Jocko Podcast - 41: SEAL Vet Tony Eafrati, Scariest Moments, Prepared to Die, Early Days, Transitioning to Civilian Life.

Episode Date: September 21, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHdur0fmxis 0:00:00 - Opening 0:10:27 - Who is BTF Tony Eafrati? 0:17:10 - Allowing Leif to Give Orders to the men... 0:29:04 - Failures in Planning 0:31:26 - Ups and Downs of THE BATTLEFIELD, and how it made Tony "feel." 0J:36:11 - Funny Story about Jocko 0:39:47 - Tell-tale signs that someone is Good to Go, or Not up to Snuff. 0:43:37 - Has Tony disagreed with an order from Leif or Jocko. 0:47:33 - One driving characteristic that separates a "dominant alpha Team guy" from everyone else. 0:51:37 - In the Teams, what are the biggest Reputation builders and killers? 0:59:38 - What makes a great NCO?  And who was the best Tony/Jocko knew? 1:05:37 - IN COMBAT:  Accuracy VS. Volume of Fire? 1:11:16 - Tony's perspective working for Jocko. 1:13:38 - The Early Days when Tony & Jocko were the "young" guys. 1:19:40 - Tony's BEST Story(s) about BTF. 1:23:41 - Tony's thought Process on what strategies/ tactics to use against the enemy. 1:28:25 - Tony's most Difficult thing he's ever did as a SEAL.  Most fearful moment. 1:30:20 - Tony's favorite piece of Kit. 1:32:20 - Number 1 Quality that allows a leader to lead others into uncomfortable scenarios. 1:35:16 - Tony's attitude toward DEATH. 1:37:41 - Training New guys entering the Platoon. 1:41:05 - Civilian life:  Putting the high of WAR behind you.  Are you still searching? 1:47:35 - How do you keep your head in the game when one of your Squad is killed? 1:54:08 - Why is Tony "hard"? 2:03:10 - Dope Internet/Onnit StuffSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 41 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And tonight, we are lucky to have a guest on the podcast. My friend, my teammate, my brother, Tony Afradi. and I'm going to start the podcast by reading a speech that I wrote when Tony retired from the teens and for whatever reason some reason that I don't remember it was work or job or some travel or something I couldn't actually be there to read this myself and that's the way the teams is

you do your job that's the priority and I knew Tony would understand that I wouldn't be there and it would be no big deal to him and I acted like it was no big deal to me but I wanted to be there and I should have been there and I wrote a speech and I emailed it to one of our one of our friends one of our bros another seal master chief and he read it there but I should have been there to read it myself and you will hear that this speeches it's kind of like Tony is it's raw and straightforward and real and so here's the speech that I wrote for Tony when he retired here we go first of all I apologize to Tony that I couldn't be there out in the desert today to see you off for those of

you that are with him today know this Tony Afratti is a hero. A dirty, scrappy, rough, hard, mean, bastard. But a hero. I've known him for over 20 years. And in those 20 years, I got to see him in many capacities. First, as a young, hardcore, beer-swilling, muscle car, driving, machine gun, and fist-fighting, third-class, petty officer.

Then as an experienced hardcore Jack Daniels swilling fist fighting second class leading petty officer. Next as a badass hardcore fist fighting knowledge filled first class training cell instructor. And finally as a seal platoon chief. And we all know that being a platoon chief is supposed to mean that you're hardcore. It's supposed to mean that you're experienced. It's supposed to mean that you're a tough bastard. It's supposed to mean that you're fearless.

It's supposed to mean that you're a true leader of men. Unfortunately, we all know that that isn't always true. But with Tony, it's 100% true. Tony is without question the primordial seal chief, the ultimate senior enlisted leader. When I joined the teams, I joined to follow guys like Tony into unbridled combat, into the violent fray, into hell. I was lucky enough to work with Tony when he was one of the platoon chiefs in our task unit at SEAL Team 3 from 2005 to 2006.

Task unit bruiser. We started our work up here in the desert, the true forging ground of Frogmen, with a couple of years on me he was the oldest guy in the troop and therefore the primary representative of the old breed and he represented the old breed with honor he immediately proved that he was physically harder mentally tougher and operationally superior to any of the young bucks really it was august 115 plus degrees he didn't get tired he outshot everyone he ran immediate action drills like Irwin Ramel he didn't drink water seriously coffee in Copenhagen that's it and desert training was just the beginning he led every evolution through

the entire workup always coming up with the plan always training and mentoring the new guys and everyone else we trained and we trained hard I drew a line in the sand Tony held that line we pushed the envelope and every evolution and prepared for war. Somehow, some way, we knew what the future held. We deployed to Ramadi, Iraq in April of 2006 into our absolute joy.

It was an embroiled war zone. We had been on the ground about a day when I went to meet the brigade commander. Tony was already out in the city in a sniper overwatch position. as I walked into the brigade tactical operation center and shook hands with the colonel John Gronsky, he said, one of your snipers just killed an IED in place or up on racetrack where we lost four Marines three days ago.

And that is exactly what he needed us to do. He needed us to kill them. That sniper was Tony. With the first kill of the deployment, strategic due to its timing, timing that opened up the entire battle space to task unit bruiser. And so we fought and fought and killed the enemy by the bushel. And Tony was at the front the entire time. He never wavered.

He never faltered. Despite the heat, despite the danger, despite heavy casualties, he constantly pushed to get out over and over and over again to kill the savages that were determined to destroy America and coalition forces. He never asked for a pause or a break or a night off or a minute off. Everything that I ever asked of him, everything he did, and he did it with every ounce of commitment and drive and selflessness and professionalism that any human could ever muster. And we would talk and laugh and we would discuss what we could do better and we'd come up

with a plan and in the end Tony would give me a head nod. And that head nod meant he had it. It was done. He owned it. And I never doubted that, ever. He never missed an operation and applied himself to each mission with solemn gravity as the senior enlisted leader. He poured over maps and imagery. He held detailed warning orders.

He briefed the platoon with clarity and directness. He led rehearsals. He did everything he could do to be ready. And his platoon performed magnificently accounting for hundreds of enemy killed. When his own men were wounded or killed an action, it only fueled his motivation to kill more of the enemy, to fight harder, to slaughter more of the evil, soulless enemy, and rid the world of their wretched kind. That is what every seal should aspire to be like. in Tony's words, BTF, a big, tough frog man with no fear, no hesitation, and no mercy, just BTF through everything like Tony did. For senior chief of Fratty's courage, determination, and leadership, I will be eternally grateful.

I owe him more than I can ever repay him for what he did for me, for the task unit, for the teams, and for our great nation. Let there be no doubt the man before you is a hero. The teams are a worse place without his presence, his guidance, his leadership, his example. Those that served with him must strive to carry the torch and pass it on so that his spirit burns bright in the teams forever. I recently watched a movie about Lemmy Killemeister, the leader of the original classic heavy metal. thrash band motorhead. The movie chronicles the life of Lemmy, the hard living rock and roll legend.

The movie paints a picture of a unique individual that can never exist again. The movie is called Lemmy, 49% motherfucker, 51% son of a bitch. And that seems to suit Lemmy pretty well. And I'm not exactly sure how those numbers would break out for Tony, but I do know this. Tony Afradi is 100% frog man. Always was and always will be. Tony, thanks for everything. I'll see you on the other side.

BTF. Jocko. And with that, Tony, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks a lot, brother. Kind of forgot about that there, and that was good. And the guy we're talking about, read it pretty good too. I didn't have like a big ceremony or nothing. He just went out to Nile and we got all gummed up.

That was about it. But I do. I appreciate it, man. Yeah. It's good to see you, brother. It's good seeing you too. And, you know, actually, when I told people that you were coming on the show, you know, people actually know who you are from the,

live to tell. Oh, yeah. And Leif's been on here. We talked about you, you know, told some stories and shit. And so, but a bunch of people had a bunch of questions. And, you know, I figured we'd try and get through some of them. We won't be able to answer all the ones that I got, but I picked out some of them and let you take a look and pick out some of them. So, well, I mean, first and foremost, people just want to know kind of who the hell are you and where'd you come from?

that's funny a few years back like we're all in Arizona and I took a bunch of the guys in a platoon over to my parents' house. You know, we had supper and every day. It was a wicked fun. Jeremy pulls me aside and he's like, you're actually having parents? I thought you were born under a rock somewhere in the desert. I'm like, shut up, you know. That's pretty funny. No, I'm from New Hampshire

And It's just Probably like you It's not so much Wanted to be the CEO I just want to be something different You know I could have went like a biker gang

Or something just as easy You know You know, I figured I have a pretty good chance Of the clink You know, this way But Not always

But a few times You know I don't know Here and there But The team's just suited me because everybody's the same everybody you know everywhere you look guys are doing what you would do and they act how you would act and it's not always great but you know so you you you got recruited though

by some of the boys like over in the PI didn't you yeah yeah i mean i i wanted to be to sue but i wasn't like thousand percent you know and i was in the philippines and i was like all right i got to do that that's it so i went and got a screening test over there in Subic Bay, and, you know, I smoked it. And, you know, they didn't have this long pipeline back then. I got there on a Friday. We got all gooned up and shaved our heads on Sunday, and we started Monday. That was it.

Okay, go. Yeah. Actually, I know I was talking to the old Master Chief that actually was the guy that recruited you and told you need to be a team guy. Yeah, me too. And I was talking to him the other day when you were down at his house on the phone. Yeah. But, yeah, and he was one of my platoon chiefs, as you know. But I told him, I told him the best thing he ever did for the teams was get you to join the teams.

That's what I had. He was laughing. He probably, probably, well, definitely the best thing for you, you know, saved your ass from all kinds of trouble. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But it's just, you know, it's the teams, like, between us, we got, like, 46 years a team guy life. And it's so hard to put in perspective if you don't know what you're talking. You know, you've never been there. Yeah.

You know, like, people don't know that we don't call each other seals. Yeah, yeah. You never say that. You never, nobody says when I joined Navy SEALs. Yeah. It's like, when I became a team guy. Yeah. If you say that, everyone's just like, turn their head and go, you retarded?

Yeah. I mean, come on. It's really weird when you hear a team guy refer to being a Navy SEAL. Yeah. It actually makes you think, well, wait, wait a second, this guy must not have actually been in the team. Yeah, okay, what class are you in immediate interrogation? like with your hand cocked behind your back like I'm just going to hit him so I'd give his driver's license a black guy yeah I don't know where that I don't know where that comes

from like where we don't say it I guess maybe it's I know when I got the team one it it was like oh you don't talk about it yeah you don't say it no yeah I know no stickers no t-shirts no no no you don't do any of that I'm sure all the punishable punishable by death yeah yeah you don't say anything well we all thought we were going to Vietnam the next stay you know he's like oh my god and after a while you're like all right

what's happening in here yeah what's going on good all right man well so that's Tony grew up in New England

like me and you know did you ever hear this that they spent a bunch of money trying to figure out who's oh yeah I know I know and the only

literally the only cool again wasn't it they got was guys that wrestle and guys from New England. And it wasn't like a big difference, but, you know, a normal person has a 26% chance of making it through, and someone from New England had like a 37 or something,

like a small uptick. I mean, you know what? I think also that there's good people out on the country. Don't get me wrong. But New England has a pretty strong work ethic. You know what I mean? True. Yeah.

And I've seen that a lot, a lot. Not that other people don't. Yeah. But all the guys, most of the guys I knew from New England and the teams had a pretty good work ethic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's just cold, too.

Yeah. Just so cold. That doesn't help. That doesn't matter. I think it does because I thought guys from Florida, in my class, like, there was these kids from Florida. There was a couple kids from Florida, and they were, you know, all loud and, like, they were just big, tough guys. Yeah. They were already in the teams, basically, in their own minds, and they all quit. I know.

I was like, well, I guess. Like the first day of buds, I'm looking around some of these guys, and I'm like, Wow, holy crap. These guys are like insane shape and all this stuff. I'm still a little hung over from the plane ride from the PI, you know? Yikes. And I'm not, you know, I made it. And he was like, they didn't.

