I don't know what's going on. like we're not just not knowing what's happening and sure enough we'd somehow fallen off of Google Maps right Google Maps didn't have our gym anymore and all of a sudden like we didn't even know what happened and so that's when we started paying attention to all this kind of stuff but there's that's this the way it works right I

mean you've got to get you've got to be able to get people to know where to go that's right we thought about that doing that a long time ago I should have we should of echo Charles because people would always say where should I change Jitsu where should I train jihitsu. And it doesn't matter as much anymore. That's why I haven't made an effort to do it anymore because now jiu-jitsu is so popular and there's so many people

and people that aren't good coaches, they don't survive. The internet will eat them alive. Like you can't be a fake jiu-jitsu black belt and be teaching because you'll just get annihilated. So, but for a while, maybe like five years ago, I was thinking we should do sort of like a,

you know, Jock approved. This is an approved, Jiu-Jitsu-approved place to train and have a map and you put in your zip code and there you go. These are some cool instructors. Here's the vibe there. Because it's so important people get that interest.

They do the Google search. And yet the next step, that's a big next step. You know, I sell stuff online. That's a smaller step to click. Totally. Cart or whatever. Yep. But you're losing people at each stage.

Yep. Yeah. And we haven't, you know, for the past, at least a few years, haven't been doing a lot of the basic blocking and tackling. So you search for cross-examination. on Google and our competitors have the first row of paid ads and that's not an untraditional thing but we weren't even playing there yeah so we weren't even making it hard for them so there's a lot a lot of stuff that we're doing now

there that'll have big impact yeah that's like when people have them the actual name jaco they'll buy my name on Amazon or on Google and we're pretty good about it now we've we've made it cost them a lot of money if they want to play that game but you know it's pretty insane that that's what goes down Yeah, that you can bid on those keywords on somebody else's trademark. It sucks. Yeah. Yep.

That's how these, that's how your old stomping grounds make money, right? That's right. You can hold me accountable. Trust me, I was very far from any important decisions like that. And so then what does it look like? So we got the, um, the CrossFit games coming up. Yeah. What in a week?

Yes. Yeah. Starts next week. Are you going? Yeah. Because I'm going. Or sure. Sweet.

Unfortunately, I didn't get it scheduled. early enough so I'm there for like a day but we got the bunch of people coming up from Jock Fuel to check it out I have only watched CrossFit games on TV how hype is it live? It's amazing. It's super awesome.

Last year was my first games which I immediately regretted not having gone before. Watching the competition is amazing but just being in in and around the community so CrossFit like I but huge part of CrossFit's magic

my mind is our community. It's just so, it's super special. And part of that for most folks, the community of the experience is in their own affiliate. And that's awesome and amazing. But there's also this other community of millions of people. And when you go to an event like the games, I remember walking around last year, probably day three for me and thinking to myself, there are a few places right. You could draw a ring around the games right now, this event. And there are probably not another 15,000 human beings who are happier, healthier, fitter, more resilient on the planet anywhere. And you walk around and you see people the level of happiness and excitement and standing in stark contrast to what you see, sadly, in most of our society. But that really struck me.

So it's just a super fun, high energy, positive environment. We've done a lot of work to build out experiences for the fans. So we'll have throw down training sessions where we effectively allow fans to do similar workouts to what the elite athletes are doing under conditions that feels like you're getting after it. I did one in Berlin. You have an announcer. You have a DJ. You're doing the same.

I mean, it is. That is as close as I'll ever get to anything quasi-elite, but it's super fun. And then we do a bunch of work for our affiliate owners as well. Yeah, that's a good point when you get around. I go to Jitatu events and you get that same thing because everyone there is 99% of the people there are training and they're in good shape and they're working hard. And just like, you know, the Marine Corps said what I opened with. And just like I wrote about in Discipline Equal Freedom Field Manual and just actually one of the most key things that Echo Charles ever said on this podcast was there's nothing that there's nothing that you can do in life. that's going to positively impact more other things in your life than exercise.

