Jocko Podcast - 405: All on The Field and None in The Tank. Battles, Bullets, and Lessons with Ret. Navy SEAL, Jimmy May.

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

>Join Jocko Underground<Retired Navy SEAL, Jimmy May discusses The Battle of Ramadi, and his SEAL career. Also his Non Profit, Beyond The Brotherhood.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 405 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. The enemy rounds continued hitting the wall and edges of the rooftop. Michael had taken the bulk of the blast and shrapnel. His wounds were many and grievous. With enemy gunfire increasing, Benny knew that if he didn't get back on a gun,

none of them were going to make it off of the roof. He did not want to leave Michael's side, but this was the only thing left that he could do. Benny grabbed Michael's Mark 48 and went to work. He sent long, continuous outbursts back at the enemy. The pain from his wounds faded into rage. By this point, the Iraqi scouts had made their way back onto the rooftop and began to help Benny with the fight guided by Doug and Mike S. The rooftop was taking heavy fire from multiple enemy automatic weapons. Seth, you guys need to get here fast.

Doug and I are hurt bad and Mikey is down hard. Mike S called into the radio. He did not know that Seth and his team were already on the way to reach their position. Got you, we're coming. Hang in there, guys. The Bradley's are on their way. Seth called back in response. Seth's element had heard and seen the two blasts from their Overwatch position and were already moving when the call for help came in.

The men urgently picked up the pace when they heard the amount of enemy automatic weapon fire that their friends were receiving. They broke out from the main entrance and headed west. Initially, all was quiet at their position, but within 15 seconds of hitting the street, all hell broke loose. enemy rounds snapped and skipped around them they moved from cover to cover returning fire as they closed the distance to the other overwatch position suddenly a seal from the other element burst onto the roof and headed over to doug mike s and michael he was followed by seth and the other seals one of the strongest seals grabbed michael and hoisted him onto his back set grabbed dug and the others took mike S they could hear the 25 millimeter auto cannons of the Bradley fighting vehicles begin to fire effectively suppressing the enemy and providing cover for the seals to load their wounded when the wounded seals arrived back at Camp Corregador they saw the men from the first of the 506 lined up waiting to support wherever they could another testament to the bond that the two units

shared. Doug, Mike S, and Michael were loaded on to stretchers and brought into the aid station on the camp. Doug and Mike S were given shots of morphine and for the first time since the grenade explosion, they finally had reprieve from the piercing physical pain. The reprieve, however, was short-lived. The atmosphere in the room shifted. The mood had darkened and the two men could feel it then they overheard the nurse say it michael was gone in that sobering moment they became aware of what michael had given them he had freely exchanged his life for theirs it was september 29th the feast of st michael the archangel the protector and guide of warfighters since time immemorial and whom Michael had been named after 25 years earlier.

And that right there is an excerpt from the book, Defend Us in Battle, the true story of Medal of Honor recipient, Michael A. Monsor, which was written by George Monsor, Michael's father. And it was an honor to have George on the podcast, number 359, to share the story of his son, Mikey, who was part of SEAL Team 3 tasking a bruiser when he jumped on a grenade to absorb the blast and save three of our other teammates, three of her other friends, three of our other brothers. And the strong seal who grabbed Michael and hoisted him onto his back to carry him out to the Bradley's was another teammate and another friend of mine, another brother named Jimmy May.

and Jimmy served for over 22 years in the Navy most of that time, 20 plus years as a seal. He led troops in combat both Iraq and Afghanistan. He led training. He's a jiu-jitsu practitioner. He attended Harvard Business School. And he's been a friend of mine since the day we met in Ramadi, which happened to be on August 2, 2006, the day that Mark Lee was killed. And it's an honor to have Jimmy with us here tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned.

Jimmy, thanks for coming by, man. Thanks for having me. And you jump right into the heavy stuff. We're not going to mess around. All right. Yeah, well, I mean, that's obviously a day. We'll never forget. And something that the more people know and understand

and recognize and remember, the better off we'll all be. So I'm sure we'll get there. We'll talk about that day. But let's talk about how we got there and how we got here today. Let's talk about you where you came from. Let's start at the beginning. So what? Texas kid.

Yeah, Texas, but El Paso. So it's kind of like right on the border. It's very much, I mean, the Mexican influence is all over the place. I spoke a lot of Spanish growing up. I had nicknames like Wero or Lece or anything else. else that means white. You know, I still, to this day, feel very comfortable in that Latin culture. You know, I spend a lot of time in Mexico working, playing, surfing.

Do you still speak, do you speak Spanish? I speak it okay. I speak Spanglish. I would never do it here because I probably say a lot of bad words. I'm not supposed to say because I didn't learn it in a classroom. You know what I mean? You know how that goes? Yeah.

So what were your mom and dad doing growing up? I didn't see my dad much because my dad had three jobs. He worked at Gibson's, which is like Vons or something like that. And he worked at 7-Eleven. and then my uncle lived with us too. He worked at Pizza Hut. We were, I mean, probably below poverty family for most of the time. You know, my mom, she worked too.

And as I got older, they ended up, my mom went to college because they're like, we got to do better than this, you know. And so my mom went to college. And when I went to high school, they both finished. But I was mostly lower middle class for my life. And then I didn't know what to do when I got out of high school. During high school, I was a wrestler, football player, and then I just never thought, I thought colleges for rich kids. I never thought

I could go. How good of a wrestler were you? I was decent. I took fifth in the state of Texas my senior year. But, you know, the guys are going to really win. They all come from Iowa, those Midwestern, like good, grindy states, you know what I mean? Those guys are, they start early and they're cut above, at least at that time. And what about football? Football was decent. I played a lot, but I wasn't going to go to college on it. I'm a little fella, you know, I'm not as big as you guys walking around. but I played, you know, cornerback and then wing back, so I was in and out as a receiver, and then I returned puns and kicks. I was relatively fast for back then.

What about school? Did you pay attention in school? Did you try in school? No, I didn't try at all. I just, I was like, I'll just enlist in the military like the rest of my family did. Almost, I think at that point, every adult male had been in the military. Most of them thrown out for something, a lot of them got in trouble. But I was just going to enlist.

Had your dad been in the military? My dad was a Hawk missile tech in the Army. and he got out. He didn't say much about it. But I do remember, like, you know, my dad died, all the things he did. I didn't know much about his armor service. On this tombstone, it said U.S. Army,

and it had the dates he served. I'm like, that's interesting. Of all the things, it has his army service on his tombstone. I don't know. It just kind of was interesting to me. So you're growing up, your parents are working all the time.

Yeah. Did you have brothers, sisters? Yeah, I got a younger sister, and they got a younger brother. So my sister's two years younger than my brother's. he's five years younger than I am. And were you kind of like the man of the house then a bunch if they were working all the time? I was kind of a, I kind of picked on them a lot.

I got to say, like I was kind of like the quintessential big brother like tying them up and doing stuff and messing with them. You know, like letting the spit drop right by the head and suck it back up, you know. I kind of picked on them a lot. We're pretty close now, though. I'm happy to say, you know, my brother's started, no college, started his super successful cell phone tower business. He puts light bulbs on cell towers. He's crushing it. and then my sister, she's a teacher.

She's just, and she works for me, and I actually with me to executive, I pay her to do all the things I don't know how to do, and she's awesome. Trust lowers the cost of transaction. She's got my social, my credit cards and everything. You know what? Take it.

And I just trust her. She pays her own, I don't even pay attention to it. She takes some money. She set a website for me. I really haven't seen it. I don't deal with it, so. So you're growing up in El Paso,

and basically it's a bunch of, I've been to El Paso. It's like, like you said, it's a huge Mexican, community. Are you getting into trouble? Are you staying out of trouble? What was keeping you from like getting in a lot of trouble? Yeah. So I got in, I should have been in more trouble. I used to go, I rode the rode rode rode bulls walking around there. And then I also used to go, I'd go to Juarez, which is like the sister city of El Paso and Mexico, because you could drink down there.

And then I'd actually box and smokers down there sometimes. And just did all sorts of stuff that my family was pretty appalled at. And I was really hard to control because me and my dad kind of had it out when I was about 16, 17, and we really didn't talk much until I left again for the Navy. It was a really tension in relationship. Was he trying to, like, control you, and you didn't like that? He was super controlling, but I'm also kind of hard to control. You work with me, you know. I had my own attitude, and my dad, he tried to control it by intimidation, but I was a wrestler, football player after about 16. You can't do that anymore. You know, you probably should

have done it a different way. And we got frustrated with me. You know, we didn't talk much, but, you know, he's dead now. He died of cancer when I was finishing buds. But he really turned it around, I have to say, you know, his last two years, he saw the writing on the wall. And he, you know, swallowed some jagged pills and, you know, really manned up and became a pretty awesome person. So I'm happy to say he figured it out.

Yeah, you know, your kids are, if you try and, your kids are going to rebel at some level. And the more you try and control them, the harder they're going to rebel, the worse it's going to be. And by the way, like, you just mentioned like, oh, you know, I'm hard to control. I work for you. But like, I never felt like that with you. I never felt like any. I didn't feel like you were controlling me.

Exactly. You kind of like gave me a direction and you look at me and like, hey, that's a bad call. And you explained to me why. And then you didn't control me. I never felt like a jock was bullying me right now, you know. Yeah. So on the mat. It's a good perspective to have, you know, especially from that kid when you're raising kids,

like if you're going to try and get them to do exactly what, is you want them to do, there's a decent chance they're going to kind of say, no, I'm not doing that. And they're probably going to go harder. And it's the same thing, not just with kids. It's the same thing like, you know, with your people that work, if you're in a leadership position, people that work for you. You can do the same thing. You can piss them off as well. And you'd be super controlling. And but you might think, well, but my way really is better. And great, your way really is better. Now you've got a bunch of people that don't want to work for you. They're not going to give it the full effort. You're not going to see everything because you're down there

trying to control everything that's going on. So just don't be a micromanager as a parent or as a leader. That's my recommendation. Yeah. And then you also, I remember one time, I just so vivid. I came back from an op and we were doing something and you were like, where were you? And I couldn't find the spot we were on the map. Dude, I never felt so embarrassed in my entire life. You're like, no, no, show me. I'm like, well, and we're over in Eastern. You're like, well, show me on the map because I want to hear it. And you knew, you knew that I didn't know where we were. And I was so embarrassed. And to this day, man, like, we just hiked across the Grand Canyon.

I had a map out every stop because it was so ingrained. I was like, I cannot believe how embarrassed I was. Yeah, that knowing where you are. And that's something that when I was a young seal, we, when I was going through seal tactical training, which was what became SQT. And it just was with like 20 guys, 20 new guys at Seal Team 1. And we would go out on patrol and do. every different position.

And, you know, like one time I was rear security, and then I was rear security for four hours. You have no idea where you are. And it was so frustrating to me. Because when I was a communications guy, I would be close enough to like the officer in the appointment to be like looking at their map, look in on them, you know, like see where we're at.

But no one else in the platoon to know where we were. And that was before GPS. Yeah, oh, yeah. You know what I mean? And you've got to stop and meaningfully take out your map and spread it out and put your red lens, low to the ground and all those things.

It's a pain. So when I became an officer, I would always do my absolute best to make sure everyone knew that where we were. And then also when I was an E5 and I was now teaching at SEAL Team 1 and I would have these officers that didn't know where they were. And I would be like, you know, I'd break out my map and be like, hey, where are you? If they didn't know, I would just like try and explain to them. If you don't know where you are, you can't call for fire support.

You can't call for an extract. You can't do anything. You can't even really navigate to anywhere because you don't even know where you are. So yes, if I probably detected that you might not have known exactly where you are. Oh, I knew it too. And I was trying to get out of there. I was trying to get out of that office. And you weren't having it until I clearly explained that I couldn't tell you exactly where I was.

Right on. All right. So it seems like life in El Paso was looking like a little bit of a dead end. But you're like, cool, I'm going to join the military, no factor. Well, I didn't know what I was going to do. do. So I went, I took a test and I did super well in the ASVAB. I'm not a super academic guy. I end up getting like a 99, what I think is the top so you can do whatever you want. And so we should do nuclear power. You get automatic E3 and you'll be E4 after nine months. I'm like, that sounds like,

you know, I want to make some money. So I wanted a nuclear power. Did you have any idea what was this going on? No. I had no clue. I didn't even know why I joined the Navy. Just FYI, the nuclear power program in the, for an illicit guy in the military in the Navy is a real. really hard program and it's a really hard job. It's a very technical, hard, like down in the freaking engine rooms on a nuclear aircraft carrier or a submarine nuclear sub. It is a freaking hard job. And there's no margin for error. Like it's a really tough training program and it's a tough job. So they just signed you up like, hey, you'll make E3 and you're like, yo, sounds good. I think they get bonus for like signing nukes.

I think it's like, hey, we can get a nuke in here. And so I got to boot camp. I did real well at boot camp. I got, you know, I was like the Navy League guy and I was the honor recruited in boot camp. And I'm like, oh, maybe this. But I just, I just didn't like it. I'm like, okay, so I get to nuclear power school. That was pretty hard.

I had to study a lot. You know me. You guys would call me coconut, you know, not smart hard. Yeah. Yeah, anyway. And so I get there and I studied hard. I mean, it was hard, but I had like a 3-1 GPA. I worked real hard.

and I didn't like it, though I could tell this isn't for me, you know. And one day I was coming back, I finished nuclear power school, and then you go to this thing called prototype where you practice running a nuclear actor. And this lady's car broke down the side of the road, I was coming back from Daytona Beach and pulled over. It's not that hard to fix. It was like the radiator gasket between the upper radiator hose

and the intake manifold. Not a big deal. Scraped it, bought a little cut of gasket at AutoZone, put it on there for. She's like, hey, man, can I give you some money for this? She gave me $30 for pizza, which I thought was fair, you know. So I took it. It was the CEO's wife.

And, you know, that Thursday, I'm like, I snuck my book in to the assembly because no one wants to talk to me. I'm a stupid student. I'm just trying to study because I studied a lot. Wait, which assembly is this? It was like this. So they had an assembly on Thursdays

when the CEO would address everybody like, hey, students, it's like. Like an all hands call. Yeah, an all hands call, correct? And they're like, we're going to call Jimmy May up here, or James May. Seaman, what was I, Seaman, seaman May.

Yeah, I'm like, and someone's like, hey, they're calling you. I'm like, there's no way they're calling me. No, they're calling you. I get up there and the lady walks out and the captain, and I'm like, hey, I recognize you. And the captain's like, yeah, this is my wife. He's like, okay, thank you. And he gave me a little letters of like nice city or something. I don't know what they call it.

The opposite of a reprimand, it was like a good thing. But it's not quite big enough to like wear a ribbon with it. Whatever that middle ground is. And then he's like, if I can ever help you, let me know. I was like, well, I got an officer package in, but it's not going well because my SATs aren't that good. I'm like an 1,100 guy. And they're like, he goes, like, give it to me. Boom.

Turn around. Next thing you know, I'm going to Texas A&M. Dang, dude. Yeah. All right. So now it's going to Texas A&M, but you're going as an E3 or something? Well, I went in there, and they wanted me to go into the Corps cadets. And, you know, I really had a problem with it because you show up and these guys,

guys are yelling at me about military stuff and none of them have been in the military. You know, they're a year ahead of you and they're supposed to be yelling and I was over it. I'm like, are you kidding me? I was such a problem child to my upperclassman because I just, I mean, I had a job because I had a daughter in college and I had to make money. And I remember I came back from work one night and they had tore up my room. Oh, so mad. I'm like, who did this?

And I'm not going to say their names because I still remember their names. And I went in the room and I pulled their racks over and tore up their room. I was so pissed. And then it was interesting. They weren't sure what to do with me. And I end up eventually getting thrown out of the Corps cadets for something. And the Corps cadets there is like ROTC, basically? Is that what it is?

When I was there, there was like 2,000 people there, but only 10% are going to military. So a lot of them, it's almost like a military-esque kind of a club thing. But, you know, they do a lot of leadership training and stuff. And it's got a really good history. I'm not going to like talk about it about the Corps cadets. I just had a real hard time getting yelled at about military stuff, the people that had been in the military. And I'm like, you know, actually, Mike S from the book was there at the same time I was. Oh, right on.

Yeah, yeah. And he didn't even play the game at all. He's like, I've been a Marine. I'm moving off campus. But he was smarter than I was. It took me a couple of years before they had enough of me and said, you're just going to go off campus and stop this. Okay. Right on.

And then how are you doing school? So I kind of, I didn't. study, but I found ways around things. You know, like they just have a grade distribution they'd publish, which, okay, which teachers have the easiest classes. So I would, like, do that, find the easiest classes. I'd go to those. And then I would, you know, I was always, you know, dating like a girl that was in the

some of athletics. They had the old tests, which isn't legal because they have a test bank. And so basically, if they have like 600 questions, they choose 50 of them for the test. If you study all the old questions, you're going to do fine in the test. So I always found ways around things. I never really tried to learn. I had to work a lot. I worked like 40 hours a week. What were you doing for a job?

I was a bartender at a steakhouse. I would say it's like an outback caliber, but it was called Oxford Street. So it was like an English themed. And it was good because I didn't have a lot of money for food. And so I used to have this rule when I was busing tables like, okay, if I'd kiss her, I'll eat after her. So that's how I got to. Otherwise, I couldn't afford food. So we just.

And you had, so when was your daughter? What year of college? Did you have your daughter? My, it was, she was born in 99. I got there in 96, but I had to start working right away as well. So she was born in 99. So it was like this was my sophomore junior year. And at what point did you hear about the SEAL teams? Did you already know about them? Do you learn about them in regular Navy boot camp? Like what, how'd that come about? This is such a like, an amazing story. I was just kind of beside myself with everything. I was just, I was kind of grumpy. I'm like, I went to the Navy. I didn't like it. It seemed ridiculous to me. College is ridiculous. I don't go to class, I have a 36 GPA. This is ridiculous. Like what? Is there anything hard?

And my uncle, he had been in the Navy. He was one of the guys who did a good job. He ended up being a warrant officer when he got out, I believe. And he's like, you know, the seals are hard, but you shouldn't do it. I'm like, why? He goes, you won't make it. I'm like, how come? He goes, nobody makes it.

I'm like, hmm, that's it. So I didn't even really think about what a seal did or anything. I just wanted to try to get through buds because I was looking for something. something hard and it was hard. So did you start training hard? I did. Yeah, there was a little group at Texas A&M. So I really, like I said, I struggled with the core cadets thing. I didn't like wearing uniform in the morning.

And there was a group there of guys who wanted to be seals. And they just got up earlier than everybody else, like 30 minutes earlier. You ran out, you had a crazy hard workout. And then you showed up to chow late, but you could actually eat. Because like if you're a regular cadet, every time your upper classman would talk to you had to spit your food out and you had to sit at detention. and you had, you know, all those games you talk about at OCS. It was kind of like that for a meal.

But you could, you had to have the same, ever had the same food, unified chow? And it was ridiculous. And when I won't, these guys, I could sit down and I could eat good nutritious. I just destroyed my body. Now I can get good nutritious food. And now I can't go drinking every night because I got a pretty hard workout to do the next day. So it really like put some discipline and structure. And a lot of those guys became seals.

So all those guys that, you know, were my upperclassmen, they were, they didn't treat me. I was a freshman. They didn't treat me like a turd. You know what I mean? Like show up, you do your stuff. And I really found my niche in that group. So it's good for me. So it's hard, very hard to get a billet for, to go to Buds as an officer.

How the hell did you pull that off? So I didn't have the greatest grades. I mean, decent. But, you know, nowadays, especially all of our O's are like four O Ivy League guys, you know. And I went to this thing called mini buds back then. And MiniBuds was like a little taste of hell. You know, you do like two weeks of buds. and you do two weeks with the team going around.

Like some G.O. gets stuck with having to show some midshipment around. But the two weeks in minibuds, I did really well. And they give the top three guys a contract. And so out of mini buds, I end up getting a contract along with, I know the other two officers actually that did it. And they did pretty well in the teams too. So that's how I got it. Yeah, that's a hard thing to do, hard thing to pull off.

So you get done, you graduate from college, and then it's going to buds. How did Buds work out for you? What year is it now? It's like 2001? 2001, yeah. I graduated August 19th in the summer. I took a bit of a victory lap. I was like on the five and a half year plan for college.

And then I get there in September and they're like, hey, we got a slot to get this next class. I'm like, yes, let's go. Just jump into it. And so I jumped right into class 238. The only thing I failed the whole time was drownproofing. I'm pretty negatively buoyant. Like it seems like a lot of like the black guys had a hard time because they're pretty negative too.

Well, I was in that ilk of those guys that had a hard time being negative. You don't have enough combat swimmer muscle. That's what I need. You're too lean. I get cold. Yeah. Yeah, so I did everything fine, but I couldn't float. And you had to do a two-minute float.

And so I failed, and the instructor, I was sitting with the other nine guys that failed. And they're like, hey, if it could pass right now, this is your last chance to get back into buds. And then instruct, so I'm like, I can do it. The only guy, no one else tried. So I jumped back in. The guy's like, hey, look, you're not going to float. And it was a black dude. And he's like, you need to swim in circles.

That's all he told me. And then I got back and I did it and I, you know, and John Proof is pretty tiring, you know. I did it back to back the second time. It takes about 25 minutes. It's even more tiring if you don't float. It is super tiring if you don't float. Because like for me, I was floating, you know?

Like that time when you were swimming in circles, I was just chilling. I was just over here cruising. Swimming in circle struggling. Yeah. Dude, there was a guy. It was a black guy in my class. He was from Africa, super good dude. You know, but he had like a cool.

African like British type accent and dude he when they would pushed him into the water like tied up for drown proofing I'm not kidding he just sank to the bottom like up like like a brick like a like a brick like just right to the bottom and just didn't move he just was down there Yeah and I was like bro. It was a bar he didn't he ended up not making it yeah, but he needed some like real help yeah and some pizzas you know like because he was shredded bro like you know like he was It's just shredded. Yeah. Shredded. So what was your first, like, impression of buds, though?

Like, when you showed up there. Man, I was just waiting for the thing I couldn't do. I'm like, there's going to be something here. There's going to be so crazy. I can't do it. And it just wasn't. It was, I mean, it's a lot. You know, you run six miles a day just to eat back and forth from, like, you know,

breakfast, lunch, dinner. That's not even on the schedule. That just happens. And then, you know, I was just pretty stoked to be in what I thought, you know, It was probably arguably some of the world's hardest military training. So I just was excited about that. Still hadn't thought about what happens after. And, of course, I'm in first phase when 9-11 happened.

And, you know, the instructors tried to put some levity on that for us. And I was like, okay, things are about to change. What phase were you in? First phase? First phase. We were about to do a four-mile time run, and we were eating breakfast because we had like the morning PT. And I was just, you know, as you should, officers eat last.

So I get in, and the class is still giant. You know, the class starts off with like ours was 150. We had 22 originals finish, which actually is not too bad. And, you know, there's just all these people. And I'm just trying to wolf down whatever food I can get because I'm starving. You know, and Buds, you're just, if you're not running, you're shivering or you're carrying something heavy. That's pretty much what Buds is for six months. And so, you know, I got the metabolism of hummingbird anyway.

So I'm like, just trying to keep stuff. What did you weigh when you checked into buds? 165. Okay. What do you know, what are you walking around right now? 175. Sure. Yeah.