Yeah. It's weird. It's weird. You know, they just had this kid that quit buds. And then he went and jumped off of a hotel down in San Diego, killed himself. And I looked at a picture. Where did he missed the pool or something? No, there wasn't no pool to jump in.

No, he killed himself. And He did it right I guess He succeeded But I was looking at it I was talking to One of the guy

A guy that we know Who's an instructor over there And I was looking at a picture Of the dude And the dude was like This strapping guy All buff with like Blonde hair

It just looked like a total stud And I go man That guy looked like a stud What happened And then the instructor guy Said Dude they all look like that now Like everybody's just

You know It's a big deal Hey I'm gonna go in the seal teams I'm gonna go in the seal teams And that's what they're saying So the recruiting is really easy, but they're recruiting all these studs. But it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yeah. That's why, you know, you know that the government wants more and more team guys. It just ain't going to happen. No. It's not. Not unless you lower the standards.

And if that happens, then we've all not done our job. That's just terrible. Awesome. All right. Get some of these questions here. It says here, on the first podcast with Lafue, discussed a story which Tony came up with a strategy for an op and Tony told Laif would be better. the brief would be better coming from Laif.

And it says, where did you develop this humility and this characteristic of not worrying about individual credit versus team objectives? So to rehash that story real quick, it was real, we were out at the desert training facility and we were just planning. You were planning some like, you know what we do iteration training? We just got go to another. Yeah, go to. It was just one of those.

And they changed the target or something. And you're like, okay, here's what we need to do. Put guys over here. Put an Overwatch over here and walk through online like this. and Lace like, hey, sounds good to go. Why don't you get the guys over and brief them? And you said, hey, sir, you know what? You go ahead and brief them.

That way, it sounds better coming from you, and that'd be the way to do it. And he was like, well, all right. You know, he was fired up. And when I saw you do that, I was like, because this is the thing, and I forgot to mention this. You and I have known each other for a long time. We're both a team together. And we had the same friends, and we hung out at the same places. Yikes.

but we were never in a platoon together. No. We were never in a platoon together and never worked together, like directly together, until we were entasking a bruiser. So when I got to Nyland, I knew your reputation, which was rock solid, but I don't trust anybody about anybody. No, I cuss not. Yeah.

Cush not. Yeah. So I just, you know, so I'm seeing you kind of for the first time out there of actually working. And, you know, that was a big indicator to me. I was like, damn, you know, this guy is totally. humble wants to make his officer look good wants to make his which is only going to make the platoon better it's only going to make everybody better so yeah that was awesome and what a great attitude to have and i get asked that all the time people this you know my bosses is doing this and

what should i do i'm like well give him support trying to help him yeah try and make them look good but the thing that's chewing away at people is their ego of them wanting the credit right and you see this something you we see this all the time so anyways where did you realize that did anybody teach you that or where the hell did you how the hell did you know to do that i i can read and watch people pretty good and i watched some guys who kind of brought me up in the teams some of the guys we were talking about earlier and i tried to kind of mimic them but then it kind of morphs into your own shit you know no and uh well yeah the first thing is i was just tired and my voice was gone i just wanted him to do it no i'm just kidding but

tired, so tired. But, yeah, like, get over there. Boss and do your job. But, I mean, some of them guys in that platoon, they were already my chums, like Chris Kyle and Bob and Jeremy, and them guys been around a while. And they already, you know, I put them through training in land warfare on Ireland. So they've known me, you know, and up to that point, it's been I was doing a lot of that shit. And I'm like, no boss, you do it. Because basically he's new to them. Not new in the

teams, but he was new. And I figured he's got to do this more and more and more. And he did. Of course, you know, life stepped up like a, like a, you know, gangbusters. It was a great officer. But in then beginning stages, like, all right, I've already done this a million times. I don't, I don't care. I'm good. You know, you want my advice? Great. But come on, let's just get the ball rolling. Nice. And so that answers the question. Yeah. No,

that was, uh, and again, that was always the attitude you had, which was, he never cared about looking good yourself. And part of that is you just had such as good reputation in the teams that, what are you going to do?

Look even better. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to get another Navy calm or something. But, but, you know, a lot of people,

so if you're listening and you're wondering, you know, what makes, what makes somebody a good like a good NCO and there's a lot of Marines, a lot of soldiers listen to what makes a good NCO. You don't always have to make yourself shine.

You don't always have to be the guy that's the center of attention. And as a matter of fact, generally, that shines through as being a guy that wants to be the center of attention instead of a guy that wants to have a good platoon. And it's not like I was doing it to make rank.

I didn't expect to make E5, never mind senior chief. God. All right. Next question. Please detail the way you are able to use decentralized command when running task unit Bruiser and how it was met through the other commanders. So for those of you that don't know, decentralized command means you're going to let your subordinate leadership lead,

and you're not going to micromanage everybody. And that's definitely what I did, and I didn't micromanage. Well, I should rephrase that. If people need to be micromanaged, I'll micromanage them. If they're jacked up, I'm going to be all in them. And like you're talking about with Laif and with Seth or with the other the Delta Patoon commander, I micromanage those guys like crazy when we first got in. Because I was just making sure they were good to go.

Just because they weren't that experience and just like guys that don't trust anybody when you don't know. Yeah. And then, but the goal was to just have them be able to run on their own and make stuff happen. Because I'll tell you another thing, you can't, you can't run everything yourself. No, nobody can. No. And so you got a decentralized command. And that's what I did was I let, you know, when we got on deployment, I wasn't micromanaging anything.

I was barely, I was just kind of broad guidance, you know. Right, of course. And then you guys were running the stuff and making things happen. I mean, I would have loved to be on every operation, but I physically couldn't because we had multiple ops going on. on. We had to split forces. So what are you going to do? I got no problems with anyone in that group, the lowest guy running it off.

Yep. But you got to let you got to let the boys basically screw up. Because then you don't know how they're going to react. Okay, do they just sit there and pow, then you got to slap them or whatever? Or do they, okay, here's what you did wrong. Roger that. And then immediately start thinking how to fix it because everybody

fucks up everything. Let's face it. I mean, we're not. never always good at anything still ain't really good at much there's btf through it all and so it doesn't seem like we made mistakes i mean really yeah yeah but but leadership is funny because some guys take to it like water and other guys are scared to death of it yeah you know lately i've been realizing that because people always say you know are leaders made or born and can you make a person that's not a good leader into a good leader and i look at it kind of like um

when you see these video games where people have different strengths and weaknesses. Yeah, yeah. And a guy might be strong and high intellect and good agility and I don't know, whatever those games have. Fair posture. Yeah. So with leadership, it's the same thing because there's certain elements, certain natural things that you can have that make you a good leader. For instance, this is a real simple one.

Can you be loud? And in the SEAL teams, if you can't be loud, that's going to be. going to be a problem. If you can't just take control of a room and be like, you know, hey, everyone get in this room. You can't do that. People can't hear you. Then you got to find a way around that.

Right. Are you articulate? Can you simplify things that are complicated? Because there's all these little things that you get ranked. You basically all ranked at. And some guys have, they were born with low rankings. And they either find a way to make up for them. They learn how to do them better.

Or they compensate by using somebody else. You know, if like I wasn't loud, I'd be like, hey, Tony, tell me, everyone to get in here, then you could do it. Right, right. That makes total sense, though. Yeah. If someone out there is a leader, have been in a leadership position,

you know exactly we're talking about. Yep, yeah. And sometimes it's, you know, hey, what's the problem? No, really, what's the problem? Well, yeah, okay, like you said, good, good, all right, now you identify it. Go work it out.

Don't sit around and cry about it and just go do it. You know, and then you got five, minutes yeah yeah yeah take care of it I think the other thing with decentralized command it's that's important is for everybody to know what the limits are like how far you can go in right direction or another and I know that you know like I always trust you guys are going to do the right thing well like you said early on in that work up you know leadership at every level you know even the junior guy it's his responsibility to keep me in check if something's

going wrong because if I'm doing something stupid he's like hey Tony but Oh, yeah. Okay, I lost it there for a while. You know, I'm old. Sometimes I lose it once in a while, you know, and I'm not going to apologize. Yeah, nice. Anything else on decentralized command?

Well, it's a lot easier if you start right from the beginning trying to make everybody understand decentralized command because that's the goal. It has to be the goal because someone like you, you can't. You got to be somewhere else. You know, we didn't want you on the battlefield with us. I wanted you on the battlefield with me.

Every time you were, I was like, oh, this is awesome. But, I mean, I really, really needed you back where you were. Of course. You know, and that everybody had a, like, wicked high level of confidence just knowing that you were back there, taking care of watching her back, you know, and never sleeping. And just doing, like, 40 pull-ups, sweating, and then trying to eat everything in the camp yeah yeah it's uh it the thing that you talk about as far as getting everyone to know that and understand that from the beginning is is for sure oh yeah i mean everybody's got to know that

man you know i i i don't want like my favorite thing is i go out on an operation with you guys and not do anything no you just sit around just just okay i'm just in the train all the you know That's the way it should be because the leaders are leading because Laif is doing his job. He's leading the assault. He's leading things. The breach team is doing their stuff. And I'm just like, okay, cool. I'm basically an observer, you know, now to a point.

Yeah. And you're like, all right. I always said that a little issue. But that's the way you want it, you know. And then when something does happen, you can then handle it. You can step in and go, okay, hey, guys, we need to back off over here. Hey, this is going wrong. And that's the way it should be.

So if that's your goal, though, is to say, look, I want my leaders to lead. I don't want to be doing all their job for them. When, first of all, that'll make them more confident. It'll make them more capable. And then when something does happen and they need your assistance, you're not bogged down with something else you can step in and make it happen. Right. I think it's take like Iraq or Afghanistan. That's why combat vets coming back.

And they talk about decentralized command. It's important because if you're just doing the same like army training and an army unit, It goes over there. What are they going to do? Go. All right, guys, now we're doing decentralized command later. You know,

you know, until that happens, you know, you got to, now they come back, hey, we need to train like this. Yep. Here's what our junior officers need to do. Here's our NCOs need to do.

Here's our E5s, our E4s, you know, our privates. Here's what they need to do. Yep. Good. All right. Next up,

talk about some failures in planning leadership and how you built back up. Yeah, we had none of that. Everything went perfect. You know, one of the things that I think of when it, I guess it's really a failure, but we would oftentimes make a decision

and then in a day or in a week decide, yeah, that wasn't a good call. Do you know what to do something else? And I think a good example of that is how we kind of task organized and we split up into different groups and be like, okay, you guys are running this area, you guys are running this area. And then, like, two weeks later, actually, no, this area is not good. We're going to move to you guys.

We're going to join them back together. I always felt like everybody, especially us in the leadership, you know, we were all like, okay, cool. Yeah, we just made a mistake. We just move on. Not even a mistake, but you got to change. You got to adapt. Yeah, you got to morph into something. It's like, if you're doing unilateral ops, then it's kind of a no-brainer.

If you go over there and all of a sudden, you know, all you, you're working by yourself, boom, boom, boom, doing your. missions, great. But if you work in split forces and you're training indigenous forces and you're doing that, you have to have these, you know, you have to, and it's not always easy to adjust for it because it's like there's a world of difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. Like a world of difference. I mean, it's all kind of the same, but stuff I did in Iraq, I didn't do in Afghanistan, you know, and vice versa, like, whoa, we can't do that. You know, and even stuff like the weather, you know, talking, all of a sudden it's snowing, you know, and then the terrain, like, people think Iraq's all desert.

I mean, there were some places where, like, in the jungle. It's like we were in Nam, you know, or Cambodia, Christ's sakes. And I'm like, well, you know, okay, we're going to walk, how many clicks? Yeah, well, when you're up to your waist and mud, you know, all of a sudden, that time frame is totally off because we didn't, you know, made a mistake. I didn't really, really read the terrain. Yep. You know, and ask about it and see who's been up there before and shit.

Yeah. But we just adapt and overcome. Exactly. I think that's a biggest thing. Learn from your mistakes. Yeah, when it comes to failure, it's just, okay, what do you do now? Yeah. Yeah, good.