Like if you're a person and you don't work out, you know, that was another thing I was considering reading on this, was there's the opening of the book Starting Strength. And in the opening of the book, starting strength, he basically says, like, hey, I understand that people are out there doing their jobs and maybe you're an accountant and maybe you're doing a good job with that.

And no one would say that this guy's unhappy because he's an accountant. But wouldn't he be more happy if he had a 405 squat always? It's like, yes, you will be happier. You'll be a happier human. So that's a good way to go. What else, man? Does that get us up to date? I think so.

Yeah. Next week. Next week. We'll be good to have you there. Yeah. We have a partnership with Jock Fuel and CrossFit, which has been freaking awesome. Amazing. Awesome to launch.

Again, we, I go to events. I just did a couple of live events. We did Detroit. We did Chicago. We did Boston. We did Philly. And it's the same thing. Like, people are in the game.

People are trying to get better. And you can just see the attitudes of the people there. We always have to warn our, like when we do events at Eschlam Front, we do events. We'll tell the hotel, like, hey, just so you know, we're opening the doors at eight, people will be outside, you know, an hour and a half earlier. And we're doing a PT at 4.30 in the morning or 4.45 in the morning. They're like, what are you talking about? Is anyone going to go with you? We will say, yeah, 900 people are going to be out there.

And they don't understand it because it's a different group of people. And again, when you have people that are focused, when you have people that are exercising and being able to exercise with other people and being in a friendly yet competitive environment and pushing each other and pushing themselves. It's a win. 100%. People are showing up that early excited to do really hard shit. Yeah.

And walk out the other end of it just buzzed. Yeah. And you've got to remember how good that's going to make you feel when you get done. Because prior to and during, sometimes don't feel too good, right? Sometimes the squats get a little bit painful. For sure. So where can we find you? right you're on Twitter

I'm on Twitter and despite having worked in social media to my wife's great chagrin I think I have 12 Instagram posts since 2012 your game is weak My game is extremely weak I checked out your Twitter I checked out your Instagram

I checked out your Facebook For a guy that worked at Google and Facebook and Pintz maybe Are you hiding on Pinterest mommy Maybe you're not going to find me though I'll tell you that right now But you're there But I guess if people really want to know

What's going on with what we're talking about It's at CrossFit That's right. CrossFit.com. It's at CrossFit. They're on all social media platforms. They've got the YouTube channel. Apparently the website's being improved as we speak.

That's right. Things are moving in the right direction. And that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. Echo Charles. Yes. What do you got? You got any questions?

Yeah, kind of like questions. So I've been to a few CrossFit gyms. But all the times that I've went, with the exception of this one here, there was like an actual class. going on. Yep. Can you just roll in and do your own workout or like how to, what's the tradition?

So the truth for most folks who are getting started with CrossFit, the traditional thing is just show up. If you've not done CrossFit before, each gym's a little bit different, but a lot of gyms will have kind of an onboarding class or session. Sometimes it's one-on-one. And if you're not familiar with Olympic lifting, for example, the coach will walk you through kind of the fundamentals.

You know, everything comes down to, you know, CrossFit, making sure you get the mechanics right, getting inconsistent before you introduce any sort of load intensity. And so there's usually an onboarding class. That'll then graduate to, and again, it depends on the gym, but graduate into folks jumping right into sessions. And again, the beauty of

CrossFit is you could be doing a class, it could be your third day where you're super unfamiliar and you could be training some next to someone who's going to the CrossFit games in their age group. And the nature of how that class is run and how it's scaled makes it possible for folks to train together in a way that feels really comfortable, motivating, et cetera. Most gyms also have open gym time. So for a lot of folks that they want to do accessory work or some additional that you can schedule that as well. If I go in a crossfit gym on open, open mat time, open gym, and I do curls in the squat rack, well, bonus points. Can I still come? Oh, okay. That's cool. Bicy curls are universally praised in every sport methodology. So. So I'll still be allowed back.