So I've lost a little bit. We'll talk about later, I'm sure, but I got my hips replaced. Yeah. I'm still on the recovery. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you remember about, like, guys that made it versus guys that didn't? I was shocked at who didn't.

There were some badass dudes that I was like, oh, dude. And then when they quit, a bunch of people will quit with them. Because they're like, I don't know if they felt vindicated. Like, okay, I made it as long as that guy did, so maybe it's okay. Or I don't know, but, like, you would see, like, a big tough dude quit and, like, three dudes will quit with them. Yeah. And I remember during Hell Week, everyone was quitting. And it just sounded like ringing the bell.

I thought the instructors were messing with me because the bell just ringing continuously, you know, and I remember I'm like, what happened to all the boat crews? Bro, it's mayhem. There's like three or four of them left. You know, so I used to be the XO, buds. It's actually super scripted. So, I mean, down to every minute. It feels like mayhem when you're in it.

But when you watch it, you're like, dang, this is a, it's super tight. Yeah. So you're going through, and it seems like mayhem because you're a student when you're going through it. I know for I never was an instructor at buds. I don't regret it or anything, but I wish I would have worked a couple of hell weeks or something just to like see behind the behind the scenes of what was going down. Yeah, it's it's a lot and we did we made some major changes to the way we you know, when I was XO there, we ended up having someone kill themselves and we we stood up this whole new thing called the A truck which is really interesting. I don't know if I

want to jump ahead into that. Yeah, we'll get there on that. Let's stick with where you're going. So no issues other than drownproofing. First phase, hell week, no factor. No, I did pretty well in that. What time of year did you go through Hell Week? It was October, November. How was your, how is your chilly, chili, chili? Dude, it was so cold. We had to carry around the stupid pumpkin all the time, and the instructors would try to break it, and they were like, you barrel the instructor break a pumpkin. And so, like, on top of that, we did a stupid pumpkin. I remember Charlie was his name. I still remember that stupid pumpkin's name. And yeah, I mean, I don't know. I didn't, hell week sucked, but it was long, but I don't remember, like, everyone's like, everyone thinks about quitting. Like, I didn't really. I was like, hmm, this is, this is hard. There's going to be something I can't do, and there just wasn't, you know. So you were in pretty good shape when you showed up there. I was, I was ready for buds. Yeah. I think I could say that for sure. Do you get rolled for anything? No. The only thing I felt was that one, that one drown-proofing thing. And back then they didn't roll. Did you get, how about pool comp? Did you pass pool comp first time? Yeah, I think I was first time every time on everyone, except.

Except I didn't get, you get a first time every time if you pass. They're called OCs, open circuits, and basically one through eight. And I think one of them I failed, and it wasn't a big deal, but like there's a different knot. They tie every time, and you've got to figure out how to get it. And I remember one of the most elations, I felt my entire life was when they tie the one where you have, they tie a knot in like your exhalation hose. And so you can still get air, but it feels like you can't because it's full of water and you have to drink the water out. And you're like, I'm drinking. I'm like, please let there be air in here.

Come on, come on. I'm drinking. And all of a sudden, like, oh my gosh. Like I'm so fired up. I was like, man, I can't smile right now because I was, but I was so happy that there was some air behind there. Yeah. That's a pool comp is a gnarly evolution.

But you passed it first time. That's pretty impressive. I don't know. I wasn't super impressive. I was okay. I failed that one thing, but everything else, you know. So you end up getting, so that's it. You graduate.

And then it rolls into SQT. Yeah, I went to, so we were the first SQT class, and back then they were like, there's the first time you're going to get your Trident right when you go show up a team. And so now you were already, you're the old guard of the team, and you're like, who are these new, you know, they had the bird cage

where you had to put your Trident in it, and they spray painted them blue to make them a nerd. You know, Team 2 is a little old school about things. We'll leave it at that. And they weren't super happy of us guys showing up there with a bird on our chest. Oh, yeah, that must not. What year was that?

That was, oh. Yeah, I left Team 2 in 2000. Okay. So yeah, I imagined my boys. I'd be lucky that I missed you. I imagine my boys definitely probably kept it on lock over there at ST2. Yeah. And so you show up there and so that means you've already been through SK2.

What was your major like lessons learned during SQT? SQT actually was pretty professional. Even back then, like they didn't mess with us too much. I thought we're still going to, I'm still in Bud's mode. And just the fact that they're talking to me like a human, they're trying to teach you actually things. And I remember at the backside, you really thought you knew what you had. Like, oh, I've been to a lot of schools.

I'm a dive supervisor. You know, I've been, you know, assaults and stuff. And then you get to the team and you realize, like, you just barely know anything. Like, I get in the house, they're all running and I'm, you know, walking the slow-mo walk that we were doing before this. I'm like, yeah, it's, yeah. So you get, do you get put right into a platoon? Yeah, right into a platoon.

And it was, so it was really, it was actually cool for us. We deployed three months early, and that first deployment was paycom, sent com, and U-com. So I did three months in pay-com because they ripped a team one team out to go over to Afghanistan. And then I went to at U-com for three months. And then we went over and we did what turned out to not be a super fun mission, PSD, personal security detachment, where we were protecting Barham Saleh, who was the deputy prime minister of Iraq. He was a good dude, man. He was a Kurd.

I don't know how you feel about things, but the Kurds are pretty good people. The Kurds are definitely the fighters, for sure. Oh yeah, I've done a lot of work with Depeche over there, and they're good dudes. I feel bad for how it went down. I was over there in 2017 when they tried to declare independence, and, you know, I guess I can talk about how I feel about it now, but I was upset that we didn't back them more than we could have. Wait, this is your first platoon, is there one assistant platoon commander, or were there two of you guys in a platoon commander? I was the third O, which was the best deal of all time.

They got rid of it, which basically I was a 60 gunner. I carried a 60 as an officer. You know, people like, well, officer should. So I carried the 60 and then I did all the travel claims in the paperwork. That was kind of what I did. So I got to get on the pig. And that's a cool thing when you're a young dude. You know what I mean?

You don't mind carrying 55 pounds in just weapon and ammo. Yeah. That's the shit. Yeah. Let's go. And that's a pretty awesome deployment though. So you went paycom? Yep.

And then to where? Ucom. And then to Ucom. Yep. Over in Europe. So you did some exercises in paycom? Yeah. We did some with India.

we did some stuff with them. We did some stuff with the Thai seals. And the Indians, I learned a lot over there. You know, the Indians don't put the same premium on life as we do. And I remember that they wanted to do, they wanted to go right to VBSS, visit, board, search and seizure, which is basically like climbing up the side of a boat from like another boat and, like, assaulting it. And they didn't, they weren't worried about the helicopter piece because we normally do it with two.

With helicopters, the half-heel-assault force and the bath, the boat assault force. But they just want to do the boat's side. But, you know, you've got this tiny little ladder that's wrapped around a Gatorade bottle, and you, like, hook this thing up, and you've got to climb up while the boat's moving, and you need to be able to do a couple pull-ups, you know? Because you got, you're wearing probably about 80 pounds worth of kit. I think that's a, because you're kind of light when you're going VBSS, so 80 pounds is about what you're wearing.

And you peel off that ladder. Not only are you going to go in the drink, but you could hit someone on the way down, like our good friend says Stone, that someone around on his head, remember, and broke his neck. So it's a pretty dangerous thing. telling him like, hey, man, we can't do this with your group right now. Like, we are just going to do this. And the guy, he's like, why not? Well, because it's too dangerous and it's not worth you losing the guy. And he, the guy tells me, this training is worth more than one or two of my guys. And I'm like, I'm like, listen, man, that's not the way we roll. So we can't do it. And they

were pretty upset. I didn't get a good mark from them, but I didn't want to do it. Yeah. And then Ucom? Youcom. We just did a bunch of like, basically PSD training, learning how to, Oh, that's right, because you knew where you're going. Because we actually didn't do any PSD during the workup, and now we're going to be protecting, you know, head of state. We protected some other people who were over there. It's not a fun mission, but you get cool pictures like it is a fun mission. Because lots of time you're sitting in the green room waiting for them

and all of a sudden like, oh, they're done, or they're meeting around long, and everyone gets up and leaves their whatever they're doing and jumps into the cars and gets ready. So it wasn't fun, but it looks like it was fun. Makes for some cool pictures? Yeah, my mom actually saw me. She saw a picture of me on like Fox News or something. She said, Dad, are you in Iraq?

Because I told I was in Europe. And she's like, you in Iraq, I think I saw you. I'm like, you know. Mom's got some good eyes tracking you. And then so you get done with that deployment. And what was your big lessons learned from that deployment? On that deployment, man, I was a new guy. I wish I could say that I had some kind of big profound thing.

But I really was just, it was so many different things. And I was often the advant. And so, you know, I didn't have any super. illustrious things to say about that. I mean, I learned a lot on your first appointment, but I can't even put it into a encapsulated thing. Yeah. It's,

I look at it sort of similar to having kids. Your first kid, you just know nothing and you're just like hanging on and like trying to. Yeah. And you also are focused on some dumb stuff and like, you're, I remember, you know,

my wife was cleaning like boiling every, uh, bottle cap or whatever. Like, oh, we got a, this needs to be boiled. And then by the time we had our fourth kid,

like kids are just eating mud. It just doesn't. Yeah, it just doesn't care. But you learn so much. And it actually almost equates almost perfectly to like what you feel like in your first platoon. We're like, oh, I was like that. And then your second, second platoon, you're like, okay,

I kind of understand. But third platoon, you're like, okay, I got this. Fourth platoon, you're like, fifth between six point, six point. You're just like, you know what to do, man. So what happens when you get done with that? And you had another kid in while you were at team two, right? Yeah, I did.

So did you get married in 90? Well, yeah, we got married right during college before I left. And then he was born. He was born in May. So I came back early from deployment two weeks early so I could go and see him be born. Right on. Yeah. And then what's your next step on the gauntlet of NSW?

Every junior officer is trying to like get another platoon. That's the, that's the golden thing you want to do. And so we're all trying to figure out how we could do it because they want to like send you off to do this, the associated tour. And they had me take this test and turn. out I can learn languages so they're like, hey, you're going to go learn Arabic. So I thought I could just slow roll this thing until eventually, you know, someone gets fired or something. And then now I'm at the team because they seem like a good call. Like someone's going to get hurt or fired or something. But it never happened. So I went off to learn Arabic and it was,

I couldn't believe I was going to miss the whole war. I'm like, I'm going to miss, all I did in this whole war was protect the dude. And now I'm going to be in Arabic school. It's to be done by the time I get back. So, I mean, I was just super mad, studied super hard. And I end up completing a 16-month course in 13 months, fought a lot. I had a really good, two different Jiu-Jitsu schools I trained out up there. Great partner named Keith Paragon. I train with him all the time. He lives up in Del Mar now. He's broken two now, so we can't train, but we talk about how awesome we used to be to each other. And I would be, I have to say it, because he's going to love this, but, you know, we actually had a tournament, and we were in the finals together. And when I tell

the story, I talk about how bad I beat him, but it was zero to zero, and they gave me the nod. And to this day, I have it over him. So it's a good thing to say. And so I left there and they're like, hey, you're going to go over and join Team 3 on deployment. I'm like, cool. I landed there and they're like, well, let's push him out to Alstation. August 2nd, I ended up with you, you know. And I don't know if remember the Arabic test you gave me.

I do remember the Arabic test I gave you. Yeah, because what was it? Seth had called over and said he needed another turp. Well, we had 18 interpreters. Two would go outside the wire. One got shot. So you had two platoons. You need an interpreter.

So he's like, I need a turp. And you didn't even ask me. I was like, hey, man, I can hobla. You want me to do it? And do you want me to tell me to tell you? Let's have you tell the story. No, go ahead. I want to hear what you have to say.

Let's hear your memory of it first. Okay. Oh, you get the last word. I see how it did. So I'm like, hey, let's just, let's practice. And there was that we had moose there. He was a good turp. He was good day.

Great. And he, I was like, okay, you said, we'll say some words to them. So I started talking, and then we're talking back and forth. I'm like, hey, you don't know what we're saying. Why don't you say the words and I'll translate them and you can see how we do? And you're like, okay. So you're like, hey, tell those guys to get down at the end of the street.

So I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm talking. And then in the middle of it, you're like, wait, they're shooting. Get them off the roof. Tell them who are not. And I'm like, like, I'm choking, you know, because you're like in my face. You totally locked up. And you did. I locked up.

And you look at me and you were like, fail. So I turned to walk away, and as I walk away, you're like, your flight leaves at one. Yeah. Yeah, that's similar to how I remember it. Yeah, so we had you, me, and Moose, and we needed a terp, and somehow you got to me and said, like, hey, you know, I speak Arabic. Like, that's where I just came from DLI.

And I was like, okay, well, how well, do you speak it? And you're like, well, I just graduated with a whatever, whatever, would you, two plus, two plus or whatever thing you had. Yeah, yeah. You were super impressed, by the way. Yeah. And so, yeah, I said, you know, tell him, and I was all mel, like, tell him, hey, we need people to move down to the west side of that building.

And you're like, dirka, dirka, dirka, dirka. And I look at Moose, and I go, did he say it? And he's like, yeah, he said it. And I said, okay, now tell him this. And he tell him to push up one more building. And you're like, derka, dirka, dirka, dirka. And he's like, yep, that's what he said. And I said, tell him, she's fired.

Tell him to get off that building down. And you couldn't see. I'm completely locked up, bro. You were just like, yo, I'm I didn't even know you. I'm like, who is this guy screaming? I met you for like five minutes. You know, that was the day Mark Lee was killed.

So it was a weird kind of somber thing. Yeah, it was freaking somber, man. Man, when you jumped on me like that, I was like, ah, ha. But, you know, like you could speak it well enough. And guess what? You were better than what we had, which was nothing. Yeah, low bar. Yeah.

So, like, go grab your shit. I remember saying go grab your shit. flight leaves in an hour or whatever it was so that was uh that was how it all kicked off um so then what so you went you went over with stone or you went over to to corrugador to the east side of romadi you you ran out on some ops over there for a bit yep and then you pulled me back for something i can't remember what i think we had like a reservist good dude and you wanted me to bump him out let him go get on some ops yeah and so but i bounced back for between corregador and actually you guys dealt me out to a bunch of different

teams. On that one deployment, I did ops with team two, four, five, and eight. Because sometimes they'd be like, hey, we don't have a turp. And you'd be like, hey, I got one for you. He's, I'll deal him to you. So like, I got a lot of ops in, uh, and when you guys were home, I stayed after that too. So I got, I got, I got to work with a lot of different teams. Yeah, that was a wild time. That was a wild time for you to show up for sure. Yeah, not only showing up, like, like, look, you showed up the day, Markley died. Yeah. General Brown visited that day. So like, I don't know if you, you might have even come on the same, but I don't know. No, no, I had to, I drove you over there in a Humvee and I didn't know how to drive a Humvee

because you're like, hey, and I was like, oh my God, because back then they didn't teach us, didn't work up. And so like, they're like, hey, you got to take jock. So I had went around trying to find Humvee keys because I'm like, I got to make sure I got because I got to be ready, made sure I had gas in it, but I couldn't find the keys. I'm like, freaking out. So finally I asked somebody like, hey, bro, or the keys. And they're like, you idiot.

So you didn't know about that part, but like, you know, but I made sure we had all the gas. He's like, you're just going to cross stream. I don't care. Make sure the gas is full. Make sure everything. I clean the Humvee. Make sure it's good. So we picked, so you and I picked up General Brown. I drove you over there. And then I think you were with somebody else. I don't think that I don't think that I, uh, I don't think that I don't think that I, uh, I don't think that I'm you're going to, you know what? I knew this is going to come up. But what? What, what did? That happened almost immediately too, right? No, you were like, called me in her office. You're like, so what's your deal? I'm like, I don't know what's your deal. What do you mean? And you're like,

yeah, sports this, and we get into it. And eventually you're like, you know, oh, you do jihitsu. I'm like, yeah, I've been training for a couple years. I'm a blue belt. And you're like, oh, so what's like your move? And I'm like, I don't know. Like, no, you've got something you're good at. I'm like, well, I guess when we train, you'll find out.

That's what I said. And now he's like, oh. Oh. Let's go. You know what's funny? You told me that exact story. No, that's exactly what it was. Yeah.

I heard another version of it that was like, like a little bit like not quite because let's face it look I don't know how you actually said it we could probably discuss how you act but when someone says the words well when we roll you'll find out let's face it that's the kind of thing you know like oh okay we'll see what's up we'll see and so yeah but in my mind this is the this is the way I was thinking in my mind was look I've been training with like all the guys that are there none of them are good at jiu jitzu so you show up and I'm kind of of stoked. I'm kind of thinking like, I didn't feel that. Yeah. I was like, dude, like maybe you got

some good moves like, hey, I'm good at Crucifix. I'm good at Camero. What are you good at? Like, it'll be good to like learn whatever you know. And obviously I didn't give you that vibe because you're just like, well, you'll find out. And then I think I was like, okay, cool, go grab your gear. We'll go train. I was like, we're trained right now. You submitted me with this thing where you put your head under my chair. I called it the fish. I thought like I was a fish. You put your head under my chin and like crushing my back. Because I did great against the other guys, you know. I was doing pretty good against them.

And then when you came showed up, yeah. Yeah, well, you're, you're like a solid jiu jitsu player. You know what I mean? And you wrestled. But I mean, even at that time, I was like, I was good. Yeah, you were already black belt. I was a black belt in jiu-jitsu. And you were trained with Dean.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was a level that I was not, did not know existed. I train on the East Coast. Yeah. There was a difference between East and West Coast, the Jitsu. The jihutsu here is insane.

When I traveled, when I traveled, you know, I would travel and I would do, I'm, I was only a brown belt, you know, but like I train the different schools. And I would, I call it catch and release. I wouldn't, would never submit the instructor. Never. But like, I'd catch it. I'd like go. They knew they'd be like, and they'd be like, okay. I just remember this.

So we had this like tent, you know, like a GP medium tent. And I went, wow, you know, brought mats on deployment. But there were mats. They were like those like folding cheap things with like the vinyl top. Yeah. They were, yeah. But I remember you were, like, after we rolled, you were not, you were like distraught. I was super distraught.

Like, what just happened. Yeah, I wasn't sure because I've had not been manhandled like that. And like, I rolled with, you know, what I thought was some high level guys. And I was like, this is stupid. Yeah. You were like, dude, you're like, that's stupid. You know, and I was just like, that's funny. What year was this?

2002? No, this is 06. Oh, sorry. Oh, six. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So you're nodding your head echo because you know like that in comparison of the rest of the world at that time I was really good. If you compare me to the rest of the world right now, like the rest of the world is better now because like the whole world is better at Jiu Jitsu now. Everyone is better at Jitzu now because everyone's better because there's that much more knowledge and learning going on. Yeah. But at that time in the whole world, I was better than I am in the whole world right now. Yeah. You know what I mean?

So for you to. That was a level I had was not ready for. You hadn't been there yet. And like I was there all the time because I'm training with Dean and like I'm training with world champs out here all the time. So yeah, that was. You want to hear the ending part of the story how he told it to me? Yeah.

Because he told me that story and then he had his like additional input like as to tell me. So he said that exact same story. So funny how you use the exact words. Like also what do you move? Yeah. So same story. And then when he got to the part when he said, when you said, oh, you know, we'll find out on the mats or whatever.

And he added, it didn't matter because I was just going to smash from the top. That's what he said. Wait, how did I say? I'm just going to smash from the top. Like that's what I said to you or what I said to him. To me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of like the story was done and then you were telling me, but it didn't matter because

I was just going to smash from the top. I remember that story. Yeah, but once you started to smash the top, it wasn't a waste of your time. So you went to the bottom because I'm like, okay, he's going to give me some top. I'll show him. It didn't work out even. That's where I got the term smash from the top. Okay.

You telling that story about Jimmy. Yeah. Damn. Smash. Dude, I was so stoked to have somebody that new, like, Jiu-Jitsu to train with. I know that might,

it might not have come off that way. You didn't feel that way, yeah. You also introduced me to the 20 squat workout, if you remember that as well. Bro, we had that. Hell, yeah. I was like, I'm just up here to work out.

You're like, hey, come here. What's a way you can do 10 reps with? I was like, 225, I think. Okay, do it. So I go, except do 20. Okay. So I did it and I put it up and you're like, that was too easy.

You're holding back. He's like, take a break, put some more weight, do it again. So then I did it with 245. And you were like, can't do it? I'm like, I can't do it again. Like I can't do it again. Dude, I'm fired up like, imagine, you know, when you're in the teams and you get like a team guy that's like a young guy. I mean, you're a young guy to me then, right?

I mean, I'm like 35 years old. You know, I've been in the teams for a long time, and I'm always stoked to have somebody that's fired up to, like, train and lift and, like, it's awesome to me. Like, that's not how I felt, I have to say that. I felt like you're messing with me. You'd ask me a question. I'd be like, I've got to please, I hope I know this answer.

I just saw another young officer that had joined us on deployment, who's now captain. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Remember I put him in an arm bar and it like, and he's like, no, I'm good. I cracked it and you were like, bro. I was like, oh, shit, sorry. But I know you're talking about. He said to be something like, you know, hey, sir, do you, do you have any recommendations? My shoulders kind of injured.

Do you have any recommendations? And I was like, yeah, muscle ups. Because I had rings meltdown. I was like, yeah, do muscle ups. Do lots of muscle ups. Like just the worst advice. Yes. Oh, there you go.

Good times. But what I was saying is it's crazy. So you arrived there. Mark had just been killed. Like it's like you said, somber. And yet at the same time, We have the Socom commander coming in, General Brown. And, and, you know, this was, we were in so much sustained combat that it wasn't like, it wasn't like, oh my gosh, someone got shot.

It was like, yeah, okay. Well, we had 32 dudes, 16 Purple Hearts, three killed, is that right? I think that's roughly what it was. It's something like that. But yeah, it was a lot. and yeah for you to show up there that that definitely must have been did you hear about what was going on prior to arriving no i was a d-l i know no one knows anything yeah the regular navy for all intents and purposes didn't know much about the war going on as far as i know they had individual augmentees that did stuff over there but i think most of them ended up at a big base

somewhere which is like a big piece of america kind of right like oh you're in iraq or you're a bogram airfield and they're salsa night and you know yeah one thing one thing that i didn't really connect with until we got home was the guys they were reading our op-somes right like at trade-et they were how is in Arabic school they were reading the op-somes in the morning like meeting like this is what the guys at tasking the brujer did make sense like and so everybody well at least like the west coast guys that were in trade at and talking to the because we're in trade at then you're telling the platoon that you're training you know so that everyone kind of knew what was going on so you were just coming in out from no one

I had no clue. That's freaking crazy. I had no clue. Yeah. It was time to learn fast. And I remember the guys were moving so much faster than I was. I really felt that way because while we came up and like I've, you know, I had my gear, wasn't set up like you guys was because I had it around my hips and it needs to be

on your chest because we're riding in vehicles all the time. And I just wasn't ready. And somewhere a couple weeks into it, I stopped noticing that everyone's moving faster than me. Yeah. You got kind of caught up. Until I stayed at the next group and Team 5 guys came in and they were moving slow. And I was like, oh.

