Jocko Podcast - 445: Pursue Opportunity Over Passion, and Bring Your Passion to The Opportunity. With Ryan Bates.

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Ryan Bates, former US Navy SEAL talks Military career, business, and seizing the opportunities in this life for massive success.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 445 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I heard a quote fairly early in my Navy career, and the gist of the quote was that seals succeed because of leadership or in spite of their leadership. And when I was young, it was a little hard for me to understand that, because it's definitely a contradictory statement, right, that you can either succeed because of leadership you have.

or you succeed in spite of the leadership that you have. But as I grew up and as I got older, it became more and more clear what that meant. By the time I was getting towards the end of my career and I was running Trade at, which is the West Coast SEAL, which ran the training for the West Coast SEAL teams, it became very clear to me what that meant.

Because you see, in the teams, we have some great leaders and we have some not so great leaders. And in the teams, we've got some great guys. We've got some not so great guys. But what I realized in Trayette was, and this is after I was in Trayette and I was now teaching and watching and observing platoon after platoon after platoon go through training. What I realized was in a platoon, you needed like a couple good leaders.

If you had a couple good leaders, then the platoon was going to be all right. The one exception to that is if you had a real arrogant Loser in there he could ruin all the every other good leader if you have one and especially he's a senior guy that could be a serious problem but so so you need at least a couple good leaders one or one you can get away with two you're gonna be solid and Chances are one of those good leaders would be in a leadership position in the platoon It could be the platoon chief it could be the platoon commander could be the LPO it could be one of the junior officers so if you have one of

of those guys and they're pretty good maybe two of them are pretty good tune's going to do well but if you if one of those guys wasn't maybe the best leader or if those guys weren't around for whatever reason which there's a bunch of reasons why they couldn't be around one of them was in trade at if they were good leaders we would kill them like mock kill them a good leader we'd be like okay you're dead you just got shot you're dead and we would do that on purpose to see who's going to step up and see who's going to make things happen and and by the way the reason we did that is because that can really happen on the battlefield. So you need to be prepared when your leadership goes down,

somebody has got to be able to step up. And that someone's going to be one of the boys, right? One of the boys, one of the E5 mafia. One of the guys with a platoon or two or three or four platoons of experience under their belt, the kind of guys that have the humility that they don't feel like They need to step up and run and everything all the time because then you get contradicting word going out. It comes a problem. But guys that are humble, but at the same time, when its time is needed, they can step up and they can run it.

They can basically run everything. And that's what they mean by the teams succeeding, either because of leadership or in spite of leadership. It's because of the E5 mafia, the boys that are going to step up and make things happen regardless of what is going on. and I got one of those boys with me here tonight. His name is Ryan Bates. He's a former seal. He's an entrepreneur. He's a business owner.

He's a security and arms expert. He's a husband. He's a dad. And he's one of the boys who got it done because he's a frog man. And he's here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned. Ryan Bates, man. What's up, buddy? Thanks for coming down, man.

It's freaking great to see you after. Well, it's been a while. It's been a while. But it's awesome to see you again. Let's start at the beginning, because I think you have a background that really led, that really had an impact on the rest of your life. So you're raising Washington? Washington.

You were born in Pascoe, Washington, kind of eastern Washington, like the opposite corner of Seattle. Okay. So you're in the sticks. In the sticks, all farmland. All farmland. And what did your parents do? Dad, truck driver, had some alfalfa fields. mom just kind of worked a little bit, but mostly like 4H FFA.

I grew up breaking horses. My grandpa was one of the top poniers of race horses on the West Coast. So I grew up with horses a lot, just old farm boy. So you were breaking horses. Yeah, yep. Like starting at what age? I was watching it my whole life. My grandpa, when you get a Phillyericult and they buy them at auction, you have to bring

them and break them, and then you got to start condition them for, for the jockeys to take over pretty much. And my grandpa was pretty much that all the way through. So he spent a lot of time with him doing that kind of thing. And yeah, just old cowboy bates back in the day pretty much, you know. And were you legitimately like in the sticks? There's no city around or anything like that? No, it's kind of a little bigger now, but no, it's literally farm fields as far as you can see.

So a lot of wrestling is pretty much the heat of everything, all those little small farm towns around. So a lot of that and just bucking hay. And that was your, that was your sport growing up wrestling, yeah. Starting at what age? Probably five, six years old. So did you have brothers and sisters? Yep, two brothers.

And we just, what number were you? First. Okay. The oldest, yeah. So you were breaking ponies and breaking your little brothers. Yeah. My brother started getting tough after a while too and they'd team up on me like, damn it. Were they wrestling too?

Yeah, we all started wrestling younger. Did your dad wrestle? Yeah, he wrestled too. So it's just you're wrestling. That's what's what you do. And that's kind of what you do in that town really is wrestling. A lot of those small farm towns, they don't have the budget to have huge football field and stuff like that, but they can get a wrestling mat. So it's pretty much it.

And we go nine months out of the year from doing Collegiate to Freestyle and then usually doing intensive training camps through the summertime like Jay Robinson and over camp. Did you do J. Robbins? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it's gnarly.

Did you get the T-shirt? Yep. Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, the, you know it shut down? Do you know J. Rob shut down? Did it really? Yep, it shut down during COVID or right during COVID or just after COVID.

They shut it down. Really? Which was a bummer. No way. My kid went to J. Rob. It was freaking transformational. Just a great thing. We should start another one of those.

Yeah. There's another good one, Cobra Camp out of Portland. That was really good too. It was also about two, two and a half week course. But, you know, they're gnarly. Yeah. 16 hours a day. Yeah.

I mean, I always look back even when I went to Buzz, it was like, it's not as bad as a camps, dude. You know my kid was going through it and he was you get so echo Charles you the whole goal of J Rob is you're trying to get this t-shirt that says I did it yeah right and if you miss a certain number of practices if you get a certain number of demerits blah blah blah you don't get the shirt and the final thing you have to do to get the shirt is do a 12 mile run so I'm talking my kid I think my kid was a saw just out of his freshman year so he's like whatever 14 or something like that and I knew he hurt his ankle before he went out there and his ankle was jacked up while he was out there.

You know, every day he'd be saying, oh, my ankle's jacked up. And so then he's got to do this, the last day, you got to do this 12-mile run. And I said, hey, you know, what's the deal with your ankle on this run? And he goes, I'm going to go to the athletic trainer and tell him to tape it up so it can't move. And I'm doing this run. I was like, cool. Sure enough, he did it, got the shirt. So you're doing that.

So you obviously wrestled in high school. How'd you do wrestle in high school? Pretty good. Never went to state, but always kind of a contender in there. I started taking a less and less serious as I got into high school. I don't know. What was distracting you? I don't know.

I just, I don't know. It was such a big part of our life. You know, and I started getting burned out. My senior year, I actually was undefeated. I actually beat the guys at one state, but I'd skip too much school. Kind of a bad student, too. So I know it's it's shitty because my dad always tells stories about how good I could have been, but never really did it. You know, I found out later in life as I got more I know.

I know. My brothers are more serious about it than I was. Did they go to state? Yeah, my brother did, yeah. Either of them wrestle in college? No, no. All of us were kind of burnt out. My dad used to put it on it's hard.

I mean, we used to do these round robins. One person would be on the swing bike. We take the belt off the dryer. one with jump rope, swing bike, and then sit inside the dryer. We do that kind of stuff all the time. Like hardcore or that kind of stuff.

And then, but yeah, as high school is on inside the dryer? Yeah, can't get inside the sauna, you know. You have to take the belt off and close the door

and it's a little sauna, you know. God, that's freaking outstanding. Yeah, but yeah, I just, I was good, alternate one year,

but then as I was tiny. I was like 103. Oh, really? Or sorry, 108, my freshman year, 129, 135, 141, 141. So I didn't really, I starved myself so much.

My 141 year, I was undefeated the whole year. One district, seated first in regionals, and then I had too many skips and I couldn't go to state. But the guys that beat one state that year, I beat twice that in that year. Come on, man. I know, I know. Well, the good lesson here is, is you can't push your kids too hard. Yeah, yeah. And if you push your kids really hard, they get burned out, it doesn't matter.

You know, you got to love the game. You got to be doing it of your own. accord. Yeah. Doesn't mean you can't push them a little bit. Yep. But at a certain point, if you don't give them a little bit of a little bit of their own decision making, dude.

Yeah, it gets hardcore. Yeah, that's terrible. And you were just not interested in school? No, I don't know why. You know, because like after I got in the bill. When I got in the bill, I like girls, you know, like that kind of stuff. But I never drank or anything in high school. I just, uh, I'd chase girls a lot.

Did you have a car? I did have a car. What kind of car did you have? I had a, I had a six nine land cruiser. Damn. I had a truck, just a Ford truck too. But yeah, I had that. You know what happened?

I'm going to tell you, this is my sophomore year. I was walking back, and I was kind of getting good to wrestling, and I started stepping up more. This guy, like the senior guy that was the cool football player, like quarterback and everything. He, like, I had a girlfriend at the time. She was my first everything. well she ended up cheating on me with this guy

I'm coming back from the thing I got my backpack on and my dad always said if you're ever getting a fight use your wrestling and he said hey base you know your girl was good this guy was big dude probably like 200 pounds and I just dropped my bag came up and he's like pop pop pop pop pop in the face I took him locked up belly to belly and took him for a ride landed on his face knocked him out

and then uh... fucked him up pretty bad and then after that all the girls liked him here so that's when I started shooting down You were better when you were a monk. Yeah, yes. Oh, man. But yeah, that was it. And then I was so burnt out.

As soon as I graduated high school, I had a 76 van, a lot like the van you were talking about. Stripped it out, put a futon in it and just took off. I worked at Mount Hood as a lift operator. Did you ski your snowboard or snowboard and ski both of them? But you get free of lift pass if you do that. So living out of the van, then we go to bail them. So this was your plan. Like you didn't have a plan.

you graduate. No plan. Zero plan. Zero plan. Just wanted to freaking take off. I always told my mom. I just wanted a lifeful stories, you know. I'm doing pretty good, bro.

Yeah. You know what's funny is everything I'd done in my life. I've never had this long-term goal being any of it. And like a smart man when I was younger told me to take opportunity over passion, bring your passion to the opportunity, right? So all these things that came in my life was kind of just a flow. So did that for a couple years or sorry, about a year. And then my mom gets on the phone.

She wanted me to go to college. She wanted me to wrestle. and that kind of stuff. And she's like, son, are you just going to be this weed smoking loser your whole life? I was like, well, mom was kind of thinking about for a while. She's like, God, I'm so disappointed you. And I was like, fuck. That stinks.

Yeah, so I went down. I was in Vail at the time and drove down to the recruiter there in Colorado. And I was like, I want to be in the Army. Like, well, this is the Navy. I was like, I'll be in the Navy. He's like, what do you want to do? He knew nothing about it, right? And at the day, he was a rescues.

You knew not like you didn't have a clue. Nobody was in the military. in my life. Nobody, I was never around it. Did you watch any movies? You were like, that looks cool or no? Yeah, somebody, one of my buddies said that they're going in the military and I was like, I was like, ah, that sounds like a good thing. And, you know, I was thinking, I thought like, well, you know, it's going to get me into something, you know, who knows. So I drove down, like, we're in the Navy. He's like, um, he's like, what do you want to be? I was like,

I don't really, I haven't thought that far. What's some cool stuff? He's like, well, I was a rescue swimmer, um, a helicopter rescue swimmer. I was a good swimmer. I'm a good swimmer. I was like, yeah, I'm a great swimmer. How were you a good swimmer? I was a swim team. Oh, sorry, I was also swim. So wrestling is a swim team. Probably the two best sports to be a team guy. So he, so he was like, well, do you want to be a rest swim?

I was like, shoot, yeah. And this is before September 11th and all that stuff. And I was able to get in pretty damn quick. Like pretty much a couple months later left on my birthday. Come back. I'm going into the military. She's like, do you sign up? She's like, I was like, yeah.

She's like, oh my God. I was like, you told me to do something. Wait, she's mad? Yeah, she was mad. She wanted me to go to college, you know? Like most boomers, they want you to go to college, you know. So I showed up, and the military is good for me. You know, I was competitive.

It was always in good shape. Pretty much crushed, Rescustomers. Set a bunch of records there. Set the old course record in Restless Swimmer School, too, or Air Crew School. And then... Wait, they have an obstacle course there, you say? Yeah, in Pensacola. It's smaller.

It's not like the buzz ones. How hard is that program? I'm like, how many people don't make it through rescue swimmer? It was a lot. It was like we probably showed up with maybe 50, 60 people and probably only 22 made it. No kidding. Yeah, it's pretty rigorous. It's a lot of swimming.

I thought you had to be in the Navy first before you could go to rescue swimmer school. Was that wrong? No, it was a pipeline. You can go right into it. So you'd have to go, you go through boot camp, then air crew, then RSS, and then you go to your A school and then to the fleet after that. What were you thinking like day three of boot camp? I thought it's fucking weak This is weak I don't know

I just like you know I was They may be the athletic petty officer because I can run At that time I was pretty lean So I can run a five minute a mile Right around there so I was just crushing and they I don't know I thought it was that wasn't that hard You're like hey as long as you're not stuffing me into a dryer You know how wrestling's cutting weight

And freaking wrestling is this It just sets you up for success in life you know What Dan Gable said once once you've wrestled everything on life is easy, you know. So, yeah, I didn't think it was that hard. And even RSS, I didn't think it was that hard. You know, I actually liked it. I liked the competitiveness of it, you know.

And so did that, went, got to my squad. Had you heard about the teams yet? Not really. That's another thing. I wish, I remember them having a dive motivator in 99, but it wasn't like it is now. You know, I just didn't know what it was. I saw some SWIC guys there, but I didn't really put two and two together. I just kind of doing my thing.

and it wasn't until I first deployed. So wait, so where did you get stationed? San Diego here. Well, that's pretty cool. H-Sil 45, yeah. So we did our first deployment, and we were off the coast, and that's when they were taking down, the smugglers coming out of Iraq.

You know, they'd go through the hat, I think the hat and the diamond head. When they come off the coastal waters, we'd bring, seals would come in and drop on. What ship were you on? Ingram, U.S.S. Ingram. Okay. What year was this?

It would be 2001, 2000? 2000. I was over there in 2000. In 2009, 2000, I was there. I was in the Gulf. So it had been 2000 because we were out there when September 11th happened. So it was right in that time. I was at the tail end of our deployment.

And we were dropping off seals and they were taken down. I just remember watching them on our fleering stuff. Like, fuck, this job is way cooler than mine, you know? And they were on the boat. The two guys, there was a sniper and another guy on the boat with me the whole time for like a month on Ingram and I was like, how do you do this? So I always get an intest. So I did my intest in Bahrain right there and I got my packet together.

And pretty much I got back to the detailer wouldn't let me go until I had two deployments for some reason because they put so much time in. So I had immediately jump on another deployment back to back and then went to Buds when I came back from that. What was your second deployment? Same place. Different ship? Different ship? Nope. Same ship.

Same ship. Same squadron. We went to the same ship. And this is right when the war was kicking off. And right when it started, right when it started, I was at the tail end and then came back, went to buds right after that. And did you feel like you needed to train for buds? Did you train for buds?

No, not really. You were just like, I'm freaking, I'm a stud. That's what I thought. I'm not joking. I don't know why. Like, I mean, you can talk to some of my, I don't know, buds, I crushed it, man. Like, I was always a good swimmer, especially when you put the fins on. Yeah, if you're on swim team, yeah, swimming is no factor.

If you're a cross-country runner, running's no factor. If you were a gymnast, then the freaking O-course is no factor. Usually if you're a wrestler, probably the O-course is no factor, too, because you have upper body strength. But it's weird. So you had no weaknesses. None, dude. If you talk to other guys that are in Buzz with me, I just won everything, dude. I won fucking everything.

And I got rolled. I got pneumonia in Hell Week, and I got rolled for it. I got rolled for it. So I did do a couple first phases. I just crushed everything. And I don't know. You know, Buds, people don't understand. They're like, ah, just get your buzz is good.

But Buds sets your reputation from day one, you know. So some people try to be the gray man. I was like, fuck that, win everything, you know, win everything, you know. Plus, it's easier if you win everything. Yeah, it is. If you're not winning everything or if you're losing things, it's going to be a lot harder for you. Yep, 100%. I mean, I guess you could, if you're in the middle of the pack, you won't get noticed very much.

And maybe that's an attitude to have. I mean, I tried to win. I couldn't win anything. I was freaking slow at slow swimmer, slow runners. I was pretty much not good. Except the log PTs. Just picked the log up by himself. I was good at not stopping.

I was good at not giving up. Yeah, I was good at like in Hell Week. That was like so fun for me because I was like, oh, wait, there's no, like I just have to keep going. Cool. I can keep going. Yeah, that's easy. Let's go all week. I'll keep going.

But no factor, huh? No, I just, I crushed it pretty good. I set the O course record at the time, I think 444, which is, I think it was 458 before then the old course is different now it's different now well they have a big net underneath the slide for life what yeah pussy shit what are you talking about really there's a big net so there's I saw it I was like yeah it's a big net it's basically a big net so if you fall you're gonna hit a big net that's it yeah that's it and they have a low rope so they have like one rope from the third story and one rope from the first story so you could just pull yourself across which I guess apparently

is hard too because you don't have the downward gravity down the down the top of the Top ones, the fast one, yeah. But there's a net there. So there's that. And then you remember the little logs that you would, the little stumps that you had to jump across? Yeah, yeah. Those are now not there. It's like a, it's like tires you step through.

So you don't. Oh, so you don't hurt your ankle? Can bite ass like. Like those things. I'll do it wet and sandy. Oh, yeah, that's fun. I think when, you know, when I got to run the, when you, you were an Amarles Age for a little bit. Yep.

And everybody knew I broke the wreck or something like that. And I had to run it for you. Oh. Oh, really? Yeah, it was the first time ever met you. You don't remember that, but yeah, that's when I first met you. That was you, huh? Yeah, I had to run the O course for you guys to show at.

Show the Admiral. How? What studs we had? What studs we have? That's freaking, yeah. It was good, man. But I remember, I was like, damn, that guy's big, dude.

That fuck, it looks like the Admiral's aide freaking security. I got that a lot. So, so then what? You go on SQT? SQT. And then crushed that I was with guys like, Micah Fink, Van Wilson. Oh, really?

Michael was in your class? Yeah, Michael was in my class. Yeah, he was funny. He was a tough guy, right? Yeah. And at that time, I was rolling a bunch. I always rolled. I was as soon as I got into that and like,

oh, yeah. So what year did you start rolling? I started rolling in 1990. I mean, I'd wrestle up there, but as soon as I got to San Diego, I immediately met Steve Bruno. He found UFC a couple of times, but he's a rescue swimmer with me.

He was getting ready for a pro fight, and he was more a stand-up guy, and he's like, oh, I heard you're a good wrestler, Ryan. I need somebody to train with. So I went into the Lions Den, and it was Tony Glindo, Vernon White, a bunch of other guys, and hell, yeah. And they were like, oh, you heard you good wrestler,

all right, they just made me do takedown after takedown after takedown, and like, freaking all these different guys rotate down me to just wrestle. He was like, okay, yeah, you can train with him. So for six months, I just kind of helped Steve get ready for his fight, and that was my first introduction to Jiu-Jitsu. I loved it. I was hooked. The Lions Den back then, first of all, they were like one of the premier schools at the time,

but they also had an old school mentality where you were going to get basically abused. We were going to show it up there for you were like a new guy. And we would train with those guys occasionally, but we would more compete against them. I know Dean did a couple competitions. I know at least a couple competitions he went against. stuff, Vernon White a couple times, or at least one time that I remember. But those guys had a, they were great, you know, they had a great thing going. Yep.