For sure. You got to do, you got to do the CrossFit workout as well. Okay. I would encourage, I've been to CrossFit gyms where they have open gym. I'm so happy when they have open gym. I would encourage if you have a CrossFit gym to have open gym as much possible time as you can. And I think that's very helpful. There are some gyms. Usually it's when they're really small. They don't have any open gym, but I would encourage you to have open gym.

I think it's healthy. I think it's healthy to be getting in there. And, man, it's not going to get to train too much, right? I think what you find too with open gym is I think one of the cool things about CrossFit is you've got this constant journey of getting better. And there's so much, you know, potential complex that need an advancement in everything you do. So you're going to find games athletes who are still working on at the very highest level who are still working on some of their gymnastics movements. And when you get started, so for me, I've been doing it nine years now. I do open gym because there's a few weaknesses I want to work on.

And so you're constantly thinking about, okay, like my ring muscle ups suck. I am not good at them. I'm going to get some extra time so I can start to work on it. And you start to develop that attitude within it where it's constant progression and evolution. Yeah. Anything else?

No, no, that's it. You know, I would say over the years, I have gotten Echo Charles to start doing metabolic conditioning. Do I get credit for the Metcons? You do. I do get credit for the Maccons. Favorite?

Or least favorite? Metcon. Well, yeah. Is a Metcon an actual workout? It's any type. It's, yeah, like a wad, metabolic conditioning. So a variety of different stuff. High heart rate.

Yeah, yeah. So just circuit training. So kettlebells, actually my favorite one. Are you asking me what my favorite one is? Okay, so it's a circuit of kettlebells. If there's bicep curls in here, it's getting to swallow. No, yeah. No, I do the bicep curls before.

No worries, we're good to go. Cettlebells clean and jerk, is it? Yeah, one hand, each hand. So I go from that to burpees to jumping jacks, mountain climbers. All right. Legit. Yep. And then how many, how many rounds do you do with that?

As many as it can for whatever. Sometimes it's like 25 minutes. Sometimes it's like. 25 minutes of that, huh? Yeah. That's aggressive. We don't even, we're not 100% sure if that's a MECON anymore. Yeah.

I might just turn into like, you know. But it goes as low as six minutes too. So what's worse? What's worse? What's harder? What? Six minutes or 25? 25. Like 25.

You say that to me like I'm an idiot, right? Yes. But here's the thing. Here's the thing, right? For me, there's days where six minutes is going to be heinous, but 25 is going to be okay, because I'm like going to be able to, like, you're going to have to back off a little bit. Yeah. And then there's days where 25 minutes is going to be heinous and six minutes is going to be, I'll get some.

Well, okay, so, and I get it. I understand fully. I get the six minutes, even if it's super hard, usually it's like, underage. 10 like eight eight and a half yeah that's usually where it kind of sorts itself out because it's the perfect in my opinion the perfect balance of like actual the strength part of it you know the 25 minutes that's like I'm using like wait it's kind of like a more of a cardio thing yeah but I get super bored with that so once you reach like the 15 minute mark I'm like bro this just sucks it's not even fun anymore the six minutes is like sure it gets sue it can get super hard but at least it's kind

of exciting in there at least you got to get yourself fired up you know I'd way rather endure that than the boredom part of it What do you think? The really short workouts were worse for me. Like doing a fram, which is like a three to four minute just like your lungs hurt for, you know, you're rolling on the floor. Those are the worst workouts for me. Yeah. Those are horrible and glorious.

At the same time. They're more exciting though, right? Don't you get like more fired up for that? For sure. I agree with you on the board of piece. It's a different type of grind. Yeah, yeah. It is weird how emotionally, and let me say that word.

Yes, sir. Emotionally, for like a four minute fran, emotionally, the first minute and a half is actually just no factor. And you're kind of like, oh, I'm a badass. And then you get hit in the face with a baseball bat and you're like, I want to die. Yeah. And you know you can do more and they hurt so bad. Did you run track before by chance?