It was a weird thing to realize like, hey, the speed of combat takes a little bit of ramp up. And, you know, when the guys get hurt, the beginning of the deployment and the end of deployment. That's it. I mean, that's the preponderance of it because guys come in and they're ramping up. And then in the end of deployment, they get a little complacent maybe. Or they're thinking about home. They're not fully dialed in. It's always those times.

And I think a lot of that happened. And we had a lot of gunfight. So it happened sprinkled throughout. But in my experience, it's been the beginning and the end. What did you say? So you went over to Corregor and you meet with Stoner. What's what you're taking? Okay.

So people don't know Stoner. I walk up and Stoner doesn't say hi or anything, you know, because I got my bags and my kit and I'm like, hey, I'm Jimmy May. We're living in this bombed out thing we called Full Metal Jacket. Basically like blow a building up, that's where we're living in. Like some of the walls were down. I remember the Army guys had a cat and like the cat liked me. So they thought I stole their cat.

But it was nice because the cat ate the money. And it would sleep with me and they'd be, that guy, the seal stole our cat. I didn't steal them to the cat. Anyway, so we're living in this. You had to wear body armor over because we got mortared daily. They're just dropping mortars in there. And especially during sandstorm because like our counterattack to mortars was to get some helicopters up or like, or get some ISR, which is intelligence, surveillance reconnaissance.

So like some kind of asset overhead that can like drop on the guys dropping on us. But in sandstorms didn't work. So every sandstorm, you know you're getting mortared. And we got mortared all the time. So you had to wear body armor everywhere. So I come walking up and Stoner's like, I'm like, hey, I'm Jimmy. And he's like, hey, here we wear Army ACUs. You got to go in there.

There'd be a set. And we shave our head. Gave me a clippers. I was like, okay. I shaved my head and put on my Army ACUs. And then I walked into the thing and my guest was working in there. And they got me to work. That was my end doc.

Soror didn't have a lot to say other than that. But I remember he kind of gave, you know, that head, that head shake, like, after I shaved my head and probably, he was like, it was good. So you end up, like you said, you're doing ops all over the place. And how much Arabic are you speaking? A lot. So I spoke, because we have a partner force. And if you have a bunch of guys with automatic weapons who are kind of on your team, you should be able to know what they're saying. And so I was pretty valuable for that.

And it's also nice when you have a team guy because if, you know, you're going to set the guys up downstairs and you have a turp, you've got to spend another team guy down there to walk around with the terp. And do you trust that interpreter? I don't know. What about those conversations going on around you? Do you know what's happening? So I had like widely, a wider net of situational awareness than what you would have if you didn't have a team guy down there. Because I can hear him talking about us. And, you know, the same thing with the prisoners talking.

You know, I did a lot of interrogations. And I would use an interpreter for the interrogation, the battlefield interrogation. but they don't know that I understand what's going on. And it was a super powerful thing, you know, to figure out what exactly they were saying. Yeah, I remember you told me too. I had a, I had written an email to the Commodore. I still have it. I got to get a copy of it.

I gave you a copy of it. I gave you a copy. I was hanging in my cage. I gave you a, I told you about it. And it was about, hey, because at the time, they were trying to get seals through training. Is it that one? Yeah. Yeah, they're trying to get more seals too, and they're like,

you got to get more numbers, but you can't. Like, if, Echo, if I had you sit in that chair for five and a half days, it would suck, dude. Like, your feet would be swollen. Now add on 200 miles of running and carrying a boat and a log and being cold and wet. Add all that on there. You know, and so we just, no matter how you water it down, we can't get more guys through. And then you came up over the top with like, don't make it easier.

Make it harder. He's like, we need more. He goes, we need a bigger. tail, not more teeth. It was like, so give, don't have seals do non-seal jobs. And man, I've been spouting that for the rest of my career. Like, you know what? Why do I got you counting comms?

Why do I got you fixing guns? Let's have you assault and do what you need to do. Because at a Fortune 500 company, that top engineer you're paying, he ain't sweeping the ground. Right. He's not doing stuff. He's not paid to do. I'm like, have these seals, focus on that.

And then I'll add the tail on the back. So I thought that was pretty wise and I hung it up. But I don't know. Yeah. So the Commodore was like a friend of my. and a great guy. And he had sent out like kind of an all hands

or whatever leadership email like hey we're looking at you know ways that we can grow the force and blah blah blah and I just responded to all hands because I also you know was kind of halfway through deployment and just that's the that was the truth like you could see that

the seals needed to be freaking awesome guys like they needed to be tough like everything you just said like oh show up here put your gear on and go out and getting gunfights. That's what's going to happen for the next, you know,

however long you're here for. And you're not going to have good chow. It's going to fall from the sky. Yep. It's like that was, that was the time I said to myself, oh, this is what,

all that training that we go through, this is why. Because someone's got, like you just said, like who's going to be able to pick someone up and carry them out when they get shot? Who's going to run out into gunfire

and carry some out when they get shot? Who's going to stay up for 48 hours? to make sure that we're ready to go to. Like, it is, it is what it is for a reason. And all the time. Like, like, when I got sleep, it's on the way to the op. Yep. Like, if I had a calm guy and, like, you know, we set up our pro words so, so you know where at, and I'm like, hey, bro, I just need to sleep for like 40 minutes. So on the, on the bird, if my calm guy is good, and lots of times, I'm working until the last minute, the guys would throw my stuff in the truck, you know, and I'm trying to line up the assets.

Like, you got to go hurry. So I run in, I jump in there. And they're briefing me on a lot of things that you might think I'm running, but, you know, these guys set me up. I trust them. I know I got a good point, man. I know I got a good chief. And they're squaring me away on the way because I got to set up all of our, like, permissions, you know, through the different layers of command and the battle space owners and everything.

So, yeah. Yeah, the training is how it is. So, yeah, when the, when the Commodore reached out to all hands, like, hey, you know, what can we do to get more people through? It's like, no, give us more. We don't care. We don't need more seals. We need more support people that can make this stuff happen.

100%. And make sure that we're getting the best freaking. hardest guys for lack of a better word look smart and cable and all this other stuff you need dudes that are just fucking hard like mentally hard dudes yeah and buds produces that for the most part no it does it does yeah uh so you're doing ops all over the place um we're getting towards the end of our deployment and and that's when uh you know september 29th you are you are you were actually with Stoner's element, which was like a couple blocks away. Yeah, we were probably about 350 yards away.

So like the plan is to have two mutually supporting sniper rober watch positions. And mutually supporting means that we can look around there to make sure no one sneaks around there, around their base of their house. And they can do the same for us. But it was really hard because we had to be on the edge of what was called L Block at the time. And they had some army guys, dude, some 18-year-old army dudes running concertina wire across Route Farooke in the middle of the day. day, I'm like, I mean, that's crazy. Because we insert at night, no one attacks us at night,

but it was crazy that those guys were doing that. I'm like, I don't know what you're paying these guys, but dang, that's like some World War II jump out of the trench. I mean, I don't know. That's a hard, that's a hard bar to get to, but I did not think they were going to make it. And so we were up on top of these roofs. We're supposed to shoot the guys from this one angle, and there was a bad mosque. And I say a bad mosque because I can understand what they're saying of the speakers. And so when they say things like, hey, come give blood in air, That means come in here. They arm up, they get a plan, or they get their weapons stowed,

and they leave with the plan, they grab their weapons, and then they go. So I know this is happening. I can hear it over the loudspeakers. And so I'm like, hey guys, get ready. You know, it's getting ready to go. And sure enough, we've been in a pretty good fight all day long, down on their end, they'd killed two.

We'd killed one. I think our guy was a four and five because when we hit them, someone ran out and stole his boots and that was it. Because like, you know, usually if they're going to drag them out, then maybe, okay, I should probably shoot that person too. There's some rules of engagement. and escalation force that has to happen that we abide by straight up. But that being said, the fact they just stole his boots means I think it was probably a foreign guy,

and the body was there for a pretty long time. So then as this fight's going and escalating, I was on glass. We had these periscopes. You couldn't stick your head over the wall or through a window, but you put this periscope up. I remember this, the house room, this guy named was Audible, and he was a good dude. And I felt bad for him because we went to use his house a lot because it was a nice sniper range, a nice good line to shoot right in that really bad area. But when we left, the bad guys would come in and beat him up and beat his family up.

And he would always be like, please don't leave. And I'm like, dang, bro, I'm sorry, man. I can't stay. He's like, you know they're going to come. And he even set up an American toilet forest where he had like a chair. He cut a hole in that would sit it because you know they have a hole in the floor. So I felt for that dude. And I know Stoner did too.

Stoner always gave him a bunch of money of his own money. Been like, hey, I know they're going to steal and break stuff. Take some money. He always gave him some money. But I was on glass when that thing blew. And, you know, that guy, my guest, that came over, the loudspeaker, man, it was, he's one of the hardest dudes I know. I don't think you'd argue with that.

His voice was pretty broken. I could tell, oh, no, this isn't good, you know. And Stoner was like, hey, get the Iraqis, let's go. And so the first three guys ran out in the street, I was trying to get the Iraqis. I couldn't. They wouldn't come. I had the guy by the front of his plates, and it was like trying to put a cat in a bathtub, man. He had his hands out on the side of the door, and I'm yanking.

And finally, I turned, and we left our, like, our breaching tools and stuff there, because we had a lot to do. So we left, like, our hoodies and our sledges and our backpack. We just had door night vision on second line and just went out there. And I ran out there, and Stoner's like, he's like, hey, where are the Iraqis? I'm like, they ain't coming. He's like, tell him to come. I'm like, I can't.

And so now we're already in a pretty good scrap. Things are going bad. Two of them did come with us. Jamila Mahanid, they did come with us, which we knew them. They were good people. Anyway, we started scrapping our way up, and then you talked about Benny grabbing that gun. That was Mikey's gun he grabbed. And I was laying next to Tommy D.

And there was like maybe a, we're on one side of the street, the other elements on the other side, and probably like a 12-inch high pile of rubble. And we were pinned down. There was like a light post next to us, and we were just ping, people's just flying. and you're just laying as flat as you possibly can. I'm trying to reload my magazine. And I remember thinking like, I don't know, but we're going to go from here. And then I heard that big gun light up and I was like, uh-oh.

But I'm like, oh, all of a sudden there wasn't pinging around us anymore. You know, like all the spalding of the concrete wasn't hitting. And so when I heard that, I looked up and I saw him. I saw him holding that gun like just no strap, no nothing, just at the shoulder, shouldering that big weapon and just laying it down, was probably the most important covering fire of my entire life. And we got up and we just, we made it to the house underneath that, that covering fire. And as I came up, the way that the roof was, there was a center-fed stairwell.

So you came up with the middle of roof. And you could see right what happened. My guess was blown up in his feet because he was laying down when he caught the blast. And then Mikey, Mikey Mansour was just bleeding up. And Benny, not only before he did that, what took him too long, he was patching everybody up. Like, you know how it is when guys are bleeding. You never have enough cause. It doesn't matter what.

He made it work. That dude, he's a man. Like, he patched everybody up. So I, but Mikey was bleeding terrible. And so, like, I rolled him over and I, like, swiped down his chest to see what, to see what I had because it was just like a blood and gore. And I just saw holes and they filled back up with blood. And I was like, and he was kind of making this gurgly noise. So I'm like, okay, I think he's going to live.

Adam not a medic, you know. And Stoner. Stoner was a good combat leader. He looked at me, he just said, get Mikey. That's all he said. And then he grabbed, I think he grabbed Mike S and kind of had him on his hip because Mike could kind of hobble.

And then the other guys. And, you know, you and I had this big conversation when we met later on where I just couldn't stop talking. Remember, I was just running my mouth. And I remember you just sat and listened and, you know, it was about this because I felt really ashamed that I couldn't. You know, you see me around Mikey's family.

Like, I just feel so, you know, like I let him down, you know. I had him as, I carried him as far as I could. He was not a huge dude, but he's like 200 pounds, you know, and then you've got probably another 60, 80 pounds of kit on both of us. At some point I couldn't carry him anymore because we couldn't get out the front and the brads wouldn't come that way. Of course, they'll get blown up. I'm not saying anything bad about those guys because they were our brothers.

They weren't supposed to get us anyway. And we pushed down a wall like a little, a wooden fence, like a doggear fence. We pushed it down. It went out, came out right on Route Farouk. And those guys were way ahead of me. I couldn't carry him anymore because I just ran out of juice. And I was dragging him. So I'm dragging him through the street.

His clothes are shredding. And we're getting to the Brad, and there's bullets hitting. And the guys are like yelling at me, like, hurry, hurry. We're trying to close the door. And I got in there. And then, you know, my guest came and talked to me once when I was exo. buds and I kind of was I kind of apologized because I I checked out for a minute like as a ramp went up I was like I was so so tired you know how we say that oh he's I was so tired and you know

Mike is he's bleeding he's sitting kind of funny because he's got a bunch of frag in his body and he's like dude do CPR I was like and then I kind of snapped back out and so I got to do CPR and you know as you do your chest compressions stuff's popping and cracking CPR is not a gentle sport, you know. And then back then it was 15 and two, and now it's 30 and zero, but I did my 15. I tried to blow in and I could see, you're supposed to look for the rise and fall of the chest. I can see bubbles come out of the holes and I'm like, does that count as one? I don't know. And he like at one point threw up in my mouth and I was just like, I don't know if I'm doing it right. And then, you know, we did that all the way until we got to cop aid, which was like

the little medic outpost they had set up. And then I had fired, like I had fired some rockets and stuff so my ears were kind of like I couldn't really hear it was this big roaring thing and the medics were talking to me trying to bark at me because Mikey and Doug had got their name tapes kind of blowed up a little bit and they couldn't have what their blood type was and they're sitting they're trying to ask me and I remember I couldn't understand what they're saying and I'm like who are you talking about and then and they were like washing because I had all this blood on me they're washing it off with their water hose they're spraying me and I'm looking at them and and when that backtrack when that brack

Adelaide door open, the first two dudes that stuck their head in there was at the time, Colonel Clark, remember that dude? I think he's a general now. He absolutely is a general. First dude, him and Major Womack stuck there. I mean, that little crack, their heads in there. And, you know, he called his Frogman. He was like, frog man.

He's like, get out of there. We've got a medicare. I'm like, all right, you know. But good dudes, full of respect for those guys. That was the best, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, and it turned out they needed no kind of blood type these guys were in their names. And so, like, I don't know why they, maybe they morphined them and they couldn't get it.

I don't know why, but I kind of came to enough to give them that. And then you showed up, I don't know when right before. It was maybe a little bit later, but I remember I just couldn't stop talking and you just sat there and listened to me. And, you know, I really struggled with, did I do things right for Mikey, you know? And I did if a better guy was there. And I actually went and talked to the doctor that worked on him. I'm like, hey, man, like, I know I just want to hear like, I'd mess this up, you know.

And he showed me an x-ray. It looked like a bunch of fuzz. and he's like, see this, this is his heart, and these are pieces of the, you know, and I was like, he goes, there's nothing you could have done. And so he told me what I needed to know, but I know that I didn't, I wasn't up on my medical care. Like, I could have done. Like, so anyway, the point was, he told me what I needed to hear. It felt good.

I don't know. You know, maybe if there was a better guy up there, it would have worked out better, but that's how it worked out. No, I mean, all the, all the doctors said the same thing, you know, like he was, mortally wounded from the moment of you know and um and it was actually it was actually uh colonel clark that called me told me what's going on and he he told me like they're they're doing CPR right now and i just knew like yeah CPR is not a good sign yeah to be doing um you know i i was trying explain to people like that it wasn't over either like you still

had to go back out in the field to get the iraqis get the gear that you guys that you guys that you guys left behind. Yep. You know, I remember talking to Stoner. He's like, I'm going back out right now, you know, like that kind of thing. Yeah, and so I didn't go with him. He went without me because I was with those guys. Like I jumped in the Brad with those guys to show them back.

So he went back and got the gear and stuff. In the Iraqis. Yeah, because we don't leave gear. Yeah. But yeah, and that was September 29th. We ended, I mean, you guys still did more ops than that. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, I teach this now. And I teach more detailed for what I do with the seal teams. But, you know, I always taught, like, about minimum force and what you should have because we didn't have a medic. You know, my medic took around earlier, so we didn't actually have a medic on that op. And we talked about minimum force requirements and stuff like that. And I used to teach, like, after that, you know, I knew about men force and I never did it again. When there was a guy that was on an op with me, he was like, no, me and Stoneer did an op, like three weeks later.

just the three of us. I'm like, oh, yeah. I learned it now. But yeah, we were still working. I mean, it's like being on the mat, right? If I stop, you're still going. The same thing happened. We had, the fight wasn't going.

So we kept going. Yeah, that was definitely a dynamic for that deployment that I think was for us anyways, for me, you know, especially growing up in the 90s and the teams. It was like in the 90s in the teams, your mindset was you're going to go do one op somewhere. Like that's what you're gonna do like one big mission you're gonna go rescue save the princess or slay the dragon or whatever And when it's over it's over and You know like Ramadi was not it was like It's not like you just said

The enemy's still going like they don't care they live there they live there they don't they don't care what's happening They're gonna keep going and you know even Even at like the seal team level The thought of like oh replacements right you know like we didn't there was no one ever talked about hey like once I took over trade at you know I would talk to the CEOs I'd be like hey what is your replacement plan for if you lose three guys from a platoon of 16 guys that's a huge hit and who did you lose did you lose a J-TAC did you lose a Corman did you did you did you

did you lose one of your senior enlisted guys like we didn't really talk about that we just didn't. And that's another reason why you need to have, you know, at least troop-wide TTPs, the techniques, tactics, and procedures, but team-wide TPs and probably community-wide, because, like, you know, we're like, we don't have doctrine. We kind of do our own thing. But, you know, in the platoon leaders course, I teach away, you know, when I took over the course you used to teach. And I'm like, hey, you got to be able to plug and play with another platoon. And like, on my Afghanistan deployment, I took in half another platoon. And, you know, if they couldn't operate with us,

that they used different things, it wouldn't work. So you got to have that interoperability. And I think that probably spawned some of that. And I definitely learned it at that point. Yeah. Yeah, we really tried to push that. And, you know, we had like a, you know, we had like a battle book about casualties, right?

Look, if you have a casualty, here's what you're going to do. You're going to shut down the radios. You're going to do this. You're going to contact these people. Like there was an administrative protocol to fall. I know. Yeah. Time out.

You're still in a fight. Yeah. But there wasn't, there was two things that there wasn't. There wasn't like a combat. Like, okay, where's your replacements? What are we doing? What are we doing here? And also, like, what does it do to the team?

Like, what do you do with a guy that's now horrified? What do you do with a guy that is now feels like, oh, this was my fault or I should have done this? Like, just the same. Like, everyone's going to have those thoughts. I should have done this different. I could have done this different. And how do you walk through that? What are you supposed to do?

What's the grieving period? How long do you take off? Do you take off short time long? So for me, it was a lot of, like, trying to figure this out. And honestly, I got a lot of it from About Face from Colonel David Hackworth, you know, about what I would kind of reflect on what he would do. And that's kind of what I did. But it's, you know, Mark was the first seal killed in Iraq, you know.

There was no lessons learned that I had recovered from somebody else. And it's the same thing for the rest of the guys in the task unit. And I have a perspective on that. I definitely have an opinion on that, especially after, you know, I got hit. November 10th, I end up getting hit after you guys got home. You know, this is true. I don't know if you know about this. This is exactly what happened.

I end up, you guys went home. Team 5 came in. I'm like, hey, I speak Arabic. You guys should probably keep me. You know, like, yeah, we don't have anybody, so we'll stay. So I'm staying in a Team 5 deployment. Great dudes, they showed up and, you know, we got in a pretty, we're supposed to do this, clear of this market area, the Malab. You know what the Malab is.

That was, so laba means play. The M sound at the beginning means verbal now, which means place you play. So it's the arena. And we're supposed to be sniper overwatch as the Iraqi army clears this whole market for like three to five hours. That's the plan. We insert at night, no one mess with the night. We get in there. We can't find two good spots, so we end up on the same house.

and the Iraqi army shows up for like three to five minutes. Seriously, they showed up and they made a U-turn, and I'm like, hey, man, I've got their comms on a little thing so I can kind of listen. I'm like, what's happening? Like, I think, do I not understand the scheme of maneuver? And like, no, they left. And so now we're stuck.

And the plan was for them to go out and grab a big bite, so they grab a big bite around a circular area. Then we fall into their perimeter, and then we leave with this like 400 band of Iraqis and their Humvees and everything, and that's how our ex-fill plan. Well, now, you know, I mean, we've got a lot of as much we can carry, but if you're in a gunfight with the whole city, you know, you can't sustain that. So it's about 11 o'clock and we're like, I don't know how much more we can do this.

So the calls made's like, hey, let's call those, let's call these guys to come get us. And they already told they can't get us. They said they're not. They say, hey, we cannot expo you there because the IAD threat. But they're like, we're coming anyway. So the plan was for me to bounce around corner. I had a law rocket left. So I was going to hit this house with Law Rocket.

And then inside of me, the 60, which is like a Mark 48, which is like a belt fed machine gun, 762, 100 round belt. He's going to open up, and I'm going to run around the corner from there. And then the Bradge are going to come and we're supposed to run next to the Brads and run all the way back to Cop Eagles Nest. You remember where that water tower was? We're supposed to run back to there. So it's not a super long way, but what's it like, I don't know, 350 yards, 500-yard dash. So we're going to do that.

I go outside, I go open up the rocket because it's like it's the kind of opens up like you see in the movies that open up that's what it is. It's actually not a very big rocket but I go to shoot it the thing blows up in my face. I don't know if I hit a wire if I did it wrong, I am an officer

it could have been possible but it blew up right in my face so I'm waiting for the gun to pick me up I hear another crazy explosion not sure what's going on I pick up my M4 I start peppering in the house waiting for the 60 to pick me up they don't pick me up

I come back around the corner guys are running out I'm like, what's going on? They're like, hey, the Brad's got hit. That was the explosion I heard. So we got to go. And so we are just trying to get out. We're throwing smokes.

And I'm running down around the, as I round the corner around the stadium, there's a house set back about 200 yards, opens up with a, with their version of a belt-fed machine gun, the 60. It's called a, what do they call that? PKM. PKM, yeah, PKM. It just doesn't have disintegrating link, but it's the exact same thing. So it's a 762 by like 56, right?

Pretty good. I have three rounds hit me as I come around the corner. I was carrying my rocket too because we don't leave gear behind, right? I mean, don't. I heard what you and D.C. talked about Afghanistan, and I was yelling at the radio when you guys did that on your podcast because I have a spent rocket. I'm not going to lose. You know what I mean?

And yet we leave billions of dollars in Afghanistan. Yeah, man. I was yelling at the radio. I was like, so mad. Anyway, I come around the corner and my hand was back. So I had one round hit my camelback hose. One round go through my chest. and the other one go through my backpack.

It kind of spun me around. I fell under a burnout car. And then he thought I was dead. And my lost consciousness for a minute. When you think you did, you probably did for a minute because I kind of hit the thing. And then he had a thing like a laser on like a little jersey barrier. You know what a jersey barrier is?

I go, no. It's like those little concrete barriers between like traffic going opposite directions. Like on a highway or like construction site. They got like a little three foot tall, four foot tall, little... Like the cement thing. Yeah.