Okay, let's adapt and move on. Yeah. All right. Next one. I really want to hear you talk about the battlefield and how it made you feel. and the type of situations when the shit hits the fan. Well, that kind of questions pretty easy for me, how the battlefield made me feel.

All I can say is it made me feel much better than any other place than the battlefield. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because everything makes sense on the battlefield. Very... We're either going forward or going away or defending our position or we're moving out.

Out of that, what else is there? Because all them things, even if you have men down and people wounded, you still got to do them. Yeah, yeah. Well, as I sit here and think about this, so our opt tempo was very high, meaning the operational tempo, though, for those of you that don't know what that means, it means like how often you're doing work.

And the opt tempo was very high. But sometimes for whatever reason, Let's say an operation would get canceled or push back, and all of a sudden, Tony would have been in camp for like two days. Well, the second day, like the first day he'd be, you know, okay, he's coming up with a plan, he's looking at something else. You know, him and Leif were trying to figure something out to do. But then by the second day, he's just starting to get all frustrated and pace around the doing here. Well, hey, this is just stupid. Yeah.

Oh, what's next? We're going to go to like the big base and like countrymen. music concert or something. I'm serious. Like, when I was in Afghanistan, I flew into Candaia. And these guys like, oh, you just missed. I can't remember what country said. They go to concerts and stuff.

I'm eating rat shit. Stuff up in the mountains. I'm like, really? What are all these people doing here? Why aren't you all murdering the bad guys? God. Yeah, so, Tony, you would get very frustrated after like two days, and then you'd just come in.

And I'd say, okay, dude, I'll be here, just Go this area and go find something to do and then you'd go make a plan and you and Lafe would come back. All right, we got something. We're going to go get it. But you got to admit, though, you know, time off is not such a good thing. I mean, a couple days break, yeah, now and then, but you got to keep the boys busy. Yeah. And they start thinking, then they start getting, you know.

But I mostly did it for me because I just wanted to get after. Yeah, there's definitely, you can smoke them. But you're right if all of a sudden they're sitting around all the time They know what's that a body in motion tends to stay at motion and a body at rest Right sense to stay at rest so if you start lagging and all of a sudden you're gonna go do an op and everyone's kind there's resistance There's not not not verbal resistance just just like a shrug the shoulders It's like just like a resistance us of some unseen resistance in the world that wants you to slow down But when the shit hits the fan

You know it's It's strange because it makes me like a little calmer, I think. I mean, not always. I had the first time I ever got a shot. I was a little jittery a little bit. But, you know, oh, my God, what's going? Actually, I knew what it was, you know? It's not like, oh, what's that?

Actually, I actually remember you were briefing some of the guys when we were back. And you were like, you were like, hey, you know what? we didn't work on training. When we went through training and we were getting ready to go to Ramadi, we didn't work on on this right here. Oh my God! What's happening? Yeah, there's this too.

Oh, wow, this is going to be cool. Yeah, until all that bad stuff starts. Then there's screaming, yelling, diving into shit and shooting and killing. But, you know, it's kind of, it is fun. Yeah. Yeah, I think the thing I've said on here before is that, the battlefield and all these situations,

they just give you this clear focus in life that nothing else gives you. No. Well, nothing that I've found gives you this. Like, oh, we're going to kill people or going to get killed ourselves. That's everything in the world. Right.

Nothing else matters. No. That's it. Just like sitting in camp watching TV. That doesn't matter. No. Okay, you got your rest. You're good?

You know? All right. No, let's go. All right. Next one. Not to take away from the seriousness of what you two have achieved in the seals, but I would like Tony to tell a funny story about Jocko. And the reason I put this one in here, of course, I don't like to hear any humor or

any laughter in the world, but there was a bunch of people that said this. So anyways, I figured you might have a story. I got like, seriously, like a million. Like a million. I mean, that story about you and your roommate, like, you're like, you're like, you're like, you're like, you guys live together in Coronado. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about the big fella. Yeah.

You're like, I was over there patty in one night. We're getting gooned up. And you're like, you know what our bill was from Domino's? It was like $2,500 last month. a month. That was so funny. That's a wicked good party, though.

Yeah, yeah, we did have some pretty good parties. And then one time we're out at an island. It's like two o'clock in the morning. And the guys are, you know, they're,

uh, what do you call that after you're done, do the work on the vehicles, uh, post, you know, post off the vehicles. Post off the vehicles.

And they're all busy doing stuff. And I mean, I'd help out if I had to, but I mean, it's not my job. Yeah. So, and they boys know what to do

Jeremy had him Great LPO And uh We're sitting there Me and Leif and maybe One of the other JOs We're shooting the shit about something I mean it had to do a work

Because what else is there And Leif was talking And it was quiet kind of And you got your arm on one of the Humvees And all of a sudden you just Out of nowhere you just kicked the dirt And you go God damn it You're like shaking your head

Clutching your fist and like, the fuck you talking about? And he just like looked at being smiled and walked away. Like, what? What is wrong with you? Still I haven't figured out what was wrong with you. I know what I remember that. You just went, God damn it. I was actually getting frustrated that there was a chance we might not go to Iraq.

Like I was so scared and horrified of, of that. It just, you know, and I just was trying to control it, but then it just kind of slipped out. Here's another quick one about Jaco. I'm like, I don't know,

we were there a couple weeks in Ramadi, and we're just falling into our groove operating. And one night I was in his office because, like, couldn't sleep or whatever. And he's like, look at this, and you show me, he shows me the computer.

He goes, this is from my wife. He says, hey, are you okay? You've been gone three weeks and we haven't heard anything from you. I'm like, chum, you better email your wife or she's going to fly over and kill you. Yeah, yeah. I talk about detachment a lot. And sometimes, you know, like I said, sometimes you get over there and you got all that shit going on and nothing else in the world matters.

But I didn't have anything going on back here. It didn't matter to me at all. all. Sorry to my wife there. I'm sure she remembers that. You made any way. You did, though. Okay, I got it.

Yeah. All right. Here's one. What made you realize one of your guys was really good to go or was not up the standard? Not necessarily big things, but micro actions or decisions that set something off in your mind. Well, I had a lot of guys work on them. me over the years and I mean I really think that you know all my brothers and the teams every one of them is good to go even the guys I didn't get along with I'd still give my life

for him in a second doesn't matter but one thing that sticks out to me was Biggles nobody knows Ryan Job because you know I don't I guess I could have been more like nice or whatever but I'm like man you look like you're fucking fat you better get fucking shape, bro. I'm gonna fucking kill you. I'm not gonna, like, write you up. I don't even know how to do that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna just physically kill you.

And, man, you know, I didn't even know if he was in good shape or not, because some people you can't tell. Yeah. They're like, look at that guy. And then he just knocks shit out. They have people that iron marshmallow. Yeah. And man, that kid did.

I mean, he really, really did. And, like, all of a sudden, I'm like, chum. Well, I didn't say that. I was like, hmm. You know, I was like, yeah. That was like my praise. Yeah, whatever. High praise from time.

Okay, on the next one. On the next thing. Yeah. Yeah, but, I mean, that was really good. You know, I remember one of my guys lost a piece of equipment one time. And, you know, I was kind of upset with him, but it just made me realize that, you know, if we're making a mistake, maybe it's not this guy's fault. Maybe it's my fault.

Maybe it's everyone's fault. as a team because at the end of the day, it's all of us. So maybe we ought to take a day or two off. You know, and that kind of helped. You know, we handled it, but, I mean, another one of my guys, he was Christmas, and he left a piece of equipment open or didn't lock something. I mean, it wasn't a big deal.

I could have corrected it right there. But the guys had just taken off on Christmas leave, and I was, had nowhere to go, so I was drinking beers in the team area. I just walked around checking shit out and sure enough. So I called a guy and he was like three or four hundred miles into his drive to a Western state for Christmas. I'm like, he goes, oh, I'm sorry. I'm like, yeah, no problem, man.

All right, so turn around now and I'll be waiting for you. There's dead silence on the phone. He's like, what? Yeah, yeah. So he drove all the way back and I was standing there. It's like four in the morning. I was like I was pretty wickered up by then and just fuming but he's like hey I'm sorry you're one lesson yep okay have a good leave and I'm sure I'm positive he never did that again

that'll do it you know yeah it's kind of a dink move I guess but you know I figured it was the thing to do he who suffers remembers yeah yeah it's uh it's the the the the the team is when you're when you're just working with guys all the time you definitely start to pick up things you can indicate okay yeah this guy's this guy's stepping up you know that's what I always noticed when when things are going sideways like in a training operation and you see a guy that's starting to step up you know that was always a good sign absolutely you know like he's going to he's going to handle something it's like that's when you train decentralized command that's where you got to let guys make mistakes and screw things up because you know

the less you know the more you're sweating training unless you bleed and wall No doubt about that one. All right. Next one. Tony, were there situations while in Iraq when you disagreed with a leadership decision made by Leif or Jocko? If so, how did you express your disapproval and were you successful in getting your point across? Most of the time, 99% of the time. No, I did not.

There was one big one that I really disagreed with you guys on. when my uh my request to keep the entire troop there for another year you said you couldn't and i was like why not and you're like we can't and i'm like why will and i was really really really angry about that but yeah i think i think this this question here is is is from someone that's thinking that doesn't really understand how we're working you know and the bottom line is i'm not coming down and going, all right, men, this is what I want you to do now. No. We would just form our own operations.

Yeah, we're forming our own operations. We're all kind of bouncing ideas off each other. The best idea rises to the top. I don't care who it came from. I don't care if it came from me, Tony, from one of the new guys. It doesn't matter to me where the idea comes from or where the plan comes from. I want the best idea to rise to top. And that's one of the best things about our troop was there was no one that was like trying to drive their own personal plan.

I didn't care. No, I literally didn't care. And I think part of it is like, you and me just had planned so many operations. And it just, you know, we just didn't care.

It's like, oh, that's cool. You, that sounds like a good plan. You know, maybe make this adjustment, maybe make that adjustment.

Other than that, cool, let's execute it. So I think that's a little bit different than, than what people would envision as like, I was the commander. Right, or because we're just not operating like that. Now,

this is why I've said to people very flat even though there's even though the military and the seal teams there's definitely a hierarchical structure I mean that's the way it's organized there's the troops and then there's you know leading paddy officers then there's a platoon chief then there's a platoon commander then there's a troop commander task unit commander right and there's a team so there's a structure there but the as far as how we actually come to plan and stuff like that there's yeah I mean some guidance but we're working as a team to do that and that's what and I would say it's not always like that in fact I know it's not always like that because I saw all the platoons and other troops act and do different ways but I mean we did operations that came

from our commanding officer still team three came all the way down yep and some of them were wicked good hops except they'd give the maybe the mission objective but they wouldn't be telling us like go in here no no cost we'd never that's not the way it was works. So I think that, I mean, the situations when you disagreed with me was probably in one hand you could say never. In the other hand, you could say a million times. You were like, no, man, we shouldn't do that.

And I'd be like, well, why not? Oh, we should put the vehicles in your, oh, okay, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. That's how we voiced it by saying, oh, yeah, let's do this. I'd say, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. No big, big, what's that?

Like a big soap opera leadership struggle? Right. No, not happening. Not happening. Never happened. And so if you don't have that kind of relationship with people, number one, is it your own ego that's getting involved? Because that's probably, that's a good indicator. If you're like, well, you know, my subordinates just don't understand.

Oh, really? Really. Why not? Okay, why not? Maybe you suck as a leader then. Do it like good? You know? Maybe if you did better, they wouldn't understand the mission more.

So pretty flat organization. we had at least from a planning perspective yes sir all right if you had to pick one driving characteristic that separates a dominant alpha team guy from everyone else what in the teams what is it well if guys in the teams you got to know this but a lot of people out there don't that like pretty much everyone's an alpha male you know they don't it's like nobody gives up the argument ever you know and usually it's you know, wrestling or fighting, and it always works itself out. But I think one thing we were talking about is gimmicks.