You know, at the time, Ken Shamrock, he was probably a little bit done with his fighting career at that time. WWF, like at that time, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but, you know, I mean, Ken Shamrock freaking was one of the premier guys back in the day. And, yeah, so you rolled into the Lions down. Yeah, probably like the, as a new guy coming in, you know, that's probably not the, one you want to start with, but I got thrown into the fire quick. I liked, you know, like, I did a couple of jiu-jitsu tournaments not too long after that, and I just, you know, went in advance, and I ended up doing pretty good just about for my wrestling, you know.

Once you learn to avoid a couple submissions, and you'll just get takedowns and not get submitted, there you go, you just won two to zero or four to zero or whatever. Yeah, yeah, just take down, quick takedown, and then hold them off for a little bit, you know, so it was good. But yeah, right into there, and then I kept rolling there. Actually, after they, they kind of, kind of closed down. I went on deployment. They kind of closed down. Then I, the next one was city boxing with, uh, with, um, Dean Lister. And, um, I got that's, you know, uh, Chris Ruiz, do you know this? Yeah, yeah. That's what I got. I talked Chris into starting jiu jutsu. You talked him into starting jiu jutsu? Yeah, he, uh, I mean, like, do you know, I've trained with Chris

so much over the years until he moved. Like he was freaking, he's a badass. Yeah, he's a ship guy. Yeah. He was, uh, he always worked out a lot. He was really flexible. Yeah. And we were sitting at our apartment in downtown and he was part and stuff like that I was like dude you should do jitzu with me man he's like what it's right up here city boxing man you'd be good at it now now fast forward look at him yeah yeah his nickname was soap fish yeah marongo gave him that nickname he says holding onto you it's like it's like it's like it's like fish covered in soap so his nickname was soap fish yeah Chris Ruiz what were you on the ship with him yeah he was on the he was on the Ingerham well he knew it was on my buddy's ship okay but then he made friends

with him and he came back and he was hanging out with rescue swimmers and stuff and he was a cool dude you know and uh and i got him into rock climbing too he started doing that he got really good at that and then uh and i talked to me in jiu jitsu and freaking obviously that caught on so yeah so this is what 99 it's to be like 2000 2000 2000 2001 oh yeah i mean then i was in city that's where i was training at the time too like all the time but i was mostly training in the daytime because i was going to college at this time so dean and i were training like at lunchtime we'd train for two or in the morning we trained for two three hours in or at lunch so we that was my schedule

at that time yeah uh but we were training all the i was i was training like two to four hours a day two to four yeah for those years from like 2000 to 2003 yeah because remember then brandon barra came in there yep for a while too i trained with brandon all the time too yeah he was a freaking animal yeah it was that's i would come in a night he was mostly there at night it was gran of stuff but yeah he was an animal oh yeah he's a good mentality so fun to train with yeah he we would do drills where we just like lift each other up like body lock and lift and just like switch hands body lock lift switch hands body lock and lift like he had all kinds of crazy stuff because because he trained at the Olympic training center for a while he's a freaking animal he's a and a great dude

oh dude he's the nicest guy oh yeah super nice guy always happy yeah it's good dude so you're doing all that and you're getting ready for buds one thing i kind of tell people people talk about like oh you know I'll train jihitsu and they're going to buds and I tell them like listen six months out from Buds stop doing that but you didn't care I didn't care that's what I did for my training pretty much I was like who likes running I don't like fucking running dude oh I need to run every day I'm like too I'm not running man I'm a good runner but I don't like it does anybody like running no there are there are some people that like running that much so you're doing all that and then you get through

budge go to SQT SQT is all good you wanted did you want to be West Coast to the West Coast teams I didn't care um the uh My best friend in buds, Van Wilson, he's an officer. He's a freaking stud. He wanted me to go East Coast. So I think he filled me out East Coast. I just ended up getting West Coast. You know, so he was a freaking, he was the honor man of her class.

He was a stud. He actually, right after we got our Trident, I had just drove across country, visiting people, stuff like that. He's like, I'm going to drive across country and propose to my girl. And he freaking end up hitting his head on the, and catching his will and dying on that thing. so but that sucked you know he was good dude but yeah graduated with him um tim fox um maca fink a bunch of bunch of good studs in there micah's a good one because uh we're in sqt uh fucking mica he's he's a tough guy yeah for sure you but we butted heads a little bit i was more jihitsu guy i was a tough guy too

it's like two alphas being the same thing you'd be like i don't give a fuck about your jiu jitzy dude all freaking smash you're like because he was a boxer yeah his boxer You know Mike ain't known, but we ended up tussling back and forth a couple of times. We actually became really good friends after that, you know. It's good. I was like, I was like, I was like, all right, all right. And I know what's that. Respect.

Respect. Yeah. But yeah, then went to Team One, did deployment. My first deployment is the Philippines. It was good deployment. What was your job? Breacher. I was the, usually they don't let you go to breach school as a new guy.

But they liked me. So it was tough dude. So I went to Breacher school and it was Breacher that first deployment, even though you don't use it at all. Were you an A-dub? Yeah. Yeah, he died. All this are A-Dub. Whatever is heavy.

And how was Work-up? Work-up was good. I was with a super seasoned guys like Andrew Buckley, Boenacable. Like, I was pretty much the me and this guy, Jason Farter, the only two new guys. I'll tell you a freaking gnarly story I'm a new guy, okay? I don't know if this is going to be good but I have to cut it at the end.

All right. All right. So you know. We'll just try not to say anybody's names. Actually, before that, what's the A-dub? Automatic weapons. Machine gunner. Okay.

Yeah. Good. Very good. So when I was a new guy, we got, you know how we used to have to put a bunch of gas tanks on the bottom of the ribs or whatever and drive it all the way out to San Clementian back? Yeah.

So it was a new guy. I'm on the front of the boat. I fling off the front as we're going out there and I land my butt on a gas can right I know it rips my asshole right have to do the full training for a couple days and that kind of stuff come back and I'm nervous because you know when a new guy you're getting your your nickname you know they're talking about all these cool nicknames of my have you know that kind of stuff and I'm like fucking just worried that my nickname's gonna be fucking sphincter or something like that you know so I get get in

there the other new guy with me I'm like hey but I need you to check this out dude and he's like you know let's show him he's like oh my god dude you gotta go to the doctor now I was like no fucking way I'm going to the doctor dude I'm just for freaking two months I just ate uh freaking medicine and X lax until that shit healed damn fast forward freaking you know 20 years later to meet my wife she's uh you know we're messing around she's like what the fuck is wrong with your ass so anyways yeah that was my new guy experience nobody found out My nickname was not that. It ended up being whiskey steamroller, which is way better.

I'm not going to ruin my whole life after that, you know. And how did you get treated as a new guy? Because you had a little bit of experience from the fleet. You were like, you know, physically had good physical prowess and shit like that. Yeah, you know, at that time, you remember, Jiu-Jitsu was kind of just really starting to get into the teams, you know, and the people were watching it more and more. And at this time, I was pretty damn good, at least better than the average person. And got Hayes a little bit, took.

and then kind of in there rock and roll Prevatera later found out that I was good at Jiu-Jitsu and it's like you think you'd tap out the platoon and I was like yeah if you want at a time yeah let's do it so I think we had the Jiu-Jitsu gym at that time like team five remember it was like the little like kind of training area and for a couple hours they just kind of rotate out I ended up spend most of them and after that never got hazed anymore you know that's that's key any you uh buds guys going out there make sure you good fighter before you go to buds, you know. At least have that in your arsenal. It really is like, I mean, a seal

platoon is sort of, it's a gang, right? It's a gang. And that stuff definitely is for real, like that packing order. And yeah, if you can fight, I mean, that's what our job is to be able to fight. So if you're good at it, people are going to be thankful that you're a good fighter and you can actually train the other guys. And I was the same way because I was into you

to real early. And so it's the same thing. I mean, that's kind of blown out of proportion kind of story of like, jaco submitted his whole platoon. It's like, dude, I knew jihitsu and they didn't. That's all it is. Same thing with you. It's not like you're a better human being. But if you know jihitsu and other people don't know it, bro, they're screwed. Like, it ain't going to work out of good for them.

Well, we're like a pride alliance. We're all kind of biding each other and that kind of stuff. And you're the better bider, dude. Everybody's like, all right, let's go back. No, I mean, it's a warrior mentality. You know, you got to have that warrior thing. So it shouldn't be just a good gunfighter or be all around good fighter, you know?

Yeah, and at the same time, like if you're a person that's like a bully, they will gang up on you and they will take you down and you will pay the man. So it's just like the chimpanzee thing, right? Like even the strongest in the tribe of, what they call the tribe of chimpanzees? I don't know what they're called.

In a pack of chimpanzee, whatever. If one is like super dominant, strong and can kick the other one's asses, but he's an asshole, two or three of them will gang up and take him down. Yep. And kill him so that the other ones, so then they'll have someone that's a better leader, basically. Yeah.

So it's the same thing in the platoon. Like if you're just an asshole and you can kick people's asses and you walk around, like you'll get, you'll get taken down off that pedestal. There's more of them and you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Gangfu. Yeah. So this is now what? 2006. You're going on your first deployment? Yeah, 2005, I think. 2005 somewhere in there. Yeah.

And you go overseas to the Philippines. The war is going on. How did you feel about that? I was wanted to be there. You know, it sucked because, you know, when we first got in our different task units or whatever, a lot of our new guys got pushed to another platoon, which was going to Iraq. But all my older guys liked me now, this guy squared away, let's keep it. I'm like, no, don't keep me.

To Iraq. But it was good. Like, you know, we went to Baselan Island. And we're actually in a pretty bad area. I actually got, no joke. Me, Christian Zuck, Freyer, we got shot in a helicopter. We were coming out of Isabella and we were loitering in MBLT6 and we were in an evergreen with Dinacore or something like that.

And we were told him like, hey, it's kind of a bad area right then. We got lit up. Freaking rounds coming all through the thing. I was like, shit, this is the most action. We can get on this whole deployment. We had to do a little emergency landing. I think one of the SF guys with us got some frag in his leg. Probably got a purple heart.

Who knows? It's stitched up. And then, but yeah, other than that, this is kind of cool, though, because after that, they pushed me up to Manila. To do what? Like, as a liaison or something like that? To train their NavSog, like whatever their Navy SEALs are. Well, they never wanted to train, right? They want it once a week.

So I'm living in this fucking five-star or Ava, or something like that. Really nice hotel, just not with nothing to do all day. So I cruise around, and I was looking for a jiu-jitsu gym or a fighting gym, and I find a boxing gym. and I'm training there and then some guys showed up Alvin Aguilar he's Tawagama in the Philippines

so we're really close now. He started showing up and they had a fighting syndicate there called URC and he was getting a guy Marco ready for a fight and he's a bigger dude and I was just kind of training the boxing gym and I see they're doing MMA and stuff I was like hey

if you guys need a training partner like can I come in there like fucking white boy and like not saying anything And then later on they kept coming back and I kept asking and they're like, ah, come in. So I sparred with this guy and just tuned them up. You know, like my boxing's okay, but I'm a good clinch fighter. You know, I can do well.

And after that, we freaking bonded. I started going to Sukkot, where they lived every day. And for like three, three and a half months, I just trained. I won the Filipino nationals. In what, jiu-jitsu? Yeah. Only white boy in it, right? They're like, you have to live in the field.

Philippines for two years, but the Talaama, the Philippine Tauagama, they call it a fraternity, but it's like a mafia kind of a little bit. But they, he just goes in. He's like, no, he's lived two years, so he's good. So I got to enter. And yeah, I freaking, and there was two, two different kind of fight groups where his was DefTack and the other guys that forget, but they were also a different fraternity, which their fraternity is like, I wasn't been shot up by A.K. And shit, like they're gnarly kind of guys. And so I went in there and I represented deaf tack and just crushed the other teams about that stuff. So it was good. I trained pretty much the whole time there. I never did ghee, really. So that's when I started first learning geese.

Oh, that was a ghee tournament? It was, yeah, it was a ghee tournament. Yeah, it was ghee. So the so that was the first time I started doing that. But he gave me my first blue belt. And yeah, he was a good time. He owned all the local like Air Force. I don't know if you know what Philippines did or no, Air Force One and Starship. The bars. Yeah, they're good bars there. Yeah, but yeah, it was good and actually, um, so you were like King of Manoa. Oh, yeah. Ask, if you ever talked to Bo Nacoblon and it goes, they came up from Towie Toward to come visit.

I'm like in the club with all these people here. I'm like, hey, let him in, let him in. Come on, guys. Like, fucking B shirt out and spiked up here. He was something like, are you even on deployment? Are you even in the military? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it was a good deployment for that, you know, so.

Yeah, well, you made the best of it. Yeah, I made the best of it. Yeah, I made the best of it. What was that saying? said like you brought your brought your passion of the opportunity opportunity over passion bringing passion the opportunity so that's exactly what you did 100% in Manila so you get home from that deployment and then just time for your second platoon second platoon and I was actually with task unit three that was supposed to go to Iraq and Dan you know

Dan Luna is yep okay so Dan Luna I call him the godfather he's awesome he was they were obviously going to Afghanistan a lot more action at that that time in Afghanistan. He was kind of just cherry picking from different, uh, different platoons. And, uh, I was one of those cherry picked. He made, he made just a, uh, the most, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of pie-pitting little groups of guys out there, but me, him, uh, Brandon Cruz, um, Andrew Arbito, um, Brad Kavanaugh, uh, it was just a group of us that were that were freaking ready to, ready to get in, you know, was Dan your platoon, who was he, LPO? My chief. He was the chief of that team.

And, you know, I always say this with wars, right? You can have, it's all your leadership, right? If you, you could be in the most badass combat zone, but if you don't have the right leader to work with the Army and to get the right missions, you get, I push to the side. 100%. You got to be political, you know, so, and Luna was that. Yeah, that's awesome.

He just, he got us into the mix, into the gun fights all the time. It's freaking outstanding. And if it wasn't for that platoon, I probably would stay in teams longer, but that platoon was just, it's a good one, man. It was a good one, dude. It's not supposed to work that way. You're supposed to be like, that was awesome, I'm going to do it again.

You're not supposed to say. Well, everything was shutting down after that, you know? Like Iraq was shut down. I was talking to my guys at Dev, and they're like, ah, we're kind of operating less, and I wanted to get into some contracting after that. I got into contract after that. But no, it was a good platoon.

We got to do crazy stuff. Like, I will go ahead. Well, I was going to say, so this is when I was running trade. And this scenario unfolded and this is this is how I you look I put like a lot of guys through training. Yeah. And obviously if someone's a real turd, you kind of remember them because you got to do paperwork on them and get him shit canned. And then you got a bunch of studs that are just doing good stuff.

But but then there's some guys that are like they stand out, right? You're like, oh, this dude's a freaking pipe hitter. And when I was, I probably, I don't know if I put you through land warfare, but I remember seeing you. I remember seeing you. I remember seeing you. this dude's freaking this dude's getting after you're freaking charging you're making shit happen I was like yeah this dude's a freaking pipe hitter and then you you you your platoon your task and it was going through urban combat training out in Louisville Kentucky and

there you know we would just unleash total mayhem on you guys it would be freaking chaos and sim munition and paintball everywhere and we'd kill your leaders and you know kidnap some of your guys just freaking total chaos to make make guys step up up see who's gonna step up and so there's one scenario I actually tell this story from like a leadership perspective is I'm sitting there and your platoon I don't know we probably killed your platoon could probably probably kill Dan Luna like he's probably you know in the back of a Humvee dead or some shit but I know this is a dude we were with Effie I hadn't transferred to Luna's thing I'm still getting cherry picked at this time oh okay yeah yeah but we were I remember we were

locked down in the courtyard yeah something like that everything was down there's gunfire yeah so we had that's what we had the situation where It's just total chaos and no one's making any decisions and someone's got to make a call Someone's got to step up and I I remembered you from like just being a a freaking pipe pititter So I walk over here you're like a younger guy right to me. I mean I was probably like 38 or something like at that time you're a younger dude but I walk over and you're like looking at me You're like crouched down behind this wall and I was like hey bro What do you think you guys should be doing right now and you're like you look around you're like we should get in that fucking building right now

And I was like fucking make it happen and the look on your face it was like I flipped a switch as a as a human where you realized bro I know what to do I'm a freaking frog man I can make this shit happen and you're like all right everyone get to that building right now we're gonna strong point it and sure enough everyone did it yeah and I was like hell yeah that's what I'm talking that was one of those moments in my in my learning voyage where I was like yeah dude if us if someone can step up as a leader doesn't matter who they are in the platoon and I knew this from when I was a young guy. That's the shit I was doing when I was a young guy.

And it's a real testament to what that that kind of quote that I started off with is like, if you have good guys in the platoon, the platoon's going to win. They're going to figure out a way to win. And that was that moment. That's why I remembered you. Like from that moment on, I was like, yeah, that dude's a freak of stud. And that was just a badass thing. And then I ended up, you know, then I found out you trained jihitsu, you know, which was like once I found out you trained Ditsy wrong. Thank God. 100%.

Let's make this guy freaking master chief of the Navy as far as I'm concerned. But yeah, that's what you need. And platoons have that. And like I said, the only time a platoon really fails,

occasionally it's because they just don't have one person like that. Occasionally that happens. It doesn't happen very often. But what can happen is you can have some leaders in there, some studs in there, but you have one really bad leader

that, you know, like in that situation, you could have a lead to it said, hey, Bates, shut the fuck up, you know, you're not in charge. Like, that can happen. Yeah. And you watch it happen. Maybe it's the Platoon Chief.

Maybe it's the OIC. Hey, you keep stay in your lane, right? Stay in your pay grade. Like, that shit actually happens. It doesn't happen very often. Yeah. But if you have a guy that's a little bit insecure or whatever, and they'll be like, Bates, you need to stay in your lane.

And it bothers them. Yeah. And that's when you have actual platoon failures where we have to recycle them or maybe we got a shit can the platoon chief. But it happens pretty. Because usually a platoon chief. tune chief or an OIC's like, dude, they're freaking stoked that they got a stud. Like Bates is out there making shit happen.

And they're like, cool. Hey, good job. Thank you. Which is how it should be. Yep. Because that's what we want. You want decentralized command. You want people to step up and lead.

So that left a huge impression on me. You know, and there was always a guy in the task unit like that. There was always like a Ryan Bates in there. You know, JP didnell was like that. When he was in my task, and JP was that guy, I was like, oh. And there was a few of them. But JP, I'd be like, hey, JP. And he'd be like, freaking ready to go.

You know? Like ready. to slay and make shit happen. He could do it. And there's always, you know, usually there's two, three guys, two three pipe-hitting E-4s, E-5s, E-6s that they're going to make shit happen. They're going to win. They're going to find a way to win.

And that's what makes it awesome. Yeah, also, too, like I always think, like, for leadership, people that get to micro-manage, right, and they kill the vibe of the guy that's trying to do it, right? I always think, and I was, you know, Dan Luna taught me this. He's like, let your boys work. You know, if they, maybe they don't get from, A to B the way you want them to, but they get from A to B and then make it happen, let your boys work. Let them work.

If you start taking away the power, they're not going to freaking work, you know. So, yeah, I always, yeah, there's leaders out that they don't let you do that micromanage you too much. They want it their way, anal, but no, let you guys get after it, you know, because we're a bunch of alphas, right? We're a bunch of alphas. We all want to get it, you know? So, like, if you let us think about them, we're all pretty smart.

Yeah. You know, let's get to work, you know? And then that gives them powers the platoon, and then they just fucking take off, like, our whole, or just wrecking crew, you know? And that's the unstoppable shit. That's a freaking great sail platoon. Yep. That's what it boils down to.

But yeah, I wish I had like a helmet cam or something. Because, dude, I can remember the look on your face. It was like, oh, shit. I was like, I can do this. Like, I can do this. It was kind of like, I can do this. I can do this. And you freaking made it happen.

