Jocko Podcast - 404: On The Path, Doing the Right Things For The Right Reasons. With Navy SEAL Officer, Sean Glass

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

>Join Jocko Underground<Sean Glass is a former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, combat leader, and now a leadership instructor with Echelon Front. Sean spent 13 years in the SEAL Teams with three combat deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Eastern Africa. He led five SEAL platoons in Iraq against Islamic State forces during some of the most dynamic and demanding environments where he saw first-hand the power of leadership on the battlefield. Sean returned from Iraq to serve as Officer-in-Charge of training for all West Coast SEAL Teams where he spearheaded the development of leadership training and personally instructed and mentored the next generation of SEAL leaders.Sean left active duty in 2019 and became the Chief Operating Officer of a successful venture capital backed construction technology startup, where he helped scale the company’s growth and established a highly successful decentralized, team-first culture.Sean then joined Echelon Front where he serves as a leadership instructor, bringing unique front-line perspective that blends tactical and executive leadership experience from the military and business environments to help build high performance, winning teams that thrive in ambiguous, adverse conditions.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 404 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. We talk a lot about the path. And we do know what the path is, generally speaking. The path of discipline. The path is doing the right things for the right reasons. The path is long-term strategic thinking and delayed gratification.

instead of short-term thinking, an instant gratification. The path is taking care of other people. The path is being humble. The path is being balanced. And being on the path, capital T, capital P, leads us down the path of our lives. And our decisions impact what we do, where we end up. And when we stray from the path, our life is negatively impacted. but when we stay on the path the positive results over time will come now of course there's no

guarantees life gets a vote chance gets a vote there is such a thing as bad luck we cannot anticipate everything there are some things that are actually beyond our control and when those things occur we take ownership of how we respond and we learn good from the bad from the ugly We learn and tonight we have with us a friend of mine who has learned a lot His name is Sean Glass. He's a former SEAL officer a combat veteran with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan He taught leadership in the SEAL teams He's also led in the business world working in a startup and then starting his own startup He's a husband a father a leadership and

Instructor at Eslam Front and he's here with us tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned about Leadership and life Sean Jocko thanks for coming down man. Thanks for joining us appreciate you having me what I miss did I miss anything on your intro Right you were in the teams. I think that's about it. Yeah, and then you were in business Your dad what do you got five kids five kids as of now? Yeah, check. We're still working still time. Yeah, yeah, I like it. I like it My wife was tapped out at four. Yep.

She told me no more. Yeah, we're at five currently, which my wife's won at eight. So she's no. So she's down for the cause. She's down for the cause. Yeah. Yeah. That's legit.

Right on. All right. We'll keep our fingers crossed. All right. Let's start at the beginning. Let's start where you came from. Let's see how you got here. Where did it all start?

Where are you born? So I grew up in a small town in Texas. I tell people the town is called Corsicana because that's the only town that is big enough that people might actually recognize on a map if they're familiar with Texas, but I did not actually live in Corsicana. Corsicana was where we did school, sports, stuff like that, but I lived on a small ranch in a town called Blooming Grove,

and I didn't really even live in Blooming Grove. We were literally just out in the middle of nowhere. What? There was no name for your... It was literally no name. Unchartered territory. My road didn't even have a name. My road was called Farm Road 1390.

Like, they just ran out of names, basically. Just started numbering them. Just started, let's put a number on it because literally no one cares about this road out there. So the nearest town to me was a town called Barry, and it had like 73 people total population. So we had 60 acres, had a small little ranch operation out there, but we lived about 20 minutes outside of town. So very rural. And the town is the town with 73 people? The town is, Corsican is the town.

And is that where you had to go get groceries and whatnot? Yeah, groceries, school, sports, gasoline, all that stuff was Corsicana. So you're in the middle of nowhere. Literally in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, yeah. And what did your dad do? So my dad was an entrepreneur, him and his brother started company. They had a bunch of different stuff going on throughout their lives.

But when I was young, their main thing was they had some barbershops that they opened up all throughout Texas, totally random. They always dabbled in real estate. They ran or my dad ran horses on the ranch for a little bit, just kind of serial entrepreneur, trying all kinds of different stuff out. But probably the consistency was real estate, always kind of buying and selling real estate. You know, my dad was an entrepreneur, allegedly.

My dad's success with business was horrible. Yeah. Like he would start businesses, and we would just lose money. Like our family would lose money and go in the hole. And it was just terrible. I'm surprised I've ever tried any business at all because I was kind of mentally scarred.

I'd see my dad start businesses and put money into them and remortgage stuff. And all of a sudden, it all be gone. Yeah, I'll be gone. I'm sure there was some of that stuff going on. We had lots of horses. And then one day we had not lots of horses. So I'm sure there was some of that stuff that happened.

but I'm sure they were also trying to keep some of that stuff from us. I mean, what about the barbershops? Yeah, I think there's still one, maybe. That's still up and running out of the seven, I think, that they started. But we always had food on the table. You know, he always provided. Super hard worker. You know, we always made sure that we were provided for for sure.

But some ventures more successful than others. You know, Echo and I talk about like when you get an idea and you're going to start a business, right, You go get a URL, right? Back in the day, you didn't get a URL because there was no internet. So my dad would have like, go get business cards made. Yeah. So he'd get like these business cards made for like the new business thing. And like that's, you know, we'd have 10 years later.

We'd just have like a box of business cards. His name and the business name. And yeah, and like a big debt. Yeah. Luckily for me and my family, my dad was doing all this on the side. You know what I mean? Because he was a school teacher. My mom was a school teacher.

So he would take chances, I guess, with some of the, some of the, you know, money from his regular job. But just none of it ever panned out. So it was kind of a bummer. But he wasn't even trying any barbershops or anything like this. I think that's where the money is really is the barbershops. Yeah. And what about your mom? She was a teacher.

So, okay. Yeah. So she started off as a medical laboratory technologist, I think, or technician. So she was working in hospital doing labs all. kinds of stuff. And then when we were born, she wanted to be home with us. So she took a step back from that and started teaching. So all throughout growing up, that's all I knew was that she was a teacher. What grades did she teach? So she taught when we went to our elementary school, she was working there at the elementary school teaching high school science at first. And then we

had a junior college in our town, Corsicana, called Navarro College, which shout out to Navarro College if you've ever watched, which I'm sure you have not, the show about cheerleading on Netflix, that's Navarro College, was known for their nationally recognizable championship cheerleading squad. Damn. So eventually she made the transit, eventually being our school shut down,

and then she transferred over to the college and taught there for, I want to say, like 20, 25 years, and then just retired two years ago. Okay, right on. And you said we, meaning the kids, what do you have for brothers, sisters? Two sisters, one old, sister two years and one younger sister by two years yes that's the same pattern as I am I got

one older sister one younger singer we're all about two years apart yeah we all close growing up I don't know I mean say I'm not sure um I think we're probably we we we yeah we were fine you know but we were all a lot different you know what I mean so there wasn't a lot of you know there wasn't a lot of hanging out I guess you might say same here very different I think we're closer now than we ever were. I would say we are too. Yeah. Plus, I think I was a real kind of an asshole.

I was not the best brother, for sure. Yeah. If you talked to my little sister, there's definitely some emotional scarring and horror stories. I think my older sister hates me, hated me more than my younger sister. I was kind of like cooler to my younger sister. I was pretty much an asshole to my older sister sometimes.

But then we also hung out. We also had like a group of friends together. So I don't know. I guess it was, I guess it would be about average. Sounds like it's about the same as yours, which means we're doing about the same thing. And then, so what are you doing?

What are you doing for like fun? How old are you, what are you doing? So we had 60 acres, which when you're a kid, you know, I live on 60 acres now in Virginia, and it's a good piece of land for sure, but it's not, you know, a national forest or anything like that. But when you're five or six or 10 years old, I mean, 60 acres seems like a vast wilderness.

So I was outside. Like I said, we lived in the, middle of nowhere. So when our day would basically be you'd wake up, you'd take care of the animals, you'd go to school. If you had sports, you'd do your sports. And then when it came time to come home, like that was it for the night. You weren't doing anything else. You're not going back into town because you forgot something. So a lot of time just roaming around the property and our property was probably 60, 65 percent woods. And then the rest was pasture. So I would just disappear into the woods and, you know, pretend like I was a cowboy or a soldier and just wreak havoc.

And for a time, a very short time, my cousins lived next door, relative next door, right? Like they're, you know, a half mile down the road, basically, next piece of property. But we would link up and just run amok in the wilderness, basically. Did you have any water features? We did. What do you have? So we had some ponds for the livestock. And then we also had, when it would rain, we had a pretty good size little creek that ran through the woods.

And that to me was the coolest thing. My dad built a little bridge out of railroad ties across the water forest. And I mean, we thought we were like in the jungle when we were back there. Yeah, Texas is weird, though, because they count a dry creek as a creek. Yeah, it's dry 90% of the creek. Like I look at real estate in Texas. It's like, oh, creek and I'll look at pictures. It's a freaking bunch of dirt.

Yeah. That ain't a freaking creek, bro. The key word you want to look for for Texas water features live. Live water. Yeah, live water. So you're out there running around. Did you have guns? Yeah.

So I had BB guns at first. So, like, my parents, dad did not grow up in the country. So he moved us all out there to give us that type of life. But he grew up in a city. His parents were both musicians. They played in orchestras all across the country. They played in the Dallas orchestra when he was growing up. So, like, you know, did not have the rural existence like we did.

So not a lot of familiarity with guns. But we had the 22s. and stuff like that, and he would take us out there shooting, and then we always had our BB guns. And then when I became a little bit older, you know, 16, 17, you got the shotgun running around the property and whatnot, but mostly BB guns and pellet guns and whatnot. And then you have to go to 20 minutes to get to school.

Yep. And you're going to public school? So we went to a small Christian school in Corsicana that was started by about the time that we started being school-aged as kids, a bunch of parents got together and started this as kind of an alternative basically to the public school. There's just not a lot of choice there.

It's either the public school or you were going to this one private school. What's the population of Corset Camer? When I was a kid, probably like 21, $22,000. I think it's sitting around like $30,000 right now or something like that. But it's a decent size. You had a Walmart at a time.

It had a Kmart before Kmart ran a business. So when I was a kid, that was like big time having a Kmart and a Walmart. So, yeah, about 20,000. Lots of Christmas shopping. got done at Kmart. Oh, yeah, they got that blue light special. Oh, the blue light special, yo.

Oh, yeah. Oh, that was the deal. So we went to that small school, and it was an interesting experience because it was kind of a blend of probably parents who were very like-minded and wanting to teach their kids, you know, the things that faith aspect of life. And then because it was the only other school in town, if you got booted out of the public school, you were going to the small Christian school. So it was a blend of learning that happened at Corsicana Christian Academy for sure.

And are you playing sports? I was playing sports, but again, it was pretty selective just based off of the population of that school. So we didn't have enough to field the football team or anything like that. So it was basically soccer. We barely had enough to put together a soccer team. So soccer and basketball, didn't have enough for baseball, didn't have enough for like a track team, anything like that. So realized pretty quick basketball was not going to be. my go-to for the future, so stuck with soccer.

So played soccer basically all my life up until college time frame. How come you couldn't play basketball? Genetics probably had a piece of that. Work ethic probably had another piece of that. I just never really applied myself to the skill of basketball. I loved it. I liked being out there and playing around with my buddies. I was just never going to go anywhere basketball.

Being a six-foot-tall guy with limited athletic abilities, it was not going to be my sport. But soccer you were good? I was decent. I was not great, but again, it comes down more to my lack of actually applying myself to any sport whatsoever. Like if you contrast me to my sister, my younger sister, who went to play D1 College at TCU for four years, I would argue exponentially more naturally gifted. I was very fast. I was athletic.

Did not apply myself whatsoever. Like, didn't enjoy the experience of practice. I like playing in the games. but you contrast that with her. She would be at home. If we were at home, she was playing soccer. She was kicking the ball off the side of the garage, which drove my parents crazy.

She had net set up, and she was always practicing, and surprise, surprise, hard work paid off, and she got scholarships to go play at a D1 college, and I did not get the same opportunities post-high school to go play college anywhere. Because you were a slacker. I was a very big slacker when it came to sports. All right, so then you guys.

get done with this school. Do you go to like a Christian high school as well? No, so the Christian school kind of tapped out about the time I was going into high school age. I think ninth grade was my last year at the Christian school and then I think it just kind of ran out of steam, ran out of funding. Parents weren't sending their kids there. So we went to the public school for 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. Graduated from there. Played soccer there, did everything. What position was you playing soccer? I was defense, usually right, right back on defense. Now, what else are you into at this time. You're going to high school. Are you getting in trouble? What do your grades like? My grades were decent, but again, not really applying myself to it, but I was pretty naturally

able to form good study habits, and I would pick things up pretty quickly. So A's and B's, I don't think I had one C on my record, but again, that wasn't from opening books when I got home and cracking. It was more just getting by on natural talent. And then part of that too was I had an ability to good relationships with my teachers and I think they kind of watched out for me every now and then. Did you, I didn't do homework. No. I didn't bring, and it's kind of crazy. You're going to see this when your kids get a little older.

Yeah. Like when they get to high school, like my kids, well, I should say this, my daughters did a lot of homework. My son somehow, I don't know why he was, somehow did not have a lot of homework. Does he had a good smile, the skinny charm. The teachers. Yeah. He would make good relationships with the teachers. It pays off.

And that would probably help them out a little bit. I did not have homework that often. And if I did, it was always last minute stuff. It was, I pride myself on my ability to procrastinate and then cram and get the job done when I was in high school. For the most part. Speaking of jobs, were you working? I was working all kinds of different stuff in high school. So when you're in Texas, you can get a, I think what they call it, maybe it's a learner's permit or a workers permit when you're 15 to get your license if you have a job. So I was like, I can get a car and have a. some freedom a year earlier if I have a legit job. So I had a bunch of different jobs that I was

working. I was a ranch hand for a little bit for some of our neighbors, which if you've ever tried ranch handing in Texas in the summertime, highly recommend it. It's a very enjoyable experience. Very character building. Very character building. What are you doing as a ranch hand? You're 15 years old. What do you have to do? So a lot of it was mending fences, taking care of the property. This older couple, they were some characters for sure. They were like some Texas characters for sure. And we'd show up, me and another buddy who lived out in the middle of nowhere, we'd show up at like 7 o'clock in the morning, and they would just basically have a punch list of

stuff for us to do. And the lady's name who was the wife, and they were probably in their, I'd say late 50s, but they were haggard. They were looking a little bit older. She'd come to the door every single morning in a night shift with a Coor's light in her right hand and a cigarette at in her left hand at seven o'clock. And she would give us the punch list of stuff to do. And a lot of it was mending fences, cleaning out the barn. At the time, they had these metal fences, and we had to go by and, like, scrape all of the rust off of the metal fences

and then just repaint them all. One day, there wasn't a whole lot to do out on the ranch, so she wanted us to do some work around the property. She wanted us to go into her, like, kind of perimeter garden around the house, pull up a bunch of weeds and do some landscaping for us. And she gave us a tour to make sure that we knew what she wanted us to pull out. Like what was a weed and what wasn't a weed? And we get to this one particular bush.

And it looks a whole lot like a marijuana plant. And she sees myself and my other high school age buddy just kind of staring at this marijuana plant. And she's like, oh, that's called the Texas cannabis. I know it looks like marijuana, but it's definitely not marijuana. It's 100% marijuana that she was growing out there for her little personal stash, her husband's little personal stash. But just whatever she needed basically done that morning. And again, lived out in the middle of nowhere.

So it wasn't like anyone was flying a helicopter over trying to find her one little bush she had going on. But yeah, she was out there giving us stuff to do, did that for part of the summer, and then realized there's probably easier jobs out there than ranch handing. So I was a waiter in our town at a restaurant called the Cotton Patch for a couple of years. And that was almost a pass down for my older sister who worked there for a while. So I was like, all right, I can go there. I can get some tips.

I can make some good money. So I worked there for probably two, two and a half years. And then right across the street from the Cotton Patch, there was a record store called Music Man. And it was maybe twice the size of this studio right here. It was not a very big store. So I went over there and, you know, interviewed for a job. And the guy that managed the place was a character, a guy named Rick. He was Hispanic, but he was also, I guess, traditional Jew, but he was Hispanic.

So he didn't have, like, it wasn't his background. He converted to Judaism. He walked everywhere. He had a big cane. He would wear, like, the yarmulke everywhere, kind of like the dude from Kung Fu, just kind of roaming about the town, of course, Akana. But he was cool. He was super laid back.

He liked music. and, you know, he offered me a job, and I worked there probably all the way up until my senior year, and I ended up managing that place. Interestingly enough, he pulled me aside one day, and I think I was probably 18 years old, pulled me aside, took me outside, and told me he had an alcohol problem, which was like not a shock to me whatsoever. He came in, like, reeking of vodka most of the days that we were there, and he asked me if I would drive him up to Dallas and check him.

him into this rehab facility that he had been scoping out. So Rick was cool dude. He was happy to help him out. So I drove him up there, dropped him off. And he did not own the music man. He was the manager of the music man. And there was a guy up in Dallas, Texas, which was about an hour north of us, like Big City. And he was the guy that owned the music man. And I don't even think I knew his name at the time. But in my mind, I'm thinking like this mogul that lives in Dallas, you know, owns all these businesses and the music man is one of his. So I find his contact information in some records at the store and I just call him up to let him know what's going on because Rick is the only reason this business stays open. He's there from like 8 o'clock in the morning

until 8 at night when they shut down. So without Rick, there is no music man because I'm still in high school. The other employee is a buddy of mine from high school. So it was a summertime. So I call this guy up and in my mind, I'm like, I'm going to make a play to freaking run the music man. Like I'm taking over the music man basically. Going big time. So I call this guy up and I'm like, hey, here's the deal. I just took Rick up to this facility up in Dallas, checked him into rehab. He's out of the picture.

And there's a pause on the other end and this guy goes, well, I guess that means, you know, we got to shut stuff down. And I said, hey, maybe, but I've been working here now for. for two and a half years. I know how this entire business functions, you know, I can manage it for you if you want that to be the case because it was summertime. So I had basically three months where I could manage this place and give him time to find someone else to step in when I went off to college. And there's like a long pause on the other end. And he's like, so you, you're confident, you can run it. I'm like, absolutely. It's not a big, I mean, it's, there's like 300 records in the store maybe. Like, it's not a complex operation. I was like, I can, I got this. So I, I think,

talk him into it and now I'm like all right and poised to make my move because at the time I was making 525 an hour as an employee their minimum wage in Texas so he I convince him he says all right let's let's go it's yours for the summer and then you know I'll try to find someone else to come in and run it when you go off to college and I said hey I think because I'm taking on all this extra responsibility I've got to run inventory I've got to run the books I've got to do all the bank drop-offs all this stuff is on me now I'm I think I need a raise. There's a pause on the other end, and he says, you're right.

You're right. You do deserve a raise. So now I'm like, I just, this is like the art of the deal right here. Like, I just took this place over. This place is now mine. I'm going to be making some good money. I can buy a new car. What I forgot was to actually talk about what that raise would look like.

I didn't throw a number out. He purposely did not throw a number out as well. So I get my next paycheck and I got a whopping 25-7 bump. in the old paycheck. So I went from 525 to 550 for managing that place over the summer. Dude, who shops at Music Man with a city of like 20 or a town of 20,000 people? Characters. How many records are you selling?

On an average day, maybe like four. Oh, this is CDs by now, right? These are CDs, tapes. A lot of tapes still would come through. It's course it can. Like there's, you know, there's a lot of vehicle still with tape players in them. So we sold some tapes. We sold some CDs.

But it was not, we were not moving a whole lot of products. What was the biggest best-selling record? Underground rap was the best-selling record for us. So we were in between Dallas and Houston, and Houston had a big rap scene. So Underground Kings, a whole bunch of different bands. There were groups, I guess, that unless you grew up in the Texas area,

you'd have no idea probably who these people were, but they were a big deal for us. So someone came in, odds are they were walking out with some type of Scruston was the kind of the genre that it fell under Scroosten rap. So that was our biggest seller. Oh, kid. Yeah. Every now and then, you know, a band would, you know, some metal band would release something new.

Corn would come out with a new album and you'd sell 10, 15 of those. But it was almost always kind of the Houston Underground rap game. Okay. And what were you into for music? Metal. So were you into music? Oh, I loved it. Yeah.

So music was a thing? Music was a thing. Yeah, I dabbled in guitar when I was younger. Again, didn't really apply myself that much to it, but I enjoyed picking it up and playing around with it. My dad was kind of old school, classic rock type guy. You know, blended the Beatles, some Zeppelin, some Pink Floyd, Beach Boys thrown in randomly.

So we grew up kind of on a blend of that. And then my mom loved like 1980s Christian music. So, Carmen, freaking. And I'm trying to think of all the old school. I don't even know what Carmen is. Yeah, Carmen's a dude. He had some wild videos back in the day where he was like gun slinging against Satan. So it was a blend of either when we hopped in the car, if it was my mom's suburban, it was going to be Amy Grant or Carmen or something like that.

And then if we hopped over my dad, it was probably going to be the classic rock station, you know, some Zeppelin stuff like that. Isn't it crazy that like you can still get in the car today and just listen to Zeppelin? Yeah. Like, I mean, no, like radio stations are playing. Yeah, as they probably will for the remainder of eternity, which is not something that you can say about a lot of the music that's getting made right now for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I had a weird realization. So when I was in, I guess it was probably like eighth grade. And I don't know what it was like for you, but for me, every single like school dance that we went to, which started in seventh grade, eighth grade, and then we went to high school, had ninth, 10th, 11, 12th grade. We had every dance I ever went to.

stairway to heaven was the last song of the night, right? Every single dance I've ever been to in my life as a, as a human, because you don't go to dances when you graduate high school. At least I think of that. Every single one, it was stairway to heaven. And so this is like 1984, 1985 through 89. So Led Zeppelin was around. Yeah.

In 1980, right? So this is like four or five years old. And I thought to myself, it seemed like when I was a kid, it seemed like those albums were like ancient. It was like we called it classic rock. Yeah. It was called classic rock, even though, you know, this, what, what did stairway to heaven come out? 1972, something like this, maybe 1973. So it was only 10 years old.

It was only 10 years old. So now, like when my son was growing up, he was listening to Metallica. But Metallica was 1982. Yeah. So and my son's growing up in 2020. So like it's 40 years old. 40 years old. Of course Metallica is still touring.

Yeah. God bless them. But it's just weird how that music for me when I was whatever 12 years old, 13 years old, it seemed like that music was classic and old, but it was only 10 years old. Yeah. So it's a totally different world. Yeah. There's a, and Zeppelin's always going to be there.

Metallica is always going to be there. I think at least their old stuff is always going to be there. Oh, got a little shot. Yeah, there's a little shot. Of course, of Canada, there was not a lot of Led Zeppelin getting played at the school dances. It was a whole lot of Garth Brooks, Chor Straight, that type of stuff. So I found metal in high school because some of my buddies were listening to it. And that was all I listened to from there on out until probably a tune or two into the SEAL team.

when I opened up my horizons a little bit, but it was all old school Metallica. I say old school. It wasn't that old for me either when I was going through high school, mega death, stuff like that. And my kids listen to the same thing. My kids listen to that stuff now.