I did. My wife did. Yeah. So there's a race of 400 meter. And they would say that. that that's like the worst one. Yeah. Because it's right in the zone.

I thought they said the 800 meters is the worst one. Well, in, I don't know. And maybe in, when you get a higher level for sure, but in high school, it's 800 is kind of more of a distance kind of scenario. I'm sure it would suck, but,

because the 400, once you get past 200 meter, you're just like. Holding on for dear life. Yeah, it's like harsh, man. Yeah, I think the professionals, it becomes 800 meters because they become so conditioned.

Yeah. But for them, they get to the 400 meter and they got another 400 to go, and it's a complete freaking utter nightmare. Yeah. So you don't want none of that, apparently. Don, you got any closing thoughts?

Just thank you guys. Really appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, well, thanks for coming down, and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of you in the future, and I look forward to seeing it out at the games. That'll be fun. And thanks for coming out. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

I mean, that's a pretty wild ride you've been on so far, and I know you're just getting warmed up. And thanks for sharing your lesson, Lauren. And of course, thanks for your service in the Marine Corps. You know, can't ever underestimate

when people step up and serve their country. So thanks for doing that. Likewise. And of course, thanks for doing what you're doing today to help people get stronger, faster,

and healthier. Love it. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. And with that, Don. has left the building.

So looks like we're working out. Looks like we're doing MEC-cons. Yep. Looks like we're getting stronger. Looks like we're pushing each other. Looks like we're rolling into the box, the cross-fit, getting after it. And that means you're going to need some fuel. Yep.

Some fuel for that evolution. Good place to get fuel, the right fuel, the clean fuel, jaco fuel. JoccoFuel.com. Get some mulk. which is protein. They're a little bit mad at me. Who? Everyone at Jocko Fuel.

Especially Joe Moss. That makes sense. Well, I'll tell you why, because I called the protein mulk, right? Which is its own word, its own name. And people don't know what it is initially. So, unfortunately, for the team, they have to explain it a thousand times. Yeah, okay. They go, do you guys want milk in your store?

And they go, what's milk? And they say, it's protein. They say yes. That took them an extra three seconds. True. Can be a pain, right, after your 17th,000th time. But for you out there, you should know what milk is. If you don't, it's protein, clean protein, tasty protein,

dessert protein. You can get it in powder form, pow-pow, or you can get it, or you can get it in ready-to-drink form. whichever form you get it in, it will take out, take you out of your catabolic state where your body is destroying itself. And we'll start to build and rebuild. So you can get some of that. So it works. Hey, here's a tip.

I'm not a tip. Like, it's a tip. But what you do is you call it moch protein. Yeah. That's what we try and do now. Yeah. Moke protein. Because actually they have a point.

If we're just saying moch and you know how you just kind of implied, oh, it takes three. seconds or whatever which I dig it no this is a viable this is I I what's the word I downplayed it but it's a legitimate thing so you're correct so go ahead yeah because you know how you when you when you in and date someone's brain with decisions right they start to get like diminish what do you call like the their decision making like people don't want to make a bunch of decisions that's why if you have a menu with like a million items it's like you risk selling nothing kind of a thing but it so if you're like hey you want some milk it's like frick I don't

let me think. I don't know. Do I? I don't I? I don't even know what that means. Now you're just you're giving them a decision fatigue just from that one little unnecessary time. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? And especially if you're in a sales situation. There's what's it called sales resistance or sales? The thing where you know someone's selling you something so you automatically have your defense up, it's called something. I think it's like sales resistance or whatever. So if you're like, hey, you want some malking your thing, the sales resistance is up because I don't even know what that is. Stop trying to sell me something I don't need. you know, the resistance is going to be way more up.

But if you say, hey, you want some more protein or you want some protein powder, it's like, wait, we might, you see what I'm saying? The resistance is not as much up. This is why this is my fault, obviously. And here was my little rationalization when this happened. What, the three second thing? No, when I made up the name milk. Oh, got it.