Like, a lot of people in the teams, I call it a gimmick. Everybody's good at everything, pretty much, and does the job. But some people are like just insane skydivers. Some guys are just phenomenal rock climbers. Some guys are just like swimming sons of guns, you know, are runners and wrestlers and fist fighters and there's you know some people just in the guns i mean that that's their passion some people are just phenomenal divers you know and i was i was always pretty good at everything but not great you know i couldn't outrun everybody i couldn't out fight everybody i couldn't

out swim everybody couldn't out shoot everybody and i just i think mine was like tactics and just being as hard as i could and it i may have made it look at easy but it wasn't especially as I got older it's no fun being a team guy when you're 44 you know and you get up and you're like all right yeah okay then I'm like I better retire

I'm done with all this but yeah if that if that kind of makes sense yeah the other funny thing about that is because in the teams no team guy ever wants to give any credit to a different team guy so if someone was like hey you know that that guy

a really good shot and then someone immediately You don't know how to swim though Yeah, we used to talk about that Always just like someone's always You're just no one's good at everything Wow Did you work you know did you And if they can't figure something out

They'll be like Whatever fuck that guy They'll just walk away Hey what are you going? Yeah Yeah The you know one thing I'll say that Is pretty cool

And I already brought this up Like one of the things that that separate, like, when I worked with you that first time and I saw you, like, being humble, I was like, man, that's, that to me is the characteristic that you can tell the guy is not just a good team guy, but an awesome team guy when he's humble about what's going on. And when I was putting guys through training, and I know you saw this too, the guys that would come through training that thought they were all badass and thought they couldn't do anything wrong, they were always bad, like they never did a good job. Right, right.

And then the guys that were, say, hey, man, I'm, you know, I'm looking forward to this training. I know we need to get tuned up and let me know what I can do better. Those guys, when they were taking notes, they always kicked ass. They always did a good job. So that being humble is... Well, being humble too is I read a bunch of after-action reports. You know, in my tour is over there about different situations, different things. And every time, they were well written by some guys, but it was, you'll always carry this.

You will always do this. Never do this. always do that. And I kind of took that on account when I wrote a serious after-action report for that deployment. I wish you would have saved it too. It was pretty good. First and foremost, this is well worked for us in these months, this environment, this temperature with this mission set and what we had to do. Don't use this as, oh, he said that, so I'm going to do it every time.

No, I mean, use it as a guide. Everything in the teams is a toolbox. You pick it out when you need it and you use it. and you put it back away. And if it sits in there for 500 years, it's still worth having because the time you can pull it out, you're going to really need it. Yep, yep.

Next one. In the teams, what were the biggest reputation builders or killers? And for those of you don't know, in the teams, and I guess it's the same anywhere, but it definitely is true in the teams. Man, your reputation is everything.

It's everything. and people know who you are. They know if you do something stupid, like really stupid in the teams. Everybody knows it one second. Everyone knows it forever. Yeah, yeah. Like if you have an accidental discharge,

meaning, meaning if you shoot your gun when you weren't supposed to, and there may be some scenarios where there's a little bit of leeway on that, but if you just do it in a dumb situation, everybody's going to know about it forever. And that's just like, you might as well just get a tattoo on your forearm

that says, hey, I had an AD on this date. Yeah, yeah. On your forehead. If you do something stupid, you know, something that gets you in trouble, like, just dumb. Yeah, you're probably going to just, everyone's going to know about it. They're always going to think about it. If you get fired from a position and you happen to not get kicked out of the teams, everybody's going to know.

Everybody knows it. Might as well just get out. Yep. Yeah. It's a tough community when it comes to reputation. It's a really tough community. It's brutal. It's wicked brutal.

Like, you know, every, it's like a small town. Yeah. Everybody knows everything, even though you're on other coasts. Yep. I mean, I've done a lot of stupid shit in my career, and I was a jerk off and dumb, dumb stuff and been an idiot. And everybody knows all that. Yeah. You know, most of the stuff that you did, fortunately, is kind of, is like on the okay side.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'd explain this. But, like, oh, oh, yeah, Tony got drunk and gotten to fight. at this thing. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. It's almost, you know, made a big spectacle that's a big to-do with uniforms and stuff. Wouldn't it have like to do with, like the things that you kind of can't do

or you can't get away with it'll affect your reputation in a bad way? Wouldn't it have more to do with how good of a team guy you are. You know what? You're right. You just called it.

You know what it has to do with? Is it something that helped, or is it something that is operational or not? Yeah. Something that's operational. Everybody knows it. Like, if you, I mean, even like you'll hear about a guy that gets lost in buds, or like gets lost going through the initial training.

But when he got to the team, he gets on land navigation and gets lost and has to get rescued. Bro, that's just going to stick with you forever. Like, I remember, you know, I remember getting like three briefs about some guy that I was getting in a platoon about where this guy got lost, how stupid it was. There was a highway. He could have walked the highway. You could hear the cars. Everyone just made a spectacle out of this kid. And, I mean, the kid got out because eventually you go, man, I just can't.

This is horrible. Everybody just thinks I can't. And so, yeah. So this question is actually a decent question because that definitely does play a big thing. So for me. And it's the basis for a lot of nicknames in the team. True, true. True.

Yeah, if you do something that's excessively stupid or just have bad luck. Like one of my favorite ones is Bush, you know, Bush. A cuss. Yeah. But he, he, like, was parachuting. And when he first got to the teams is a new guy. And in his parachute, he landed in, what kind of bush was? Some kind of a bush with thorns and what that is.

Parachute got all tangled up and he got stuck in there. The guys, that's his name. He's great, too. He's an awesome guy. Yeah, for sure. Bush. The other funny things, there's team guys where you don't even know what the real name was. Actually, I was kind of like that.

Nobody knew what my actual. name was. Mine was just Jocko, and that was my civilian nickname that my parents gave me. But the funniest was, there was a guy, and I'll just tell the story. There was a guy, and you know him. Of course I do. But anyways, his name was Al. And I was always like, yeah, and I was like, you know, I knew it was Al. And then he was a heavy weapons instructor. So we called him Big Al, Al, and then we called him Big Al 50 Cal. And it was like, Big Al 50 Cal. I knew Big Al 50 Cal for like 8.000. And then he was a heavy Al 50 Cal for like 8. years right and one day I'm like you know we're talking and I were doing some we're going on a trip or something I knew his name because I was in a couple of platoons yeah I didn't paperwork yeah so I finally get to paperwork I finally get to paperwork and this guy was also a real quiet guy

I mean real professional real quiet he's awesome didn't say much and one day I'm doing the paperwork and I go hey man I'm like looking at the list of people that's going I go hey man I thought you're going on this trip with us and he's like he's like yeah yeah I'm going and I go oh you're not on the manifest here and he goes no and he comes over he points and he points and he's going I'm out his name and his name is Keith yeah I go I go I go bro I go you want it that's a mistake you don't want me to get a change he goes no no that's my name and I go I thought your name was Al I go is Al your middle name and he goes he goes no Al's not my name at all and I go I go what do you mean why does every single person call you Al and he goes

well he goes well in my first platoon well I was out doing something it was night and I was I guess I was looking around and moving my head a lot like an owl And so the guy started calling me owl and then over the next platoon that changed from owl it just mirffed into Owl, owl, and then his name was owl and I literally would have told you this guy's name was Al and and he never corrected he just said you know, hey whatever you call me owl that's close enough So I thought BF or somebody named him that So that's Big Al, 50 Cal. But you know what? His reputation was, because this is a question about reputation.

His reputation was awesome. Because he was solid. He was a former Marine, wasn't he? Was he? No, that was 295. Oh, okay. 295 was in the core. But, you know, solid reputation.

So for me, and I guess, I mean, it's what you do operationally is what build your reputation. And if you're a good shooter, if you're not, you know, shooting like an idiot, you know, if you can patrol well, if you have good field craft, all those things, the real things. That's what's kind of cool. That's what's kind of cool. That's one thing that's in the teams, that's hard for them to erase is what's your real

reputation as a real team guy, as an operator team guy. That's the thing that all these people that kind of come and go and the, you know, that kind of come and go and teams and it's maybe it's not they're not real real team guys you can't fake that you know and when guys get some guys get shot blown up you know wounded and some of them can't operate anymore it's not like we throw them to the wolves they want to stay in the teams we keep them and take care of them and some become phenomenal instructors and just go on and do great things yeah i had the they were going to keep they if if ryan joe would want to stay they were going to keep a cuss yeah yeah absolutely oh you're blind

Cool. Yeah, so what? Great. You can lead BT. Doesn't mean you can't listen to me when I say, go do this. Yeah, awesome. And then contrary to that, obviously the killers are when you screw up stuff operation. The other thing is, if you're an arrogant, egotistical guy, everyone's going to hate you.

Yeah, and you ain't going to last long. Because there's some guys that are great skill-wise. They're great operators, but they're horrible to work with. They're arrogant. They don't listen to anybody. They're not humble. And those guys will have a bad reputation, too. They got blinders on.

They can't open the, you know, and you got to, if you want to evolve at all, but stay alive, you know. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Next one. What makes a great NCO? And for those of you, not in the military, an NCO is a non-commission officer.

The military is broken into two basic, basic pathways. of advancement and of existence. There's officers who are like the managers and the leaders. And then there's the enlisted guys, which are the grunts. But then as they get promoted through the ranks, you eventually become what's called the senior enlisted advisor. And if you think about Hollywood movies, the way they always categorize these two is you've got the young junior officer,

fresh in Vietnam, fresh out of the academy. And then you got the salty old gunnery sergeant. That's the two. That's the two. So the NCO is the enlisted side of that. And NCOs, they always say, is like the backbone of the Marine Corps, the NCO. The chiefs run the SEAL teams is the statement, right? Because the chiefs are the guys that, chiefs are the guys that will be at a SEAL team,

especially in the old days, be at a SEAL team for eight years. So you are the continuity and you get raised. So the question is, what makes a great NCO? and who is or was the best NCO you know? Well, for me, what makes a great NCO or chief is, I don't think you can just do it. I think it's, I'm not saying I'm a great NCO, but I did have great NCOs who taught me a lot,

and they brought me up, and they put their foot square in my rectum when I needed it. and they also took their time to explain things to me when they could see in my eyes. I was nodding my head, yes, but I was really, I didn't grasp it. And they're like, I'm going to do it this way. And they would work around my, for lack of better word, learning disabilities. Because, I mean, some of the stuff, you can't, you know, when you're a new guy, you're just like,

yeah, yeah, yes, chief, or Roger Chief. And they're like, no, dummy, relax. Here's how you do it. And that leadership style went a long way with me. I never forgot it. You know, who's the best NCO you've had or ever known? Man, there's so many guys that it's not one. I know, I can't say their names because, you know, it's not cleared.

I mean, but that's a good thing about nicknames sometimes. You know, I think I'll have to say overall, Mr. Fack was probably the best one I ever had. And he was just an old school, hot ass. son of a bitch but he was fair as all hell he was fair and you always knew you where you stood with him and I love that that's what I tried to do later on like I didn't want to go hard hard hard and then totally take another direction and just be like easy on the guy so they like me you know I don't care and I thought that was much easier in a better way because mission men is how he should look at things

Put the mission first and take care of your men. But sometimes if you have to sacrifice men and you got to like, okay, you got to die for this mission. All right, Roger that. I mean, that's the way the military is. That's what you get paid for. But yeah, Mr. Fack was probably the best one for me. Yeah. So that's another.

When I talked about you and me coming up in the teams and hanging out with the same people and being the same. But we were in a platoon together. but we did have the same guys that raised us both. The same guys raised us both. And for sure, Mr. Fack, as you are calling him, was a huge influence on me. I mean a huge influence on me. Everything I was or am, everything I was in the teams as far as being professional and like, hey, we're going to, that all was taken from FACC.

All of it was taken from him, 100%. me too and the seriousness that he put towards the job like the the the the gravity that he put towards the job and the gravity to put towards the operational stuff that we just talked about as far as you know the things that we said makes up your reputation that's what he cared about above anything else that's what he cared about and so for sure working for him and that's that's again that's why when we actually started working to get and i'm just realizing this right now I mean, I guess I made sense of it before, but when we started working together, that's why we had the same thoughts and things. Right. Everything was, like, of course we're going to do that. It's like when we were bounding back one time somewhere in Iraq and just we didn't even have to say anything to each other. We're just like cover and move. Cover and move.