I'll catch my oldest son roaning up in the garage every now and then in our barn, our hangout barn, if you will, our family barn. We have our gym and stuff in there. And he'll break one of my guitars out and he's just shredding Metallica and stuff and to my wife chagrin. That's what they want to listen to is Metallica and May deeth.

I try to convince her. Look, if you, is the music loud? Yes, it's loud. Is it fast? Yes, it's fast. If you listen to the lyrics, there's nothing wrong. Good messages. With those lyrics.

It's all kids dealing with stuff. It's all stuff about war. It's all people just working through problems. Spitting it and do the best possible life. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I got ACDC back in black in 1980. So I'm nine years old and I was like oh but then I got Black Sabbath. Yeah and then I was like oh

Okay now I understand the world. Yeah, that's the that's my oldest son's go to on the guitar right now is Iron Man and old Black Sabbath. He's figuring out can't go wrong. When you're when you're when you're that age and you got stuff I mean probably every Teenage boy is going through some stuff but for for me about the time when I found all that stuff my parents had split up they split up a while before but like the divorce was official right then. So I was angry, frustrated, all those things that, you know, a young kid with a very self-centric worldview is probably going through. And like that music just spoke to me. For the first time, I was listening to stuff that I was like, it's, like, it's okay to be frustrated about stuff. It's okay to be angry about different stuff. And you're listening to these guys just pour all of their personal experiences into. And you're like, hey, I can relate. I can relate to that.

It has to be also testosterone, right? For sure. Like you're 15 years old, 16 years old. You got testosterone coming out, your freaking eyeballs. And like when there's such a thing as roid rage, right, for a reason. Like people go on steroids and they get like angry. So when you're 15, of course you're going to be freaking shit's going to piss you off for sure, man. So that's luckily, I mean, if you look at Metallica,

like how old was Metallica? They were like that age when their first albums came out. 18, 19 years old when their first albums come out, insane. And they're dealing with all of those things, all the same things. And that's why it will always be around, because you'll always have young men going through those exact same things. And not only is the music insanely well orchestrated and put together, but the lyrics, young men, at least young American men,

are always going to hear that, and they're always going to be able to resonate with that. Yeah. It just lands. I remember the first time I heard Black Sabbath, I was like, oh, this is what I thought, this is what I was thinking. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like, especially you compare it to some of the other junk that was out there in the world. Oh, yeah. Like there's just some junk music out there, popular music. I don't know. I was stuck on some radio station. It was just playing these ballads, like these sort of metal rock ballads. They're disgusting. They're literally disgusting.

Yeah. All right. So you're now 15, 16. Your parents are split up. You're freaking working in this record store for 5. 25 an hour. But didn't you get raised to 550? 550.

So now you're 550 an hour. We're looking up. Things are looking up. You have a car. Did you buy a car? I did. What did you buy? So I can't believe I ever sold this car.

But my, well, my first car was the parents suburban. This big, 1989 guacamole green suburban that my dad bought off a lot and he got a great deal on it because it was legitimately guacamole green. I think it was like the forest service tree vehicle cover, a color and to make it look better, he put a big gray stripe right down the middle of it like somehow that was going to improve it. So I drove that around as I was saving my cash up and then we went to a swap meet up at the ballpark in Arlington and Dallas. And this was back in the day before muscle cars were astronomically expensive, right? And I drove off the lot in a 1970

Chavelle Super Sport for a six grand. Oh my God. Midnight blue white racing stripes. So now you're talking about testosterone fuel Metallica. And now I've got, you know, a 454 sitting there. And it was, I was, as a kid, always into cars, always into muscle cars. And I was just fortunate enough to live in a place in a time where a young man who was willing to do a little bit of work could afford something like that. It got probably eight miles to the gallon, but fuel in Texas was like 97 cents back then. So that's what I had until college, and then I will forever kick myself, but I sold it when I went to college because you're always tinkering with old cars. There's always something that you've got to fix on them. And I was thinking I need a little bit more reliable transportation and I sold it.

And then I sold it for more than I paid for it. Yeah, but what did you get to replace? place it. I got a, what the hell did I get? I think I had bought an old land rover, like a 1995, I guess it wasn't that old. I was old. It's only 2001, so it was probably like a six-year-old land rover. Yeah. Which, talking about things that need to be fixed all the time. Yeah. I think needed to be fixed all the time. So it wasn't necessarily the best, the best swap. But, you know, I was 16 years old driving that sucker around. No, no air condition, didn't care, loud, exhaust, just, just crush in life at that point in time, basically.

So when did you find out about the teams? So I was probably either 14 or 15 years old. And I was an avid reader growing up. I read all the time, always had books in my hand. You name it, I was reading it. And we spent a ton of time at the library. And part of that was probably my mom was a teacher.

So we were always at the library. My mom was a teacher. I didn't read anything. Yeah. My dad was a teacher, too. I still didn't read it. I loved it. I would get lost in all these different books.

And it could be, I lived out in the middle of nowhere, too, and there just wasn't a whole lot of stuff to do besides play in the woods and read. So I was always reading these adventure novels and whatnot and pretending to be those. I'd read a book and then I'd go out in the woods and just basically pretend to be one of those characters when I was young. But we spent a bunch of time in the Corsicana Public Library. And I was in the military history section. And this was before, you know, pre-9-11. And this was like 1994, five, maybe something like that.

Maybe 1996. There wasn't a lot of information out there about the SEAL teams. And I stumbled across this book called Hunters and Shooters. And it was this oral history of SEALs in Vietnam. And I read it and I was hooked. Like instantaneously knew that's what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was like, I can get paid to do this. I can actually go and make a living out of jumping out of airplanes and running around in the

and diving and doing all these things that, you know, probably every young man dreams about when they're little. So it was a huge turning point in my life because up until then I was not very disciplined about a whole lot of things. And it was very evident that if that's something that I wanted to do, it was going to take every single thing that I had. I had a channel all my energy into that. So everything from there on out, every decision I made basically became, the decision

was, is this going to help me get into the SEAL teams? And if the answer was no, then I didn't do it. So got serious about working out, got serious about eating. I think my parents thought I was insane and full of it. Like my parents grew up watching a very undisciplined young man who like, you know, I wasn't horrible. Like I was a good kid, but I wasn't the hardest worker growing up. We lived on a farm. We had horses.

We had emus. We had all kinds of random crap on the farm. I was always complaining about work. And then just whatever it was about reading that book, it was just. like a switch that went off. And like I was very focused. And all of a sudden I'm working out on my own. I'm studying because I want to get good grades so that I can get into the community.

Because I don't know if that mattered or not, but I'm like, it's got to help. You know, if I've got straight A's, it looks good. So it was a big turning point for me. It's a weird realization when you are running around in the woods playing Army. And then you realize you can actually do that. Yeah. Yeah. Literally my first thought was I've been doing this my entire life and now this is something that I can get paid to do

Go on these crazy men this is stuff that Vietnam I mean this this is insane stuff I was reading and it just resonated and I was like I want to do this I have to be a part of this community I at least have to see if I can if I can make it oh yeah I was going to nom yeah that was my plan I was like going to nom I figured there was still ops going on come on man There's M.IWs and MIAs, like, I will be rescuing them. I just got to make it through buds. That was kind of what I was thinking was going now. I've already got the plan built out.

In 1990, let's roll. So you graduate high school then. Now you're focused on like, I'm going to be a frog man. I'm going to be a seal. And where do you go to college? I went to Texas A&M. How come you just didn't enlist? So it went back and forth on whether to enlist and not.

And my parents played a big role in me not enlisting. And what they told me was it was a shock to them. them that I wanted to do this. You know, my, uh, not necessarily a big military family. My mom's side had some service, but like my parents didn't serve anything like that.

And I think they were again, having a hard time wrapping their mind around the fact that like I was actually capable of doing something like this. So I, so. Oh, so you mean they doubted you. I think so.

There was literally nobody that I think that thought I was serious about it or thought that I was going to make it through. Uh, and I can't blame them. If you looked at, you know, my life up until then, it was kind of the antithesis of what you need.

needed to do to actually make it through a program like that. So in their minds, I think it was more of a delay tactic. Like, how do we get him to realize he's not meant to do this? How do we get him to realize that there's other things in life that he can do? Let's let him ruminate on this for a little bit. So they were talking to me about college and just said, look, if you still want to, you can enlist after college too, but we want you to get your degree first. That is a tactic for sure, by the way. Get your kid to go to college. They meet a girl.

They do this. They get a job offer and you keep them out of the military. I've seen some people execute on that plan. I'd be willing to bet because I never actually asked him, but I'd be willing to bet that was their tactic was, hey, get him into college. He's going to figure some other stuff out, even if he doesn't and he still wants to do it.

Now he's got a degree. If he doesn't make it or just doesn't like it, he's got something he can fall back on. So they were probably thinking, get him to college. He'll have a good time. he'll lose focus and he'll, you know, find some other path, find a girl settle down. But unbeknownst to them, I was the lamest college student of all time. Is it hard to get into Texas?

You went to Texas A&M. And is it hard to get in there? I don't think it's necessarily, I mean, it's not Harvard, let's be honest. But, you know, you still have to have good grades. You still have to, you know, contribute that type of thing. So I think they, at the time, it's a state school, but they're still decently selective. I think you had to be more or less in the top 10% of your class at the time to make it through. So you were?

I was. Yeah, I was around probably like the 10th percent. 10.4. Yeah, I was just slid right in underneath there. But I chose to go there because there was the core of cadets is there. And there's a group inside the core of cadets that were just focused on getting people prepared for selection, for butts for the seal training pipeline. And to me, I guess like, this is a great resource. I can go down there.

I can work out with these guys. I can better myself. I'll prepare. It'll help me be more prepared, basically. So I went down there. I was not in the core of cadets. I just worked out with these guys. And I mean, they were, I thought I was in good shape.

You know, I was running. I put in like three miles. I would do some calisthenics and stuff. And I thought I was in good shape. And then day one, running with these guys, it was just like a nuclear bomb went It was the worst experience in my life. These guys were all just freaks. These guys were actually in shape, is what it was.

These were actual runners. They were putting in like 18-minute, three-mile times, which to me was unattainable at the time, basically. So it was a very good thing for me to choose to go there because it reframed my perspective on my own personal training. So my day in college consisted of I would be up at 420, 425 at the latest. I'd get a cup of coffee and then I'd have to drive to campus because 445, we would be starting a PT. And then we would PT until about 6.30.

Then we'd hit the chow hall. And then my classes didn't start till 8. So I would go to our gym and I would get another workout in because when you're 19, 20 years old, you can do stuff like that. Let's go. It's not going to break you down, basically. So we'd PT for about an hour and a half together. I'd eat. I'd go PT some more.

And then we would go to class. and then after class I would go to my job, which was I was working in the school system as a after school kind of counselor for an underprivileged school that was nearby Texas A&M. So I'd go do that until 5.36 o'clock at night. I'd come home, eat dinner, study for a couple hours, and then I'd be asleep by probably 8, 39 o'clock. I was the lamest college student of all time. I can, you know, maybe three parties I ever went to because my roommates were going,

and I just didn't enjoy them because in the back of my mind I was just very concerned about getting in trouble. If I get in trouble and I want to be an officer and get picked up for that program, if I get, you know,

arrested or in a fight or something like that, everything that I've worked for is over with. So it was just wake up, PT, school, sleep. Did you start to get in really good shape? I got in very, very good shape.

Very good shape. Better than some of those guys at certain things. I was a little bit bigger than most of them. So when it came to like calisthenics, I was better at it than them. But when it came to running, I was always tail-in.

So we would have a three-mile-time run at the end of each semester just to track our progress. And it was a three-mile loop, but it wasn't, I'm sorry, one-mile loop that you would run three times. But it wasn't a good actual test of your three-mile time because half of the loop was uphill. So you'd run downhill, basically, in the last half would be uphill. And I ran an 1820, and I was the slowest guy about like 45 seconds. Damn. We had guys that were putting in 1645s. They were just freaks.

And we were swimming all the time. And these guys were all trying to go to buds? All trying to go to buds. All trying to go to buds. What did you study in college? Speech communications for no other reason than I thought it would be easy and get me out of college quick. I also thought if I was going to be an officer, I probably needed the ability to actually speak in front of people. And I thought in my back of my mind like this will probably help me hone my public speaking skills.

What I didn't realize is you didn't speak at all. It was just all paper writing. It's like the worst major I possibly could have taken outside of maybe a dedicated like engineering course. Because every semester, each course that I was taking had like a 30 page paper that was attached to that course. It's called speech communication. Speech communication. It's basically developed for people that wanted to go and be like PR reps and stuff, which I didn't know any of that. Like I'm picking this out of a catalog of what I thought would be the easiest major for me so that I could just focus on P-Ting.

being ready for the seal teams. So you start, at some point, you've got to put your package in, right? Yep. To become a seal. Did you go to the, did you go to the minibuds thing? I did not. So they actually stopped that right about the time when I should have been able to go. And I'm not sad that that happened.

Because when I got there and then I started to actually later on in my career when I was running one of the phases of selection, what I found out was minibuds never really helped anybody, but it definitely could hurt people. So if you came to minibuds and you did well, the message that I was told was, eh, it kind of helps, not really. But if you came to minibuds and you didn't do well, you didn't perform like, you're done, you're over with. So I didn't have the opportunity to go. I didn't even have the opportunity to talk to a board or anything like that. I just put together a package. I sent it in and it got examined by some board somewhere, probably in Millington, Tennessee, or maybe in Coronado, I don't know where.

And then they kind of decided your fate from there. So no even interviews. You didn't even interview? No letter of recommendation from anybody. Letter recommendation. So we had a couple of guys that were A&M alumni. Team guys? Team guys.

Yeah. I can't even remember their names anymore. Damn. Yeah. But like there was a network basically of A&M guys that had graduated that were willing to help out. So they just talked me on the phone first. a few minutes and then wrote me a pretty nice rec letter but that was really it like I didn't spend time with those people or anything and this is what 2007 2008 2005 time frame was when I was

starting to put the package together so at this time there's so many people applying to be officers I mean there's like probably let's just say I think the number would probably be around a thousand I would imagine probably around a thousand people would be applying and it would be like 30 yeah slots yeah total is that probably 30 from the naval Academy. It'd probably be a little bit more than 30 total, but for OCS, Officer Candidate School, which was the program I would have to go through because I didn't go the Naval Academy. I wasn't in the Corps of Cadets. So I think the number was around like 15 people got selected that year. From the whole country. From the whole country. And you were one of them. Did you have to write an

essay? I did not have to write an essay. I had to write just a little bio about why I wanted to be in the program. Just hey, I wanted to serve. I wanted to lead. I wanted to give back pretty much all the generic things that they probably wanted to hear There was nothing that you think made you stand out. I think my PT scores probably made me stand out. How good were your PT scores? They were pretty good. They were pretty good. How many pull-ups did you do? I did like 32 pull-ups. I did a hundred and forty-seven push-ups. That's freaking good. Yeah, I did What was your run from mile and a half? My mile and a half run was not super impressive, but it was you know, it was competitive. It was part of it was probably a, uh, ride it around 8.59, I think. My swim was good.

I was a good, not, actually it was a horrible swimmer, but I was good at side stroke. All I did was side stroke. So my swim time was phenomenal for not being someone who grew up swimming. So I think my PT scores, uh,

were your grades in college good? My grades were good. You know, again, I wasn't taking engineering classes. Didn't you have to take, I think I took like some kind of a test for OCS. I don't,

to get into OCS. I don't think. I took a test. I took the ass fat a couple of times. Yes, I did. I took a test called the officer aptitude test. And I crushed that thing.

What was on it? It was mechanical stuff. Okay. It was planes coming at you and going away from you and where, is this plane coming towards you or going out for you? Mechanical like gears, which way is this thing going? A bunch of math problems, a bunch of English stuff. Yeah.

And I like crushed that thing. That does sound familiar. That does sound actually very familiar. Actually, I remember sitting in the recruiter's office in college station doing that exam that I did well on it. So you get picked up by something. That's, it's hard to get picked up for that program. I was, uh, sure.

I was, I mean, it was like the best day of my life when I got that letter, but I got picked up. Yeah. So you get picked up for that, but didn't you have to wait like a year or something? Yeah. So why was that? I had an injury. So I tore my shoulder when I was in early college years.

And then I had, it was a labor, um, tar. So nothing, nothing too traumatic, but I had to have it repaired. And they took for, to clear that through a medical board. And, you know, I'm super frustrated at the time because in my mind, I'm like, I have delayed. I didn't enlist. I delayed to go to college. I've been training. I'm ready to roll. I thought I was going to get picked up. And then like the day I graduated, freaking go in my mind, that's what was going to happen. And I, it was about a year, almost a year and a half before they cleared me of all that stuff. And it was exceptionally frustrating for me,

for one, because they have all my PT scores. Like, it's clearly not a debil. A debil, Inhibitating injury whatsoever. Like I crushed the PT portion of it, so I'm clearly physically able to do this job. So it was probably a blend of just how long it actually takes people to clear those medical boards. I doubt a doctor sat there and looked at my paperwork for a year and a half. It probably took him a year and a half to get to my paperwork in the giant stack of paperwork that he had to work through. So it was frustrating. I moved back to my hometown.

I taught actually for a year in our school system as my job, and then just kind of typical Navy, you know, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And then all of a sudden a call comes, it says, hey, you're leaving in two weeks basically for OCS. So I was very frustrated that I had to wait that long. But in the grand scheme of things, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me because you look at the trajectory of what it put me on as far as the deployments that I got to go on, the people I got to work for, and with, I met my wife because of this timeline. All of those things played out because of this. So I wouldn't change one thing about it.

All right. So you launched OCS. Yeah. How'd you like OCS? It was freaking miserable. I wanted to be the best I possibly could be. So I drove to OCS from Texas. And it was up in Rhode Island. So that's like an 18 or 19 hour drive. And the whole drive, I was reviewing all the materials they told us to come prepared. You know, all of your, the Sailors Creed, all of those things that you were going to have to recite. And I get there. And at the time, I've got this big, you know, Ford F-250, King Ranch diesel. I've got cowboy boots on. Like, I'm going to check into this place. And I'm just getting the once over from all of these cadets that are there kind of running the initial days. So I get there, you know, they're being super cool.

Like, oh, yeah, man, you know, it's great, blah, blah, blah. And then they take me into this hallway and then that's when, you know, the jig is up. That's when that's when you're theirs, basically. So these guys come busting out, these upperclassmen, like, they're yelling and screaming at me and stuff. And to me, I'm just like, this is a freaking joke, dude. Like, this is crazy to me that this is stressing people out. But, like, there was a couple of guys with me and a couple of girls with me and they were

freaked out by this. But, you know, previous life experiences and whatnot, like, I've been yelled at, plenty of time, so it wasn't that big of a deal. The process of OCS, not a huge fan of it, but I wouldn't change anything because my drill instructor, a guy named Yakovoni, gunnery sergeant, Yakovoni, like the classic Marine drill instructor, it's the freaking man. And I learned so much from that guy from a leadership perspective, but he also knew what I wanted to do, and he took a special interest in me because I wanted to go and do this combat. MOS, which is what all Marines care about, basically.

So he gave me a lot of additional privileges that other people going through did not get. Like what? I spent time in his office. I was the, you know, he made me the class president, basically. So at first I was really annoyed by that because I thought that meant that I would not have time to PT. But he was really putting me in that position so that he could have extra access with me and give me the things that I basically needed like extra time. So did I pay the man for being the

class president when the class screwed up? Yeah, all the time. But it also meant that we got to spend a lot of time together. So I'd go to his office and he would just talk to me about stuff. We sat down, we watched Band of Brothers together and he was walking me through like all these different leadership lessons learn from Band of Brothers. He was exceptionally hard on me. Like he was not, you know, he held me to a very high standard. And if the class screwed up, I paid the man for it big time. But by the end of it, you know, I was when I was the senior class on deck, if you will, I was the regimental commander. So I was a guy running basically all of OCS. And, you know, after the day was over, me, him and another couple of the Marine gunnies, like we'd go out in town

and have a drink and get dinner. And, you know, you got like Silver Star winners that are there, that are these gunnery sergeants. And they're just teaching me, just teaching me. So from that perspective, I freaking loved it. But from the day-to-day perspective, God, it was miserable. You know, you're using all these, they're teaching all these skills that in the SEAL teams, you're just never going to use. Like your mobility boards, your navigation boards, stuff like that. Yeah, I'm not good at math. So that stuff to me was, those moboys must have kicked your ass off. They kicked my butt. The moboards kicked my butt. And then the, the test that you have to go through to get in, like the physical test, I'm not flexible. And there's this weird dynamic.

at OCS where some of the gunnery sergeants really like each other and they have like a crew. And then other gunnery sergeants don't like this crew. And they look for the guys and gals that this crew likes and they try to harass them and like kick him out. So I was not flexible. So we were doing this like toe touching test and I couldn't freaking touch my toes. And I was about to get booted out of the program because I couldn't touch my toes. And yeah, it came over and basically saved me from that experience. Put his knee in your back.

He got you down there. Literally got me down there. So mobility boards and physical mobility were my two biggest weaknesses in OCS. But overall, the experience of getting to learn from him was awesome. And I met two of my best friends at OCS. There was two other guys that were three other guys that were going to go through the same program. So we were all either in the same class or within one class of each other. So we all moved out to course.

Ornado together and rented a place together as to go through Buds. So from that perspective, it was great. From a day-to-day, how was OCS perspective? It was just 13 weeks of being miserable, not eating enough food, getting out of shape compared to the shape that I went into it. Folding underwear. Folding, ironing underwear, all of the things that are going to make you very, I guess, a good sailor.

All right. So you graduate. and now you're out, you go with a roll, a few of your buddies to go out to buds? Roll the few of my buddies to go out to buds. One of them, I'm buddy Sam, is a Coronado kid, Wado Polo player, built like a refrigerator, just total stud. But he grew up in Coronado.

So, you know, he knew all the lay of the land. So he basically picked a good place for us to live down there in the Keys. Damn, yeah, yeah. And we actually rented from an older team guy as a captain in the Navy who his family was friends with. So we live there. Okay, I think I know who you're talking about. Yeah, we live there and went through training.

And it was just the best time it possibly could be. And one of my buddies who was going through training, James, his wife, is a two-time Olympian. So she was like our den mother. Like she was there living with us. Olympian in what? 800 meter. Okay. Total, total animal.

Just so fast. And I went on a couple runs with her. And it was just like the most embarrassing thing of all time. because she'd be having a conversation with me, and I can't even breathe. Like, I can't. I'm, like, sucking wind, and she's just conversational pace, basically.