Well, you know, at that time that platoon I was with, we kind of had micromanager, right? And, you know, it was, and at that time when you said that, you know, most of the guys in the team, looked up to you because he already came back from Iraq and he had those stories and stuff like that and when you come up and like hey get to work and I'm like fuck yes you so freaking it's so legit it's like you I had the permission now to fucking make things happen you know yeah that's good you go about you the debrief jocco told me I could do it people back all right well I guess you can do it and that was so so then after that you got they put together like a like a handpicked team to go to

Afghanistan? Yeah, because obviously Iraq was kind of closing down. They're doing more police action there. And Afghanistan is really kicking off 2009, 2010. And so they, so Dan Luna got kind of, I don't know, the opportunity to cherry pick out of the other battoons and make a, make a wrecking crew. And he did, man. We, we went there. I mean, he was a great leader. Like, he was one of the better leaders I've had because I was a team one with him, like long, long. Yeah. Yeah. When I, yeah, so. Yeah, he, uh, I don't know. I just the fact. like what I told you he was political where he knew how to talk to people in a you know respectful smart way to make the get us more work and at the same time he was out there with us doing the work with us so he was and and he was all about like hey just make it happen don't let's not get all crazy about shit let's just

fucking crush everyone and that's pretty much what it was so we had crazy ideas out there we were like we're in Fob Anaconda and listen be coming into Fob Anaconda we were in a Chinook On the way into, like, maybe 500 yards out, we get RPEG that shoots past this, right? I think it's them shooting off the flares. And I'm like, talked to the gun. I'm like, what is that? And they're like, it's RPG.

I'm like, get me out of this fucking helicopter. Yeah, so that's just coming into it. And at that time, the base was getting attacked like every other day. And we'd be, if we'd go 200 yards off the base, we're in a firefight. And it was just eight of us, eight of us. So R.OIC was a new guy, but a pipe hitter. But he was one of those guys just let. I wouldn't say he was like he like was manipulated by by freaking Luna but he would listen to

Luna as a leadership you know well Luna is an experienced guy yep and that OIC who I know who it is is like a guy that's smart enough to be humble enough to be like okay yeah it sounds like a good plan you know so we had him as an OIC or we had good guys in OIC and then we had just a little wreck crew we went up there and and we did crazy stuff like like I saw a bunch of horses there And they were just halter broke there at crappy. So for like almost a month and a half, I just broke him out there. My grandpa sent me out. What's halter broke?

You can't ride them really. You know, so they can lean them around, but it's harder. They're not really rain broke. So you can only use them for like carrying stuff. Carrying stuff. And if they, if you can ride them, they don't listen to their rains at all. They're really green. So how long is this, you get on the ground and you see freaking horses?

Who had the horses? Just the people around? The Afghan people? Yeah, there was a couple raunchy ones on base. There was like, on a little fob that just, they were just really shitty horses. I got some pictures of pretty cool. Dan, at the time, we were high altitude, so we weren't getting the air support a lot. So sometimes we were patrolling in like 10, 15 kilometers in night with like 100 pounds on our back, you know.

And it was freaking sucky. So I was like, hey, dude, I think I could break some of these horses and get them set up. And we can do off horseback. And he was like, do it. All right. So my grandpa sent me out. My thing had to build a post and get around crowd going. So what did your grandfather send you?

Sent me like a rope so I can rope them. And then different horses, different like pack saddles and stuff like that. And they had some saddles there, but they're real shitty. And just stuff where I can, you know, work and start working them. And like, you know, it's been a while since I did it. But I was like, they're tiny horses. Like 13-hand horses are tiny. And Brandon Cruz is out there with him.

He's like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but I'll help you. And so we just started getting to it, getting the horses rained, the hardest part is once they're pretty rideable is to train in the seals to ride them. They wouldn't listen. Just guys like hawking him in the face. Listen to me. Poor Bito, right? Bito's a pretty athletic guy and he's in alpha like the worst.

I gave him the worst horse. I was like, I joked around. I was like, hey, get on this horse. The freaking horse takes off. Just sprint around. Tries to clip him on a Connix box. Almost takes him off. Run straight into the freaking wall.

Bito has to do a split over the top and land in the dirt. Almost kills him, right? Seriously, almost kills him. But the but yeah, we ended up Was Bito a horse rider prior to this? No. Yeah. None of the team guys were.

Oh, yeah. That was, it was terrible. It was terrible. But we ended up getting going and we did pretty, I think like, I don't know, probably 30, 40 missions off horseback. But mostly what we were doing, I did one with riding in. But again, the stills just weren't good riders. So it just didn't work out, you know.

So we ended up using them most as just pack animals, putting all of our weight. taking off our plates, moving fast to the night, you know, and then taking down a compound, bringing the horses in, fighting out with the Taliban, and then put them all the weight and going out at night again. And so that's really what we did for that whole mission set for those four months. It was awesome. It was a... Did you have, did you have, were you working with Afghans? Did you have Afghan like partner force? No. Oh, Hazarians, but they never came with us. So it was just you guys. Yeah. Yes. We didn't have any like, how you'd have to take a couple with you. No, so just imagine that.

Dude, yeah. It was a good time and it was all guys that were. So were you sending, was the OIC like sending up for mission approval like, yo, transport will be horses? Yeah, pretty much. That's freaking epic, man. Yeah, they got me award an army, Army achievemental with the V for it and stuff. So I got, I got a word for it.

But yeah, they liked it. And what were the missions? What were you guys, like, what was a mission that you would be doing? So, like you're going into a compound. Who's selecting the compound? What are you looking for? Intel in the area, they would say Taliban safe havens. Like maybe they use cashies there or they house it when they come through.

So we would get that intel from the people in town because most of the people in Afghanistan, they don't like the Taliban, like a gang. You know, so and it was a very heavily Hazarian, which the posh to the Taliban really persecute the Hazarian. So they helped out a lot too. And plus the Taliban at the time where they're making IEDs with kids' toys on them. And little kids are getting blown up left and right. So the town was really kind of on our side,

and they would give us the people that in the area that we house them, then we'd go in there, take down the thing, turning and find the cachets. And then honestly, like, I'll show you the videos like, I'd just get on the loudspeaker, and I'd say, Taliban like a Koshuji-Janki, saying, like, you fight like girls, come fight us. And they would come out and fight.

And it's weird, too, because Sun would rise, they'd fight for us. They'd fight all day. we would, I was a sniper in that too, so I'd snipe at them. We'd have guys that flank them. Then they'd stop for from 12 to one to do prayer. And then come to 2 o'clock, here's the fight go again. And before it comes down, the sun comes down, they're out.

So it was good. Nobody, nobody, we did have one, CNASC got his legs blowing off in the very first of that. You know, Dan Knawson? Yeah. Yeah, that was our deployment on that deployment. So, but other than that, everybody else, nobody, that happened literally in the first, like, week we were there.

That was his first. Yeah. It was turnover ops. Turnover ops, yeah. But that happened in the first. Turnover ops was always a little sketchy. Yeah, they're always little sketchy. It's always right when the guys are leaving.

Yeah. But yeah, that whole deployment, nobody got hurt after that. You know, some people got shot in their plates, but everybody came home safely other than, and even, you know, CNAS came back. He just lost his legs, you know. But, yeah, it was a good deployment. And what was your op tempo like? How often were you going out?

Every other day, every two days. It was a lot. it was good and and 30 or 40 those was on was bringing them horses with you how how many horses would you take maybe three or four and put our weight on them you know we would we go out with um with mortars a lot we did bea was like a freaking idiot savant with that freaking mortar because it's handheld you know how you're doing that little handheld you just be like i'd just be like I'm like he was good with that mortar man um and then I'd put my sniper rifle whole bunch stuff. We would take out a bunch of law rockets. We had a good story. The DEA was on one and

they were burning hash on the compound and I was on the roof and it was kind of blowing in on me. I was getting positive. I was like, boom, we started getting hit, right? And everybody jumps off. It's me and a couple of the guys up there and my new guy throws a grenade out and he's a little bit, whatever, feeling a little lightheaded. I was like, are they that close? Like, no, man, I just want to throw a grenade. People are throwing up law rockets. I'm shooting. I have no idea where that went. I look at Brandon Cruz.

He's sitting with me and he's on the ALGL, the old thing that breaks down. He takes two rounds right in the screen. I was like, get down. He's like, oh, shit. Yeah, that was one of our deployments on it. But yeah, we used to take DAA and they found different stuff they burn it on. But if you're sitting there for a long time. And you guys that use no vehicles?

at all? No, not really. We would, uh, kind of nice. Very rarely. Like, uh, it's really sketchy there because,

if you're in bad air, there's really only one, it's not like you're in a city where you can take different routes. Like a couple times I was in a vehicle, I'm like, we're getting blown up. It's going to happen, dude.

We had those weird things with the tires in front of it that's supposed to roll. I don't know what that's going to do, though. No, but, uh, but no, but no, mostly everything was,

uh, oh, we did have side by sides. I think we're the first platoon to use those side-by-sides out there, and we broke them all by the end. They're all for hand trash, but mostly just patrolling. Patrolling. Helo's a lot of times, but high altitude, you always need those Chinooks.

So if we couldn't get the air, you'd just be patrolling in most of the time. But it was, if I would think, you know, and it would be eight of us, we're cruising with some horses, and I'm pointing, I'm way up there, and I just like cruising. You know, you had to use those eight. C-130's overhead. I felt like a lion pride just cruising through like the valleys

ready to get after it, you know. It was a good deployment, man. Did you guys do like immediate action drills with the horses? Did you talk about how it was going to go down? Yeah, we talked about it. We got to like an I had coming back and we, it was shitty because we were coming through

a freshly plowed like farm or something. So we're stepping in like knee high and the horse just bound it back with us. We're getting shot, we're shooting, moving back, boom, boom, boom, boom, getting back to the compound. It was probably good like 500 yards. We were I in back or doing those immediate action drills all the way back. I'm like moving through this just plowed freaking field.

And the horses stayed with us the whole time, dude. Without you hold on to him, they just knew that you were. Yeah. At the end, they were kind of like, I spent so much time with them. I had this one named Whiskey. He was a little stud, dude. Yeah, they actually had. try to get where I could take him back with me.

They were trying to put in paperwork, but I was like, where am I going to put him out of? I live in PB. I mean, I'll roll around PB with my horse, you know. But he was honestly like every day because they were just run loose in our compound kind of thing. So every day you'd just wake up. I'd be like whiskey, come over there, eat naple out of my hand. So at the end, I would patrol and I wouldn't even have a lead rope.

He would just fall on my back hip, you know. So it was cool, man. It was, it was, you know, I've heard a lot of stories about horse stuff, but it was, it was a cool horse experience. Oh, for sure. I felt like it was in the Wild West, you know, 100%. How long was it when you started working with the platoon before you, working with the horses and then working with the platoon before you got it before you took them out on an op? I mean, we, we brought them out on holters pretty soon, pretty quick, but the horse ride is probably like a month into it. And that was kind of a shit show.

It's a Brad Cabiner, right? I love him to death, but he's agro. He gets agro. I gave him like one of the worst horses. He couldn't rain him. He just went where he wanted. You're just being a dick handing out the freaking shitty horses. Yeah, because Brad Catern used to get a super agroo.

He gets pissed and I was like, here, take this from Brad. He's like, he's trying to ride. He's like, where are you going to fucking go, horse? Slapping him in the face. I'm like, god damn. Horses do wherever he wanted to. It was, we visited a school that it was more kind of like, it wasn't for a real hardcore off.

It was in the area. This Azarian school got burnt down, a bunch of the teachers killed because the Taliban was in the area. They didn't want any kind of schools going on. And at the end, we pushed all the Taliban out that they were able to start their school again. So it was us. We rode in to meet them is what we did. So we all came in a horseback. Bito came in with just a loincloth and a freaking chest rig.

Paint himself, painted his face half black with a mohawk. Right. The kids are just like, what the hell is this? Dude, no joke. Boots with a loin clot, that's it, you know? So we rolled in like that and visited the kids, like, let him thank us. And then we cruise back to the thing. But it was good, like, you know, probably six-mile ride, five-mile ride, you know? Yeah, dude, there's pictures of Beto in that get up.

That shit never would have flowed if I was there not a million years. I love Vito. I think it's frigging awesome. I'm so glad he did it. But it shit wouldn't have happened on my watch, bro, zero percent chance. That wasn't on an op that we were actually freaking operating on those. So kids probably thought they didn't know what to think. Oh, yeah.

Those pictures of Bito like that. They're the most epic freaking pictures. And I'm like, yeah, I love those pictures so much. And there's just, I'm being honest, there was a zero percent chance. This motherfucker would have been doing that shit if I was there, like zero. And he probably would have known that. Like anyone was around me, they know shit. Shady Fly,

with a jocko. Yeah, but we kind of had like free reign at that time. So we were just being cowboys and stuff. I went, I went more like jeans into like a, uh, freaking,

uh, jungle top. I thought that was cool. But, you guys all looked. You guys all freaking got the seal fashion quall on that one. It looked like the back street boys. Dude.

From Afghanistan. It's so funny. Like, that's the kind of shit. Yo, I was always like, hey, look,

you know, we got to be professional and all this shit. Like, that's, I mean, I stopped my guys from wearing patches. You know what I mean? and they had to do it behind my back.

But, yeah. But you were also close to the flagpole, too. You had to be like that, right? Well, yeah, in Ramada, you definitely, we were, yes, 100%. Yeah, yeah. But even my previous deployment, like, we were kind of, we were in Baghdad, but my guys weren't going to see anyone from the senior leadership. But I was still like, hey, dude, you got to, you got to, you got to, you got to, you got to be professional.

That was just, you know. That's how you get the more ops, you know. That's how you get the more ops. Yeah, 100%. And look, you guys were freaking in the middle. nowhere, you know, and horseback. Fucking horseback, like some shit. And you can kind of, I guess, you know, I can imagine if those pictures would have

made it up to the, up to the leadership that have been like, well, listen, you know, we were out there. You know, it's important to blend in with the local poppice. So who, the Comanchees? With the Mohawk. Yeah, dude. That's freaking. Oh, man.

But yeah, that was, that was a good one. And then. There's like that. picture of Chuck Keating too where he's got like his sleeves cut off his shirt he's got to be a fat cigar in his mouth and I'm like I love that picture yeah I can I have to be honest like if I was around that shit never would happen like wouldn't have square your shit away yeah I would just square your shit away but I'm glad that there was enough leeway so we get some really cool pictures yeah yeah yeah yeah freaking is that why beatle calls half face blades half face blades is that yeah kind of off that yeah yeah from that uh

little thing I know Is there some other, like how did he, where'd that come? I'm going to have to have beetle on and talk about it. Yeah, you got to have a beat on. 100%. Yeah, he, uh, you know, he's really artistic. Yeah. Call him autistic artistic.

He's freaking, he just comes up with cool shit all the time. Even when we were out there, he's a really good cook, an amazing cook. Like, like Michelin Star cook. He would like, uh, just cook us food all the time out there. I'm like, hey, man, cook us up some gourmet, maybe like truffle salt, freaking eggs and that kind of stuff. Yeah. I don't know. He's just really, uh, creative.

He's a creative guy, man. Because remember, he also built that B&S brewery, too. What's B&S brewery? He had a brew. He fell out with business part of stuff, but he designed that whole brewery that's in Santee. Oh, okay. But how it looks inside, that's all him. Okay.

Yeah, he's artistic for sure. Yeah. Yeah, but. Well, clearly, I mean, you look at his knives and his hatchets and everything. Those things are freaking amazing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's good at whatever he does, man. Yeah.

He was a, he was definitely, he was definitely a guy that was not a follower. Yeah. Even in the teams. Yeah, you know, it's like one of those things where you have to have a level of creativity if you're going to be really good. So we covered this book on this podcast. It's called the psychology of military incompetence. Okay.

And the whole book is about basically there's people that are attracted to the military. And the reason they're attracted to it is because they see like this good order and discipline that they want to be a part of and that they kind of want to be in charge of. Right. So they see like, oh, if I put on this uniform, people are going to have to salute me. They're going to have to listen to me. They have to call me, sir. And they really kind of get off on that.

And those kind of people can do really well in the military in peacetime. And in garrison situations because it's like, hey, we all need to be wearing this thing. And you be at this time and follow these directions and all that. And they do really good when things are peaceful. But when war breaks out, they kind of lose their minds because all of a sudden, like, wait a second. The enemy didn't do what I thought they were going to do. The enemy wasn't supposed to do that and they kind of fall apart and their guys do things that they didn't expect and so they kind of fall apart So you want to have that good combination and that's what you want in a platoon in a platoon you want like a couple guys that are like yo dude

We need to follow the rules and a couple guys that need to be like yo we need to like bend the rules a little bit and make this happen and you want to have that good combination and then of course you want to have somebody that's overall in charge It's like all right we can bend these and that's going a little far so put a freaking pair of pants on Bido Yes grow him a little bit Fucking one cloth. All right. Let's rain the commandee in here. And that, but you end up with guys like in a situation like that.

Like you, clearly there's no doctrine for, okay, we're in this area of operations. We're going to start breaking horses and utilizing them for a transport. That's not a, that's not a thing. You're probably the first, well, you know, you're definitely not many seals. Yeah. Have gotten on horseback and gone to, I know there's a bunch of SF guys that did it, too. like early in the war. Yeah.

But it's just not a normal thing. And you thought outside the box and for lack of a better word, but you have a creative sense like, oh, we can make this happen. And then that ends up with a really positive result. Yep. And so those are the kind of things you want in the SEAL teams. You want, and in the military in general, you want to have people that are like, okay, cool, I can see what we're doing.

I get it. I understand the constraints. But hey, we could probably do this too. That's what you want. 100%. I think that's, it's bred in us even from buds, you know? We're all kind of equals. Right? I think that's why I like the teams. Everybody says that their force is the best.

What I like about the teams is everybody gets a seat at the table. Yeah. You know, if you're squared away, you know, a straight shooter and your freaking pipe hitter, you know, you get, even if you're on your second platoon, maybe even on your first, but you got a good idea and people respect it. You get a seat at the table and get to talk, you know. I think that's what makes us a great force is everybody, everybody has their ideas. And then, yeah, probably one guy just be like, it's a great, a little bit too much. Little bit too much. Let me back off a little.

Let's pull it back a little. And you do attract guys Like even me as much as I'm like a pretty Lean towards like the Marine Corps type discipline type thing That's kind of where I lean but still I joined the teams Because I saw motherfuckers wearing jeans and boony hats and nom And I was like that's what I want to do And then I got in the teams and especially as I moved up

I started entering the mindset of like oh We gotta form good relationships with these people We gotta be professional like that's definitely where I ended up It's not where I started no Because he used to be enlisted right before I was listed for my first eight years when I was at team one. And yeah, it was awesome. But even then, you know, so I got very lucky and had a very weird career in that I did,

I did one deployment to Guam. This is in the 90s. There's nothing going on, but I did a deployment to Guam. That was cool, whatever. But then I did two ARG deployments, which meant back in the day meant you wrote a ship. And so I was riding a ship. I'm working, you're working with, there's, whatever, there's 16 or 18. We got plused up a little bit.