Yeah, the cement thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. barrier. So they all jump behind that thing. He's drilling that thing. And then like I figure out what's going on. I can feel that I'm bleeding. I end up, I'm like, I still got a couple more rounds in my magazine. So I emptied everything he had through that window. Pretty sure I got him. Not positive. Didn't do a BDA. A battle damage assessment. Didn't do that. But when I was done, everyone was,

had run back. So I'm like, well, I guess I'll run back. And I ran back. And the medic, who is now an elected official, awesome dude. I got back to Eagles Nest. I'm like, hey, guys, I'm a, I think I got shot. They're like, I'm pretty sure. So I opened up my plates and he puked right on me, like, threw up right on me. I was like, bro. It's like, I don't think that's useful. He kind of wiped it, the big beer, he wiped his face.

Then they put a piece of hydrogel on it. Hydrogel is a stuff we use a stick explosives to a door. It's not like an absorbent thing. It's like a, how do you describe hydrogill, Jocko? Glue. On a piece of plastic. On a piece of plastic, maybe. Yeah.

He's just stuck it on my chest. So I'm still bleeding. Wait, why did he throw up? Because it was gross. He's a medic. I don't know. We're a good friends. Like, we're really good friends.

And maybe he just didn't like seen his buddy and shot. Oh, damn. I don't know why I threw up. Yeah. He sent me a picture of it on like Christmas 2014. I'm at dinner. I'm like, bro. Give a brother a head up before you.

Just to give everyone like you got. Yeah, just to give everyone like you got, if that's not the luckiest, one of the luckiest shots to get shot, the way you got shot was like one of the luckiest possible ways. to get shot. Yeah. I was running at a full sprint through a solid beam of ammo. And the, and the bullet hit,

like, basically went through, like, your chest muscle. Just my peck. Like, just like your peck flesh. Yeah.

Like, which is crazy to be able to survive, you know, that's like, that's like the guy moves his sight a millimeter. Yeah. Yeah. Or if I'm a little bit slower on my 40-yard dash.

Yeah. You're dead. Yeah. So you got this, I mean, what amounts to essentially a bad flesh wound, but not a horrible flesh wound. I mean, you were running around after you got shot. So, yeah, just so everyone knows what the shot was. It was from the side and went right through like your peck. Yeah, I had soft body armor.

And so he said it had been, with a small round, it might have broke the trajectory and would have went into my ribs or something. But since there was such a big, heavy round, it cooked right through my soft body armor, right behind my plates, didn't hit them. and went right through and it left a burn mark across the other side so it went through my right peck and my left peck so I got like two little holes here

and then a little burn mark so it came out in what do you call grazed your other peck yeah yeah I had this little burn mark and they gave me when I got there they gave me like a pipe cleaner and I had to like put it through one side and kind of floss it

for five dude I want to throw up I'm like so gross and then I had like you know those squeasy bottles like football players have so they can squeeze through there I had one of those and I had to irrigate it

they called it where I had to squirt it And then like, push that little, like, that's the pop noise I'm not supposed to make. But I don't think it'll pop the little blood clot out of there. And I had to do that for a couple days. And then, but I was, so this is, it gets weirder. So I go there, I get to the hospital. They have to take chest or x-rays. That's what they have to do.

And they're like, hey, you, good news. You didn't have anything important. You're good to go. And that's why they put that hydrogen on because there's an occlusive bandage. Because what could happen is if you poke a hole in your lung, even a small, lung, a small hole, as I breathe out, that air, instead of coming out of my mouth, it comes out of my lung, and it fills up in my body cavity, and it collapses your lung called a tension pneumothorax, and then that, you end up, like, dying from that unless they poke a

hole in you. And actually, the medic wanted to poke a hole in me, oh, just in case. I'm like, I don't think so, bro. He's like, no, no, I'm the medic. I'm like, no, you're not going to poke a hole in my chest. Like, I think I'm good. Like, we got in a little argument about it. So then I go there, we're good to go. Now, I'm pretty angry. like I'm angry and I'm also embarrassed and ashamed because I'm not supposed to be getting shot man you know what I mean like I don't I don't know that's just how I felt and so I was really pretty distraught so I walked out I wrote CG for a regular all my hand because that's how the helicopters worked back then remember and I had a beard and a cool gun so nobody asked me a question and I

got on and I flew to cop aid as close as I could get and I got out of cop aide and I was running down Route Michigan going towards, or Rock Rock Michigan is like the most IADD route since the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I think that's how they said it. I'm running down that at night trying to get back. So I'm probably like, I don't know, was it, three quarters a mile from Craig Ador from Cop Aid, roughly.

And I see the boys pull out onto the street. And so I break out my infrared chem light, so you can only see it with night vision. I pop it and I make the little budsaw and they pull over and it was the same medic because they were going to get some Iraqis to go on op. And he's like, he's like, what are you doing? I'm like,

I'm coming back. He's like, it's Jimmy. It's like, oh yeah, hell yeah. He's in Texas, you know. He's like, hell yeah. And I can probably say his name. Yeah, he's an elected official. Yeah.

Okay, yeah, so it was Morgan LaTrell. So he's like, hell, hell yeah, come on. And so they called in and they're like, hey, we got Jimmy here. Like negative. He's at the hospital and we're going to pick him up. And they're like, nope, he's right here. We're going on up. And we're going on an op.

And they're like, okay, we'll handle it later. And so I went out and worked with them for another couple of weeks until December 10th when, you know, Elliot got blown up. November 19th. I'm sorry, December 10th. Yeah, that's a different date. Sorry. So November 10th when I got shot and then I went home with Elliot Miller and Joe. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, those guys got really messed up leaving an Overwatch position. and we're supposed to have Elliot on at some point. So Elliot, let's go. We're going to make it happen. Yeah. And then, so you flew those guys with those guys home wounded. Yeah, I flew back with them right around Thanksgiving.

I think I did Thanksgiving with Joe in the hospital. Elliot wasn't really very, he couldn't really talk too well. He was really really messed up. And he ended up, we had to, as we were a drop, as a playing gain elevation, I'm not a doctor, but he was up coding. And like, I remember this nurse was like messing with it. And the flight crew was like, you need to sit down while we're trying. And she's like, no.

And I was like, I love you. Like, hell yeah. Like, she's like, nope, I'm staying and working. She did. She stayed and worked on him. And, you know, he had like an SUV worth of medical equipment on his bed. And she was just working all of it. And they were trying to get her to like when they land and take off.

And she just wouldn't do it. She stayed there and worked. So mad respect for that lady. God bless her. And then, you know, we ended up having to fly lower than we wanted to. And we ended up dropping. We dropped off Joe at Bethesda, and then we sent,

I think we sent L.A. down to San Antonio for the Burn Center because he was pretty blowed up. And then, you know, I land in San Diego. So I'm like, you know, 36 hours. I'm a pretty major gunfight. And, you know, my wife had left me and went back with the kids.

And I, the ambulance drove away. I didn't have any place to go. I went to the team. I think I went to Danny's. And then I think I slept in my cage sometimes. And I was just getting ready until, because we were already in mid-workup, because I missed the part of the workup. I missed the professional development part.

So we were already starting unit-level training. And so I didn't need a place to live because you're gone most of the time anyway. And so that was kind of where I was at that time, just living in my cage, kind of. Yeah. And so now you're a platoon commander at Team 3. Yeah. And you're in Stoner's Task Unit, right? I am.

Yeah. Yeah. Same guys that I'd been. with before. I remember seeing you the team and you're like, hey, did you get shot? I'm like, yeah, you're like, yeah, I think I'm good. I'm like, yeah, I think I'm good. He's like, okay, cool. You train it? And I'm like, yeah, I'll be training. That was all it was. How's that workup? That was the one, I did bad. As the OIC, that was probably my worst performance in any platoon I've done. And you brought it to us. It traded. And I remember, you

know that one where we come down the canyon? you guys killed all of us. Like we were all dead and you left me alive to try and solve problems. And I just, I wasn't doing it. And, you know, I still remember I was carrying like a person and a 60 because everyone had, we could even fight. We were combat ineffective, just running down this thing. Like, I don't know. Stoner was pretty upset with me, rightly so.

Yeah, you know, when I think about this whole story, because I've never really like thought about your whole career like this before. But this is why that training was so. important because essentially you had guys that had just not been in leadership positions before and you're an example like I really hadn't you really hadn't been in an actual leadership position I was a combat interpreter right and so you learned some really good lessons learned about combat you learned about like how to handle yourself but as far as like maneuvering elements around and this was very common in the SEAL teams and you would come sit next to me and I'm shooting and you're like what are you doing and I'm like I'm shooting and you're like you should make a call but I'm like

But I'm shooting because that's what I do, you know? I had never been leading. And I remember you pulled me aside. You're like, you need to sit behind a bush with your gun pointing up in the air, looking around. And I'm like, it's just, I'm like, that's ridiculous. Like, you know. But it's right.

But at the time, I was just like, bro. Well, and it's the same thing. I realize this because Laif and Seth were the same way. Laif and Seth were like, when they got into my task unit, they had both done something similar to you. Like they were in a platoon where they got told, hey, keep your mouth shut. Your new guy on deployment,

they sat in the jock doing a PSD or whatever so they didn't really actually and this was so common in the teams that you could be like a young officer you'd never been in charge of anything before yeah and you definitely didn't get taught how to do this stuff and so that's why like that that training was so important and you know what I do remember is one time you guys were at urban warfare and you guys were all jacked up and I got done like debriefing your your platoon and stoner's all freaking mad and he goes jimmy scott come with me and he this was still out at fort knox oh yeah he wrote us up so he walks outside and i follow he that calls you two outside and he starts yelling at you guys like and you know you guys are like roger roger and he said get the hell out of here and he walks away and i look at him and i go hey bro how many times did I yell at you when you worked for me? And he like, you saw the look on his face. He was like, oh shit, because I never yelled him.

I never yelled at Leif. Didn't, you know. I think he had a neck brace on it that time too. Remember? That was the neck brace. Oh, he might have. Because I remember he yelled at with a neck brace on. Yeah, yeah.

That might have been it. That might have been. But it was one of those things where he was like, oh, yeah. And it was like, hey, man, if your guys, if you think you need to yell at your guys, That means you haven't trained them right. That means they're making mistakes. They need to learn, not get yelled at. Like, I can guarantee you.

You know, that's like when I was saying earlier when you showed up. And this is like I would meet a young again. I'm not trying to sound like I'm an old man, but I had been in the SEAL teams for a longer time than you. And I could see that you wanted to do a good freaking job at what you were doing. Like to me, that's just like the most, that's all you could want, man. All I ever wanted from a guy was like they want to do a good job. they want to do a good job and they're tough. And I remember actually there was a little political movements.

This is during our workup, during my workup with Tasking a Bruiser. And they were like thinking of moving some of the officers around and like maybe they're going to move stoner or something like this and they're going to give me a different officer. And the ops officer pulled me and he's like, hey, you know, we could make this adjustment. And I was like, no, I don't, I don't want these guys. I want Leif and I want Seth. And they're like, well, you know, these other guys might have some more. experience and I was like what I want is guys that are tough and guys that want to do a good job

and I said Seth and Leif are tough and they want to do a good job so when I met you I was like oh this guy's tough and he wants to do a good job and so when you were in your workup with Seth dude you wanted to do a good freaking job you know like of course and you're tough give me that all day long I don't need to yell at you and as my point to Seth was like bro that guy both you and Scott you guys wanted to do a good freaking job if you screwed something up. It's just because you didn't know what to do at that particular moment. All you want to do is learn. So let's teach him. Let's not yell at him. And he's like, Roger. Yeah, I didn't know about that conversation. But I definitely, you know, the learning curve was steep.

And years later, when I came back as a troop commander, I was much more ready to go there. And I spent a lot of time with my officers, my junior officers. And, you know, I did a lot of work with them. And then I took another platoon on. So the way the seal workup is it started off professional development six months, then unit level training six months was what Jocker ran. And then you've got at the end, you've got TJET task group integration. The last six months we get all your assets. Well, they gave me another platoon that I didn't go through my workup with me. And actually, it was Bobby Ramirez who killed himself the weekend after my retirement.

Actually, great guy. Tragity, truly. But he came over to me as one of my overseas. And he's like, hey, man, all this stuff that you're teaching my job. J-Os. Because I brought his J-O's, I'm like, hey, I do J-O development once a week. He's like, will you teach me? I'm like, his true commander didn't teach him that. He didn't know how to do ground force commander stuff. Now, his chief was a badass. It was Bo, you know, that guy.

And that made it further. But good on Bobby for having that kind of like humility to be like, hey, can I sit in with the jail? So here he is, and OIC, and a prior enlisted guy at that. So he's probably got, you know, six platoons with experience. And he's like, hey, I, you know, I need to learn how to do this. And that's to your point. Like, we never really taught him how to do that. And I didn't know it either. And I failed that workup pretty bad.

I feel like, like, I mean, I know that Stone was pissed. Yeah. Well, also, everybody kind of failed that workup. But by the time you go, everyone would learn. Like, there would be a steep learning curve, but the shit's not rocket science either. Like, I would tell you, like, one time, like, hey, dude, you don't want to do that. You'd be like, Roger. You wouldn't do it anymore.

Like, or, hey, you might want to think about this and you do it. Like, so, yeah, everyone gets their ass kicked. and 90% of guys go, dude, I just got my ass kick. What do I need to do better? 10% of guys go, I got my ass kicked. It's because the training sucks or because my chief sucks or because my new guys are, whatever. They just blame other people and they're never going to get fired.

But yeah, you are normal kind of learning curve, especially, again, I never really connected your whole leading up to this. Like you didn't have like a true assistant platoon commander. You know what I mean? Where you were like, okay, you're going to run this squad and you're going to run through these I ads, and you're going to run through the house or whatever, you're going to be doing this.

You were kind of like carrying a pig and doing travel claims, which is not great officer development, man. So I hope that we started doing a better job, you know, and that was my main effort. That's why I went to trade debt. The reason I went to trade at when I got done. I'm glad you went there.

That was good. It was good for that thing. That's the reason, because I knew that we had learned. I knew that I knew that what Laif and Seth knew on I was teaching them while we were in workup. I knew that. And I was like, who's gonna teach these guys?

But you're on your sixth deployment by that time, right? That was my seven. Okay, seven. So at about three deployments, you're kind of a Jedi. Like that's when the Jedi thing kicks in, I think. But then after that, it's completely different. Because the first, one, you don't know what's going on. Two, you think you know what's going on, but you don't.

Three, man, the blinders come off. You have some excess capacity. I can tell what you're about to do. You know what I mean? If you screw up, no big deal. I'll just play off that and fix it. It's about that seven-year mark that it really hits, I think. That's my opinion.

And what really helped me out a lot was when I was in E5, I was in training cell at SEAL Team 1, and I was a single young guy. And guess what that meant? Nothing better to do. I taught CQC, land warfare, combat, I did everything. I did everything. And so now I'm watching these things.

And I could see like, oh, that guy doesn't, that guy shouldn't be over there. Oh, that guy's on his weapon too much. Or that platoon commander's not making a call. And so I through teaching it got to look at things from a detached perspective and that's really by the time I got to team two now when ends in a team two I just got done teaching this stuff and I wasn't like oh I know everything but I was like I can I know I need to take a step back. I know I need to look around. I know I don't need to be shooting my weapon. I know I need to keep things simple. I know we need to cover and move for each other. I know we need to focus on certain priorities. I know we need decent like I knew those things. And so it was very lucky for me. And so then when I got done with that deployment to Ramadi, I was like, there was, you know, the admiral said, where do you want to go? Yeah.

And I was like, I want to go to trade at. Because I didn't say why. I think he knew, but I wanted to make sure these lessons got passed on because, because also the battle of Ramadi wasn't over when we left. You know, I mean, you got wounded. Joe and Elliot got wounded. I mean, that was still hard fighting. And I was like, I don't know when this is going to be over. So all these guys, all my friends that are about to get in another platoon and roll about.

over there, they need this training. Like I need to make sure they have this. And that was what became my focus. But, you know, like I said, you had a little bit of a lack of knowledge. But as soon as you would get tightened up, you'd fix it and freaking kick ass. I mean, that's, that was pretty normal from my perspective. Like I said, if someone's arrogant, they would suck. I think the bar came in high for me.

They're like, oh, Jimmy just come off the Ramadi deployment. He's ready to go. But so they came in expecting me to know these things. And I really didn't because I was essentially a combat interpreter for most of the time. I really didn't do a whole lot of leading on the battlefield, to be completely honest. As an officer, you're supposed to be from the front, but I was actually doing what my niche, my part in that cog was that. And, you know, I wasn't going to step on Stoner's toes or, you know, anybody else's. And how was, so you had some challenges during workup, but like I said, it was normal.

I mean, Stoner was stoked on having you, like 100%. And I'm talking like as you guys went through and he'd be like, oh, yeah, we screwed this up and it like yeah but we got it you know what I mean uh how was that deployment so you guys go on deployment yeah it was it was a frustrating one because you know I just came off that super kinetic deployment and I got all the same kinetic guys to want to go scrap it out and you know what it just wasn't that it's like hey man you can't shoot the rules of engagement have changed you can't shoot people for what you should shoot people for and now you know we had to dial them down a lot and then you know I had Chris Kyle on that deployment and he ended up you know he

took around in Sauter City, kind of yanked his helmet off. And I wasn't there with him. He came back with me. And he was a different person after that. You know, I remember thinking the, I wanted to help him as best I could. I did all the things I thought I could too, but he really struggled. You know, at first it was kind of funny. Like, oh, the legend. It's about time. Who gets a nickname like the legend in the teams? I'm coconut. That's not, Jimmy Whiskers is that. That's as good as I can get. You need whiskers? I haven't heard that one.

Yeah, that's a newer one because I got nine lives. I always landed on my feet. And eventually it went to Gato and then it's been whiskers. Yeah, Jimmy Whiskers. Anyway. So, yeah, that was pretty much a non-kinetic deployment. It wasn't totally non-kinetic. We rounded up 12 HVIs, high-value individuals.

So we had some ops, but it wasn't like, I mean, Rardi, I reloaded my mags, seriously, probably multiple times a week. Like, because I'm shooting live rounds at people every night. And then on that one, it just wasn't quite that, you know. And the appetite was more like, let's try and build this place. And you have to, you know, it's a shifting. It's not, you just can't beat everybody up all the time. At some point, you've got to build some people up and let them do their own beating up.

And that was kind of the phase was in. So it was frustrating for those guys coming off that deployment to realize like, hey, it's not that kind of fight again. And, you know, I'm in the middle of that. I'm a pretty aggressive guy, I think. And so, you know, I had to do some growing up there too. Check. So what's your next job after that one?

So after that, I went to Bahrain because as an Arabic speaker, I actually kind of had it out with the XO. We didn't, I don't care much for this dude. But he was the one to send me to the Pacific next. He's like, hey, you've got two back-to-back tours in Iraq. Wait, this was the X-O at Team 3? Yeah, at the time, yeah. And he was like, you need to go to Pacific. I'm like, listen, bro, nobody speaks Arabic but me.

It's stupid to send me back there. Have me do my troop commander here. or my task unit commander back then, as it was called. And he's like, no, he's like, you need to get well-rounded. You're just, you're so one-sided. It's going to be bad for your promotion, which I didn't care about. I came in to go to war. And I know people like, no, you came in to be an officer.

I'm like, no, I came in to go to war. That's what I came in for. So anyway, we had it out. And I was like, that's so stupid. So he sent me to a one-year tour in Bahrain to do J-Sets, which once again, I'm going to miss the whole war. I was all frustrated. We didn't know it was going to last 20 years back then.

I know, I know, you know how everyone was. like, I can't miss the war. And I went over there and ran J-Sets. And actually for the same commanding officer at Team 3 that we had there, yeah, he went over to Bahrain, and actually, we got along really well over there. Cool. Because at Team 3, I think he was really nervous around me. And, yeah, I don't know.

He's a good man. I think well of him now. He came out to my retirement, actually, if you remember seeing him there. Yeah, yeah. But we worked together really well down there, and I definitely count him as a friend and an ally now. Yeah. And you're just basically working a bunch of setting up these exercises over there and running things. Yeah, so I think there was like 22 joint combined exercise for training.

That's what a J-set is. And then, you know, you fly in there. You grab a platoon that's on deployment that's not doing anything. You pair them up with the skill set they wanted to learn. And a lot of it is like showing up for the final ceremony. I got along super well with all the Arab people because I speak Arabic and they love it. You know, I got to go falcon hunting with the Bois-Rangy rural family. and, you know, just, it was an interesting deployment.

My area, but got pretty tight. I found a place to train Jiu-Jitsu down there. And, yeah, they had flown in a Brazilian who was good, but then the guys that ran the thing was not very good. He was a black belt. You know how sometimes people just pay for their black belt? That's so much to happen because I was tearing him up as a blue belt. And then, but his Brazilian guy that was under an alliance school, I believe,

that Brazilian guy would put me in my place pretty quick. I got to fight in Abu Dhabi. I went to, I went and did a J set over there. But the ADCC trials or just trained in? No, the Abu Dhabi tournament. I got to fight in that tournament. So like I went there for two weeks and there was a J set going on. So I stayed there and trained there.

And they had like 30 Brazilian black belts. Brazil like, you know, putting you in the Gwad and grab on your batch and, you know, they were good. And it was super fun to train with them because the locals didn't want to train Jiu-Jitsu. And it was at the equestrian center in Abu Dhabi. And I trained there and then I stayed and I got to fight in the Abu Dhabi. Oh, that's cool. I did six rounds. I didn't make the metal round as a, I think I was fighting as a blue, maybe purple at that time.

I definitely was blue. And I was fighting with them and I'm getting knocked out by, I think we lost my points to a Brazilian. But it was really cool, man, like just getting a fight in that term. You fight all night. You start at 10 p.m. And you fight all night because it's like 130 degrees at night there. Oh, good check. Yeah, your Arabic must have gotten freaking good.

Yeah, it was tight. Yeah. Because my last memory of your Arabic. I know. This is a good one. Was it, was it Mikey Mansour's Memorial? So, Mikey Mansour's Memorial. And we're at Camp Corregador, the guys from the first of the 506th, like it's freaking

heavy, obviously. And the Iraqi scouts. Yeah, it was Mahan. wanted to like have their guys talk and put some word out. And so you were the interpreter. Yeah. It was respect. Yes.

Because Arabic is a much more flowery language. And they have different levels of respect, which are different words. And so he would be like, you know, to use your dirka, dirka, duke, and I'd be like, and respect. And he'd be like, durka, durka, durka. And I'd be like, heavier, deeper respect. And you'd be like, ducca, ducca, d'ek. I'm like super heavy. So I'm listening to this thing.

That's really what it translates. I'm listening to this and, you know, and I mean, obviously it's like super emotional, but then I'm actually trying to listen to like how Jimmy's doing up there a little bit, right? And I don't notice that at first, but the guy's like going on, you know what you see like after a post-fight interview? Like the guy's Russian or the guy's Brazilian and so they're going on and on and on and on. And then the interpreter will be like, he says he's looking forward to the next fight. You're like, no, maybe you just say that. That didn't just happen.