But she was there in the house with us. So she'd go up to, like, the training center during the days and prep for the freaking Olympics, and then we'd all go to Buds and just get our teeth kicked in, basically. And how was your intro to Buds? It was awesome. So I was nervous at first because I've put so much time and energy into preparing for this and I was nervous about how I was going to stack up against everybody

else that was there because, you know, everyone in my mind did the exact same things to prepare. Everyone, you know, logged thousands of hours of running and swimming. Yeah, because you basically spent four years at Texas A&M preparing to go to Buds. Every single morning doing that. Every single morning preparing for Buds. So that's good preparation. It was outstanding. And the whole time, too, we're also doing different stuff.

for like water comfortabilities, things that you probably actually shouldn't do without supervision. But we were doing other things like drownproofing and stuff that got you more comfortable in the water. It was outstanding, outstanding prep. But in my mind, I was very nervous about how I was going to stack up with everybody else. And it was just fine. You know, I was up there at the top with a lot of things. I was never going to be the fastest runner. I never fell out of a run. Never. But I was never going to be the top of the pack. Like, we do a four mile time run, and I would be, by the time we would run back through the rock passage, I would just be getting past left and right by people. Just gas style.

Just falling apart. I would start. This is another crazy thing about the guys at A&M is they didn't, their running style was how I learned to run was they would just take off top speed right from the very beginning. Just go pre-fonte. They would just straight up, just go. And that would be the pace they would keep the entire time. So I would get a big lead taking off. And I don't think I got gassed coming back.

It was just that nobody else was actually trying that hard until the halfway mark. And then the guys that were really freak runners would just start to put on, you know, the five-minute pace and they would just fly past. Yeah. Yeah. Was when you were going through buds, are you looking, was there studs that you were, you know, everyone talks about the stud that quit, right? Oh, yeah. Did you have some of those? For sure.

There was kind of the usual characters. And if you went through buds, you know what I mean by the usual characters of the guys. that you think are just going to crush it. One, because they look like it, and two, because they tell you, they're just going to crush it. And then eventually those guys just go away. But you had, you know, D1 athletes that came through there and washed out. You had these guys that were second and third offenders trying to come through the program that knew everything there was to know about buds, and they would wash out.

So there was definitely, you know, people that you would line them up on day one and say, hey, come and pick who's going to make it. and probably most people would pick the guys that washed out would be my guess. That's pretty wild, isn't it? Yeah, it is. It's very wild. Now, there also was some legit athletes that did just fine. Yeah, yeah.

Some wrestlers, for whatever reason, crush it. And I think the reason is they're just used to being miserable all the time. Like, if you're a wrestler, your life is just miserable. Your practices are miserable. You're starving yourself all the time. You know, you're pushing yourself super hard. And Bud's just a case. study of can you be miserable for seven months. And some of those athletes, I think what it was

is they're very used to doing everything right, getting everything right. And then when they fail, it messes with them. They're not used to it. And they get on this kind of downward spiral. So a lot of guys washed out before Hell Week kicked off. And then during Hell Week, a lot of those other big strapping young lads were not there. And then some of the little guys who were just tough as nails and runners, Just tenacious. Just they're not going to freaking quit. We're there. What was how weak like for you?

Any big deal? How do you say this without seeming like, you know, kind of a egomaniac? But really the thought of hell week was much worse to me than hell week. Once we started and we got going, it was tough. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. But I think an advantage I had was I was an officer. So I'm not necessarily worried about my own individual performance. I'm worried about my boat's performance.

And if I pass a run, but my team doesn't pass a run, I still get freaking beat for it. So because I was more focused on the guys and I wasn't as focused on my own personal misery, I think it made it a little bit more bearable for me. The thing that I hated the most about buds was the cold. And Hell Week is just, you're just cold the entire time. That's right. You're a Texas boy. I'm telling the hell.

Cold water that doesn't exist. I would go to our lakes in Texas. Texas, the water temp would be like 91 degrees. So. Bro, I was used to, I was used to the water of Maine. No. I was surfing in Maine in the wintertime. No.

I got out to California. I was like, yo, this is easy. It was just no factor. No, it was if you said you can do a log PT or you can sit in the ocean for surf torture, I would do the log PT every single time. Most people would not say that. Most people would say surf. I honestly had like no opinion of things.

I was, I was sort of just an automaton of like, Hey, this is what we're doing. I kind of was like, you, let's go do it. I don't know. I was kind of having a good time. And for me,

Hellweek was the easiest part because it couldn't fail. Yeah. Because everything was hard. Yeah, there's no standard. Yeah, there's no standard. It's just keep going.

It's the standard just keep going, which I'm good at. I'm good to keep going. Like, I'm real good at that. But like, oh, the four mile time drawn was it hard for me. Those time swims, they were hard for me.

The obstacle course was hard for me. Everything else was like, I'm fighting the clock. And, but in Hellweek, I was like, Oh, I can't fail this boat's on head carried down to freaking I being back. Yeah. Cool.

I can keep going. Let's do this. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah. The obstacle course and all that stuff, I was good at all of those things. But the obstacle course I ended up always just getting beat for even, I was like the second best in my class at the obstacle course. The guy that was the best.

His name's Mike. He was a total stud. He was the guy that made Buzz look easy, basically. Total stud. But because we were number one and number one. Number two, for that particular evolution, what do the instructors always want to do, face off between Sean and Mike?

Mike destroyed me every single time. Like, unless he lawn darted off of the slide for life and broke something, like there was no chance I had in beating Mike. So we'd finish, and I would get beat because I lost to Mike, basically. That obstacle course is freaking awesome. It's amazing.

It is freaking awesome. Yeah. It is like a giant adult playground. Yeah. Yeah. His time going through there, I think the best I ever did was like 620 and he was consistently putting up like 5 30s. Dude, a guy in my class was getting like eight minute, eight minute, eight minute, whatever.

If you're all through buds, we're doing like our last obstacle course and he breaks out like a five. And the instructors are like, what the fuck is it? They're going crazy. Do it again. They go do it again. He's like, okay. He does again and gets like a four four or something like this. He was just sandbagging.

Yeah. For six months of buds, just sandbagging. Well, I don't know that I was sandbagging, but I had never put up a 630 before. And then one of the instructors said, hey, to the whole class, if you don't get underneath eight minutes, you're getting wet and sandy before the next evolution. Like, we don't care that it's a passing grade. Like, you're getting me basically. So I always was around that eight minute mark. So I was like, well, I really got to freaking turn it on.

And that's when I ran, you know, a 645 or something. And then from there on out, I was like, oh, I can I can go faster. basically. But Mike was always just smoking me. And I pulled them aside one day and I asked him. I was like, yo man, how are you? Like, what's your secret, man? Like, what are you doing differently? And he wasn't trying to be a prick about or anything, but he just said, hey, I don't actually even try until I get to the slide for life. And then I really just conserve energy and then put it on. And I'm like, bro, what? I'm 100% from the uneven bars, you know, the parallel bar. It's like, If I wasn't 100% from there, I'd be back at like eight minutes.

But his secret was he was in such good shape. He would not sandbag, but he would just jog the first piece and then save himself for the part where most guys gas out. And then he would just pour it on. I remember having to run it wet and sandy. And then all of our classes running are wet and sandy. I was thinking about that's one of the times I was thinking to myself, that this is not safe.

You know what I mean? Everything's just saying. He had slippery. I was like, this doesn't seem safe, but I guess that's what we're doing. So let's go. There was an evolution in hell week. We had to carry our boat to the option course. I'm like, you're talking about not safe.

Let's get that boat up to the slide for life. Track it down. Real quick, the slide for life, where in the obstacle course, where is that? Halfway. Yeah, halfway. And it's a tower that you have to climb. It's three levels. And by the time you get there, like you're, you're tired.

So this is where you really start to see people gas out. your forearms are tired. Your forearms are kind of smoke because it's all hanging on to stuff. It's all ropes and climbing. And so your forearms are kind of smoke when you get there. So Jeremy told me, and I get little bits and pieces

of the O-Course experience. Jeremy told me the, so Cake Nuts was going through and he kept jamming himself up, failing or whatever. And he was like, yeah, because his technique, he kept, like, bending his arms, like, trying to, like, you know, like, climb. You need to use more skeletal. So strength.

Yeah, he said, Brad, just keep your arms straight and you won't burn out your arms because you keep feeling on that part.

It's like, I don't know, some rope. I don't know. Some rope parts. So when you come down the slide, you climb up three stories

and then it's just a long rope that you slide down. You know, starting it, it goes from three stories to zero stories. Oh, so you're kind of hanging up. In the beginning,

you hang upside down and go. Wait, and that's the slide for life? Yeah, you're sliding down a rope. But the rope is kind of loose. So it's kind of like difficult.

go down. And your forearms can definitely get smoke. And people used to fall off of it. 30 feet, 25 feet, 20 feet. I mean, falling 20 feet sucks. Wait, what do you hit the sand? You hit sand. And now they have, they put a net under it for a while. And now they have like sand berm underneath it. So you're not falling. You used to be more legit. It's a motivator is really good. It's like when the gym, when all the gyms transition to the, uh, like soft kind of box jumps instead of the old school metal yeah yeah like look if people were starting to try things that they shouldn't have tried right like look you don't have a 36 inch box jump with a metal box like you're not trying that because there's repercussions there if you fail so

it's a little extra motivator but uh that oh course they had olympians when I was running the third phase of training we had Olympians come through because the Olympic training center is in san Diego and they couldn't make it and it was all the grip string. They're so specialized that you just have to be, you can't be an Olympic swimmer and expect to go through that obstacle course and crush it. Yeah, they're too special, but a gymnast would fly through it. I had a gymnast, I had a gymnast Olympic alternate in my class. Oh my. And he would fly through it. He, unfortunately for him, wasn't good in the water and failed some water evolution and didn't make it. But Olympic alternate in gymnastics. That's insane. Like going through the O course was a joke. They didn't even use his legs.

was he just, he was like literally nothing for him. Yeah. Any other, did you have any challenges in buds? Besides the cold? Cole was the big one. Drownproofing,

I was doing very well, you know, past all the evolutions and whatnot until drownproofing. And I was very confident about drownproofing until I actually did drownproofing. And then it was just like

absolute chaos underwater. It was the first time in my Bud's experience where I was like, this is, this is sketchy. Like this might be. Like you might not make it type thing?

I was thinking like, yo, that was a vastly different experience than what I was expecting. Went through, you know, practice all the procedures. I was very comfortable in the water. And then it was like eye opener. So next day show up and I managed to get it done the second day. But as most nervous I've ever been was I was very concerned about failing again the second day. But what about pool comp?

Um, pool comp. Sorry, did I say drum proofing? You said drum proof. Oh, okay. Yeah. No, drownproofing, we practiced it so much that it wasn't really that big of thing. Pool cop was the one where it was like, yo, man, this is a different experience, a very different experience than in my mind what we had built it up to be. I was talking to a kid trying to tell him that it was like, hey, you need to prep for pool comp.

Like, it's really hard. And he was kind of like, you know, I'm good in the water. Like, this is no factor. And then he didn't make it the first time, didn't make it the second time, third time. And I talked to him when he was done. And he was like, I go, I tried to tell you that was hard. And he said, nothing you could have told me would have explained what it was like. I was like, check.

There's not much of buds that I don't remember pretty vividly. I don't remember anything about the first pool comp other than just, other than it just being like a freaking tornado. Just mayhem. Absolute mayhem. Andy Stumpf was the instructor. Dude. I should have asked. Yeah.

You know, Andy passed. I want to say, I think he said it's either three or four. In the three years he was an instructor, he passed four people on pull comp. Well, I was not one of those. He's like, and they earned it. Yeah. Well, I was underwater for probably six minutes. And I get to the top.

And I'm just, I don't even know where I am at that point. And he's like, you know, you failed. And I said, okay, well, I wanted to get some pointers. And I said, okay, well, you know, what's, you know, could you, you know, specifically I could do better. He goes, it was so short that I don't even remember what went wrong. And I'm like, okay. Thanks.

I swear, I wish Andy could have been, if they just could have had a camera and a microphone on Andy for the three years that he was a second phase instructor, it would be the best TV show of all time, especially from a comedic perspective. Yeah. Yeah, it was one of those things where if you were in his line, you were trying to find a way to get out of his line.

Oh, yeah. He was talking to me about it. He's like, yeah. He goes, yeah. He says, you, he goes, you learn a lot. He was telling you about like the different hand. positions that people would have. He's like, you know, the mural,

I forget what it was, but it was something like, oh, when they started to curl, you'd be like, oh, he's about to bolt like he's done. And he could know how much pressure to put on them or take off of them. And yeah, so Andy Stumpf gets some. Yeah. That was the worst five minutes of my life up until that point in time

for sure. So first base, second phase, they liked our class. We had a lot of personality. You know, guys were hard workers, guys that were funny, which buds instructors There's always like classes that can just kind of embrace it. And then we got to third phase, and it was just, they did not like our class. So third, for whatever reason, third phase for us, where we're, you're really excited about

third phase because you're like, now I get to shoot. I get to blow stuff up. I get to do all of these cool things. I get to learn land warfare. Third phase for us was just like first phase, 2.0. Just beat down. And now you're on an island where there are no eyeballs watching you. So we spent more time getting beat than we did actually shooting.

Like we would go to the range. We'd probably get five minutes of shooting in. Someone would screw something up. And then we'd be down on the surf cell. Do you think you guys got cocky because they like the instructors like you in first and second phase? And you guys were kind of like, hey, we got this. And everyone loves us. It could be a part of it.

The personalities that were in third phase at the time, I think we're, had a lot to say with that. And there was one chief specifically who ended up being out there almost the entire time, not supposed to be. But just I think one time he had to cover for another. cell so we stayed out there. And then it just became the snowball thing. Like once the, so for those that don't know, there's different cells in third phase. So they rotate out. So the marksmanship cell will come out for the first two weeks and run the class for

two weeks on this island called San Clemente Island. Then they leave and the demo cell comes out. Well, the marksmanship cell is giving a turnover to the demo cell of how the class is doing. And if the turnover is these guys suck, then. the snowball starts happening. So it was in some ways worse than first face because no one was around to rain anything in. And you're almost over the mentality as a third phase student.

Like their beatings are always still going to be there in buds, but you're supposed to be learning things now. It was not necessarily the case for our third face class. Just learn how to be hard again. Yeah, there you go. So you graduate, graduate from buds, which is not really a graduation. They just give you a piece of paper now.

Yeah, literally a piece paper. Shake your hand on the grinder and send you along. And then it's off to SQT. SQT for officers at this point in time, we got what they call the officer role so that we could go to the junior officer training course, which I think we were maybe the second or third class to actually go through that because Lief stood that thing up, didn't he?

No, he didn't stand it up. He took it over. But yeah, this was now, what, this is 2009? 2008? 2008? Okay, yeah. So Leif had been in there for a while. Okay.

Because, but he didn't stand it up. Actually, who stood it up was Admiral Richards. Oh, okay. So this is like in way early. Okay. This is like 2000. But it wasn't, what Laif did was take it and turn it from it.

Hey, this is how you write evils. This is how you write Navy messages. Because you got to remember, well, this is probably what was like for you too. Like, you didn't have any experience in the Navy. You didn't know how to write a Navy message. You didn't know how to write an evaluation. You didn't do a bunch of Navy stuff. So they needed to do.

to give some of that Navy stuff to guys. And that's sort of what it started off with. And then they started like bringing in some guys that have been in combat. And then Leif actually was like, hey, we need to teach guys some leadership while they're going through this junior officer training course. So he did a great job of sort of pivoting that and setting up the FTXs and all that. Really good. Yeah.

So he was there for I think the first two weeks and then turned over with Mike Sorrelli took over. So we went through that. It was awesome. Learned a whole bunch of things. What was not awesome was we had some time to kill in between when Buds ended and when Jotsie started. And I think it was because there was a Christmas fell in between that transition. We did not have the class before us only had, I think, three or four officers in it that made it through. So they wanted to combine our two classes. So they needed to find something to fill a gap between our class ending. And then when the JOTC was supposed to start on the calendar. And at the time, there was a Green Beret major who was kind of augmenting the Jotsie cell with Mike Sorelli. And he convinced the powers that be that it would be a really good idea to send us to the Q course during that time frame. So we shipped out to Camp McCall in February and went through three weeks of the Q

course out there, which was... Which how much of the Q course is that? So it's right post selection. It's now when they're doing the small unit tactics, a portion of it. So in some ways, awesome, because you're getting taught. But he kind of sold, this major kind of sold the chain of command on the fact that it was this portion of the Q course was more of like a gentleman's course. You're going to be learning.

It's their selection. It's literally their selection. So we're out there digging foxholes at night, Camp McCall in February. It's, you know, 20 degrees outside. You don't get to wear any cool, cool guy worn. gear. You're in like your cotton freaking BDUs out there. Yeah, it was a unique experience. So we did that for three weeks was supposed to be the time frame. I actually jacked my knee up on a ruck one night and they had to send me back to get treated in San Diego. So I was only out there,

I think, for a week and a half of that. But during that time frame, we learned about ambushes. We learned about layups. We learned some good stuff. It was a crappy experience for sure. from a, from a standpoint of a guy who just graduated buds and you're like, cool, that's now behind me and now it's time to start learning how to actually be an operator and then get thrown right back into selection. And not only selection, but green beret selection where all the instructors are like, let's see what these, let's see what these Navy guys can offer us type thing. Um, not to do. Let's see what we can offer them. It's 100%. Let's see what they're all about. But the, the flip side of that was we did learn. We did learn. If you want to

to if you took the time and actually wanted to learn what they were telling us, then it was very valuable, very valuable. All right. So now you get done with SQT and you roll into Team 7. Team 7. Right into a platoon. Right into a platoon. So they had just got back from their deployment, like literally just got back.

So we rolled in and I ended up in Charlie Patoon, Seal Team 7. and the platoon chief and the OIC and there were awesome, awesome. Two people that actually genuinely cared about mentoring, actually cared about developing myself and the other squad commander. And the other squad commander had a big leg up on me because he was prior enlisted. So he had a lot of good experience. He was a team three guy, a guy named Rob, just a freak athlete too, a guy that's real easy to like, real easy for guys to want to follow,

good personality, good at everything he does. but we had people there that actually cared about investing in us. My first troop commander was Jack Carr, who sometimes troop commanders care about their squad commanders, and sometimes they don't. And Jack absolutely cared about us. And we were on training trips. You know, he'd pull us aside, talk to us,

and then also just watching how we conducted himself as a troop commander being very aggressive in a good way, going throughout training, aggressively maneuvering for us, get opportunities overseas was really set our platoon up for success. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. I remember putting, Jack is unfortunately for him or fortunately, depending on how you look

at it. I put him through as a platoon commander and then as a troop commander. Oh yeah. So he was stoked. Yeah. Yeah. We joke about that a lot. When we went through the, our first block of training was land warfare, which is the best place

on the planet basically now in California. But I was 25. I might have just turned 26. So I'm kind of in my prime on this, in my own mind, this young stud. And we got through with land warfare. And my knees weren't right for like a solid two weeks. Like I remember very distinctly going to church. And like you put the kneeler down post-land warfare.

And I kneeled down and I would legitimately think I could get back up afterwards. So I'm thinking like I'm looking at guys that have now done this. This is their eighth land warfare block. I'm like, how the hell are these guys? still walking. Yeah, but that was it. Yeah, that training was freaking awesome. So what were you learning?

Oh, man. What were the big like, so you do land warfare, mar ops, you know, urban. What big, what big lessons learned do you have from a leadership perspective? Yeah, one of the things was just letting the guys, letting the guys go. So I was the class, OIC for my SQT class,

about halfway through the class, they fired the OIC that was there and put me in charge. So I got an opportunity to run like a, you know, a platoon quote-un quote-unquote throughout SQT land warfare. But we're all students. We're all learning stuff. So it's not like anybody has an advantage over anybody else. So I was a little bit more hands-on and very quickly into a platoon, you really realize

that's not a solution for success, so we say. One, your guys are going to tell you back off and just let me do my thing. but just being comfortable making an initial call and then just letting them do what they do was huge. And I was very fortunate. I was in the squad with the platoon chief, and I was very fortunate that he, I was making calls, that he very easily could have just said, that's not your job, that's my job. Stop doing that. But he didn't do that.

He let me make calls. He let me learn. He didn't let his ego get in the way. He was very interested in teaching me and mentor. touring me. So a big piece was just giving guys direction and then letting them go and do that. And then... You mean decentralized command? Decentralized command would be a huge thing. Yeah. Decentralized command would be a huge thing.

And another piece was just the level of detail that goes into our planning was very impressive for me. I always liked that aspect of things. I like kind of nerding out on the planning style of the planning phase of the operation. But again, my only experience was SQT, which your plans aren't super robust. So seeing the point man disappear into his room and build routes where like every single thing was taken into account. Seeing your snipers, you know, picking the best places to be on the battlefield based off the weapon systems they're going to carry. Seeing your breaches prep the charges they need for that specific door and all those things, it was like, oh, the seal teams are everything that I was hoping that they would be. So the level of detail that goes into the

planning was awesome to see. And again, it wasn't one person doing that. It was everybody had their role. Everybody was contributing. And then at the end of the day, you put all those pieces together. I bet that coming into the SEAL teams in like 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, like coming into, if you're showing up in the SEAL teams during that time frame, It was probably for all you guys that showed up at that time,

it was probably like, yep, this is what I signed up for. I came in in 1991. And I joined the Navy in 1990. I got to Seal Team 1 in 1991. It was not what I thought it was going to be. Like, A, I thought I was going to Vietnam. But even just thinking that we would have like, you know, areas to train, thinking that guys would be like, hey, this is what we're doing,

that there would be this extreme, like, mission. Like, there wasn't, we weren't going to war. I mean, we're going to do exercises, you know, like it just wasn't, wasn't what you weren't sitting in a room with like, like occasionally a Vietnam guy would come in and talk to you. Occasionally like Roger Hayden would show up and be like, you know, you'd do some I ads and he'd debrief you. And you'd be like, oh, you know, that was awesome. But most of the time it's some guy that never done anything. Not to their, not's their fault, but they just, there's no war going on in 1984. No war going on in 1987.

Oh, yeah, sure. A few guys went to Grenada. I was a few guys went to Panama, but not any large numbers. And so if you had someone like that, it was like luck. Most of the guys never done anything. And again, no offense. And they did their best to pass down, but there just wasn't that attitude either because you knew you weren't going. You're going to go on deployment and go do exercises.

Yeah. So yeah, that, I can't, I can't imagine like for you, you know, Jack Carr's your, your, your, uh, troop chief or your troop commander. I know who your platoon chief was. I mean, like, you can't ask for a better platoon chief. Yeah. Like, these guys are focused. Yeah, that had to be freaking legit rolling in in 2010. At the, like, the war is on.

Yeah. It was amazing. That environment was pre for us since we went through Buds because every single instructor that was at Buds had multiple tours underneath their belt. Some of them, you know, were dealing with injuries that it had just come off the battlefield and they had put them at Buds. So for us, like the realization, of the second that you get to a SEAL team, odds are you're going overseas into a combat zone.