Go, go, go, go. But one thing real quick about at NCO, one of the best I ever had, another C daddy of mine. And I can say his name because rest in peace, Tim Farrell. Tim Farrell was a big, big influence on my life. Me too. He was a wicked good operator. I can't, I don't know anybody. He was a tougher guy in the teams.

He's just a high hitting guy and just, he's a really good dude, man. Really good guy. And he was awesome at everything. Everything. Everything. Yep. Yeah. He was awesome at everything he did.

He'd beat you at everything. Yeah. He would beat guys in the swims and he wasn't wearing fins and they were. I mean, he was just incredible athlete. Yeah, an incredible athlete. And by the way, he was not like a guy that was like, well, you know, I didn't get my workout in today. No, no, no. He didn't care about anything.

Son of a gun. He was like, oh, just get after everything. Yeah. Yeah, Tim Farrell, for sure. It was a great guy. What a frog man, he was. He certainly was. All right.

Anything about accuracy of fire in combat versus volume of fire. And I'll tell you, the reason I left this one in here, Tony, is a lot of soldiers and Marines and team guys that I hear from all the time. And they always are listening. And not only that, at this point, and I hate to say it, but in America, our police forces need to start thinking about this kind of stuff because there's bad stuff happening to America where guys are getting in legit urban warfare. And so talking about the accuracy of fire versus the volume of fire. Well, you know, it's a double, it's a flip of the coin. It depends on the situation, but I can tell you the number of times I fired a rifle and an assault rifle, like an M4, M14 and all that.

You know, a scar on full auto is big frigging goose egg. You know, I can't think of one situation or if somebody said, okay, Tony, you're going in this room alone and there's eight guys pointing guns at you. Well, okay, Roger's that, but, you know. But sometimes, you know, volume of fire gets your heads down. If you're in the street, you got to get that fire. You've got to try to gain fire superiority. And if you don't have that, you ain't really moving.

And so at that point, you're not doing all the things you were taught and breathing. You're just getting led down in that direction to cover your ass, well, your buddy's ass, so you can move and they can move. But accuracy of fire in combat, you know, in good. good situations if you're under fire and you're putting lead down range so you can move it's real nice to have a supporting element in an elevated position they're the ones combining these two just as a pretty good example it's pretty nice knowing about four blocks from you you got chris kyle up there talking to you on the radio hold on you see a guy fall out of like the window

with a gun you're like thanks brother you know you're pretty confident walking down the street at that point. So, yeah. Yeah. The other thing is, I mean, we always have massive, you know, firepower with Mark 48s and Mark 46 is to lay down the heavy volumes of fire. And that's the same thing. Roger Hayden was saying in here the other day, who's another, you know, person that mentored you and me growing up in the teams. And, but he said that they had four 60s.

In their 14-man platoon. Like two stoners, three stoners. No. Four 60s and five stoners. That's what he said. That was what they carried. Wow. Yeah.

So, so ain't, you know what's interesting, too? Like, we talk about point shooting, but the guys, like all of our guys are AW gunners put, sites put the ACogs on their, on their,

which was partially for PID so they could tell who they're shooting at. Right. Could see further. but also, man, accuracy. Yeah, it's a four-power scope. Yep. You know, and at night, it don't matter because you're using an APPO or a laser,

and you're on nods anyway. So. So, and then one last thing is that you, you know, again, now we're talking to, aimed at police officers, but also, also guys in combat, you don't have unlimited ammunition.

No. So you got to think about that, too. Me and my brother just had this conversation. You know, he's like well i wish i you know concealed weapon carry you know he's got said i got my revolver and he's got like a uh 686 stainless p or plus you know seven shot 357 i wonder where he he wanted a revolver i told him what to get yeah that's a good that's a good he loves it but he's like you know should i when i'm concealed carry should i carry some speed loaders i'm like well chum is that

always convenient no well you know what you're not getting in a gun fight. You're not. If you get into somebody shooting, you either shoot them or you put down fire and you run. It's not your fight. If someone's jacking your car or whatever and they pull a gun, you shoot them, yes. But, you know, it's a nightclub shooting or something. You're blasting your way out of there.

And that's it. You're not going to sit there. You don't have unlimited ammo. Right. And even the teams we didn't. That was my biggest fear. I would hate to die of lack of shooting back. I mean, that would just suck.

You know, and we never really did run out. We got low. We got low a few times, but never really run out. That's scary. That's why we kind of train on, you know, we did a lot of that where try to set a standard. You can't, you know, if you got to shoot, you shoot. If you run out, then you go to your pistol. If you run out of that, then you go to your grenades or whatever, and then you're just BTF.

But we trained, you know. If you're in sustained firefights, like, you're. M4 gunners, you know, after 4 May, you're going to start slowing it down. Start thinking about round commerce conservation. Same thing with the machine gunners. Start slowing your rates of fire down. Initial bursts, initial volleys, and then go down to like, you know, shorter bursts, more time looking at what you're seeing. Because if you're out there hanging with your ass hanging, you know, and you've got no rounds, then guess what?

It's run time. And nobody wants to run. That's just terrible. Awesome. All right. uh next one what is tony's perspective as an enlisted an older guy serving quotes under you as a younger officer so i i don't know if this person

actually understands that we're about the same age and had been in the teams about the same at the time and um we were more brothers than like anything else and then uh what was it like what were you like to work for compared to other guys you were under. Well, that first part, that first part, it was pretty easy because I remember you and Leif were talking, like, we didn't know who this Jocko guy was. I kind of was walking by the office. It's like a movie where I stopped, like halfway through a step. And I backed up, and I went, what did you guys say?

Yeah, this new task unit commander, we don't know who he is. What's his name? If you're like, Willink, Jocko, Jocco, or something like that. I'm like, yeah, we're all set. And then they're all like, you know, because they're the two lieutenants, you know, Seth and Leif. And they're like following me into the head. I'm like, relax. What about this guy?

What's like? We're good to go. I mean, we sure we're getting him? They're like, yeah, yeah, it's done. He's coming. He'll be like tomorrow. I'm like, yep, yep, all right. Let me just tell you something.

Be squared away tomorrow. And I start walking away. You know this guy? And I was like, you know, is he good to go? and I just looked at it. I gave him that look like, please. I know what I'm talking about. Be squared away tomorrow.

Yeah, and you better be on your game. Me, I'm going to be hung over tomorrow, so whatever. I've known him forever. But that and what were you like to work for? What you were like? This is not even a question. He was great. It was best ever.

I mean, just, I don't know. We think the same. We're like-minded. and we like we like to work we really really loved our jobs and our men and our people you know know i hate saying i loved my man that sounds kind of whatever but i you know i did i really cared about the guys and that was the best part of being a team guy and i'm sure jocco will back me up on that absolutely as your brothers yeah there are no doubt about that no doubt about that at all um all right next one

Please expound on the early days when you and Tony were new guys in the teams. This is like a whole other podcast. Okay. Go ahead. Well, I don't know. It was kind of a different time. When we were new guys, like, my first platoon, we were involved, you know, like the first Gulf War. And I thought it was, well, that was great, you know.

And we really didn't do much. My platoon didn't. And, you know, some of them guys over there for six months, then the war started. And it was like a month or whatever. And then it was done. It's like, hmm, you know. But other than that, I think in the later stages in my career, we didn't train as hard. But the deployment, I mean, we still trained hard.

But the deployments were harder, like more work. and back then if you did a deployment where it was like a training deployment because there was no war going on we still had to deploy people realize if there's no wars team guys are still deploying the same uptempo and because we need constantly be around the world in case something happens but we did a lot of like hardcore shit like we did a lot more reconnaissance work which meant we didn't have vehicles so we had LPCs which are leather personnel carriers, meaning boots. And we'd hump in like 25 clicks or whatever. And we'd do these ridiculous swims and these long dives and do all, I mean, really like long, like the hotter the better.

I mean, you look at a team, to put it in perspective, you look at a team guy back then, a lot of them were a lot leaner. You know, and we did a lot more running and swimming. You look at like a team area now, you go to the gym. and it looks like WW, you know, I mean, they do. Everybody's like,

like stronger and not, because you got to carry more shit. We do a lot more direct action stuff. But also, we did a lot of drinking and party. In San Diego we did. I know that.

And, uh, we hung a lot together. Nobody was married. You know, I don't, we had like 16 guys in my platoon and one was married. Yeah.

And he was the LPO. Yeah. Like, no. one was married. No, we all hung out together all the time. And we all, like, lived in Imperial Beach or, like, Chula Vista. Now people live, like, 40 miles away, and, like, everyone's married and owns a house. Nobody owned a house. We didn't have any money. Cruise boxes. Yeah, we, yeah, we had a house, like five guys in an apartment with, like, one,

one couch. It was just a disaster. You know, the, the guy that you were talking about earlier that I lived in the Coronado with? And, uh, for a quite some time, we had we in our house we had we only had one fork so it'd be like it'd be like hey man are you almost done with a fork because I want to be out of your dinner back couldn't go to vons and buy another fork I could really see that happen with you two gorillas yeah that was that was funny so that when I when I remember one of the big things I remember about checking it at team one was was just not even looking people in the eyes because it was this this this reputation and of just you're just going to get beat down.

Yeah, we got hazed a lot too. Oh, yeah, we got beat up, we got hazed. And a lot. You didn't, you know,

you didn't come in there thinking that the world owed you anything at all. Yeah, no. The only thing they owed you was an ass beating. Right. And, you know, we had some big monster guys at the team.

I remember I checked in and there was this one guy, you know, probably the biggest guy at Team One. I'm not going to say his name again, just because I don't want to be. Jay? Yeah. Gens with a Jay.

I'm checking it. You know, I'm at the team and I'm doing over there doing some push-ups or something. And I see this guy come out of the gym. He's literally, how tall is he? 6-6. Yeah, how about that? 6-6-300 pounds. A monster.

He's completely covered in tattoos. And he's walking. It's about a 40-meter walk from the back of the Team 1 building to the area where we keep the outboard motors and stuff. And he's walking. He's lumbering, right? He's lumbering along and about 20 meters into this hike He stops and he's got a gallon of milk in his hand And he just he stops like stops it uncorks the milk and just sits there

Drinks half a gallon of milk Slowly puts it back down puts the lid back on and then lumbers the rest the way over I'm like good Lord I hope that guy doesn't eat me Like kill me and eat me and so that was that was definitely the team one thing when I got the team one I Everyone was just a big, bunch of tough, mean bastards. And they were getting ready to kick your ass at any time. Daily basis. And, you know, I think, you know, nowadays, there's a war going on, you know?

Right. And so the guys have a different kind of test ahead of them. And that's cool. You know, that's a different kind of test, and it's a harder test. And it's, it is, that's what we, that's what guys join the teams for. So the young team guys that are coming in, freaking badass. Awesome. Absolutely.

And I tell you what, man, people say whatever about what they want to say about the way millennials are and all this stuff. Man, I've been to some hanging out with some team guys, especially after some memorials and stuff. These young frogmen, they're badass, badass guys that are ready to die or kill without question. And so respect and I'm so glad to see where the teams maintains that always. Absolutely. all right if tony had to write for the history books three top stories of shiny example of btf getting after it

what would they be just give me one give me one oh my god everything everything is so many good examples there's so many good ones um it's hard to say just one guy you know but uh i don't know i'm one time when me and uh dauber did that like thousand yard center peel

that was pretty hard to contain that it didn't bother me that was hard man I mean that was that was pretty hot like I mean this is a tactic with two guys there's two of us bringing up the rear this this extraction you know actually yeah it wasn't extraction because it was by foot otherwise it had been an exfiltration

but we kind of took up the rear we started like covering moving and them guys were just on a dead run but we had to stop, go, stop, go for about like a mile or whatever. It was just terrible. I mean, I was sweating like a teamster, man. I mean, I was just,

and because it was like 8 o'clock in the morning. And it's like 110 degrees out. That was pretty good. That was a pretty good one. But I remember getting back to the old days with that. I mean, we didn't save ETF back then. But we used to do some horrendous humps. you know, humping to the civilian world means like marching, not marching, but patrolling.