So we had 18 seals. And then, whatever, three. thousand Marines or whatever that freaking group is so we're a really small part and we're working with the Marines all the time and so I got very integrated and I was a comms guy yeah so I got very integrated with the Marine Corps and how they operated and what it looked what it was like going to their briefs going with my OIC who is taking me to these brief so I could come up with the comms plan but now I'm sitting there like in a big brief with the Marines with the with a colonel or lieutenant colonels from the

battalion and I'm like oh so I got Introduced to conventional forces and even just the big navy because bro yeah, I know Yeah, I know. Yep like you you at least had a little bit of experience You take someone like Bido I mean this motherfucker. He doesn't know what the hell's He's like what he's mass right away. Yeah like what's captains we didn't even know what the captain is They're like bro. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, so I would have been like that but luckily I did those Couple art platoons where I'm integrated with the big Navy Yeah, going to big briefs with captains and Commodores and

colonels and you're like okay I understand so I kind of learned what it took to build good relationships with the conventional forces and that really paid dues for me because when when I was a platoon commander and a task unit commander that's what I had to do more so the platoon commander it was pretty early in the Iraq war we were kind of my task unit commander kind of ran a bunch of stuff and it was very I mean I was basically like an assault force commander for the whole time like all it's all I do is go take down buildings and whatever but when I was a true commander now it was like total integration with the army in the Marine Corps and it was hey first and foremost you got to be professional make those things happen but inside the

platoon like you know my guys were saying hey here's some things we could do here's some insertion methods here's some ways we could set things up that were not that were unconventional thinking and so it ended up being a great combination of that and and like you said that's what you need in a platoon that's what you need in the SEAL teams you're going to end up with some guys that are a little bit far in one direction you're going to up some guys a little far in the other direction and what you should end up with what you should end up with is a nice happy medium yeah where dudes are like all right we're we've we land in a place that makes sense yeah you know which is what we want yeah

you know I always feel that way like when when guys get in trouble you know I'd be like damn I wish I was that guy's boss because if I was their boss I would not shit would not gonna you wouldn't let it get to that point hey man you can't wear that and look I'm picking on Bito I get it but you know guys get in trouble if he was gonna listen to podcast like fuck you chaco guys get in trouble all the time guys get in trouble in teams yeah course and I'm always like dude if I was there this dude would not have been doing that dumb shit I would like hey bro you can't do that like J.P. Donnell tells a great story when I met him for the first time he's like in his

second platoon we're at an island and I'm like bro what you do you know what happened your hand and he's like I fell down and I was like hey bro I've been in the teams for 15 years who did you hit and he He's like, I've got a fight. And I was like, listen, man, I want you to go on deployment with me so you can kill bad guys. Do you want to do that or do you want to get in bar fights? He's like, I want to go kill bad guys. I was like, cool, don't get any more bar fights.

Like that right there, that's all it takes. Yep. I'm not saying JP didn't get any more bar fights because he did. But at least it was less. JP's such a nice guy too, man. When he gets down, he's a warrior dude. So it was like, okay, when you, when you, and I always had guys like that. You're always going to have to be pulling the reins on guys.

Most guys. Well, I shouldn't say most guys. a platoon, whatever, 18 guys, you've got three or four guys, you've got to pull the reins on them. You've got three or four guys, you've got to push them. There's three or four guys that are like, I'll sit here in the tent and play video games. Those guys are in the teams. Yeah. And so some guys you'll be pushing, some guys will be pulling back.

And that's all good. That's what makes the good platoon happen. Yeah. And if you don't have that, then people do things that they shouldn't be doing. You also have to have the freaking wherewithal. Yep. To look at a guy and be like, hey, dude, you. You can't do that.

And they go, you fucking pussy. It's like, no, no, no. I actually don't want you to get in trouble. Yeah. I actually want us to continue to do our job. I actually want you to, you know, be able to progress with your career. I don't want you to go to captain's mask. All those things?

Yeah. Like, I'm not a pussy. I actually just want you to do good. Yeah. And I never had a guy that was like, well, that doesn't make any sense. It's like, hey, bro, I get it. I see where I call. And probably that's because I wasn't an e-dog.

Yeah, because you had the experience. You saw, I think some of the best, some of the best officers of guys that were e-dogs prior worked with them and then because they know what they're thinking like like a guy's coming. You could speak to them in a better manner you know? Yeah.

I never forgot where I came from. You know, I was never like, I can't believe you got in a fight. I was like, AJP, I know you got to fight. I get it.

I used to hear those old stories because when we turned over in Philippines was with Gude. Oh, yeah. And Gude said you guys just to battle back in the day. Oh, yeah.

It's about the war of the giants are guests. You know? I don't know. Oh, man. He's a big boy too. Yeah. He's a freaking stud.

I mean, what a freaking stud. So that's what we're doing. So you do this deployment. Yep. And I mean, during deployment, you guys were engaged the whole time. You're doing good missions the whole time. Pretty much the whole time, like right towards the end even.

I think even as they were doing turnover ops, some of the guys in different places are still get shot in the plates. And it was from the start when seen us when we got there all the way to the end. It was go time. And I mean, I'm honestly like, I know everybody says they've had good deployments. And, you know, I've talked to a lot of guys that were on your deployments to like Jason Hogan, stuff like that. But man, it was a good one for us. Yep.

I loved it, you know. Oh, yeah. I mean, one tenth of what you said. Yeah. It's like, that's a great deployment. Yeah. But then when you do 100% of that stuff, it's like, hell yeah. Get after.

Yeah. That's what you came in for. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Who wants to be a peacetime seal, you know? Nobody. Yeah. Yeah, well, I wasn't used to and seal for a long time.

Yeah, but then you weren't though. Yeah, I know. I'm sure from the day one you wanted to get after it. Oh, of course. It's so weird because we, the whole mentality in the 90s was we thought we would get to do one, like if we were lucky, you'd get to do one mission. You'd like, something would happen and you'd get to do a mission. Yeah. And then that would be it.

You'd be like, yo, we did a mission. And, yeah, when September 11th, even after September 11th, I was like, I hope I get to do a mission. Yeah. And the officer detail was like, Jocko, this war is going to last a long, long time. And I was kind of like,

I didn't believe him. Yeah. I didn't believe him. Now, he was probably more right than he thought he was because two decades of fighting. That's crazy. Yeah,

that's freaking crazy, dude. Crazy stuff. So as you, as you're getting ready to get done with that deployment, first of all, did you turn over the horses? Did you try and explain that to the next guys?

It was a, it was a, uh, now it was his fifth group that came in. And they didn't want to do. thing to do with it. And honestly, too, because, you know, horses, horses feet, if you don't have right shoes on their feet and their toenails grow, if you don't have to take care of that and you're walking on rocky, they'll start splitting and turn lame. And honestly, pretty much

every single one of the horses at the end were lame. You know, they're all, because all their nails are splitting. Because I couldn't get the, whatever horseshoes for them. I didn't know, I need all the, I mean, I never, I never horseshooted. I mean, I usually had people that do it. So, like, you need, you have to clip the nails and you have to clean them out and have any of that gear. You know, you could try to do your best. And your grandfather didn't send it to you with a YouTube video. You're trying. Here's how you do the shit.

Dude, their hosts are so tiny too. And like, I could probably do it. But like trying to get the right shoes for them out there. And, I mean, they were tiny horses. I'll show you pictures. They are tiny-ass horses. And they really didn't start going lame until the last couple weeks. But I could see them.

All their, all their toes are splitting. So we kind of handed off a bunch of lame horses to the next guys. But they didn't want any of it. Dude. They're like, what? No, dude. Honestly, the SF guys didn't even want to leave base that much. A couple of them got freaking smoked in the first little bit that they got there.

And so they're just like, nah. And we're like, all right, we'll get it. So, yeah, the next guys that came in, they didn't want anything to do with it. And so, who knows? But I almost got to bring that horse back. Yeah. Yeah, the our officer's ROIC liked it. And he, like, ran it up the chain.

They're like, yeah, we can work on it. But I was like, dude, where am I going to keep it? Yeah. It would have been cool in PB, though, right? Whiskey. Yeah. Right up my horse. Probably got it some chicks that way, you know.

So as you're coming home from that deployment, are you, are you thinking about getting out? So that's kind of where it is, right? Screen like me, screen or get out is what I kind of thought at the time. Remember, I never had this huge life kind of dream to be a seal or do anything. I really just wanted adventures and do stuff. And so like, I had some adventures. So I was kind of that point at 12 years. by this point, right?

So obviously, if I do another one, obviously, screen and go that route, staying for the 20. And then that stuff was kicking off in, the piracy stuff was kicking off, Tom Rathor, or Tom's company, Trident Group. It's 2011. And I think Bito screened and so did, so do cruise. And I was like, guys, I'm getting out, man, I'm going to go. And, you know, they all talk to you a couple times,

I'll be like, hey, man, listen to me. You got a lot of experience. Let's give it back to the thing. you know, I think I came and did the Jiu-Jitsu for you for a little bit and that and I was just like, you know, I'd understand, but I don't, I just want to do other stuff. You know, I want to do cool stuff. So get out and me Lee, why I'm on term leave, go do my first, do anti-piracy, right? Did you ever talk to any guys that did it or no? Yeah, yeah, but not in any kind of like in-depth stuff.

Okay, well, it was a good time. I'm going to tell you. So first one I get on. Flying to Malta, you know, half. of beers, you know, I'm single during this time. At this time, I sell everything in America. You know, I'm just living in a backpack. I'm going rogue. You know, I'm going to travel and use this because you're going to change your home of record every ship. And you work for that ship, but then you're off contract. Just you contract on that ship and you go. So I'm, I'm like,

well, I'm just going to live in Europe, you know, flying to Rome, fly from Rome, go out to Lisbon or whatever, you know. And so I come in there. I get into Malta. And at this time, there's like three old seals. I mean, they're bold as dirt for like this. 60s or so. I don't know. They're not even from the like peacetime seals but just fat. One of them's called gut, right? We get in, we fly into Malta, we buy our weapons from our arms dealer there, we bring it on to the ship and then we go to Suez Canal and we start going down the Red Sea. Once we get to the Gulf of Aden, we get attacked by one small boat, right? So it's coming up, and it misses the angle and it's come behind us and they shoot at us and I'm like,

pop, blah, blah, blah. I shoot back. But the other guys don't shoot. I'm like, are we not supposed to shoot what's going on they're like oh yeah yeah we we should shoot i'm like okay these guys never been in a firefight before my life right um end up getting one of the guys on the boat he uh our navy ship picked him up i got him the hip and he passed away on that and then literally five days later biggest privacy private piracy attack ever one of the guys released on youtube it's it's pretty pretty freaking i watched it yesterday you watched it yeah okay the guy i got nervous when that happened the guy and pat got fired from it right um because he He let him get in too close, that kind of stuff.

So we get in, like, freaking, that actually goes on for a long time, that whole thing. But they come all the way into the ship. We put the, so that what was happening, I was on the bridge when it happened. There's like a boat, it's an office of quadr. There's a boat just sitting in the shipping lanes. And I was like, talking to the Indian, it was all Indian crew. It's like, what's that? And they're like, oh, I don't know, maybe nothing.

I was like, where the big boat just sitting in the middle of the ocean running the shipping lane? Sure enough, as soon as the boat came over to the horizon, And they were at least two small boys on us. And over the water, it takes a long time. You know, it's like, it doesn't happen all in there. It's like 15 minutes to watch. We just drilling in. So we put the crew in the bottom.

So they had like a squared away system. They got a boat to launch mini boats from and stuff? Yeah, Mother's ship. That was an old fishing vessel. And they had, you know, whatever, 20 foot skiffs on it. Lower it down. There's about eight to nine guys per skiff. And you're watching all this happen.

Yeah, I'm just watching. I was like, well, this is awesome. I'm going to get my, make my little loophole. I get already. It's literally like shooting fish in a barrel. What were you shooting? A.Rs. A.Rs. You either buy A.Rs or A.Ks. Did you have yours like all dialed in? No, you can't. You buy them from arms. They get on the ship and you can't really side them in. But really, it doesn't really matter on the water anyways. If you look at it, we miss a lot, but you got to walk the rounds in. Because it's hard to tell the distances, you know, 100 yards looks at like 50 yards on there, you know.

So they come in. We put the city guys in the citadel. One guy stays a citadel. like at the bottom of the ship where they can't get shot. So there's like 20 crew. You put all them on the bottom of the ship. And who's driving the ship? The captain stays up. So he stays up. Okay.

Some of them, sometimes they don't. It's just us trying to figure out how to drive the boat. It's not good. It's such a wild west. It's crazy. You know, so they go down.

They come in. Pat, he didn't wait. Like, he let him get, if you listen to me on my version, I'm like, yeah,

they're getting pretty close. Do you want us to start warning shots? No time for warning shots. They're already coming and shooting at us. So they start shooting at you? Yeah. Well, we give them warning shots and then immediately start shooting back. Got it.

And they're shooting everywhere. They don't know where you get some big ship. They're shooting everywhere. They don't know where they're getting shot at it. They freaking, they hit the boat and then we're over the top. That whole boat just gets swayed. And then they get behind. There's a little kind of shooting.

And we kind of waste them all back there. And then another boat comes in. I was like, Jesus, this is the best firefight ever. Because it's not like we're in a, it's a, like you're shooting ducks in a barrel except for you're shooting pirates in a freaking little boat yeah you're behind like we built sandbags you're fortified you know they don't know where you're at they're shooting everywhere you're just like so anyways that whole thing goes down the funniest part is uh the indian crew comes up right and he's like so thankful he's like oh

he's like thank you ryan thank Ryan I'm so so appreciative let me offer you my daughter for marriage No, no, no, no. Let me see a picture. Let me see a picture, buddy. No, but that really did happen. Then we get off, we get off in Sri Lanka, and then we're off. You get paid like 40, 50 grand. And so I immediately call every friend that I, that's on the fence about staying and

and getting, I'm like, listen to me, guys, we fly into Malta, we get a jump on the ship, we just shoot with no dangers. We get a jump off of 50 grand, and then you get a party for a week. He's like, I'm getting out. So like eight guys got out at the same time. And I did that for like three years. I didn't really come back to America. Just, just freaking did that with all my buddies.

And we did 28 ships in three years. Friggin' good time. I got 174 stamps. Passport stamps. Yeah. All through different areas. How often did you get engaged? Or did you engage?

Only four times. That big one and then three smaller ones. We were on the wish way. where we got stuck in the Bob and Mendeb, and they were kind of fishing in, but not getting close enough. So a lot of warning shots, but other than that,

that was the biggest one. So everybody else to come on, we're all like, fuck, I thought you were going to get into some fireflies? And the rest of the time, were you just like sleep, eat, lift?

Did you stand watch even? Yeah, so I would set up my guys, because after that, they made me a lead so I can make my own team. And so I'd set up my guys, like two teams, get 12 hours a day. So three on, three off,

three on. So they take 12 hours, and then you're off 12 hours. So always a guy on the bridge. And then the other two guys have the other 12 hours. So yeah, you have all you do. I mean, the best shape I was in my life, you know, freaking lifting steel.

I felt like I was in a Rocky movie because you're using chains and shit. We're all covered in rust, shirts off, you know. It was good. Yeah, but. And you say you did, you did this for three years and it was 28 ships, you said? 28 ships. So how long is the ship ride? They could be anywhere from two weeks to a month and a half, just depends.

You know, and then I'd usually take seven, 10 days off, you know, flying to Rome, spend 10 days there, sight sea, hang out, and then be like, uh, hungover one day, be like, hey, you got another ship going on? And like, yeah, we got a ship out of Sri Lanka. I was like, I'll take it. So, and then I, by this point, I found a bunch of single guys that were kind of the same situation as me. So we just traveled together. Uh-huh. Get off a ship, all of us have, like, you know, 180 grand combined with no, no kind of ties to America. No bills.

No bills, dude. Damn. It's a good time, dude. It's a good time. I'm sure you invested that money very wisely. Oh, man. Yes, I did. Man, did you, when you got out of the Navy,

it was just like kind of no factor, huh? Like you weren't like, no, because I was still getting into stuff. And then after that first thing, I was able to pull off a lot of my buddies. So it was like almost being in the teams again. But no officer in charge you anymore. And more money. And more money. Yeah, dude.

So it wasn't, it isn't like I just all of a sudden left the teams. You know, eight of us all got out within a month of each other. And we all ran those boats for three years. So it was fun. But then, yeah, no rules, a bunch of money, able to party was, I know. I know. It was a good time. It was a good time.

So then what was next? Is this when you started doing security? No. So what happened is. I came back to America and I had a little security company that we set up on the side. I never worked them, but I was able to set it up and we got the monster contract. And I came back and I ended up doing security. My wife is an announcer.

So I ended up doing the security really professional after which she asked me out. And then she's at 12. So I was like, well, this life's over with. She's really the one that tame me, you know I was like, what year was that? 2013. 2013, yeah. And she just put freaking full lock on you.

Yeah, well, I mean, she's built like a good mayor, dude. So I couldn't, I knew if I was gone all the time, you can't, you can't keep that down if not. So I was like, ah, you know, I'm thinking about kind of fine work here. Do you want me to do that? She's like, yes, please. So that's when I jumped on. was on the wind detail after that.

It was offered to, you know, Chance Hughes is. Yeah. So Chance was offered it. He passed and offered to me and I took it. So perfect timing. Yeah. You know, so it was. And then what did that consist of?

Okay. So it's hard because he's obviously, it doesn't have eyesight. So you're more security, slice slash like kind of everything. And you get up, you know, an hour before he does, get ready. And you're going to bed an hour after he does. So for, you know, two weeks out of the month, I mean, you're sleeping five hours a night. And it's, and he himself is a, is a very high capacity genius. So you have to be on his point, you know.

So if you're, if you're not well spoken, if you're not on point, if you're not, you know, kind of at his brain level or somewhere close, he's like beat it. So it was definitely, you know, the teams, you come through the teams, you learn how to be a warrior, right? And they get out of the teams. It's almost like starting new, right? Learn about business, real estate, learning how to progress your empire, all the different ways to do it. You know, it's like all the time that people went to college and we're starting in normal life. We skip that. And now we're, you know, mid-30s trying to figure it out now, right?

And so it was good detail. Him, and I was in a position where I like to ask questions. Like I don't think there's anything I can't do. I really don't. There might be people smarter than me, but I'll work them, you know. And I'll ask questions constantly, you know. And so once I got on that detail, I was with him, you know, all the time. And so I was like, all right, how do I use this detail to progress my life and what I'm doing with my new hot girl I just got?

So I would work for those two weeks. Yeah, that's another thing, because you knew you couldn't be traveling all the time. You also didn't need some bank, boy. Yeah, it's a bank. To keep the hot ones, dude, you can't be a slosh, dude. Behind every successful man is a hog girl that pushes them. So, yeah, I'd come back from that thing. And obviously, you know, I'm living at the wind.

You're living inside the wind casino, room 560. Everything's free for you. getting paid really good money plus you're eating at every five star place there i mean it's it was fucking awesome you know and and plus you're protecting him do you live do you live there even on your off weeks no two weeks another guy's coming and switch out with you and you go back to your house afterwards you know and uh because because of his eyesight stuff you're with them all day long and it's everything you're learning like you're seeing even if 30% bleeds off and you're learning about business every day like high level and you're sitting in meeting

with him when he's doing the big negotiation for whatever deal he's working on. You're sitting right there. Yeah, because yeah, you have to. Everything, everything, you're with him. You're answering his phone. You're bringing it to him. You're hearing everything going on. And so like, you're just learning. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to build a bar because he's in hospitality. You have the, his whole empire that you're with. You're meeting with their COOs, their general managers. You're talking all these people, becoming friends with them. So I came back. I came back. And I literally just took 125 grand to start building the bar. I didn't even I saw my two to two weeks.

Monkey see monkey do. Yeah, two weeks off. So I moved my off time to Spokane, Washington. Never lived there before. Never knew anybody. What made you move there? That's close to my hometown. Got it.

But my hometown's small and kind of shitty. So I moved to the bigger city right there. And I was there for like two weeks. Where's your wife from? Temecula. Caleigh girl. Jack. Yeah.

It's the I.E. Hotties, I call them. But there was no pull for her to move like down there? Well, at the time, she was, she's worked. She's an announcer for Supercross. So she's on the weekends going to do those so she can live anywhere kind of thing. So we both are just traveling. She works every weekend announcing.

She did the X game. She did a bunch of stuff like that too, and all the offroads for the Bahas. But those are on the weekends. So she would do those and come back so she can live anywhere. So she moved up there with me. and it was. Were you married yet? No.