Now, there's a couple of a to tunes that don't. There's a couple of tunes that go to the Philippines and, you know, man that mission, but the odds were you were going overseas. So when you get into the training aspect now of going through our unit level training blocks and prepping, it's utmost focused because it's real. Everybody knows that the second that training's over with and you load the bird up, you're going to some place where you're going to get after it. Yeah, I remember like I I would be teaching urban and I'd see like a guy in the street like standing in the middle of the street like a new guy like just walking across the street or stand in the middle and I would get like a knot in my stomach. I'd feel sick because I'd be thinking like this guy's going to get shot like that's and that's just me right and you had a whole I had a whole staff of guys that were thinking that way. So yeah, this was this was like a kind of a really good time to be for you to be a young junior.

your officer and plus you're older you know you're mature you're you're what did you say you were 25 almost 26 this point time I was probably 26 yeah so you're just you're just in the perfect spot man it was amazing and I think probably the biggest lesson learned for me going through that initial training training blocks was having high standard and then our platoon commander and our platoon chief they had exceptionally high standards and if we didn't get something right we weren't going to bed like We were staying out there and getting it done. And, you know, one night, specifically just to kind of give an example of that is you were back on San Clemente Island going through the urban training. And we had just wrapped up the urban training and now we're transitioning to the maritime operation.

So boats in the water coming in, doing your OTB over the beach type preparation, that type of stuff. And big waves out there at the time of year that we were out there. And we had a couple of guys who just didn't prep their rucksacks properly and they couldn't get through the surf zone. and our platoon chief loss is mine. And we spent the entire night doing nothing but swimming out past the surf, coming back in and swimming out past the surf. And at the time, it was a miserable experience. But the next day, you're like, there's a reason why we did that. We failed.

He has a higher standard. And by the way, he was there with us swimming through. It wasn't like he was on the beach, you know, giving us pointers with a bullhorn. He was leading us through the surf zone again and again and again. And so that mentality of you're going to do it until it's right, layered on with the fact of now we truly understand why we're doing it until it's right. Because overseas, you only get one chance to get it right. So probably the biggest lessons learned was when you hold a high standard,

which our leadership absolutely held high standards, guys don't complain about it. Guys like it. Guys love it. Guys enjoy being a part of a platoon like that. Yep. And that's a perfect example of taking care of your people. and not misconstruing, taking care of your people

to be, oh, I'm going to let my guys get off easy. Oh, hey, you know, it's no big deal if a couple guys can't get through the surf zone. It's no big deal. We still need to get some sleep tonight. It's like, no, actually, what's most important is you know how to do your job and you're ready. So where'd you guys end up going on appointment?

It was all over the place for a while because we were supposed to go to Iraq. And then we were going to go to this new place called the crisis response element. And then we were going to go back to Iraq. And then about a month before we actually deployed, we found out we were going to Afghanistan, which, of course, everybody was super fired up about. Because at that point in time, Iraq was more or less shutting down, and Afghanistan was still rocking and rolling. So the unique thing

about this deployment is, in order to get, they just switched the concept up of how they wanted to deploy the seal platoons into this. They went away from a regionalized perspective, where platoons were going to only deploy to certain regions. But what that meant was the cycle of deploying platoons was now going to be off. And in order to get all the platoons, all the SEAL teams, I should say back into a cycle where it's predictable deployments, Seal Team 7 and whatever our counterpart on the East Coast was, which I think was Seal Team 10, had to do an 11-month deployment in order to synchronize the schedule for the rest of the community. Awesome. So we get to go to Afghanistan and we get to spend almost twice the time in Afghanistan.

And a unique thing about this was we were doing a new mission set over there that was called Village Stability Operations. And the theory behind Village Stability Operations was Afghanistan is a wild place. There's tribes all over the place. There's different villages that don't even know that a central government exists. There's just all this tribal influence that goes on. and they wanted to be able to link all of these tribes together, basically, into one kind of cohesive central government. And how they wanted to do this was by embedding special operations units inside these villages, training up local police forces that would eventually be able to provide their own security once U.S. forces pulled out so that Taliban and insurgents wouldn't just flood back into the region, the second that America pulled out, basically. So our job was going to be to embed in this village that no Americans had been in.

And step one was clear white space. And that's kind of military terminology for there's bad guys in this area. The first thing you need to do is get rid of them. Get them out of this area. Because if you don't, you're not going to be able to actually dedicate time to training locals to be policemen because you're just going to be fighting all the time. So step one was clear all the bad guys out. Step two was build this localized police force, train them.

And then step three was basically transition over to giving them, tie them, tying all these villages into a provincial government. And the provincial government is now tied into the centralized government. So our platoon, and I think there was two platoons from Team 7 that were doing that mission. Our platoons and the SEAL platoons from SEAL Team 10 were the first SEAL platoons to do this mission. There was different varying levels of excitement about doing this mission. what do seals normally do, at least what do we think we do when we go overseas, direct action. We're just going to find a bad guy, we're going to kick the door down, and we're going to grab them or do something else to him, basically.

This was not this mission, on its face. This mission was a by-with and through mission. So there was the opportunity for guys to not be very excited about doing this mission, but because we had good leaders and they really understood all the opportunity that was layered inside of that mission and all the freedom that was layered inside of that mission, they did a very good job of giving us the why behind things. Hey, we're going to Afghanistan. Here's the mission that we're tasked with.

Here's why that's a good thing. Here's what this affords us the ability to do as a platoon. So there were platoons that did that mission that were not excited about that because you're training people. But our leadership was very creative. They really understood the mission, which went a long way. And they did a really good job of not lying to us about stuff, but being honest and just painting a picture of all of the things that we could accomplish if we played our cards right on that mission. And it was phenomenal.

I mean, within two weeks of being in country in Afghanistan, we loaded up a convoy. We drove 300 miles away from the nearest big American base, which was Missouri Sharif up in northern Afghanistan. And we embedded in a village in the middle of nowhere. Like literally night one was circle the wagons. Like park your vehicles in a circle, stand watch, and you're just living basically out of your vehicles as you're building up this little fob in the middle of nowhere. And then we spent the next 11 months just trying to build relationships with different tribes, different locals, and then clearing white space out. And definitely some, probably the biggest stark contrast for me was the perception of what, we were trying to accomplish versus the reality on the ground over there.

So the mission is you want to build this infrastructure where you can tie these villages into the central government. And like that's going to be a really good thing for them, right? Well, guess what? None of those villages wanted. They wanted half of them didn't even know there was a central government. Yeah. They didn't know this guy Karzai, who was the president, existed.

They're living basically almost like in biblical times out there where it's them, their family, in this village, they're never going to leave that village. They're hurting, they're growing crops. They're going to live. They're going to die there. And everything is run internally to that village. So part of this mission was we had to conduct all of these key leader engagements, which means, you know, let's say Echo is a tribal leader.

We're going to go and do a patrol into that person's village. And we're going to arrange a meeting where we sit down with this tribal leader and we explain to them why we're here as a member. All the good things that we want to do for you as Americans. So we would sit down in these KLEs and sometimes it was my platoon commander doing them. Sometimes it was my platoon chief and sometimes it was me just depending upon who was available that day. And my initial take was, well, I'm just going to tell them all the great reasons about why we're here. You know, we're going to tie you guys into the central government and it's going to bring peace and stability and all these things.

And they didn't want any part of that. And they would basically just turn a blind eye or just boot us out of the. the village. So I had to change my tactic. So we would have these KLEs and, you know, the new tactic that I chose was, you know, just tell them why we're really there and see how that goes. We're really here because people that your country was harboring flew planes into buildings in my country and killed a lot of my countrymen and we're here to find them. And guess what? That resonated with every single one of those tribal elders because that sense of honor and revenge is built into a part of their culture,

and we finally started to get some traction. The central government piece, the only people that cared about that were people who realized they could line their pockets by being involved with that. All the other villages, they were down to support

when they understood that we were there for basically revenge sake. Yeah, that's wild. And one of the big lessons learned, I think, from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan is we can't try and impose our way of life our values and our ideas on what they're on the normal people there.

And their own government can't do that either, by the way. Like, the people are going to be who the people are. And if you're going to try and do it, it takes generations to do. It takes literal generations to change the way people think. And if you want to take that kind of effort, then okay, you can do that. But it's going to be an occupation where you're going to have to say, set things up and run things with a pretty stern hand. But you know, you can't just present these ideas and people go,

oh, okay, cool, your way of life looks better than ours. They just doesn't work. So don't try that. How was like, what was the enemy contact like where you're on this long deployment? Yeah. At first, outstanding from our perspective, right? So we, when you go and you embed in one of these villages,

it's just a matter of time. Like any VSO site that we went and talked to before, or we were in contact with them, before we started to do this mission, all said the same thing. You're going to embed out there. You're going to build up your little fob, and then they're going to come. They're going to come, and they're going to try to push you out of this fob. They're going to try to kill all of you and basically take that terrain back. So within about two weeks of us embedding, it might have been three weeks of us embedding.

We had a big coordinated base attack that went down on our tiny little fob. You say base, like most people are thinking a base. We're talking, I don't even know if we were 100 square meters of terrain that we possessed, that our camp was, but we had these two terrain features right to our right and our left, and we had built these OPs up there where they were constantly manned 24-7, heavy weapons, standoff weapon systems, all that good stuff. So middle of the day, all of a sudden rounds start coming in inside of the camp. Mortars start coming in, rockets start coming in.

And our camp was on the far side of a wadi, which a wadi, for those that don't know, was basically a dry riverbed. And on the backside of the wadi was all this high ground because it's Afghanistan. It was basically the beginning foothills of a mountain range. And they were launching this attack from the backside of those mountains, and it was probably 700, 800 meters. So they were just lobbing stuff in. And as soon as it happened, it was very clear that my platoon chief had thought through

this exact scenario because there was zero hesitation on the call. It was load up, we're going, and we're going to take the high ground away from those guys right now. Unfortunately for me, I got stuck back on the fob, man in the radio, because timing wise, my platoon commander was at one of these big KLEs somewhere else. So my chief pulls me aside as rounds are coming in and he's like, hey man, I'm sorry, but you have to stay here and you have to keep that radio contact going with higher headquarters so they know what's going on. So my job during that was basically communicate and then coordinate our standoff weapon systems, why they maneuvered out through this wadi and then basically popped up on the high ground where the Taliban was not expecting them to do. They were expecting us

to just sit inside of this base and try to slug it out with them. And it was very evident that they were not prepared to get outflanked like that because they, our guys pushed them right off the high ground, they got them on the back slope of this mountain range. There was a vineyard. And they all hunkered down in this vineyard. And then there was a B-1 flying overhead. And we just rained 1,000-pounders and 500-pounders, 2,000-pounders and 500-pounders right on top of them as our guys were pinning them down. And the whole thing was over in probably an hour, hour and a half. And that kind of set the initial tone for deployment. And then he was an 11-month deployment. You're going through seasons. You're going through summer. You're going through fall. You're going through winter. The fighting season in

Afghanistan is real. April starts the fighting season because all the snow melt, people can move around. And then by about November, when the first snow comes, the fighting season is basically over. So eight months of that 11 months was very kinetic, was an awesome time. And then the last couple of months were basically dedicated to training more or less because no one was out. No one was, and there really just wasn't that much of them left in our area because we had done our job and cleared them all out. And built up the police force to where now they had presences

inside of all these different villages and they were denying terrain to the insurgents. What were your big lessons learned off that deployment? Big lesson learned, one was, and I didn't really probably fully, take advantage of this or appreciate this. But my platoon commander gave me so much freedom on that deployment. And we butted heads a little bit during ULT, but he always looked out for me. He always had my back. And on that deployment, he gave me a whole lot of freedom to make some mistakes too. And I made

some mistakes that could have cost the platoon some ability to maneuver with higher headquarters. And he took care of it for me. And he didn't, you know, beat me over the head. for it. He just pulled me aside and kind of talk to me about, hey, think about this, don't think about that. You know, this is what you need to be looking at from a perspective because it's not just the fun of running around and trying to chase down the enemy. Like we have higher headquarters that you have to appease and you have to have relationships with them as well. So one was just, when I was a platoon commander, trying to mimic that freedom to the guys that I was leading. So from a professional standpoint, just giving your guys that freedom.

A personal one for me was just how quickly complacency can creep in, over an 11-month deployment especially. So for us, IEDs was a huge worry in this area. And it was a very effective weapon system for the enemy, very low cost. And within three weeks of embedding, we were doing a convoy. And it was nothing crazy. It was just a resupply convoy to go pick up some more supply. because again, we were living in the middle of freaking nowhere. And we were driving down a road that we've driven down a dozen times.

My vehicle was a third vehicle in that convoy. And we hit a pressure plate and it blew our vehicle off the road, blew the rear part of it out. It was a matte V is what they call it. So it's a mine resistant vehicle. It was designed to basically be able to take a blast. Yeah, thankfully. Better than a Humvee, right?

Humvee, flat bottom. Blast hits it. All that energy gets dispersed right to everybody that's inside. of it, really bad day. The Matt V has a V-shaped hole, so when the blast goes off, it kind of redirects a lot of that blast energy, and we were in one of those, and luckily for us, we hit it with a back wheel, so most of the energy was directed towards the back end of the vehicle. It blew the back axle off. It pushed us off of the road, but more or less everybody on the inside was just fine. Wasn't an ambush or anything like that. I think they just laid it there

and left. So within three weeks of being in country, I'd experience an ID, and now I'm paranoid of IDs. I'm dialed in. Like, I don't want that experience again. We're there for 11 months. You're doing patrols every single day. Complacency starts to creep back in. You start to pay a little bit less attention on your patrols to where you're stepping. When you're dismounting from your vehicle, doing, you know, your looks to make sure things are going on. You're starting to get a little complacent. About halfway through the deployment, we had basically done all we could do from our little camp. We had cleared all the white space out of there, and there was one village left in our area that was like the Taliban stronghold. So what we decided to do was embed in that village.

We were going to do a big clearance operation, clear them out of that village, and then embed in that village and make their stronghold our next VSO site. And if we did that, it was basically checkmate for the region. Like we now control all of the region. So it was a big movement to get everything we needed to do another embed down there and also a clearance operation at the exact same time. And the area that we chose to make our HQ, you know, you're picking it off of a map, basically, of satellite imagery. And there was a schoolhouse that America had built. It was like the only concrete building in the area. And we had built it, I think, in 2004. Well, the second that we left that area. The Taliban just made it their HQ building, no more school. And right before we went

and did the clearance operation, we dropped a couple of J-Dams on that building to clear everybody out of there. So we're like, this is the place we're going to embed. So my portion of this operation was I was leading the embed team. So the clearance was going to go ahead and then I was going to follow right behind and we were going to seize that ground and basically try to fortify it as quickly as we possibly could and get ready to repel enemy attacks. So it's about month six. We get there, and when we get there, there's a big kind of open area, not necessarily a field, but just kind of a, probably an old playground,

I would imagine right in front of the school. And we were told that it had already been cleared of IEDs. So we get there, I'm in charge, I'm not thinking too much about the IED threat, because Army had come through with our guys and their EOD had cleared that in entire area. So my thing at this point was speed. We have to get the weapon system set up. We have to get some of our barriers set up to protect us that night when we know they're going to do a counter attack. So hey, it's cleared of IDs. Let's get rocking and rolling. Guys are starting to come in through the side of the building and I'm trying to make communications with my platoon chief and my

platoon commander and let them know we've reached the schoolhouse and we're starting the embed, but I don't have SATCOM. It's just not working. So I I break out my sat phone, which almost always works, and I'm trying to get signal, and I'm just doing basically railroad tracks in this front open space in front of the school, trying to get a place that gets signal. And I finally get the signal. And I can't sit still for more than three seconds anyway. So, like, as I'm talking, I'm walking around this area that's out front. And I finally let them know what's up, hey, we're here. And then we start the big movement. I bring all the logistical trucks in. start actually offloading the weapon systems and all the things we're going to need.

About 10 minutes into that, and it was one of our local partner forces, it was his country, stepped on a daisy-chained IED, it was two 82-millimeter motors, blew both of his legs off. Our two EOD guys, my Navy EOD guys were right on his right side, right on his left side, and they were miraculously uninjured. But our medic goes over there, our SEAL medic, and start. starts patching this guy up, gets the turnicets on, you know, gets the fentanylinum, and then we start to come up with the plan to call in the HLZ. My EOD guys, because now there's an active IED threat, they clear a path to the HLZ,

which is only 100 meters away from this building. In that 100 meters, they found six more IEDs. Over the next 24-hour period, they found a total of 16 IEDs right in that area that I was walking around in, not paying attention to whatsoever. So the reality of it was complacency had creeped in at that point in deployment. And even though I had been told it had been cleared before, the right call would have been to get my guys back in there and clear it. But I wasn't worried about that. I was worried about other things. So complacency is a real thing. And you've got to keep watch on it at all times. All right. So you come back from that deployment.

and now you're rolling in. Did you go into another like squad commander or do you go right to platoon commander? I wouldn't ride to platoon commander. So I was very fortunate in myself and two other guys that were squad commanders at the team, asked to stay at the team and go right into a platoon commander spot. And we were given the opportunity to do it. So very, very rare. I mean, it's unheard of nowadays because of the officer pipeline that we have.

But back then, a couple of guys would get the opportunity to stay. back and I was one of the fortunate three that got to to stay back and do another platoon. And how did you feel in this workup and everything? My expectations were very high. We did really well going through our first workup. And things just kind of made sense to me. And I think a lot of that was the mentorship that I received from my platoon commander, my platoon chief. There wasn't one area where I felt like I really had some significant struggles. Like land warfare made sense to me. Assaults made sense to me. The Mar-Ops piece made sense to me. So I was expecting to go into ULT or our training cycle and just

completely blow it out of the water, do phenomenal. And part of the reason is I've been very fortunate throughout my career to be teamed up with very solid senior enlisted. And that was the case in this one, my platoon commander tour as well. My platoon chief, a guy named Brian, phenomenal. He's still in. Like awesome tactician. Super humble guy. Kind of guy that when he speaks, everyone stops and listens to what he has to say, tons of experience. My LPO, who's the second highest ranking enlisted person inside of the platoon, was the Warcom Sailor of the year, just squared away at everything he did. And my fire team leaders were good to go. I had a bunch of new guys. So this was a 21 person, 21 man platoon. And of that 13 of my guys were new guys. So

there's some challenges there, but also there's opportunity there. It means that we can raise them the right way we can show them the things that are important. So I'm thinking we're just going to go through this training and just completely destroy it. And our first block, again, is land warfare, which I love starting with land warfare because it shows you exactly what you're working with from a platoon standpoint, shows you who you can go to, who's going to be there, who's willing to put in the work, all that stuff. So we get there. I feel very confident at land warfare. So I'm thinking we're just going to run through this training, and it's not. what was happening. And it was very frustrating. We were not doing very well during the land warfare

block. And after about the end of week two, I'm kind of at my wits in here and I can't really figure out what the heck is going on. And very fortunately for me, my first platoon chief is now running that land warfare block. So he senses the frustration. And again, you know, he is very involved in mentoring me throughout my entire career. And he pulls me aside after one of our our afternoons of doing these immediate action drills out in the desert where things are just not going well. And he's like, hey, so what's the deal? And I didn't have an answer. I was just so frustrated. I could not figure it out. I was like, I don't know. Like, I feel like I'm making good calls. I just can't, like, we're just not clicking. And he's like, well, you're trying to control too much.

And I was taken back. I'm like, well, what do you mean? I'm trying to control too. much. And he's like, you're not letting your fire team leaders, you know, make mistakes. You're not letting them take charge of stuff. Like you're, you see a mistake, what could potentially be a mistake, and you're jumping in and fixing it. And I'm like, well, of course, of course I'm jumping in and fixing it. Like I'm the, I'm the platoon commander. I'm responsible for everything that's going on in this platoon. And, you know, in my mind, I didn't tell him this, but in my mind, I'm like, well, if I, if we make mistakes, the platoon looks bad. And if the platoon looks bad, I look bad. So I'm trying to fix all these mistakes and really what I'm doing

is I'm just hamstringing our entire platoon. And centralized command. Very centralized. Even though I told you my last platoon, I learned all about the value of decentralized command. But then you have to counter that with the ego that's like, I want to look good. Yes. And I 100% did. Like I wanted our platoon to be the best platoon. I wanted to be the best platoon commander. Like I had, you know, my personal goals here, or two, but really I wanted the platoon to succeed and we weren't succeeding. And I was the reason. And he said, well, hey, and this was probably not evident to me at this point in time either, because again, I only been in the community for two and a half years at this point, and I'm in a leadership position now. And he said, well, why do you think we come out here and train? And I honestly

didn't know the answer to that. I was like, well, to prepare for deployment. He's like, and what else? I'm like, to learn. And he's like, yeah. And he's like, well, how do you learn? He's like, you make mistakes, man. Like your guys are here. No one in your platoon has ever been in the position that are in right now. You've never been a platoon commander.

Your platoon chief, as awesome as he is, has never been a platoon chief. Your fire team leaders have never been fire team leaders. You're all here to learn. And part of that is guys are going to make mistakes. And we make mistakes here so that we don't make mistakes overseas. and by you stepping in every time you are about to see a mistake or think you are about to witness a mistake, you're cutting off all this learning and they're basically being trained. My guys are basically being trained to not do anything because LT will make the calls. And you can't see

everything. Zero percent. You can't control everybody. And so even though, and the more they think you're going to control them and then you can't or they're waiting and it just is a disaster. Yeah, absolute disaster. And that was, Textbook, what was going on inside of this unit level training block. But fortunately, for me, it was our first block. So I was able to course correct and use decentralized command and start giving the guys the room to make decisions. And guess what? When they made decisions, 90% of the time, they made awesome decisions.

10% of the time, just like I would do, 10% of the time, if not more, I made bad decisions. And then we would debrief. The instructors would tell us the things that went right, the things that went wrong. We'd fix them. and they wouldn't happen again. So by the time, we were out of unit level training, we were doing a phenomenal, phenomenal job, totally prepared for deployment. And fire team leaders were rocking and rolling.

LPO and chief were never the thing that any of us were worried about. We knew they were going to be awesome. But fire team leaders are rock and rolling, and my new guys, because we had so many of them, they were like the backbone of the platoon. You know, they were running stuff, they were learning, and we were totally prep for deployment. And then where'd you guys go on deployment? Unfortunately, we did not go back to Afghanistan and we did not go back to Iraq. I think actually Iraq shut down the tail end of our very, my first deployment.

So we went to a place called the Crisis Response Element or the Cree for short. And that's a place in the Middle East that they stood up to basically be a break glass in case of emergency type scenario. We'll have two platoons with all this different capability. there was a boat team that was there. There was TF160th was there. So they were basically putting all these assets in this central location in the Middle East in case another Benghazi happened,

which had happened the year prior to our deployment. So what everybody told you about the Cree was, it's a great opportunity. Like you're going to go there and you're going to be like the force of choice if any contingencies happen. But the reality is nothing ever happened. So guys would go over there

and they would spend six months on this little base, and they would have to try to find a way to make themselves relevant. And they really couldn't because there was guys in Afghanistan that were doing their thing, and there was just not a lot to do besides train, and every now and then you would go on maybe if you're lucky, one of these, what they call, joint combined exchange for trainings or J-SET. And that basically means we would go to, let's say, Lebanon, and we would work with the Lebanese seals.