For me, milk, it tasted so good. And it was so good for you. To me, it was a different thing. Like, protein chink. milkshakes taste bad milkshakes aren't good for you we have something new it tastes good and it was good for you it's something new we need a new name for it and in my mind I was this is going to be like a Xerox machine sure you know people say hey can you make me a Xerox to this yeah people needed something a different name for it yeah because it was so different or like people say oh can you pass me a Kleenex

that's the name brand I thought the world all over the world people be like hey I need a milk not a protein shake because they didn't want that and not a milkshake because they don't want that. They're going to be like, oh, I need a milk, just what we call it now. Yeah. So in my little infantile brain, that's what I thought would happen. What I should have done something similar is energy drinks. Because our energy drink is truly good for you, truly good for you.

And yet when people think energy drinks, they think bad for you. They think chemicals. They think high caffeine. They think sugar. Yeah. And we don't have sugar. We don't have chemicals. And we have a good, serviceable, good for you level of caffeine.

Yeah. So it's a good thing. But we didn't make up a word for the energy drinks. Well, maybe I should have. Maybe you still can. Okay. So we have, you know what, apparently in the streets. Oh, yeah.

From the field. Yeah. In Philly, coming back from Jocko live, they call it Jocko. they call it one word like jaco oh yeah oh you got the jaco drink yeah yeah so it's like jocko but they say go kind of jaco like oh you got that jac go drink they say in one word so there's the people has legs that's what they're calling it yeah yeah so maybe i made a mistake with the mulk maybe i made a mistake by not coming up with something better for the energy drink but these are the mistakes that i've made I apologize.

We appreciate you working with us to take what's good for you. You know, we got joint health stuff, joint warfare. We got super krill oil. We got, you know, immunity, Cold War. Cold War, if you're on the road, take Cold War. It's like 100% good to go. You go and shake a bunch. You're sitting in an airplane, shaking a bunch of hands, like what you're doing.

You're getting your disease You got to fend it off Yeah So joccofuel.com Check it out We got everything that you need on there You can get it at Wawa Slim pickings at Wawa

Due to the The beverage empires that are out there Trying to shut down the rebels They're buying all the slots That's what's happening We're hanging in there But in the meantime vitamin shop GNC military commissaries

Afees Hanifes Hannaford's going hot. Dash stores, Wakefern, ShopRite, H.E.B. H.E.B. in Texas. Hey, thank you, H.E.B. And thank you, State of Texas. Troopers, folks that are out there in the game, just going in.

We're crushing an H.E.B. So thank you. Same thing with Meyer up in the Midwest. Harris Teeter. We got Lifetime Fitness, Shields. And look, CrossFit. We're talking about CrossFit today. If you want to sell this product in your gym, email JF Sales at joccofuel.com, and we can get it in there for you.

Get you, maybe get you a little refrigerator. You can just have it ready to go. Same thing. You got a little Jiu-Jitsu Academy? You got that academy? You want to sell some good stuff? You want to help your clients, help your students, and you help yourself because, you know, it's going to another little bit of an income stream, right?

So let's make it happen. There you go. That's what we're doing. Joccofuel.com. Yep. Also. Origin. USA.

These are. This is where you can get your. Okay, RTX, run, train, everything else. Execute is. Execute. I think I say execute. I think maybe Pete says it's like an X, like a variable. Like a variable, yeah.

Hell yeah. Yeah, I like that one. I guess execute school, too, but isn't executed a E? Yeah. But at X, it's like trend. It's like hip. I don't know. Either way.

It's athletic gear. Yeah, it is. But yeah, cool. Athletic gear. Good. That is very good. But it's all made in America. Which is even better.

It's like adds the additional. But also they got some jujitsu stuff on there, geese and rash guards and whatnot. Some jihitsu stuff. They got all jiu jitsu stuff. Yes. What else do you need from jiu jitsu? That you can't buy it, origin. You get the gie.