And it'd be like, you look at the map, and we don't, we, we didn't patrol in the day. So it'd be like, all right, it gets docked at like 19-hundi. I'm going to move out about 1930. And it gets, and we're going to stop at about 0.5. And we got to cover, I don't know, 40 clicks. All right, let's go. And you're 100-pound rucksack. You're like, really?

Okay, let's go. And you think, I couldn't have been a plumber or something. Oh, no, I'd be a team guy. I couldn't have been like, went to college. No, no, no. Yeah, you know, and you were kind of talking about this earlier. But I remember times where you guys be out the field for two or three days. And meanwhile, while you're in the field, we're spinning up another operation and finding out another target for a direct action mission.

And you guys get back and you'd be like, hey, man, we've got a target for you. You're rolling out in two hours. So, and, you know, you just go to your guys and be like, all right, guys, change your gear. They're heading out. Let's go. You're loading vehicles in an hour and 30 minutes. And you see guys just turn and burn. Yep.

Yeah, nobody said, oh, really? No, just do it. You know, yeah. My whole, that platoon that I had on that deployment, I mean, them guys BTF. I mean, especially like the sisters' kids, those guys were, you know, we had the new guys. We had the older guys, and then we had the middle guys. You know, and, you know, spas and squirrel and Chucky. Those guys were wrecks.

Those guys were badass, man. For sure. I mean, they just, they didn't, they were the meat kind of of of the platoon. And they were the ones that, like, had to do it like most of the work. You know, the new guys helped them. And the other older guys were more of leadership positions. Yeah. And they still work, too.

but these guys worked and they just like, yeah, Roger that and just got after it, good dudes. Day after day after day. I guarantee after day after day. I guarantee all them guys, and I couldn't keep up with everyone after I retired. I guarantee all of them guys are doing well in their careers because they're fantastic.

I do see them and they are all kicking ass. Roger that. That's good. For sure. How does Tony decide what strategies, tactics to use on a mission against an enemy? Curious about your thought process. Well, first of all, you got to figure out which what we're talking about.

My experience in the savages that we slayed and killed and shot. First of all, it's better to shoot someone in the back. So, you know, an ambush where you can catch him walking away from you is always the best. but front you just VTF and figure it out we're talking about Sung Sue there you know the out of war and

you know I thought you know he says if you know yourself and your enemy you don't need to fear a thousand battles or whatever well I know myself pretty damn good and I know my group pretty damn good

and I have time to read all that stuff and figure it out so I figured I just hate the enemy I'll just hate them and that hate will fuel my passion to make the operation as best I can and work at the best I can and learn from the mistakes that didn't work out. But that's that kind of, when you got that,

it kind of pyramids down and everything kind of works itself out. You know, and you can't be afraid to try something different because, and you can't be afraid to bounce it off people. That was great about Jocko. I would bounce something off of them, you know, and you'd like, yep, that's good. we go. Now,

wait a minute, because he wouldn't let it go. You know, would be like, can I walk me through this again? Roger, we're going to do that, that, that,

that. And I would also, really, when I'd let other people run operations, or I would work with other groups, I would,

I would just kind of wait for when they glanced over something. And I'd go, well, wait a minute. Okay, now what are we going to do here?

Well, you know, we're just going to do this. I don't know, I don't know what that means. Please explain it to me. Well, and they hadn't really thought about it. And that's the little glitch in the mission plan that's going to get you killed. But you can't, you know, you can't take a lot of time to plan on an op sometimes.

Sometimes it's like, all right, you know what? An assault. Here we're going to go. We're going to go in strong like cowboys. Or are we going to go on the prowl? We're going to go in surreptitious entry. Be real stealthy. Sometimes you can't.

Sometimes it calls for a straight up, punch them up, you know, just mix it up. and BTF, you know, and that's easy to do because you don't get a plan much. Okay, let's just go there and kill everybody. Show us where they go. Yeah. Yep. So I don't know if that answers that question, but. Yeah.

And from my perspective, I mean, and you just kind of made it sound like big, no big deal. But Tony was always pouring over the imagery, looking at the maps, trying to figure out which angle, trying to figure out the best spot, trying to, that's what he was doing all the time. Just trying to analyze as much as he could and make the best plan. And I think also, man, the experience level, you know? Because like I said, right, even pre-war, pre-9-11, how many freaking ops did you and I do training ops where we did all this stuff? 2000. Yeah, it's just like over and over. And so by the time you get there, it's really, even though these weren't combat operations,

you get, we learned a lot from them. And there was little adjustments we had to make for sure. But for the most part, what you learned how to do, what you learned how to do is you learned how to take a group of guys and get them to do something. Right. And when you learn how to do that, okay, that's, then you, okay, you want us to do this? Cool.

And how to take a group of guys and get them to do something. It doesn't matter what that thing is. I can get a group of guys to do something. And that's what's beneficial. Yep. That's what all that years of experience helps you out. with it doesn't necessarily help you i mean it didn't help us with with doing the specific mission that no no because you can't can't cover everything no i mean at that point i had three years as an

instructor in land warfare and it was my eighth deployment so i know i'd been you know eight pootunes or whatever. There's not much more I was going to, you know, learn from another six months of training. I mean, it's pretty much, I mean, there's no real thing I was going, wow, I've never done this before, you know, like, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. All right. What was the most difficult thing you ever did as a seal? When was the most fearful moment in your life?

Well, I get asked this a lot and tell you the truth. There's got nothing to do. it, you know, the bombs and the wars and the killing and stuff. It's like, I never, ever batted an eye, skydiving or static climbing, jumping into the water, jumping at night. It never bothered me one bit, you know, not at all. Never even was scared at all. But I don't like getting on the roof, you know what I mean? Like, I hate being a 40-foot ladder or in a man lift.

You know, I work for a landscaping company. Sometimes we're up in the man-lift. It's like, man, this kind of sucks. And I'll admit it. I'm a little bit afraid of heights at that level. And rappelling off a building one morning in Hong Kong, like a 60-story building, and we're rappelling off and then going through a window

and you've got a training, you've got to shoot these targets and stuff. I mean, it's pretty cool, but I didn't like it at all. And this morning it was windy, and the building's actually moving. And I look down, I'm going on a rappel. You know, I'm edging over the side. I'm not on the top of this building.

and the people look like raisins, you know, down there. And, I mean, I need to say, I mean, I got to go to the bathroom and I'm hung over. And I was like, oh, my God. But I'd rather die than be called a pussy. I'm going to do it. No, but I'd rather die than be a puss. So that was pretty much the, I'll never forget that day either. It was terrible.

The most fearful moment or the most difficult thing you ever did is a seal? retire without a doubt 100% retire and I'll leave it at that yeah I hear you all right Tony's favorite piece of kit and over Tony's career what's what piece of gear has advanced the most not including night vision which obviously improved up to a bunch well I'll get to my favorite piece of gear kit but uh evolution of gear it's got to be You know, there's a couple of things. Like I say, boots. The boot thing is phenomenal.

We've got such good gear and boots now. Also, you've got to look at navigation. You know, I remember the first GPS is we used to call them giant pieces of shit because they were like the size of an ammo crate. Yeah, they were huge. They were huge. And they looked like a telephone from the Korean War, you know. But nowadays, they're just badass.

Yeah. You know, global positioning systems. I mean, and also communications. I mean, your satellite communication is absolutely fantastic. And everybody who was in the military out there, when we had all the old kicks and Diana pads. And if you remember that HF, high frequency, and we did a lot of HF and stringing up antennas out in the woods.

It was terrible. Yeah, literally stringing up, you know, 80-foot antennas so you could make a communication shot to some of, other distance station. Morris Coe, literally using Morris Coe? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Good times. But my favorite piece of kit, I would have to say, is anything that you get in and drive.

Because back in the day, we didn't use any mobility, really. Everything was on foot, and it was like, holy shit. That and the 300 windmag sniper rifle suppressed with a 22-power night force scope on it is a, Wicked good piece of kit. Let me tell you what. I mean, I can read your t-shirt at a click. That's pretty good. Legit.

Legit. All right. Tony, what is the number one quality that allows a leader to lead men into uncomfortable conditions and succeed? What's uncomfortable? I guess just bad scenarios, tough situations. Well, I think keep it in your mind, mission men. mission men look guys you're not paid to sit here and here's what we got to do let's go do it yes uh it sucks sometimes it's bad but mission men if you keep thinking that that's what we're paid

to do the bottom line is you follow the orders of the guy above you and we're team guys so that line bleeds a lot it has a lot of waves in it you know because he'll be like hey tony we think we'll do i don't know jocco let's do this all right It sounds good. But at any given time, if he goes, hey, Tony, this is what we're doing. Roger that. And that's it, even if it means dying. Because if you lead by example and you're humble and you're good to your guys and you know your guys and you let them know you,

but you don't wipe their ass and you don't take any shit from them and they know you, they'll follow you. You know, if you're humble and you make mistakes, admit it, move on. And I think that's, I know a few of my guys. guys probably most of them would follow me wherever we want you know and uh i guess that's just because i never changed they always knew what they're going to get for me that's about it steady yeah yeah the other uh the other big thing is making sure people understand why they're doing what they're doing because like tony just said man we we're going to have discussions about stuff and say hey this is why this is why well what this is why I think we should do it this way you know it's not just like

go and do now there are situations of course where someone goes hey go and execute this now hey go hit that building hey take guys over there there's times in combat where you got to make those decisions and you got to make things happen and that's when you talk that's when that's when the important things that you just talked about having a just trust right like I I just had trust in my guys they trusted me that if I was telling him to do something, it was the right thing to do. And by the way, if I told Tony go take that building over there

and he looked at me and said, negative, not now. I knew he was saying that to me for a reason. Yeah, because it's some wired in front of it or something. Yeah, there was a reason why he was telling me that. And we're not going to have that discussion. Probably don't have time to do it right now. I'd say, okay, then we got to get out of here.

And he'd okay, okay. Roger. Roger. And then we'd go. So, man, having that trust, building up that trust. through, you know, the humility, the relationship, all that stuff is, is how you end up with a tight unit. And that's how you, really, that's how you lead. Tony, did you have the same attitude towards death as Jocko?

Were you prepared to die? Was I prepared to die? Yes, in a second. Get that over with right away. I really didn't have an attitude to death except for, you know, making other people die, the bad guys. Then I didn't care about them. I didn't, I guess I dehumanized them in my mind, so it wouldn't bother me because it, you know, because they're just, they're just, they're not people, they're a target. You just whack them and that's it.

And, uh, I was, I was definitely prepared to die. A matter of fact, you know, I thought that would be like the end of my career, like, kind of, but, um, I thought it would be the end of your career too, motherfucker. there was a couple guys in our task unit i was not scared there was a couple guys in our task unit that i i did not think we're going to make it because they were just like i was like oh yeah i'm going to be giving a speech at his funeral because he's a fired up young kid that does not care about yeah like just not the other way for those of you out there like oh he like didn't do his job he was like yeah no like like like Just guys that were so so fired up that, yeah.

And like even our guys that did get killed, there wasn't one of them where I thought, oh, he's, he wasn't ready for that. Right. Yeah, he was. Did he want? Of course, those guys didn't want it. I would love to have them here. They would love to be here. But at the moment of truth, they did what I would think they would have done.

Right, right. None of them did I say, oh, it's a shame. or anything like that because those guys had those attitudes of they were there they were they loved their job they loved doing their job they believed in what they were doing and that that's the way it was absolutely all right tony's view on training mentoring integrating new guys into the platoon yeah i mean i've been on the LPO side of that. I've been on the not new guy side of that.

I've been on the new guy side of that. I've been on the chief side of it. And I usually told the guys, you know, you're on time. Be motivated because it's fun. For those of you that think, like, the SEAL teams to me is a thousand times more than I thought it would be. It's a fucking blast. It's the best thing ever. It's the best men's club in the world.

and uh but like you said you're trying to build these guys have these guys build their own reputation you know confidence nobody has any confidence in the first day at the team nobody um trying to instill confidence in them and uh i used to tell them you know

should be seen not heard carry a pen and paper be on time and shut the fuck up nobody cares about any of your stories where you from or none of that crap you know saint stripes you know Eventually, that'll come out in a year.