And it wasn't war, but at least you were getting to go someplace cool and do some training. That was like the highlight of the Kree tour. So nobody was really excited about going to the Kree and not going to Afghanistan, but we had a great platoon with great dynamics. And very similar to the lessons I learned from my platoon leadership in Afghanistan, just be honest with the guys. Odds are we're not going to do anything. But we're all going to be together for six months. We're going to train hard. We're going to improve our skills while we're here.

We're going to be ready in case something does happen. And at the end of the day, we'll have a good time because we're with each other. And that's really all that matters is we're all here hanging out, getting better together. So that's kind of the environment that we rolled into. But you guys actually ended up doing a pretty significant support for another operation that was going down. We did. We did. And that was definitely the highlight of that tour.

And the way that we were able to support that was through a relationship. So our troop commander had augmented this other command a couple of times in his career. And when we got into theater, he reached out to him. And at the time, that particular command, which was a tier one unit, kind of a deploy for purpose unit, they were using Army Rangers as their response force, if you will. So they would go and conduct an operation. And during the planning cycle, if they needed to call somebody for, help, it was the Army Rangers basically that they would call and they were building them into their

plan. So he just called them up and said, hey, I've got two platoons of seals sitting right here in this place. What do you think about using them as your support instead of the Army Rangers? And they were all about it. No knock on the Army Rangers whatsoever. But we all went through the same initial selection pipeline. We speak a common language. So they were very comfortable with that. So because the troop commander reached out, made a phone call and leveraged that relationship. he had all of a sudden we had an opportunity to potentially go and get some work. So the unfortunate thing was not everybody got to go down there and support. And even maybe not unfortunate, but what was weird was they didn't want to send just a platoon down there either because they didn't

need 21 people. So they wanted to send about 12 people down there and they chose guys from both platoon. So it wasn't like, hey, Jocko, take your platoon down there. It was, hey, we're just going to pick 12 people and we're going to send them down there. The initial idea was rotate those 12 people through. But if you put yourself into the mindset of the people that you're supporting, you don't want that. You want the same 12 people the entire time so that you're getting to know each other and know how you operate. So we ended up being down in Africa for about four and a half months of that deployment. And there was lots of different operations that they were trying to tee up.

And the one that got approved was actually the one. that probably had hands down like the highest risk attached to it, which blew my mind. Like the other ones kind of seemed relatively easy to go and accomplished. And for some reason, this is the one that got approved. So we were what they call the IRF or immediate response force. And, you know, there's different lingo for response forces. And I don't know that this is doctrine, but basically the way that they described it was QRF means you're like 15 minutes out type thing.

IRF is you're literally right there. like you're staged ready to go on the X with them, and if something goes wrong, you're there to support. So we were there IRF, and it was a over-the-beach operation, which was phenomenal for us because because we were deploying to the Cree, a big portion of our training was focused on maritime operations and over-the-beach operations. So we had prepared extensively for over-the-beach operations, and now we were getting the opportunity to go and actually support, which most people would probably think, well, seals do OTPs all the time,

but the reality is we have not because we've been engaged in conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. So this was one of only two over-the-beach operations that had happened, I think, in like the last 15 years and we were going to get to be part of it. And OTPs are not easy.

There's a lot that can go wrong. I did three shipboard deployments when I was an enlisted seal, or no, two as an enlisted seal, one as an officer. So I've done like the so many OTB ops. It's totally ridiculous. When you're doing an ARG platoon, every op we would do would be an OTB.

Like we just go OTB all the time. It was, and we got really good at a core group of guys. We just did back-to-back ARG platoons. And so we were really good at it. And it is something that you really do legitimately have to like practice and rehearse. Like if you don't practice a foot patrol, you know, worst case scenario, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, You know, you get a half an hour lost and you've got to walk back or you don't practice. Well, dives, you also need to practice.

But even diving is like you're kind of contained. Like you have your rig. You have your swim buddy. You go, you know, miss the target. Worst case scenario you miss the target. You swim back to the extract point. Man, if you screw up OTB, like it's a disaster. Like boats are sinking.

Weapons are getting lost. People are getting stranded. It's just a total disaster. So you have to be. good at it. It takes some time to get proficient. And which running the training command, you see it, even in training, like guys are losing weapons in training. Guys are, you know, crashing boats in training, even in a very controlled environment. So now you're talking about a very complex operation just in what they were looking to accomplish in grabbing this one particular

individual off of a beach in Somalia. And now you're layering on the most complex thing on the planet, which is the ocean and all the different things that can possibly, go wrong with that. And surprise, surprise. If it could have gone wrong, it went wrong on this operation. And I can't get into too much of the detail of it. But there was phases to the operation. So you can't bring in a big Navy ship really close to shore because people know you're there now. So you keep the big ship way off the shore and then you launch in our smaller fastboats. You can't bring those fast boats in too close because they're big and loud and people can hear them. So you have to stop the fast boats at a certain level, and that's when you launch the small boats, the zodiacs.

And then you bring the zodiacs into a certain level, to a certain distance, and then typically guys are swimming in because it's dead quiet. So the plan was launch the fast boats to a certain point, then launch the small boats to a certain point, and then the assault force would swim in. We would stay about 100 meters off the beach in our little zodiacs and be prepared to support the operation. Everything goes great. All we're doing is we're staying right there and we're picking them up as they come back out through the surf zone in a perfect world. So we launch the fastboats and one of them hits a crab pot out in the middle of freaking nowhere in whatever sea. We're driving around in right now. And it just happens to be the command and control boat. So the ground force commander

is inside. And the ground force commander was the squadron commander of this. unit is in this boat that goes down. So obviously initial wrench in the in the in the in the operation right there. One of the boat guys, the guys that's driving around the SWIC operator has to jump in in in the water at nighttime and literally pull the prop off and put a new prop on to get this boat back up and running. While that's happening, the assault force is swimming in and by the time that boat got back up and running they were already embroiled in a massive firefighter. on that target. So before guys even got to the shore, there was already things that were going wrong. So the intelligence leading up to this was that it was supposed to be a pretty permissive

target, that this person was an al-Shabaab operations facilitator. He was now retired, which I don't know what al-Shabaab's retirement package looks like, but they gave this dude allegedly a little chateau on the beach to live in. And he was definitely not retired. He was definitely still fully in the game. So the assault force tries to get him out, and they're just receiving massive contact from all over the place. They're exchanging fire. They're trying to find different ways to get inside this building, and they just can't do it. Because we're not at war with Somalia, we can't actually bring a whole lot of firepower to bear.

So there's no overhead air support, which is very rare for U.S. forces to go into an area where they can't drop bombs to mitigate risk. So the way that you typically from a risk mitigation standpoint get to be able to send 20 guys deep behind enemy lines as you've got a lot of assets overhead that can keep bad guys at bay. Well, there was none of that. So it was kind of like the Black Hawk Down scenario where when the word goes out in Somalia that people are here that they don't like, like they rally the freaking troops. And there was multiple different groups of armed males making their way towards this target. While that's going on, we get the call to go lock down the beach and make sure that the beach is secure so that when the assault force comes off, they don't have to swim. They can just load up and we can get out of there because things are getting sporty pretty quick. So on the way in, more issues start to happen.

Boats, we have four boats with us, the small zodiac boats, the rubber boats, and they're all just dying in the surf zone on the way in. and come to find out the engines that they had in theater at the time that we were using, where these new electronic, what do you call, electronic, not carburetors, but electronic ignition engines. So they had this safety feature on it where if it sucked in sand into the engine, it would kill the engine so you weren't cycling that sand through the engine and burning it out. Well, you're doing an over-the-beach operation in Somalia. You're going to hit sand. You're going to hit some sand.

So all the boats are dying Guys are jumping out to try to keep the boats from tipping over in the surf zone because the worst thing that can happen is your boat Turned sideways and it takes a 10-inch wave to put that boat over completely So guys are jumping in trying to keep the boats in the right direction We're trying to get the boats to the beach and at this time the assault force is you know Coming off of that target and we're starting to receive Some pretty significant you know machine gun fire I'm not convinced they knew again

exactly where we were, but I'm convinced that they knew we were coming from the beach somewhere. So they were basically just trying to spray the beach down. So guys are coming off. We're trying to load guys up. We're trying to get through the Zurf zone. The boat keeps dying. Some boats have 15, 16 people in them, which they're not meant to have 16 people in them. Some boats have three people in them. You've got jet skis that are coming in trying to pick guys up. It was just pandemonium. But the professionalism of the guys that were on the target was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. With all that chaos, with all the contingencies going on, they were talking as calmly as you and I are talking right now. And even though they didn't accomplish the objective,

everyone came back, which was a miracle. And there was a lot of really good lessons learned from that operation. But it was a very unique opportunity. And the big lesson learned was when you throw the water in there, if it can go wrong, it's going to go wrong. Yeah, I was I was kind of give water the credit for seals being good. Yep. Because a lot of times we don't have to work with the water. We don't have to work with the water. Everything seems easy, you know.

And for anyone else that tries to get in the water and do this job, it's very, very difficult. So you wrap up that deployment. And then you go to Buds, right? You become a bunch of trucks. Yep. I went right from there. I actually asked, I said, hey, I want to stay at the team and do a troop commander tour. And my ex-o, who was awesome, was like, hey, you're way too junior to do a troop

Commander Torreso, you have to go somewhere else. So I wanted to go to Buds because I knew historically if you're an officer at Buds and there's a need at the team, let's say someone gets fired. Let's say someone gets injured. You can very quickly raise your hand at Buds and say, I'll go fill that gap. So my whole plan was to go over there. It's not that I necessarily had this overarching desire to be a Bud's instructor. It was, I know for a fact, if someone gets fired or someone gets injured and they need a replacement, they'll pull from from buds pretty quick. And I could get back to a team quickly. So I went over there and I ran the third phase of buds, which is the last phase, which is the portion where you're still selecting people. It's still very physically hard, but now

you're actually teaching as well. You're teaching marksmanship. You're teaching demolitions. You're teaching very basic land warfare tactics. And it was a phenomenal tour. I did not know that I was going to enjoy it as much as I did. And a big portion of that was my crew that I had were just a bunch of savages. They were just awesome. Like the epitome of what you want of a Bud's instructor. They were all studs. They were all, you know, very physically imposing. They were all very good at the skill. They were all completely bought in to teaching these students. And it was just an absolute great time. And, you know, selfishly too, you can actually spend some time mentoring these young men. First phase, not a lot of mentoring goes on in first phase because you

don't know how many of those people are going to be there at the end of that seven weeks. By the time they get to third phase, odds are guys are going to graduate. A couple of guys might get rolled for land navigation for safety, but odds are the officers coming through that program are going to end up in a seal team. So you can start really working with them and investing in them. Did you work any hell weeks while you were there? Yes. Every opportunity. What was that like on the, looking at that from the outside. The thing that stuck out to me the most was as a student going through it, it just seems like absolute chaos. Like there's no rhyme or reason for anything that goes on. Like it's just a free-for-all. It's the Wild West, basically. And then you get to see it from the backside

and everything is organized and controlled down to the smallest possible detail. It's meant to seem like chaos. But there's times and tables for everything that goes on. So from an instructor point, you know, the stress level is exceptionally high, but it's also a very controlled environment for safety's sake, because you're asking people to do some pretty ridiculous things. And you see some gnarly things when you're going through watching people go through Hell Week as well. Like one student in particular was dragging a little bit, so we brought him over and we put the pole socks on him. And my medic pulls me over and he's like, hey man, take a look this and I looked at his pulse ox and he was at 46%. And I said there's zero percent chance he's

at four. He'd be dead if he was at 46 percent. So throw that one out, grab another one and bring it back over here. Do it again, 48 percent. If you told that to a doctor, clinically that person is dead. You can't survive. But somehow this dude was rocking and rolling with 48 percent oxygen going throughout his body and we very calmly escorted him to medical to get examined and then within a few minutes he was back out getting after it again. So the amount of things that people can push themselves through is just awe-inspiring. When you're a student you're going through, you're just, you don't have that perspective, I don't think, of really what you're going through. You know, you're just getting after it. When you're an instructor and you see what these guys are

going through, it's impressive. It's awesome to see. Did you get any better at figuring out who's going to make it? If it was a wrestler, I'd put my money on the wrestler. If it was a guy that played water polo, I put my money on the guy that played water polo. I don't know that I got any better at anybody else. But those two demographics for some reason, if you saw a guy coming through and he had cauliflower ear, I don't know that I saw one that didn't make it through. Lots of different theories behind why that is.

But I don't know that I got better at picking, I'll say this, I got better at identifying people that wouldn't be there because the instructors wouldn't allow them to be there for much longer. And that usually had to do with their ego and their attitude towards other people. Very quickly you could pick out like, this dude is not going to last because his people are going to turn on them. And then the instructors are going to make sure that they don't make it through the program, which is a very good thing.

Yeah, because these are people that are concerned about themselves and not about the team. 100%. And we don't want them. Nope. Nope. What did you do when you got done with that? So being a Buds instructor.

So I was not quite through with my tour yet, but my master plan for going to Buds paid out. So at the time, there was a need for another troop commander at SIL Team 5. And I was only about 16 months, maybe, into a two-year tour at Buds. And my executive officer was a guy named Jimmy May. and I asked him, I said, hey, I think there's a need at Seal Team 5 for a troop commander. Can I jump ship early and go? And he was like, I will never tell someone who wants to go back to a platoon, no. So yes, you can.

You just have to convince the skipper and CMC over there that they want you on the team. And one of the people I had the opportunity to work with at Steel Team 7 before Jason Gardner, now he's team echelon front. He was a CMC over there. So it was a pretty easy sell for me to. slide over there. So I left Buds early and went over there as a troop commander. And it was just a phenomenal tour, phenomenal tour. The entire team, I think it was the first tour that I had where it seemed like the entire team was focused on the team and not individual performances.

And you know, you go to a SEAL team usually there's three troops. And usually what happens is one troop is competing against two troop, which is competing against three troops, which is good. You want some competition, but it can get unhealthy. You know, one troop might not share lessons learned from training to two troop because they want to go to Afghanistan. So they want all the attention, basically. So even inside of your troop sometime, you can have two or three platoons that may be not really supporting each other as much as they should.

There's too much competition. I did not feel like Team 5 was like that at all. I think that the commanding officer in the CMC, Jason, has set a real good tone. off the bat of what we expect is the entire team to act and function as a team. So it was the first team I was ever at that the troop commanders spent time frequently together, that the platoon commanders spent time frequently together. And it really made a huge difference in just the entire culture of that team.

And that team, my experience was everybody was just fired up to be there. Everybody was fired up to train and everybody just wanted to go on deployment. How was a workup? phenomenal. So going through, again, I was blessed with a phenomenal senior enlisted advisor. He actually just retired after 20 plus years of service. And I felt again very confident that we were going to go and just crush this training. My platoon commanders were all phenomenal. My platoon chiefs were all phenomenal. They had all been multiple combat situations. I think you know just about all of my platoon chiefs, just solid, solid. And we got into unit level training and first block of training

was, again, land warfare, which is awesome. And at this time, we were transitioning as a community away from training scenarios that were more focused on fighting insurgents and shifting into training scenarios that were more focused on what they would call great powers competition. So people that have enemy that have similar capabilities to us, think Russia, Think China. They have jets. They have night vision goggles. They have radios.

They can jam. They can do all these things. So because they were pretty confident, the community was pretty confident that our troop was a good troop. They wanted us to go through these FTXs first and experience them as kind of a test before they rolled them out to the rest of the troop. And we were fired up. We're like, heck yeah, man. They think that, you know, where they go true to for this, like let's show them what's up. So again, I'm ready to just.

Such a bad setup. It's such a bad setup, right? So we're ready to just run through this thing. And I was the determining factor in the fact that we were not successful on the first FTX. And I came up with this plan that was just, it was too complex. It was too complex. And I was nerding out over this particular operation. And I had, you know, three platoons.

I had three platoons that I could bring to bear on this battlefield. And I wanted to get a lot of them out. the field and what that meant was I just had too many positions. I had two positions in the high ground and then a third position that was kind of an adjacent piece of high ground. And in my mind, that all made perfect sense. The reality of the situation was when you go on a land warfare FTX, for those of you who haven't been yet, things rarely go as planned. And you're going to receive contact. And there's going to be a lot of problems that get thrown your way. So the platoon that went in to do the actual clearance and try to grab the bad guy that we were after, all of a sudden

they're embroiled in this massive firefight, you know, situational and awareness is lost of what, of where who is, and they come out of this, uh, this village and they're trying to extract with their prisoner that they have now. And they just see muzzle flashes in multiple positions in the mountains, to include bad guy positions that are up there too. And they engage one of the positions that I had put out there that should not have been out there. Hey, online or L is the tactic and I violated that and we paid the man for it that night and it was 100% my plan. I was convinced like I'm like we got everything locked down. There's no way anyone's getting in here and it was just too much complexity for when stuff hit the fan on target and we went back. A guy that I really

respect was running training. He just finished up his CO-20. I believe at SEAL Team 7, phenomenal guy. And, you know, got a good honest debrief. The master chief there that was running training at the time. Again, phenomenal guy, damn that guy, solid professional. And we got a good, hard, honest debrief. And the overarching factor was my plan was just too complex. And if you guys can't understand what you want them to do, they are not going to be able to get it done.

Especially once that mayhem hits. Mayhem. Once that mayhem hits, man, it's just everything's out the window. Yeah. And that's exactly what happened. Everyone knew where those positions were until the mayhem hit. And until guys are now sucked into a firefight. And there's multiple bad guys in the hills that are maneuvering as well.

And they can't see us from the ground. They just see muscle flashes. And they ended up engaging a position that I put out to support. And that mayhem, that plan to not survive first contact for sure. So we, we being me, course corrected on the next two FDXs, we came up with good simple plans and we knocked the next two FDXs out of the park. And again, I can't take credit for that. I had really solid platoon commanders, really solid platoon chiefs.

And all I had to do was give them a good plan that was not too complex and just let them execute on those plans. And I say give them because these were troop size FTCs. these weren't platoon size FTX. So every FtX was a troop size. It's kind of cheating. Yeah, like when I was a troop commander, when I was a platoon commander,

it felt like I was kind of cheating because people would see like, why aren't you going to put this, you know, integrate your fire teams and mix them up? And I'm like, no, we're just staying with our normal fire teams. And don't you want to put someone over here and I was like, nope, we're not doing that. And it was, so we get out there and mayhem would happen, but we'd just be all in our standard operating procedures. It wouldn't have to change anything.

And it was like kind of easy. I remember when I, I first started when I wrote down like the laws of combat right and I didn't reference those off of anything I didn't refer to any manuals I just was like I know you know you've heard the story but I was out there at our land warfare training I was watching this platoon fall apart and it's like okay I can see what they need to do they didn't know how to lead here's what they need to do I didn't go back and cross reference like any of the war fighting manual from the Marine Corps or FM seven tack eight from the from the arm I didn't do any that I just took what I had

knew and then you fast forward like six months and I'm like hey you know I need to like make sure that I what I'm putting out is solid right and one of the first things I thought like I kept telling everyone like hey you need to keep you simple you need to keep it simple you need to keep it simple and it turns out that's literally the oldest maximum of the oldest maximum of military leadership is keep it simple that's like number one you can look at any you know canon of military leadership and how to conduct operations It's like you better keep it simple. And it's literally like cheating.

You go out on these crazy operations, but everyone's just doing what they've been doing for the last three months or the last three weeks. And everyone knows their fire team and they know what the objective is. And they go do it. No factor. Keep it simple. Yeah. The next two FDXs were simple.

Online, L, clear. And surprise, surprise. Things went well. Awesome. Anything else on that workup? The big thing that stuck out to me was, we knew that there was going to be the potential that we could be clearing ISIS out of Mosul on that deployment. So the battlefield had changed tremendously from the, I guess, technically the second Iraq war that you guys weren't involved in.

We were now not necessarily, it wasn't our fight. It was the Iraqis fight. We were going to be enabling them with capabilities. We were going to be right there beside them, you know, with them inside some of that fighting. was going to be their job to clear those people out. It was also exceptionally micromanaged, the campaign was. So we knew that we were going to be working with Army personnel, Marine personnel, and we knew that we were only going to get basically one chance to impress upon them our level of professionalism. So a big thing that was important to my SCA, my senior

enlisted leader and I, was making sure everyone in our platoon understood, good why we needed them to look professional and act professional. Why we needed them to be clean shaven when they get overseas. Why we needed them to be in a proper uniform. Maybe even more importantly than that, why we needed them to be able to understand what operational terms and graphics were, which for people not in the SEAL community, nobody cares about those in the SEAL community. Luckily, because I had such good leaders at the platoon level, we only had to say it once. And then they took it upon themselves and carried that message. And the overarching why we gave them was, we're not guaranteed.

There's other units in theater. There's Marines in theater. Marcos in theater. You know, armies in theater. And just because you have a trident on your chest doesn't mean that you're going to be the force of choice to go into Mosul. Like the opportunity is there, but we have to be able to take advantage of that opportunity. So not only were we focused on training, but guys really had to be focused on the

professionalism aspect of it. And it was easy. It was easy. And I think the reason it was easy is because I had such good leaders at the troop level and they really understood and own that message. And guys want to go fight. And if the price they have to pay to go fight is a clean shave and a squared way uniform and looking at the, you know, small unit tactics manual every now and then, then that's what they were going to do. FM 101, tack five, tack one. Operational terms and graphics. It was crazy that we would brief senior leadership in the Army and the Marine Corps, utilizing what symbols we thought made sense to us.

Just like arrows. Yeah. Like explosions. Yeah. Like just like random whatever we thought worked. And man, when I figured out like, oh, the Army and the Marine Corps actually and actually all NATO forces follow this manual right here. Okay, cool.

I got it. That was a huge step forward in life. Yeah. It was like learning to speak their language in a split second because you all have to just pull up that book and you can figure out what you're supposed to be saying. And then how about deployment go? Oh, it was phenomenal. Phenomenal.

I'll just start off by saying I didn't do anything on that deployment. My role as a troop commander was going to be back in the rear, basically, with the command structure, you know, supporting and enabling my guys. There just wasn't a role for the troop commander to be in the field at that point in the war. And you know, that was fine. You know, I had two great deployments where I got to have some fun. And now it was my turn to watch my guys go out there and watch all their hard work pay off. I think our job was done, our heavy lifting for my troop chief and I was done during ULT.

It was making sure that they were trained up as well as they could possibly be because we knew that we weren't going to be out in the field with them. Are there opportunities to get out for an operation or two and go see your guys and have a good time? Yeah, but I'm not going to be the ground force commander for these operations. My platoon commanders were going to be the guys leading the fight. And because of the level of professionalism that our whole team had, and because our commanding officer and our command master chief had this vision of how they were going to make themselves the force of choice for the Mosul clearance, our guys became the force of choice for the Mosul clearance, which should not have happened. The Marines were actually controlling, so for those that don't know, Mosul is in northern Iraq.

It's a big city. Half of the city is very metropolitan, very, well, it was very new. And the other half of the city is what they call old Mosul. It kind of looks like it was built probably in the 1800s type thing, mud huts, that type of thing. So the Marines were given ownership of the battle space up north. So, Mosul is in the north. So the clear choice, when you look at it, should have been the Marine should have been leading the charge into Mosul.