Okay. No, she, I actually got her give me some money for investment, too. Nicely done. Nicely done. You know? I was like, for 80 grand, I'll give you 2%. So I literally just came in there for a couple weeks. Kind of looked where, you know, I'm asking questions about this all the time with everybody

there. And I found a good area and pretty much got a building. It looked like it was an 18. 80s building pretty much condemned and I was like all right I'm gonna build a bar there Did you buy the building? No just rented out the space looking back now that I know real estate I would have bought the damn building you know but Steve wouldn't you know let you know Yeah I know damn it's gonna go bought that building for like 680k and it's fucking worth a lot more So anyways just started building out a bar a little 1,100 square foot did it for 125 grand

Barely had enough to buy the liquor to start it out but what I did I'd ask some questions what he would say is like like, look, I was like, how do I find good people? How do I get known? He's like, poach. Go to all the restaurants around, meet the people, talk to the, talk to the industry people, look, find the cool people, then poach him. And that's what I did. So every day I would have a beer at a different bar, eat dinner at a different place. And I would just start talking people. I'm like, I'm a Navy seal and building the ex-Navy seal. I'm building a bar down the road. And I actually got the newspaper there to do store on me. And I just started doing it that way. And by the, it took me three months to build it out. And as soon as I

build it out I won over the industry and I talked in some of the big like the better known bartenders in there started working for me and so it became successful overnight I think I built it from 125 and I did about 400 already about 890 in gross and 400 and some thousand in profit the first year and and then the next one happened and so I'm going there working with Wynn doing this but the next one and that didn't have a kitchen so the next one I had to build was a globe bar and kitchen And I had, why did you call it Globe? It was a globe building.

So it was called the Globe Hotel back in 1890 is one of the first buildings there. And when I dig into this stuff, probably asbestos everywhere, I'm probably going to die when I'm like, 70. And the first one was called the Blind Buck? The Blind Buck.

What would it, where'd that name come from? I don't know. Like, you know, those speakeasers are, I don't know, I was just coming up with cool sayings. Cool. That'll work. I was looking, because like a lot of those, it was more of like a speakeasy

kind of like old school looking bar. So is, I remember seeing, I don't know what, maybe you sent me pictures of it or something. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I've got some.

It was a cool looking bar. Yeah, it was like, it was all for scratch too. Like we built, I talked my buddy in that was a contractor down in Pasqua

where I was from to come up on the weekends to help me. Dude, in the beginning, I was no joke hiring like, bums off the street

to help me hang drywall and shit. It was bare bones, you know? And, yeah, then the next one. So still going,

working my two weeks, coming back, running the bar. Hogan? Yep, hell yeah. He's in my task unit. Yep. Yep. So I talked, Jason, I was looking for work. I talked to him in and come and help me build a second bar and, you know, no like any part of it. Just like come and hang out with me. I think he got in trouble somewhere and he's trying to get his life in order. So he's living on my couch and help me build the second one. He's a freaking stud too, dude. Stud. Well, you heard what happened to him there. Yeah, yeah. I'll get to that. Yeah, I remember what

it happened and we freaking, you know, try to help it out about his scenario. Yeah, but the, But yeah, weird scenario too. Yeah, I'll tell you. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. So we built out the second bar. I have to build a kitchen. So I got to learn how to build a kitchen.

Built a kitchen. Somehow put it together. And if, listen, if you can make a successful bar and restaurant, every other business in life is easy. Because dealing with 60 employees, people taking things from raw to cooking them, trying to keep people from stealing alcohol and money.

It's fucking. It's hard, dude. It's 60 people. How big was this place? This is about, the first one's 1100 square foot. The next one's 4,000. But with the kitchen. So I had a full kitchen and everything.

They did good. I did hire, so get it going. They're both popular. The highest grossing bars in eastern Washington. And just really from when guiding me and giving me ideas and then asking questions. So that gave me the confidence in business and doing that kind of stuff. But we get them open. So Hogan, team guys, man.

So Hogan, I'm like, hey, be my GM. Like six months into it. I'm like, ran through all my waitresses and stuff. I'm like, God damn a deal. I was like, buddy, I got to bust you down, man. I'm sorry, man. I can't have you. Like, you got these feuds of girls all fighting over you.

Frattingization, buddy. You're not learning anything in the teams. So, yeah, I put him ahead of my security. And, yeah, what happened on that, it was a big weekend. He broke up a fight. The guy took a swing at him. He shot in, took him to the ground. But when he shot in, he put his head.

into the concrete and broke all five vertebrates in his neck. Yeah, so that's up because he's a stud. He's a stud. He's a freaking physical beast. Beast. And he's never been the same after that, you know, that he went paralyzed from the neck down, took him like, you know, three or four months. They started getting filling.

He's, I've seen him a couple times since then. He walks with a limp now, but I feel bad about that, man. I just freaking, it's a freak accident, you know. But, but yeah, anyways, yeah, I got. He was like just explosive power. Like explosive power. Squats like almost 600 pounds. Like gnarly stuff like he runs a 440.

Yeah. Like just a beast of a person. Yeah. That's why all the girls liked him. Oh man. Yeah. But anyways, you know, team guys. I wouldn't hire team guys to run bars.

If you'd ever. Not a good mix. That is not a good mix, man. We're too cool, man. It's just, especially in those small. towns. Fricking, everybody's pregnant afterwards, you know. So you're doing that and those businesses, now you're still working for a win.

You're doing this every two weeks, two weeks on, two weeks off. And that's what you're doing. And how long do you keep this process up for? Just keep doing it. Because the bars, once, now I'm married to my wife and we start a family. And bar life is not for family life. Because whoever counts the money first wins in the bar. So it always had to be there 4 o'clock in the morning, count the money.

Or my wife had to. And then even her, too, when she was nine months pregnant, we couldn't get the, it's a B story, we couldn't get the bartenders to do their cleaning duties, right? My wife is within weeks of popping. She's like, all right, everybody come in, pays them their hourly wage, has them sit around our freaking huge bar, serves them all beers. She's like, now you're going to watch me clean this whole bar for six hours, nine months pregnant. And so she freaking on her hands and knees, pulling the hair out of the drains and made everybody in that bar watch her for freaking, you know, almost eight hours probably while paying them while serving beer the whole time, made him watch.

And to keep, they call her the hammer. That's freaking. She was probably more like you. Yeah. She's more like you. I remember meeting her. And I was meeting you. Well, I knew you, but I remember meeting her.

Yeah. It was like calves. Cavs Memorial. Yeah. And you know, you know what you're doing, right? This is why my wife's a fan of you, right? Everybody's, you know, trying to drink their sorrows away, drinking beers. Jocko comes in with a pitcher of water.

Just drinking water. Walk around the bar, right? Walks, packs this little eight-year-old kid. He's drinking Coca-Cola. You know, I'm probably just trying to have a good time. He goes, you know, kid, that's 41 grams of high fructose corn syrup. It's going to stunt your growth. You're not going to be nothing in life.

Walks away drinking. That's my wife's person. introduction to joccois she's like wow he seems motivated he is Oh man, what an asshole You'd be a great bar owner dude everybody would you be listening drinking water bro drinking water He's serving water yeah freaking four dollars a cup of water Keep you healthy Your son drink this water flush that sugar out your system didn't you get in some tussle with like her with your wife's ex-boyfriend at some point who's like a bellator fighter or some shit

What happened with that? Okay, this is a good story here. Okay, so we sold the bars, right? And we had this kind of limbo. I was still working for a win. She's like, I want to move back to California to my hometown. I was like, I don't want to meet your old boyfriend. This is a small town.

It's Canyon Lake. I'm like, I don't want to fucking meet old boyfriends and stuff, you know? You literally thought of that? What? Like, I don't want to meet your old boyfriends? Yeah, because it's part of your brain. It's a tiny little freaking community. It's called Canyon Lake.

It is literally, they live in a lake, and they all still live there. She's got like five boyfriends in that area. And they all still. I still hang out. I see pictures. I'm like, dude, I don't want to, I don't want to be fucking, she's like, sweetie, they're gone. You'll never see a boyfriend. I'm like, all right, because I don't want to fucking, I don't want to talk to old guys that have been with you, you know. And she's like, you won't, sweetie. It's going to be fine. I'm like, all right. We go there. And it is fine. And then I was looking for a place to train. So I was going to Jane Henderson's

gym. And train there for a month. And they're like, hey, man, you're pretty good. Will you come train with our fighters. You know, like, we have a guy getting ready for a Bellator fight. He's a Belator fighter. I was like, yeah, shoot, man. He's like, your size. He needs better grappling anyways. He's a striker.

I'm like, all right. So I come in. And so my wife mentioned me before. She's like, oh, my first boyfriend's a big MMA guy. But I didn't really know anything more than that. So we come in, start pummeling, getting warmed up, going through some drills. And he goes, this guy goes, hey, man, I feel like I know you. I don't know.

I trained a long time. to go down in San Diego but never really up here. He's like, oh, okay. Pummel and more. He's like, oh, dude, it's your wife, Diana Doggan? I was like, yeah. I was like, fuck. This is the guy. This is the guy that deep virginize my wife.

My wife's 10 years younger, right? So this guy is younger than me. You know, I'm 40 now or something like that. I'm like getting ready. They're like, oh, I'm going live half an hour. I'm like, one more time, old body. One more fucking time. Boy, everything you got.

Oh, man. for like 30 minutes. I just fucking crush this guy. Nice. I was, I might have been, must have been wrestling for fucking ADCC right now. It's going all for it all,

dude. Hell yeah. And afterwards, like, I get in the car and he's like, fuck man, he crushed me. You know,

I was like, yeah, man, good training. I'm like, drive away. Like, fucking, uh, and so what I don't know,

he's got a big following social media. So he, he tags. He's like, oh, Dina Dahlgren's husband just fucking crush me for 30 minutes, right?

So Dina gets a notification on her stuff. And she's following him. No, she's not following him. Oh, it's because she tagged him. Yeah, tagged. We're about to get to some. Yeah, I was like, who that fuck? You want to hear this drama, dude.

Going back to Mecula, boys. So she gets a notification that he says something. And then, so I walk in the door and she's like, so how is jujitsu today? And I'm like, oh, you know, don't you? She was like, yes. I'm like, I did crush. She's like, yes, thank you. Like, yeah.

But that was my one drawn way. I'm like, now we're packing up or we're leaving this fucking town. before that guy gets any better. My one time old boy, because he's 10 years younger me, you know. Once you start pushing 40, everything moves a little bit slower, you know. Yeah, you got to, you have, you do have that wisdom. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?

You have that wisdom. You can do some little things, some little, like you can notice something. You're like, oh, I can see this guy has a little issue with this position. You can like focus on that. Like you can, you can outsmart some of these youngsters. I noticed this take down the fence sucked. Yeah. Yeah.

Boom. Boom. Yes. Rinder in the middle of taking them down right to rear naked. Yeah, dude. Yeah, no. I mean, I train with you.

You freaking, a beast. Yeah, it's awesome. My takedown, my stand-up takedowns are good. Yeah, no,

your wrestling is freaking solid. Yeah, and your base on top is really solid. Yeah. And you're a strong bastard. Well, you know, you have these weird persuasion moves where you fucking,

you did this one thing where you dug your elbow into my fucking, you know what I'm talking about? I was like, fuck, dude, what are you doing? He's like, oh, man, is that hurt?

I'm like, yeah, It hurts. That's, see, that's more of that mental, but does that hurt? Does that hurt you? Oh, I didn't know that would hurt you.

He rolls persuasion. You think he's going to be super like, ah, but he's not like a gentle giant. And then he just finds a little area and then just fucking pulls it in you. I wouldn't say gentle, but yeah, yeah, I guess.

Well, I can be a little bit more hostile, you know, sometimes depending on the, you know, the quote-unquote opponent. Sometimes hostilities do come out. Sometimes. Well, you know, my boy, Ryan over here,

he's always cool. Yeah, yeah, he's a very smiling. Nice and cheerful yeah like other people Oh bro, whatever Echo sometimes comes into the gym and like you can see on his face like on his face he's like today's the day You know what I mean? He walks in with that today's the day type attitude not every time Not every time sometimes you don't want to be there Yes, that's true, but sometimes today's the day in your mind

And I could usually sort that out at about three to six minutes I'll have that attitude sorted the fuck out And I'll be a real assing when he comes in all happy he's like Yeah, I feel good. He comes in like, a mean. Like, mean, like, you know, today's the day. Like, I've been thinking about this thing. And he watched a YouTube video about something.

And he's got this little, this little tension in his brain. We call it focused. Yeah, focus. He'll have that focused look. And I'm like, oh, is that how it's going to be? And I'm like, oh, is that how it's going to fucking arm drag. He's like, yeah, I'm going to fucking arm drag. Some little thing like that, he'll try.

And I'll be like, shit is getting shut down. You got to throw them off. You kind of come in all happy, joyful. Like, hey, man, go to see. And then take it to him at the end. The dokey dook. Yeah, yeah. That'd be a good try.

We're going to keep exploring. I'll tell you that. Try something. So what was the whole deal with like war machine and how like, like what? Kind of talk through that. Like, because I know you guys. And look, I try. I mean, we were, we in San Diego, everyone that's training for the most part, we're all

chill and like we would cross train with each other. I'd go to undisputed. We like when I say I, we would go to undisputed. You guys would come to victory. Like there was definitely, and plus we had been at city boxing. We had been at undisputed. Like these were all, we're all friends. Small tight to family here.

So I knew, I mean, obviously I knew you, but I knew John as well. So what was, dude, what went down with that dude? Okay, so obviously. How'd you meet him? How'd you meet him? We've been at the lines there a long time ago, stayed friends contact. And then once I started training with Undisputed in 2003 maybe, we just came more and more tight. And he was just now doing that ultimate fighting challenge.

So I was main training buddy. We're pretty much the same size at the time. And we wrestle a lot of likes. So I train with them all the time. Became really good close, friends, sort of living together as roommates. Now, now, were you like, he seems like kind of a typical guy that's like, oh, he likes to go party, come get in some fights. Were you ever like, there might be a little bit, might be a little bit more. Well, it's not good.

It got worse. The guy that we're talking about The guy that we're talking about is a guy named John, how do you say his last? John Copenaber. Copenhaver who legally changed his name to War Machine. He was an M.MA fighter. He fought in the ultimate fighter. And he eventually.

Bellator too. Bellator, but he eventually almost killed his. Christy Mack. Who is his girlfriend, then wife, right? No, they never got married. Okay. Well, is his girlfriend, live-in girlfriend. They worked together for a while.

And he beat her. almost to death and beat some other guy. Yes. Almost to death as well. And he's in prison, I think, for the rest of his life. 36 years. Okay. So that's who we're talking about.

So from your perspective, you're hanging out with this guy. He likes to train. I like to train. You like to train. He likes to party. You like to party. Okay. So these are all kind of normal things.

Was there any indication that this dude might not have it all there? In the beginning, no. He always had respect for the teams. You know, he went to the Citadel. He, to be an officer. Did he graduate? Wait, no, his junior year is he had kind of a drug addict mom. His dad died when he's 12 in his arms.

He got his pension. The mom ended up spending all the money and he lost his tuition at the Citadel. So I think he made up to his junior year. Then obviously he linked up with Shamrock and he started fighting. Obviously, I met him during that time. We kind of fell apart. I was going, you know, more military stuff and they linked back up. Wait, you met him which time?

In Lions Den. Okay, so this is, you're in the rescue. Swimmership. Rescue swimmer shit. Like, 1990. Yes, way back then. That's when I first met him. Obviously, and I was always searching new places to train.

I always kept in contact. He's like, come to Barry Ishida's place. So I'm training, I'm getting ready for my UFC fights. And I was like, fuck yeah. So we need to just rekindling back again and start. I was pretty much the main training partner. So now it's like 2000. And are you still in the teams?

I'm in the teams now. Okay. I'm in the teams now. I just got it. I'm probably a new guy at this time. And obviously we started doing it. But yes, as he started getting, I don't, don't know. He wasn't that bad until he, he got in a, he got in an argument with the matchmaker

to the UFC. I don't know that. And they kicked him out in the UFC. He didn't know what he's going to do. And then he started getting into porn. Once he started getting to porn, that's when he really started getting off track. I don't know. I'd go visit him in L.A. and I'm just like, what the fuck? Like he started making porn, right? Oh, yeah. He was in the movies. He was in, porn star for a bit. Yeah. And so he was, you know, I'd always visit him up in L.A. he's like oh this shit's great man I'm getting all these bitches I'll say dude come on get back into this now I was trying to always kind of pull

him back but he didn't know he's always a little bit more rowdy and then he started kind of calming down we got in that fight because of that fight he went to jail for a year where the fight at thrusters was a pretty big fight yeah I remember that we're freaking a helicopter was looking for us it was fron nuts I remember

seeing the security camp footage yes yeah and I remember thinking to myself, yo, like I knew you guys were friends. Yeah. And I see the security cam footage and I'm like, yo, that's Ryan Bates right there. He just knocked a guy out.

And I remember thinking that, okay, well, let's hope this, you know, doesn't go anywhere as far as the teams go because I don't want you to get in trouble or any of that stuff. But you didn't get rolled up that night. I didn't. You know, I just got back from Afghanistan. The process, they didn't want to do anything with me.

And honestly, the guy was coming up to fight me. You know, I was just doing that. War Machine only got in trouble because he was in a violation of his probation for a prior or something prior. And he wasn't supposed to be in a bar. So he went to jail for a year because violation is probation. So are you talking to him when he's in jail for a year? Yeah. How did that impact?

Well, he had another porn star girl. What's her name? It's Jeanette Madison, something Madison or whatever, porn girl. And he married her. And she was while he's in prison or before? he goes to prison? Before he goes to prison, what happened is he was trying to, she got in trouble for doing porn illegally and got sent home. Well, he brought her to, where's home? Cungry. Okay. He tried to, oh, wait, did some one team guy trying to get her close to? Yeah, I'm

going to tell you that. Okay. Some dumb shit. All right, let's go. He got her into Tijuana and another still team buddy, close buddy of mine uses girl's passport with war, brought her a pack. She got popped. He pop for a warrant he got in trouble for illegal alien smuggling see if if you were our officer you wouldn't have got to do this I'm like dude I'm serious about that like a little sanity check little sanity check to be like hey this is not a good idea wait did so the did the team guy get in trouble he got trouble yeah he got in trouble yeah he got in he got in trouble he was a good team guy so they didn't kick him out they busted him down

you know and that kind of stuff but he stayed in well she got sent to a immigration jail. Somehow a war machine worked with the IRS because the thing that she was doing, the guy she was doing porn with was in violation of IRS stuff. Sometimes he worked with the IRS for her to be an informant through the IRS for this porn guy. So he got her out, then married her and got her into America. Then he went to jail for that fight. So then me and the team guy, we had to take care of this porn star wife of his that couldn't work and so he's living at that team guy's house with his wife family i had to freaking give her money for like a year so we take care of her she gets out he has that he got a prior fight in Vegas went to jail for another year we had to take care of for

another year and uh and then he got out friendship dues are strong yeah these are a lot of friendship i make i make better choices now with my friends as they get older you know when you're younger You just want the fucking tough guys and that kind of stuff. As you get older, you want to surround yourself by like-minded smart people, you know. So anyways, we get them out, that kind of stuff. And you couldn't talk any sense into him. I was. I was like, I was like, buddy-liss of me.

You know, like, I'm in the teams and that kind of stuff. I like this. You've got to pull your shit together, right? Well, he does. He starts getting back into it. Back into fighting. Yes, back in the fight. That's when he starts fighting with Bellator again.