You get the rash guard. You got the shorts. Yep. That's right. You're ready to go. Yeah. I just meant it as there's some jvite. You go to origin, USA.

dot com you can get the RTX stuff you get the Jiu Jitsu stuff specifically for Jiu Jitsu then you also got the jeans the boots you see I'm saying so I say some jiu Jitsu that's as part of what origin offers what I'm saying what I'm implying I don't know I don't know why my son asked me this the other day but he said how many times have you worked out in pants in sweatpants in your life yeah no he said when's the last time you worked out with sweatpants that's what it was yeah I said I don't think I've worked out with sweatpants in and at least a decade And I don't think I've worn sweatpants while working out three times in my entire life. Damn.

All right. Yeah. My legs don't get cold. Huh. But if your legs get cold, which maybe your legs a little bit more aerodynamic. A little bit, you know what I mean? Like that a little bit. I know what you mean.

You know, some people think you have skinny knees there. Yeah. Maybe they get cold. Okay. You get some joggers. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. If it's cold, well, it's not necessarily, oh, my legs feel cold.

It's not that. It's for like, hey, when you're warming up, like, okay, you ever worked out in a sweater? Or not a sweater, like a hoodie or something like this? You have? Most of, yeah. Yeah, why? Because keep my upper body, get my upper body warmed up. Wormed up for that workout.

Same, same deal. Okay. Right, you're doing some squats, some deep squats. It's better to be warm than not warm. I'll tell you that. Better be loose than stiff. Okay. Maybe I need to give a shot.

the justification on that one. So there you go. Go to origin USA.com, get some American made quality. Make it happen. Make it happen. Also, jocco story.com. This is where you can get your discipline equals freedom. Shirts, hat, some hoodies on there, some accessories on there.

You want a flag? You want a flag? Fly the flag of discipline. We got one on there. The Defcore flag. Defcore flag, X flag even. That's when you're going deep right there. The X flag.

It's actually a lot of people. that one. It's a good one. Also, there's the shirt locker, which is a new shirt, a lot of representatives of the shirt locker at Jocko Live this past weekend. I saw a comment in it said, oh, I don't see many shirt locker shirts because I posted a picture or something. I don't know what moment I caught, but there was there was shirt locker shirts in a big way. Oh, it was pretty awesome. Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. I would go so far as to say, 40% of the people at these gigs were representing while on the path. That's what it felt like.

I would have guessed 40% to this. Yep. That might be a little bit high, but not too high. No, it was, well, the people I saw, I mean, granted, I didn't look at what everyone was wearing, but the frequency in which boom, it was hitting me. Yeah, I think 40%. Pretty awesome. Yeah. Very good.

But if you don't know what this is, it's a new shirt. It's a new shirt every month. Different designs that represent the path in various ways. One of them, which a guy was wearing, by the way, I got like literally scolded for. For what? For one of the designs. Oh, yeah, yeah. The don't F it up one.

Yeah. But it just said don't F with a flag. There was a K, so I guess there's an implied swear word there. It up. Yeah. Pretty big. But kind of muted, though. It's not all bold or whatever.

It's kind of muted a little bit. But nonetheless, that was the most controversial one. I'm not 100% sure if that shirt would have passed. my scrutiny yeah well but I think it probably would have you think so you know because occasionally you got to go outside the box just a little bit yeah well to me when the reason that it probably wouldn't up the first complaint I got I was like half I think he's right you know like I was always sketch about the whole swearing wearing the shirts with swearing on it but then again brother there's more

people than me just me you know there's a lot there's some of them that I'm like bro this one is gonna latin bra everyone's gonna love this is the best one This is the best one. And then people won't like it. And then there's ones that I'm like, okay, this one's cool, but, you know. People really dig it. Yeah, exactly right. So you just never know.

Everybody's different. And that's kind of part of the reason for this whole thing, where it's, you get a wide variety of cool stuff. In my opinion, hey, look, you're going to find something cool. So you'm saying? Even if you don't think every single one is cool, a cool one's going to come in. You can be excited about that one. Well, there you go. So, check it out.