Our commanding officer did a phenomenal job of training us and preparing us and selling our capability. And because he did that and put in all the work building relationships with his commanding, the command structure inside of Iraq, before deployment even, he was able to convince them that actually the capabilities that we bring to bear are more suited for that campaign than the Marines were. Nothing against the Marines. We just had a commanding officer that was very good at selling our capabilities and building

that relationship. And because he could do that, our guys were the ones that went inside Mosul. So I gained two more platoons for deployment because there was so much work to be done inside of Iraq. I went through workup with three platoons. And then at the end of our unit level training cycle, our big training block, I was given two extra platoons to go and deploy with. So I was going into Iraq with five platoons.

Those five platoons, we split up into seven different outstations. So spread them all across the country. And each of their jobs was basically clear ISIS out of your space that you're in. And a big piece of that ended up being Mosul. So most of the time, energy, and effort got spent in clear. clearing Mosul. And again, I wasn't up there. You know, I let my guys run the show. They were well trained. You know, they knew what the mission was. I got to go out a couple of times and have some good times with them. But it was them leading the fight and they did a phenomenal job, an absolutely

phenomenal job. And by the time our deployment was over, our guys had completely cleared all of Eastern Mosul. Sorry, yeah, Eastern Mosul, the big city. Crazy urban combat. You know, ISIS, that was their caliphate at that stage in the game. They had put all of their fighters inside that city. And they plus them up when they knew that the clearance was coming. They would send fighters from Syria to plus this up. So now, you know, imagine you're clearing through this city with skyscrapers. And it's completely controlled by 3,000 to 4,000 ISIS fighters that are inside of there.

And because they had the whole city controlled before we pushed in, they were doing things like staging these giant suicide vehicles in all these different garages. So you would be clearing and then all of a sudden two blocks ahead, this something that looks like something at a, you know, Mad Max, you know, Fury Road would come out and it would just barrel towards you and you would have 15 seconds to get a rocket or a bomb on that thing. And if you didn't, it was going to level a city block. And that was every single day for about the last four months of that deployment is the environment that those guys were out there. and operating in. And every single one of the platoons that we deployed with had the opportunity to get in a lot of good kinetic operations on that deployment, which that was unheard of in 2015 and 2016. We had gone through three or four years where guys just weren't getting to actually

do the job overseas. And we were very fortunate. And I think we were able to take advantage of the position that we were put in to actually go overseas and do some. good work. And you guys lost one of your EOD guys, right? We did. Yeah, only guy that didn't come back. So JJ Feinan, he was our EOD chief, phenomenal dude. He was embedded with one of my platoons that was on the outskirts of Mosul. So they were up at this place. The Mosul, we call it the Mosul Dam House. There's a giant dam up there. And one of Saddam's old palaces was up there. and we took it over and we were running operations out of there. And they were running into IEDs left and right up there.

And they were also running into like chemically laced IEDs. So our EOD capability needed to be at this one particular site. And the day that we started the push for Mosul, and I say the push for Mosul because we actually had to get to Mosul to start the clearance. So we were probably, you imagine almost the World War II. scenario where there's no joke a forward line of troops, what we would call a flock. And good guys on this side, bad guys on this side, and you would go to that flot and you would just exchange fire all day long and try to get to a position where you could push the

flot forward at the end of the day and then just do that day after day until you actually get to Mosul to start the clearance. So the very first day that the clearance kicks off, our guys are embroiled in massive firefight at one of these forward line of troops. And they realize that they're getting maneuvered on and they can't really stay in the position that they're in. So they make a call to get in their up armored vehicles and go to a more tactically advantageous position to continue the fight. They realize as they started to do that, my EOD guy, JJ, the chief, was in the front seat of the front vehicle because it's his job to try to spot things right. And he realizes pretty quickly that the route they chose took him right into a mind-finding. basically. So he calls an all halt and now they're trying to figure out how they're going to get

out of this minefield. So, hey, safe in, safe out right. And what that means for people not in the military is if you walked in a way, it's probably pretty safe to assume you can walk back out that way, much less risk than continuing to go forward or try to go left and right because you've already trod that path once. So he's in the vehicle. He makes the call to all back, so to back everybody up and the platoon chief is in the back of the vehicle and he's got his door to the mat v open and he's trying to make sure that they're following the exact same tire track that they were in before and j j j's kind of directing the entire thing and he sees uh the platoon chief with his door open and he says hey man close your door like that's my job so platoon chief closes his door j jj opens his

he's looking down trying to spot, and I don't know if they had just barely missed it the first time, or if it was a crush plate. And a crush plate is a tactic the enemy will deploy where they will build a charge, and they'll attach a pressure plate to it that has to have basically so much poundage before it detonates. So like you've got these two different connectors and, you know, someone steps on it and it pushes it down a little bit more. Someone else steps on and it pushes it down a little bit more. And the reason that's a great tactic is if I hit the first guy in the platoon, everybody else can stop and pull back. If I hit the seventh guy in a platoon, now everybody's in a really bad scenario.

So a crush plate is probably what it was. And as they were driving back over it, they detonated it. And JJ was looking right down at the charge. And, you know, it did him in. And our guys tried to keep them alive. They were working on them. after all of this went down, after the bomb goes off, all the guys in the vehicle are clearly, you know, their bells are wrong, but like they're going to work, they're trying to save him. They are able to keep him alive for a pretty decent period of time, but there's no hope, man. He's gone.

And by the time they get him to the, the HLZ to get him out of the Medevac bird, he's not responding. He's gone. I was one of the days that I was actually fortunate enough to be able to go out with one of my platoons. I was my another platoon, Charlie Patoon and I were out at another point in the Florida line of troops. And I was having the best day that I'd had on deployment so far because I was finally out of the office with my guys in the field. We were exchanging it a little bit with the ISIS guys on the other side of the flot. And we were having a good time. And I was just loving being back with the guys. And then I get the phone call.

And you know as a leader, whenever you get, we always have our satellite phone with us so that you have multiple layers of communication, right? You've got your satellite radio, your personal radio, the vehicles have radios. All of this is meant to be sure that you can reach people no matter what's going on. When the satellite phone goes off, usually what that means is they're purposely choosing not to communicate over the net that everybody in theater can listen to. So I feel the vibration in my pocket and I'm already got like the pit, the pit feeling and took the phone call. It was actually one of your guys that told me and went from best day to worst day. How long was that, how long were you guys actively fighting in Muzul? The last four months of the deployment was every single day inside of Muzul, every single day.

And then what was a turnover like? When you were turning over, were you turning over for, hey, you guys are going to go and do what we were doing? That's exactly right. And just fortunately, the turnover happened at the best possible point in the clearance it could,

which is we had just finished the eastern part of the clearance. We'd reached the river, and now Seal Team 7 came in behind us, and it was their job to finish the clearance. So we had reached this perfect landmark to do that turnover. So they were there, for a couple of the days prior to that.

So they got some good experience in. They got to see what our guys were going through. And then we turned over to them, and they got to take care of the western part of Mosul and clear that up. And they finished that clearance on their deployment. And once that was done, ISIS was crushed. I mean, they were more or less crushed by the time we had rolled out. Not because we, you know, I'm not saying we crushed them, but I'm just saying their foothold

in Mosul was gone. They weren't getting it back. So Steel Team 7 came in. And awesome deployment for them too and finished it up. The thing that was crazy to me about that deployment was at times the level of micromanagement that was going on. My platoon commander that was in Mosul every day had to have a, I shouldn't say had to, we chose to put it in there.

He had a phone line in his Matt V in his command vehicle that went directly to the one-star commanding general of the theater. That's the level of intrusiveness. that was happening on the battlefield. Now, because we had such good leadership in our commanding officer and our command master chief, we embraced it. We embraced it. And they said, look, guys, this is going to be the reality.

And you can do what other platoons have done and what other units have done, which is push back against it. And guess how far that's going to get you? Or you can embrace it and you can give them everything they want before they need it. And that's the best chance you have at getting a little bit of freedom. So we went into the one-star's jock. They're basically a tactical operation center, and we gave them every piece of equipment we had to allow them to battle track us.

And then we put the phone line inside, which, you know, bane of that GFC's existence, but it was in there and it was his job to monitor that phone line. And if there was questions directly from the one-star, he was going to be the one that needed to field that question and put that one-star back in their comfort zone so that we could continue the clearance.

And the choice was pretty clear. You can either push back against it and you can see how that works out for you or you can just embrace it. And because we chose to embrace it, we had more freedom to maneuver than anybody else did. Now, eventually what happened is the, I believe it was the two-star commanding general,

the entire campaign came and visited my guys in the field in Mosul and he saw the process. And he said, this is ridiculous. And almost overnight, the authority to release munitions from aircraft went from the one star to the guy on the ground. So overnight change. And that was based on the fact that you had a leader, a two star, who wanted to see what the reality was in the field and was not happy with what he saw. And he changed it up. And that was the real game changer for Mosul.

The first month of Mosul, the Iraqi Special Operations Forces were getting a trided so fast that we thought the campaign was over. We thought that we were going to lose. Part of that was they were not necessarily employing the best tactics, and part of that was it took so long to get a strike off. And when you're dealing with multiple suicide vehicles bearing down on you at any given time, you can't hesitate with that stuff. You don't have time to call and paint a crystal clear picture. So a big piece of it was the Iraqi started listening to tactics that our guys were telling them to employ. And an equally big piece of that was finally our guys on the ground had the ability to conduct business the way that it needed to be conducted. And they took full advantage of it.

Yeah. You got to, when you're in a leadership position, you got to go out and see what's happening on the ground. That's all there is to it. And if you're not doing that and you're looking at it from a distance, man, things just look different from a distance. And they might even seem like they're squared away. Yeah. You know the process? When you look at a flow chart.

that someone's presenting you on PowerPoint of how the fires are getting approved you're like okay This probably takes five minutes. You know this probably takes three minutes. That's no problem first of all you don't realize how long three minutes really is And you also don't realize that three minutes is really 30 minutes So and this applies to anywhere supplies to business applies to everything that's going on from your from your leadership perspective You have to get out and actually go down and see what's happening and if you don't do that it's gonna be problems You have no idea what's going on no idea You get done with that deployment Now you come back and what you step up to ops at SEAL Team 5?

Yeah, I did. I did not want to leave the SEAL team. I loved everything about SEAL Team 5. I asked another troop commander because I was still pretty junior for a troop commander. And they said no. So I said, okay, cool, ops. And they said, sure, you can stay around at OPS. And I mean, you know, ops is not usually a job that people are super excited to do in the SEAL teams.

There's a lot of maybe bad stigma that comes with the ops jobs and just the fact. of how many hours you're going to work and you're not with the guys and you're going to be doing some admin type stuff and the reward the rewarding feeling is maybe not as high as as other tours I loved it I loved it for a couple different reasons I had a phenomenal commanding officer and a phenomenal command master chief and that commanding officer gave me a whole lot of room to run the day to day of that command. And, you know, he led by commander's intent, hey, here's what I want to have happen. And I would go and I'd build out some, some courses of action for him. And then I would brief him, I'd tell him which one I thought was the best one. And 99.9% of the time, he would say,

cool, go execute. I also had very good senior enlisted was my counterpart. My ops master chief was another phenomenal guy who, you know, knew a lot more about the operations role than I did, because I'd never been in it before. So he helped me out, keep me in line, kept me pulling in the right direction. And then again, we were blessed with really good troop commanders who made my life very easy and really good platoon commanders

who made my life very easy. And unfortunately, I did not get to deploy with them because I got pulled to go to the training command, which was awesome. But always a bummer to miss out on deployment, especially when you have a team that you just love. And in the operations job, when you're in the training cycle,

it's not super rewarding. You know, you're putting training together, you're running the command on behalf of the CEO day to day. You're piecing all those things together. You're prepping for deployment. Then you get on deployment and as an operations officer, that's where you can potentially have a little bit more fun. If there's a strike sale in theater, you'll probably have a hand and running a whole lot of those strikes. So I was very much looking forward to deploying and getting the opportunity to run the strike sale. And also just, I loved everybody at the command and I didn't want to leave that command, but I was called up to go to the training command,

which was awesome. I just wanted to do it six months later. I didn't want to do it right then and right there. Yeah, I want to make a quick note. You've been talking about your career and the vast majority of your career. You've had a lot of autonomy and been able to do a lot of things,

and that was very similar to my career. But I would say, because I was kind of tracking your career, you know, first of all, when I was putting you through training and then, you know, through just guys that I would talk to and what, what team they're out, what platoon, how are they doing? You were squared away. And when you're squared away, things are a lot easier. When you're squared away, you get a lot more leeway. When you're squared away, when you do a good job, when you're professional, when people can trust you, when your boss trust you, when the ops master chief, when the ops officer, when the exo, when the CEO, when people trust you, you can do, you can do a lot. You can do a lot. You can do a lot. You can do a lot. You can do a lot. You can do. lot more and it's all those little things that you mentioned it's you know making sure that everyone's professional but it's also like hey doing a good job during operations and when you screw things up saying hey this is my fault here's what we do to fix it like all these things

are what lead to freedom and and having this autonomy there's I always say if you talk to most of the people that ever worked for me they'd be like oh freaking jocco's like he'll let me do whatever I want like he was just he let me do anything anything I want to do he let me do it there's few people that were not squared away and if you said oh how was it working for jocco they'd be though he's a complete micromanager there's a reason i'm micromanaging if i'm micromanaging you there's a reason why i'm micromanaging you and i just wanted to point that out you know you had a great reputation of being squared away of being professional of getting the job done of making good decisions and that gives you a ton of leeway and look can you get a micromanager that's like

doesn't matter what you do they're going to micromanage you yep can you be in a situation where like you're talking about the beginning of that deployment, the first month where, look, even the, you know, we talked about a platoon commander, never being a platoon commander before and, uh, and a platoon chief never being a petition. Well, whoever's in charge during the initial assault of Missouille, they probably never been in that, hey, we're going to go assault, do a siege assault on a city. They probably never been in that position either. So they're doing the best they can.

They didn't quite figured out. So the only thing they know to do is just like control, kind of like when you were at, at land warfare, as a troop commander and you're like, or as a platoon commander, I think you said, and you're going to control everything. There was probably a leader there thinking, I'm going to control everything. I got to make sure that we don't make any mistakes.

I don't want to have any this. I don't have any that. So they get very in the micromanagement mode and something happens to happen where they can readjust their mindset. In this case, two star flies out, looks at what's going on the ground and says, this is not right.

And then put some trust back in the troops on the ground. But I just wanted to point that out. If you as a person listening to this or feel like you're like, man, oh, I heard Sean Glass. He got to do whatever he want. I'm going to tell you, Sean Glass earned the right to do whatever he wanted. He earned that freedom. And if you're feeling like you're getting micromanaged, it's not the responsibility of your boss to figure out that you need more freedom. It's your job to prove to your boss that you're going to make good decisions, that you're going to be professional, that you're going to when something goes wrong, you're going to take ownership.

Like all these are important lessons and you've kind of you kind of spelled out almost like a fantasy career of I got to do what I want I got a lot of leeway I got this I got that I mean getting you had you already got three platoons as a troop commander Then they gave you five platoons as a true commander that's not normal They had a huge amount of trust in you as a leader to step up and be able to do that so I just wanted to point that out if people if you're listening to this and you're thinking man That guy had great bosses he didn't get micromanaged I'm gonna tell you Sean Earned that right to not be micromanaged and I think that's an important thing to point out You get done at team five now you go to trade at you're in the best what I believe is the best leadership lab in the world hands down I don't think there's anything better than trade at for seeing and watching and learning and understanding leadership

I don't think there's anything close to it and you are in a position where you get to see leadership in action on an almost night basis, you get to see leaders get put in through a scenario. And the next night, you get to see other leaders get through that same scenario. And the next week you get to see other leaders get put through that same scenario. So you're seeing like iterations of leadership. And you start to learn what works and what doesn't. And it's a, it's a very powerful. I think it's the best leadership lab in the world. I think you are 100% right. And something that's a testament to that is, When you are the officer in charge of that training command, there are professional sports teams that want to come and talk with you and your staff about how you organize training.

You get authors that are writing books about leadership that want to come and see what's going on. The Red Bull training team came out there to see what was going on. It is, hands down, the most unique leadership lab on the planet. And we spend so much time and money as a community training. And the scenarios that we develop, like it's testing every single piece of that platoon. From the troop commander who maybe has four deployments to the platoon chief, who maybe has six all the way down to that brand new machine gunner, every single FTX is testing every single skill set for one of those individuals. When you, what was the biggest or, you know, what was it? Would you take away from it?

Two biggest takeaways from a leadership perspective. One is, if you came in there with a big ego from a leadership perspective, you, your people were going to suffer. Your people were going to suffer for six months if you couldn't freaking change that. And that, I'm not saying, I'm also not not saying this, but I'm not saying that was because my guys would hone in on you and crush you. I'm saying that because you would fail to take on the lessons learn. And if you're a platoon commander or a platoon chief that's not accepting those lessons learned,

you're making the same mistakes, which means every night is a rough night for your platoon. And we saw plenty of platoons. You feel bad for these guys where every night is a rough night for that platoon. And it's 100% on that leader. And one of my favorite experiments to run, And I'm sure you did something similar was sometime in a scenario, I would eventually, not every night, but every platoon commander that came through got this at least once. When I was there, I'd kill them in a scenario.

We'd be doing one of these big FTXs and I'd put them down and I wanted to see what was going to happen. And typically one of three things would happen. One, everything would just grind to a halt. Everything would grind to a halt. No one would make a call. no one would want to make the next decision. Everybody would just kind of freeze. And what that tells me that I need to talk to that platoon commander about is just he's micromanaging.

The same thing I was doing as a platoon commander. He's micromanaging. His people are afraid to make that call. The second thing that happened is, hey, everything went great. Guys picked up the slack. They covered, you know, covered and moved for each other. They got the job done. And what that told me was the guy did a great job of decentralized command that his people

knew what was up and they were not afraid to make decisions. The one that was always my favorite to watch is we would remove the platoon commander and everything would just get so much better, just so much better. And that tells me that person was just a freaking ego maniac, just a hurdle. Just get that person out of the way and let the platoon do what they know is right. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy to watch. And you could do the same thing like you might have a super strong platoon chief. And it'd be the same thing. You kill him and everything grinds through a halt. Or you kill him and people start stepping up. You know, it's just you got to do those things and you definitely learn.

And the ego thing, most, vast majority of the time, guys would, they would get, they would take the lessons on board. They'd be like, yeah, we suck last night. God, that was horrible. I'm embarrassed. You know, I can't believe we did that. And over, you know, five FTXs by the fifth one, the land warfare cadre can't beat the task unit anymore. They can't beat the troop anymore. They're too good.

They maneuvered too quick. They're covering for each other. They're keeping things simple. They prioritize. Like, they're just executing and you can't. There's nothing you can do about it, which is great. That's what we always wanted to see. It was weird sometimes you'd get a platoon or a troop that would think you wanted them to fail,

which is the craziest thing in the world. Like, bro, you're my friend. Like, I grew up with you. I want you to win, dude. But you can't do this dumb shit. You can't do that. You've got to stop doing that. But a vast majority of the time, they were learning.

And it was great. One thing that I'll never forget is seeing guys like have an enlightenment, right? Seeing like a troop commander or a platoon commander or a platoon chief or just seeing them have like an enlightenment. And they would go from literally being a bad leader and they'd figure it out and then they'd become a good leader. Like almost instantaneously, that was always awesome to see. But man, the experience that you get from a leadership perspective at that in that trade episode. I was so lucky because when I was an E5, I was at SEAL Team 1 and I was in training cell and I was teaching this is before there was SQT.

So I was teaching like new guy officers. We were taking them out with the new guy enlisted guys and we'd go out and I would be doing I ads with them and like I'd be detached and I would see what it looked like and I would see what will work and what didn't work. So by that time I was an officer like I had already done like what will the equivalent of a trade debt tour. Yeah. It's freaking so lucky. So lucky. The word that you just used the attachment people. was the second big lesson learned, which is the second, and usually that's the light bulb moment for most people, for sure, is when they realize, hey, I have to detach from what's going on right here from a leadership perspective. I can't be the person that's patching up the wounded people. All of a sudden things would get a lot better for that entire, entire platoon, entire truly. And usually it would take a pretty rough night before you could convince them,

like, you got to step back. Some people are harder than others, and they wouldn't learn. quite as quick but hey when you kill them yeah and all of a sudden they're alive and they're just sitting there listening to what's happening they're watching and the all of a sudden the answers become very clear but they're not allowed to do anything about it and I remember so many guys they're like this is what you should be doing you see how you know what's going on you see how you see how you see you're monitoring this you see you see you see what they should be doing right he's like yep you didn't know that three minutes ago yeah because you were

freaking clearing rooms like an idiot you shouldn't be clearing rooms you shouldn't be working on that one guy you shouldn't be handling these prisoners all that stuff that you're doing like how many rounds do you have how many mags do you have I have two mags left out of nine. Wrong. Dude, what are you doing, bro? Stop. Yeah.

You're a leader. Yeah. I was fortunate enough to learn that lesson early on the ability to detach. And that was one of the things that I would always try to impart on leaders, people in leadership positions as quickly as I could. So when I was running third phase and we were exposing these young officers to tactics for the first time, we'd run these immediate action drills. And they would just be nightmares. I mean, one, because they're just learning. but two, because they would shoot seven out of nine bags.

And then the next round that we would go, I would talk to them in between runs. And I would just say, hey, look, man, your job is not to do that. Your job is to maneuver the platoon. You have a platoon. That's your weapon system. Your weapon system as a seal platoon commander is your platoon. It's not your rifle. And get comfortable with that.

And then we'd let them go again. Some guys got it. Some guys didn't. And if they didn't, the next run, I would take their gun. And guess what happened? the second I would take their gun. All of a sudden, they're making good calls because they're not worried about seeing the world

through a rifle scope anymore. And it was the same thing at Trade Act. As soon as you can get people to understand, they had to remove themselves from those scenarios, the better off that it was going to be for every single person that was inside of that troop or inside of that platoon. So 2019, you decide you're going to get out.

Yep. you have a freaking awesome career you're living the dream you've had incredible deployments you've had all kinds of autonomy you've got a great reputation you're running training what's going on why you decided to get out

family so at the time five kids and it was kind of a combination of things so that's all I've ever wanted to do was be a seal and I was having the best time in my life like every single deployment, every single tour was my favorite tour. I was just genuinely love being a part of that

community. I love putting on the uniform. I loved being around the people that you have the opportunity to be around when you're in that community. It's unlike anywhere else in the world. And as I started to realize the impact that some of those things were going to have on my family, it shifted my perspective from being, I don't even know if I would call it selfish because my wife never complained about it. My wife is the best human being on the planet. And, you know, she's, she's 1 of 8, which kind of helps probably in understanding that everything's not about you. So she was fully supportive of the career. She, to hear her tell it, she knew that a Sean inside the seal platoon or inside the seal community was going to be a very fulfilled and happy Sean, which would

translate to a very good and fulfilled husband and a very good and fulfilled father. Even if that time that I was home was minimal. The time that I was going to be home, I was going to be fully invested because I was just on cloud nine the entire time. You get through with the trade at tour. I was very young, maybe not age-wise, but time-wise. I finished that tour and I was at like 11 and a half years in the military. So I start to look at the next portion of my career. And again, I would love to do the next nine years, even though I'm not going to be with the guys, even though I'm going to be in some positions, hopefully a commanding officer tour thrown in there towards the tail end. I would just still love to be in the community.