He starts getting the stuff. He obviously stops porn stuff, but he did a thing with Christy Mac at the time, so they started dating. I get out by this point. I'm doing anti-piracy. I start working in Vegas and that kind of stuff. So I'm hanging out with them all the time. You know, I had to help him with a lot of like legal stuff money-wise. So he's like, hey, I'm going to start this company. You don't have to put any money. Let me just do something for us. We started doing it together, right? It does good with it. It's crushing it. Just as I do alpha-mill shit. For some reason, that worked out. Anyways, He's winning in Bella tour.

Everything's good and doing good. I was like, hey man, you know, maybe start dating like a nice girl, you know. He was always good with the like girls that have low self-esteem. I don't know why. Hot girls are low self-esteem. I was like, let's try to get you with another one. But he was in love with her. He was.

He's in love with this girl, Christy Mac. Yeah. And he, uh... Did you meet her? Oh, plenty times. And what's she like? She was kind of monotone, like, girl. I don't know.

Like, not like. a crazy wild girl you know just kind of like but he you know i don't know he was it just wasn't good mind space for him like if if you put him with the he's like fuel if you put him with more fire he just burns up you know and by this time we've been friends for fucking you know 20-something years or yeah probably uh maybe not 20 but like 15 years at this point you know and uh so i'm trying to get him better well he wants to marry her so he he has all of our t-shirts and stuff at his place He's got 80 grand worth of t-shirts. And he's kind of doing it fulfilling out of his, out of his place.

Well, he drives up there to Vegas to propose to her and catches her in bed with another guy. I don't know, whatever the real-I-TV guy is. He beats the shit out of him almost fucking to a pulp. He leaves and then he stays back with her. Wait, the other guy leaves. After war beats the shit out of him, he leaves. And then that's when he turned his attention to. Chrissy Mac and obviously

like you know we know all that turned out and you know she's pretty bad and he calls me right after it happened and I was like buddy so while he's on the run like right after it happens and also he like beats the shit out of her he almost kills her yeah and he calls me like a three in the morning and I was like I was like

buddy you got to turn yourself in man I can't do anything for you fucking idiot you know and I don't hear from again after that and so then I noticed that he drains the bank count. There's no money in the bank count. We got all these bills we have to pay. But because it's hit the freaking, it's all over the news. Like, it's prime time news. Remember that? Oh, yeah. Dog, the bounty hunters looking for him, all that stuff. We start getting freaking, we start getting

T-shirt orders like fucking crazy. Like, crazy. This is a sick and twisted world. And so I'm stressed out because I can't close down the account because he drained it before he went on the run. I don't know what to do. I'm like, fuck, you know. And my wife's like, hey, sweetie, we're getting orders in like crazy. I was Shopify. I was like, fuck, I don't have the T-shirts that are at its house. She's like, I was like, well, they are yours, right? I'm like, yeah, I talked to a lawyer.

They're like, hey, if they're your company, yes, you can go get them. And so we cruise up and we load up my truck with all these freaking 80 grand worth of like wholesale t-shirts, right? I'm loading the last box and my girlfriend at the time, my wife now. Did you have to break into the place? We had a key. We had a key to get in. So it was no factor. No factor, yeah.

And then all of a sudden my wife's like, are those on marks? I was like, yeah, there are marks. She's like, what should we do? I'm like, nothing. We're not doing anything wrong. And so I started driving away with the stuff. I get taken down by marshals. I'm not talking like, you know, police force guys.

I'm talking kidded up, shaved, he has big beards. Like, I look like I'm getting rolled up by freaking your platoon. And what's it called? I'm like, get on the ground. Get on the ground. I'm like, oh, shit. So I get out there and they're kind of tussle me around and stuff. And they pull me into a van and interrogate me for a little bit.

And I plead the fifth. I'm like, I'm not saying anything, you know. And so my wife's down in the car behind me or my girlfriend. And they're talking to him. And I keep beginning saying that. And then they come in, they're like, oh, you're fucked, dude. Your girlfriend spilled the beans on everything. I'm like, what are you talking about?

The guy, the detective just started being like a fucking asshole to me. Like, you piece shit. But the guy, there's a federal marshal in the front that was an ex-Marsog guy. Okay. He actually, he's like, hey, calm him down, dude. He's a fucking good dude. He's a war fighter. Just let's not get too hard.

And they let me go and that was it. Right on. And we sold the T-shirts, made our money back, and then he went to prison. Pretty much. You ever hear from him again? Yeah, I started calling us a bunch. Maybe like a year ago, like a lot. He's just, he's a lot, man.

It sucks because he could have done so much good stuff. Like, he's a very smart, intellectually smart guy. He just too much, you know. But yeah, he's in 36 years without, without, roll it's crazy right yeah he was a good fighter too man yeah he was a good fighter just I wish he would have not been so fucking outlawish you know but you know it's I like it because it's I like that I went through that path about finding friends because now I'm very particular about the people I keep especially now having a family in your business like

if you're not if you're not adding or or I'm working off or like we're combining things or you're doing not at my level or above I don't got time man you got to freaking you got to put in the work you know so I'll never be caught in that situation again with with that but yeah it's weird too because you know I quite frankly I never saw any side of that from him so when he was around me he was like super humble super respectful like just a totally different person and it makes you you know you wonder I mean clearly the dude had some serious issues, but he seemed like he was trying to prove something. He would always be trying to prove something.

And yeah, I didn't get to see that. You know, I just had this super humble guy that would be call me sir and stuff like that. Like, you know, team guys don't call me sir. They call me jocco. Like, here's this dude, he's calling me, sir. You know, it's like, and again, it always makes me think if that individual human being who ended up doing this horrible stuff that's going to put him in prison for the rest of life if you had had some kind of like mentorship or leadership even like me

personally if I'd have been like hey dude what are you doing like let's go over here let's get your shit squared away hey it's not impressive to act like that in fact we don't think it's cool it's cooler if you do something but you know if someone can can get into a person like that's life and I've definitely had people come and talk to me you know now that people that have listened I was on the wrong path I was getting in trouble I was doing drugs and if they totally turn their life around So it definitely is worth it when you interact with people. There's always a possibility you can really help them.

And all that being said, there's some people you can't help. There's some people that they're going to do things and it doesn't matter what you invest in them and how much you mentor them and talk to them. They're going to ruin their lives. It happens. Well, with him, when I was not deployed, like all of his worst decisions happened when I was deployed. When I was around him every day, we train, hang out, you know, like, you know, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm not doing drugs. Like I might go out.

I wasn't a big huge drinker either. So I got to go out for a couple drinks before we're training all the time. So all of his bad decisions that he made is when I wasn't around. When he was around me, he's the same with me too. Like he was never like a hothead to me. He was a crime was going on on his train. Like he was, he's very level-headed like you're saying. He was only like that when he's up in L.A.

Hang out with porn starts doing drugs, that kind of stuff. It sucks. If he did, like honestly, he would have been a great team guy with the right mentorship, you know? That's why he likes it so much because we're, whereas I'd take him to the O course. like he wishes he could have been done that. But then he got neck tats and all that stuff. You can't do that with neck tats, you know. But no, he had potential.

He had potential. It makes you sad because he was close. We were close. And honestly, he expanded, like, we were very well matched up. And, you know, you got that one training partner. We were tight with. That was him and me. So I missed that.

I can't find that anymore that much, you know, especially the same age. But we just had a guy on the podcast the other day. His name is Brian Wood. He's a British. and just like the ultimate professionalism. He won the military cross or was a war at the military cross. He literally led like a bayonet charge in Iraq. But he made this statement.

He was like, he said, I believe everyone is two decisions away from ruining their lives. And he says, I like trying to work my life where he can influence people or help people or help people if they've made one or two of those bad decisions, right? And I was really thinking about that a lot is like everyone's in that situation. Like, oh, you drink, you get a DUI and like that's the, like, oh, like you might, you can recover from that.

But if you drink, you get a DUI and then you like resist the cops or you, you know, there's one more bad decision that you make, you freaking trashed your life, you know? And I always try and tell that to young people, you know, like you do, you can make a mistake. And you can make a bunch of little mistakes, but you can make one bad mistake, and you've really screwed up, and then another one, and you're done.

Yeah. So definitely a good learning lesson there from him. It's sad to see. I mean, obviously, it's terrible what he did to that dude, and then to Christy Mac, Christy Mac, yeah. Christy Mac, you know, terrible. I mean, he almost killed her.

I remember seeing her posting stuff and, you know, it was just a freaking nightmare. Well, it's like, just fucking walk away. Like, I wish. I wish he would have called me before he went into that shit. Like he's like, fuck I'm freaking out. I'm like, hey, dude, stop. Fucking walk away.

Now you got the opportunity to get a new girlfriend. Good. I'm serious, dude. I mean, like, truly, though, that stuff, that little saying is like, good. Now you have the opportunity to get a fucking more badass girlfriend. You don't want that trash anyways, you know, if that's true, what's happening, you know? But I also, I don't, I think it was just that, that whole mentality and what he was at, it wasn't good. And I think drugs were a little bit involved, too.

like he was doing stuff for Adderall or something like that. And I don't know. Yeah, for all your kids out there, keep narrowing straight, you know, 100%. Yeah, waste of talent. It's a waste of talent. And then your wife starts up, when does she start up saltyhoney.com? As soon as I started impregnate her and ruin her career. Okay.

Yeah. Because she's a model and all this other stuff too. Well, she's an announcer. She got to, you got to, you know, you got to travel a lot. So as soon as we started having kids, she can't travel every weekend. And doing that kind of stuff. So she's like, you ruin my career. I'm sorry, don't be so hot, dude.

You know, so yeah, once we started having kids, she's like, I got to do something. You know, she has a good following. And so, and she was helping me with those bars. So she learned business. She's 10 years younger to me, right? So, but she's got a crazy story. She got thrown in jail, like kids jail when she's like 14 years old. You know, those hardcore camps.

For what? She's a bad kid. And her dad changed her up and drove her to the middle. of the Nevada desert. How bad of a freaking kid? I mean, she was running away from home, like, you know, hooding around and that kind of stuff at 14. So her dad chained her up, threw her in the car, drove her,

you know where Vegas is in Perump? Yeah, yeah. Another two hours out there. Hills have eyes kind of shit. And they dropped her at this kid's... Like reprogramming camp or something? Yes, and it's gnarly. I've went out there and looked at it.

I'm telling you, it's 200, 300 miles from anything in the middle of desert, just this little building. And for a year and a half, or whatever. I should be there for, I think, three years altogether. They dropped her and dropped her off. And, like, they can't look up from the ground. You know, they can't, it's gnarly.

It's like worse than probably jail. And they can't, they can only see their kid once a year, right? What? And if they don't wear in the enough. Is this shit legal? This sounds like psychos. I don't think it is. I think Paris Hilton's talk about it.

So it's like shut it down or whatever that kind of stuff. But she said it was good for her. But yeah, it's not like their parents can only visit them one time a year if they earn enough merits. to do it, right? Well, she didn't earn enough in the beginning, so they didn't see her for like a year and a half, and they wrote her a letter in code saying,

if you graduate high school, you can get out. So she took all her time and graduated like three years of high school in six months. And so she was out by the time she was 16 and on her way. Does this place have a name? I don't know what the name it is. Yeah, it does, but I don't know what the name is out. And she appreciates that she went to this thing?

Yeah, it's kind of her own little buds. She came out like all freaking she's honest She doesn't lie She doesn't freaking really drink or do anything She's like straight edge I'll get her to party once in a while You know but like it's you know We're pretty healthy family

She's a very regimented girl So so when she started learning about business And no wonder she liked When I was like you got 41 grams That fuck those cars That's right Like listen me I was eating a couple eggs In the beginning of our relationship

In the morning's like Those are rookie numbers dude I fucking get about 6 7 8 in there, put some egg whites, come on, protein up. I'm like, okay, Jesus. We should eat, all we do is eat steak in our house. So what's, what you do when she got out of this freaking home for delinquent children?

Well, she was 16, she got, she had her GED by that point, and she asked her dad for money, and she's like, he's like, get a job. And so from that on, she just, on her route, you know, started doing modeling, started trained for the Olympia, one top three in the Olympia three years in a row, which is freaking gnarly, you know, just, like overachiever all the way through. So she, uh, she's doing that.

Then obviously I marry her, put her into more business and, um, ran the bars. Really, she was the hammer. She was like, you know, me, I have a drink with the guys, relax a little bit, that kind of stuff. She was like, what time you're out. Let's go drink on the job fired like that kind of stuff. Like, we're gnarly hardcore, you know, which is good. Yeah.

I'm more the happy guy. You got that balance that we were talking about from a sealable to. You got you, you're over here going wild and she's over here running. Yes. Like I'm more relationships. He's like, oh, Ryan, I'm like, come on in. I'm the happy guy. She's the, she's the freaking, she's a really hardcore.

Even with my kids, man, my kids are like, daddy hugs and kisses. She's like, he's like, are you crying? Yeah, he's not right. So anyways, yeah, she's keeping your check. Oh, man. What made you decide to sell the restaurants? Just because it was the family. The family, like, yeah.

Kids can't be at a bar at four o'clock in the morning. No, and you're just like, you know, did you do all right when you sold them? Oh, yeah. We crushed him. Came up like five times. Oh, nice. Yeah, I gave some money for a lot of things we're doing now, you know? Sweet.

Roll those into a bunch of fourplexes. We got into real estate a lot after that. After I sold those bars, when it was like, what do you want to do now? I was like, teach me real estate. So I got to talk with cool people like Don Brand, who earns Irvine Group, you know, Irvine. Got to meet with him a lot. LaFrax, who owns pretty much all of, you know, New York. You know, you get to mingle and talk to those people.

real estate, even at a small level, it's the same equation, you know, how you leverage different products you can use for that kind of stuff. And I always like the real estate more because if you look at the best families, the real estate families, the wealthy guys, it's not as cool, but they have the best families, you know, they get passed down from generation and they just build empires. So after that, we went that route with our money. But then at the same time, my wife needed a job, so she started doing salty honey. started with 12,000 bucks just that that's it and it'll do a little over three this year

and she does that all herself no guidance dude I'm bringing her on the podcast to find out about this week in school dude oh I want to know what the hell is going on in this thing she'd be a good podcast I also want to know what she was doing when she was 12 13 14 to get in enough trouble I can't imagine taking my daughter putting any I have three daughters taking one of my daughters wrapping her in chains and freaking dropping her off somewhere and her dad too she's is like you A big freaking dude that's serious. Like it's like you rapping your daughter.

Like your daughter's been a thing. He is a gnarly strong person. Like I'm not joking. 6263, 250, 260 arms like this. Just enormous Viking looking dude. You know, so. Yeah. Yeah, he was like, I guess they didn't have it.

He's like, all right. He had to pay like 80 grand a year for her to go there. Damn, dude. Yeah, back in like the early 2000s. What did he do for a living? Contractor. Okay. Yeah, I keep pulling out.

Dude, she must have been off the res. She was. off the res. Yeah. Dealing drugs, doing crazy shit. What? Yeah, a little hoodlum. That's so weird because I only know the new.

Yeah. It's hard for me to see it. It's hard for me to see it. Like, you know, she's the kind of girl, if you give her a couple of beer, she's like, oh my God, I'm so tired. I'm going to bed. You know, like that kind of stuff.

I don't see it either, but I guess she was bad, though. So, but yeah, she jumped in that, and now it crushes that, and, you know, I help her with that. And it's honestly why we got into, yeah, but yeah, anyway, She crushed it with that and she still crushing it. It's growing it. Yeah. So then you end up starting canoe club USA. com.

So is great name. The great name. Great name. So canoe club USA. What made what brought that about? COVID. Nobody can get ammo. And I knew how to get it. I had the money to buy it. And I was seeing people buy it for 30, 40 cents sold for a dollar. I was like, shit. I just, I just, I just, I just, you know, I just. I started with, honestly, I just started with a couple of pounds in my garage. That's how I was doing in the beginning. And the guns and ammo world is an awesome world. It's very Wild West, good old boy crew. Like, it's hard to come up in it. And it's like, you got to be an honest person, pay fast.

Don't try to screw anything over because of a small community. And everyone will hear about it. Everybody whole idea. You'll be cut off in a second. You know, like, just because of doing good business, paying on time, saying what you're doing, you know, a lot of times you're giving money up front and hoping it comes to you. You know, so you got to freaking know the right people to talk to. And we, dude, we've gotten caught in a scam for $1.2 million. We got it back, but it was a scam. There's a lot of them out there.

What was the scam? During COVID, there's a company called Urban Arms out of Utah. Just let you know, don't ever do business with anything in Utah. It's like one of the scam capitals of the world. Really? Yeah, yeah, Ponzi schemes and stuff like that. But what he was doing, he was taking a bunch of payments from a bunch of different seller or buyers taking that putting it into cryptocurrency and then being like oh sorry your thing didn't go through and then giving their money back trying to make money off cryptocurrency well crypto went crash and he didn't have the money to go back but I have like because of all the people that I met in in Vegas like David Chesnoff like we know the governor everything like

when really connected me with the right people there David Chesnoff is this gnarly lawyer like you ever watch the gym He's like you know he if you look him up he's an R he's one of my best friends So he he just put his name on a letterhead and their lawyers like pay these people immediately So we're the only people out of the eight they got our money back yeah, but but anyways yeah Ammo world is is very sketchy but if you do it right you know like You know now I work with you know a hundred million dollar companies like guns.com They you know they're worth like 300 million they buy for me because they can't have people to import

because it's not in their insurance. So when I import, I get to sell it directly to these people. So relationships, handshake deals, stay true to your word. And yeah, you get with those big companies. And obviously, Canoe Club is kind of the retail side, the small, but behind the scenes, our wholesale is what we're crushing it with. Brent from O'Rine, all these different distributors that are $100 million companies, all import and they'll buy it from me right away, you know.

Guns.com is probably the best one. They do a good job. They crush the market as far as used guns and that kind of stuff. So I work with them a lot. And you're also, what's the Gordian? Gordian imports. And that's weapons, all right? That's anything.

So like that's, like right now we're working on a Mark 19 deal. But I started that with Adam. You know Adam Fritz's? Yeah. He's a team seven guy. He, you know, went that more secret route for a while and worked in Eastern Block a lot. And then he's kind of retired, some of retired. I'm like, you're the perfect person to help do international arms deals.

So that's why I started with him. But yeah, they do the, that's how we import. And then that's how I'm doing the, because I had one deal where I went to Poland, Ukraine, to sell 16,000 VM rockets to NATO. And I realize it's not like the movies. It's not like war dog and stuff. You have to be clear by the DTC, have a broker's license to do it legally. So I didn't get to take any money from that.

So after that, I teamed up with Fritz and now we do that on the side too. But it all works together, you know, it all works together. And then on top of all that, you're doing the real estate stuff. Every bit of money that we get and we make, we put into real estate. It's tax free, no depreciation. So, and the thing is, too, how, you know, if you put in real estate's generational wealth, if you put into your trust that they can never sell and cash out, you know, they have to rotate it into another another investment you know they can live often stuff but they can

never cash out so that's that's why I learned from all the billionaires good good lesson learned and then you ended up doing this freaking TV show yeah how did that we just had Dean Stott on for the second time but how did how did that come about old mean Dean dude very serious man um the uh you know what brandon Cruz got offered a deal and I was middle of doing ammo and they saw me on some video him and they asked me to come out last minute I wouldn't pursue it or anything like literally a couple days before the the the actual uh like tryouts or whatever I did go to do a go ruck challenge and whatever and I did it and they picked me and I wasn't going to even do it my wife's like do it and I was like God I'm going to be one of those Hollywood seals now dude we made

fun of him so bad now so you go you try out and then what do they say like we want you in this show yeah how long is the film for that shit. Dude, it was long. It was like a year and a half. God. I know. Did they pay you all right?

Yeah, it paid okay. Yeah. It's like, I mean, could be more. It's only 90 days of filming, but it's just spread out over a long time. Oh, okay. Yeah, but truly I wasn't going to do it at first, but then once I started doing it, it's actually kind of fun.