You know, so just ask questions if you need to. Be on time. Listen. Do your job. And show the guys the right way to do things. And if it's not the right way, you know, tell them how to know the difference. Show them how to know. Do what they did for me.

You know, and you look in their eyes and they're just like, Roger, but no, you don't get it. You have no. Show me what I just said. Okay. Just say you don't understand, you know. But that's about it. Just try to be, you know, fair with them, direct. That's about it.

Lead by example. One thing I want to say there is about, you know, talk about being steady. We had a situation one time when I was a platoon chief and we were working hard, wicked hard. Like going, off tempo was through the roof. The battle rhythm was shot to hell because it was just go, go, go, go, go. And the guys were getting tired and stuff. And we had a meeting about it, and I didn't say anything. And they're like, if we can just slow down a little bit, you know,

and I was like, okay, I mean, legitimate bitch. You know, because sometimes you go, go like that, things are getting safe. And you start making mistakes. But we hadn't really made any mistakes at that point. And I said, put it in perspective at this time, like, Daba. Some of them guys were, like, 22, 23 years old. That was, like, 38. And I go

I use the analogy Like we used to say you're only as fast as the slowest guy in your patrol Maybe the guy that's got more weight carrying more equipment So he sets the pace and I go And I go they'll you agree with that? And everyone's like yeah yeah You go well we'll take a break when the oldest guy here gets tired and that's me and I'm not tired And I've said okay, Roger that go to work They're just like

Yeah, Roger So hopefully some of the new guys learn something on that one yeah yeah no doubt about that it's uh leading from the front you know if yep no doubt about it all right how does one put the high of war behind him and his he and and and are you always searching for it still in other things. Have I transitioned to civilian life?

Kind of is a little. I just don't like it. It's terrible. Like there's no action. I mean, there's no, you know,

going, and who didn't like going to work on a Monday morning? Yeah. It was the best. I mean, and, you know,

and by the way, you went to work on Sunday. You went to work on Saturday. Yeah. Just every, every, of the guys of the team, oh yeah, it's a weekend. No, we'll be at the team.

We're going to be working out. Then we're going to be working on our gear. Then we're going to go out and we're going to wake up the next morning and do the same thing on Sunday. And then we're going to come in on Monday. That's what it is. Because who cares about? What else are you going to do? Yeah, what else are you going to do?

Oh, you go to a hike. Go with your friends. All my friends are in the team. I know. So it gives you nothing. So, oh, that's it. Go back to whatever failed relationship I have. Yeah.

So that can definitely be a little tricky. Am I searching for other things? Probably, you know. I don't know. It's such a hard question to put in perspective. I mean, I live in New Hampshire now, and I work 40 hours a week. I do all right, but I don't, there's no, you know, the magic in my life is, like, gone. I mean, that was the magic, the glue that held me together as the teams, you know.

know, and, you know, I got some good families back there, you know, that that help me out, like friends of mine, friends of my family and, like, the Murphys, you know, the Daniels, the Downses. I mean, there's just, you know, if I don't get to people back home's name, I'm sorry, but, you know, I got really good friends that try to help me, kind of, but they just have no idea, like, you know, there's one old team guy back there that's, like, from the 70s. You know, and I talk to him, and it's like, Roger. You know, then there's a Sergeant Major, retired 30 meters back there. But it's a small town, and it's like, I drink a lot.

You know, I work a lot, too, so I'm kind of functioning that way. But there's no, I don't know. I guess I'm still looking for something. But it's just the high war is just like, I don't know, it's, I think you could say it's the fucking best. It's like the best thing ever. And once you get done with a big firefight, you want to go back and like, can we do that again and again and again? It's so much fun. I mean, it sucks.

It's hard, but it's great. I mean, we're just because if you think about like they say heroes, right? To me, the real heroes are them guys standing a post out there with minimal training that don't want to be there and still do their job. and fine American soldiers, sailors, marines, you know, airmen, whatever. For us, that's our profession. Like, you know, that's like, we didn't even want to go home. It's like our blood and our guts. It's in our DNA.

That's what we want to be. So, I mean, how do you, you don't just, you do all that stuff for all those years. There's going to be side effects. You know, there's going to be. I don't care. I'm, you know, I'm not going to go, I don't go see a counselor or nothing. because I think I'm strong enough that, you know, I can handle it. But it's not easy.

You know, it's like when people, when people always come up and they say, you know, thank you for serving. They always say that. And, you know, I always say, hey, it was an honor to serve. Of course, course, but what I really want to say, and sometimes if it's a deeper conversation, I'm like, don't thank me. I feel guilty because it was so fun. And, like, you guys paid me to do this?

Like, what did you do when you were a little kid? I ran around the woods and played. military stuff and right put camouflage put cold black cork on my face and what played with guns and beat shop b b b guns and that's what i did all the time as a kid and then i i grew up and i turned 18 and then they started paying me money to do the same thing i know and then they said oh there's a bunch of bad guys you go kill them oh okay they will give you more money and then yeah so so people say thank you and it's sort of it definitely makes you feel like damn man i got so lucky the day i enlisted in the military, I got so

lucky because it was like you know, it was like a, the square peg found the square hole basically. Right. And that's what a lot of team guys are like. And that's why when all of a sudden the square, they go, okay, you can't use that square hole anymore. They pull you out and there's a triangle there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No. Yeah. It's so true. And they, the service to me, I went in when I was eight, I listed when I was 17, when I was 18. got out when I was what 45, 44, whatever. And it never lied to me. They always paid me, and they'll pay me for the rest of my life.

And everything they said was true. Do this. They go, oh, the military is a bunch of bullshit. Yeah, there's little things, but overall, you know, I didn't have to, like, figure out, like a woman and, you know, I was all wishy-washy about shit and stuff. And, you know, and, oh, that's just part of whatever,

being a man and stuff. stuff, but they never lied to me. It was always just really, really good. Civilian life is not like that. I mean, I deal with people, and for the most part, everybody out there is a good person, I believe. But I get mad because of the misuse of the military now. I mean, it's so misuse. It's crazy.

Grab 200,000 badass army soldiers and Marines. Go over to where ISIS is and smoke these sons of them. bitches. What are we waiting for? I don't get it. But on the flip coin, people are like, we get to pay the deficit because we don't want our children to pay it. Yeah, but do you want them to fight the war?

We got the muscle right now. I don't know we're waiting for. This is a crock of shit. Hopefully that'll change. Yeah, hopefully it will change. You know what? I'll do one more question here. How do you keep your head in the game when one of your squad is killed? Yeah.

You know, well, I think for me, you have to treat it like mission men in that order. And to me, there's no use, you know, the milk is on the floor. There's no use crying over it. You know, EOD doesn't, you know, defuse a bomb that already went off. Okay. What you've got to do is try not to lose any more of your men. Okay. Now you just got to do the mission with the dead guy.

And I know that sounds maybe cruel. There ain't no time to sit there and mourn or do any of that. You have to complete your op. You have to do your mission. Right. There's plenty of time to mourn. There's plenty of time to figure out what were wrong or what didn't go wrong or whatever happened when you're back at the ops done. And that's why we train like that.

When we train and we're going through a building and they put a guy down who just step over and clear the house because you don't want to get, you know, more than one killed. You just have to do what you've been trained to do. And in the leadership position, it's very hard not to, you know, you can train all your life, but when something happens like that, it's very hard not to just go, oh, my God, I've got somebody killed, you know, what happened, what happened? Because I take it very personally because it was one of my guys and I racked my brain for a long time.

And then I figured out that, well, you know, I just got to do my job and be a leader. You know, and I can't let the rest of the guys down. And I can't let myself down on my team and my country. So I got to do what I got to do to get out of there. Not to get out of there, but complete the yacht. And then figure it out. Then take care of as best we can and have a lot of respect.

And that's about the best way I can answer that, bro. Yeah, you know, I remember. after Mark got killed and he was obviously he was the first he'll killed in Iraq he's the first guy that ever worked for me that got killed and I remember a couple days went by

we actually did the memorial ceremony in like a couple days went by and I was kind of trying to figure out what to say to the platoons specifically what to say to your platoon right And I was sort of, and I realized what I was doing, right?

What I was doing was the only thing I knew how to do, which is work. Yep. And finally, I remember I was, that's what I wrote down. I'm like, look, Mark came into your platoon and, and I said, hey, Mark is the best motherfucker ever. Yeah, he was. And my fucking soul is crushed right now. And actually remember, as I was talking, I started getting emotional. And I stopped.

And I was getting a little choked up. And I stopped talking. I was just trying to get it together. And you were sitting there. And you're like, hey, man, it's okay. Yep. And I was like, check. this is what I'm going to do.

I'm going to work. Yep. And this is what we're going to do. We're going to work. We're going to work. You know, when that happened, I was thinking about that. I never, ever once shed one tear. And I started getting, like, concerned.

Like, do I have anything, my feelings at all? And then we came back from that deployment. I remember maybe, I don't know, six months later or something. It may not sound like. Like, it may shock you, but I used to like cats. I used to like cats, you know. You always seem like a cat guy. I like dogs too, you know.

I just me and my girlfriend at the time had cats. And my cat died. And I bawled like a little baby for like three hours. I think it was just a point in me waiting for it to come out. You know, and I'd be like, okay. Because you're a team guy around that stuff all the time. People getting maimed, shot killed, and blown up. and, you know, and then it kind of festeres.

And I think, you know, it's kind of deep and stuff, but whatever. I'm not really that deep of a person. And it just came out and I was like, you know, that's kind of cool. So maybe I was just, you know, I took the, like, Beehide thing a little too, too much, probably. But, well, I think that's about all we got for tonight. and thanks everybody for asking those questions. Tony, you got anything else you want to say? Any closing comments?

Nah, just shout out to all my chums and all my brothers and the teams. And, you know, all the people that know me, my family and everybody. And thanks for being so nice to me. And the teams, thanks for being so nice to me and letting me do all those wicked cool things, you know. And Jocko, thanks for having me. It's so good to see you, my brother. Always.

Yeah, pleasure. I mean, just phenomenal, you know. You don't know how many people watch your show. I watch this. Well, what fires me up the most is, obviously, the military guys and the team guys and team guys that are, you know, are bros that are like, hey, man, that was great. Oh, yeah. I learned. And that just gets me, that's why I'm doing this, man.

Yeah. That's why I'm doing this. And, yeah. that's what means the most to me and having you on here obviously is uh is phenomenal so um everybody that is out here that's listening to this thanks for listening to the podcast thanks for supporting it if you do want to support the podcast a little bit echo charles tell them quickly how to do it actually like actually i do have one more question go ahead um you know how okay you're like a hard guy and I was put real simply and this might be kind of an ambiguous question

but like that example you say it was real hot and you're not even drinking water you're drinking coffee in Copenhagen yeah example like why is that you know how because it's a spectrum right like a lot of people like some people they can be big they can run you know 10 miles no problem all this stuff but they get in certain kind of discomfort physically or whatever they're done or you get these big guys or whatever, they'd miss one meal, they're done. Right, right, right. They're thoroughbreds. Yeah, so you're like the, are you like, I was part of that crew in the teams.

Like, this fought and drank a lot. And so that kind of trained us, like being hung over and stuff. Like, I mean, we would be like hungover and go to work and you work out for three hours. Yeah. So these guys, I knew guys were like, they could never do that. Right. So we were kind of like bottom feeders. So when shit got bad, we're like, yeah, whatever.

Yeah. I'll make a couple. not like that anymore like I work I need to drink water because I'm not used to it anymore I would there was some kind of a genetic component like right like like I freely admit like I don't sleep a lot right and I understand that it's not just because like I'm just tough it's because there's some genetic component in there that doesn't require a lot of sleep and and either and you know I have one of my I've told this before like one of my daughters I'll go to bed at like 1130 she'll be awake and I'll wake up at 4.30 morning and she'll be awake like she'll be awake like

she's genetically, she doesn't need a lot of sleep. So I know I'm kind of like that too. And there's some, just FYI for Tony, there's something genetic about the water intake because, I mean, I did patrols and stuff with you. And, you know, I mean, I'm fairly hard, but I need water. You know, I would need to carry more water than you. And, you know, never, never would I be like a bitch about it? Like, but no, you know, I would need like twice as much water as Tony would eat.