So the same things happen here like this this guy Mohanid is up there and he's talking you know he's talking for like you know Let's call it like 45 seconds and then Jimmy's like They truly respected Mike and I'm like okay cool and then it happens again and he's like it was a deep respect And I was like well then it happens again this is like a seven minute speech Which Jimmy did in 17 seconds right So we get done bro and I walk up tonight's like bro what was that guy saying like you only interpreted one word. And I go, he goes,

well, it's really complicated. There's a bunch of different words. I go, all right, bro. Well, I just know you're not ready for like you. That's what you said to me. You're not ready for the UN. I was like, all right. Because, you know, I was, I was, what,

36 hours out of that gunfight too. I wasn't super stoked, you know? And Jago was just like, hmm. You're not ready for the UN. Not ready for that UN slot, bro. Oh, check. So you get done with this Bahrain. gig for a year and then next up you go out to the east coast you go out to a team on the east

coast yep yeah i go out there and it's it's like having a big selection process and uh i go all way through it and at the end they ended up decided to put me and it was my own fault i screwed up on one of the major operations that were grading and they decided to send me to a different squadron that i didn't want to go to and uh not only did they send me to it they're going to deploy on february 24th i'm like do you mean tomorrow is am i deploying tomorrow they're like, yeah, so boom, I'm out. So I'm on deployment. It's a really interesting deployment.

I don't know how much I can go into this one just, other than I was running an emergency task force at that time, and we were wildly successful. And, you know, you met the admiral that spoke at my retirement, and he became a really close mentor to me because basically I did a lot of, I went so far above because, you know, when you're, I thought that since my conno assigned by like the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

that means no one below that can say no to me. That's kind of how I felt about it. And it turns out that's actually not true. So I was skipping like layers in the chain of command. I mean, I moved a, I moved a U.S. ship truly. I also launched a mass sets out of different countries, trying to clear the airspace. And I just really went way out over my skis. And I remember I went and woke them up. And I'm like, hey, this is what I did. did this and this. And he looks at me and he's like, huh. He goes, Jimmy, I'm not sure what you did, but we're going to go upstairs and we're going to make sure this goes well. And then after that, we're going to have a conversation about who's a decision maker and who's a decision facilitator.

And I learned a lot from him because he didn't try to crush my spirit, right? It's like you said, I want to do good. I just, I got deployed on one day notice. I don't, and my turnover was a high five turnover, which means I get off the plane and he flies back on the plane that I got on. So I didn't know. So anyway, he didn't break my spirit. And we had some really cool things, you know, down there. I had my own Jiu-Jitsu fight club, you know, like we do. And he would come to it.

And we had all the different people from different agencies coming to it. You know, guys have a black eye. And there's kind of like a little like, you're training with Jimmy and the boys. It was pretty cool. They ended up having like a little civil war in this country for a while. And I had to go out and grab some teams. Speaking Arabic was huge. I actually drove right up to it.

a tank in a Toyota Avalon and I was like, hey man, do you mind moving this tank so I can and the guy's looking at me trying to explain to me that there's a fight going on. And I'm like, I totally get you. I feel you. But I just need you to move the tank for long enough from you. And the guy finally looked at me and shook his head like, okay. And I went out and, you know, got those things back. And it was a really interesting deployment.

We were worried about the embassy getting overrun, eerily close to what's going on in Benghazi, to how that went down, to be honest, because, you know, the ambassador was like, hey, you guys are coming over the wall. If things go wrong, I'm like, oh, yeah. He didn't know there's three of us. It says three of us to come over the wall. We had 19 fast company Marines, which they would have done a good job, I'm sure. Like, not being facetious at all.

You know how Marines are. They get after it. But that was kind of how it went down over there. Where were you at when extortion went down? I just got back from deployment. And, you know, extortion, I lost my best friend. You know John Tumelson. He worked for you.

You remember when he got in that big fight? I do. Yeah. And I was worried because you were his boss, so John Thomas was my roommate. And he goes out, okay, he's not an angel. He was probably, like, picking up their girlfriend or something. You know, he was a big looking dude. And he was walking out of the bar, and there's three guys tackle him from behind.

And he, like, slides on his, gets up. One of them was a bouncer, too. Oh, the bouncer, plus two other dudes. Yeah. Okay, three guys, tackling him from behind, he's down. He gets up. They kicked him out. out of the bar.

And so he's leaving the bar. Yeah. And so then they came after him. Right. So I'm just saying all the ways that he was right. Right. He didn't know. Like he was walking.

They tackled him from behind. So now you've got three dudes tackling you from behind. J.T. gets up and puts them, he puts him in the hospital. Like jaws wired shut. And it turns out that these dudes were in the Navy. And so now the Navy wants to press charges against him. And I was concerned.

And, you know, J.T. He had a blood infection because. Because, like, you get the streaks that go down your veins when you get infected. And I was like, you got to go to hospital, bro. And I was like, you go to hospital. I'll go talk to Jock. Because I was like, I walked into your office. I came in.

I just want to let you know what happened with JT. And you're like, what? He got in fight with three guys and one. I need tough guys. I was like, yeah? That's kind of how it went down. But I know they want to mast him and stuff. And Jocco was like, yeah, I got it.

And that was kind of it. And I don't know. Nothing really happened of it. I'll tell you exactly what happened. Yeah. Um, he went to cat he went to Commodore's mast. Yeah. And the Commodore so the Commodore and other Navy dudes were in there the Navy guys he got to fight with. Yeah. And they're their master chief stuff. And so we're standing there and he busts him. You busts him. He's like yep you I do remember this. Yes. Like your reduction in rank. Yeah. Which meant he wasn't going to be able to screen. Yeah. And he had just made chief. Yeah. So now he was going to become an. five yeah I remember this so the Commodore's like boom boom like you're you're busted like done and he's like all right everyone leave and he's like Jocko stay here

and so everyone leaves and he he I said hey sir this guy is um actually I told him this before I said hey you remember the guy that you because he the Commodore just been up in an exercise yeah and JT was the the JTAC yeah calling up at Fallon like calling all kinds stuff and yeah Commodore I go you remember Remember that guy that was up there? And he's like, yeah. And he goes, this is the guy you're about to send a Commodore's mask right now. And he's like, okay.

So anyways, bust him down, tells everyone to leave, tells me to stay back. And he gives me the paper. And he goes, here you go. And I was like, Roger, sir. And somehow. It didn't get filed? Somehow that paper did not make it into his record. And you know what?

That Commodore, who's no longer with us, he became an admiral. Who he was a guy that was trying to look out for like a tough good freaking team guy Yeah, like what you want him to do we got jump by three guys exactly exactly And you know that's one of those things I always think like well if JT would have gotten busted he wouldn't have gone to damn neck You know yeah yeah he wouldn't have been so Yeah, one of those things but he was doing what he wanted to do so back to extortion one seven and you know So he's my roommate I get back from deployment I've got my kids visiting me out in Virginia Beach and I get a call in the middle of night, yeah, get to the command.

I get, I'm like, what's this about? I don't know. I drive up there 6 a.m. on a flight going back to tell his family because, you know, like, if you don't know Echo and people outside of the teams, when you go on deployment, there's this like, people would consider it morbid that you fill out about before you go. It's like, who are your pallbearers? What songs do they play at your funeral? Who do you not want at your funeral?

Where's your will? It's 24 pages long and you go through this and it's actually super important. because it solves a lot of problems. And I'm the guy making notification. I knew it. I know his family. I get there. I drive, I find him in Minneapolis.

I drive down there. Bow met us there. He just showed up because he's a good dude. And we go in there and I walked up to his dad. You know, I've got two more people from the command with me who were going to, they're just squared away. Like, they're just squared away people to come with me as part of the Keko team. What does Kiko stand for?

Casualty assistance, something. I don't know. But it's the person that tells the family that they lost somebody. So I'm in my blues. I show up and his dad sees me. His dad's like, I've been expecting you and George was a man in a few words. I'm like, yes, sir. And we sat down and we didn't say much. And then his mom came home.

She was at her 45th. She was retiring at 45 years as a nurse. And, you know, I'm like, you're going to tell her in me. He's like, I'll do it. So he went out there and told Kathy and, you know, it's a hard time. There's no way around it. And then after that we started working on funeral preparations and stuff. I had to go back because I was a little bit messed up for my last deployment.

So I had to get a surgery. Bounce back. three days later, and they had set up everything. It's a town of 700 people. We got a 1,500 person funeral going down. So every logistical issue you can think of, you think COVID was a pain? Imagine like not having enough hotels,

and we're bringing in a C-130 with a bunch of guys from, you know, a bunch of team guys. And where do you house this? The answer was the school. We had like a gymnasium and then overflow into like the theater and stuff. Anyway, I learned a really important lesson that day. And, you know, it's one of the most important. important lessons of my life and I always consider it like JT's parting gift to me. And so, you know,

I get back from that thing. And back then we had spreadsheets. That's what we did, a piece of paper with like names and jobs. And those two, I'll call them text, tech supports what we call them normally. There's probably a more PC name for it, but it's not derogatory. They're just, they're non-seals who are at the seal commit. They did a great job, really good job. And, you know, their friends of mine this day. And they, on it, I'm like, okay, I'm probably a pallbear. I'm probably speaking, you know. I'm probably giving his mom a flag. I'm flipping through, I'm like, nope, not Paul Bearer, okay, that's weird.

Not speaking. What am I doing? I am handling the VIPs. So I'm getting pissed. I'm like, I'm getting mad, and I'm getting ready to go say something, and all of a sudden I stop, and then I feel like this intense shame over me, and I'm like, oh, I just want to be recognized. recognized for who I am in JT's life. It's about me. It's not about me. And so JT's final lesson in me

was to get over myself. And, you know, I don't live up to the humility I would like to all the time, but I hope, you know, that I could manifest that in my life after that. And you know what happened? I shut my mouth. And you know what I did? I handled the VIPs. And it makes sense. I'm the senior ranking of my friend group. It makes sense. And you know what? The guys that carried the coffin didn't drop him. the people the guy that spoke did a better job than I would have for sure he did a great job you know and guess what the mom found the right seat and she got the flag so and I'm not remembered is the dickhead who had to like make myself a center of attention you know but I was super close to doing it and so you

know there's there's always a silver lining and you know there's nothing good about losing my best friend I'm not going to say that but I will say that you know in his memory there is something I learned Yeah, and what a freaking stud, freaking Iowa wrestler. He trained jituary. I've trained here, actually. I've always wanted to do something. I've got to put something up like a freaking kick-ass memorial thing.

Dude, and he was a ranked top 20 triathlete in the Triazdell Division in his spare time. Like when you're in the SEAL teams, you don't have a lot of spare time. That dude, he was just a phenomenal, and we called him the human Labrador. like what better compliment can you get than that? You know what I mean? Like he was just everybody's friend. He'd do something. We'd scrap it out.

You know, guys are. We'd be mad and I'd be like, I'm still mad. And he'd look at me, but like 10 minutes later, he was like, what? You still mad about that? I'm like, it was like 10 minutes. He's like, so how long you'd be mad? I'm like, okay, I'm not mad. Like, it was just, he was just that way, you know?

So, yeah. And I mean, that, I mean, that, obviously that time for NSW was just a freaking disaster with extortion 1-7 it's just horrible and I mean that's one you know that's one this one guy you know and that as much as that impact was it was that impact over and over and over again throughout the community and throughout all those families man it was just a freaking nightmare um what what what did you end up doing after that what was your next command where'd you go so I went over I went back to Team 5, and, you know, my old platoon chief, I can say his name, you know, Jason Torrey. Yeah, you're smiling.

Go ahead. Just the other JT. Oh, dude. The other JT. The other JT. But, yeah, no, Jason's like, what, he was my. LPO. Yeah, he was my LPO when I was at Steel Team 7.

Yeah. And just freaking. Hyper squared away. Yeah. He came over when I was, oh, I see. My chief was a great guy, but he wasn't doing a good job. And I was defending him until the end of the earth. And then J.T. actually got on, J.T., my chief, J.T. gets on him in the midfront of everybody.

And I pull him inside. I'm like, hey, bro, like, that's my chief. Don't do that to him in front of the guys. And he's like, I'm the assaults. The assault's lead. And if I'm going to do this, I got to square him away. And like, we kind of got into it. And then, so then they end up firing my chief. And guess who I get?

J.T. is my chief. And I'm like, oh, that guy, here we go. But, I mean, all of a sudden, in the house, I had nothing to do. I'm like, oh. Yeah. Like, the assault got ran. Everything just was running. And I was like, dude, hyper, squared away dude.

He's working now. I think he's chief staff officer at Silabs up in Washington doing great things. And so he calls me. He's like, hey, if you want to leave there, why don't you come here? I need an officer. I'm like, oh, you think you can make it happen? He's like, hell yeah. Dude, I fly in there and it was just, it was awesome.

Really good deployment, really good workup. We were all over to Afghanistan. So he was your SEA? He was my SEA as well. Oh, yeah. And, you know, I didn't have to talk much. You know, JT talks a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He made up for you. He made up, but he'd say his thing, and I would just sit back. And he always deferred to me like, you got anything, sir? I'd be like, most of the time, no. And it was kind of cool because it gave an extra gravitas when I did have something to say. You know, they'd be like, oh, he's going to talk this time because JT's just, he's that good, you know. You know him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he's freaking just like a character. He's hilarious. As a operational seal? Hell yeah. Yeah. But also, like, just. have fun and hang out. Yeah.

Just just always having a good time. And when I say always having a good time, I mean like no matter where you are. Like we're in Iraq. Yeah. And like we're having a good time. Like things are funny. Things are fun. Things are good.

Which is the coolest thing about the teams. Like no matter where you are, you can have guys. We're going to have fun no matter what. Like the shittiest situation, the worst, the hottest, the coldest, whatever the case is. Like you look over at J.T. and you're going to... He's got a sound effect for you and a crazy story. And you're like, oh, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So I got him again. And, you know, I picked up four platoons, rolled over to Afghanistan, had a really phenomenal deployment. I mean, those guys were so good. I was pretty hard on them during the workup. But they did a good job.

I had really good OICs. And then, you know, of course, Bobby came over as one. And, yeah, they did great. And on that deployment, I think we had 168 dudes. and I'm not going to go into kill counts and stuff, but we did a lot. They found like over 24,000 pounds of HME homemade explosives. They recovered a drone.

They did all sorts of cool stuff. And just really cool. I would just show up as a guest assater. That's what I would do. You know what I mean? Like you know how to run your thing. You know the Battlespace owner. They're like, you want to run an element?

Maybe. But if you need an element lead, we're like, well, no, we got a guy. So I'll just guest assault and fall in there and had some really cool ops with those guys, man. We had a really cool op on Christmas where we just in Afghanistan walking through Afghanistan. And one of the guys was like we set up a ALGL, which is like a grenade launcher. And it's a belt fed. It's got like a from this hill.

It has like a two kilometer reach. And he was up there dressed as Santa Claus. It was really cool, man. Yeah, it was really cool. So, yeah, great deployment. And we did lose a guy. We lost Chris Pike. He was not a seal, but he was an operator straight up.

Like the guy was awesome. He was built like a gorilla. So was he one of the technical guys? Yeah, technical guys. So he carried around this technical equipment that would help us. I don't know. I'm not going to go deep in that way. He carried around technical equipment.

But he was strong. You know, he didn't try to pretend he was a team guy, but he could operate. It was competent. And, you know, he was a, I went to his funeral. And his mom and his family, I'm like, oh, I see where they come from. You know, his mom spoke at his memorial. I don't know a lot of moms that can do that. And, you know, she had a little, maybe a little tear in her eye,

but she's looking right out at us. And it's as intense as you can, it's as tense as you can get. And she's like, don't know anybody to cry for us. We're warriors. We're pikes. And I was like, dang, I hope you have a lot more kids. That's what we need. So, yeah.

Any other major lessons learned from being a troop commander? Yeah, man, being a troop commander, you know, I think I really, I kind of. that was one of my better performances in the teams, not to sound overly arrogant, but I was ready for it. I fell into it.

I was tactically good enough. I didn't have to worry about how my weapons work or anything. I could shoot with the guys as well as anybody. And I could really sit back. I had a great chief, a great SEA,

and really solid chiefs. All those guys were a master chief now. It was just a really phenomenal deployment. Guys did their piece. I did get in trouble once right when I got there, which I was like, great. I threw a keg party at Danny's, and, you know, I just decided to buy a keg for everybody,

get to know everybody. And I left, not super late, but, I mean, not toward, but I left before the keg was done. And so one of my guys stayed and decided to, like, you know, kill the keg. And he went out to have a cigarette, I guess. I'm sure he was helping to oleated across the street or something. And he gets rolled up by the cops for being super drunk, you know. And he gets put in the drunk tank. And then after he gets put in the drunk tank,

they release him the next morning, and they tell him there's no paperwork or anything. So he goes and he tells his chief. And his chief is like, wait, there's no paperwork? Oh, well, I'll just keep that. So for all you listeners out there that are not policemen, I don't think you can put someone in jail overnight without paperwork.

I think you have to put something down on paper. So anyway. So they don't tell me, I don't find out about it. It goes up to the top through Warcom, right? The highest guys, the admiral. So my boss's boss's boss tells my boss's boss, who tells my boss, who comes out to an island, I think, to check out how awesome we are. Because I'm like, yeah, I mean, we're awesome.

He wants to see some awesomeness. This is where you come. And so, yeah, we're out at, you know, siphon. We're driving to siphon 16 next, you know, the one with all the point of hard rocks. Yeah, we're going to siphon 16. I'm like, oh, you wait, tweak it down there. You're going to see some real awesomeness. Anyway, the commanding officer and the master chief were like,

hey, why don't you come ride with me, Jimmy and J.T. I'm like, yeah, okay. So we sit in the back and Robert when I get in there, he was like, so when are you guys gets a DUI? When are you going to tell me about that? I'm like, I don't know anything. I'm like, I don't know. I don't think you're right.

Who was it? He gave me the name. I'm like, no way. There's no way. I know that guy. There's no way. He goes, well, you got a police report that says that. I'm like, you give me a couple minutes to figure it out.

So I walk out. He tells me the story. It wasn't D.Y. He's like, I told Chief, I tell it, I told him, well, you know, I didn't think there's any paperwork. I am like, you feel the fire. Like, are you kidding me? You know? So I get back to the boss and I'm like, I'm like, yeah, this is what actually happened.

And, you know, he goes, what do you want me to do about it? And I was like, hold me publicly accountable in front of my guys, please. And my boss goes, uh, that's not what I expected you to say. I don't know if that's the right thing. I'm like, nope, you do that and I got the rest. It's like, just you need to hammer me in front of the guys. He said, okay. So, you know, we had the SEAL team got together and we got it in this room and he wrote me a letter of badness, whatever.

Maybe it's a nip lock or something. I don't know how bad it was. It was a letter of badness. And anyway, read it in front of everybody and then walked out. Yeah, how are you? And, you know, I looked at my guys and I was like, all right, guys. I didn't even say a thing. No, you don't need to.

I had nothing to say. I was like, listen, this was our one silver bullet. Like, everyone at this team is going to go to Afghanistan. Every one of them want to go. This, it's ours to lose. So all these things that are going to, your focus is that. If it's not that, it needs to blur out. All right?

That's it. And, you know, that dude was a good dude. He was dying to get punished. He was like, please, hold me. He wanted that gift of accountability. And I didn't give it to him. And I know that was a cruel thing to do. Really.

Because had I hammered him, he would have felt better. But I didn't, I didn't say a thing. And that dude ended up being Sailor of the Year at Team 5. And he's a master chief now. And you know him. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I learned.

And, you know, I'm towards the end of my tactical career there, I kind of knew how to navigate their circles. And I was like, these guys don't want to see me get strung up, you know. So they really cleaned up their act and they had a great deployment. And it was phenomenal nine months in Afghanistan other than losing Chris Pike. Yeah. You also told me about learning some resilience from one of your guys. I think he's still active.

Yeah, he is still active. And I'm not going to say his name. I'm just going to call him Dawn. So this dude, that same group that was out in Afghanistan, I had a group out in the west in Hellman working for the Marines. Because the battle space owner, the Marines own that battle space, if you don't know. And within that are different groups. But we all answer to the battle space owner because he has to coordinate everything that happens in there. So he, you know, point man, solid dude.

He can brief. He's a level three, which is like human intelligence stuff. He's just a sharp dude. Who do you put on point? You put the dudes who are sharp. and this guy, he's a Mexican dude, and he's up front, and he sees an Afghani about to step on an IED. He runs up to grab him too late, boom, blows that Afghani in half, kind of smashes Donny up a little bit, and he lost his eyes.

Eyes are gone, he's got to trache in, pretty blown up, lost some of his hand, because, like, the frag came up, blew his hand up, gets blown up, and I remember thinking, all right, like, I don't know how bad it is, but I wasn't on the opposite. They flew him into Bogum. go see him in a boggroom and we're putting him on the plane and the ladies like hey he's uh he's not responsive i was okay so i kind of take him by his hand and he's got a trache and he can't talk he can't see and i kind of like hey buddy's jimmy how you doing man and he struggles to sit up and i'm like what's happening he wants to communicate so we try and get him a whiteboard but he can't see he's got right

with his off hand because his good hand's blown up and we figure out he's trying to tell me he wants to come back and I'm like, oh, man, this guy. So I tell him, I was like, listen, buddy, like, you know, it's important for the guys to see you do recover. They're worried about you. So what I would like you to do, would you please send videos of your recovery to the guys, stay in touch with us. And if you get better, I'll bring you back. And that guy did it. Don got blown up on December the 10th. And so I'd go out there, I spent the holidays with him,

and we're getting ready to go on an op, and you see, you see him, he sends a video of him running on the treadmill. He's sweating, and the guys are cheering, and, you know, the physical therapy staff are distraught at what's happening, you know, with this guy putting out. And it was cool, man, the guy,

it was, they kept him in touch, and, you know, he didn't make it back on deployment. His injuries were too great. But that he still had community. He still had, a purpose and he still had a goal. And you know, we sent a guy home from our deployment after he got shot in the plate and we didn't do anything for him.

We sent him home and gave him time. And I don't think he had the same kind of recovery, you know? Whereas what Don ended up doing was, you know, he came back and he wanted to get back in the teams. Somehow when I grew back, I'm not a doctor. I don't know, he's a badass, you know. He just grew back in I. He's like, I want to come back in the teams.

And so a lot of the higher ups are like, no, you can't bring him back to teams. You have peripheral vision, CQC, skydiving. And I'm pissed. I'm like, give him to me. I'll take him, you know. And I'm the opso now at five. And they're against it. And they're like, well, what if he does SQT?

I'm like, okay, well, just maybe just a couple blocks. That's a slap in the face, man. Like, you know what I mean? This is a seasoned operator. Like, anyway. So I'm like, that's fine. Which blocks do we have to do? and it was like close quarters combat and skydiving.

And because they were like, make him do it off. I'm like, he doesn't have to breathe underwater again. Like, that's ridiculous. Anyway, I went and told him, I'm like, hey, bro, listen, this is, they said they can bring you back, but this is what you got to do. He's like, oh, cool, I'll do the whole thing. I'm like, no, no, no, no. He's like, no, no, I'll do the whole thing.

He did. He's the only enlisted guy to ever speak at an SQT graduation. And he was the honor man for Ms. SQT. Hell of yeah. Awesome. And he's still out there right now. He's going to do Beyond the Brotherhood with me after this. And I'm super proud of that dude.