Kind of fun, yeah. Yeah, because it's like you use all the gear. You don't have to do the cleanup. Oh, that's sweet. Yeah, everybody cleans your rifles for you. It's kind of a big deal now, John, but you got rolled up. But you got rolled up.

Right you got arrested. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. So so brief me on that one in Kowal Lumpur. Yeah. Which is not a great place to get arrested. No and so we went in we're training with the triple or the G GK is what they're called on the way out. They had didn't have the right paperwork for your military gear and in that that country, even if you have an expended shell seven years in prison six gains expended casing if you have a a light that attaches to a gun. Seven years in prison, six canes. That's the maximum maximum.

So just don't go to, don't go to Malaysia. I don't know. They, uh, Netflix came back. They got me, got me lower, got me all straightened up. So wait, so you get, you're going through the airport. Is it to leave or to arrive? To leave. Okay.

I already worked there the whole time. So you're getting ready to leave. Yes. You're going through what, like customs to leave? Yeah. And they find it and they're like, they find a magazine, one magazine? Three max. Three max.

Empty max. Empty max. bags. They pull them out and they're like, oh, they're kind of confused. I don't know what they're saying. I'm like, well, just take the mags. It's like, no, no, no. And I didn't take a serious at first. I'm like, what do you mean? No, no, no. Or what's going on, you know? And then that turned into a bigger thing. This is we can locked up abroad about to go down. Dude, I started getting nervous, like maybe 24 hours into it. So they bring you to jail? Yeah. Luckily, like in the jail cell is not.

It's like a 20 by 20s. Frickin shitty, shitty kind of. The guy's been in there for like seven years. Now, I'm getting mug shots. Just gen pop like you're in a bunch of other random years. I was like,

shit, I'm going to have to beat the shit at all these guys. I'm, but I'm the new boss of town. No, but the GGK built me out right away, Netflix and stuff. So I was on house arrest.

But the thing that was nervous is like, there's going to be four to six months for your trial. And I can't leave. And I'm like, fuck. My wife starts getting on social media and reaching out. Everybody's reaching out. I got freaking different congressmen.

Like Morgan LaTrell helped me out a bunch too. Like I got like freaking like extraction teams being set up. I'm like, guys, it's not going to get to that. Let's be careful here. But it ended up the people that actually help me in the end with the GGK, the guys I worked with. They, in Netflix too, but the GGK was there for me the whole time. Like this guy, Paul Young, he's a stud.

He was next, he was like in trouble a lot when he was a younger kid and joined the military. He's kind of the rougher bunch, but now he's ahead of their counterterrorism unit. When I first showed up, I gave him a half-faced blade knife that because he's a big fall. Dude, he had, you know, Beto's company, Def-Con's. He had Def-Con's on. I was like, damn. Half-face plays. Like, oh, two expenses.

I was like, here's a knife. Thank God I made friends with them because he's got to build me out. But they took good care of me. I was just in trouble under the civil side, not the monarch. The monarch is everything's under GGK. So in the end, the magazines were classified as props. So I was able to get out. It's funny too because that David Chestnopf, that lawyer, my buddy, honestly, he's awesome guy.

And he was like, he's like, they immediately rush me to the airport, fly me to Tokyo. And I land, he's like, are you in Tokyo? You're out of there? Okay, I'm going to go to sleep now because he stayed up for 10 days trying to give me out. But it worked out. It was definitely, I might negotiate the contract to be a little more next time, you know. How was the rest of that film in that shit?

It was good, man. And the, you know, I miss it. I miss, you know, I don't get to be a team guy anymore. You know, you don't get to do shoot and move and do that stuff. And everything moves a little bit slower. You're not just quiet. But it was good, dude. I think the toughest guys, I think, physically tough are the Swedes.

We did this ice sweats. right. It's fucking negative 30 Arctic Circle, right? Jump in the size hole and you come out and freaking, I'm I'm fucking freezing. Like how long did you stay in the water for? Maybe a minute or so. Enough to wear them fucking, definitely in the verge of hypothernia.

We come out, I got to immediately stripped down naked. It's not like we go to a warming hut. We have to rewarm by running through the snow and shit. We get out and immediately get naked, right? I'm trying to put in my socks and the Swedes are naked too. I'm like, do you guys not have fucking shrinkage? He's like, what's the shrinkage? Your balls go up beside

you are you just hanging like that all naked walk around still swinging big dude i'm like no we're swedes little shrinkage i'm like god damn it boys yeah the swedes are tough dude but uh but yeah i got to see all these special force i'd never heard of before you know it's like uh um like the anti-cartel unit in mexico and yeah that i was surprised that you guys were down there doing that well it makes me nervous and now the cartel knows i because they had to cover their faces the whole time but i know you're right there i'm not going to Mexico anymore Yeah. But it was good.

It was good rolling with Dean. Dean's a good dude. He's more of the serious guy. Joke around a little bit more. He's like, why are you joking all the time? My buddy, this is how it was in the war.

Because the shit's fun? Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, but it was a good time, though. Have you heard anything? What's going to happen with that show? Yeah,

I think it's looking good. They've got 10 million views in the first week. So I'm probably, I'll do it again if it comes up. We'll see. It's cool. Like, never been in this position to get like sponsors or anything before like I know vesky is like

I always love their guns are badass and Lorraine just like I got you dude I'm like fuck yeah I'm cool enough to get sponsors down dude and my wife my her whole life she's got sponsors all the time you know because all the stuff she did I was like now look you know you're the man what do you need babe what you need you need some novesky I got you oh man yeah so neveski's probably my main sponsor I love those guys so looking up with them now hell yeah uh does that does that get us up to Speed? Does that get us the present day? What else you got? Yeah, I think that's pretty much it. I'm gonna probably get my wife pregnant again pretty soon. Hell yeah. Start a freaking franchise know of kids. Yeah, you need at least a fire team dude. Yeah, I do at least a fire team. Are you have more kids? Well, no. I mean

My life you have two or three four four kids four kids. Oh shit. Four kids fire team. Fire team. So I got to have four then. Yeah, at least you should have seven. I mean honestly like it seems like a lot or whatever, but have as many kids as you can. Yeah. Like have as many kids as you can. Because the ones that you have, they're going to grow up and leave. Yeah. You'll be mad. Nobody will remember your name if you don't have kids.

Yeah. You've got to have as many kids as you can and just like the older ones will leave and then you'll have more. Yeah. Like more. Do you ever think that like, you know, obviously being in the teams, we were selfish our whole life. That kind of stuff.

Once you have kids, like you turn less selfish, right? I feel like everything that I've learned in life, my duty is to somehow pass on at least some of it to them. For sure. That's probably my more passion now is, you know, everything I do, this TV show, all that stuff. Really, everything is to create wealth and empire that my kids can learn from and crush it further than what I, I took it to here and then they take it to their kind of thing, you know. Yeah, I mean, it definitely was different from you because I had kids while I was in the teams. And as I've said many times before, the teams was my priority, even when I had a wife and kids. And you have to have it that way.

Yeah. You know, I mean, my wife would look at it, I hope, from a strategic perspective back then and be like, well, at some point, this old bastard is going to have to retire from the teams. And then he'll be, like, able to focus on the family. And that was true. You know, once I retired, it was like, okay, now I can go to every wrestling tournament, every freaking dance recital, every gymnastics thing that the girls or kids were doing. So, yeah, at a certain point, it's like, I get to do this. But I will tell you, like, once the kids are gone out of the house, which I have one left in the house, and it's like, it sucks. Yeah, oh, yeah.

Yeah, because you have all the night. It's like, damn, what do I do now? Yeah, because you don't, like, you don't have, like, there's a certain age where, like, those are your friends. Yeah. You know, your kids are your friends. Yep. And especially for me, like, when I got out of the teams and, like, a couple years later, my son was sort of old enough to be my little team guy friend. you know, where it's like, oh, we're going surfing.

We're going to jih Tutsu. We're going to go. Like, it was just that. And so he became sort of like my team guy buddy that we're, you know, you're going to go D'Am Patrol. I used to go D'Ombuds surfing with my team guy friends. Well, you know, I'm out of the teams now. I'm going with him.

Oh, I'm going to go and jujitsu for five hours on a Saturday and a Sunday. It's like, well, I'm doing it with him. So you have this little relationship, you know, with your son. And I did that some of my girls, but it's different. Yeah, it's different. Like they're not always going to be into what you're into. Yeah. And but then when when they're gone, it's like, hmm.

Yeah. What do you do now? Yeah. Well, now what are we're supposed to do? You're going to tell your wife, get in the gym, dude. We're starting to roll. Yeah. We can let's go.

No. Yeah. So have more. Yeah. I mean, honestly, we're at that point. I'm going to, I mean, again, my wife's too hot not to, yeah, to bang him out. Our, our kids too studly, dude. They're all ripped when they come out.

They get six packs soon as they come out of the womb, dude. That's freaking nuts. Yeah. Yeah. It's the dude. You know, it's like, you know, when you're breeding, this is bad. to say but you're breeding horses all about the mayor not the not the stud you know so that's that that's the key to have in narly offspring is have a stud wife yeah yeah i would say like my wife is definitely like a

she's a beast yeah she's a freaking badass viking chick yeah and yeah well i definitely stepped it up you did too yeah our kids are going to take over the world dude right all man uh awesome echo charles Yes. Well, before that, where can people find you? So you're at Frogman, 532.26. Yeah, 5236 underscore. Underscore. And then Canoe Club USA, obviously is our company if you want ammo.

Or cool T-shirts. Or cool t-shirts. Or cool hats. Do you have hats on there? Oh, yeah, of course. I should have bring some, damn it. Yeah. Oh, you didn't bring me?

No. Delete all this. And that's you and Bito doing that, right? Yeah, I mean, Bito. Johnny, Johnny LeBlanc too. Okay. Brown. Hell yeah.

You know Johnny? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's freaking, dude, that kid's a stud too.

Yeah, right all, man. He runs a, he runs a chat. He's a CEO, chatter bait. What's chatter bait? Do you know what he is? No, no, I don't know what that is, man. I don't know. Oh, you have to ask about that.

He's like almost a $3 billion company. He runs it all. Well, can you give me a hint to what it is? It's the biggest porn company in the world. Oh, okay. Yeah, he runs at all. He's the backside. He develops.

Like he doesn't actually do that, but it's like, like, he's not in the movies. He's not in front of the camera. Yeah, he runs that whole company. He freaking, it started like right in the beginning of when they first were, he was like the third coder to come on. Because I brought him on those piracy trips with him. He started being a coder. I'm like, what are he going to be a coder for? Dork.

Yeah, fast forward. Now's a chief of staff for the whole company, dude. Damn. Yeah, he's crushes it. But him, him, Bito, and me are canoe. Right on. And then we'll have, we have some other stuff coming up. And then also, yeah, watch, watch, watch, watch,

And Netflix. Yeah. Toughest forces on Earth. The toughest forces on Earth. I've watched a few episodes. It's definitely entertaining. I get a kick out of it because you're on it, you know? And it's cool.

I know Dean too, which is cool, but I, you know, I know you a lot better than I know him. And you're having, you seem to be having more fun than Dean is having, right? Yeah, Dean's like more serious. Yeah. I kind of, I give him shit all the time, you know. How is it, how much is it like edited down to where you're like, dude, why'd they cut that out or why'd they kiss cut, cut that out? cut that out? Pretty much it's pretty thing. I mean, all TV's a little bit of a lie, you know, but pretty much what you're seeing is what you get. They don't, they didn't really have any

input. They didn't say they'd just like go. And I was like, just go. All right. You know, so I just kind of had fun with it. I mean, what do you do in that situation? I mean, I don't have this attribute to be a freaking TV star. It just came in front of me. So, you know, opportunity. Brought the passion, the opportunity and freaking out after that, you know, so I was kind of had fun. You get to travel all over the world. And they're like, dude, listen, I mean, when you're, even in between, like, you're staying in nice hotels. When you're out there, sometimes you're freaking, like, when we're in Sweden, we were freaking living without food and shit.

And I was like. And you were chilly. Yeah. And you got a shrinkage. I'm like, fuck, dude. I was like, I got a total toilet at home now under a fucking steam room, dude. I'm too old for the shit. Oh, man.

Like, hung it through the jungle. Like, I know it's been a while since we did that. But, like, you know, doing 10 kilometers through the jungle with a 50 pound pack. I'm like, fuck, man. I mean, it gets me, it gets me sharp again, though. Sharp in the sword. again you know so yeah but yeah but no yeah well you're doing it you're doing it with him what's crazy is that the jungles were crazy those guys getting a lot of firefights

fighting those cartel down in Columbia yeah again that was wild that you're down there doing that stuff yeah fighting the cartel like they were often why we were doing the stuff dude it's funny you show up and they're like hey what do you want and I was like I don't know here's a fragor and like catching a fragor I'm like whoa is fuck wild I didn't give a shit there you know so but uh yeah if we do another one I think I asked to go to Africa more. Oh, that's cool. I want to do the Rhodesian shit.

Yeah, plus you hunt too. So you get down there and slay some stuff. Oh, that's the thing. Buddy, I was never into hunting. I was in one little kid, but when you're getting to teams, you kind of forget about it. And over the last couple years, obviously, Bito hunts like every other day. Did he ever kill an elk with a spear? Like, he was all fired up telling me.

He was going to use, like, I'm not going to get an elk with a spear. He was going to hide in, like, a mud wall like ramble. And he was like all fired up. No, he didn't. I was with John Dudley and I shot an elk and it was, you know, it was wounded and bedded down. We're waiting for it to die. And I'm like, I'm like, Dudley. Like, I can go kill this.

I will sneak up on it. He's like, dude, shut up. And I'm like, no, I'm like, dude, let me get up there. Like, let me put a knife. I'll put a knife on the end of this stick and I'll get it. And he's like, dude, you're an idiot. And I'm like, okay, but can I go? You just figure four to its head and got a little school.

You know what's funny is, so I just got into Bohun last year, which honestly, I love it. Yeah. I mean, I shoot. It's so freaking badass. Like, you have to. It's hard. It's hard. It's freaking hard.

Like, I've been at, I've been at elk camp with some of the literal best hunters in the world. Yeah. Guys like John Dudley, guys like Cam Haynes, like in with the best guy. And like, it is, there's no one in that camp that will say, I guarantee this is going to work for me. No. Not one single person will say that. No. Not somebody that's been hunting for 30 years, publicly, all this other stuff.

Yep. And they will sit there and drill targets at 110 yards all day long. Not one of those goods will be like, oh, I got this. No one. No way. No one. Well, instead, you're trying to range. Trying to do everything at once, but call at the same time.

Do you know what Terry Howan is? Yes. I know his name, but I don't know. Oh, dude. Awesome guy. When I first met, I didn't know his even team guy. You know, I was like, oh, my Navy's so stiff. I was like, oh, were you in the military?

He's like, yeah, I was in the Navy. I was like, oh, where are you out? I was like, ah, 17 years, you know, and I'm like, I'm an idiot. So I go, so he's turned into my good hunting, buddy. We went, so last year is the first time I hunted with a bow. They told me this thing, OEF4, it's Ryan Bader's organization. You should do that with us. We get donated tags to us so we can hunt all those units in Arizona.

Sweet. They're freaking gnarly. Oh, yeah. 400 plus bowls and something, you know. and they, because when people draw and they can't do the hunt, they don't want to lose their points, they get to donate it to us, and then we get to hunt, and they keep their points. Damn.

So I go out there with Terry, right, and learn how to, they told me to get it, I got a bow text. I got a bow literally one week before that. I'm trying to learn how to shoot. Not good, no. So I get out there, freaking, we stock in like a mile and a half. I freaking pull back on an elk shoot, hit a branch, miss it. And they're all like, this is the last time you're probably,

you're right, not going to get another shot. I'm like, God, dang it, man. I don't just pissed off, right? Next day, I can only do a cow call. Call one in, bedded down. Terry's like, I'm coming to you right now. We're going to get this guy. Okay, all right.

He comes in. As soon as he comes in, steps up starts moving. We're moving on it, stocking in, get close. Freaking shoot, take another branch, miss it. Damn. I freak out at this point. I'm like, fuck. He takes off.

I'd start sprinting over the mountain, down the mountain. Take another shot missing. I'm sprinting for about two and a half miles. Terry's trying to catch up to me the whole time, calling me on the radio being like, calm down. They'll come back to us, but I don't hear. I'm just sprinting.

Take another shot. Waste four arrows at this thing, right? He finally catches up and he's like, bro, were you even a fucking sniper? Dude, what did I get myself into? You're just running through the forest after an elk? And I'm like, I almost got him. I was just calm the fuck down, dude.

So he, I was like, so I learned a lot on that one. And at the end, I did you get one? Yeah, I got one. Nice. Double long shot, 70 yards. It was good. That's a good shot.

Yeah, well, he was like. He was teaching me like in the beginning I was missing everything and he like sat with me every day and like Well if you had your bow for one week. Yeah, that's not good. Yeah. So like during that two weeks I was hunting, he taught me now I'm good to go. What does he do for a living? Just hunts, hunts, and he does, he teaches sniper school, but he's sponsored by a couple people. He's retired. I think he did 17 years of damn neck and so now he's just hunts a lot. But he's a cool, chill guy. Never live, but until you take off running, like we ran. out of the water he's like damn bro hunting with you fucking sucks but yeah that's freaking legit yeah i love bohun man that's the best do you have a rain can you shoot at your house yeah i i set up 120 yard at my house oh sweet i got a big little long a couple acre lots so i got that and then there's a couple live courses by us too sweet where you can walk around yeah yeah that's

yeah it's weird you know who alex honnold is i know he's like a the rock climber that climbed el cap amongst a billion other things but he's like the best rock climber in the world I guess can I say that there's probably someone that's like well actually he's not technically but whatever he's a good rock class he's freaking he's freaking bad ass he climbed El Capitan in in

the Osamity yeah with no ropes like the dude's freaking gnarly is he the guy with the Netflix scene too doesn't he have a show yes he does I think it's on Netflix or is HBO or some that uh I don't know but he made the movie called Free Solo Yes I know he talked I watched it that's nuts yeah so he came on but He lives in Vegas.

Yeah. And everyone's like, why the hell would you move to Vegas? And he says you can, he said 20 minutes drive from Vegas and you're at a trailhead, 20 minutes later, you're at a place where you can just die alone because no one will ever find you because you're that remote. Yep. So Vegas has a lot of uncovered gems once you get out of the strip. Oh, yeah. Well, we live towards, we live on Lake Meeter, like maybe 10 minutes from Lake Mead,

but then we have a river house down on the call. Because remember, dumping down to Lake Mead is a Colorado River and then goes down to Lake Havis. And stuff. So we have a river house on the river there. So during the summertime, we're on the river with a dock. And then we cruise down to Lake avisu and there's like, you know, little restaurants and stuff along the way. And then when you're wintertime, you're in the, uh, in Vegas. And Vegas is good because it's the best food in the world. So like date night is always also you can fly direct to a lot of different places because a lot of places fly direct to Vegas. Because the casino subsidized the airport to get cheaper flights and more directs into it to get people to quicker to Vegas. to Vegas, man. Let's go. And honestly, I call my crew

like the Vegas Luminati. They're freaking badass. Like all the people I met through the wind. It's like the people that run that town. So if you ever come, let me take you out to the best restaurants and stuff, dude. It's awesome. Well, I used to go to Vegas a lot for UFC

when I was cornered a bunch of people. But I still go occasionally. Yeah. Yeah, dude. Honestly, we love it. You know, it's good. And I, you know, even the governor, Joe Lombardo,

all those guys, they're all part of a little crew there. And it's good, good, good town. It's still got like a cool underbell, you know. They got the, got the crew, you know. Got my homie, Jav Chesnoff. You'll never get in trouble again. I like that. Listen to me, look him up.