But when I looked at where my family was going to be during those tours, it changed my math up a bit. And if you remember, I said my commanding officer when I was a troop commander was phenomenal. He was phenomenal at everything, including just being a mentor on life too. He was the first guy that sat me down and walked me through the rest of my career where I wanted it to be and not just from a career standpoint. He made me sit down with a sheet of paper like this and put where I wanted my next five tours to be. And then he made me right down beneath every single one of those tours the ages my kids would be when I did that. That hurt. That hurt a lot. I mean, sorry, commanding officer, but that might be the reason I'm not in the community anymore,

but thank you for prioritizing me. But when I looked at the fact that my oldest son, Ronan was going to be 18 years old when I hit 20. That hurt. Because what that means is now that I could finally be there every day involved in his life, he's gone. He's out the door to college, doing great things, hopefully enlisting or going into the community. No pressure, son.

But that was a start. That was kind of like a slap in the face of, oh, shoot, man. I've got one chance at this father thing. And like you said, I had a great career. I had a lot of fun. I had some really unique opportunities. And it just became apparent to me that I needed to spend the rest of this portion of my life focused on my family and not necessarily on myself. That being said, it's not like I came to this decision overnight.

I wrestled with this thing for a very, very long time because I didn't necessarily know what I was going to do. on the outside. I knew I loved the job. I also knew that people in the community had been looking out for me and they had been giving me these very unique opportunities because they wanted me to be in the community long term. And that means a lot to me. When I look at your troop commander,

when you were a platoon commander, was my boss multiple times, including when I was running the training command and he was phenomenal. So I had to tell this person who hand-selected me to go and run this training command, man, I had to tell him that I was not going to be in the community anymore. And I know for a fact that

he invested a lot of his personal time in me. And that carries a lot of weight. You know, the fact that people poured their time and their effort and their mentorship into me. I didn't, I didn't take that lightly. But it basically just came down to, hey, it's either the community or it's spend time with the family. And family's always going to win out on that one. And I will say this, when I did have that conversation, he was awesome about it. He was fully supportive. He busted my chops a little bit at first, of course. But he was fully supportive of it.

And the community was fully supportive of that decision, which made it easier for me going out of the community, knowing that I didn't burn bridges, knowing that I had a lot of people, you know, still rooting for me. Yeah, that's a tough one. Yeah. There's not a day that goes by that I don't wish I was still in there. but then I'm at home with my kids.

I get to, you know, coach boxing in the town that I live in and my son comes to it. I get to drop them off every day. I get to pick them up most every day. I get to go to all their games. I get to go to all their events and none of that stuff would be possible

if I was still in. Yep. And then so what'd you do once you got out? Yeah. This is when you went to Agoros? It is. And, you know, you and I had already had the conversation about echelon front.

And I was going to do that. And then so rewind back to Officer Candidate School. I told you two, my best buddies. I met at Officer Candidate School. And then we went through the selection together, had some tours together. Well, one of these guys got out a little bit earlier than I did. And him and another seal who was a lifelong buddy of his started a construction technology, which is not two things that typically go together, but it's a construction technology company.

and he wanted me to come on board with him and be basically help him start it up and run it. And I was already in conversation with you and, you know, Eschlon Front's awesome. And I was like, this job is sounds amazing in the team. Like just look at who's on the team. It's basically like being in a seal platoon again. So I was all on board. And then I called you and I said, hey, I've got this other opportunity to do this. And I don't even think I'm paraphrasing.

I think this is literally what you said, which you. is you would be stupid to not do that. You said, go do that. And I had told you I was only going to give them probably two years in that position because we didn't want to be in California when we wanted to move out. And you said, go do that for two years, learn, get some experience in the civilian sector, we're here when you want to come onto the team. So I did that for two years.

Was the COO for about the last year of that? There was no need for a COO at first. It was like four of us trying to get stuff done. but that was a big learning experience and also just an awesome time an awesome time to see a lot of the things that we had learned in the community translate directly to civilian life which there's always questions about it right there's always questions about does this stuff that we learn in this very unique niche is it going to fit with the civilian sector and the answer is yeah because the common thread is people and people are the same in the military as they are.

in construction as they are in the tech sphere, they're the same. So you end up doing that for two years. Great company, by the way. And what they do is they build houses in a factory. They design everything. They dig. Then they build the houses in the factory in pieces and they ship them out and you have like a house in like two weeks.

It's insane. It's done. It's insane. So, agoris. Check it out if you need to build a house. The, the balls of these two dudes. to, so how they came up with this was they both built houses in Coronado and one of them did their traditional, let me bring in a contractor design team and one of them said, hey, it'll be quicker

if I do modular. And they were miserable experiences. Both of them just freaking hated it. And out of that experience, they both said, well, let's just start this company with our focus being to literally change how the United States builds homes. It's a pretty lofty goal. And I'm trying to put myself in that mindset of what I would have done if. I had just built a house and in Coronado and it was a painful process.

I don't think I would have set out to start a company to change the way that America builds. I think I would have just said, well, that sucked. And now I've got a cool house in Coronado that I'm happy with. But they started this company. It's killing it. These guys are phenomenal and they're going to continue to do amazing things. And I was thrilled to be a part of the team.

And it's interesting. You said, you know, technology and construction, which normally don't go together you're right and you know these guys point out that construction hasn't changed it hasn't changed in America in like probably 50 60 years sure there's some there's some advancements with like material your your material but also the way that you know you can go you can have an iPad and you can see what the drawings are and you can kind of see some different angles but still the same thing you're still like got a guy out there swinging a hammer you're building the whole thing on site that's it that's what

you're doing and these guys have got it no we're going to this thing in a factory. It's going to be squared away. We're going to ship it out there. We're going to get this thing put up. I mean, it's it's changing the way that we do construction in the country. So I'm sure those guys are going to continue to dominate. You do that for a couple of years and then you move out to Virginia. How did you land in Virginia? So again, my wife's 1 to 8. So she's originally from New Hampshire. Her dad was a undercover agent for a customs for a long time. So he was doing a lot of stuff in Boston against the Irish mob, stuff like that. So they chose to live in New Hampshire because it's basically right across the border and he could commute in. So one by one, they all started kind of matriculating down to this town. I don't know if I even want to say the name of the town because I don't know how many more people I want coming to live there.

But it's an awesome town in Virginia. And they all started to come down there and move into that town. And it just became kind of the mecca of our family. So it was an easy decision for us. My wife would probably say it wasn't an easy decision because I'd rug my feet for a long time. But when we finally made the decision, grandparents are there, uncles and aunts are there, cousins are there, the family is there. So we moved out there. We've got 60 acres out there, run a small farm.

Kids get to go to school with their cousins. They get to see their family every single day of the year. And it's all the things that advantages of San Diego. Yeah, there's awesome things that happen in San Diego. Things that weren't in San Diego for us was we're never having 60 acres. And we had no family aside from my sister who's a trainer for NSW. She's the only family that we had here. So it was an easy decision to move out there.

And so then we transitioned you into Eshlam Front as this was happening. Like literally I stepped out of Agoros one day and was on board with Exchelon Front the next day. How you like Eschon Front? What's not to like about it? You know, it's awesome. Everything about it. The team is phenomenal. The work, getting to go around and meet awesome Americans and talk to them about some of the issues that they're facing, talking them about how to be more effective leaders in their work life and their personal life is ridiculously rewarding, ridiculously rewarding.

And you see the difference that it makes in someone's life when they decide to stop pointing fingers. when they decide to stop blaming other people for problems and they decide to actually do something about those problems, it's huge. And you go and work with these companies and all kinds of different sectors of the economy, right? Everything you could possibly imagine. And a lot of times when we get brought in, it's because there's a change in leadership. And new leaders came in and they realized that maybe things weren't done very effectively from a leadership perspective before and they want a fresh start.

and they'll bring us in to kind of, you know, do some training and talk about leadership. And we'll go and we'll see these people who are working hard jobs, hard jobs, factory jobs, oil field, construction out there. And man, they're just trying to provide for their family. And now you layer on the heat and you layer on hard manual labor and you layer on things that are inherently not the safest occupations. And now on top of that, you've got to add the fact that they got to deal with. with the freaking crappy boss. Like, that's a tough thing to see. And we'll come in and you see new leadership comes in

and they realize that there's a problem and they want to give a better environment for their people. And that's awesome. You can come in and you can actually make people's lives better. And that really is what leadership is all about is empowering your people in every single area of their life. And it's cool to be able to be a part of that for so many different folks.

And also I get to learn from you, from Echo, from everyone on the team. Like, I'm not done learning about leading just because I'm at echelon front now. I get to work with awesome people. And every time I go on site with someone, I'm just listening. And I'm learning too. And it's making me better in my personal life and in my professional life. When I first started, like, actually teaching leadership in the teams, like, this is what I'm teaching. When I started teaching the laws of combat, when I started teaching these things,

and I started bringing that up the chain of command. We need to be teaching this stuff. One of the arguments that I would use, I remember saying this to my Commodore at the time, I said, hey, sir, have you ever heard of Hamburger University? He's like, no, what's that? It's where it's in Schaumburg, Illinois, and it's where if you're going to be the manager of a McDonald's,

you're going to go to a six-month school to learn about leadership. And I said, sir, we have guys that are in a platoon that they're not getting any leadership training. They're a platoon commander. They're a LPO. They're a platoon chief. And they've never had any leadership training.

Why is that? We need to train these guys. And this just goes so perfectly with what happens in the civilian sector. You're a guy on a construction site. You pour concrete. And eventually someone goes, hey, you're good at pouring concrete. Now you're in charge of a team. And now you've led that team for a while.

Now you're in charge of your alignment. Oh, you're good at doing your job as alignment. Now you're going to be in charge of this team. You're a salesperson. Oh, you're a best salesperson. Okay, now you're in charge of a sales team. No one gets trained in leadership and everyone thinks, oh, well, you are good at this job as a plumber. Now you can lead a team that's putting in, you know, a massive plumbing job.

No, it doesn't work that way. You actually have to learn how to lead just like you have to learn to be a plumber, just like you have to learn sales. You have to learn how to lead. And that's really essentially one of the most important reasons why Eshlawn Front exists because there's people that get to CEO positions. They've never had a leadership training in their life. They've never done any leader. There's people that got, how many people have we taught leadership that have their MBA from an Ivy League school or some of it's like they don't learn anything about leadership and they are so grateful when they realize, oh, this is a skill that I can actually learn and then we, they can put it into action almost immediately. And then when they get their whole team and they start going, oh, I can educate all the people that are in leadership positions.

The SVPs, the VPs right on down the line to the front line leaders right on down down the line to the front line troops, the individual contributors. they're learning how to lead. And then we get these synergistic leadership situations unfolding. And it's just so rewarding to see these companies just step up their game across the board. So that's awesome. You've been a great addition to the team. I know it's been nothing but outstanding feedback, which is basically what I always thought we were going to get from you anyway.

So I remember once I was like, Leif didn't really know you that well. Yeah. And I was to like, I said, hey, you know this guy, Sean. And I was like described as like hey man this guy like he's just a stud he's very articulate He's like he looks like you know just like a Superman type character that's gonna be up there Represent national front he's like Levesike you never say that about me I'm like I'm sorry bro I was just trying to sell you Try to sell try to sell Sean but um yeah so that's been awesome and then the latest adventure you've

gotten into which you dragged me into which is I appreciate is primal beef How'd that start? Yeah. So that all started with the move out to Virginia. So we moved out to this area. It's right in the middle of the Shenandole Valley. I mean, it's kind of paradise. We've got the Blue Ridge Mountains on the right side,

the Blue Ridge Mountains on the left side. The Shenandole River runs right through the middle of our town. And it is, I don't even know if it's arguable, that it's probably the most lush region in America. And when we got there, again, five kids, got a lot of need to feed those five kids. We bought a cow from a farmer that lived in that town. And I had the first bite of steak from that cow. And I looked at my wife, who always sits to my left at the dinner table. And I said, this is hands down the best steak I've ever had in my entire life. And because we have five kids and we eat a lot of beef, we went through that cow pretty quickly.

And then we ordered another cow. And it was from the same farm. farmer and it was phenomenal, the exact same. And it really got my wheels turning because I'm like, well, people don't have access to this. Most Americans cannot do what I'm doing. Most Americans do not live next to this farmer who is, one, blessed enough to live in the Shenandoah Valley where those cattle are grazing the greenest pastures of all time. And two, they don't have access to get that thing and put it on their plate every single night. And to me, that just seemed kind of almost like un-American. And I reached out to my brother who lives in that hometown, my buddy Paul, who's the rancher. And then I reached out to you and just said, hey, here's what I'm thinking. What do you

think about this? And, you know, gratefully, you were, you were on board. And then we started, started the mechanisms of building everything out that we needed. And we officially went live early August with primal beef and all the feedback so far has just been incredible. And there's, when people think of beef, they don't typically think of Virginia. They think of places like Montana, Colorado, Texas. There's so much beef that's produced in Virginia. The reason people don't typically associate it with that is it's processing. So all of the processing that goes on for American beef,

is in the Midwest. So cattle are getting raised in Virginia historically and they're getting shipped out to these processing facilities and holding yards historically right in the Midwest and then they're just getting mixed in the shuffle with all this other beef. But the fact is there's so many advantages to beef that's raised in the Shenandoah Valley that other places in the country just don't have. The Chesapeake watershed is right there and it runs way inland. And it creates this insane amount of ability for things to just grow and thrive inside of the Shenandoah Valley region. And you pair that with this little microclimate that happens because you've got the Blue Ridge Mountains on both sides and the river running right through. And those pastures will grow everything. All these native grasses are growing right there. And that's what these cows are eating on a day-to-day basis. And they're not having to work for it. They're not having to move three miles to go find the next bite of grass.

It's literally right in front of their faces. And, you know, you listen to, you read accounts of these explorers when they first, these Western explorers when they first made their way down into the Shandadoe Valley. And they're talking about riding on horseback through fields of grass where the grass is so tall that it's touching their shoulders as they're going through there. That doesn't happen other parts of the country. That's only right there in this area. And when you talk about what makes quality beef, it really kind of comes down to three things.

How they're raised, what they're finished on, and we'll talk about finishing what that means, and then how they're processed, the final cuts. What does that look like? So the advantages for where we are is they're grazing the greenest pastures in the United States of America, hands down. All these different native grasses that are just adding, you know, nutrient density to the meat, tenderness to the meat. And again, they're not having to work for it. And because they're not having to work for it,

they're not moving, you know, three acres, four acres, three miles a day to go find the next shrub to chew on. That translates directly to the quality of the beef. And all of our cattle come from one farm. All of our cattle come from one farm. And that is not something that you're going to find most any other place that you're trying to find beef in America. You walk into a grocery store, zero percent chance.

You know where that beef came from. There's a chance that beef's not even American. There's a chance that there's a large chance that beef came in from overseas. There's also a very large chance that that cow is not even a beef cow. It's probably a dairy cow. And it's probably a dairy cow that is now no longer productive for dairy operations and they're going to process it and they're going to sell it a steak. That's not what you get with primal beef.

you get American black angus beef that's raised on one farm right inside the Shannandoah Valley. And what that translates to is quality and consistency. So if you look at even some of these other operations, and I'm not bashing them. Look, man, the more Americans that are eating beef that comes from a farm, the better for the United States of America. So you look at a good ranchers or a butcher box or something like that. They're helping farmers out. They're putting beef from American farms on people's plates. That's great.

But what they can't offer is they can't offer consistency because they're coming from different farms. So you might have a steak you really like one box and the next box. It's not going to be the same steak. We didn't want that. We wanted every single person to know when they place an order with primal beef exactly what they're getting. And that is the fact that their first bite is going to taste just like their thousands bite because all the cattle are raised the exact same way on the exact same farm. So the how they're raised, that's the unique thing about where they're raised on this farm in the

Shenandole Valley. The next piece is how they're finished. And there's different methods of we're nerding out on cattle here. Let's go. I'm a freaking steak connoisseur, as you know. Yes. And when you sent me the first one, I was like, okay, cool, rabbi. Let me see what's up.

I'm like, oh, I'm in. Let's go. You want to close a deal with Jocko. Send him a freaking Shenandoah Valley rib-eye and let me go to town on that thing. I was like, yo, this is special. Awesome. Awesome. And that's exactly what we want every single person's experience to be.

And every decision that we make as a company is based on two factors. What's best for the animal and what's best for the customer, every single decision that we make. And the finishing process for a catalyst, typically there's two ways that they're finished. They're going to be either grass-fed and grass-finished, or they're going to be grass-fed and then finished on some type of grain, something like that. Corn, barley, something like that. How you finish it adds different flavor profiles to the beef, right? Grass-fed, grass-finished is going to taste very different than a grass-fed and then grain-finished animal. And that makes sense, right?

They're eating different food sources. So for us, the farm that we work with that we partner with where all of our steak, all of our beef, all of our cattle come from, they, he has a very unique finishing process that I really think translates directly to why this beef is so good and so different than any other beef that I have. One, again, they're grazing these pastures that other cattle in America just don't have access to. That's the biggest differentiator right there in the Shenandoah Valley. then the finishing piece is they continue to graze, they continue to have access to grass, but now he supplements it with distillers grain that he grows on his farm. And he upcycles, which is a trendy word, he upcycles produce from these local markets that are around our hometown.

So he gets produce off of, you know, the shelves from different markets when they have to make room for new produce. And he gets all of these fruits, all of these vegetables. with the grain that's grown on his property. And he mixes all that up into a mash. And that's what the cattle are finished on for about the last 180 to 200 days. And again, they have access to plenty of grass. They're still eating grass that entire time.

But it's that that really lends that unique flavor to it, that extra marbling, that rich beef flavor to it. So there's the first two factors, right? How the cattle are raised and how the cattle are finished. The third factor, which is just as important, is how the cattle are processed. And we partnered with a processing facility out of Lynchburg, Virginia, which is a couple hours from us, called Seven Hills Abattoir. And the reason that we partnered with them is they are the best in the business, in my opinion. They're definitely the best on the eastern seaboard.

They're doing things that no other place is doing. And one of the things that they do is the welfare of the animal, again, is a lot of the animal, again, always our main concern. So they put a lot of effort into maintaining the welfare of the animal all the way up until it's time for processing. And that translates directly to the quality of the beef. And you know as a hunter, right, if I put a bad shot on an elk and that elk is stressed out and that elk runs 700 meters and now all of that adrenaline is coursing through that elk's vein, the stress level of that animal, it makes the meat profile different. It tough. It tough. that meet up. It's the same thing with cows. A cow that's lived a very stress-free life in the

Shenandole Valley grazing pastures and has a very stress-free process of processing, it's going to translate directly into the flavor and the texture of that beef. The really unique thing that they do, which again is not normal in the processing industry, is they dry-age everything whole carcass. So the entire carcass is dry-aged for a minimum of 14 days. Now, we don't go overboard and do like the 28-day extreme dry aging. I don't personally like that profile in beef, the flavor profile. So 14 days, whole carcass is what's happening during that 14 days is everything is breaking down. The meat is getting tenderized.

All these enzymes are breaking down. The flavor is getting more bold. The beef flavor is getting more bold. The marbling is settling in. All these great things are happening. That's not normal. Most processing plants do not do that. And the reason they don't do that is space.

It takes a lot of space to dry age a carcass. And it takes a lot of space to dry age a carcass for 14 days. And every day they're adding to the number of carcasses that they need to dry age because more beef is coming in. And most of these massive processing plants that are out Midwest and other places, they're dealing with such large volume that they can't do that. So what they do is it's a process called wet aging. And wet aging, typically what that means is the animal is processed, and then they start cutting into the animal right away, the carcass right away.

And then they take those individual cuts, they vacuceal them or cryoelum, and then they put them on shelving units where they can organize everything, save a lot of space, and then the individual cuts of meat continue to break down because they're sitting in their own blood, basically. And the blood acts as a enzyme basically that breaks everything down. You know, wet aging, there's not saying that there's, that's necessarily anything wrong with that, but I don't think it's anywhere near as good as dry aging. And the reason people don't dry age is you have to have space for it. Seven Hills is not trying to be the world's largest processing plant.

They're trying to be the world's best processing plant, which is exactly why we partnered with them, because everything they do is designed to give the customer the best finished product that they possibly can. So they're dry aging the whole carcass, and then all these cuts are hands. hand cut by butchers that work at Seven Hills. And this is, it's an intangible thing, but it's something that we really love about these guys is they're investing in that local community. That processing plant was shut down for like 30 years and they brought it back to life and they're providing jobs for people that have been down on their luck in Lynchburg, you know, for the past 10, 15 years when the economy is suffering, they're giving them good paying jobs.

They're teaching them a skill in something that I really love that they're. do is they also hire from a work release program. So people who are just getting out of prison who made some bad decisions in their life, who no one else is willing to give these people a second chance, Seven Hills is willing to give them a second chance. And they bring these men in and to hear them talk about it. It's like on day one, they won't even look at you. They've just been kind of so beat down by the system that they've been in that it's hard for them to even make eye contact. And then they start to work with them. They start to give them a skill. They start to teach them how to be a butcher, which is a craft that is very quickly going away. And they're giving

them value through work and through employment. And they see this huge turnaround where now all a sudden they can hold conversations. They're fitting back into society. And they have a purpose. And, you know, we just went and sponsored the Lumberjack games down in near Lynchburg. And I got a chance to meet some of these guys, some of these work release guys. And the pride that they take in their work, we were serving burgers during this event. And one of the guys that was there had just been out of prison for two weeks. And he was the guy that was doing all the grind for us, all of the burger meat. And this guy could not stop talking to me about how.

much pride he took in that meat. Hey, I wouldn't put anything on your plate that I wouldn't put on my family's plate. And he could, he was so proud of the opportunity that these guys have given them. So, you know, they're producing the best finished cuts on the Eastern Seaboard. And outside from that, they're doing something that nobody else is willing to do, which is give people a second chance. And it is a game changer for those people. So that's the three big factors that really go into beef are how's that beef raised? Where are they raised? What are they eating? How are they finished? And how's that beef processed? And every single thing that we did, every decision that we made was based on giving the customer the best possible experience that they could possibly get. And that's what primal

beef is all about, is about giving Americans who don't have access to farm raised beef, who've never had the opportunity to really experience the difference in farm raised beef in putting that on their plates because let's be honest. I sit down to dinner every single night with my family no matter what's going on. Some people do that. Some people don't do that. Some people got much busier lives than I'm living right now. If there's chicken on the plate, whole family might not be sitting down together. You put a steak on that plate, the whole family is sitting down together. And anytime that primal beef can play a hand in families coming together at the dinner table and breaking bread and serving some farm raised beef, that's a victory for us. And that's what we're trying to achieve with primal beef.