And, you know, I learned that from, I learned about those important things about resilience along the way. And I think maintaining that community, he's still part of the team, you know. Maintaining the purpose and the goals was super important. And that's one of the things I'm trying to do with Beyond the Brotherhood, which I'm sure we'll get to in a little bit. Freaking outstanding.

What did you do after that? I think you went to buds, right? Yeah, I went to XO kicking and screaming because I'm like, they're like, hey man, I screened XO third look, which is your last possible look because I never took a real staff tour. I just didn't do that. I just kept going. They're like, you've only gone to the Middle East.

You only, you know, just done SEAL teams. You need to do some other things. They want you to do boats or SDV. Anyway, so I somehow made XO. So now you have to go do an XO tour. So that's my first ever staff tour. I didn't know about all the Navy programs, just like 24 Navy programs,

like motorcycle safety and like all I didn't I hadn't taken a PRT in like seven years I didn't know and they're like well your fit reps so you take it I'm like I don't know like I didn't know I didn't know I didn't know we still took the PRT I just didn't even know so now I'm not on the XO in charge of all this admin stuff I don't even know about and uh had a great staff there I still stay in touch with with some of those ladies they were one of them she just put on warrant officer I'm super proud of her. And no, it was a really good tour for me. I didn't realize how far gone I'd been. Because like when you're, if you walk into a coal mine, you're going to get a little dirt on you, you know. It makes me think of that one. You did a podcast where there was a guy living in

like the CIA world or one of those worlds with the intel. It's a dirty world. Well, going to combat over and over for 14 years is going to leave a stain. And I didn't realize where I was. And then, you know, being at shore and being home and, oh, it's, it's, you know, it's, you know, So, you know, I'm a normal person. And it took a while for that stuff to kind of bleed off. But it was really good for me. And being a buds, you know, we learned a lot. I learned a ton while I was there.

And back to the resilience thing, we had a suicide there. So this was a guy that quit, right? Yeah, I was a guy that quit. I think the proper word used to be a trite. I don't know what it is now. They always have a Phoenix division or something. I'm trying to be good by NSW, but we called them a trites back then. So usually when guys quit, you take them, you give him the man talk with the master chief,

which is like usually some big stud. You know the dude who was at the time. And he was like, and then you go and put him in bed because they've been awake for two or three or four days. Well, this guy didn't do that. Jumps in a car, drives downtown, jumps off the 24th floor of the Marriott. And, you know, we're like, and then we start looking at the stuff and we're like, wait, there were some kind of suspect car accidents where some guys lost. Could there be, I don't know.

We don't know, but we know that we've got at least one suicide, and we have to do something about it. And so I had a couple of these lieutenants, and by this time, you know nowadays these SEAL officers are so freaking smart. They're all Ivy League guys. They're all 1600 SAT guys. And these two guys went to MIT, and I was like, hey, I need you guys to design something.

Let's figure out what we can do with these better to treat these guys. And they came up with the H-Rock, the Hellweek Recovery Observation Center. And they were like, look, after you quit, you've got to spend 24 hours in the 8-rock. And during that time, well, first before you start Hell Week, you have to put down the name of one person that you're going to call when you finish Hell Week. That name. That's first.

Then you have to talk to the psych. You have to spend 24 hours in there, and you have to get a med check. And then you can go, you can leave. So I looked at this. I'm like, that's the worst idea ever. This is going to be like Jonestown the day after. It's going to be one mass suicide. They're always going to like be in this huge pity party and they're going to all,

you know, but that's not what happened. They, it made this sense of community. They're in there watching, eating pizza, watching movies, and then you realize, hey, I'm not the minority. No one talks about quitting buds. No one does. And now you've got all these guys who are in the same boat, you know, every one of them is the biggest badass.

Their town, their family is ever known, you know. And, oh, and then they have to call that name. And that's an interesting wrinkle too, because now it's like, okay, my family, they love me because I'm the best, I'm the golden child. You know, those calls, how do you think those go? You think it's like, you're dead to me? When they call, it's like, hey, I'm proud of you, you know, do great things in Navy. And so it breaks that glass and it gives them a community.

And then we start working on their next jobs and they get goals and purpose. And it really was a really cool thing that we did. And it worked out great. To my knowledge, there's been zero suicides from, guys from at trites after buds and yeah I think it was something that I learned a lot about resilience that I didn't know from these young lieutenants who were smarter than others when you got a guy like you and me kind of you said when you were going through buds you didn't think about quitting I didn't definitely didn't think about quitting

when I was going through butts at all what did you learn from these guys like hearing them talk the out brief when somebody just so did you do that out brief as well are you sitting there for some of those well no it's not really an out brief You're talking about the man talk. See, out brief, yeah, we talk to them on the backside. And usually, we is usually not me. You know, we have the psych and stuff. We'll talk to them.

What kind of stuff do they say? Well, a lot of times they, so before and after H. Rock, because when, after H. Rock, it was a lot different. But before, a lot of these guys were just like, I got to get back. I lost, I lost focus or no, I don't remember quitting. I was hallucinating or there. A lot of times they had some kind of excuse. After the H-Rock, I didn't see that as much, you know.

And an interesting thing was one time the Mick Pond, that's a matcher-chief petty officer of the Navy. That's the like, I'm saying it for your people, not for you, is the highest-ranking list of guy there is in the whole world. Like, he's the top dude. He's the only guy with a third star on his little anchor. And he came up to me and he's like, hey, man, you know I was a budget right? I'm like, no.

Like, bro, you got to tell people that. That'd be a great thing for these guys to know that they could, they could, you know, quit, not make it, and now they could become the Mick Pond. And he's like, no, I don't want to talk about it. I was like, dang, that would have been a great thing for him to do, you know. So when you're seeing these guys, like, if someone's listened to this right now

and they're, like, thinking about going to Buds. Yeah. And one thing I've always said is, like, if the three of us were going to Buds and you were wanted to make it because your ex-girlfriend said you could never make it, and you're going to prove it wrong. No, I think you can make it. And ECHO wants to make it because, you know,

he wants to prove to his dad and I want to make it because I'm patriotic, all three of those guys could make it. We could also all three not make it. Like, whatever that why is, I don't think it really matters. Like, I know guys that were like, oh, no one thought I could do it, so I was doing it.

That was me. Yeah, there you go. That's like a classic situation. I didn't have anything. Yeah. And there's guys that are like, you know, I'm doing this because I believe in service. They quit like freaking day too.

So they have these big like super philosophical reasons and they don't make it. They quit. Now, look, again, some people that have big super philosophical philosophical reasons, they don't quit. Some people that are doing it for their, because they want to prove their ex-girlfriend wrong,

sometimes they quit, sometimes they don't. What I'm saying is like, you just got to want to freak and do it as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, I don't know. We did a lot of things trying to find the magic sauce. And really one of the best things we figured out was that they made this thing where they put all, they rack and stack these scores.

And some of the major components are self-assessment, cadre assessment, peer assessment. And they look at those things. And if those things align pretty close, the guys do better. That and oddly enough, being close with your mother was another common thread. I don't know what that says, but those were some of the few things we could do. When you say the self, peer and cadre assessment. So if we all think, if like, okay, the cadre thinks I'm like not the best athlete, but I'm a tough guy.

and I think I'm not the best athlete and I'm a tough guy and my peers think I'm the best, I'm not the best athlete, but I'm a tough guy. Those lenses align and you're probably, you have a better chance because you know what's going on. But if you're like, I'm the best athlete ever, and they're like, man, he's a little slow. And, you know, just being, maybe it's a maturity thing

with your frontal lobe. I don't know. But if those things align pretty closely, it's been, and that and of course, there's a baseline physical fitness. People are like, it's all mental. Well, it's more mental if you're not in good shape, you know. Yeah, I've always told people, hey man, you know that rope climb?

It doesn't matter how mad you want to climb up that rope climb. You can really, really, really want it. Yeah. But when you can't do it, you can't do it. And all the want and all the mental strength in the world, you got to freaking train for that. You got to be physically ready for it. And for all those buds, gun to bes out there, you know, just the baseline, you know, mile and a half running boots and pants, nine minutes.

Your five-firmier swim, nine minutes. 20 pull-ups. If you can't do that, don't show up. And then what's the other one? 100 and 100. 100 and 100 pushups, 100 sit-ups. That's right. You do those things and you've got the physical tools to make it.

If you don't, it's going to be harder. It's going to be harder. Yeah, yeah. I think did you say, now you're good at pull-ups. You're not a hard pull-up guy. Running was your thing, wasn't it? I was not great at anything and not horrible at anything. That's a good place to be.

I never want to run. I failed one. I never want to swim. I've failed one. There's a lot of swims you can fail. There's a lot of runs you can fail. I never won the O-course, I never failed one. So I was just like in the middle of the pack.

Yeah, I'm a bad place to be. You know, I think I got gooned like one time in the goon squad. That's a slippery slope. Yeah, yeah, it can be. But like, that's why. You know, if you only get gooned one time, you learn your lesson. I was like, yo, whatever it takes to stay up with the pack is worth it. So Echo, if you get gooned once, like, let's just say we're running.

And they decide that this is the cutoff for people who are running. fast enough so everyone behind them has to get in this. So if you made it past that, you're running in a circle nice and slow and catching your breath. If you didn't, you're hitting the surf and doing push-ups and just getting beat down. And now we take off again. And guess what, you know, you're probably not going to do real well. So that slippery slope just gets worse and worse. So it's like you best decide to just put out because once you get gooned once it's, yeah. Did you work how weeks while you were there? I did not. I, you know, there's a lot of things I had to do.

And I don't know, I've never sent a single person to surf. I've never, I don't yell at people. It's just not my thing. It's not my style. So I went out, I brought on pizza on some nights. I always like to go to the camp surf where they like dig that big microphone and they tell jokes, you know. And it's a really cool like indoctrination of teams. It's like day four.

You're probably going to make it. And I remember they're like, okay, someone tell a joke. And they like had couches out there. And I had, I bring burritos and pizza for the cadre. And we're watching them. And, you know, the. my buddy Beau was the, he was in charge of first phase. He always ran that and he was like, okay, tell a joke.

And someone would get up and they start to tell a joke that I'm like, maybe it was racist or something. He'd be like, hit the surf, everybody. Before you finish it, he hit the surf, you know. And they come back and maybe they would tell a joke that was like, sex or something. Hit the surf, everybody in the middle of it. And like, after a while, you see someone get up and start to tell joke and the class

would be like, shut up. But it was a good, like, tone setter for like, hey, we don't do that here. You know what I mean? It was really cool. You know, because they're boys and they're all, Like they wanted to say a thing, but, you know, he really, he set that, he used that as like, hey, that's not how we do these things here.

So pretty cool. And meanwhile, you would also, you have another kid at this point, right? I do. I got the little savage. Yeah. Yeah, you know him. The little beast. I ain't going to bust his name out.

But if, you know, if he sees, if he sees Joch, he's going to grab him by the neck and try and put him out. I know. He always approaches me as if, what is it like? It's like, he shakes my hand and he looks at me in the eyes. And how old is you right now? Nine. So he's been doing that since he.

He was like six. Yeah. Like coming up to me, shaking my hand and looking me in the eyes, like, good to see you. I'm like, he's got like the soul of a freaking 32-year-old veteran. Dude, that cost me five gummy bears to teach him. Because I used to bring in the mornings. I'd train with, you know, the Wolf Pack, you know, Morgan and Bram and Jr. You know those guys.

I train with him every morning and I'd bring him in there. And he would train with me for five minutes just because I want him to be, the gym is a fun place. right and then I'd put him in thing with a little TV in his breakfast and then I'd go fight with the boys and my friends would come in and he wouldn't he wouldn't walk up and and shake down he's hide behind my leg I'm like what are you doing bro he's like I'm I'm kind of so I read this book about how like loss aversion is more powerful than like if I tell you I'm going to give you $500 that's not as powerful as I give you $500 and I take it back right so I'm like okay let me try this new psychology power I have my five-year-old and I I give him I'm like hey hey buddy

Here's five gummy bears. Put them in your pocket. They're yours, but you can't eat them until after class. So every time someone comes up and you don't shake their hand, I'm going to throw one gummy bear away. Okay. Can you do that? He's like, yes, sir.

I'm like, okay. We say yes, sir, yes, ma'am in my house. I'm like, okay. So we go up there and sure enough, Morgan comes up the stairs, and he's hiding behind my leg. And I'm like, oh, oh, hey, give me those gummy bears, please. And he, like, takes it out and gives it to me. And you know that metal trash cam we have right next to that.

Right next to the water fountain, the clang, it's a clang! It's like 20 feet from here. I laugh when I see it. And his face looked horrified. Like, just, I can't believe he just threw away. That's sugary goodness. And then he's like, okay. I'm like, are you going to do it now or do I need to take another one?

He walks up, he shakes his hand. And then people react. They're freaked out. They're like, what is this kid all intense? So now it's his game. Yeah, so your parents out there, five gummy bears is all it takes. Yeah, I never recognize that loss ofversion thing. I know the the punishment that I had with my son was I took one of his toys and brought it to the concrete patio and smashed it with a hammer because he had done something.

It's a little more intense. He had done something that was unacceptable in my family. And so, yeah, and so people are like, I can't believe you did that. You know how many times I did it? Once. And then I had a staging area and I took his next favorite toy and I put it in the staging area. And I was like this one's next if anything like this if you if you're out of line Wow and he couldn't really speak very well because he was only four and I was

He was like six though You want change your own diaper and he was like he was like check so I only had to only do it one time and it left a mark right? Yeah Don't want to lot don't lose the the favorite toys. Yeah, so there you go So you got him now and then after that you go back to didn't you go to the deploy again? Yeah, it's like 2017, 2019. Yeah, I went to the second half of the Mosul fight with,

we did Western Mosul, which was like that big fight with ISIS. And it was an interesting thing. Now it has a new thing called A2E, A3E, like advise, accompany and assist. And everyone wanted to go with, the accompany is a third A, and that's whatever one wants because the guys,

now you got these new guys who want to come in and they're like, they're trying to prove themselves because they got all these combat vets, but the war ain't the same anymore, right? And so these, it's time for the Iraqis to defend their own country. And, you know, these guys want to go in and get in the mix. But really, you know, we can like mark the Iraqis where they are, let the Iraqis fight. When they get stuck, they are not technically savvy enough to like do the combined arms things with the aircraft and call in the J-TAC.

Because, you know, calling in bombs is, I mean, it's not super hard, but there's pretty big consequences, right? On a risk assessment, it's like it would be bad. Yeah, catastrophic. Yeah, catastrophic. So we do that for them. You don't have to be there on the ground with them to do that. And the guys really, like, struggle with that because they're like, come on. So we made this rule.

You had to be one kilometer off the float, the forward line of trace. So the Iraqis are pushing. You've got to be 1K back. And then you can call on the strikes. And that's on the, that's on the, with their company. Usually you can do it from the jock. You don't even need to go. And, you know, the guys really struggle with that.

But, you know, I don't want to send a guy home in a box for that country anymore, you know. and we went into that and it was actually super, super good, but it was interesting seeing how much the guys were always trying to find a way to get up there. They're always trying to find a way to get in the fight. I'm like, well, how close are you? Well, it's going to be closer, but I can support with a 50 cow, and I'm like, bro, I know, man.

I know, I know, I know. But what's happening here is going to happen whether you're up there and getting shot at or not, you know. So, yeah, it was an interesting place for me to be on the other side, right? I'm sure there's someone like, oh, Jimmy's weak, you know. You were the guy pulling the reins. Oh, I was the deputy commander of the seat of Sotov, and then I was the commander for a while.

So that's like all special forces in Iraq and Syria, because the boss had to go home because he had a family issue. And, you know, NSW was like, we'll send a guy over. And he's like, no, no, let's have Jimmy do it. And, you know, now I'm running these commanders who are way senior than I am. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, it was.

And they know me. It's the teams, you know. And I, because in my mind, I'm like, there's no one here that can tell me I can't go on an op. I'm going to go over. you know what I mean? You immediately. Yeah.

You immediately went to the same voice. Oh, yeah. I was like, so I think I'm going to go on an op. So I go on this op and the guys were like, oh, here, sir, this is where you're sitting. I'm like, okay, do you want me to gun, drive, where am I? Like, you just sit right here. I'm like, oh, you're that guy. I'm the combat vet.

Like, what a spectator now. Like, oh, I'm like, no, guys, I can really help. But no. You know what? It's not a place for me to be. The guys did a great job. I went on an op with them. And I'm like, okay.

I am that guy who is, you know, it's past my prime. Turned into that. Yeah, exactly. So I didn't go on anymore. I just weren't on that one. And they were good. It was some team seven guys. But, yeah, so we did the Mosul fight.

It was, it went, I think that really, the integration of technology, unprecedented level, guys didn't get to get the scrap on they wanted to get. But also, we didn't hurt a lot of guys. You know, we lost C4, Charlie Keating, you know, but. Yeah, the technology advancement was so. incredible. Like our deployment, when you and I were together, 2006, like the UAVs and stuff were just like pathetic.

Yeah. And I remember our, one of my officers, it was actually Laf's, one of the Laf's assistant platoon commanders. He was like the UAV guy. And like every time he would launch for those things, it was a crash. It was just a disaster. I remember we gave him such a hard time.

Oh, bro. They were hitting walls. buildings, hidden trees. And, and I mean. Was it the first aquauma? Is that what it was?

I don't know what it was. But not only that, but the imagery sucked. You know, it was like from a shaky little freaking camera that was on target like one quarter of the time. So they, and it just turned into the technology's got so good,

so fast. Yeah. And by the time you guys were over there, it was like incredible. Yeah. Incredible. And also the enemy had it as well. Yeah.

You see some of this stuff that's going on right now in Ukraine where there's like, drones dropping hand grenades. Have you seen some of those videos? It's freaking horrific. We were worried about that in Mosul too. Actually, they had all sorts. We tried to all sorts of different things

and somebody came up with the idea of having these like falcons swooping down and taking out the drones. I'm like, that'd be cool. I mean, it'd be cool to see like, what's more America than an eagle swapping out and grabbing a drone, a bad guy drone? But we ended up finding lots of different things,

but really the best thing to do was just because the drone had a return address. It had to go back. right and so once that thing goes back you followed in with a hellfire and that was kind of the most successful thing in my opinion that's that's a pretty good success yeah how you like me now yeah yeah you drop your little 40 mic mic shell and then you eat a hellfire when did you when did you you did like the executive uh what do they call it when you went to harvard because you didn't go there right no it's program for leadership development it's because i was looking around for an executive MBA and uh you know

I went all, I was like, oh, I'll do STSU or I'll do, and someone's like, but every place was accepting me, USC. I'm like, wow, maybe I should start at the top and work my way down and see what happened. So I threw out like Harvard, Stanford and then got accepted. And I was like, oh, well, I guess I should go now. So I went to that and it was actually awesome. It's basically their MBA curriculum. You do all the case studies.

And then you do six weeks on campus. It's nine month long. And then you do one more module and it ends up as alumni. And it was great. With the best thing I got out of there is a network. I mean, I tell people now, I think school is overrated. Like if you're going to be an engineer or a doctor, you've got to go to schoolmen. But if you're going to run business, my brother's awesome at business.

He doesn't, didn't even go to it. He finished high school, barely, you know. And it's, there's just, I think that entrepreneur line is we need to preserve that and celebrate that. And I don't necessarily think that college is the right fit for everybody, you know. Oh, yeah, I definitely agree with you. As a matter of fact, I was getting an interview the other day. I was, they're like, oh, less men are going to college.

And I was like, yeah, I kind of support that, you know. I mean, yeah, like you said, if you're going to be an engineer, you're going to be a doctor. But if you're going to go and do, like, why not go learn how to weld or go learn how to be an electrician in a, in an 18 month trade school where you come out with a legit skill that people actually need in the world. So. Yeah, because all these other things, you just plug into the big machine making $80,000 to $100,000 a year. And on top of that, college is an indoctrination. It's like nonstop indoctrination. And, you know, this is, I'm speaking from, you know, I've got a daughter who's in medical school.

And then my son is just starting at Tarleton State. And, you know, I just see it. It's so much of an indoctrination, they put all these little things. And it's like, well, why don't we just teach them the skills that they need and leave them alone? And I think the trades are still that way. Yeah. Yeah. But you started a business kind of around this time frame, right?

Yeah. I started sushi assassin. Sushi Assassion. So go Charles. Now he's entered the chat. Are you a sushi guy? Yes, sir. All right, man.

So can you say sushi assassin? Sushi assassin? It's kind of hard to say. Yeah, yeah. But, uh, so I came back from business school. I'm like, I got this new business muscle. I got to use it. And then the teams, you know, that's what we do?

Like, oh, I learned how to be a hearse master. You go tie that. So, uh, I went down and I, I speared. I'm a big, I'd like to spearfish. I had like, like 200 pounds of yellow tail. I'm like, what I'd do with this? And my buddy's like, bro, we should start a sushi thing. I'm like, do you know a sushi chef?

He's like, I'm a sushi chef. I'm like, uh, okay, you sure? Make me some sushi. So trying to like what you did with me. And he did a good job. And he's got a really, he's from Kauai actually. He said, I think he said he'd know you. His name is Aaron Bishop.

But he grew up, he grew up in Kauai. He's like a small framed little white guy smaller than I. Do you have freckles? Yeah. Do you have a brother named Damien? Yes, he does. That's your one. Aaron Bishop.

Yeah, yeah, he's older than Damien. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, so he's a good dude, man. And he started this up. And, you know, at the time, I'm super proud of him because he didn't have a lot going on. He was working. He hadn't done his taxes in a couple years.

And he just, his life was kind of not going super good. And we started a sushi assassin. And he runs it, you know. He runs it. He does it. I set the business up, and he's got a really nice, like, vibe to him. Phenomenal sushi, if you're in the San Diego. area and you want to do some sushi, get some, in your house. And what really helped us out was COVID,

because all of a sudden, they shut down all these mom and pop restaurants, you know, and no one knows how to make sushi. I mean, I kind of can now, but I can't make what he makes, you know. And so now you can have the, we'll take a PCR test, show up in your house, boom, minimum of eight. It's about $140 a head, but it's super good. All you can eat, you know. And you're in your house. If you want to just, you want to drink, you drink your own stuff. And then we clean up and leave. And it's been pretty good. So He's making a good living now. I don't take money from it, but I want to hand the business off to him,

but that was my first foray. What is it, sushiassion.com? No, he has an Insta, and I think it's sushi assassin. dot CEO, I think that's, I don't have, I'm looted social media, man.

I have a LinkedIn, that's all I have. You know, it's like, we don't, and it's mainly the San Diego area? Yeah, it's mainly San Diego area. Check. Yeah.

All right, so you're doing that. Um, and now we roll into your, kind of like your last, Your last tour was group one, right? Yeah, I rolled over to there, and I was the Opso for a while. And then they shut down the Ford units, and they combined everything in group one.

And I was redlining. I'm like, I was running all of what used to be down there. And I'm like, hey, man, and the staff hadn't come here yet. So the guys that were there had to come back. And I was like, hey, I can't maintain this. Because I was working from like, you know, I get, you know what it's like the team. I work at 430 until 6, get a workout in, then go to work. Because we have like siper piped into our house.