He's like literally the best lawyer in the world. That's super good. So, damn. Yeah, so if you see, we can go and have a good time, you'll never get in trouble. Freaking bonus program. Got you out of the KL freaking detention center, so that's good. All right, Echo Charles.

What do you got for questions? It seems kind of random. But back when you were protecting the ships, right, against the pirates, and you said that it's hard to gauge distance on the water. Why is that? Well, everything always looks closer than it is on the water, you know? So you can't like, you know, if you're on land, you can kind of tell between football fields, right? Well, when you're on the water, you can't really tell that.

It's hard to tell that stuff. But what's different about the water than it is, but land is when you shoot into the water, you get immediate feedback. So instead of trying to shoot and not know your rounds are going, it's better to shoot short and then walk your rounds into the person. You know, that way. And then say if you're shooting at the person, but you keep missing,

you're not knowing where he's missing. Right. But if you shoot before, it's kind of like using an Adub to like walking around or an automatic or a machine gun. You don't tell you. Yeah. Echo knows what's out. Yeah, but yeah, if we're over the water,

it's easy to shoot into the water and then walk them in. Yeah. Is it, I mean, as far as gauging the distance and the difficulty or whatever, Does it have to do with the water, like, moving as opposed to, like, land? You know how, like, no, but you got to think, too. You got, like, you got your ship that's going 12 knots. This ship is coming 20 knots. So you have all this change of distance over water.

So to try to make a point shot on a rocking boat to a person and another boat, it's pretty impossible. Yeah, it makes sense. So if you're coming, it better be to shoot close and then walk them in past the boat. You know, you should jump on one of those ships are fun, dude. Yeah, sounds fun. Put a little hunting trip out there. It's good to go. Right on.

Sometimes I like to go technical. You see what I'm saying? But yeah, all my other questions have been answered. Thank you. You got it done. Good to meet you. You two, buddy. Ryan, any closing thoughts, bro?

No, everybody listens. Just keep crushing life. Don't be a pussy. I like it, man. I think your wife says that on a pretty regular basis too. Yeah, I had to get a tattooed on my wrist because she says, so much. Right all, man.

Well, thanks for joining us, bro. Thanks for sharing your insight, your lessons learned. Most important, thanks for your service to the country and to the teams. And thanks for being a badass frog man, man. Appreciate it. You too, buddy. Thank you for having me on. It's an honor, buddy.

And with that, Ryan Bates has left the building. Yep. Did you, you know when we were talking about War Machine? Yeah. you remember that whole time frame right of course it's strange is oh time frame yes in real life yeah like both when war machine was kind of around

and then in the post oh yeah fully so war machine actually I knew not as good as him but I knew War Machine my first like you have eras in your training so when I first started War Machine was one of the main guys that I would be training with it was like war machine

Matt Tyro was down there every once in a while. Just old school guys. Dean Liz. No, it was Brand. Remember Brand? And then, yeah, some other guys. But yeah, he was there.

That's how I met him. And I remember thinking, Oh, War Machine, it's kind of a dope nickname. Then, yeah, later on, he changed it. But he was always, like, actually cool. Yeah, yeah. He didn't seem crazy or nothing like that to me.

He said normal. Hold on, though. Would you say, even though he seemed normal? Did you see a little tinge of like crazy eyes? No, not at all. Only online. This was back in the MySpace and Facebook days. And only through that that I was like,

hmm, these rants are kind of like fueled by some other side that I haven't seen in him in real life. And I'm going to like hard training too. You know, like some people when you train hard, you see little tingees of temper or this and that. But nothing, nothing. All normal like freaking good training now. and then I actually ended up doing his website later on

in maybe 2007-ish War Machine MMA.a.com So, you know, so I had dealings with him. Yeah, yeah. So, like all normal, but I would see the stories, you know, like in the news and then like, you know, that thrust to his fight. I remember that too.

And he did a rant online about that, like freaking, oh, they just wrongly accused me. And I kind of, for whatever, because I knew him in real life, I was like, fuck, I kind of believe him. Like, that's all. That's how normal he was in real life in my experience, which is weird. I mean, amen. It's what it is.

It's another little part of Ryan Bates's, like, what do you say when he was younger? He's like, I want to make stories or I want to have good stories to tell us something like this? There you go. He got some good stories. Yeah. A horseback, like breaking horses over in Afghanistan. Yeah. And just making it happen.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. He and I mentioned this to you before, probably many occasions where I'm starting now. to really come to realize even though I felt like I knew this I really come to realize that so Ryan Bates seems like the guy who always is taking some kind of action like doing it rather than talking about it or reading about it all the time and not doing it he's already he's taking steps ready physically making it happen oh yeah and yeah they guess so that's how it turns out right you got all these stories and it's weird because he's talking about all this stuff and I'm like

bro, I was around for all of that. Like me personally, I'm popping in and out of those stories. Like, hey, I was part of that. Just a little bit. And I didn't know him back in the day or whatever, but I was kind of part of those. That's kind of weird. Yeah. You think about he spent three years going on these pirate anti-pirating ships and then just

being in Europe with a hundred grand in his pocket. Yeah. You know, like what kind of stories did he make dead? I know, bro. Probably the kind he can't be talking about right now. No, but, dude, I was just, I remember when he, when he got out, I was kind of, I was, like, I retired. And then, you know, you'd see that he was getting out or here that he got out or whatever, I was kind of bummed out. You know, because you feel like that's, you know, kind of a guy that's going to carry the, carry the torch.

Yeah. The torch of getting after it, the little, the frogman torch of making things happen. Yeah. You know, but. Yeah, that's interesting that he's the guy that you were talking about this whole time. Yeah, you've heard me tell that story before. Any times. In fact, that affects me because I'm always been, not to go too deep about myself or nothing,

but I'm like that guy who's like, hey, like they're, it's a weird subconscious almost thing. Like in the back of my mind, it's like, hey, if I do this, like I'm going to violate some rule. Like I'm not in any position to like make anything happen. There's a few things I'm responsible for and the rest is kind of like, hey, I'm waiting to be told what to do kind of a thing. and then to be like, no, no, no, if you can actually take action on pretty much everything. In one way or another, you can take action on it to make things happen or whatever. And it's like, huh, that was like that story always was a good, like really legitimate real world reminder of that. Yeah.

And it was, like I said, I wish I had a little camera and a helmet cam. Yeah. But you could see the look in his eyes changed. Yeah. Oh, I can. And JP tells a similar story when I'm like, put JP on your helmet. Yeah. Why?

Because I want to be able to see you. I can have you make stuff happen. It's like, dude, that's so awesome. And they were similar situations because that was JP's second platoon. You know, so you kind of know what, you kind of look around. If you're, if you're cognizant,

if you're aware, if you have a good situational earnest, you're like, I think I know what we could do right now. Yeah. But the weird thing is last platoon, you were a new guy. Yeah. So no one has told you, bro, you're cleared hot to make shit happen.

Yeah. So let's go. Yeah. So, I felt that. Yeah. Like when he says, like, yeah, like you're and it's not like you're cleared hot to be the boss now right it's not that but it's like bro if you if you if it's kind of clear like that something should be done and you know what

that is bro you can make it and that's a key component and I mentioned that when I was uh opening that the dude you have to be humble because otherwise if you just think you should be in charge of everything all the time then you're just it doesn't work because now you're stepping on people's toes and you don't think that boss made a bad call and you go like that's a problem But when you're humble and you're like, oh, wait a second, just like you said, there's a little leadership vacuum right now and I need to help out and I'm going to do it, that is a powerful thing. Yep. So that's what that's when you have a good platoon. Get some pipe hitters in there to make things happen.

All right. And you can see that he went out in the world that made stuff happen. I mean, he's kicking ass. Oh, yeah. Good to see. So the action part definitely important. All right, speaking of action, we're working out. Yes, we're getting stronger.

Yes, we need fuel. Yes. Recommend? Any recommendations? I think Jock Fuel. I think, you know. I agree with you. I agree with you.

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Very sweet. Like, rewardingly sweet. Like, cooling. as a child like fruit punch yeah rewardingly sweet yeah because you know you get some kind of

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we're in a lot of stores around the country now we're in Wawa we're in vitamin shop GnC military commissaries a fees hanafer dash stores wake fern shopright

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Is that in stores yet, or is there like a delay? No, it's landing in stores right now. But there is a little bit of a delay as it goes out from the warehouses and gets into the stores. But most of the stores, what's cool is you bring your product in. Like let's say a product is selling our product, right? They're selling milk. You bring them and they want to try them to see if they want to put them in the store. Everyone said yes.

Like let's get them in. Because soon as you try these things, you're like, there's no way this is good for you. Oh, this is good for you? Yeah. Straight up. Yeah, so 15 calories, but yeah, drink as many as you like, don't care what program you are. Don't care what program. Yeah, yeah, because our friends from Arizona was asking like, oh, wait, can we go buy these now at the store or whatever?

I was like, I don't know, don't know. Yeah, yeah. So we're there, you should be there. I mean, it's hitting stores. Yeah. And by the time you hear this, it's probably in stores. So that's what we're doing. Joccofield.com.

Check it out. Also, we make geese. We make jeans. We make shirts. We make hoodies and we make them all right here in America. OriginUSA.com. Check it out. If you need Jitoo gear, if you need hunt gear,

if you need a pair of blue jeans, because you're going to go out to the store. You're going to go out to dinner. Sure. Dinner. You're going to go work on your ranch. You're going to go swing your hammer. Whatever you're doing, we got you covered.

OriginUSA.com, this is a big deal. Yeah. Because it's all made in the USA, which is very important. It is? Very important. Very important. Yep, it's true.

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And this, you arrive here. This is where you can get your discipline equals freedom stuff. Shirts and hoodies. There's a lot of cool stuff on there. Also, good. Good? We talked about that a little bit today. Yeah, well, we talked about it more offline.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, offline. That's true. We stopped recording. Apparently, Ryan's wife is fired up for the good attitude. It's true, that's very useful. Very useful tool and weapon in this life. I am definitely got, I got curious about this camp that she went through.

Yeah. Can you imagine you're taking your daughter and tying her up and dropping her off at a camp somewhere. Yeah. She must have been getting wild, bro. Yeah. There must have been some mayhem going on. I mean,

what would your daughter have to do, where you tie her up and drop her off not to be seen for a year? Yeah, I think... Some chaos. He meant, yeah, he mentioned, like, she was dealing. Yeah. And so, yeah, that makes sense. Like, if my daughter was dealing,

and I felt like, hey, she's not responding to my rehabilitation tactics. Yeah, man, I dig it. And I knew about some camp. that purported to rehabilitate young troubled youth. You know, that man. There she goes. God, that would be heartbreaking. Very much.

So yes, sir. Yeah. Heartbreaking. But hey, if it worked, it worked, you know. Yeah, and apparently, like he called her after to figure out, like, what the name of the place was. Yeah. But, you know, she, he said it was what she needed. And you know what's cool.

It's like the military. So what's what the military often provides that for young men and women. This is what they needed. Structure, discipline, direction. Those are all really good things. Yeah, I wonder what that pro, because it got shut down or whatever, right? Or maybe moved or read, Don.

Something about Paris Hilton? Maybe Paris Hilton went to this thing. That kind of rings a bell, though. I feel like I knew something about it. I don't know. But if I do wonder what the programming is. We will take Eddie Bravo's advice and we'll look into it. Yeah, yeah, I'll look into it.

But you know, like there's all these programs. Like, you know, scared straight. Remember that one? Right? And that's a specific program with a specific like, approach, right? They get bringing to the prison and all the stuff. And, you know, maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't, you know, I wonder what the programming is there. Because it's a whole camp. You can't talk to them. It's like, you can tell. Obviously, it's rigid. What do you say? Like, she wasn't

allowed to look up, like you had to look down. Like, there's some. Yeah. It's rigid. But I wonder, but I wonder, but I wonder. But I wonder, but I wonder. But I wonder, but I wonder, we're going to, we're going to kind of break you down and then build you back up. Because the really, at the end of the day, from what I know of, the people that go into the military, especially if they're even halfway looking for that, for that structure, you know, people going for different reasons, I know. But a lot of times when the people that I know anyway that are like, hey, I want to go for structure or the parents recommend it for structure, oh, they get the structure because they do provide that empowerment part of it. Sure, it's hard and, you know, they do all this stuff. But at the end of the day, they're empowered.

And, you know, I wonder like what empowerment programming. Yeah. And another huge part of is like you're going against your will. Yeah. So as a human, we don't like to be doing things against our well. So when our dad ties us up and puts us into a school where it's completely against our will, they must have had some serious psychological understanding to get through. Like, bro, if somebody did that to me, I would never comply to it.

anything that they're telling me to do. I mean, unless it was like, okay, after a month, I'm like, oh, I'll never get out of here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I had a friend that was in the brig. You know what the brig is? Yeah. It's like the military jail. And I actually met this guy when I was in boot camp.

And he had been in before. Oh, no, it was after boot camp. So he had been in before. And he told the story that when he got, he got kicked out the first time. and he had gone to the brig and he was in there for like a month of just not listening fuck you guys you know I'm not doing your shit and finally one day like he the guy's like hey you need to make your bed he's like making my bed he goes looks like this day won't count either and then walked away he's the next day the guy comes back he's like what did you mean by that

he's like well if you don't do what we're telling you to do that day doesn't count and you owe whatever you owe four months or something oh damn so you have to do what they say otherwise This day dust doesn't count. I was just going to keep it going. So you know what? This dude made his bed. Got on board with the program because he needed to get out of there. So I could understand complying because you know that's the only way to escape.

But then I'd get out and I'd freaking be pissed. I wouldn't want to do it. Yeah, that's why I figure there has to be some kind of mentor shit, something, something in there to say like, hey, this is beneficial. You know, too, man, you get broken like a horse gets broken. You know what I mean? Where you're like, oh, I have to kind of get on board. with the program. And if you get on board

at the program and then you read maybe there's that moment where you go oh I can see where this is going to help me you see what I'm saying so that that's kind of a I very seldom talk about imposed discipline but sometimes

very rarely I hate to even say this very rarely you've got to impose discipline on someone for long enough for them to go oh I can see that I'm going to win now yeah you know this happens with sports this happens with coaches like you got to do the hill sprints no one wants to do them we got to do them and then they start winning

and then everyone realizes the benefit right Right, right. Or you gotta do the homework, right? Oh, you gotta do the homework. I don't wanna do my homework. Okay, well, I'm gonna make you do your homework. And then a while you get an A and then your opportunities open up. So you can impose discipline on people sometimes because you have to, because it's the only way that you can show them that the discipline will bring you freedom.

You can't tell it to them because it just doesn't work. Yeah, yeah. You can't explain it to them doesn't work. They've got to, they got to do it. So occasionally. So maybe it was a situation like that where she was anti, anti, anti, anti, anti, anti, but she's doing it. it because you have no choice. And then eventually she goes, oh, I see how this is going to benefit my whole life.

Yeah. Yeah, it is, you can, under certain circumstances, you can see how that could be where, you know, someone who's super rebellious or whatever. And they're like, no, no, no, they insist, stubborn. I insist on not listening. I insist on not doing it right. I insist on it. And that one moment of like, bro, this me rebelling is, I'm kind of tired of it.

So let me, okay, I'll listen. Just for the sake of I don't want that beef. Just today, though. just because they do it right then they it's almost like it opens their eyes to this whole new world where it's like wait a second all these benefits from come from just doing it correctly oh shit I might do this again and then it slowly gets good to them and then that's just how afterwards you know makes sense so yeah good yeah good if you want to represent good you can't anyway like I said joccal store.com that's where it is uh also the short locker new design every month subscription scenario so good and people seem to like it um that is also on Jocko store. So if you click on the top where it says a shirt locker, you can kind of see some of the design, see what you're in for, you know. So yeah, man, if you like something, get something.

Check. Also, speaking of getting something, you probably want to get some steak. So check out Colorado Craftbeef.com and primalbeef.com. Two awesome companies selling you the best steak you're going to eat. That's just how it is. And you can put it on your stove, your pan, three minutes one side three minutes the other side two minutes the other side two minutes the other side side you're good you're good depends on the temperature right there you go but that's 10 minutes you

got a steak like a good really good steak right and you're eating it you know what I mean yes you are that's one thing with you know you know well you know me you do you know that fact that I like if it if it's if I'm required to put an effort to make dinner yeah ham sandwiches you know what I'm saying like that's what I'm just not I'm not doing the whole life babin for four hours, you know, like yesterday. We had to marinate it. Make the marinade. Like all that stuff that he's, I'm super stoked when he's doing it.

Yeah. But I'm not doing it. John Dudley, dude, this dude's prepping meat freaking three days in advance. Oh, yeah. That's real. And I'm always like, yo, I'll bring ham. And some mayonnaise will make some sammies if I'm in charge. Sure.

But if you are going to, you only need 10 minutes and you make yourself a freaking tasty steak. Yeah. Which is going to be the best thing you're going to have. So check that out. What do you put on your steak? Salt and pepper. Yeah, regular. Salt and pepper.

That's all you need. That's all you need with these steaks, 100%. So check it out, Colorado Craftbeef.com or primalbeef.com and get yourself some steak. There you go. Also, subscribe to the podcast. Also, joccoor underground.com. Also, YouTube channels. Also psychological warfare.

Flipside canvas, Dakota Meyer, putting cool stuff to hang on your wall. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. You can check them out if you want to. I've written a bunch of kids books with you. some people find surprising, even though I have four kids. Some people think, oh, what are you doing writing kids' books? You're a military guy. Well, I'm a military guy.

I had four kids. Yeah. So, yeah. Had to write books for him. So they could actually learn something about life. So check it out. Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, four, and five. Also, Mikey and the Dragons, check those out.

Aeschelon front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Every problem that you have is a leadership problem. And the way you fix that problem is through leadership. So check out echelonfront.com for details. We do consulting. We have live events. We have all kinds of things happening.

If you want to check that out, that's where you do it. Also, we have an online training program for life. For life. I could tell you you a leadership program, but it's not just a leadership program. It is a square your entire life away program. Go to extreme ownership.com. Check that out. Take some of those classes.

Join some of those live sessions. That's what we're doing there. If you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization helping our service members get better.

And she does a bunch of other things. But giving them the medical treatment that they need that the government doesn't provide, that is one of the premier ways that she helps helped a bunch of my personal friends save their lives. So if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also, we got Heroes and Horses.org. You heard Micah Fink get mentioned a few times today.

What, he said? Tough guy. Micah Fink, tough guy. Ryan Bates, tough guy. Two tough guys together. You know what you got to do? Fight. Get the respect.

Now we're bros. That's true. But Micah has now opened up his charity organization up in Montana, and they take veterans out to the wilderness. so they can reattach to reality and reattach to the earth and reattached to their lives.

So check that out, Heroes and Horses.org. And also Jimmy May has his organization Beyond the Brotherhood.org getting guys from the teams into the civilian sector helping civilian companies win. So check that as well. And if you want to connect with Ryan Bates,

he's on the Graham. Frogman 53 26 underscore. Also, if you need ammo or cool t-shirts and hats, go to canoe club, USA.com. For us, I'm at jocco.com. I'm also on social media. I'm at Jock Willings. Echo is on there at Echo Charles.

Just be careful because you can ruin your whole life or waste your whole life, getting caught up in the algorithm, which you don't want. Thanks again to my brother, Ryan Bates, freaking kick-ass dude, kick-ass husband, kick-ass dad, kick-ass frogman. Proud to call you, brother. And thanks to everyone out there who has served or is serving in our armed forces around the world. Thank you for protecting our freedom and our way of life.

And the same goes to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for protecting us here on the home front. And to everyone else out there, just listen, just remember. No one's going to do it for you. No one's going to give it to you. You're not going to be gifted the things that you want. No one's going to take the action that you need to take.

And no one's going to do the work that you need to do. No one but you. To get up, get out there, and get after it. And that's all we've got. for tonight. So until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.