Word. And the deal is, the way it's set up is you pretty much order like a box full of various cuts. Exactly. Whether it's ground, whether it's, I just had hot. hot dogs yesterday. Freaking legit. So those are awesome. And then you get, you know, whatever,

get some New York, get some rib-eyes in there. It's just, that's just outstanding. And there's a couple different, like, sizes of boxes you can get. Yes. And the reason that we went with the,

the structure of that, the box method is just to give people the best value that we can possibly give them. And also, again, it goes back to the wanting to pay respect to that animal. We don't want anything

to go to waste on this animal. So we designed our boxes to where one cow basically breaks down into a certain number of boxes that we can then deliver. We're not worried about cuts getting wasted. We're not worried about cuts getting lost. We want every single cut of beef that comes off of these animals to go into the hands of Americans and their families. So we've got different box options, and we try to put some variety in there, but we also know people like different stuff, right? So you're a rabbi guy. So guess what we got?

We got a box that features the main cut in there is rib-eyes. And that box is also going to have some other good cuts, but the staple of that box is going to be rib-eyes. And then there's some ground beef, some burger patty, some all-beef francs. You like New York strips. There's a box that features very predominantly New York strips. You like fillets. That's your go-to.

There's a box for you. You want just ground beef. Maybe you're a cross-feed athlete that crushes two pounds of ground beef a day, which buddies of mine that compete in cross-feed crush two pounds of ground meat. beef a day. We got a box that's just ground beef that you can crush two pounds of every single day and we'll be there for you. I've kind of getting fired up this. Hey, I'll tell you what you're I had the patties. Bro, that makes a burger. Game changer right. And it's so easy. You just take them out and you throw them right on the grill, right on the trigger, whatever, and you've got

the best burger you've ever had a couple minutes later. Yeah, so I'm a steak connoisseur now, but when I was a kid so like my mom and dad both worked there were school teachers my mom used to go to the butcher shot and get shop and get these boxes full of hamburger patties I think there was 40 in there yeah so for breakfast I would have a hamburger on a English muffin for lunch I'd have a hamburger on a piece of bread and for dinner I'd have a hamburger on a bun there you go breakfast lunch and dinner I to this day I don't really like breakfast foods but I'll have a hamburger 24-7 but yeah the patties coming out of that primal beef box were legit Yeah, I was going to give some to echo, but then I ate them.

That makes sense to me completely. So primalbeef.com is where you can get in the game. You can get, I mean, I don't, there's nothing else to say. Go to primalbeef.com, put your order in and join the club. Yeah. The last two things I would say is, look, are we going to be a little bit more expensive than if you go to the store and buy something off your shelf? Yes, we are.

And we're not trying to hide that fact. But what you're getting in return is you're getting, you're supporting American farmers, you're getting traceability where you know that every single steak, every single burger, every single cut that comes out of that box was raised on the exact same farm in the exact same way. And that's going to translate to the exact same experience every single time you are serving primal beef. You're supporting American processing facilities that are doing good stuff. And the last thing that you're supporting, and this is something that we're really proud of, is we partnered with the C4 Foundation.

So Charlie Keating, teammate of ours, he was killed on the deployment before me in Iraq. So we turned over with SEAL Team 1 right after he was killed. His dad is a phenomenal human being. And when we started this company, it was very important to all of us to be able to give back to the community that we were involved in, the military community. And there's different ways you can do that. You know, some companies give a percentage. There's nothing wrong with that.

But we wanted what we did to be a little bit more tangible and a little bit more, I don't know if meaningful is the right word, but impactful, directly impactful. Did you say tangible already? I did. Quantifiable. It's like quantifiable. Yeah. I think it's quantifiable.

Quantifiable is the word you're searching for. We wanted to make a direct impact on service members' life. So I called up Mr. Keating III, and I told them what we had going on. And I said, hey, would you be interested in partnering with us? Because what I would like to do is every time we sell a box, I would like to donate a cut of beef directly to a special operations force member and their families. And he was all about it. He was all about it. And what I want to point out with that is we're not playing games.

We're not hiding that cost in a box. that cost of that cut is coming out of your pocket, Jocko, is coming out of my pocket, it's coming out of Declan's pocket, and it's coming out of Paul's pocket, the four of us that started our partners in primal beef. And every time you order a box, we don't need a cut directly to a special operations force member and their families. So not only are you supporting American farms, not only are you supporting American business, not only supporting your family with farm-raised beef, but you're also supporting.

supporting seals and their families every single time you place an order. Outstanding. Primalbeef.com. Does that get us up to speed? Are we up to speed? We good? I mean, I hit the heavy bag this morning, and I think now we are up to speed. You're not on social media, are you?

No. Well, primal beef is. But primal beef is. Primal beef. So primal beef, hey, for primal beef, primal beef.com, Instagram and Twitter. Primal underscore Beef underscore Co. I don't know if you know this, but Primal Beef Twitter is suspended right now.

I will look into that. I have no idea why. I'll call up Elon and find out what's going on. So I don't know what's up with that, but it's suspended. Okay. So we'll figure that out. But Instagram, Primal underscore beef underscore co.

That's where we're at. Echo Charles, any questions? Did you use the word matriculating earlier? What does that mean? It'd basically coming down, if you will. Okay. Cool. Kind of like precipitating a little bit.

Exactly. I would almost say they could be brother and sister words. Precipitating would kind of be up here, and what you would say is the precipitation, eventually matriculated down. Okay. All right. Yeah. So that was you guys. Okay.

All right. I got it. That's good. I want to rewind a little bit to drown proofing. Okay. So when I was in fourth grade, Kolo, element. school, by the way. We did drownproofing. And it was a very specific process. What is drown proofing in buds or in the seal teams? What is drownproofing? Yeah. It's an evolution you go through

in first phase where it's meant to get people to be, or actually really to test people's comfortability in the water. So what they do is you stand on the pool deck. They tie your feet together. You have to put your hands behind your back. They tie your hands together. And then you You have to jump into the pool and you have to complete a series of different events. Wait, hands and feet? Hands and feet. Todd behind your back. The first thing, if I remember correctly, that you have to complete is a five-minute

float where you have to float at the top of the water for five minutes with your hands and your feet tied together. Sounds easy. Some people don't float. People that go through buds tend to not float very well. So there's different things that you have to do to maintain your calm and to be able to float. The next thing that you have to do. you have to do is you have to swim underwater a certain number of laps back and forth in this 25

meter pool with your hands and arms tied together. Or when you say underwater, no, you can take breaths. You can take breaths, correct, but you're mainly like submarining and then coming up when you need to take a breath. And then the last thing that you have to do, and this is like a 20 or 30 minute evolution by now. Wait, so the swim, hands and feet. Everything's tied together.

Everything's tied together. Don't you, you miss bobbing, right? Oh, you have to Bob. It's the first thing. The first thing, you're nine foot of water. Yeah. And you go down to the bottom, kick off and take a breath, go back down to the bottom. And you do that for like 10 minutes.

Yeah. 10 minutes. And then you float for five minutes. And then you swim 50 yards. And then you have to go down. You there's your mask, your dive mask is on the bottom of the pool, nine feet. You got to go down and get your mask. So you get it in your teeth.

You bring it up. And then you got to sit there and tread water until the instructor tells you can go to the side. Yeah. And then you got to carry your mask. your mask of the side in your mouth. And that's the process. That's the process. That's the process.

I will tell you this. I practiced that in college. I practiced that in buds before we did it, but never with my hands and feet actually tied together. You just held them there. Hold them together. You know? So when it came time, I was like, no big deal.

The sensation of actually having your feet and hands tied together, vastly different experience. That makes sense. Vastly different experience. Which one is, what, what, what, what a, what a, or whatever, what's the hardest one? The swimming? Well, it depends on who you're talking to.

Like, for me, for me, I was a decent swimmer, so I wasn't too concerned about that, but what was frustrating was one of my buddies was a butterfly swimmer in college at Arizona State, I believe. So as I'm trying to just survive and swim across the pool, I'm literally watching him like a porpoise fluttering through the water. Like a mermaid. Yeah, like it's no big deal. Gracefully.

Merman. Merman. Merman, yeah. The hardest part for me for that was floating. I don't float. And it's all about giant breath in and then just try to hold it as long as you can. Quick exhale, another giant breath in.

The secret to floating is you got to have air in your lungs. So much as you can get in there. What was your hardest one for drone? Out of those? Yeah. Yeah, probably just the floating. The floating because you're, same thing. Like, huge breath, hold it for as long as you can.

And then you got to like kind of kick to the surface, grab another breath. And what about like Remy? Like out of Lake it. when you're, what do you call it, negative, negative point, whatever, when you think, you got to, you got to maneuver. He was probably, like, a little bit closer to treading

and probably a little bit more out of oxygen and probably just, it was probably a little bit harder for Remy. Remy Adelike was not loving the drown proof, and I can just about guarantee you that. Yes, sir, I understand. Okay, right on. It's a little bit different than my fourth grade drownproofing. Yeah, but, yeah, interesting, nonetheless.

Good evolution. Cool. Good to see again, bro. He was well, man. Always a pleasure. Sean, any closing. thoughts from you. I think we just about covered everything.

Just thankful to be here. Thankful to be on the team. Right on, man. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming out, man. And thanks for sharing your lessons learned, obviously. Thanks for what you did in the teams for the Navy, for the nation. And thanks for what you're continuing to do,

raising your family, Ashton Front, spreading the word, and now Primal Beef, getting after it, helping America. eat and live better. Thanks bro. Much appreciated. And with that,

Sean Glass has left the building. So there you go. Yeah. A little bit of getting after it. Get that, get some of that steak protein. However, sometimes you always don't have that steak available.

No. You know what I mean? Sometimes you're going around the door. Yes. You know what I mean? Bro. Those, Literally, that was me today.

So I did squats today. You're welcome. And but I was running, you know, what do you call? Press for Time. I was pressed for time. I was pressed for time. You know what I was left over steak. That was, what do you call when you stripped?

Like I cut them last night. They were from last night. Leftover. But I cut them in strips, boom, right? Had them in the fridge or whatever. So I was like, freaking press for time. I'll just throw them in the microwave real quick. So I'm like trying to eat them or whatever.

After they came out of the microwave, I'm like bro I'm not gonna finish this whole thing right now like I gotta go see I'm saying So I ate a few which was in my estimate about 10 to 15 grams of protein worth of steak Which is not that much for steak because steak is especially post squats. Yes To go the milk bro. I just grabbed the milk easy money literally on the way out Boom fridge out like didn't even like stop like the walk like I like how amazing you are by that no no I like I was amazed by that if it well if you if you put yourself in the situation I'd be amazed too just you'd be amazed how little time it was taken

yeah I'm saying I'd even stop did you even stop didn't even stop bro I'm telling you didn't even stop it took more time for me to throw the other one in the microwave seems saying yeah yeah for sure yeah no steak no worries hey go energy drink of which I've had two because I didn't know that was gonna be a four hour podcast yeah but it was because Sean Glass was talking about some good stuff you know what I mean I'm too deep right now the thing is what should we be calling jaco go a clean energy drink a healthy energy drink a good for you energy drink look what should we be calling it because it's not a freaking normal energy drink yeah yep I like I've always liked clean the word clean energy

drink I like that for whatever here's the here's the question clean I think a lot of people throw out there right a lot of people be throwing that out there clean this clean that but it doesn't actually have meaning. Also, the problem with healthy is, people hear healthy and they think, oh, it's going to taste like crap, basically. Let's literally like what the feeling it gives you. Yeah. It gives you that feeling.

But I guess clean is what we're going to do? I like it. I like clean. Do people recognize what that means, though? Do they recognize that that means healthy? Because let's face it, some other energy drinks have claimed to be clean. They're not clean. Yeah, I don't know.

You see what I'm saying? I do see what you're saying. I know this, though. If you or if someone's saying, hey, like, man, this month I'm eating clean, it gives me. And this is just the feeling, right? Where it's like they're not, I don't get the same feeling as if they say, I'm on a diet. Like when they say that, that's the same as healthy, right? The feeling of, sure, you're probably eating healthy, but it's probably not tasting.

It's not that enjoyable. But when they say I'm eating clean, I'm thinking, ooh, you're eating the good stuff, you know, like the steak, the freaking chicken with the perfect recipe. You see what I'm saying? You're just not eating BS. See what I'm saying? You're not eating fast. food you're not eating a bunch of like cookies and ice cream stuff like this you see what's

that's the impression so maybe we'll go with clean get a clean energy drink yeah get a go get that get it all jacofuel.com get hydrate get greens get mulk what we just talked about the protein jay krill super krill joint warfare just get it just go get it joccaldhue dot com by the way aphes you can get if you're in the military you can get it at aphes you can get a hanaford you can get a vitamin shop GnC's got the drinks in there. Go to G&C and grab some ghosts. That's a good plan, actually. Did you hear me sniffling a little bit?

Yes. What was that? Okay, so I felt myself. I thought you were crying. No, I wasn't crying. Not this time, but so I've been like a cold or something. Bro, it's been a while since you cried on the podcast. Thank you for, you know, pointing that on and everything.

But nonetheless, a sickness, like a cold has been kind of starting to develop. Okay. In my body. Okay. So I'm like, all right. Right. Boom, cold war, three a day. Yeah. Cold War, cold war, cold war. This cold like kind of emerged.

It wasn't even a cold. It didn't even develop into a cold. It developed into just what you heard, just the sniffle. That's it. And I don't even have a sniffle right now. It was just like a momentary sniffle. Like a temporary sniffle. Bro, that time you broke.

Bro, we're not, right? We're not talking about that. We're not talking about that right now. Bro, that was good. Then I realized I had to give you like a heads up. Like in the future, right? Kind of your fault. Yeah.

So we'll watch that. Thank you. Nonetheless, Cold War freaking did the job again. Super reliably, by the way. Yeah. It's powerful. The thing is, this is how you know when a sickness was successful. If you got to miss a workout or miss school or miss work.

Yeah. That's how you know, like, that was a successful sickness. Yeah. This one's not even close. Yeah. Didn't I even consider shit, should I work out today? I never considered that. No, no consideration.

It wasn't even a thing enough for me to, for considerations. You know what I'm saying? Cold War all day. Vitamin shop, Hanifords, dash stores, Wake Fern, shop right,

H.E.B. down in Texas. Meyer in the Midwest. Thank you. Harris Teter. Lifetime fitness. Shields. And by the way,

small gyms, you got a CrossFit Gym. You've got a JG2 Academy. You want to sell JoccoFuel? Email J.F. Sales at jocofuel.com. That's what we're doing. Or go to joccofuel.com. Get this stuff that you need.

We just had the pre-workout come out today. It's a little bit. bit psycho a little bit it's a lot of bit psyched a lot of bit psycho but so it's psycho I told you I quit pre-workout like maybe three real is like two three years ago okay because I was like you know pre-workout like before this pre-workout pre-workout is like hey man let's face it I just need to get freaking amped up I don't care of the cost right now I just got to get amped up and I need the pump and which I get it man because I was there but if you remember the work the pre-workout

back when they first exploded onto the scene one was called an NO dash explode. One was called jacked with the E was a backwards three or three or I don't know, whatever, right? So it was like, they had their things. Their thing. But, bro, I was like, bro, I was like, bro, you don't even know what's in that thing. I'm like, it's probably some nefarious things in that thing. So I was like, bro, after a while, I'm like, bro, I'm literally going to kill myself because, you know, your tolerance goes up and then you're taking two scoops and like all this stuff. So I stopped, stop the pre-workout. And then for two years, so I was like, all right, cool, Jacqueso has a pre-workout.

You know, he's not putting no freaking weirdo stuff. in there so at least I'm gonna be healthy so let's get back on the train hell yeah I get that pump right took like half a scoop yeah put it in while we're filming that video by the way half a square I put it in brought two sips I was like bro I feel the the tingling the it's you're already bro I was all sensitive to it plus it was like that's kind of heavy you know it's psycho it's cycle yeah I was even while we were filming like there's edits of me like I'm going psycho in there yes you are I'm like go like yeah we filmed we captured it I guess I needed it for like the moment, right?

I had to get into character. But I was in character. I was going psycho. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. They're real deal. So there you go.

Jogafruit.com. Go check it out. It's true. Also. Origin USA. Boom. That's where we getting our geese. So we just, I just, so Carlos Mendes.

Our boy. Lose. Loose. Yeah. Hell yeah. He sends me a picture of two origin geese, nanopurl. Weave is that what's called a nano? Nano pearl.

Wait. Why did he send you picture? of two geese because he just got two geese one black one white no big deal he's like bro yeah loz i'm telling you los got his brown belt right i'm i don't know his brown bag don't you right right on see freaking he's on that path man i'm telling you

and appropriately has origin geese because bro if you have a gee and you don't have the origin one you're kind of like hey look maybe ignorance is bliss i don't know maybe no it's not bliss honestly if you've had an origin glee on it's not bliss yeah but you wouldn't be ignorant anymore. But it's still not bliss because you still never in my life did I go, oh, this feels good to put on. And it was like one of those crappy old cotton geese. That's true. Come on, dude.

That was never bliss. Yeah. No. No. It was just like tolerable. You see what I'm saying? But now it's like it's bliss. Let's face it.

Let's do that. Go to origin USA. Get jeans. By the way, winter's coming. Get a hoodie. You need a hoodie for winter. Let's face it. Or the black wash jeans out.

The Delta 16th is the black one. Yeah. Yeah. Black. Yeah. This is not what they call it, black wash. I think she's called black. Just black coloring the color.

See, I don't know the terms, but the black ones are out and I got one. So boom. Oh, wait, you got them? I don't have any. I'm sorry, bro. It's kind of jacked up, isn't it? All right, so there you go. Origin U.S.

Get all your American-made stuff. Speaking of American-made, get some primal beef, primal beef. com. You heard the deal. I don't think anyone's ever convinced me more to even eat more steak. I know, man. Fire up, getting me all hungry. Yeah.

And plus, did you eat today? I just ate those little strips of steak That I just had a mulk. Oh, that's right. I just had a mulk but other than that it was a lean morning Oh no wait. I take it back. I did also have a moke when I rushed out the door this morning I had a chocolate. Yeah, yeah but the thing about milk is like I don't know maybe everybody's different But oh, I had a banana too by the way, but after I drink it like literally 30 minutes later like it's not like I'm still full Maybe like 45 minutes. I'm like still full some people different but maybe right after workout too. Maybe that had something to do with it so I'm still hungry and then Sean Glass talking about all this

grass fed fruit finished and like all this stuff and the quality and the development of the flavor like all this stuff steak ribbyes all this stuff I was like seeing like I was like seeing steaks in my I'm gonna go home and have one by the way so there you go primal beef.com check that out jocco store dot com yes sure but some some good stuff with jocco store by the way so shirt locker boom we're rolling Got a new design. I got one. I was going to send it to you, but I don't know. I didn't.

It's like a... Is there a point to that story? Yeah. Yeah, you know, sometimes you'll like, I think, oh, he'll probably like this one. Yeah, and I'll send it to you. Okay, what is it? It's like, yeah, but after a while I'm like, maybe I'll like it, maybe I don't. Okay, so it's like a, you know, the TNC surf, the yin yang?

Yep. Right? It's that. But one of them has you facing the swing, and then one of them has the eagle facing the other way, right? The what? An eagle. A bald, American, ball eagle. Okay. Okay.

So do you know what that is for? No, I have no idea. Bro, discipline and freedom. Oh. So you're saying discipline is this way, going this way. And then the other one is freedom because the evil is like freedom. Anyway, see, I'm glad I didn't send it. What is it like a cartoon thing?

No, no, no, no. A drawing? Art. It's art. We'll call it art. Yeah, yeah. Graphic design. Does it look like it could be a Harley Davidson shirt?

Because if you have like an eagle and it's a photo and it does not. TNC. It's like that Yin Yang thing. you know the symbol anyway you can have to see it to appreciate it and guess what a bunch of people they're going to see it and i believe they're going to appreciate it all right man unless shirt lock it's called the shirt locker if you don't know shirt locker it's on jaco store it's one of the things on jocco store jocco stores where you can get other shirts discipline equals freedom good stand by to get some that's a good one people like that one um and also we have the shirt locker

which is a new shirt every month different designs one of them in which is the yin yang Discipline equals freedom. Sure, there's a bunch of other ones. Anyway, check it out, jocco store.com. Subscribe to this podcast, subscribe to the Jocko Underground, subscribe to your YouTube channel, get psychological warfare,

go to flipside canvass.com, get something cool to hang on your wall. Get the books that we have. I've written a bunch of books. Get them. Especially the kids' books. I should have talked about that with Sean Glass.

Like, he's all about the, he's got five kids that have wore your kids to the bone, right? Also, she also like, he, we were talking about Jiu-Jitsu. I was like, oh, there's Jiu-Jitsu, you know, somewhere, right?

He's like no, there's not. I was like, dude, check it out. And he found one. And now he's got his kids. It's just good. Go train. Get your kids a warrior kid books. Mike and the Dragon's about face by Hackworth.

Just get these books. Eschon Front. We have a leadership consults. You heard the kind of caliber of people that we have at Eschon Front. Sean Glass is one of those people. We will help your company get through their leadership issues and turn them into leaders. You probably haven't gotten your leadership team trained. to be leaders.

You probably just thought they could figure it out. Well, they can't. You have to learn it. Oh, I guess you can figure out. Like, you can figure out how to play basketball. You can figure out how to play guitar, but think of how much, you can figure out how to do jih jih Tzu, but think about how much extra time it takes. If you have to learn it yourself as opposed to someone coming in and saying, hey, let me just show you how to do it. Let me show you where put your foot over there on that arm lock.

That's true. So learn. Eschlamfront.com. We also have online training academy, Extreme Ownership.com. Come on there and learn these skills. These are skills. We want you to learn these skills. That's my goal.

It's to teach as many people these leadership skills as we possibly can. Check it out. Please. Extremeownership.com. That's the online academy. Also, we have, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee.

mom mom a Lee she's got a charity organization it's unbelievable what they do to help out also you heard Sean mentioned the C4 Foundation you can check that out as well outstanding organization and of course heroes and horses dot org where Micah Fink is taking our veterans into the wilderness so they can reconnect with their soul and if you want to connect with us Sean can be found only through primal beef no social media for Sean legit credit but now he's got to have primal beef primal beef.com and

Instagram and Twitter I don't know why his Twitter was on freaking shut down just primal underscore beef underscore co Echo is that echo Charles I'm at jaco just watch out for the algorithm just it's a monster it'll just grab you and you'll just

waste your life that's what'll happen thanks once again to Sean Glass for everything you have done for the nation, for the Navy, for the teams. Thanks for what you're doing right now at Eshlam Front with your family and of course primal beef. Getting people fed with the good stuff.

Thank you. And thanks to all our armed forces out there on the front lines protecting us and our way of life. From all enemies, foreign and domestic. And thanks to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol Secret Service, and all first responders.

Thank you for protecting us and our families here on the home front. And to everyone else out there, listen, you get to decide. You get to decide what you do. You get to decide who you are. You get to decide to stay on the path and you get to decide if you fall off it. You get to decide when and where you go. And when things are truly beyond your control, you get to decide how you will respond to those things. It's on you.

So don't fall off the path. Don't fall for short-term gratification. Think strategic. Stay on the path. And you do that every day by going out there and getting after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.