I actually had a hardwired into my house. Damn. Yeah, you just like, my friend knew how to do it. We set it up. So anyway, I was working like crazy and I told the boss, I'm like, boy, I got to tap out, man. Like, we got to, we got to. So they split my position into three. We had like the opso, the training officer, which is what the group one ops used to be. And then we had like the 35, which is like combining intel and kind of forward-looking ops. Anyway, so I'm like, I want to take training because I'm getting out. So that's a kingmaker job, put someone in that kingmaker job.

So I went to training, and it was awesome. Had a great job. I loved it. You know, I'll just say CB, work with me. And one of the best, most capable, humble people I've ever met. You know, I just, he was one of your OICs. He's my OIC. He's the Delta Charlie in the book Leadership Strategy and Tactics.

He's the guy that I stole everything from. Yeah. And you know what? And you ask him what he does? He's like, I do the bitch work. That's what he says. Of course. Just a phenomenal dude.

He set up my whole retirement for me. And just he lives a couple walks from us. You know that? He's up front. Yeah. Yeah. But phenomenal dude. And work with him.

And we ran that training. And that went well. And then I kind of like started working my way out. And, you know, I started a couple other businesses. And so, so tell us about the, what do you got going on now? So now I've got. So you, well, you retired in 2022, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, actually technically January 1st. But my retirement that you. What I spoke out? Was it December 16th, I think? Check. Okay. Yeah.

But I started May Day Executive Services, and we do high-end events for executives, safe, unconventional. I just did one, just last three days I've been doing it, and I took some folks riding, like, water boards. Those little water jet boards, and we did some. Wait, what's a water jet board? You, like, stand on it, and the jet ski follows you around, and you, like, ride on it. It almost feels like a hoverboard. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Right on. We did that, and then we did, we went around with the sharks out in La Jolla, which if you're not from here, it's a pretty big deal. And then they don't know it, but I actually did see a small Great White when I was out there. Like how big? Seven foot maybe. Yeah. So, no way. Yeah.

So it's not a surprise to see one. Yeah. But most of the sharks that you see in La Jolla are those little leopard sharks. These little leopard sharks that are, they're nice. Yeah. They're nice sharks. They got little bitty mouths. They just like clams or something.

Yeah. But anyway, they were pretty, it was a big deal. for them and then we also did some underwater not tying and then I did a talk with them on on adjusting your team to change so it was really good I work with uh this was through pray dot column I work with those guys all the time their CEO Steve Gatina has been a mentor for me on the way out you met him at my uh at my retirement and he's I did some work with them early on like in 2015 I did something for him I'd set up a scapenter hunt or something and he's like hey can we pay you I'm like no you can't pay me I just he's like what can you I'm like well will you be my

mentor. Dude, that was the best investment of my life. Those guys, I mean, he's probably texted me 10 times already today. I called him on my way here to make sure I was squared away, and he's just been a phenomenal, you know, mentor and leader and just good people, you know. So you need mentors inside and out in the military. It was you, Dave Cooper, Bonacobal, you know, those were my mentors. And then now on the outside, I've got Steve Gutina. And he's been amazing, So that is called Mayday Executive. It's at Maydayexecutive.com. It's Maydayexecutive services.com.

And I've actually never seen the website. My sister made it. I don't pay attention to it. Yeah. I looked at it. Yeah. I heard it's messed up on the cell phone right now. So she's got to fix that.

But on the desktop, it's tight. I don't know. I don't do a lot of that. I'm mostly word of mouth. I'm booked through March right now. But I try to just do two events a month. And sometimes it's speaking. I do a lot of with the Entrepreneurs organization

and the YPO, Young Presidents' Organization. And then, but my preponderance of my time is spent on Beyond the Brotherhood. Right. So talk us through that. Beyond the Brotherhood. This is a 501C3. Yeah, correct.

Correct. And, you know, people don't realize how often seals kill themselves. It's pretty bad. Like within four months of my retirement, four of our brothers died by their own hand. and it's a problem. And I think we're just getting on the tip of the iceberg

because now the guys that did a lot of the combat are just starting to get out. And I think that, you know, we talked about resilience, community, purpose, goals. These guys, they're used to fighting for a higher cause. You know, they're fighting. Maybe it's for patriotism. Maybe it's for the guy next to you.

It doesn't matter. You're part of a community. And now you get out and you're working for money. And a lot of these guys do fine. but years down the road, they lose that community purpose, sense of goals. And so I thought about what I could do to get after that problem and, you know, beyond the brotherhood in cooperation with Punta Brava surfing golf club. I've been doing work with them for a while and they're like, hey, would you start a 501C3?

We'll cover it. What do you want to do? I'm like, let's get after this problem. And so, you know, we're just getting started. I did 14 dudes in 2022. And this year, I think we've got 18 so far. But I don't advertise. We take the guys in and basically I like to use the Navy programs, be an expert that.

We help them get through the VA process. Then when they get through that, we plug them into a network. Because you know, in the teams, you're like in a black hole. You don't really have social media or anything that. I got my first social media account in January. And so we take them, we give them the last bits of what they need. So like if you're a company trying to hire, oh, I need them to have this real estate thing. I'll get them that real estate certificate.

I'll send them to you. And we line it up based on five things that I actually learned from a different nonprofit. But it's like, what matters to you most to put it in order, where you want to live, who you work with, the mission that you're doing, how much you get paid, or ability to control your own time. Once I get that, I get a picture of what kind of thing you need to do. And then, you know, there's no one size fits none solution. We work with the guys, get them placed. And I'm starting, I got good partners. I need more.

So, you know, we, of course, we need donors because it's a 501, C3, but we also need mentors. people don't want to take these guys and hire them. And I'm finding that they've done really well. So there's a value proposition on both sides. And we've got a website beyond the brotherhood.org. And, you know, it's a way to give back to the seal community. It's important to me. Mayday executive pays the bills.

Beyond the Brotherhood is like good for me. And I'm still plugged into the community. And, you know, I think down the road, I think the magic's not what we do right now, but I think it's going to be in five, six years. They guys are higher up and they're, you know, they're at the echelon of society. they deserve to be a society they fought for and earned.

And then now they're looking at what their life is and maybe they can find some purpose to give them back to Beyond the Brotherhood. Maybe they come to our events or, you know, they see that snop-nosed little punk that just like he was getting out, you know what I mean? Let's get this little fellow turned in the right direction. Yeah, for people hiring. So if I'm at a company and I'm looking for somebody to do a certain job, I can go to beyondthebrotherhood.org.

Yep. And I can say, hey, I'm looking to hire somebody to run one of my plants or one of my sites. And you, this is what I really liked about what you're doing. Talk me through how you are screening guys. Oh, yeah. You're preparing them what you talked about. Hey, we need a real estate thing. We'll get you that real estate thing.

But you're also doing a cool methodology for screening them. Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. So like there's a lot of organizations just taking anybody, you know what I mean? but you don't know who that person is. Is he a guy that got, you know, shit canned after a platoon and a half and stole something and lost his bird? He's got a buzz class next to his name. So, you know, we screen our guys for character.

Not everybody makes it. And when I say character, I take, I have them turn in when they apply one supervisor, one peer, three subordinates. And we talk about those lenses, they need to align. So, like, if they all think that you're a jerk but you're squared away, but even your supervisor say that, you're like, all right, this might be the right guy because everyone sees in the same. But if the kids guys below you think you're a jerk and above you're like,

oh, he's a nicest person. Okay. That's not, you're not true across the board and you probably are not the guy we're looking for. So we screen these guys and, you know, the teams are about 2,500 of us. Like, you know, if I, if someone didn't know me and they ask two or three team guys, they can get a kind of converging validity of what my reputation is. So that's what we do. We get, figure out who these guys are.

They're not perfect, but they're pretty. good, high caliber dudes. And, you know, we'll give them with last bitch what they need and send them on their way. And then what's the deal with the Punta, what is that, Punta Brava? Yeah. What's that all about?

Punta brava. So it's a private surfing golf club. I've been doing work with them for a while. I know I would take investors out and take them big wave surfing or take them to the wineries in Mexico or whatever it is they want me to do. And it's been fun.

We've got a really, it's a really cool place. It's Punta brava.com. but it's going to be one of the best highest-end golf clubs in the world. There's five holes that are designed by Tiger Woods. You have to hit over the water to get on the green. And they're only going to take 360 members. It's super high-end, but it is cool. So if you know where Labufodora is, just south of Encinada.

I was checking out on a map. It's a peninsula that sticks up south of Ensenada. Yes, sir. And it's like seven miles out into the Pacific Ocean. So it feels like an island because there's just huge mountain on it. and man, they're breaking ground. I think before the end of this year, they're going to have a nine-hole set up,

and they're talking, they'll have an air strip there. And just, how are the waves? The waves, not that good, but Toto Santos, the world-class big wave spot

is a four-minute jet ski ride from there. So once we get the marina set up, it's going to be really easy to bounce out there. I took some dudes out there surfing in 25-foot, and they didn't do super great, but they didn't die. My leash ended up snapping. I had to swim all over.

it and go get it. But it's cool. I took some guys spearfishing there a few weeks ago. It's a really cool place, man. Like, I mean, it's expensive. But if you can afford it, it's definitely worth it. So are people going to build houses down there on that place? Yeah, they got 25 lots that they're selling. And, you know, did they go through the website? They can figure out all the deeds on that. But yeah, you can have a house on it. And I think the real estate around there is going to really bump up. And in addition to beyond their brotherhood, they sponsor Punda Brava Medical. So they're trying to bring medical care to all the people in that area, try and give back to. the community there. And you know, I got a soft spot from Mexico. I grew up right in El Paso and I

surf down there all the time. I've been dying to take you down there. But yeah, it's good people, good community. I really like what's going on down there. Check. Now, if I'm a guy that's getting out, same thing. I go to beyond the brotherhood.org. Yeah, you'll click a little application thing and then it'll go to our admin, which is me and Sean Murphy. We're admin. And then one of us will look at it. We'll divide and conquer. He takes most of the East Coast guys. I take most of the West Coast guys. And then we do our little research. If it checks out, because sometimes I've got put you on a wait because, you know, I got like a couple guys in the queue. There's only a couple of us doing it. And so I've got a lot of jobs. But I really think that once Beyond the Brother

gets up and running in a couple of years, especially when Punna Brava gets the constituency that they're going to get, and we'll be a centerpiece there. And I think it'll be easier for us. But right now, I'm super bad at fundraising. I'm not good at asking people. for money I'm just not good at it like it feels weird you know but that's kind of what you got to do for a 501c3 mm-hmm and what else you got you've married yep yeah so you got that going on yep and she's awesome she's active duty right now okay so going to dime her out but she's a lawyer check all business you see her on the mat here sometimes she's out you're training yeah check and and and then you know when we

were talking before you were kind of talking about just like broad like life lessons. And one of the things you were talking about is just like decision making. And at some point shifting from like making selfish decisions, which might not have turned out the best in the long run. Yeah. Over to like, okay, I got to put others first. Like talk me through some of that stuff.

Well, I made a lot of selfish decisions, you know. And I know, I think one of the biggest things I can say that has been a huge effect on me was I missed the first 14 years of my kids' lives. Like those 14 years, you know, I was gone, what, 270, 300 days a year? And then when you're home, you just kind of drop off your dirty laundry and prep for the next trip. And I was gone a lot. And so I really, you know, I'm grateful to my older kids, 18 and 24, because especially my daughters worked really hard to, like, maintain a relationship with me. She came out here to go to SDSU.

And I missed a lot of that. But now I got the second chance. And I guess my message to other people out there that maybe made some bad decisions, you know, not the teams are a bad decision. and it's who I am. You know, I was made for this. But, you know, I've got another shot with my youngest son, and, you know, I spend a lot of time with that guy. You know, when I pick him up at school,

I work from like 4.30 a.m., and I'm off by two, and then it's just he and I do our thing. And, you know, he's got a bunch of different interests. He does rugby. He's here on the mat a couple times a week. But just that time that I give him is for him. And, you know, I didn't do that from my first two. I was worried that they would be like, oh, now you're going to, this is, is he your only real kid?

But they weren't anything like that. It's been cool. I took a trip to South Africa this summer with my oldest. That's where he wanted to go. He wants to be a vet. And then, and I took the little fella. And we self-directed safari and a Toyota Camry. Tears lions like looking down it.

Animals aren't hard to find there, by the way. What's self-directed safari? You rent Camry, step one. Step two, you drive to the Wild Animal Park. Got it. You just drive through. That's it. You drive right up on them.

Like, I mean, hyenas, elephants. Were you in South Africa? Yeah, I was in Kruger National Park. Yeah, because that's the one thing that I, when I went to South Africa, is like, there's no, like, there's only parks, right? There's no lines walking around in normal places. No, no. But in the parks, if you get out of your car, you could be Lionford. Right, right, yeah.

Yeah. I also made that mistake. I got out of the car sometimes. Did you hear this story? So I'm with Laif and his wife, Jenna. Yeah. And with our friend Paul down in, in South. Africa and we're driving and we had to go from Joe Berg to like this place just this

game reserve right yeah so we're driving and we're talking and we're you know whatever and I didn't really realize it but we had gone from like the world into the thing right yeah yeah it happens fast right yeah but I didn't really see but we went through like a gate and everything but I didn't really I don't know if I was doing something else or whatever it wasn't paying attention yeah it's not like America yeah so we're dry and now it's getting dark but the sun's going down and all of It's like a nice sunset across, you know, like cool, like little woods and like little mountain thing. And I'm like, oh, like, hold on. Let's get a picture.

And so lay like this guy, Paul stops the car. And I'm like, all good. And then I'm like, you know, I'll get a better picture if I'm not in a car. So I just like open the door, get out. And I start walking around like trying to find that good angle with the tree in the mountain or whatever. And then I just like take a few pictures on my whatever phone and then get back in. And dude, like, life was like, bro, I don't know if that was like a good. good thing. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, well, we're in like the wild

animal park. Yeah. And I was like, oh, well, you know, kind of like whatever. Yeah, because in America, they can't eat you. They have teeth or something. But it turns out this dude, Paul was like thinking like, hey, do Jocco's just freaking legit? Dude, he just doesn't care. Like, whatever. Whatever. Lime? Jocco doesn't know. Jocco was just Joccox. No, it was just stupid. The real answer was Jocco's dumb. And Jocco was almost dead because he was dumb. But I just got out. I was like just fooling around. I got a cool picture. I did the same thing. You're freaking idiots, dude. I pulled up on this, like, you could go along the river and these little pullouts in a dirt road.

So I get out of the camera and we walk down. And I'm like, oh, there's a crocodile. I'm going to go see the crocodile. So we walked down there and where the crocodile was, it's gone. That thing was setting up on this man. And then on top of that, there's elephants in this riverbed. I'm like, hey boys, we should walk back to the car. So I'm walking and, you know, my boys are like, well, I kind of want to look at the elephant.

I'm like, no, no, no, I think we need to go back to the car. So we walk up the thing because, and I can see like, you know, elephants make big poops and they're all overplace. I was like, man, this is like they're a thoroughfare. Like we don't need to run into an elephant here, you know. Yeah, that and I saw a rhino, right? Oh, that's the hardest one to see. I didn't see one of those. Yeah.

So we saw one. And bro, I was like, we were in a range rover. And I was like, this thing's looking at me. Yeah. And most of the things that I look at in the world, I kind of think I can take them. Not this way. You know what I mean? I'm kind of like, look, dude, unless you're like John Jones, like, I'm like,

I look at John Jones, be like, oh, this could be a problem. But even John Jones, you know, I'll stick that. You know, I'll stab him or something, right? I don't know. You know, whoever it is, I think I can take them, kind of. Yeah. Right? I'm at least going to be able to handle the situation.

But they're unarmed. Yeah. I had a big knife. Yeah, I didn't have a knife because we flew in from, you know, flew on an aircraft. So I didn't, I was too stupid. I didn't go out and get a big knife. So I didn't have anything.

It's not like, you know, I had to stick John Jones. Like if that happens, if I roll in through Albuquerque, no offense, John Jones. bones. But no, but seriously, you know, you look around and people, you're like, I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. Yeah.

Right. But this thing's looking at me. Yeah. And it's like, we're in a car and I'm like, this thing will kill us all in this car if it decides to right now. Yeah. This was a weird feeling. Dude, do you see any hyenas?

Scary a.F. Dude. Think about a jaw muscle that goes straight into neck muscle. I, it was. Hyenas are my favorite land animal. Dude, we pulled into a little chain link fence and we camp there. We pull up and there's like, you to me, chain link fence, hyena, my son.

I'm like, dude, this doesn't seem super safe. It's Jurassic Park-ish. It is Jurassic Park. It was like Jurassic Park. They had like a little electric wire, like two little electric wires. Yeah. And on the other side of it is elephants and lions and, yeah. I don't know if they were on, power outage or whatever, but that's where we were at.

Yeah. Same thing. I pulled in, camped in the Camry. Like, yeah. Well, I'm glad you made it home and I'm glad you're getting to spend all this good time with your boys and with your daughter as well who's just they're they're freaking great kids no you know all my kids yeah you've seen them so um what else man does that get us up to speed i think it does um we got mayday executive services dot com we got beyond the brotherhood dot org

you're only on lincoln yes sir that's all i have so jimmy may if you want to connect with jimmy may he's on lincoln um man echo charles you got any questions yeah do all right here we go here we go What's up with the Humvees? What? They don't have keys? Is that what's going on? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, there's no, there's just a little switch. There's no key. No key for Humvee. You just switch it. Yeah. And so I was an idiot trying to find keys to the Humvee. But I didn't want to tell anybody, you know. Whatever. I would have been looking for the keys too. No. So wait, but if I buy like, remember like Arnold Schwarzenegger had that big Humvee? I'm sure they rig. I'm sure they rigged.

They probably rigged, but the ones overseas don't. There's actually, not only you switch, but there's another switch that locks the lights because I had to turn the lights on. I didn't know how to do that. And I was trying to, like, please let me turn these lights on, right before Jock looks. Because there's one switch, you have to, like, unlock the little light thing and you turn it over. And some of them are I are R. And Jocco's sitting there with his helmet on.

Like, I'm like, oh, God. If I don't screw this up. So technically, anyone can just take a Humvee then. Oh, yeah? Well, actually, the way the Marines and Army do it, they have a little, like, lock, and they just put a lock on the door, like a padlock. Like a padlock. Oh, damn.

Yeah. So you can't hold, and it's like bulletproof stuff. Like, it'd be hard to tear that door off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you can crawl in through the top sometimes if there's like a... Crawling through the turret. Yeah. But sometimes they throw some kind of chain around the freaking steering wheel too.

Like there's, let's face it. There's some thievery going on, some borrowing going on. Yeah. Some acquisitions happening. Just about talking about like not wanting to tell people when you're messed up, man. You know about my first skydive? No. This is ridiculous.

So, like, I go through free fall school, and, you know, you get 22 jumps. You know how good you are, 22 jumps? You're not. You're a guy trash, yeah. So I just, I have a buddy who's on the jump team, and he wants to, and I'm dating this girl. And he's like, hey, we're doing tandem. Can we, you want to take her for a tandem? Like, oh, yeah, cool.

So we take her down there. And he's like, hey, you want to jump with us? I'm like, yeah, I'll jump with you. Cool. I can jump. So all I know is military, right? So I walk in, I'm like, what do I do? He's like, hey, dude, just act like you're with us.

I'm like, okay, cool. So these guys are walking, you know, and they got sunglasses, and they're putting their hand out, and they put the left hand out, and they slide a parachute on their hand, and then they walk out the door, right? So I'm just in the back of the line, you know, looking cool, swagger, got my sunglasses on, put my hand out. She puts this thing on me, to my horror, it's like a camelback. Like, it does not look like the kind of, like, thing I know how to put on.

So usually in the military, I've got this giant backpack, right? And then it has another giant parachute underneath as well. and it's got like it's got buckles and like this thing that'll pull the parachute for me if I don't pull and then all these things so I'm like well that's okay I'll take care of at the JMPI the jumpers pre-inspection that's when usually I walk out and I have all my buckles and one person who knows what he's doing looks at everything I do they look at all my buckles then they spin me around they open up my pins they look at every single thing and then they like smack me on the back and then I go to another guy and then I go to the other guy and I do it. who does the same thing, and then I don't touch anything until I get on the plane. That's how it goes, right? So I'm thinking,

I'll just square this way at the JNPI. I walk out, we turn left, plane is spinning, we get on the plane, I'm not even wearing my parachute. So now I'm like, I wonder quietly to myself, how do I put this parachute on? So I step into the bottom,

because I look at, I watch other people do it, because usually, there's two straps around my legs, then there's a belly band, then there's these two straps behind me that I pull, then there's another one that goes across my chest. And all those things you put together,

there's, you step through two straps and put one thing across your chest. And I'm like, is that it? It seems like there should be more. So I'm looking at this thing, and I'm like, then I noticed that there's no thing for me to pull to like open my parachute.

So the plane's in the, air and I'm flying my girlfriend is sitting on my buddy's lap because he's like trying to strap her in and I'm super concerned that I don't know how to open my parachute and I'm like hey man I'm trying to get his attention without letting her know that I don't know what's going on and I'm like hey man so where's my pool you know he goes oh it's back here and there's this little beanbag and I reach back there and I feel it and I'm like hey what do I do I squeeze it like what he goes oh you just throw it

So now I'm in this plane. Dude, this is ridiculous. I'm in this plane. Dude, 100% this is how it went down. Bro. I'm in this plane. This is like, this is why. You might have to cut this.

No, no. This is why the life expectancy of men is freaking so much freaking lower than women. So now. Because this is an idiot and action. Yeah. So now we're going up. And I'm like, okay. So I think I'm supposed to throw this thing.

There's another little can't handle down here around my waist, which I can only, assume is for my backup parachute, which I hope there is one because at this point I don't know. And the light turns green and I got to jump before the tandem people jump. So light turns green, I jump out this plane. My clever plan for safety, because usually I pull at like 3,500, 4,000, I decide to pull at 7,000 because you fall 1,000 feet in 6 seconds. That gives me an extra like 18 seconds to figure out how to fix my parachute if I don't. It doesn't work. It's my clever plan. So I read. I throw this thing as hard as I can.

And it opens, right? It opens. And usually my parachute goes like, just giant parachute opens, right? It's like 360 square feet of just giant parachute goodness. This thing goes, it's like a kite. And I'm not even going much slower than I was when I was falling.

I'm like, what is happening? So I'm like, okay, it looks like it's as big as it's going to get. So maybe I should try my canopy controllability check. That's what you do, right? I usually, I look left, I shake my leg left so the people behind me know I'm about to turn left, and then I pull my parachute down, and it's like, whoa, whoa, and you kind of go slowly to the side. This time, I look left, I shake my leg, I pull the thing down, I go above my parachute, like a serious, like a pendulum. Yeah, so I echo, just, the military parachutes, they're really big, they're 360 square feet, and they're meant to,

be able to support you and your weapon and your rucksack and all this weight and so they're not very maneuverable yeah and he's jumping a little sport shoot it was probably if i'm guessing it's probably like the jump team does like a 150 so and this was super long time ago so i don't know what the they're like they're like like surfboard this is like the uh the uh a five nine surfboard like just a little shred surfboard where he's used to riding a long board like he's used to like a You're trying a paddleboard. Yeah. Yeah.

So now I decided not to finish the rest of my camera control ability check because I am. Horrified. I'm sorry. I'm horrified. I'm like, I don't know. I've seen these guys land these things before because I can't yank it because I'm going to pop up in the air. Like you'll pop up to 25 feet and then just like stall and fall.