Joccoor.com. That's where you can check them out. They also check out primalbeef. Primalbeef.com. Primalbeef.com. We got Sean Glass, veteran, former seal officer, and he has got a little

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You want to support veterans? You want to support like good farming? Go ahead and check it out. Primalbeef.com. Get yourself some steak. Get yourself some burgers. Get yourself some beef hot dogs. That's what we're doing.

Yeah. Also, subscribe to the podcast. Because we're here. We used to argue about whether it was worth saying that. Yeah. For about probably 90 episodes. Yeah. I'd say, why are we still saying this?

Yeah. And yet I just said it. And now it's been 397 episodes. So anyway, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't yet. And also subscribe to Jocko Underground. We just got done recording a new Jock Underground talking about compromise. We talk about all kinds of subjects on there. We also answer a bunch of questions.

Subscribe to that Jocco Underground. around dot com also YouTube channel also psychological warfare also flipside canvas dot com Dakota Meyer making cool stuff for you to hang on your wall we got a bunch of books we got you know what I haven't talked about the ABCs of jiu jitsu by by coach Adam Mason the same coach Adam from way of the warrior kid is that the same Adam yeah yeah coach Adam and Chris Ayler's who's another jiu jitz guy did all the artwork he's a tattoo artist but he's also a sick just artist artist artist He did the artwork in there.

And where would you, where does this book land? It's, it's like not quite a kid's book, but it is a kid's book. It's not quite an adult book, but it is an adult book. It's just like, it's for everyone, I guess. And if you, this is actually one of the things I noticed when I was kind of going through it like halfway. I'm like, wait a second, is this a coloring book too? And you know what he said?

It can be. Can be. The thing is the art alone is, it's the kind of art you could just hang on the In fact, maybe we should offer some prints. Anyways, check it out. ABCs of Jiu-Jitsu. Also, I wrote a bunch of books too. You can check those out.

Final Spend, Leadership Strategy and Tactics, Field Manual, Code, Evaluation Protocols, Discipline Eagle, Freedom Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid. Let's get those for every kid that you know. Mikey in the Drive. I signed so many Way of the Warrior Kid books. And little Warrior kids were coming out

to the live events. And I'm talking about some heavy stuff in those things. I'm talking about life. Death, disease, trauma. And these kids are there in the front row. Big eyes, taking notes. What's up?

Warrior kids. So check all that out. Plus, we got Hackworth, signed a bunch of Hackworth, a bunch of about face, obviously. Extreme ownership, dichotomy of leadership. Check out of those books. And speaking of dichotomy of leadership and extreme ownership, we have a leadership consultancy.

We solve problems through leadership. Go to ashlonfront.com. We sold out the Dallas. gig, the Dallas muster. There's still a few slots left for FtX, individual FtX down in Texas that JP's running and go and engage in combat situations, simulated combat situations, and learn how to lead. Check that out. We got the Women's Assembly coming up, which is September 14th through the 16th in Phoenix, Arizona. Jamie Cochran was getting pictures taken with people. They know who she is. They understand that she understands. So go check that out. You can find

all of this stuff and plus you can find out about our consulting services at echelonfront.com. We also have an online academy so you can learn about leadership while you're sitting in the comfort of your home. You don't have to pay some crazy amount of money to travel. You don't have to bring in Eshlamfront to your organization. You can just go to Extreme Ownership.com and you can take courses. You can ask questions on live sessions. We've got all kinds of incredible ways to teach you the skills of leadership that you can apply. You can apply with your boss. You can apply with your peers.

You can apply with your subordinates. You can apply with your husband. You can apply with your wife. You can apply with your kids. You will learn how to lead and it will make every aspect of your life better. Extreme Ownership.com. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families.

Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america's mighty warriors.org also you got micah fink he's got heroes and horses dot org he just got a group out of the field they spent 41 days in the field getting reconnected with their soul it's an awesome program and if you want to connect with us on the interwebs of course we got crossfit dot com if you want to check out this whole crossfit thing that we talked about today all kinds of of positive things will come out of your life

if you start to get in better shape. If you start to connect with other people that are in good shape. If you start to exercise and have a routine, this is all positive. It's all gonna help you in every aspect of your life. And that's a quote from Echo Charles. So check out CrossFit.com

and go check out the social media channels at CrossFit and as well as Don, who is terrible, despite working. at Facebook, despite working at Pinterest, despite working at Google, he's got nine Instagram posts, so go hassle him at Don Fault. It's D-O-N-F-A-U-L.

And Echo's there as well. He's at Echo Charles. I am at Jocco-Willing. And all's what I'm going to say is, look, you can be a good physical shape, you can know J-Jitsu, but you can get caught up by that algorithm. I know Echo Charles the other day. He was in the hotel, he's in the lobby. I came out, I looked at him.

I saw him, he's wrapped in the algorithm. The algorithm had him by the throat at him by the neck. No, it didn't. Bro. Oh, it's playing chess. You were wrapped up in the algorithm. Don't.

All right. I mean, hey, man, if you say so, but, hey, I deliberately seek, sucked, seeked. Sought. Sought out, specific app. Okay. So for those of you that don't know, and apparently we all need to know this, Echo's going down the, the, he's in the chess game right now. He's been playing chess.

He's on chess.com. What's your call sign? Echo Charles 24. So if you want to challenge Echo Charles 24 to a chess match, he's on their chest.com. Yep. He is looking to gain experience. He's learned a few lessons so far. He's learned about cover and move.

Yep. He's learned about decentralized command. These things are all applicable. Yeah. They're all applicable. Yeah. I'd say more so than I'm looking for, what did you say? I was looking for challenge matches.

Yeah, I'm looking for challenge matches for sure. I'm not looking for experience. I'm looking for the experience of the challenge match, grudge match. Do you put money on these games? No. I don't. Okay. So there it is.

You can find us. And it's better that you play chess than you are scrolling through the gram. It's true, bro. It was weird because you know how like you stumble onto something? You're like, oh yeah, you're kind of into it or whatever. And you don't realize where, bro, I wasn't on Instagram for like two days, not at all, not one single time for two days. But I was on the chess. I was on the chess.

For probably more than I should have been. But still, it's better than Instagram. Yeah, and you got challenge matches going with your son, right? Is that what's happening? Yeah, with my son, I just put main tie on there and Liam on there. Bro, don't put those guys on there. They got work to do. I don't.

They need to be editing videos. That's true. So that's going to be on them. They're going to exercise discipline. I'm saying? All right. Well, there we're at. Watch out for the algorithm.

Go to chess.com, I guess, is what we're doing. Echo Charles 24 challenge matches. Let's go. And thanks once again to Don for coming on and for his service. And thanks to all our service men and women out there who are staying fit, stay fit. If you're in the military, please get after it. That way you are better prepared to protect us and our freedoms. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service.

All first responders, same message for you. be in shape, be fit. Usually they have good deals. You go to CrossFit and your law enforcement, your police, Jiu Jitsu gym, same things. People take care of you in these communities. So go and check it out

so you can do your job better and protect us, which we thank you for. And everyone else out there, you gotta prioritize your health. That's what you gotta do. You have to do everything that you possibly, Can to maintain your health and and it is a struggle. It's an uphill battle and the slope is slippery and listen you know what I understand that there are things there absolutely are things that we cannot control There's wretched diseases that we cannot control there are accidents that happen that are beyond our control

Sometimes we just have bad luck but remember that there is so much we can control, so much that we can control. Namely, what we eat and how we exercise. And these are the two biggest things that impact our health. So don't take your health for granted. Make it truly make it your number one priority every day. And look, if you go through a spell where you got something going on

and you got to refocus for a little while. A couple months goes by. Look, I get it. We all go through times like that. We got a sick kid. We got a project that's going on. We got things that happen that are beyond our control. But listen, don't let that become the norm.

Get back on the path. And you do that by going out there every day and getting after it. And until next time, this is Echo. and Jocco. Out.