And I don't weigh twice as much. I mean, I'm whatever. I'm maybe 40 pounds heavier or something like that. But so there's some genetic component that makes you need less water and makes me need a decent amount of water. Yeah. Also, I spent a lot of time at Nylon. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You're acclimated to it.

I'm not like that now. I need a lot of water. But even overall above and beyond just the water situation where, and you're like this too a lot, we're kind of talking about this where do you think that, you know, like if you just sit around indoors and after a while you're like, bro, I got to get out. Oh, yeah. A lot of people, they're not like that. They're the opposite. There's like, dang, there's a lot going on outside. I better stay indoors.

Even big, tough, strong guys, a lot of people are like that. Is it and does this kind of fall in line with why you took to the team so? Oh, that's absolutely echo. Without doubt. And I'll tell you, again, going back to give credit where credits do, man, the people that we were raised by the same people in the teams. And those guys, they didn't complain about anything. They showed no weakness ever. Ever.

Ever. Nothing. Like, oh, you're tired? You'd never hear a guy say he was tired. Ever. Never. No, no. You know, hurt doesn't matter.

Broken something? No. just be quiet. Put tape on it. Yeah. Shut up. Yeah. And so when you're brought up that way, and I mean, it was blatantly obvious when you got the teams.

Oh, yeah. Like if you, you just, no, there was no, no, no, just don't complain about anything. Just be, just suck it up. Oh, this sucks. Yeah. Don't even admit that it sucks. Don't ever do that. Yeah, and let's be quiet.

That's probably the best way to explain it. Yeah. That and like, I didn't have anything else with that. Like I said, it wasn't the best shooter. I wasn't the biggest guy. but I had that. I always had that. I remember one time we were training.

And you know how like after a round is done? Like a lot of people and I was one of those people, you just, you just flop on your back and lay down and get your rest. Yeah, weak. Yeah, bro, one time, long time. Took your eyes off your enemy. That was more or less the attitude. He was like, you look a little tired there. Almost like it was when you first kind of started coaching me up a lot.

And you were like, you look a little tired there. But it wasn't a joke. It was kind of like, as if you really. wanted to say, bro, don't do that right there. Like, stand up, walk, you're, like, showing weakness. Like, I don't like how you do that. That was really the tone. That was true.

So that makes a lot of sense right there. But that being said, I think it goes, I feel like it goes a little bit above and beyond just having a skill or being really good at being able to tolerate pain. I feel like, just like how you were saying, I think, you know, a few weeks ago, you're like, there is a word for it. I kind of want some, a little bit of pain to show him a life. kind of thing. Right, absolutely.

But like in our case, I think it can be catar guys is that we are we're lunatics. Yeah, like math. Because who wants, who? Who wants this be a frog man for 20s up here? I mean, that's just put so hard on your body.

Yeah, yeah. But we are lucky. Yeah, lucky. But a guy like Tim Farrell, who you talked about earlier, I mean, all the guys that we talked about, Mr. Fack, I mean, how old, when we were coming up on the teams, he was 46, 47 years old.

Yeah, he was all broken. You know, broken knees, broken ankles. Guess what? Out there on a six and a half mile run. Oh, yeah. Every single time. And what were the complaints? None.

None ever. Just crush everyone and just be, actually like, Mr. Fack, he wouldn't crush people on the run, but you'd see him hobbling. Yeah. Across the finish line. And you'd be like, that had to hurt so bad. But he just, whatever. Yeah.

Put a little tape on it. Well, I fell out of a helicopter and broke my heel bone on Halloween day. Yeah. And I deployed in, well, actually, I went over it before I deployed it. So I deployed in March. Dang. Yeah, I got hammond, and I cut my cast off with these bolt cutters. And that wasn't a good idea.

And I remember the master chief of the command. He'd be, he's like, he wanted to make sure I was good to go to go overseas, so I'd be walking down the hallway. And I'd see him. I'd walk perfect. And it hurts so bad. It goes, how you doing? I'd stand and I shoot the shit with him for a minute.

Good, good, Roger. All right, hey, I got to go. Go in the bathroom. You'd go in the head and be like, oh, my God. I mean, I was still hobbling when we deployed. It just kind of went away. There's no way I was missing that. No way.

I think most of us are like that maybe to begin with, but maybe taught, like, out of it. Because, you know, I mean, even an everyday person, if they do something kind of hard or work out or even, you know, something. Like, people will recreation and be like, I think I want to run a marathon or something like that. So when they do something hard or kind of painful, some kind of adversity and it's done, you feel good. I think that's a natural thing. Oh, absolutely. Like, people like, look at my cool scar, you know, that kind of thing. But it kind of feels like, and I'm kind of listening and stuff from as an outsider a little bit here, it kind of seems like those shackles of kind of being trained out of that.

Just didn't happen for you guys and guys like you, you know? Oh, yeah. Maybe we got trained in the other way. Right, yeah. Or I think you guys just held on to it. You know? Absolutely. Like it just, yeah.

Yeah, there's no doubt. And there's a bunch of, bunch of badass frogmen that are in the teams. Yeah, that's all. And, you know, you can go talk to the Marines, Army soldiers, tough bastards. Oh, yeah. Cake nuts? Okay. So when he's living here, we're rolling DJ?

What's that thing that cross? It's like this syndrome when you just work out. Oh yeah, it's called the Rabdo mylosus Yeah, so he gets that, by the way And he, it's just from His best friend growing up Two of his best friends growing up

Our team guys, I'll tell you they are later Oh, nice So he's, we're rolling judicceton And he's like going every day Of just all day He's like, man, I'm just doing DJit's And he's kind of quiet, you know He's like, oh, we're all done

We've been done, hard day Then like, you know the guys who showed up later Whatever they're still kind of like Like hey, you want to roll Kickettles like this Okay, like that So he never says no. The next week, I guess he had to go to the doctor or whatever.

The next week, he's like, yeah, you have that redoubt? Like, have you been doing a lot of physical output? You know, this is. He's like, yeah, I just been freaking, I know, but that's exactly what I'm saying. But normally that stops a guy in his tracks while they're training. And he's just like, no, just keep training. Yeah. Someone else wants to train.

I mean, I remember one time he said, like, oh, I'm kind of tired. I mean, he said that, but he didn't say, I'm done. rolling you didn't say like you look tired you look tired yeah awesome that's what I think awesome uh all right any other questions from echo Charles no that's it we can um we can go to support you know let's wrap it up how can they support if you want to support this is how you can you know we talk about getting after it a lot from time to time um and supplementation is not a form of weakness would

Do you agree, Tony? I would agree. Right? Supplement, right? Best supplements, because nowadays supplements can be kind of whack. On it, fortunately. Someone on Twitter was asking me about Shroom tech, shroom tech. Like, oh, how does it work and all this stuff?

Here's the thing. This is, I know that it helps, or I've heard from credible source, that it helps with oxygen utilization. So, you know, like high intensity that kind of goes prolonged or whatever. But you can read on it on the website. They have all the, like, the actual living. literature like the test and all this stuff on all the stuff anyway so it's legit we all know it's legit i think that's kind of common knowledge by now you can get 10% off if you want supplements

on it dot com slash jaco let's go slash jaco get a worry bar as well my my suggestion a lot of good stuff on there next way amazon so if you shop on amazon like we all do click through the website our website jaco podcast dot com there's a little link there a little bit banner on the side and uh you know go through amazon or go to amazon through there and of course subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and youtube still more videos to come by the way yeah and of course jaco store if you like any shirts that we we have we did it i think we expended a lot of mental energy making sure that the shirts are good to go as they say or as you would say kind of dope kind of dope yeah but dope meaning not just oh they're dope because we

said so we try to put different layers on them you know you know how it's not like it just says hey i'm cool or i don't know whatever it's it it says something and then there it means something as well right where if you don't know what it means you just don't know that's one layer you don't know about it you know this one has a couple layers sometimes three just saying they're not just normal and their quality as well just say they're good anyway you can uh judge for yourself far as how they look jocco store.com. If you like them, go ahead, get a shirt, support that way, or a mug, or a sticker, whichever. Or rash guard.

Or rash guard, yes. So, new things, rash guard, if you didn't know already, rash cards are good. Biking, diving, swimming, surfing, bodyboarding, crossfit, any kind of Olympic lifting where you need mobility is, it's actually better than cotton shirts. They, like, you know what I mean? And jiu-jitsu. Last but not The Jiu-Jitsu.

Andy did good. And today, Andy, one is super fight. Big Andy Burke. Representing. It wasn't a super fight. It was a bracket, by the way.

Oh, I thought I was a superfighting. Decision, heel hook. Dang. Andy representing. And yeah, he did,

in fact, have Trooper Rashka. See, what we were talking about the 17, well, 17 to 19% improvement in performance.

Yeah. And I, in my, in my bro science, like, opinion, I think that applies to all,

all physical activity when you wear this rash card. I'm a believer. And for those of you that don't know, Echo Charles does have a doctorate in bro science. Yeah, well, I'm working on it. And, okay, so new stuff. Also, we have patches. I have Velcro, the Velcro ones.

You know, like this kind, Antoine. And then women's stuff as well. They're tank tops. Okay, I got you. We're going to do T-shirts as well. Thank you, Lisa. So for the nudge, you know. And then, yeah, there it is.

That's the stuff. Maybe some more cool stuff. You know, the seasons are changing. So we'll put some more stuff on there if you guys like. It's cold. Need some warm gear. Potentially. Let's get it done.

Yeah. But there it is. Yeah. And thanks for everyone with the, who has supported. That's dope. If you want to get some of this goodness right here, a little bit of a pomegranate white tea available on Amazon. Jocko white tea

The only thing I drink other than water and milk So jump on the train Also if you haven't got a copy of extreme ownership yet Which me and my brother Laif Babin wrote Which has a ton of Tony who you heard from tonight A ton of Tony in there anytime you're hearing about the Charlie Patoon chief or Charlie Patoon doing this or that's the guy who's running it and making it happen You can pick up the hard copy digital copy or the audio book and that

Laif and I actually read in October 2 20th and 21st in San Diego, California. If you're a leader or you want to be a leader, come on out to the extreme ownership muster. We're going to teach the principles of combat leadership, and we're going to get in the weeds on the tactics of how to actually employ them. It's one thing to know them, but you've got to know how to employ them on the battlefield,

on the street, in the business world, or in life. so register and then come and get it and as always if you want to keep kicking it with us Echo Charles and myself we're all up on the interwebs Twitter, Instagram

and that Facebook Ye Echo Charles is at Echo Charles I'm at Jocka Willink I don't think Tony has any of that stuff No I don't do anything BTF. BTF.com

Yeah, yeah. Just don't contact me.com. And to all the motivated troopers out there, especially, first off, those in uniform, military, law enforcement, firefighters, EMTs, thanks for what you all do. Thanks for working hard, for training hard, for living hard, and for fighting hard, and for holding hard, and for holding the line. and the rest of you folks out there, the rest of you troopers in the workforce attacking your daily struggles, smashing obstacles,

keep doing what you're doing and doing it with focus and some ferocity. And finally to Tony, thanks again, my brother for coming on the show. Thanks for the years you put in. training, fighting, and leading. Thanks for always being there to support me, no matter what. No matter what.

Yes, sir. Thanks for what you did for me, for the task unit, for the teams, for the Navy, and for the United States of America. And you know, Tony is one of the many veterans from every war. who remains in the shadows, who seeks no glory, who did what he did as his duty for country and for his brothers on his left and now on his right. So to all of you veterans like Tony, the true quiet professionals, thanks to you warriors who have set the example. of how to serve and of course how to get after it so until next time this is echo and jocco and the original bt fredi thanks brother ditto enough said roger roger out