So I'm like trying to figure out how to land this thing. And I end up pulling it off pretty well. And my buddy, his name was Johnny. He said, dude, you did great. I was like, oh my God, I can't believe. So anyway, I didn't jump civilian for a long time. I do now, and I really understand how stupid that was. But at the time, you know, I didn't want to admit that I didn't.

You know, at the time, it made so much sense. Don't want to look like a wimp, bro. No, I mean, come on, bro. But yeah, that's like Tony Afratti told the story on here. He was like, he's absolutely horrified of heights. Tony is? I didn't know that. He's horrified of heights.

And he was reprimed. repelling in like Hong Kong off of you know some skyscraper in Hong Kong like it's literally like a 500 foot repel or something crazy like that and he was like I was so freaking horrified but I wasn't going to look like a whim so I just jumped off I freaking went for you know like what are you to do I don't know that and I tell that story and is it the older I get the stupider it sounds I'm like I cannot believe dude I'm like cringing as you're telling that story so the normal protocol echo is you go to a class they teach teach you about it and then they send you up with a free fall instructor. So like when I transitioned from jumping the military rig to jumping the civilian rig, went to like a class. And it's not a big class, but it's like one hour class or something. You sit there and you go, they put you down there and they're like, here it is. You know, here's how you throw it out.

Here's what you do with your other hand. Here's the malfunction procedures. Like you learn a lot of stuff. And then they take a military free fall per, or sorry, a civilian free fall person that's going to qualify you and they jump with you next to you next to you. Yeah. Because think about this. So even though he only had 22 jumps, he had.

Definitely develop the muscle memory for doing one thing that if he does that it ain't gonna work like you'll die So they send an instructor out there and the reason they send an instructor because people have died as they're scrambling looking for their rip cord and it's not there So they go oh people die doing this so we send someone so they see Jimmy doing the wrong thing They make no and they can signal to him and get it they can pull it at they can pull it for you or something like that No, Jimmy's just going so long He's in the aircraft doesn't even know how this freaking thing works I didn't even wasn't wearing it Yeah, I don't even know to put it on. I was like,

dang. But I didn't want that chick to think I was a wuss. You know what I mean? You made the right call. I made the right call. Hell yeah. What else that go? You got any more questions?

Oh yeah. You guys talked about the, what's it called the freaking talk or the man talk after the trait scenario. Yeah. What are they saying? What's the man talk technically? So basically, it's kind of based on the man in the arena, if you've heard of that talk.

I'm trying to think who said the man. Roosevelt. Roosevelt. Yeah, the man in the arena. It's like, you know, all you guys cheering, the guy that got in there and did it, that's an accomplishment in itself. Even though he lost, even though he might have failed, whatever. Yep.

And that's kind of like, that's kind of the crux of what we're trying to tell this guy. Like, hey, you're a great American. You're smart. You're strong. You're capable. You're going to do great things. Just not in this community. That's it.

And so that's what the man talked. And that was kind of our whole A-Trock in a, you know, probably two-minute thing that they did. And now we have, it's a much more robust process. I really believe in it. I think it's good. And I learned a lot about, you know, those three things, you know, the community, purpose, and goals. And I think it was important.

So the man talk is, oh, so it's not, so it's kind of like an encouraging talk. It's like a positive thing. No, no, you quit. No, we're not, we're done telling you you suck and crushing you. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Hey, you quit. And it's like, hey, listen, I got to get you back into the regular Navy.

You're going to go into the Navy. And you could be the McPawn. You could be super high up. You're going to do great because these guys are super high caliber guys. Even our quitters are awesome dudes. If they have the right attitude, they go out and dominate. Yeah. You know what?

I don't know if I could say it, but you know, Mikey didn't make it his first time. Yeah. No, Mikey didn't make it his first time. And neither did Mark. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had George on. We talked about it.

Okay. And he was like, yeah, it's in the book. You know, he like called him up. Like, didn't make it. He was crushed, bro. Yeah. And yeah, that's scary. And I'll tell you what.

Like that thing about the man in the arena, there's so many people that go obviously there's people that go to seal training props respect yeah you went dude you gave it a shot good for you moved your family you trained for years you get here didn't work and there's all kinds of people that don't even do that man yeah they don't even they don't even I mean dude it takes courage and commitment yeah to go for it it really does it's a huge step and listen I think it's you lately I've intent when guys are asking me about it. I'm like, hey, most people don't make it and most people don't think they're that person, but you probably are. The chances are, you probably are the person

that's not going to make it. There's an 80% chance that you're the person that's not going to make it. And you know, those stats are low. I think that's what we say, but we know they're low because now you've got to compete to get into buds. You come into the combine and if you're not one of the top runs, you don't even go and that doesn't count against our numbers. Because we got, you know, we got to like appease the higher ups. Like, it's not that bad, 20% make it. you know but it's pretty bad and those guys go off to the fleet and you know for the navy they get super high quality guys 70% of our e-dogs they got degrees man at least a four year they just couldn't get a slot as an officer because it's super competitive so we get super high quality guys and the

atrites i mean they're solid dudes and it's kind of cool seeing and build this community after the h-rock you know what i mean yeah what do they do what happens soon when they get dropped where do they go so first they go to the h-rock they spend at least minimum 24 hours there and then they got to make that call before they leave the barracks, you know, before they leave supervision, they make call. Then they go back and they got to finish sleeping. You know, they're probably, and then they got to start thinking about their next steps in life. And then, you know, there's a big administrative machine that starts the needs of the Navy. You know, when we went through, it was like, you take your ASVAB and here's the rates open to you. They start talking about

what their next steps are. And they have to spend at least two years in the fleet before they can come back. Historically, people that quit once don't have a good shot of making it back through. I mean, you know, Mike and Mark were definitely outliers. Because we ran the numbers every single way. Like the highest, the guys that make it through the most are like the academy officers because they live that for four years. You know what's going on. And they have a really compete to get those slots.

Yeah. And they're living in that code. They have a seal up there teaching them. So they're the highest. They're the most probable guys to make it. Enlisted guys are probably about, I think, 18% or something like that when I was there. So it's super low. And, you know, to make it through under.

the age of 20 is super crazy. I heard that's like 5% super crazy yeah and those guys I mean we we know a couple guys that have done that me and Jason Gardner Jason Gardner Jason Gardner Jason Gardner he's a long time yeah I didn't know he was that young yeah he was yeah those guys when I was 18 I don't think I had I didn't have it I could don't think I had it I learned it in college I learned something in my head but I wouldn't had it at 18 no way yeah that's a weird It's a weird dynamic. What else? Echo Charles, any more questions?

It's all I got. Good to hang with you. Cool. Good to see you too, man. You know, I miss being on the mat with you guys. I got my hips replaced recently, and it's not, it's been a slower recovery than I would hope for. But, you know, it's good to see you guys still out here training. And, you know, this is still home for me.

I come to victory, and I know everybody here. And now my little boy's training here. And it's just a happy place, you know. I was like, oh, yeah, we do the podcast here. I'm like, oh, my gosh. It's just like being home. It's crazy, man. I've been here since 06.

We had to do something for JT in here, man. That'd be badass. Okay. You know, we got that one mat that has like a flag and stuff on it. That'd be pretty cool to put something up there. Dude, I got a cool picture at him next to Hawkeye. That was his dog that we took on the beach when we were living in I.B. together.

Same time when he was working for you, that'd be really cool. I have it on my house. I wasn't sure what to put up with it. I don't have, you know, California's small house. I don't have a lot of walls. But it'd be cool to put that up here. Maybe we'll work on doing that. I'll take that for rec.

Right on. Right on. Jimmy, any closing thoughts, bro? No, man. You were a mentor to me before. You've always been the same to me. I really appreciate you, Jocko. You know, you were hard on me when I needed to be hard on.

And then you had a profound effect on my career as I went up. And I think sometimes people would be like, oh, that's one of those, John one of Jocco's guys. I'd be like, you're damn right. You know what I mean? So I appreciate what you've done. And you do a lot of good things for the teams. I know that there is an undercurrent of the team is like,

hey, these guys, they go out and they use. the Trident to leverage for their own purposes, but I know you do a lot for the community, and I appreciate that, and, you know, I'm trying to give back as well. So, you know, good to have you guys as allies. Echo, man, I love your part. Your little inserts are always so key, so I love having you here to keep a sane because, you know, Jack Horneau, I'll just talk in acronyms and going our own little, like, violent agreement circle, you know, but it's good having you here. Yeah, bro. Right, oh, man. Well, you know, like I said, the day I met you, I was like, cool this guy wants to do a good job and he's tough and for me that's all that's all i ever look

for in my friends you know this guy wants to work hard do a good job and it's tough so thanks for coming down man thanks for uh sharing your lessons learned thanks for your service to the country to the navy to the teams and thanks for what you've done for me over the years and thanks for what you're continuing to do today to help out guys and to keep them on track and get them moving in the right direction, finding the next mission, man. I know you care about the teams as much as I do,

and I know you're still getting after it, man. Thanks for what you're doing. Sir. And with that, Jimmy May has left the building. Jimmy May, always learning. Jimmy May. Always improving. Always trying to stay on the path.

There you go. You don't know what's funny about Jimmy May. What's that? How I knew, like, know him and stuff. So you told me that story. About like, oh, about some guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is the challenge story. You'll find out. Yep, you'll find out. When we roll. I'm thinking back, that might have been the time when I realized who he was. Like when I brought him together

because I met Jimmy, man, like, trained with him a bunch because he'd come during the day and that's one, like, you don't get a, especially back then, there was no huge groups of people training during the day.

Prior to that story? I'm, I don't. Oh, I might have told you that story, a pretty late day. Yeah, yeah. You didn't tell me right. when it happened. Yeah, yeah.

In fact, if I'm remembering correctly, I told you about maybe he came up or something like that. And then you were like, oh, let me tell you this thing about that. And then I think that's why I think that's. And then I put them all together. So I was just training with him. He was just going to. He was like, oh, yeah, I'm like a Navy SEAL.

But, you know, back in the day, I'm, I know about it. Remember Igor, like all these guys, my friends and stuff like, okay, yeah, everyone, I meet like. He didn't say I'm in Navy SEAL. He said like, probably, oh, yeah, I'm in the team. Right. Because I just want to make sure you're not making Jimmy. Oh, Jimmy.

Yes, it's not a direct quote. That's for sure. So I'm like, cool, and he's freaking good at Jiu-Jitsu. And so, you know, I was always really happy to see him so nice. He has, to be honest, he kind of has a scary look in his face. When you look at his face, he looks like, oh, but it was super nice. He tried good training, really, you know, really good guy. So I was always looking forward to seeing him when I'd see him, training, right?

Slowly but truly, freaking convert you tell me that story. I find out all this stuff. Greg tells me some stuff. I'm like, freaking, that's the guy. that I used to train with because I didn't train with him for a long time and I was thinking but that doesn't make sense because it doesn't seem like he's that guy because he's just a normal dude sure enough that's the guy oh so before you realized he was in the teams I knew he was in the teams before I knew about all the

stuff he did okay and I didn't even know about all the stuff but the guy because I knew him just as Jimmy not Jimmy May okay yeah because he just said my name's yeah it's funny too because I always call him Jimmy May Yeah, me too. And then people in the teams call him Jimmy May. No one calls him just Jimmy. I called him Jimmy before I knew he was Jimmy May. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah. So there you go, man. Train some Jiu-Jitsu. I'm kind of bumped he can't train right now. Like hard. You know, he can roll a little bit and stuff, but I think he's got, you know, he'll be there. He didn't go into the whole like hip. His hip scenario.

Yeah, yeah, straight up like kind of gnarly. Yeah, no, that's not. Dude, when they're replacing your hip, it's gnarly. Period. to end of story. You know what I mean? Like they're taking a major part of your freaking skeletal structure out

and replacing it with metal. You know? So, yeah, that's what it is. So anyways, but, you know, the thing is, Jimmy, just like all of us should be, he's always constantly working and trying to get better. So staying on the path. There you go.

When you do that, you need the proper fuel. Get yourself some jaco fuel. It's true. Also, that pre-workouts out. That's the new hotness right now. And I am back on the pre-workout. You're back in the game. The tingling actually, I shouldn't, because I didn't do like a full length workout, but my workout was 35 minutes.

I still felt the tingling on the way down here. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. That's when you know right there. How many minutes prior to the workout commencing are we? 10. ingesting. 10.

And here's the formula. And I went over this with Kerry, by the way. So if I'm working out right when I get up, here's the formula. It's the deluxe formula for pre-workout. Creatine. So it's water, right? Water. Creatine.

Scoop and half creatine. One hydrate, jocco-hydrate. You'd think, actually doesn't matter the flavor of hydrate. And then one scoop. I'm at one scoop now. I started with half scoop. Oh, you're already. I'm already one scoop.

Pre-workout. Those three all mix. Some people like the greens, which I dig. I advocate for the greens for sure, but that's not the deluxe formula I'm currently on. Boom. Perfect, bro.

Perfect. Lands perfectly 10, 15 minutes before the workout, boom, go. The tingling begins. Full speed. The workout commences. So good.

So good. Perfect. Try that one. Report back. Okay. Check. There you go. Joccofuel.

com. Get yourself some of that pre-workout. Get yourself some go. I'm two goes deep right now. And I'm getting ready to go train that. Shoo. Which you're not training today. Is that what I heard?

Not today. Because you already lifted, apparently. That's what you said to me. Curls, too. I have a whole day dedicated. You did a 35-minute workout today and you can't train. J-Jitsu because of that? Yeah.

No, I actually have some videos I have to do. I got to do it. You know, I'm prioritizing and executing. Okay. Right on. All right, yeah, we'll also get milk. Because how many mulks deep are you right now? Two.

Okay, I am too. So we're both 60 grams. By the way, that's the only thing I've eaten today. Yeah. It's two bottles of milk. RTD. What flavors did you get?

Banana and chocolate. I went vanilla, then chocolate. That's a good, nice to have the options, right? Little variety activity. Normally I'm super

boring, right? Like you stick with the same one. Yeah, like go, like I only drink tactical tea. Not only, but like 80% of the time, tactical tea. The mainstay.

20% of the time I'm giving maybe some pink. mist, maybe some sour apple, maybe the lemon lime, but 80% is the one. But I find myself with the milk mixing it up a little bit more. Yeah. Yep, I see it. I go from banana chocolate. I don't so much do the vanilla.

Do you do the blue ras go or go is out. Yeah, yeah. Do you like it? Just came out. Yeah. Yes. I do like it. I do like it.

I surprisingly like it too. I'm going to say this light and refreshing. Sure. Hell, hell yeah. You know what I'm saying? I know what you're saying. Well, you know the mega mix, too. I don't know if you heard me explain this to carry.

The mega pre-workout mix. Okay, go. It's the same mix. But with a go? But with the go instead of water. Oh, yeah. So you get the blue-res. You stack the blue-rass all day.

So you blue-res go. Blue-raz hydrate, blue-res pre-workout. Triple threat. Boom. Oh, yeah. Then, I mean, I don't know if that's, you know, you put the greens on the creatine. That might not be illegal, bro. Yeah.

Yeah, you got to cut it. Well, you got to put creatine as well. So that's the mega mix right there. But I can't take responsibility for the results on that one because you can be wigging out. Jacket. Yeah. Very much so. All right.

Get this stuff at joccofuel.com. Get it at Walwa. Get it at vitamin shop. GnC. The military commissaries, Afees, Hanifords, dash stores, wakefront, shopride, H.E.B. down in Tehaz. Meyer up in the Midwest, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness. Shields.

And by the way, small gyms everywhere. And if you own a small gym, you own a little Jiu-Jitsu Academy, you own a CrossFit gym, you own a powerlifting gym, whatever you own, email J-F Sales at joccofuel.com and get yourself some of the stuff. So you can give your clients the product. Normally that sounds bad like we wouldn't give us a product. That's like drug dealers, right? To give you a free whatever product and then you're addicted to heroin. Yeah. You know what I mean?

You're addicted to crystal methamphetamine. Sure. Then you die. You commit crimes and then you lose your teeth and then you die. Yes. This is the opposite. You actually commit good workouts. You grow stronger and you live better.

The real good. So get some people some product. JoccoFuel.com. Let's go. What else? Also, origin USA. Boom up. So we're doing Jiu-J-T, too.

We're working. What are we doing? Not working? Oh, we're working. So look, doing J-Jitsu, you're going to need a ghee. Once you go with these origin geese, you're not going to go back to the regular

conventional sweatshop geese. Yeah. You're not to do that. And you are working too, so you need a pair of jeans, maybe two. Can you wear black jeans in a elevated scenario? I guess it depends on a nice restaurant. Like it's Valentine's Day or something. Brad Notties, hell yeah.

Oh yeah, big time. I mean, we're in California, so we're kind of messed up. Because in California, you can roll out Valentine's Day, five-star restaurant, flip-flops, t-shirt, surf shorts. Yeah. You might get a little bit of like a look, but they're still letting you in, no factor. You're probably getting no factor.

No factor, yeah. But if, you know, if you're trying to like maybe step it up a little bit, you might want to put on the black jeans. Yeah. You might as well get ones that are made in America. It's true. Don't get ones that are made in a sweatshop. No. It's freaking wrong.

It's just wrong. Don't let that happen. OriginUSA.com. Get yourself some gear hunt. This went hunting, by the way. Didn't kill. It's okay. But I had a freaking awesome time.

Yeah. Cam Haynes had a elk two yards from him that he shot and killed. He's wearing the origin camo the thing was just like standing there didn't see it It really work bro what better proof do you want You got the proof man you don't get any more camo than that two yards away elk to your is natural habitat Look if I'm in my house if you're two yards away. I don't care don't care you can be the predator from you know the movie You can be the proud bro I'm gonna see it two yards a hundred percent in my house Yeah, right that's my house I know when the house seems different

So the elk couldn't even see him I can't even see him in that Origin Raptor Cammo. So get yourself some hunt gear. Hide from what you're trying to kill. Boom. Jocco store.com. We make some stuff.

We make some t-shirts. We make some rash guards. They're actually origin stuff. Yeah. A little bit different designs, but yeah, rash guards from origin, boom. You know, that's how we're rolling. 100%.

But yeah, if you want to, you want to represent good, Discipline Eagles Freedom, we got your shirts and the hoodies and hats. I posted a video of you the other day. You were wearing a shirt that was like, like discipline but it was in a G. I. Joe font. Format. Sure. Format and font. Yeah, the whole deal. Yeah. And there was a bunch of comments said, where do I get that shirt? Yep. And you replied shirt locker.

Shirt locker. Well, that could have been slightly cryptic because yes, it's from the shirt lock. But the shirt locker store. Mm-hmm. It's our program. So yeah, man, you want to get on that the shirt locker program. It's one new shirt every month. That's just one of many that you can get. Good news too. That is a pass one. That one's from last year. Like 20. 22 last year. Can you still get it? You can still get it. So if you remember shirt lock or boom, we give you a little account. You just log in. You freaking buy whatever one you want from the past. So you have access to all that stuff. But yeah, new shirt every month. People seem to like the design. It's funny because a lot of people don't know about it or put it this way. Less people know about it

than I thought because even like, you know, the video that we put out or you put out of you deadlifting and the shirt changing all the time. I'm like, oh my gosh, where do I get that shirt or whatever? You know, and these are like, bro, they've been up and shirt locker all day. So yeah, Good. Cool. But yeah, now we know. Jocco store.com. Shirtlocker. Jocco store.com. Just click on join the shirt locker.

There you go. Subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to Jocco Underground. We're recording one of those. Actually, maybe two of those this weekend. Get those up some Q&A. Answer your questions. Give you the info.

It's $8.18 a month. Why? Because people get kicked off of platforms and there's nothing they can do about it. They're not prepared. We're prepared. Hopefully it doesn't happen. Well, we're good.

We're over here. We're just putting out word, but sometimes people might think the word we're putting out shouldn't be put out. Then what are you going to do? We'll be there on the underground. If you can't afford $8.18 a month, we get it. Tough times out there. Email.

Email assistance at jocco underground.com. We'll take care of it. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Subscribe to or buy psychological warfare. Flipside canvas.com. Dakota Meyer making kick-ass stuff for you to hang on your walls. Got a bunch of books. You know what they are.

Hey, defend us in battle. I covered that already with George Monsor. Also Rose Ray, she co-authored that. She's a military spouse. She did a great job. George Monsor, just incredible book. Defend Us in Battle, the story of Mikey Monsore. Get that book.

And then I've written a bunch of books. You know what they are. Got a new version of leadership strategy and tactics coming out. Expanded a dish. I put some very pertinent and pragmatic, useful information into this new version. So check that. I was also got a dope black. Which is kind of where everything ends up, you know, for me.

Like we try, oh, let's go. Let's make it black. Looks dope, right? That's true. You got to admit. It looks badass. So there you go. New version of leadership strategy and tactics field manual. Then all the other books.

The kids books have written. Get those. Eshlamfront. We have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to ashlamfront.com. Come to one of our live events. Bring us into your organization.

Have us come and talk to your leaders about leadership. Let us get you aligned. That's what we're doing. Everything that we do sells out. So if you want to come to one of our events, get there early, go to Eshlamfront.com. Check it out. We also have online training, extreme ownership.com. It's our online training academy.

We have a lot of information. We have the skills that we learned and there's skills that you can learn. And if you don't have the skills of leadership, your whole life is worse, period, end of story. And what is leadership? It means you're interacting with other human beings. husband, wife, kids, employees, boss, peers, everybody, friends, everybody, family, everybody. You're interacting with other people. In order to do that effectively, you need to understand leadership.

Extremeownership.com, learn how to lead. Also, if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star Families, check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Lee, she's got an incredible charity organization. She helps with medical procedures and treatments that are not covered by the military. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also, don't forget about Micah Fink, taking our veterans up into the wilderness to find

themselves Heroes and Horses.org and Jimmy's organization that we talked about today, beyond the brotherhood.org. If you want to connect with us, Jimmy can be found on the interwebs, Maydayexecutiveervices. and beyond the brotherhood.org. And if you want to reach out to Jimmy May, he's on LinkedIn. And then for Echo and I, we are also on all these different social media platforms that exist. Echoes at Echo Charles.

I'm at Jocco. Just be careful because the algorithm is a big beast and it'll try and grab you and waste a bunch of your time and your life. So don't let that happen. Thanks once again to Jimmy. Jimmy May, thanks for your service. Thanks for your sacrifice. and thank you for everything you are doing to continue to help our community and our brotherhood.

And thanks to all the men and women in uniform around the globe at this very minute protecting us and our way of life. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders. All of you continually step into harm's way for us and our families. and we thank you for keeping us safe and everyone else out there you know i started off this podcast by reading about mikey monsoor and what he did and the sacrifice that he made well on his gravestone at fort rosecrans national cemetery chiseled at the bottom of his gravestone it simply reads no regrets and that's the way that he lived and that's the way that he died no regrets and it's a good reminder to all of us and I believe that for most of us the biggest

regrets come not from what we have done but what we didn't do so let there be no regret about what we could have done about what we could have accomplished about what we should have done let's leave nothing in the tank leave it all on the field No ammunition to spare nothing left inside. Let's go with no regrets. And we do that by going out there every day and getting after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.